by Mike Meno

Progressive political blog FireDogLake launched its online marijuana legalization campaign yesterday. Complete with a website and an advisory board that includes former law enforcement officers, physicians, and activists, the campaign—called “Just Say Now”—is designed as a “transpartisan” nexus of sorts for the growing nationwide movement to end marijuana prohibition.

Partnering with FDL for the campaign is Students For Sensible Drug Policy, which recently made an excellent decision by naming our former colleague Aaron Houston as its new executive director. Though we miss Aaron’s presence in the office, his new position ensures that he’ll continue to play a leading role in combating the destructive policies of marijuana prohibition.

For more, check out this clip of FireDogLake founder and publisher Jane Hamsher announcing the “Just Say Now” campaign on CNN.

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What Prohibition Can Teach Us About Marijuana Legalization — and Other Tales From Last Call Author Daniel Okrent

As an ardent believer in the legalization of marijuana, as well as most other currently illegal drugs, I’d be curious to know if you find any corollaries between the current ‘War on Drugs’ (which we’re losing and will continue to waste time and money on) and prohibition? – Mark Clark

The obvious parallel between Prohibition and the war on drugs is their shared futility, establishing that you just can’t legislate against human appetites. There’s also the consequent enrichment of those who would try to satisfy those appetites outside the law: the bootleggers of the 1920’s and the drug syndicates of today.

But the common aspect that suggests, to me, that our drug laws will be changing radically over the next few years is the government’s inability to derive revenue from the sale of liquor then, drugs today. No factor played a larger role in the repeal of Prohibition than the government’s desperate need for revenue as the country fell into the grip of the Depression. Before Prohibition’s advent, a substantial amount of federal revenue came from the excise tax on alcohol. As the collection of income taxes and capital gains taxes plummeted between 1930 and 1933, politicians realized that the return of liquor and beer could help shore up federal finances. In fact, in the first post-repeal year, 1934, fully nine percent of federal revenue came from the revived alcohol tax.

In today’s political climate, where no one seems to be willing to raise income-tax rates, both state and federal governments are turning increasingly to excise taxes, use taxes and other levies that could easily be applied to marijuana. Californians will be voting on such a measure — it’s actually called the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act” – this November.

Why did it require a constitutional amendment to prohibit the sale of alcohol but prohibitions against other drugs — marijuana, e.g. — require no special amendments? — Jim S

In the era before the Constitution’s commerce clause had established itself as the lever enabling Congress to enact laws that might have appeared to infringe on state prerogatives, a Constitutional amendment was the one sure-fire way to impose national standards on the citizens of every state.

But even more than that, a Constitutional amendment was seen as an impregnable fortress. Laws were changed all the time, but no Constitutional amendment had ever been repealed: simple majorities in both houses of Congress could change or revoke a law, but a Constitutional amendment required two-thirds majorities in each house, plus the concurrence of three-quarters of the state legislatures. Prohibition advocates (and opponents, too) believed that a Constitutional amendment would last forever. In the words of the Prohibition amendment’s primary sponsor, Sen. Morris Sheppard, “There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”

Sheppard said that in 1930. It’s a measure of how badly Prohibition had failed that the Twenty-First Amendment – the repeal amendment – was ratified just three years later.

I’ve heard that Prohibition actually increased American drinking. Do you have any statistics on average alcohol consumption before, during and after Prohibition? — Luke

You’ve heard wrong, Luke: one of the very few positive consequences of Prohibition was the reduction in drinking. There was a very steep reduction immediately after it went into effect, but even the ensuing years of speakeasies, bathtub gin, cross-border smuggling, and every other manner of law-breaking did not bring drinking back to pre-Prohibition levels. At the end of Prohibition, Americans were consuming approximately 70 percent as much alcohol as they had in 1914. (Demographic historians use that as a base year, as many states began to pass sharply restrictive liquor laws around that time.)

In fact, it wasn’t until 1973 that we returned to pre-Prohibition levels of alcohol consumption, and only a few years later the per capita consumption figure began to decline again. Even now, we’re only inching our way back to the 1914 high-water mark. (Or maybe I should call it the “high-alcohol mark”!)

One figure we’ll never reach again: the 7.5 gallons of absolute alcohol the average American drank in 1830 – the equivalent of 90 fifths of 80-proof liquor, or nearly three times as much as we consume today.

Here in California we have a proposition on the fall ballot to legalize marijuana. A lot of people are hoping that if marijuana is legalized, the gangs that currently profit from it will become less powerful. Is that a reasonable expectation based on what you know about what happened when Prohibition was repealed? — PaulD

Whenever I hear “legalize everything” arguments about today’s prohibited drugs, I always start wondering what the traffickers would do next. After all, criminals generally don’t have pension plans and can’t afford to retire early. Can the Prohibition era teach us anything here? As you mention, it helped get organized crime established in the U.S., but after it was repealed, how many of the smaller crooks decided to go straight? How many moved on to other criminal endeavors? — Ian Kemmish

Today, there is no more visible consequence of Prohibition than the empires built by the mobsters who dominated the bootlegging business. No wonder — not only did they sell their goods at handsome prices, but none of their income was subject to income tax (at least not until Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion in 1931). Money like that must find an outlet.

Some went straight: the Bronfmans, who controlled Seagram’s, used the production facilities, distribution relationships and brand recognition they had built during Prohibition to become one of North America’s wealthiest families, dominating the distilling industry. Others stayed crooked: the national crime syndicate that reigned for decades after repeal was the product of inter-city peace pacts and cooperation agreements forged at two conferences – one in Atlantic City, the other in Chicago – during Prohibition.

And some took a middle path. In the years after Prohibition, culminating in a major effort after World War II, one-time bootleggers from eight different states east of the Mississippi decided to look west in an effort to find a way not just to preserve their fortunes, but also to enhance them. Their solution: they invented Las Vegas.

