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Arizona's medical-marijuana law takes effect

110 apply for Arizona marijuana card on 1st day

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110 apply for Arizona marijuana card on 1st day

by Mary K. Reinhart - Apr. 14, 2011 05:36 PM

The Arizona Republic

There was mostly "chronic pain" among first-day applicants for an Arizona medical marijuana card.

The state Department of Health Services received 110 electronic applications - nearly 60 percent of them for chronic pain - and authorized at least 44 people to use marijuana as treatment. Their cards will be mailed today, allowing them to possess up to 2 ½ ounces of pot every two weeks and grow up to 12 plants.

About one-third of the applications were rejected for various reasons, including problems with physician forms certifying that the patient has a specific debilitating medical condition and could benefit from marijuana. DHS officials said one physician listed "problems" as the patient's medical condition.

Eighty-two percent of the applicants were men and their ages ranged widely. There were no applications on behalf of children.

Voters in November approved the use of medical pot to treat certain ailments, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. Applicants are required to submit a photo, a copy of their driver's license and the physician certification.


Arizona's medical-marijuana law takes effect

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Arizona's medical-marijuana law takes effect

by Mary K. Reinhart - Apr. 14, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Arizona's medical-marijuana law takes effect Thursday, but patients already have been lining up to pay hundreds of dollars in some cases for pot recommendations from clinics that opened in recent weeks for just that purpose.

Health officials are concerned that so-called certification mills could quickly turn a medical program into a recreational one, but they have limited recourse.

Starting today, people can apply with the state Department of Health Services for permission to use marijuana to treat debilitating medical conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease.

The online-only application requires a photo of the patient, a copy of his or her driver's license, a signed statement promising not to give the marijuana to anyone and certification from a physician that the patient would benefit from using pot.

State rules finalized last month by DHS require a health professional licensed by one of four Arizona boards - allopathic, osteopathic, naturopathic or homeopathic - to conduct a physical exam, review one year of medical records, confirm a debilitating diagnosis and check the patient's other prescriptions through an online database.

While much of the attention in the marijuana debate has focused on dispensaries, which won't go online until later this year, a small industry has sprouted to help patients qualify.

DHS Director Will Humble said the rules were written to regulate the industry as tightly as possible without running afoul of the law voters passed in November as Proposition 203. But he said it will only take a handful of physicians writing casual recommendations to explode the program.

"What I'm afraid of is there will be enough of them that just check the boxes but don't really do it (a thorough exam). Or do a cursory drive-by . . . collect the money and move on to the next patient," Humble said.

"I'm concerned that enough of them will end up turning this into a program that we didn't intend for it to become."

Humble said the health department will work with the Arizona Medical Board and other licensing boards to check up on doctors who appear to be issuing medical-marijuana recommendations outside the law. Red flags might be similar demographics or medical conditions, he said.

The first draft of rules required physicians to have a one-year relationship with a patient, but now a doctor could recommend pot to someone the same day they meet.

"What appears to be happening already is you've got a small group of doctors who are doing exclusive medical-marijuana recommendations to patients who are new to them," said Lisa Wynn, executive director of the Arizona Medical Board. "They're arriving at the answer before they've even met the patient."

Sue Sisley, a Scottsdale internist in private practice, supported Proposition 203 but believes many doctors will opt out of the recommendation business for fear of jeopardizing their practices.

"I know tons of docs who won't come near this program," said Sisley, whose practice doesn't include anyone who would qualify. "That's what lends itself to these certification mills. That's what we were hoping to avoid by the rule-making."

Jay Reis, director of Arizona Medical Marijuana Certification Centers, runs three clinics in Scottsdale, Tucson and Cottonwood and is the process of opening three more. The centers charge $150 for a same-day certification but require three years of patient records, though the law only requires one.

Reis said he launched the business in January because he believes medical marijuana can bring relief to suffering patients. He said he's offended by mobile-certification outfits set up in hotel rooms or trailers by newcomers to Arizona, who give clinics like his a bad name.

"They're coming in here, putting doctors in a hotel room and not even giving you a physical," he said. "They're just here for the money."

Humble said he doesn't care where the exams are done, only that all the requirements are complied with.

