Dear pot smokers: Please don't f--k this up. We are on the verge of legalization. This is a pivotal moment in our country. And some of you - actually statistically about half of you - are ruining it. In a recent survey, conducted by State Farm, 44 per cent of marijuana users said they don't think the drug impacts their ability to drive a car. Come on, you'd have to be high to believe that. I'm a little sad to have to spell this out for you, but if pot didn't have an effect on your brain, you wouldn't use it. It might be green and fuzzy like a muppet, but it's a drug. Please treat it like one. [continues 325 words]
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House voted to allow Department of Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients in states where it's legal, marking the strongest sign yet that attitudes in Congress toward the drug are shifting along with public sentiment. The House took several other emotional votes Thursday, including approving an amendment that would ban the display of the Confederate battle flag in veterans' cemeteries and, in a particularly raucous moment, narrowly defeating another that aimed to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in federal contracting. [continues 841 words]
Just after noon on May 3, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stood in front of a well-dressed crowd at the Commonwealth Club - an "unusual coalition" of Republicans, doctors, environmentalists, and former cops, as one member put it - talking at length about marijuana. Specifically, the still-magnetic former San Francisco mayor and likely frontrunner for governor in 2018 railed about how much he hates the stuff. "I can't stand it," Newsom said. "I mean it. I don't want it in parks and playgrounds, I don't want my neighbors smoking it. I just don't like it." He took care to mention his position as a concerned father of four, as television cameras and reporters' microphones picked up every word. [continues 860 words]
It's the latest turn in a clash between the sheriff and county commissioners over whether deputies should give citations to those caught with a small amount of marijuana. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has said he has no plans to use a commission approved ordinance that lets deputies issue a civil citation, instead of a criminal charge, for possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. A citation would be similar to a traffic ticket. Now, a newly completed analysis by county staff estimates the expense that comes from jailing small-time offenders instead of ticketing them. [continues 444 words]
The tomato seedlings in the urban garden were sprouting. The basketball court was filled with men in blue, gray, and brown uniforms shooting hoops and doing pushups. Inside, at vocational classes, men learned the art of tailoring a suit while a group of women studied toward their GEDs. In many ways, the South Bay House of Correction has become a microcosm of the country's evolving attitudes toward drug abuse and drug-related crimes. The facility just off Interstate 93 in Boston is a different place compared with the early 1990s, when leaders in Washington passed a stringent crime bill that authorized stiff penalties for drug crimes and nearly doubled the country's prison population. [continues 1055 words]
You might not like President Obama's political philosophy or leadership style, but you have to admit that he is one cool president. If you're unconvinced, consider his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30. His poise and charm were on full display, and his comedic timing was impeccable. Still, his best joke made me cringe a little: He said that his popularity rating had been rising. In fact, he said, "The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major." [continues 614 words]
You may not like President Obama's political philosophy or leadership style, but you have to admit that he is one cool president. If you're unconvinced, consider his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30. His poise and charm were on full display, and his comedic timing was impeccable. Still, his best joke made me cringe a little: he said that his popularity rating had been rising. In fact, he said, "The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major." [continues 615 words]
In 2011, I represented Michael Steele - a 52-year-old African American man who was schizophrenic and suffered from a long-term drug addiction. Police believed they observed Steele selling drugs to another man in the city's Tenderloin district; however, upon conducting a search of this other man, they found nothing. What they did find was less than a gram of heroin on Steele. As a result, he was arrested, charged, and convicted of a drug sale and possession-for-sale. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 14 years - because of sentencing enhancements for three prior drug-related convictions, nine years were added on to his five-year sentence. [continues 387 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]
The question has arisen as to why marijuana should be legalized. The alternative question is why it was ever made illegal. The whole crusade against pot began almost a century ago in the United States when a bunch of good citizens of the U.S. South decided that black people were having too much fun with the drug. They sponsored ridiculous propaganda campaigns with such crude distortions, as seen in the movie Reefer Madness. Laws against cannabis spread as jails filled with "offenders" feeding the "justice" system. [continues 105 words]
