Denver's Marijuana Policy Review Panel voted 5-3 last week to recommend that city cops not "arrest, detain or issue a citation" to any adult found in possession of small amounts of pot during the Democratic National Convention this week.
The panel was created in the wake of two successful city initiatives that, in 2005, legalized possession of up to an ounce of pot by adults and, in 2007, dubbed minor pot-law enforcement a lowest police priority. The 2007 initiative called for the creation of the panel that would be tasked with seeing that the law is implemented to the "greatest extent possible."
Unfortunately, to date, that hasn't exactly happened. In fact, Mason Tvert, panel member and director of the group Safer Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation, which led the campaign for the successful initiatives, has told reporters that in the years since the initiatives passed police actually made more arrests for minor pot possession than before the initiatives passed. In 2007, the city prosecuted 1,600 minor pot possession cases, Tvert told the Associated Press. This year the city is on track to increase the number of cases to 1,900 – not including any cases that might be added during the convention.
FBI Investigating Deadly Drug Raid at Home of Maryland Mayor
The FBI has launched an investigation into the drug bust at the home of a Maryland mayor last week, which ended with the deaths of the mayor's two dogs.
To recap: Apparently a drug dog in Arizona hit on pot inside a package in the post office that was addressed to Trinity Tomsic, the wife of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Mayor Cheye Calvo. Police brought the package to Maryland and, dressed up like mail carriers, delivered the package to Calvo and Tomsic's house, where it sat outside on the stoop all day July 30. When Calvo got home, he picked up the package, dropped it off just inside the front door, and headed upstairs. That's when the Prince George's Co. narcos and sheriff's office SWAT team swooped in to raid the home. According to Raw Story, sheriff's office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellis said the officers "apparently felt threatened" and thus shot the dogs, but Calvo tells a different and far more disturbing story: The offcers broke in and shot their seven-year-old Labrador Payton then actually pursued their four-year-old Lab, Chase, who ran away from the cops and was ultimately shot from behind.
California's Fourth District Court of Appeals this week ruled that portions of the state's medical marijuana law requiring counties to issue identification cards for qualified medi-pot patients does not conflict with federal pot prohibition, codified in the Controlled Substances Act.
Local officials from San Diego and San Bernardino Counties filed suit in 2006, arguing, in part, that the state's Medical Marijuana Program Act was inconsistent with federal law – and thus should be preempted – because it required them to provide and review applications, issue ID cards, and maintain records for patients qualified as medi-pot users under the groundbreaking 1996 California Compassionate Use Act. Requiring the counties to issue the cards "imposes an obstacle to the Congressional intent" embodied in the CSA, they argued.
Latest Drug War Strategy: Cops Deliver the Drugs then Raid the House
SWAT team makes Tree City a sad, sad place
The endless War on Drugs hit another low on Wednesday when SWAT officers raided the home of a suburban Maryland mayor, pursued and shot to death his family's two dogs, then proceeded to question the man and his mother-in-law for hours as they sat next to the bloody bodies of their pets.
Nice work. And it gets better: It seems local cops were actually responsible for delivering to the mayor's home a package of pot that the SWAT team later swooped in to raid. Seriously.
Here are the details: Apparently a drug dog in Arizona hit on pot inside a package in the post office that was addressed to Trinity Tomsic, the wife of Berwyn Heights, Md., Mayor Cheye Calvo. Police brought the package to Maryland and, dressed up like mail carriers, delivered the package to Calvo and Tomsic's house, where it sat outside on the stoop all day July 30. When Calvo got home he picked the package up, dropped it just inside the front door and headed upstairs. That's when the Prince George's Co. narcos and sheriff's office SWAT team swooped in to raid the home. According to Raw Story, sheriff's office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellissaid the officers "apparently felt threatened" and thus shot the dogs, but Calvo tells a different and far more disturbing story: The offcers broke in and shot their seven-year-old Labrador Payton then actually pursued their four-year-old Lab, Chase, who ran away from the cops and was ultimately shot from behind.