"I don't care whether the assessment happens in the park," Humble said. "The question is, is the physician acting in the best interest of the patient?"

The DHS will have 15 working days to process the applications and has hired 10 temporary workers in hopes of avoiding a backlog.

Humble said the agency can handle up to 500 applications a day. Patients whose certifications aren't processed within the timeframe will have the $150 health-department fee waived.

Since there are not yet any licensed dispensaries in Arizona, patients who receive medical-marijuana ID cards also will have authorization to grow their own pot.

Patients can cultivate up to 12 marijuana plants. The plants must be grown indoors in a locked room or outdoors surrounded by a concrete wall and a locked steel gate.


It sounds like government tyrant Will Humble is doing everything he can to prevent people from using medical marijuana.

"If [the person's photograph] wasn't exactly 2 inches by 2 inches, the computer was rejecting it". I suspect this means if the photo was 143 by 143 pixels instead of 144 by 144 pixels it was rejected.

First-day stats for medical marijuana promising

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Arizona health director: First-day stats for medical marijuana promising

Posted: Thursday, April 14, 2011 8:13 pm

Arizona health director: First-day stats for medical marijuana promising By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

The first Arizonan who got state permission to legally smoke marijuana is not some 22-year-old claiming he's in pain.

It's a 60-year-old Scottsdale resident living with Crohn's Disease.

That, coupled with other statistics from the first day Arizonans could get certified to buy, possess and use marijuana, pleases state Health Director Will Humble. He said if the patterns hold, it will prove that Arizona has successfully created a medical marijuana program as opposed to a recreational one.

The state's online application process for certifying people to buy, possess and use marijuana went live at 8 a.m. Thursday. Humble said the first applicant -- his name is not a public record -- had his paperwork reviewed and approved within a half hour, paving the way for the state to send him a card certifying him as a ``qualifying patient.''

That allows him -- and anyone else who gets a card -- to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.

For the moment, though, none of the patients or the people who are certified as their caregivers will be buying anything, at least not legally. That's because the state is still going through the process of licensing the 125 dispensaries that will be allowed under Arizona law to sell the drug.

That triggers a provision in the 2010 voter-approved law which says anyone who lives at least 25 miles from a dispensary is entitled to grow their own medication. And with no clinics now and none anticipated for months, that means everyone.

In the first nine hours after the web site went ``live,'' Humble said 110 people submitted applications. But only about two thirds of those ended up with health officials putting a card in an envelope.

The rest? Humble said one of the biggest problems involved the electronic photographs which are required so they can become part of the ID card.

``If it wasn't exactly 2 inches by 2 inches, the computer was rejecting it,'' he said. Humble said the technical support team worked that out during the day.

But he said there also were some problems with the pictures that some would-be marijuana users submitted. Humble said they simply found a photo of themselves on their computer and decided that would suffice.

It did not.

``It was a picture of them on their Harley next to a tree in the shade and it wasn't a clear picture,'' he said.

Humble said he actually expected more than 65 people to submit applications in the first hours, as the law allowed marijuana patients to go to their doctors to get the certification ahead of time.

``I thought we'd be into the couple of hundred range,'' he said. But Humble said that with the application process available online on a 24/7 basis, there may be people figuring they'd wait until the evening.

``A lot of folks know they don't have to apply during business hours,'' he said.

Humble also said the first-day figures don't provide him any clue of how many people will qualify to buy, possess and use marijuana.

The law approved by voters spells out that only those diagnosed by a doctor with certain medical conditions can get the required state certification. These include diseases like glaucoma and AIDS as well as chronic or debilitating conditions that lead to severe and chronic pain.

On top of that, the Health Department imposed various restrictions which Humble said are designed to keep physicians from setting up shop as ``certification mills'' to provide cards for those who want the drug strictly for recreational purposes.

Humble said he anticipates the number of certified users a year from now could be as few as 20,000 -- or as many as 100,000.

He said, though, the first-day statistics suggest to him that the system is working as he had hoped, with marijuana being recommended for medical purposes only.

Humble acknowledged, though, that more than half of the medical conditions reported fell into that chronic pain category, a classification he conceded could be abused. But he said that, absent more, there is no reason to believe that the doctors who made the certifications were acting improperly.