What do you think of the theory that prohibition was engineered by Standard Oil in order to get Henry Ford to abandon ethanol as the chief fuel of his Model-T? — L. F. File

Not to be too harsh about it, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. In fact, if there was a single industrialist more committed to Prohibition than John D. Rockefeller, it was Henry Ford himself, who supported it vocally, determinedly and unflinchingly right to the end.

How much of our “aghastness” at Prohibition is based on fact? To hear most people talk, not a single good thing came of it. Yet I have heard anecdotal evidence that things such as domestic violence and other, often alcohol-related, issues fell off significantly.
Very simply, what is the good news from Prohibition? Was there really any good that came of it, or was it all a misshapen mess to from beginning to end? — AaronS

In addition to the reduction in drinking (see my answer to Luke’s question, above), there were a few other ancillary benefits, depending on your point of view. If you’re a believer in federal law enforcement, you can trace many of our post-repeal national criminal laws back to examples established during Prohibition. If you think Roe v. Wade was a wise decision, you can be grateful for Justice Brandeis’s dissent in a famous Prohibition case, Olmstead v. United States, where he wrote about the citizen’s “right to be let alone” – words cited by Justice Stewart in Roe.

My own favorite legacy of Prohibition is co-ed drinking. In the pre-Prohibition era, the saloon was a male-only institution. Speakeasies ushered in a change in social mores that had men and women drinking together in public for the first time, which in turn brought about music in bars – the birth of the nightclub.

In the largest sense, though, I’d say that Prohibition’s most positive legacy is how it tells us that prohibitions on individual behavior generally don’t work.

“Progressive” is a concept that’s been attacked by some, notably Mr. Glenn Beck. Do you consider Prohibition to have been a Progressive initiative? — Bill Harshaw

It wasn’t initiated by progressives, but Prohibition was certainly supported by them, in large numbers; 16 of the Progressive Party’s 17 members of Congress who voted on the Eighteenth Amendment voted in favor of it. The progressive view of the responsibility of government to improve the lives of citizens motivated the support for Prohibition expressed by such figures as social worker Jane Addams and journalist William Allen White. Modern conservatives would call this an expression of the nanny state; liberals would call it an expression of social conscience (even if a misguided one).

It has been said that Prohibition in the U.S. would not have come about but for the efforts of the women’s movement, but how critical were women to the repeal of prohibition? — Seano

Absolutely essential. When the prominent socialite and Republican Party figure Pauline Morton Sabin came out against Prohibition in 1929, the repeal movement began to pick up support. Traveling to various cities with other socially prominent, wealthy women with whom she had formed the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, Sabin drew huge female crowds. Her example established that it was respectable for women to oppose Prohibition.

Sabin was an extraordinary woman and probably my favorite character among all the people I write about in Last Call. She was honest, forthright, fearless and willing to change her mind – qualities all too absent in our public life today.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times

by Mike Meno

Bruce Fein served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, and has since gone on to work for conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Now, as a member of the “Just Say Now” advisory board, he’s joined the growing number of conservatives who are calling for a legal and regulated marijuana market.

Watch below:

Mexico's president Felipe Caldéron is the latest Latin leader to call for a debate on drugs legalization. And in the US, liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the 'war on drugs' there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight

by Rory Carroll and Paul Harris

The birthday fiesta was in full swing at 1.30am when five SUVs pulled up outside the house. Figures spilled from the vehicles and ran towards the lights. They burst into the house and leveled AK-47s. "Kill them all!" A shouted instruction, only three words, and the slaughter began.

US SWAT police in drug raid.

Gunfire and screams drowned the music. Some victims were cut down immediately, others were caught as they tried to escape. By the time the killers left there were 17 corpses, 18 wounded and 200 shell casings. Among the dead was the birthday guest of honor, a man local media named only as Mota, Mexican slang for marijuana.

The atrocity last month in Torreón, an industrial city in the northern state of Coahuila, came amid headlines shocking even by the standards of Mexico's drug war. A sophisticated car bomb of a type never before seen in the country; a popular gubernatorial candidate gunned down in the highest-level political murder; and then last week the release of official figures putting the number of drug war-related murders at 28,000.

It was against this backdrop of bloody crisis that President Felipe Calderón said something which could, maybe, begin to change everything. He called for a debate on the legalization of drugs. "It is a fundamental debate," he said. "You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides."

A statement of the obvious, but coming from Calderón it was remarkable. This is the president who declared war on drug cartels in late 2006, deployed the army, militarized the city of Juárez and promised victory even as the savagery overtook Iraq's. Calderón stressed that he personally still opposed legalization, but his willingness to debate the idea was, for some, a resounding crack in the international drug policy edifice.

"This is a big step forward in putting an end to the war," said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle chief of police and now spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs on 17 June 1971, a hard-line prohibition policy continued by successive US presidents. Four decades later there is growing momentum in the US and Latin America to abandon the fight and legalize drugs, or at least marijuana. There have been false dawns before but many activists say the latest rays of sunlight are real.

In November, California will vote on a plan - called Proposition 19 - to allow adults to possess small amounts of marijuana and let local governments tax its sale. Last week a cross-political lobby group encompassing Tea Party libertarians and leftwing liberals founded a new organization, Just Say Now, to support similar legalization across the US.

"We should give the [individual US] states the ability to regulate marijuana just like alcohol," said Aaron Houston, co-director of the campaign. "This is an idea whose time has come."

Three factors are driving the momentum. Baby boomers who smoked pot in their youth do not share previous generations' fear of the demon weed. Economic crises have squeezed law enforcement budgets and prompted states to seek fresh revenue sources. And Mexico's horror show of shootings, beheadings and mayhem shows what happens when a rhetorical war turns all too real.

A policy proposal long confined to radical fringes became mainstream last year when three former Latin American presidents - César Gaviria of Colombia, Fernando Cardoso of Brazil and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico - urged governments to legalize marijuana to squeeze cartel profits. Influential thinktank the Brookings Institution backed the call.

