Marijuana, by Most Measures, Is Not the Scourge That Alcohol Is, Writes David Booth The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 996 words]
Doesn't Have the Impaired-Driving Threat of Alcohol Marijuana, by most measures, is not the scourge that alcohol is, writes David Booth The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 995 words]
BEHIND THE WHEEL: Recent studies indicate smoking marijuana far less dangerous than drinking booze The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 996 words]
Marijuana, by most measures, is not the scourge that alcohol is, writes National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 996 words]
Marijuana, by most measures, is not the scourge that alcohol is, writes David Booth. The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 997 words]
Marijuana, by Most Measures, Is Not the Scourge That Alcohol Is, Writes David Booth National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 996 words]
The National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that "about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn't impair them." The article - When is stoned too stoned? - further sensationalized the "crisis" by noting: "nothing would make (20 per cent of those surveyed) stop driving while stoned." With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neo-cons into paroxysms of paranoia, fearing our roads would be turned into killing fields by the demon weed. [continues 997 words]
One of the chief arguments against legalizing cannabis in California is that legalization is not needed. In 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill decriminalizing up to an ounce of cannabis for all adults, no medical-cannabis recommendation from a physician required. Possessing under an ounce is punishable by a citation, which carries a fine of no more than $100 (plus fees) - or a less serious offense than blowing a stop sign on a bicycle. Thanks to this, misdemeanor marijuana arrests nearly vanished in the state, tumbling by almost 90 percent from 2009 to 2011. Nobody really goes to jail anymore just for a little bit of weed, this argument goes. [continues 798 words]
The signatures are still being tallied and verified, but an initiative aimed at legalizing recreational use of cannabis in California is on track to easily qualify for the ballot this November. Early secretary of state reports show the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which is backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker, submitted more than the needed 365,880 signatures just in Southern California. And more than three-quarters of the signatures sampled from counties that have completed the verification process - 15 out of 58 - have been deemed valid. In all, some 600,000 petition signatures were submitted earlier this month. [continues 951 words]
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a proponent of the legalization effort, should be reminded that his most important responsibility as an elected official is to protect the people from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act is rumored to be bankrolled by billionaires who do not have California's best interest in mind. New York billionaire Sean Parker has purportedly been recruited to augment money that will flow from George Soros and the Drug Policy Alliance. They didn't earn billions because they are dumb, but apparently they think we are. Their stated benefits of legalization are frankly an affront to one's intellect. [continues 481 words]
Congress and President Obama are under pressure to reschedule marijuana. While rescheduling makes sense, it doesn't solve the state/federal conflict over marijuana (descheduling would be better). But more important, it wouldn't fix the broken scheduling system. Ideally, marijuana reform should be part of a broader bill rewriting the Controlled Substances Act. The Controlled Substances Act created a five-category scheduling system for most legal and illegal drugs (although alcohol and tobacco were notably omitted). Depending on what category a drug is in, the drug is either subject to varying degrees of regulation and control (Schedules II through V) - or prohibited, otherwise unregulated and left to criminals to manufacture and distribute (Schedule I). The scheduling of various drugs was decided largely by Congress and absent a scientific process - with some strange results. [continues 601 words]
A new report from American Civil Liberties Union says the federal government's civil asset-forfeiture program disproportionately affects minorities and poor people. The program allows law enforcement agencies to seize cash and property from suspects without an arrest or conviction. The advocacy group found that almost half of the seizures by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in California involve people with Latino surnames, calling it an "ongoing attack" on people of color. Federal drug officials said they had not been given a chance to review the group's analysis, but that the pattern seems to simply reflect their fight against Latin American drug cartels. [continues 948 words]