In fact, he pointed out that nearly half of all the applications came from people at least 40 years old, with 22 percent from those 51 and older.

He said states where the program has become largely recreational have the dominant group as men in their 20s and early 30s, ``not because men in those age ranges can't have medical conditions ... but by in large, men in their 20s and 30s are pretty darn healthy.''

It did turn out, at least for the first day, four out of five Arizona applicants were male.


Arizona's medical marijuana law takes effect

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Arizona's medical marijuana law takes effect

Posted: Thursday, April 14, 2011 3:24 pm

By Andrew Hedlund, for the Tribune East Valley Tribune

The new medical marijuana law went into effect Thursday, while potential medical marijuana patients gathered at the Green Relief Expo at University of Phoenix stadium to receive recommendations from doctors.

Debilitating conditions, as described by the new law, that could warrant medicine include cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, chronic pain and Alzheimer's.

Arizona voters approved the new law last November in the general election. The measure, which was labeled Prop 203 on the ballot, received 50.1 percent of the vote.

Implementation of the law came quickly: The Arizona Department of Health Services was given 120 days to set up the entire program.

"Really over the last 120 days, it has been the policy development phase," said Will Humble, the director of the department.

"We developed the administrative code and rules for regulating and managing the program. Really, basically, (Thursday) is where we make the big shift into operations."

The application process requires potential patients to fill out a form, present an Arizona driver's license or identification card, and provide a current photograph and doctor's recommendation.

Applicants must also submit a signed statement in which they pledge not to use marijuana for recreational purposes or give it to anyone who does not have a medical marijuana card. The entire application process is online.

Patients also must pay a fee of $150. If people have a hard time paying this, a national non-profit organization will be helping patients get access to the medicine they need.

The Medicinal Marijuana Assistance Project of America helps patients get the care they need by helping patients with state fees and bringing doctors to rural communities. The group also was one of the sponsors of Thursday's expo.

The organization also gives disabled veterans an automatic 50 percent discount of treatment and gives free care to those patients who cannot afford the 50 percent off.

"We help on the financial side. You know, a lot of people don't have insurance. The way health care is designed in America a lot of people end up taking on the burden of those bills and they can't afford the proper medicine they need," said Vince Palazzotto, the executive director of the organization.

Patients will be able to either cultivate their own marijuana or obtain the medicine from a dispensary. They would be allowed to buy up to two and a half ounces every two weeks.

Initially, all patients will be required to grow, though.

"The initial cards will all say, ‘Authorized to cultivate.' The reason that they are going to say that is because we will not have any (medical marijuana) dispensaries up and running probably until October," Humble said.

The law allows people who live more than 25 miles away from a dispensary to grow up to 12 plants for their personal use.

This means that anyone who receives a card from the time the law takes effect through late summer will be able to grow. This changes once the dispensaries have opened their doors.

Once this occurs, patients who live within the 25-mile radius of a dispensary will not be allowed to cultivate their own medicine anymore.

Humble said the agency has not worked out the process that will let patients know that a dispensary near them has started offering medicine.

Once dispensaries open shop, the stores will be allowed to cultivate their own medicine or obtain it from another dispensary or a qualified patient.

The medical community has had a mixed reaction to it. Many support it, but that does not necessarily mean that those doctors will write recommendations. Some practices will not offer it at all.


Arizona's Medical Marijuana Law in One Handy Guide

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Arizona's Medical Marijuana Law in One Handy Guide

By Niki D'Andrea Thursday, Apr 14 2011

Starting today, Arizonans can apply for medical marijuana patient cards.

So, in just a couple of weeks, some Arizonans will be able to legally possess and use pot, provided they stay within ADHS guidelines. The department won't begin accepting dispensary applications until June, so all patients issued cards before a dispensary opens within 25 miles of their home can grow their own weed, if they indicate on their applications that they want to cultivate.

Get a card, and you can buy, possess, and use up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana every two weeks — or grow up to 12 plants. Follow the law, and cops can't arrest you, landlords can't discriminate against you, and employers can't penalize you (unless you're high on the job).

To get a card, you must:

First, receive written certification (on a form provided at the ADHS website) from a licensed Arizona physician stating you have one of the debilitating conditions listed in the program (which include cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, hepatitis C, and "severe and chronic pain").

