Hardrock69's Reefhead Madness Thread

[Hardrock69]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-mayor-supports-re_0_n_1602508.html

Chicago Mayor Supports Reducing Pot Penalty

DON BABWIN 06/15/12 06:31 PM ET

CHICAGO — With the murder rate in Chicago climbing at an alarming rate, police may soon get some help keeping a lid on violent crime from an unlikely source: marijuana.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy both support an ordinance that would allow police officers to ticket anyone caught with a small amount of marijuana instead of going through the time-consuming arrest process that takes them off the street for hours at a time.

Police arrested more than 18,000 people last year for misdemeanor possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana, which "tied up more than 45,000 police hours," McCarthy said in a statement. "The new ordinance nearly cuts that time in half... freeing up cops to address more serious crime."

More significantly, the alderman who drafted the ordinance – which turns small amounts of pot into a ticketable, not jailable offense_ said it not only addresses concerns about fairness but also provides increased safety for city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

Alderman Danny Solis said most of those arrested are black and Hispanic and come from predominantly minority neighborhoods – the ones in the thick of the violence.

"The irony is that the worst crime is happening in our city is happening in the same neighborhoods where the possession (arrests) are happening," said Alderman Danny Solis. "The police officer is now going to be more in the neighborhoods that need him or her than in the district doing paperwork."

States across the country are starting to relax their laws on marijuana possession. This month alone, governors in Rhode Island and New York moved toward decriminalization of small amounts of the drug.

In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed a bill that imposes a $150 civil fine on adults caught with an ounce or less of marijuana. And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed a bill that would change possession of small amounts of marijuana from a criminal misdemeanor to a violation with a fine up to $100.

Current marijuana laws disproportionately affect minority communities. Cuomo acknowledged, for example, that 82 percent of those arrested in New York City were either black or Hispanic. And when Solis first introduced the ordinance in November, he and others also pointed to statistics that suggest that the arrests themselves are a colossal waste of time.

Of the 8,625 misdemeanor marijuana cases between 2006 and 2010, about 87 percent were dismissed, according to statistics from the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court.

But it's a marked jump in Chicago's homicide rate that may have given Solis' proposal more steam. Murders are up by about 50 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year.

"I'm a realist," said Solis. "That has to have been an influence."

Emanuel had made it clear in November that he was open to the idea of the ordinance, even saying a member of the police department's gang unit had made the same suggestion. He then directed McCarthy to study it, with McCarthy also signaling that he would consider it because it would free up officers.

"The mayor was serious about this, but he wanted to make sure we had all the research and analysis done," Solis said. "So I told him I won't call it to a committee until your staff and the police do that work."

With that work done, Solis said he expects the full City Council to vote and pass the ordinance later this month, with it becoming the law sometime this summer.

Under the ordinance, anyone in possession of 15 grams of marijuana – roughly the equivalent of 15 marijuana cigarettes – faces a fine between $100 and $500.

[FORD]

Rahm Emanuel is actually on the logical side of an issue?

Shit, there really IS a first time for everything!

[Hardrock69]

AWESOME NEWS....is it news? Well CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!

URUGUAY IS APPARENTLY GOING TO LEGALIZE THE SALE AND POSSESSION OF POT!!!!

http://www.theweedblog.com/uruguay-government-to-legalize-and-sell-marijuana/

A Government Finally Embraces Reality

The local media in Uruguay, citing unnamed lawmakers, is reporting a plan to legalize and sell marijuana to registered users to combat crime, and cut off the flow of money to dangerous cartels. Hmm, seems like I’ve heard this idea before. Oh yeah, it’s what we have all been saying for years. It’s what several latin American countries have been wanting to do, but can’t because of staunch opposition from Obama. Well, it looks like the U.S. is no longer calling the shots in the western hemisphere.

The president of Uruguay has not yet confirmed the report, but did tell the The Associated Press in an email to expect a announcement soon addressing “the marijuana issue.” The program would be based on the notion that getting people off drugs is about rehabilitation, not punishment. In order to buy marijuana users must first register with the government. Any user who goes past the monthly limit of government joints will be required to undergo drug rehabilitation, but will not face prosecution. All income from the program will be used to treat hardcore addicts. Wow! Is that reason I smell in the air?

We need to send Obama to Uruguay asap for leadership training. Apparently, the idea is to reduce crime by reducing the flow of money to dangerous drug dealers, as well as by giving cannabis users an alternative source of ganja so they are not drawn into using more dangerous drugs.