The death of Prince, who apparently had a Percocet problem, and a 2016 presidential primary peppered with New England town halls that delved into increased heroin overdoses and prescription drug abuse have converged to create what CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls "a public health epidemic." Drug addiction is 2016's big nonpolitical story. CNN aired a special, "Prescription Addiction: Dead in the USA." The Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to provide grants for treatment and improved monitoring. The House also is working on legislation , with funding expected later in the year. [continues 771 words]
Feds Quit Assault on Harborside, Oakland Passes (Contentious) New Pot Rules, and It'll Be Marijuana and Trump Together on California's November Ballot. Oaklanders are in the middle of one of their biggest marijuana moments in city history. Last week, its city council approved a vast, but controversial, expansion of Oakland's medical-pot industry. The vote came the same day as Mayor Libby Schaaf's announcement that Oakland's biggest dispensary, Harborside Health Center, had prevailed in its federal-forfeiture court case. Also last week, a coalition of activists dubbed Let's Get It Right, California announced all of the Golden State would be voting on legalization of adult-use marijuana in the November 8 election. [continues 1441 words]
As BART police Sgt. Michael Williamson made his usual rounds outside San Francisco's 16th Street Station one recent gray morning, amid scores of commuters who poured up the steps from the underground railway, a woman, barefoot and twitching, sat to the side of the entrance and pulled out a glass pipe. Years ago, an officer might have searched the woman before taking her to jail for drug possession. By law, officers today still could. But law enforcement agencies in cities like San Francisco have begun shifting tactics when it comes to low-level narcotics offenses, viewing them more as a public health issue, driven by addiction rather than criminal intent. [continues 1320 words]
The reason marijuana might actually be legalized for adult recreational use in California this November is because professionals - - not stoners - are running the campaign this time. This crew is so straight that the wackiest guy to speak at the campaign's kickoff event the other day in San Francisco was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from Orange County who used to be a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. Yet even though the 68-year-old Rohrabacher told me he hasn't fired up since he was 23, it sounded as if he might have caught some secondhand caught some secondhand smoke out on Post Street when he compared the fight to legalize marijuana to Reagan going to Germany and telling Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down that wall." [continues 709 words]
Heroin's Fast Rise Propels States to Charge Family, 911 Callers With Murder "I think a person who supplies illegal drugs to a person that kills them is . . . no different than a person who shoots somebody with a gun." David Hickton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania When Jarret McCasland and his fiancee decided to celebrate her 19th birthday with heroin, it meant the end of her life and the end of his freedom. Flavia Cardenas, who worked in a nightclub, died of an overdose the next morning in Baton Rouge. After a prosecutor convinced a jury that McCasland administered the fatal dose, the 27-year-old pipe fabrication shop worker was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison in February with no chance for parole. [continues 2064 words]
As California moves toward completely decriminalizing our multibillion-dollar marijuana economy, one cannot help but notice that many of the regulations are being written of wealthy white people, by wealthy white people and for wealthy white people. This is sadly not surprising, but it is both wrong and a lost opportunity, given the history of the disproportionate impact of criminalization on minority communities. As a county supervisor striving with my peers to craft sensible policy in the midst of a modern-day gold rush, it is my goal to ensure that the huge economic potential for legalization is shared equally with the communities who have suffered excessively during marijuana's criminalization: Latinos and African Americans. [continues 416 words]
"We thought America was the best in the world." "This can't be happening." That's how Saw Marvellous Soe and Eh Wah described their astonishment after police seized more than $ 53,000 in cash from Eh Wah's car in Muskogee, Okla., in February. Eh Wah is tour manager for a Christian rock band led by Marvellous that played in 19 U.S. cities, raising money from concerts to support an orphanage in Thailand and a Christian college in Burma. Worthy causes, no doubt. But when law enforcement found the cash during a routine traffic stop, a little-known legal process known as "civil asset forfeiture" allowed police officers to seize it, and whatever other property they wanted, without having to prove that Eh Wah was guilty of a crime. [continues 535 words]
High- Profile Coalition Will Submit 600,000 Signatures to Give Voters a Chance to Legalize Marijuana. SACRAMENTO - A measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California appears headed for the Nov. 8 ballot. A coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker on Tuesday said it had collected 600,000 signatures, more than enough to qualify the initiative. Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other supporters of the measure plan to kick off a campaign for voter approval of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act on Wednesday in San Francisco. [continues 605 words]