Last August, Argentina's supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal consumption, giving the government a green light for further liberalization. "Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state," said the court. That month Mexico made it no longer an offense - but stopped short of declaring it legal - to possess 0.5g of cocaine (equivalent to about four lines), 5g of marijuana (about four joints), 50mg of heroin and 40mg of methamphetamine.

Maria Lucia Karam, a Brazilian former judge turned liberalization advocate, said Calderón's statement showed that policymakers were recognizing the failure of prohibition. "I certainly have to be very optimistic," she said. "Ending drug prohibition is the only way to reduce violence in Latin America and elsewhere." Judges across the region were growing bolder in challenging "unconstitutionalities" in current drug laws, she said.

Not all are convinced that Mexico's president, a conservative who has staked his rule on the drug war, is serious about reassessing strategy. His call for debate, made during round-table talks with security experts, business leaders and civic groups, may have been a tactical attempt to deflect headlines that 28,000 - a big jump on previous official estimates - had died in the past four years.

The logic behind legalization is that marijuana accounts for about 60% of the $40-$60bn annual drug trade. Make it legal, goes the argument, and the cartels will lose most of their business while states gain tax revenue and shed the burden of jailing non-violent pot users.

The policy would not lead to a "garden of Eden", said Walter McKay, a Canadian former police officer who works with the Mexico City-based Institute for Security and Democracy. Cartels would adapt and continue making profits from cocaine, heroin, kidnapping and extortion. "But you would hurt their revenue stream, which would mean less money to corrupt police and politicians." However reluctantly, governments were being forced to confront the failures of prohibition, said McKay. "We're moving forward. In my lifetime I think we'll see prohibition dismantled or at least softened."

A report by Edgardo Buscaglia, a law professor and UN drug policy adviser, found that since Calderón declared war on the cartels their power and influence had increased massively, largely because they had been forced to become smarter and more brutal. Buscaglia thinks legalizing drugs would be good policy but no panacea.

Proponents of prohibition say there is at least one success story: Colombia. A decade ago it was overrun by cocaine-trafficking guerrillas and paramilitaries. Today, after $1.3bn of mostly military US aid, the state has recovered territory and authority and jailed top drug lords. Could Afghanistan and Mexico follow suit?

Skeptics pray they will not. In a recent report called Don't Call it a Model the Washington Office on Latin America thinktank said narco-trafficking continued to flourish in Colombia, and that its security gains were "partial, possibly reversible and weighed down by collateral damage".

Latin America's drift away from a US-led drug war stems partly from Colombia and Mexico's suffering and partly from growing boldness in challenging the gringo superpower. Bolivia and Venezuela have led the way by expelling US Drug Enforcement Administration officials. As a result, say US diplomats, drug trafficking has surged.

But now some US states seem to be joining the revolt, saying prohibition of marijuana has failed just as miserably as the attempt to ban alcohol in the 1920s and has given a similar boost to organized crime.

Public opinion over California's Proposition 19 is split. Some surveys show voters narrowly in favor; others show them against. But the mere fact of the ballot's existence is an astonishing victory for legalization advocates.

They have compared the ban on cannabis to the ban on alcohol in the 1920s, an experiment which gifted power and fortune to Al Capone and other mobsters. Prohibiting drugs has failed to prevent their use and social harm and fueled narco-gang violence. "It has simply not worked," said Houston, of the Just Say Now campaign. "We tried to ban drugs and it has failed."

His solution is to treat cannabis like booze: legal and taxable. Legalizing marijuana will slash cartel profits while providing annual savings and taxes of $43bn a year to the US economy. "And frankly, that's at the low end," Houston said.

Marijuana is already practically legal in many parts of the US. Using it for medical purposes in some form is now allowed in 14 states and Washington DC. Again, California has taken the lead. The city of Oakland is set to license four industrial-sized marijuana farms in January that will institute commercial-size cannabis growing alongside its already booming small-scale sector.

The attraction for the poor city is clear: one of the farms alone is estimated to generate $3m in tax revenue and create 400 jobs.

The California Democratic party has stayed neutral while numerous bodies from city governments to police groups to politicians have mobilized against the November ballot. An influential group of Californian police officers, the Orange County Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, also came out against the move last week, saying that it would hurt law and order. "[It] allows for a free-for-all at the local level and will be another burden on law enforcement," said Joe Perez, the group's chairman.

Resistance is even stronger outside California. Few people are realistically looking at measures to legalize hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin. America is still having enough trouble getting used to the idea of accepting marijuana as part of the legal landscape. No one thinks other drugs will follow quickly behind, if ever.

Tom Rosales, the leader of No On Prop 19, which opposes legalization, called the formation of the Just Say Now group "tasteless". Its name, he claimed, is a taunting nod to the 1980s anti-drug slogan associated with Nancy Reagan, Just Say No. But supporters of Proposition 19 would say that the prohibition policy has its own brutal, three-word epithet. Kill them all.

WHERE THE LAW HAS BEEN LIBERALIZED

PORTUGAL

In 2001, Portugal became the first European country officially to abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs. Those found guilty of possessing small amounts are sent to a panel made up of a psychologist, a social worker and a legal adviser who will advise on appropriate treatment.

ITALY

Drug laws were relaxed in 1993 to define very small amounts of drugs (usually less than half a gram) as being for personal use. People found with smaller amounts do not face criminal prosecution, though they are placed on a users' register.

CALIFORNIA

The passing into law of Proposition 215 in November 1996 did not legalize marijuana in California but created a new exemption from criminal penalties for its medical use for those with a doctor's recommendation, which can be made either in writing or verbally. This November the state will vote on a plan, called Proposition 19, to let adults possess small amounts of marijuana and let local government tax its sale.