“This measure should be accompanied by efforts to get young people off drugs,” said ruling party Sen. Monica Xavier.

Well, you heard it here folks: the tide is turning fast against the U.S. Drug War. Nations will no longer be bullied by Obama into accepting drug violence within their borders. The time is now to rise up against prohibition and demand legalization. Our brothers and sisters in Latin America have our backs. Let’s do this!

[Hardrock69]

ALL OUT CHICAGO BITCHES CAN REJOICE!!! Well...sort of....

http://www.theweedblog.com/chicago-city-council-committee-approves-new-chicago-marijuana-policy/

Chicago City Council Committee Approves New Chicago Marijuana Policy

Chicago City Council Committee Approves Rahm Emanuel’s Marijuana Policy

The Chicago City Council committee on Thursday voted 12 to 1 to approve a new Chicago marijuana policy. Mayor Rahm Emanuel last week indicated his support of the proposed policy that would allow Chicago Police to issue tickets instead of making arrests for possession of 15 grams of marijuana or less.

Emanuel has said the change frees up police for more serious crime and saves the department about $1 million annually. The mayor’s office finds that there were 45,000-plus police hours used for 18,298 arrests last year for possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana. Each case needed four officers to arrest and transport offenders.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told the committee, “We are not talking about decriminalization, we are talking about holding people accountable.”

Under the new policy, McCarthy said officers would have the option of issuing a ticket to someone, rather than placing them under arrest. Arrests would be mandated for anyone caught smoking marijuana in public or possessing marijuana in or near a school or in or near a park

Under the plan, anyone caught with marijuana under the age of 17 or without proper identification would still be arrested. Tickets would range from $250 to $500.

The plan goes to the full City Council next week.

[Nitro Express]

My sister and her husband lived in Peru during the days of the Shining Path terrorist group. That part of Latin America was dangerous in the early 1980's. They just recently came back from there and things are much better. In fact, a lot of US citizens are moving down to Equador and Panama to retire. John Hopkins just built a new hospital in Panama due to the demand from retired US citizens moving there. Mexicans are moving back to Mexico because parts of the economy are on the uprise.

If you get outside of the major European and north American countries the world economy is better. The reason is the banking structure in Europe is tied with the banking structure in North America. The old Euro/American power house no longer runs the world the way it used to. Brazil, China, Russia, India, and South Africa will be the rising stars on the world stage.

The IMF and World Bank no longer rape these countries like they used to. They have more money now and apparently it's being used more intelligently.

[Nitro Express]

In short, due to the skyrocketing homicide rate, the cops can't waste their resources on some reefer smokers. Yeah, Chi town sounds like it's in competition with Detroit these days.

[Hardrock69]

Congressman Jared Polis Owns DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart In Hearing - posted June 21, 2012

Congressman Jared Polis questions DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart during a hearing on the agency’s priorities. He repeatedly pressed the administrator on the relative health impacts of marijuana versus other drugs.

This woman is a TOOL. She obviously is lacking in intellect, should be more aware of the effects of ALL drugs, which ones are more severe and have more harmful effects on humans.


However, she has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that she is an idiot. She sits there with a deer-in-the-headlights stare, as if she is incapable of comprehending the questions asked of her in her official capacity as Chief Administrator of the DEA, and when Congressman Polis dumbs down the questions to their most basic form to assist her in comprehending what is being asked in PLAIN FUCKING ENGLISH, she STILL is unable to coherently form even the most basic answer to his questions, which should be easily understandable to the most average human with average intelligence.

And she is the Chief Administrator of the DEA?

She needs to be fired.

I know she could not have gotten the job without being smart. I also know she could not answer his questions truthfully, as that would go against the policies of the DEA, and she could lose her job.

So that leaves her open to criticism that she is an idiot...she gets asked the questions....and is suddenly realizing she needs to figure out how to answer his questions without saying anything that could cause her to be fired....and then fails to come up with a reasonable answer.

This sort of stupidity just pisses me off. She knows that reefer is WAY less dangerous than even ASPIRIN, but for her to admit it would undermine the mission of the DEA, which is to prosecute all illegal drug cases.

[Hardrock69]

On the international scene, the Columbian Constitutional Court has ruled that people cannot be jailed for possessing small amounts of pot or coke for personal use.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombia-court-no-jail-time-for-possession-of-cocaine-marijuana-for-personal-use/2012/06/29/gJQAUthBCW_story.html

Colombia court: No jail time for possession of cocaine, marijuana for personal use

By Associated Press,

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that people cannot be jailed for possessing cocaine and marijuana for personal use.