You might not like President Barack Obama's political philosophy or leadership style, but you have to admit that he is one cool president. If you're unconvinced, consider his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30. His poise and charm were on full display, and his comedic timing was impeccable. Still, his best joke made me cringe a little: He said that his popularity rating had been rising. In fact, he said, "The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major." [continues 608 words]
Ten years ago in Los Angeles, Theresa Martinez was finally making progress in her long, painful struggle against drug addiction and the cycle of incarceration it fueled. But in order to continue her methadone program, she needed $200. Homeless, unemployed, and terrified of falling back into heroin addiction, she tried to get the money the only way she knew: selling drugs. Martinez was arrested for a $5 sale of cocaine, a felony that, absent aggravating factors, carried a three-year prison sentence. By global standards that penalty would have been unusual and harsh, especially since she plainly needed help and support - not incarceration. But here in the United States, Martinez faced an even worse fate. California law prescribes sentencing "enhancements" for anyone who has a prior drug-related felony conviction. Martinez was threatened with a nine-year sentence. Anguished, she took a plea deal for six years, bringing her lifetime total to 23 years behind bars, all for drugs. [continues 578 words]
Society Goes From Racist Approach to Empathy. The Rev. Mike Starks witnessed the destruction of crack cocaine, but not from the sidelines - he was a self-described gangster and drug addict before he became a minister. The Akron community activist recalls authorities responding to the epidemic, which is said to have lasted from 1984 to the early 1990s, with the all-out War on Drugs. Lawmakers enacted mandatory prison sentences for dealers. Stories in the media blamed addicts for their choices and told of gang-ravaged inner cities. [continues 865 words]
The Orlando City Council is scheduled to make an important decision Monday, one that could set the tone of law enforcement for years to come. A proposal by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to decriminalize possession of a small amount of marijuana in the city is set for final action. The ordinance passed by a single vote in its first reading on April 18. If the measure becomes law, it would give city police the authority to write a ticket to someone found with less than 20 grams (0.7 ounces) of marijuana rather than make an arrest. Several hundred people went to jail last year for just such a violation, and many may have ended up with a criminal record. [continues 501 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]
Nov. 8 Initiative Would Authorize 15 % Tax on Retail Sales Ofmarijuana in California SAN FRANCISCO - California voters will decide again this November whether to decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana by adults, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday, calling the looming vote a "pivotal moment" in the national debate around pot legalization and the 45-year-old war on drugs. Newsom and other leaders of a coalition behind the Adult Use of Marijuana Act announced they have collected enough signatures to place on the Nov. 8 ballot a measure that would make it legal for adults 21 and older to possess, sell or transport up to an ounce of pot. California voters rejected a similar measure in 2010. [continues 782 words]
The Colorado Department of Public Safety released early findings on the effects cannabis legalization has had on law enforcement, commerce, health and juveniles. The study, mandated as part of the 2014 initiative decriminalizing recreational marijuana use in the state, is bracketed by a series of caveats. It's not comprehensive; many of its statistics are self-reported. It's not complete; while the drug was decriminalized in 2014, commercialization only began in 2015 and some information for that year is not yet available. Many results may also be clouded by the "decreasing social stigma" around marijuana use, meaning that rather than interpreting statistical shifts as dramatic changes related to decriminalization, some users may just be more at ease discussing their habits than they once were. [continues 481 words]
Dr. Leana Wen, a practicing emergency care physician and Baltimore's health commissioner, has seen what addiction does to patients. Speaking to reporters this month in Baltimore, Wen recalled a patient, who developed an addiction and would lie about illnesses to ensure she had access to treatment, but then died of a heroin overdose after multiple attempts to get appropriate treatment. "Our overall goal: We have to get people into treatment at the time that the need it," Wen said. But the rate of fatal opioid overdoses has skyrocketed in the United States. Opioid-involved deaths more than tripled from 2000 to 2014, including an age-adjusted death rate increase of 210 percent from the same time span, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014 alone, 28,000 people died of fatal opioid overdoses, according to the CDC. [continues 1583 words]
The Controlled Substances Act is not outdated. It is a law structured in a way meant to protect science, medicine, patients and the public. It is not absolutist. It has an administrative structure built into it to control for mistakes, new scientific discoveries and even evolving public or medical understanding. Today's federal drug laws appear to have done a disservice to marijuana, locking it into an inappropriate schedule where it is banned outright. But in reality, negative drug policy around marijuana is not the fault of the CSA. Instead, a variety of other factors -- mainly attributed to biased lawmakers -- have hindered the law from working properly when it comes to the drug. [continues 662 words]