Reporters can be a pretty easy bunch to please, to wow even, especially when it comes to drugs. Cops know this, which is why, whenever you get a drug bust of any decent size, you're sure to get a press conference. The reason is pretty obvious: Visual aids. The standard drug bust brings a load of fun stuff to the table – drugs, guns, and money, a veritable feast for the eyes!
The rise of the urban meth lab in recent years has done wonders for the relationship between narco cops and reporters (as David Carr put it, the meth heads have really been making a great grab for the honor of being low-man on the druggie org chart). Busting meth labs isn't pretty work – it requires cops to don haz mat gear to dismantle the clandestine labs that, quite literally, could kill them. The addicts who've built these altars to disease and disaster earn near universal scorn (the poor addled saps), but the pictures, man, that's some good shit!
Thus, it is no surprise that the Austin Police Deptartment hit presser gold with news of its Sunday bust on Scribe Drive in Northwest Austin of a clandestine lab in the early stages of meth production. (Two suspects are currently in custody, and charges have not yet been filed.) Fortunately, no one was hurt dismantling the lab – and to boot they got some nicely nasty pics of both clearly marked and clearly creepy chemicals. Not the best ever, but still pretty sweet.
Forty-percent of adolescents who report drinking sometime in the past month say they got their booze, free of charge, from an adult – and 20% of all teen drinkers were given alcohol by a parent, guardian or other adult living in their home, according to a new report from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
In all, reports the substance abuse treatment advocates at Join Together, that means about 650,000 kids in the past month were given alcohol by a parent or guardian. "This report provides unprecedented insight into the social context of this public health problem," SAMHSA Administrator Terry Cline told JT. "Its findings strongly indicate that parents and other adults can play an important role in helping influence – for better or for worse – young people's behavior with regard to underage drinking."
Finding good drug-law news and info can be a chore. Its a sad state of affairs, really. So, Reefer Madness is happy to report that our friends over at the Marijuana Policy Project this week unveiled their new marijuana news blog – for all you Reefer fans who just can't get enough drug-law news.
According to Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector Brian Cantera, there are likely 20,000 residential marijuana grow operations spread throughout the western province of British Columbia, reports the BBC.
And if that's true, reporter Misha Glenny opines, then B.C. "is probably home to the largest concentration of organised criminal syndicates in the world."
Really? Hmmmm....
That sounds a little grand, even for the BBC, don't you think?
Ellis Co. sheriff's investigators have arrested 46-year-old Dwayne Marshall Nielsen on a charge of pot possession (strangely, a rather minor charge) after finding a sophisticated growing operation hidden beneath is Waxahachie home, reports The Dallas Morning News.
Nielsen is out of jail on a $40,000 bond, after police found his so-called "indoor farm" consisting of about 150 active plants capable – or so the narcos have estimated – of producing some 40-pounds of dope every other month. Apparently the cops had been working the Nielsen case with Drug Enforcement Administration investigators since October and were ultimately tipped to the location of the grow basement, accessible only through a secret door located behind a bookcase in Nielsen's house, the daily reports. Ellis Co. Sheriff's Capt. Danny Williams said the raid was tough work: "The odor was hard to describe, but it wasn't good," he said. "We had to get the fire department in there to help air it out so we could work."
The problem with narcotics, says Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, is that we don't police them enough. Yup: Right now, Whitmire is holding court in the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice about how Texas should have a "zero tolerance" policy toward cocaine, and how troopers should be "more aggressive" in policing highways for drugs. Now is the time, says Whitmire, to get the resources we need for a true "War on Drugs in Texas."
"We oughta have a hearing," he says. (Indeed.) Tell us, he implores the Dept. of Public Safety witnesses appearing before the committee, "what you really need to stop drug trafficking."
Fourteen months after they were given psilocybin – the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms – as part of a controlled experiment, 64% of the study participants say that the hallucinogenic experience has increased their sense of well-being, Johns Hopkins University researchers reported July 1 in theJournal of Psychopharmacology. "I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," study participant Dede Osborn told the Associated Press. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected."