THE NETHERLANDS

The Dutch classify cannabis in all its forms as a soft drug and the smoking of it, even in public, is not prosecuted. Selling cannabis, although technically illegal, is widely tolerated in coffee shops which, however, must keep to a five gram maximum transaction and sell only to adults. Recent moves have been made to tighten these controls in response to drug tourism.

SWITZERLAND

Zurich's Platzpitz park needle exchange project in the mid-1980s led to the decision by authorities not to police the park on the grounds that it would focus drug use in one place. The experiment ended after the number of addicts in the park rose from a few hundred in 1987 to more than 20,000 in 1992.

© 2010 the Sunday Observer/UK

CHRISTINA ROGERS
The Detroit News

Two months ago, Ryan Richmond and three other investors opened an unusual type of business in a modest cinderblock storefront in Ferndale, hoping to capitalize on the state's newest medical industry.

The space, which once belonged to a film industry payroll company, now receives a steady stream of customers looking to soothe their medical ailments with the state-legalized drug of marijuana.

The business's client base has grown to more than 1,000 regulars. State-certified patients can pick from among 15 to 20 varieties grown by local caregivers approved by the state to cultivate the pungent-smelling bud.

"Obviously, there is an opportunity," said Richmond, co-owner of Clinical Relief LLC, a medical marijuana consulting business.

"Many patients say they can't get a continuous supply of marijuana."

Nearly 20 months after state voters legalized marijuana for medicinal use, a small yet fast-growing service industry has taken root in Michigan to supply patients with the drug.

But, as businesses rush to gain a foothold in this budding market, state regulators and law enforcement officials are still trying to make sense of the new law.

Along Eight Mile near Southfield, up the Interstate 75 corridor in Oakland County and into the western reaches of Wayne County, billboards have cropped up advertising schools that say they can teach people how to grow medical marijuana and health clinics that specialize in getting residents certified for using it. Marijuana remains illegal for recreational use.

Dozens of garden stores have sprung up selling hydroponic gardening kits and high-intensity lamps -- equipment commonly associated with growing pot.

A marketplace for buying and selling the drug also has emerged in dispensaries, cafes and support groups, known as compassion clubs, where card-carrying medical marijuana patients can purchase an ounce for between $300 and $400.

But some cities, like Livonia and Troy, already have restricted or banned business related to the drug. Others, like Ferndale, have enacted moratoriums on marijuana-related commerce until they can create rules to better regulate its trade.

"A lot of this is going to get ironed out in court," said Michael Komorn, a Southfield-based attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases. "There is no bottom line on this because the law is murky."

New business opportunities

Industry backers, however, say the expanding marketplace could bring new business opportunities for Michigan's ailing economy.

About 21,000 patients so far have received state-certified medical marijuana cards. Another 8,900 have registered with the state as caregivers, residents who grow and harvest marijuana for a limited group of patients.

The number of applicants grows each month. In June, the state received a record 5,909 applications.

"People are coming out of the woodwork," said Komorn, a board member of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, an industry advocacy group for patients and growers. "They are excited, and they see this as an opportunity to get their foot in the door."

Already, many garden stores are doing brisk business selling equipment for growing medical marijuana, and displaced workers are finding new prospects in the state's newest cash crop.

The state also is attracting out-of-state investors and national chains, such as Oaksterdam University, an Oakland, Calif.-based trade school for cannabis growers. The university opened a Michigan campus last year in Flint.

According to state law, a caregiver can have up to 60 plants at a time to supply five patients. Each patient is allotted 12 plants, and the caregiver can also be a patient.

At best, this arrangement can earn a grower up to $40,000 a year, but the real money lies in selling excess product to dispensaries and patient groups, a transaction that falls into the gray areas of the law, experts say.

While state law makes it legal for caregivers grow pot, it doesn't address what they should do if they harvest more than they need for patients.

Some industry ads for grower training courses tout salaries of up to $100,000 a year.

"Is there big business available? Yes," said Adam Brook, a former grow shop owner and organizer of the annual Ann Arbor Hash Bash. "But not by staying 100 percent legal."

Cities respond

The law's ambiguity has prompted some cities to restrict medical marijuana commerce. Troy, for instance, has banned dispensaries -- businesses that buy pot from local caregivers and sell it to patients with medical marijuana cards. Troy officials feared the facilities would invite break-ins and hurt the community, said City Attorney Lori Bluhm said. The city also questioned their legality under state and federal laws, which don't address the issue of dispensaries, Bluhm said.

"The fact that there is no explicit provision to have dispensaries in Michigan is an indication they're not allowed," she said.

Some experts, however, say the big bucks are in selling grow equipment and other supplies to marijuana growers.

One benefit is there is no question the equipment sales are legal, Brook said. And they offer a decent financial return.

"It's not a cheap hobby to get involved in," Brook said, adding that grow lamps can cost about $400 each. "That's a nice sale for a guy who was told this is a growing opportunity."

Miles Vankeersbilck, a store clerk at Hydro Heaven on Eight Mile in Detroit, said sales continue to grow as the state approves more caregiver cards.

The store sells everything from high-intensity lamps to grow tents lined with metallic material. Its selection of nutrient-rich fertilizers spans several aisles.

It opened about a year ago, one of the first in Detroit, but now it is among many that have started to "pop up everywhere," Vankeersbilck said.

For some, growing is a secondary job; for others, it's a main source of income, he said.

"We meet people who are moving in from out of state," Vankeersbilck added. "They're out of work and come here."

But after the initial rush, the industry's growth may taper off significantly, economists say.

"The notion that there is some huge pot of money to be made is a bit of an exaggeration," said Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard University who studies the marijuana trade.

The market is likely to hit a saturation point quickly and some businesses will be forced to close as competition heats up, he said.

State and city governments could make some additional money if they tax the drug's sales, but it probably won't add much to their coffers, Miron added. Medicinal pot sales tend to remain smaller than other business activities.