The decision ratifies a previous Supreme Court ruling that said people cannot be jailed for possession of a so-called personal dose. A 2009 law placed the dose at up to 20 grams of marijuana and one gram of cocaine.

Thursday’s ruling came in a challenge to a 2011 citizen’s security law that specified persons found with up to 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of marijuana or 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cocaine should be punished with at least 64 months in prison.

While striking down that provision, the court did not mention a quantity acceptable for personal use.

Chief prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre said Friday that the decision does not amount to drug legalization.

[Hardrock69]

Study shows beyond a shadow of a doubt, the GATEWAY drug is ALCOHOL:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/05/study-the-gateway-drug-is-alcohol-not-marijuana/

Study: The ‘gateway drug’ is alcohol, not marijuana

By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, July 5, 2012 13:52 EDT



A study in the August edition of The Journal of School Health finds that the generations old theory of a “gateway drug” effect is in fact accurate, but shifts the blame for escalating substance abuse away from marijuana and onto the most pervasive and socially accepted drug in American life: alcohol.

Using a nationally representative sample from the University of Michigan’s annual Monitoring the Future survey, the study blasts holes in drug war orthodoxy wide enough to drive a truck through, definitively proving that marijuana use is not the primary indicator of whether a person will move on to more dangerous substances.

“By delaying the onset of alcohol initiation, rates of both licit substance abuse like tobacco and illicit substance use like marijuana and other drugs will be positively affected, and they’ll hopefully go down,” study co-author Adam E. Barry, an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Department of Health Education & Behavior, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

While Barry’s study shows evidence that substance abuse behaviors can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy by examining a subject’s drug history, he believes that the persistent and misguided notion of marijuana as the primary gateway to more harmful substances went awry because its creators — who called it the “Stepping Stone Hypothesis” in the “Reefer Madness” era of the 1930s – fundamentally misread the data and failed to conduct an adequate follow-up.

“Some of these earlier iterations needed to be fleshed out,” Barry said. “That’s why we wanted to study this. The latest form of the gateway theory is that it begins with [marijuana] and moves on finally to what laypeople often call ‘harder drugs.’ As you can see from the findings of our study, it confirmed this gateway hypothesis, but it follows progression from licit substances, specifically alcohol, and moves on to illicit substances.”

“So, basically, if we know what someone says with regards to their alcohol use, then we should be able to predict what they respond to with other [drugs],” he explained. “Another way to say it is, if we know someone has done [the least prevalent drug] heroin, then we can assume they have tried all the others.”

And while that standardized progression certainly doesn’t fit every single drug user, the study took that into account too. “There were a low enough number of errors that you are able to accurately predict [future substance abuse behavior]… with about 92 percent accuracy,” Barry said.

By comparing substance abuse rates between drinkers and non-drinkers, they ultimately found that seniors in high school who had consumed alcohol at least once in their lives “were 13 times more likely to use cigarettes, 16 times more likely to use marijuana and other narcotics, and 13 times more likely to use cocaine.”

Barry also noted that the rates of tobacco and marijuana use among all 12th grade high school students were virtually the same, confirming a report the Centers for Disease Control published in June, and an analysis Raw Story published in May.

The study should give pause to anyone involved in youth drug awareness programs, as its findings suggest that making science-based alcohol education a top priority could actually turn the tide of the drug war — but only if lawmakers and leading educators decide to use that same science as a foundation for public policy and school curriculum.

“I think [these results] have to do with level of access children have to alcohol, and that alcohol is viewed as less harmful than some of these other substances,” Barry added.

That social misconception, largely driven by the sheer popularity of alcohol and the profits it generates for private industry, is diametrically opposed to the most current science available on drug harms. A study published in 2010 in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug of all, above heroin, crack, meth, cocaine and tobacco. Even more striking: The Lancet study found that harms to others near the user were more than double those of the second most harmful drug, heroin.

“This is a time of budget tightening,” Barry concluded. “Many social services are being cut. If you take [our findings] and apply them to a school health setting, we believe that you are going to get the best bang for your buck by focusing on alcohol.”

[Hardrock69]

Once again, PROOF that marijuana DOES have medical uses. This brought to you by a GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED STUDY, no less!

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/03/government-sponsored-study-destroys-deas-classification-of-marijuana/

Government-sponsored study destroys DEA’s classification of marijuana

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 9:46 EDT

A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that marijuana provides much-needed relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are desperately needed, utterly destroying the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) classification of the drug as having no medical uses.