Second, submit an application at the ADHS website, along with residence, postal and e-mail addresses, a copy of your Arizona driver's license or identification card, proof of U.S. citizenship, a photograph, your certified physician's statement, and a signed statement that you won't pass along your pot to anyone who's not allowed to have it.

If your own doctor won't write a medical marijuana certification, you can obtain certification from another physician, provided the physician is licensed to practice in Arizona and provides a written statement to ADHS confirming your debilitating condition and stating you've established a physician-patient relationship.

To cultivate your own cannabis, check the box on the application indicating it, and state that you don't live within 25 miles of a dispensary. All patient card applicants need to pay a non-refundable application fee of $150 ($75 for people who show proof of participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a.k.a. food stamps).

People seeking cards as designated caregivers for qualifying patients (which would allow them to purchase and possess medical marijuana on behalf of a patient) must submit all the same information, but also undergo a criminal records check (convicted felons aren't eligible), and submit a set of fingerprints. The application fee for caregivers is $200. Each qualifying patient may have only one caregiver.

Everything must be submitted online through the ADHS website, using electronic copies in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Once you submit your application, ADHS will approve or deny it within 10 business days. Cards are valid for one year; renewal fees are the same as initial application fees.

Once someone has a patient or caregiver card from ADHS, they may legally possess up to 2.5 ounces of usable medical marijuana, and may purchase their pot from any licensed dispensary in the state. Such edibles as marijuana brownies and cookies will count toward the legal limit, but only the weight of the usable marijuana in the edible will be counted. Dispensaries will be linked to a central database that records all purchases, and each patient or caregiver won't be able to buy more than 2.5 ounces total every two weeks.

If a patient or caregiver transfers medical marijuana to anyone who doesn't have a valid registry card — or if they're in possession of more than 2.5 ounces of usable marijuana — they will be breaking the law. Patients authorized to cultivate cannabis could still buy marijuana from a dispensary but would have to stay within the legal limits of possession.

Only patients with medical marijuana cards issued by ADHS can buy weed at dispensaries in Arizona; however, patients with valid cards from other states can legally possess marijuana here. As of March, more than 10 possession cases have been dismissed in Mohave County, because all the defendants proved they could legally use medical marijuana in their home states (usually California). Sergeant Steve Carbajal of the Tempe Police Department and Sergeant Mark Clark of Scottsdale PD both told New Times that officers expect to handle possession cases by out-of-state visitors on a case-by-case basis. Carbajal says officers have received information on the reciprocity function of Arizona's medical marijuana law.

Card-carrying patients in Arizona can rest easy knowing that if they get pulled over with less than 2.5 ounces of weed in their cars, they're not going to be arrested. However, it's still illegal to drive while high, and though the presence of marijuana in someone's system isn't proof of impairment (it stays in the user's system long after ingestion), police can still use the horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) test. This is the field test in which an officer takes a pen and asks the driver to follow it with his or her eyes. If the driver's eyes involuntarily jerk (nystagmus), cannot follow the trajectory of the pen at different angles, and have pupils of unequal size, an officer could consider this "probable cause" for impairment. However, many DUI attorneys say the HGN test is flawed, and drivers can refuse to submit.

Also still illegal: using or being under the influence of marijuana at work, and blazing up in public places (including parks, schools, bars, and clubs). Patients won't be able to consume medical marijuana at dispensaries, either.

When local dispensaries begin to open this summer or fall, patients can purchase a variety of marijuana buds, tinctures, and edibles. But ADHS won't start accepting dispensary applications until June 1, about a month after they start sending out patient and caregiver cards — which are valid immediately.

People with medical marijuana patient or caregiver cards from ADHS will be legally protected before dispensaries open, so possessing less than 2.5 ounces of pot will be perfectly legal for them, even if the source is dubious. But many patients, particularly those who aren't comfortable buying marijuana from a street dealer, may choose another option: legally growing their own.

The law says any medical marijuana card holder who does not live within 25 miles of a dispensary may cultivate up to 12 plants. And since nobody will have a dispensary within 25 miles of their home until sometime after June, every qualified patient has an opportunity to start growing now. In its online FAQ sheet for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Program, ADHS states, "Since no dispensaries will be operating when the first qualifying patients obtain a registry identification card, all qualifying patients will be approved to cultivate if they request approval to cultivate."