Compassion first

Meanwhile, some medical marijuana industry advocates denounce this profit-driven mindset. They view the drug's legalization as an act of compassion first and a business second.

"We're trying to provide a safe place so people don't have to do this on the street corner or back alley," said Bill Teichman, 51, owner of the Waterford Area Compassion Club and Everybody's Cafe.

The club sells memberships for $20 a year, and state-certified patients and caregivers can participate. The cafe, which opened nine years ago, has seen business pick up slightly since it added the compassion club, and Teichman plans to expand by opening a dispensary and supply shop. The club has about 450 members.

Similarly, the owners of Clinical Relief in Ferndale have plans to expand, but say the business is rooted as a health service, supplying medicine to patients who would otherwise have trouble getting it because of the ambiguities in state law.

"The law is so goofy. It barely makes sense," Richmond, of Clinical Relief, said. "Logistically, how do you supply all this?"

"You don't make penicillin in your brother's basement if you need it," he said.

The investor group already owns dispensaries in Colorado and Nevada and has plans to open several locations in Michigan during the next couple of months, increasing its staff to 50.

Still, Richmond acknowledges that the dispensary is a for-profit business and its margins have to stay healthy, too.

"I can guarantee our margins are nowhere near the pharmaceutical industry," he added.

© Copyright 2010 The Detroit News

By Philip Smith

Sacramento Bee/Field Poll survey released over the weekend found support for legalizing marijuana in California at 51%. The poll was not measuring support for Proposition 19, the Tax and Regulate Cannabis marijuana legalization initiative, but instead asked respondents: "Which action best fits what you feel should be done about marijuana laws?"

Legalization got 51%, with 47% saying marijuana should be legalized and controlled like alcohol and another 4% saying marijuana should be legalized -- period. Thirteen percent wanted to keep current laws, but lessen the penalties (which pending decriminalization legislation would accomplish), while 19% wanted tough enforcement of existing laws and a hard-core 14% wanted even tougher pot laws.

Between those who want to legalize it and those who want to decriminalize it, the poll suggests nearly two-thirds of California voters favor relaxing the state's marijuana laws. Only about one-third support the status quo or hardening the state's approach to marijuana.

This Sacramento Bee/Field Poll is in line with recent robocall polls on Prop 19, which show the initiative at 50% in one poll, 52% in another. A Field Poll from early July had the initiative losing by a margin of 44%-48%. This is yet more evidence that the Prop 19 race will most likely be very tight indeed.

The poll also found that 47% of respondents had tried marijuana, but nearly half of those (23%) had not smoked in the last 15 years. Eight percent had toked up in the past year, with the San Francisco Bay area with the highest last year use rate (11.4%), followed by Los Angeles County (8.8%), Northern California (8.1%), interior Southern California (7.7%), the Central Valley (5.7%), and San Diego and Orange counties (4.8%).

By Chris Cassidy

Robert Girvets, a 78-year-old retiree, has replaced his occasional martini with a hit from a vaporizer. Sarika Simmons, 35, prefers a fruit-flavored cigar rolled with marijuana, but only after she's put her three daughters to bed. John Wade is a 43-year-old event lighting specialist who sneaks a toke on the golf course to steady his puts.

"I don't walk around in Bob Marley T-shirts or have a marijuana flag in my room," said Kyle Printz, 44, a Marin County software engineer who told the Sacramento Bee that he occasionally smokes after a long day of writing computer code. "It alters your state of mind a bit and does help you relax."

The Bee just published results of a new field poll that illustrates the changing face of pot smokers in the Golden State. The results suggest that marijuana is going mainstream — and with 51% of respondents supporting legalization, the poll should be heartening to supporters of California's Proposition 19.

This November, California voters will have the opportunity to back Prop. 19, which would change state law to allow local governments to legalize growth, possession and distribution of marijuana for recreational use. In these budget-strapped times, support for the initiative is growing: another recent poll showed support for Prop. 19 zooming ahead, with 52% of voters favoring it (versus 36% opposed).

The state legalized medical marijuana in 1996 — right around the time that the rest of the nation was still stuck obsessing over whether the president did or didn't inhale. Today, California is one of 14 states, along with the District of Columbia, that permits medicinal marijuana use.

To its credit, the Obama administration has relaxed the federal government's approach to medical marijuana distributors. But if Prop. 19 passes, don't expect the administration to keep quiet. Californians should anticipate a heavy-handed response by the Drug Enforcement Agency, considering the administration's stay-the-course approach to the War on Drugs and the President Obama's inability (or unwillingness) to fulfill progressive campaign promises on related issues (even before the risk of losing a substantial number of Democratic seats this fall loomed).

But the inevitable federal crackdown shouldn't deter Californians from taking a stand against expensive and harmful prohibitions on the drug. California has long been a leader on environmental regulation and marriage equality. Now, as states everywhere struggle to balance budgets and grapple with laws that overwhelmingly impact people of color, it's time for the Golden State to lead again.

Chris Cassidy writes on law, judicial nominations and the Constitution as they pertain to criminal justice reform and women's rights.

http://criminaljustice.change.org/

by Mike Meno

The idiocy of our country’s approach to medical marijuana was on full display for all to see at the Minnesota Vikings training camp yesterday.

Since the age of 10, Percy Harvin, a Vikings wide receiver, has suffered from chronic, debilitating migraines. Luckily, later in life, Harvin found a therapeutic substance that not only relieved his migraines effectively, but also allowed him to play football. It was marijuana.

But during last year’s NFL combine, Harvin, a promising prospect, tested positive for marijuana, and was subsequently drafted much lower than expected. The Vikings finally picked him 22nd overall, reportedly after a long talk about his marijuana use, and specifically, how it needed to stop if he wanted to keep playing.