While numerous prior studies have shown marijuana’s usefulness for a host of medical conditions, none have ever gone directly at the DEA’s placement of marijuana atop the schedule of controlled substances. This study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, does precisely that, driving a stake into the heart of America’s continued war on marijuana users by calling the Schedule I placement simply “not accurate” and “not tenable.”

Reacting to the study, Paul Armentano, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told Raw Story that the study clearly proves U.S. drug policy “is neither based upon nor guided by science.”

“In fact, it is hostile to science,” he said. “And despite the Obama Administration’s well publicized 2009 memo stating, ‘Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration,’ there is little to no evidence indicating that the federal government’s ‘See no evil; hear no evil’ approach to cannabis policy is not changing any time soon.”

Schedule I is supposedly reserved for the most inebriating substances that the DEA believes have no medical value, including LSD, ecstasy, peyote and heroin.* As the DEA describes it: “Drugs listed in schedule I have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and, therefore, may not be prescribed, administered, or dispensed for medical use. In contrast, drugs listed in schedules II-V have some accepted medical use and may be prescribed, administered, or dispensed for medical use.”

And that’s the problem, the study’s authors portend.

“The classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug as well as the continuing controversy as to whether or not cannabis is of medical value are obstacles to medical progress in this area,” they wrote. “Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. It is true cannabis has some abuse potential, but its profile more closely resembles drugs in Schedule III (where codeine and dronabinol are listed). The continuing conflict between scientific evidence and political ideology will hopefully be reconciled in a judicious manner.”

They add that their evidence showed marijuana reliably reduced chronic neuropathic pain and muscle spasticity due to multiple sclerosis versus trials where a placebo was used. They also specifically tested marijuana’s effects when smoked, calling the delivery method “rapid and efficient” but noting that vaporization is a better choice because it produces less carbon monoxide.

The study adds that, like all medicines, there are negative side effects associated with marijuana, such as dizziness, fatigue, lightheadedness, muscle weakness and pain and heart palpitations — all of which can pose a risk in some chronic pain patients with co-occurring conditions like cardiovascular disease or substance abuse disorders. However, they call these side effects “dose-related” and “of mild to moderate severity,” adding that they “appear to decline over time, and are reported less frequently in experienced than in naïve users.” Researchers also noted that “fatal overdose with cannabis alone has not been reported.”

Authors additionally found that marijuana does cause withdrawal symptoms within 12 hours of use, noting the symptoms are mild in experienced users and typically abate within 72 hours. They added that ingesting marijuana “can acutely impair skills required to drive motor vehicles,” but noted that the data on marijuana and traffic accidents is “inconclusive.”

Ultimately, they concluded that more clinical trials are needed to determine which individual components of the marijuana plant are causing the medicinal effects, and whether the plant can be used to treat a host of other ailments.

SEE ALSO: Study: The ‘gateway drug’ is alcohol, not marijuana

“Medical marijuana is mostly used for chronic pain, and has enabled countless patients to either reduce or eliminate their pharmaceutical drug regimen,” Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), one of the nation’s leading medical marijuana advocacy groups, told Raw Story. “However, it can also be used for: arthritis, nausea or as an appetite stimulant for people living with HIV/AIDS or cancer, gastrointestinal disorders, and movement disorders (not just for people with multiple sclerosis). That is only a sampling of health conditions for which cannabis has been found helpful in alleviating symptoms. Other health conditions include: [post-traumatic stress disorder], [attention deficit disorder], [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and other mental health conditions, glaucoma, and migraines.”

In hopes of forcing recognition of marijuana’s medical value, ASA sued the federal government last year after a long-running appeal for the reclassification of marijuana was shot down nearly a decade after it was filed. That case should go before the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit later this year.

“The federal government’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” ASA chief counsel Joe Elford said in an advisory. “It is far past time for the government to answer our rescheduling petition, but unfortunately we’ve been forced to go to court in order to get resolution.”

“Reform advocates can and should use this study to show their congressional representatives that our country’s leading medical marijuana researchers agree that it should be reclassified,” Hermes added. “…This certainly should also have a bearing on the D.C. Circuit’s deliberations in the appeal of the rescheduling petition denial.”