So the first wave of registered Arizona medical marijuana patients can plant pot seeds the moment they get their cards. But they can't just plant them in the open in their backyards — plants must be grown in an enclosed, locked facility (like a closet or greenhouse). But marijuana plants can take anywhere from two to six months to mature, so by the time a patient's buds are ready to harvest, a medical marijuana dispensary may have opened within 25 miles of their grow.

But fret not — patient cards are valid one year from the date of issue, and the Arizona Department of Health Services has no enforcement mechanism in place to notify law enforcement that a patient may be out compliance. So theoretically, patients won't have to worry about their plants until they apply for renewal of their registry cards.

When that happens next year, ADHS will check its database to determine whether any dispensaries are operating within 25 miles of the cardholder and send the cardholder a list of dispensaries, along with a renewal card that states he or she is not authorized to cultivate cannabis anymore.

But for 12 months, the door's open for registered cardholders to go and grow in peace. Arizona's getting greener, after all.


Maricopa County officials urged not to issue permits for medical-marijuana

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery - F*ck the people and their medical marijuana!

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Maricopa County officials urged not to issue permits for medical-marijuana dispensaries

by Michelle Ye Hee Lee - May. 20, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery advised the Board of Supervisors this week against issuing permits to medical-marijuana dispensaries on county-controlled lands, fearing a backlash from the federal government.

Although Arizona's medical-marijuana program mostly will be run by the state Health Department in cooperation with cities and towns, Maricopa County officials plan to opt out in reaction to mounting federal pressure on states that have legalized medical pot.

County officials indicated they would heed Montgomery's advice if he drafts a formal legal opinion, which Montgomery said he plans to do in about a week.

Montgomery said he would not prosecute medical-marijuana cases because it is outside his jurisdiction. He said he consulted with the supervisors on the issue in his role as the county's legal adviser.

Last November, voters approved Proposition 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, which allows qualifying patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to use marijuana. But marijuana is not a federally approved drug.

Arizona is the 15th state to legalize medical pot and to join the ongoing national debate over conflicting state and federal marijuana laws.

Although the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009 released a memo discouraging prosecution of medical-marijuana users, federal pressures continue to mount on states that have legalized medical pot. U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke this month warned Arizonans they are still violating federal law by participating in the state's program, and they will not have any immunity from federal prosecution.

"I always hate to go against the will of the voters, but in this case, Dennis' letter is pretty compelling. And if Montgomery issues an opinion that mirrors the federal letter, I think it's something we have to heed," county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said.

Montgomery said although the federal government clearly will not prosecute seriously ill patients using pot as medicine, the same legal "safe haven" does not exist for dispensary agents or local government employees who implement the state's law.

"I'm not comforted by a wink and a nod" from the federal government, Montgomery said, explaining why he is advising the county against issuing permits.

Prop. 203 allows qualifying patients to receive up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from dispensaries or to cultivate up to 12 marijuana plants if they live 25 miles or farther from a dispensary.

Montgomery has publicly opposed medical marijuana and was one of the most outspoken local officials who joined the anti-Prop. 203 campaign last fall. Montgomery said he still disagrees with the policy of legalizing medical marijuana and is concerned that dispensaries operating in Maricopa County will become "magnets of crime."

It is unclear what implications Burke's letter will have on the state's medical-marijuana program, or how the county's pending decision to prohibit dispensaries on county land would affect patients' access to marijuana in remote areas of the county.

The state Department of Health Services will begin accepting dispensary applications on June 1. There is one dispensary application pending with Maricopa County.

"We're still trying to figure out what the impact of the letter we got from the federal government is going to have. I think all those (federal warning letters to state officials) have put a layer of uncertainty on this program and all the other states' programs," DHS Director Will Humble said.

Prop. 203 allows local jurisdictions to impose "reasonable" zoning restrictions for dispensaries. The majority of cities and towns have come up with a zoning ordinance for medical-marijuana dispensaries, said Ken Strobeck, executive director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns.