Harvin complied, and the migraines didn’t seem to be a problem for much of his breakout rookie season. “Questions about his ability as a receiver seem silly now,” Jim Trotter of Sports Illustrated wrote at the time. “The only thing that has slowed him is migraines.” Toward the end of last season, the migraines got worse, and Harvin was sidelined. Except now he wasn’t able to use marijuana to treat them, and nothing else seemed to work.

On Monday, after another stint in the hospital, Harvin was finally back in uniform at Vikings training camp. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post describes what happened next:

Harvin, who has battled migraines since he was 10 and sought treatment last year at the Mayo Clinic, had not practiced for two weeks because of migraines, returning to the field only Monday. Suffering another attack Thursday, he managed to return to the field and looked up to the sky to field a punt. He doubled over, vomited and seemed momentarily unresponsive and was taken to the hospital. The scene was so disturbing for players that the rest of practice was called off.

If medical marijuana were legal in the United States, and treated like any other legitimate medicine by the NFL, then Harvin could consult with a doctor about the best way to use marijuana to help relieve these awful migraines. (And anyone who is a migraine sufferer knows just how awful they can be.) More importantly, the Vikings could have a productive wide receiver. Instead, they’re forced to stand by idly as their $1.04 million investment is carted off the field in an ambulance, overcome by pain that could easily be relieved by a safe, non-toxic medicine.

How’s that for sensible marijuana policies?

by Jennifer Mascia

Residents in 14 states and Washington can now appeal to their doctors for prescriptions for medical marijuana to help them with their pain.

Their employers, however, may not be so understanding.

In some cases, workers have been fired for failing drug tests despite having prescriptions saying, in effect, that what they are doing is legal according to the laws of their states.

Though the number of such cases appears to be small, they are exposing a new legal gray area, with workers complaining of rights violations and company officials scratching their heads over how to enforce a uniform policy for a drug that the federal government has not recognized as having a legitimate medical purpose.

“The current state of affairs puts employers in a very difficult situation,” said Barbara L. Johnson, an employment lawyer in Washington. “But the reality is that there are no federal guidelines like there are when dealing with other types of prescription medications.”

Some workers have learned about this legal quandary first-hand, at the cost of their jobs.

Nick Stennet, 20, has a congenital disorder called Poland’s syndrome, which left him without a chest muscle on the right side of his body and with a right hand with fingers substantially shorter than those on his left.

Doctors prescribed one or two inhalations of marijuana each night before bed to relieve severe muscle stiffness and shooting pains in his arms.

Mr. Stennet said he told the human resources manager at the Home Depot in Hilo, Hawaii, about his prescription when he was being hired. But after his drug test came back positive for tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active chemical in marijuana, he was out a job.

“Why would they send me down there when they know I am going to test positive?” he said. “I feel like they put me through ridicule when it was so avoidable.”

Steve Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said the company followed federal guidelines for its drug policy. Employees are allowed to take a leave if they choose to use marijuana to combat the side effects of treatment for a serious ailment. When they return, however, the THC must be out of their systems.

“It’s a safety issue for us,” Mr. Holmes said.

Cynthia Estlund, a professor of labor and employment law at New York University, said that only one state that had legalized medical marijuana had taken the additional step of saying explicitly that it was unlawful to fire someone for using a lawful substance.

At the same time, Ms. Estlund said, “Nothing in the law tells employers what to do, so they don’t have to fire them under federal law.”

That is the objection raised by Scott Michelman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of his client, Joseph Casias.

In 2008, Mr. Casias, a father of two who medicates with marijuana to relieve the pain of inoperable brain and sinus cancer, was named associate of the year at the Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Mich. But when he injured his knee last year, company policy required a drug test. The positive result cost him his job.

In June, the A.C.L.U. filed a complaint in state court on his behalf, citing wrongful termination. He is seeking reinstatement and damages.

“The cancer is not what’s keeping him from earning a living — Wal-Mart is,” Mr. Michelman said. “There’s actually no law to require Wal-Mart to do what they did.”

Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said: “This is obviously an unfortunate situation all around. But we have to consider the overall safety of our customers and our associates.”

On the broader legal question, Mr. Rossiter added: “As more states allow this treatment, employers are left without guidelines.”

Only the Rhode Island Medical Marijuana Act offers protection to medical marijuana cardholders for students, employees and tenants. Michigan’s law does not compel an employer to make accommodations for marijuana consumption “in any workplace” or for “any employee working while under the influence of marijuana,” according to the legislation.

While that addresses marijuana smoking at work or just before work, the Michigan law does not speak to what employees can do away from work. Mr. Michelman of the A.C.L.U. said he believed that there was no gray area and that federal law does not govern the relationship between a private employer and an employee.

“There is only one law governing this situation, and that’s Michigan law,” he said.

John Vasconcellos, a California state senator who was a leading advocate for medical marijuana legislation there, said lawmakers had not anticipated such a collision of state and federal law in employment practices.

“I think they’re hiding from common sense, and they’re hiding from the science that shows it might help their employee be more healthy and feel less pain,” Mr. Vasconcellos said of companies that fired employees with medical marijuana registry cards, prescriptions or endorsements from doctors.

In Colorado, the right to use medical marijuana for a debilitating medical condition is protected by the State Constitution — though with limitations — making it unique among states where it is legal. But Brandon Coats, 30, a phone operator at Dish Network who has used a wheelchair since he was paralyzed in a car accident 14 years go, was fired after a random drug test came back positive.

Mr. Coats’s doctors had recommended medical marijuana to control his involuntary muscle spasms and seizures after prescription drugs were no longer effective for him. A few puffs before bed allows him to work comfortably the next day, said his lawyer, Michael Evans.

Mr. Evans said that Mr. Coats — who, he said, had consistently received good performance reviews — was terminated for conduct that was legal and outside of work.

In an e-mail, Francie Bauer, the company’s corporate communications manager, said: “Dish Network does not comment on the specifics of employee matters. As a national company with more than 21,000 employees, Dish Network is committed to its drug-free workplace policy and compliance with federal law, which does not permit the use of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.”