On May 29, Vermont became the second state to legalize industrial hemp farming when Republican Gov. Jim Douglas allowed H.267 to become law without his signature. The bill creates a regulatory scheme similar to that enacted in North Dakota, the first state to reauthorize agricultural production of the non-narcotic cousin of marijuana.
Under the new law, farmers must be licensed by Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets; hemp must be grown from seeds provided by the ag secretary, on land the secretary has approved for hemp production. And farmers must agree to submit to random inspection by the ag department and/or state police.
Although medical marijuana is legal in Washington State, patients who might be in need of an organ transplant – think hepatitis C patients, for example – apparently need to think twice before availing themselves of medi-pot: If they go that route, the University of Washington Medical Center won't let 'em on the transplant list.
That's how it went down for 56-year-old Seattle musician Timothy Garon, who died earlier this month from hep C, after being denied a place on the liver transplant list at UW. Garon had used medi-mari, in compliance with state law, and that's the main reason the hospital's transplant committee offered for denying him access to an uninfected liver, reports the Associated Press.
Indeed, according to the Seattle weekly The Stranger, area hospitals have used patient use of medi-mari, legal there since 1998, as a viable reason to deny an otherwise-qualified patient from receiving an organ. Their reason (prepare for the lameness): Aspergillus mold. Seriously. According to statements provided to the weekly by two area hospitals, aspergillus mold is occasionally found in both marijuana and tobacco; if a smoker is given a transplant, the mold could cause infection. And since the hospitals consider marijuana an "addictive drug," they believe that transplant recipients may not be able to stop smoking after the transplant, thus allowing aspergillus to take hold, cause infection and then cause organ rejection in the organ recipient.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, hempsters in the Silver State have filed a petition seeking to allow the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute to research the use of industrial hemp as a source for sustainable biomass energy.
Nevada voters twice have sought to legalize and tax-and-regulate marijuana – ballot initiatives that gained broad support yet ultimately lost at the polls (in 2006, the measure earned the nod of 44% of voters). Although hemp is the non-narcotic cousin of pot, Nevada law defines marijuana as "all parts of any plant of the genus Cannabis," which (unfortunately, and, really, incorrectly) includes agricultural hemp.
Apparently folks at the DRI aren't opposed to the suggestion – a spokesman told the daily that they already are studying wood chips, pinyon pine and peanut shells as possible energy sources. Hemp could be "another biomass," spokesman Greg Bortolin told the paper.
Initiative petition backers need to gather 58,628 signatures of registered voters before Nov. 11, in order to have a chance to change the law next year. If they succeed, the daily reports, the petition would be presented to lawmakers in 2009, who would have 40 days to approve or reject the proposal. If they reject it, the language would appear on a 2010 ballot.
We had a bumper crop of stupid criminals last week – each doing their part to give pot smokers a really, really bad name.
First, from Humble, Texas, comes the sick and sad story of three teens arrested and charged with misdemeanor abuse of a corpse for allegedly digging up a grave and stealing a skull in order to make a bong. I wish I were kidding. (You think normal bong water tastes and smells bad – can you even imagine? Ick. Ick. Ick.) Seems 17-year-old Kevin Jones was being interviewed by police about the use of a stolen debit card when the teen (who faces charges as an adult) spilled the beans about digging up a grave with two buddies, including 17-year-old Matthew Gonzalez (also charged as an adult). (The third teen is still legally a juvenile, so police have not released his identity.) Gonzalez apparently confirmed the tale, though police are still investigating, reports the Associated Press. The grave was in a 19th-century veterans cemetery, the AP reports, and the skull appears to have come from an 11-year-old that died in 1921.
Why would Jones confess to such a thing? "We can only speculate and guess to what goes on in the criminal mind," Humble Police Sgt. John Chomiack said.
As questions about possible political improprieties dog White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy, agency head John Walters hits Austin in search of good PR