[Hardrock69]

Ok, now we have a spokesman from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition speaking out, and boy does he have a lot to say about the DEA!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-haase/dea-marijuana_b_1660526.html

The Fallacy of the DEA: Why the Agency Needs to Concede to Legal Marijuana

Jamie Haase, a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, is a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

There's no denying the pressure that the Drug Enforcement Administration must be feeling lately. The popularity behind the marijuana legalization movement is at an all-time high, and prohibitionists are jumping ship at record rates to support cannabis reform. The drug agency has never been without opposition in its near 40 year history, but it's hard remembering a time when there's ever been this much heat on the narc outfit. The DEA is obviously still alive and well at present, but government bureaucracies are in no way immune from having to evolve with the times for lasting survival.

Looking back, 1973 was an epic year in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in January, the Watergate hearings began in May, the legendary thoroughbred Secretariat won the Triple Crown in June, and then a month later in July, the world was introduced to the biggest narcotics police conglomerate ever known to man: The United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

I say conglomerate because the DEA wasn't created from thin air. Instead, several existing agencies gelled together to form the inaugural drug enforcement monopoly. The main forerunners to the Justice Department's newest play-toy were the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE), the Office for National Narcotic Intelligence, and many of the enforcement components from the U.S. Customs Service. These agencies ceased to exist entirely once the DEA came onto the scene, excluding Customs of course, which only relinquished some of its arsenal to the new kid on the block.

Coincidentally, the U.S. Customs Service was the first federal law enforcement agency I worked for, though it was several years later and towards the end of the organization's historic span when I was employed. I bring this up because the fate of U.S. Customs, as it was under the Treasury Department, is a perfect example of the government evolution I alluded to earlier. Ultimately, neither the Customs Service nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) could stand the test of time as standalone entities post-9/11, thus the merging of their authorities under the newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.

Going back to the DEA's similar rocky formation, President Richard Nixon's purpose for establishing the agency was to have a single and streamlined unit at the federal level to combat the nation's growing problem of drug consumption. Leading up to that point, the feds had no real teeth to combat the illicit narcotics industry. Actually, it's not that the feds didn't have the teeth, it's more that they weren't chewing and operating in sync with one another (as is still the case today with the constant red-tape and rivaling between certain agencies).

The concept of having a centralized narcotics bureau might have been admirable in the early seventies. However, we're now witnessing the long-term flaws associated with creating such a robust agency with the sole purpose of drug enforcement, especially considering one of the DEA's biggest targets is marijuana (which is obviously a commodity becoming more and more acceptable every day).

The growing tolerance towards cannabis poses a huge risk for the DEA, or at least the agency seems concerned with pot going mainstream. If this weren't the case, they wouldn't be so relentless in their fight against the medical marijuana industry. Polls consistently show that the use of cannabis via doctor recommendation is welcomed by almost eighty percent of the population. Yet, the DEA refuses to throw in the towel when it comes to this costly and unpopular crusade, even if it means trampling all over the rights of state and local governments in the process. Common sense should tell the DEA to give up on marijuana entirely at this point, including policing against recreational usage, which a majority of Americans now believe should be legally on par with alcohol consumption.

Many long-term factors were neglected when the DEA was formed in 1973. For example, what if public perception changed over time and people later determined that drug abuse and addiction should be treated as health issues rather than law enforcement ones? Or what if society came to agree that prohibition's caustic side effects weren't worth fronting a fruitless multi-billion dollar drug war each year? Or what if citizens deemed that one illicit substance in particular, the one realistically funding more of the DEA's annual enforcement budget than any other, was a plant that could generate a taxable fortune for a country in need of financial aid more than ever?

Unfortunately for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the organization is single minded for the most part, meaning there's no backup plan should Americans one day decide to do away with prohibition altogether. As a result, the agency has a vested interest in maintaining the Controlled Substances Act as it now stands. This is why the agency fights tooth and nail over losing its grip on any banned substance, let alone the most popular and abundant one.

Other agencies (i.e. FBI, ICE, ATF, etc.) have wider scopes, broader authorities, and more mission flexibility. If the threat from terrorism ended tomorrow, the FBI would certainly survive due to the agency's array of enforceable statutes. Likewise with ICE's investigative division, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), as this DHS component actually has the broadest statutory authority of all federal investigative agencies.

One factor often overlooked regarding the futility of drug policing is the fact that the relationship between drug suppliers and drug users is essentially victimless. It's not as if Chapo Guzman and company are down in Mexico with their guns drawn to the heads of Americans, forcing their products into the mouths and noses of Yankee gringos. Rather, it is Americans seeking out the services of the cartels, and ironically and unfairly for Mexico, drug traffickers south of the border have American guns drawn amongst themselves as they compete over U.S. business.