The issue has not worked its way through the Colorado courts.

Some companies have begun to recognize marijuana as a legitimate therapy. Jian Software, based in Chico, Calif., recently consulted with the National Organization of Marijuana Reform Laws, or Norml, in an effort to institute a drug policy that accounts for the medicinal use of marijuana.

This is necessary, said R. Keith Stroup, legal counsel for Norml, because the courts have not yet held that medical marijuana users enjoy “a legally enforceable, fundamental right” to smoke.

“Employers in states that have legalized the medical use of marijuana under state law unfortunately remain free to fire employees who test positive for THC,” Mr. Stroup said in an e-mail. “It is terribly unfair to these patients, but at this time it is not illegal.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times

by Mike Meno

For decades, prohibitionists have claimed that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that inevitably leads to use of harder substances like heroin and cocaine — despite the fact that every objective study ever done on the gateway theory has determined that it’s absolute crap.

Last week, researchers at the University of New Hampshire released yet another study discrediting the gateway theory. Their findings, based on survey data from more than 1,200 students in Florida public schools, showed that a person’s likelihood to use harder drugs has more to do with social and environmental factors than whether or not they’ve ever tried marijuana.

“There seems to be this idea that we can prevent later drug problems by making sure kids never smoke pot,” lead researcher Dr. Karen Van Gundy, associate professor of sociology at UNH, told CBS News. “But whether marijuana smokers go on to use other illicit drugs depends more on social factors like being exposed to stress and being unemployed – not so much whether they smoked a joint in the eighth grade.”

These findings echo virtually every other previous study done on the topic. In 2008, for example, the RAND Corporation found that “[t]he gateway theory has little evidence to support it, despite copious research,” and the federal government’s own Institute of Medicine, in a report commissioned by the drug czar’s office, has declared that “[t]here is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect.”

In a news release last week, the UNH researchers urged American drug policy makers to reconsider current penalties in light of their findings. “Employment in young adulthood can protect people by ‘closing’ the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities,” Van Gundy said.

Of course, no one should expect these findings to have much of an impact on prohibitionists’ rhetoric, since that would require them to acknowledge, well … reality. But it was encouraging to see this study reported in such mainstream news outlets as The Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and CBS News. The next time some dishonest prohibitionist tries to call marijuana a gateway drug in print or on the air, any reporter or anchor worth their salt should be able to point out that there isn’t any scientific evidence to support the gateway theory. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Marijuana Policy Project

Ten years ago I wrote – and AlterNet published – the very first bylined news story about the active ingredients in marijuana destroying cancerous tumors. The article was entitled, “Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ’74.”

Much to its credit, AlterNet has archived the story for a decade and the link still gets picked up and reposted to websites around the world. You can read it here.

After I wrote the story, and won a 2000 Project Censored award for doing so, my frustration at not seeing the facts in the article reported and discussed in the mainstream media eventually led to my giving up a 20-year journalism career in disgust.

Now, with California voters on the eve of deciding whether the Golden State will legalize adult cannabis use, I feel the need to point out some important facts that are getting short shrift in the debate over Proposition 19, the “tax and regulate” cannabis initiative.

If California legalizes marijuana, it will be fitting, since California was the very first state in the Union to make cannabis possession and cultivation illegal nearly 100 years ago, back in 1913. Prior to that, cannabis was the active ingredient in many common medicines, for everything from migraines to arthritis to colic.

That’s right: during the 1800s my great-grandparents' generation used to give cannabis extract to their babies to soothe them.

These days, of course, if a person dares to give cannabis in any form to their own child, for whatever reason, they face jail time and having their kids taken away. But that’s a subject for another article.

What begs discussion on the occasion of California’s historic vote, which the whole world is watching, is that cannabis has been shown in hundreds of laboratory studies over the past ten years not only to be physiologically harmless, but also to be the most potent anti-cancer agent found in nature. No other natural substance holds the cancer-stopping power of cannabis and that's a proven fact.

In addition, cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, shrink and prevent the spread of tumors far more effectively than synthetic chemotherapy agents, for the simple reason that they destroy cancer cells without damaging healthy cells, a feat that widely prescribed chemotherapy cocktails can't duplicate.

Two unlikely journalists have led the way in publicizing research on the cancer-fighting powers of cannabis, filling a ten-year void left by the mainstream media. One is Paul Armentano, a frequent contributor to AlterNet and spokesman for NORML, the nation’s oldest pot legalization organization. Paul’s diligent coverage of every type of cannabis research is exemplified by this article about the potential of cannabis as a cancer treatment and this story about the huge number of laboratory studies already done on marijuana.

The other pioneering cannabis scribe is Granny Storm Crow, the pseudonym of a retired teacher's aide in her '60s who every year publishes a compendium of cannabis research as it applies to a vast range of illnesses, both mental and physical. This year her list of thousands of cannabis studies runs to 420 pages, with research specifically addressing cancer appearing on pages 70-97. You can find it here.

California voters need to know that the plant they are voting on is not just something people like to smoke while watching their favorite YouTube videos. Tens of thousands of sick people throughout California find relief from scores of ailments by using cannabis because this plant has so many healing qualities, in addition to its relatively mild psychoactive properties.

In fact, many medical marijuana users ingest cannabis in forms that do not get them “high” at all, such as skin creams, oils, suppositories and many edible forms of the plant.

Proposition 19 is not just about “smoking weed to get high.” It’s about opening the door to a full, uncensored discussion of the many benefits of marijuana and its botanical cousin, industrial hemp, which were freely cultivated for 400 years in America prior to their ill-conceived federal prohibition in 1937. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, “In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession and consumption of marijuana.”

If cannabinoids are the most potent of all anti-cancer agents, as over ten years of laboratory studies document, then the citizens of California need to think about that before they vote on Proposition 19. Californians who choose to support cannabis prohibition, notably Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the “No on Prop. 19” effort, must also be willing to accept responsibility for restricting their fellow citizens’ access to a harmless substance you can grow in your garden that is proven to destroy, and prevent, deadly cancers.

http://www.alternet.org

by Dr. Joe McSherry

Research continues to show cannabinoids are remarkably helpful for symptomatic as well as therapeutic treatment in cancers. Inhaled cannabis has a long history of use by some patients to mitigate pain without the sedating side effects of opiates. THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, has been shown to restrict metastases and growth in a variety of tumor cell lines. THC as Marinol, FDA approved, has been used in humans to mitigate nausea and vomiting side effects of chemotherapeutic agents for 25 years. In recent years, CBD (cannabidiol), a non-psychoactive constituent of the resin from some cultivars of cannabis, has also been found to work in concert with THC, through different mechanisms to inhibit or kill tumor cells. Now CBD is shown to prevent the dose limiting side effect of chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer in mice, according to data published in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia.

Paclitaxel, used in advanced breast and ovarian cancer chemotherapy, causes nerve and muscle disturbances in “up to 93%” of patients. That is, Paclitaxel can cause severe pain to minor stimuli, limiting its usefulness in those patients. If use in humans was possible, CBD, which is non-toxic and non-psychoactive, would be an important contribution both for symptomatic and possible therapeutic benefit to patients afflicted with ovarian or breast cancer. Given the harmless profile of CBD in pre-clinical studies in a wide variety of cancers, it should be available as an alternative for any cancer patient. Being found in marijuana, a Schedule I drug, it is not available for any therapeutic use. In Europe and Canada, the combination of CBD and THC is available by prescription.

Dr. Joseph McSherry, a neurologist from Burlington, VT, was one of two physicians to serve on the Medical Marijuana Study Commission, which was established by the Vermont Legislature in 2002. His support and testimony helped Vermont become the ninth medical marijuana state in 2004. Even after his success in his home state, Dr. McSherry continues advocating for patients’ rights to use medical marijuana, including in New Hampshire, Iowa, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., by testifying at hearings, reaching out to doctors in other states, and meeting with lawmakers.

Dr. McSherry is a guest blogger for the MPP blog.
http://www.mpp.org/

by Anahad O'Connor

A large new government study has found that smoking marijuana on a regular basis, even over many years, does not impair lung function.

Marijuana, the country’s most widely used illicit drug, has become increasingly popular and less stigmatized in recent years, particularly among young adults. One government report released in December found that one out of 15 high school students now smokes marijuana nearly every day, a growth fueled in part by the spread of medicinal marijuana, which is legal in 16 states. With its use rising, questions about the drug’s long-term medical consequences have garnered more attention.

The new research is one of the most extensive looks to date at whether long-term marijuana use causes pulmonary damage, and specifically whether its impact on the lungs is as harmful as smoking cigarettes. The researchers followed more than 5,000 people over two decades and found that regularly smoking marijuana — the equivalent of up to a joint a day over seven years — did not impair performance on a lung function test. The test, a measure of pulmonary obstruction that looks at the amount of air a person can force out in one second after taking a deep breath, is typically worsened by smoking tobacco.

In something of a twist, the researchers found that compared to nonsmokers, marijuana users performed slightly better on the lung function test, though the improvement was minuscule. “Even with this tiny increase in airflow, I have to admit that I really doubt that there’s any real increase in lung health,” said Dr. Stefan Kertesz, an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham school of medicine and an author of the study. The finding may merely reflect marijuana smokers’ years of “training” in taking deep inhalations and holding the smoke, the researchers said.

In the near term, smoking marijuana irritates the airways and can cause coughing, and public health advocates stress that it causes impairment that reduces attention, lowers motivation and heightens the risk of accidents. Over days or weeks, chronic use can lead to problems with learning and memory. But whether smoking marijuana sets off the type of pulmonary changes that lead to lasting damage like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a leading cause of death among Americans, was not entirely clear.

Earlier research suggested that the impact of marijuana smoke, which contains some of the same noxious chemicals as tobacco, was not as harmful to lung function as cigarette smoke. But many of the studies were carried out over relatively short periods and contained hundreds, not thousands, of subjects.

In the new study, which was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association and financed by the National Institutes of Health, roughly 5,100 men and women in four cities – Oakland, Calif.; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Birmingham – were interviewed and given lung function tests repeatedly over 20 years. They were on average about age 25 at the start, and more than half smoked marijuana, cigarettes or both.

The researchers found that for marijuana smokers, an exposure of up to seven “joint years” — with one joint-year equivalent to smoking 365 joints or filled pipes, or an average of one joint a day for seven years — did not worsen pulmonary function. Dr. Kertesz noted that with heavier marijuana use, described as 10 joint-years of exposure or more, lung function did begin to decline. And for a person who smokes both marijuana and cigarettes, “the net effect is going to be continued loss of lung function.”

Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied marijuana for over 30 years and was not involved in the study, said it confirmed findings from several other studies showing “that essentially there is no significant relationship between marijuana exposure and impairment in lung function.” He said one reason marijuana smoke may not be as harmful as tobacco smoke, despite containing similar noxious ingredients, may be the fact that its active ingredient, THC, has anti-inflammatory effects.

“We don’t know for sure,” he said, “but a very reasonable possibility is that THC may actually interfere with the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

Dr. Tashkin said he and his colleagues had found in their own research — unexpectedly — that even smoking up to three joints a day did not appear to cause a decrease in lung function. “I think that the bottom line is that there does not appear to be any negative impact on lung function of marijuana smoking,” he said, “and that therefore marijuana is not a risk factor for the development of C.O.P.D. Tobacco smoking is the most important risk factor for C.O.P.D.”

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/307/2/173.short

Copyright 2012 The New York Times
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/marijuana-smoking-does-not-harm...