The horrific bloodshed below the Rio Grande is reason enough to legalize marijuana entirely and immediately at this point, and for Americans who still don't get it, our shared boundary with Mexico is 1,969 miles long and unsecured. It's obvious the violence can't remain isolated to only Mexico if it's allowed to foster long enough. Indeed, the Department of Justice reports that Mexican cartels have already set up shop in more than 1,000 U.S. cities.

The southwest border will never be fully secured as long as much of the trade between South and Central America crosses America's southern border. However, there's no denying we'd be much safer if it weren't for the constant criminalization of our neighbors to the south. Illicit marijuana revenues make up around sixty percent of cartel profits per the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and it's the earning potential from this substance alone that tempts and lures most recruits into the narco game. Maintaining marijuana's illegality is only producing, enriching, and weaponizing more and more psychopath killers in Mexico, while simultaneously wasting valuable and scarce resources here in the United States.

Just recently, the DEA's administrator, Michele Leonhart, only reaffirmed her agency's stubborn position on marijuana. She was questioned in front of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and it's intriguing to me that a congressman from Tennessee, Steve Cohen, was the one who grilled Leonhart the most on the DEA's outdated stance towards cannabis. Not because Tennessee ranks second to only California when it comes to the domestic production of marijuana, but mostly because I imagine the DEA feels confident hedging its bet on "indefinite marijuana prohibition" with southern conservative mindsets. However, as a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), who is tasked with giving presentations in some of the bible belt's deepest parts imaginable, I feel confident stating that I don't think the south will be the DEA's saving grace when it comes to deterring pot legalization.

Obviously the Drug Enforcement Administration is at a crossroads right now, and in no way am I implying the organization should be eliminated or disbanded. However, when it comes to marijuana the ballgame is over, and resources need to be drastically and quickly shifted. The agency needs to bow down gracefully to cannabis's legitimacy at this point, instead of continuing to prolong the inevitable. The government was set up to be run by the people for the people, and it's time for the DEA to recognize this. It might've been in 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be public enemy number one, but it's nearly half a century later today, and prohibition itself has now become a much bigger nuisance to society (especially concerning marijuana).

[Hardrock69]

This is my favorite park:

[FORD]

Washington: Legalizing Marijuana Could Bring in $2B Over 5 years
August 11, 2012 4:02 AM

SEATTLE(AP) — The state’s latest financial analysis says legalizing and taxing marijuana could bring Washington as much as nearly $2 billion over the next five years — or as little as nothing.

The Office of Financial Management released its fiscal impact statement for Initiative 502 on Friday, and the results track closely with its earlier analysis, released in March.

I-502, which will be on the November ballot, would legalize pot under state law and allow its sale at state-licensed stores, with tax proceeds dedicated to education, health care and substance abuse prevention. Oregon and Colorado voters will also decide on marijuana legalization measures this fall.

Marijuana would remain illegal under federal law, however, and it isn’t clear how the federal government would respond if any of the states voted to legalize it. The Justice Department could prosecute employees of state-licensed pot shops, sue in federal court to block the laws from taking effect, or simply seize the tax revenue from the states as proceeds of transactions that are illegal under federal law.

Because the federal response remains unclear, Washington’s analysts said they could not determine the ultimate effect of I-502 on the state’s finances. However, they said, assuming a fully functioning marijuana market develops — and that it entirely replaces the existing illicit market — state revenue from pot sales could be more than $1.9 billion over the next five years. The state typically spends $30 billion per two-year budget cycle.

I-502 would create a system of state-licensed growers, processors and stores, and impose a 25 percent tax at each stage. People 21 and older could buy up to an ounce of dried marijuana, one pound of marijuana-infused product in solid form, such as brownies, or 72 ounces of marijuana-infused liquids.

The analysis anticipates 100 state-licensed growers supplying 328 marijuana stores that would sell more than 187,000 pounds to at least 363,000 customers. Those numbers are based on federal drug-use surveys.

Consumers would pay $12 per gram — the price currently charged by many medical marijuana dispensaries — plus the 25 percent marijuana tax, 10 percent state sales tax, and any local sales tax, the analysts assumed.

The document noted that Washington would likely lose some federal money to fight drugs, such as a marijuana eradication grant from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

However, the analysis did not take into account any possible savings from no longer arresting, prosecuting and jailing people for having small amounts of marijuana, and Alison Holcomb, campaign manager for I-502, said she found that disappointing.

About 10,000 people in Washington are charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession each year.

[jhale667]

[ELVIS]

You should try that with tacos...