If the county decides not to allow dispensaries on its land, that means cities and towns that encircle county land will have to work around it, Strobeck said.

Chris Jacques, Peoria's interim community-development director, said he would prefer that dispensaries locate within city boundaries rather than in county islands. The city's zoning ordinances have specific distance requirements for dispensaries, and the city would prefer to be able to regulate dispensaries, he said.

"If there was a proposal to have a dispensary in a county island, we would not like that because we've got strict controls over where dispensaries could be located," Jacques said.

The applications for dispensaries in Wickenburg all are within town boundaries and not in the sizable county islands in the area, said Steve Boyle, Wickenburg community-development director. Although Boyle said it is "discouraging" that Wickenburg would approve dispensaries against federal law, he said he does not anticipate the federal government cracking down on town officials for allowing dispensaries.

"It could happen," he said, "but our attorneys don't see it getting that drastic."


Home-grown marijuana challenges Arizona police

Are the police lying when they say they have no plans to arrest people who grow medical marijuana?

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Home-grown marijuana challenges Arizona police

by Edythe Jensen - May. 20, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

More than 2,300 Arizona residents have state permits to grow marijuana in their homes - for now. That will end in a few months when medical-marijuana dispensaries start opening and household gardeners must pull the plug on their grow lights or face criminal charges if they live within 25 miles of a dispensary.

But it's unclear who will enforce the shutdown, and spokesmen for local law-enforcement agencies say they expect that will be a challenge.

The state Department of Health Services began issuing the growing permits in April. DHS spokesman Laura Oxley said it will notify holders when the permits are no longer valid but will not inspect homes for compliance. That will be up to police if they suspect illegal activity, she said.

Joe Yuhas, spokesman for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Association, said the law was never meant to promote home cultivation. Doing it without a state permit is a criminal offense that carries stiff penalties, including possible fines and incarceration.

"I wouldn't think a person would want to take the risk," he said.

Law-enforcement agencies across the Valley are grappling with how and under what circumstances they will check on suspected illegal-marijuana-growing operations. Most say they have no plans to investigate addresses of expired permits routinely, and there must be a complaint or strong evidence of a crime before they would try to inspect a home. They agree that separating legal from illegal activity under the voter-approved medical-marijuana law will be difficult.

Patients who had a marijuana prescription when the law took effect last month can't buy it from legal vendors yet because the state won't be approving dispensary sites until August. They can, however, apply for home-cultivation cards available to anyone who isn't within 25 miles of a dispensary. Growing must be indoors and is limited to 12 plants.

According to commercial sites that sell lights and other equipment for indoor cultivation, growing setups can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Phoenix police spokesman Steve Martos said it is puzzling why anyone would invest time and money in an indoor setup to use it only for a few months or risk criminal charges by continuing the cultivation.

So far, 2,315 Arizona residents have one-year state-issued cards to grow marijuana at home for personal use, although DHS officials say it is unlikely all are doing it.

Spokesmen for several Valley police agencies, including Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe and Scottsdale, said they have no plans to check homes on the DHS permit list routinely where residents may have expired marijuana-growing cards.

"The law prohibits police from using the fact that a person has a medical-marijuana card, by itself, to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion of a crime," Chandler Detective Frank Mendoza said.

Neighbors who complain about suspected illegal drug activity may call police and spur an investigation. However, DHS information on marijuana-growing cards is not public record, so neighbors have no way of checking whether the house next door once had permission and doesn't any more. Police agencies, on the other hand, have access to the DHS records, including the names and addresses of those authorized to use or grow it and permit expiration dates.

Sgt. Steve Carbajal, Tempe police spokesman, said the department will likely use DHS data as "investigative tools" if there's a complaint or if police suspect illegal activity.

There must be strong evidence that a crime is being committed before police initiate an investigation into reputed illegal marijuana-growing, said Mendoza and Scottsdale police spokesman David Pubins.

Glendale police are discussing the challenges of marijuana enforcement under the new law with their legal department, and "we do not have absolute answers right now," said Sgt. Brent Coombs, a department spokesman.

Martos, the Phoenix spokesman, said home use of medical marijuana brings a myriad of enforcement challenges, including that the mere detection of marijuana odor is no longer a clear-cut indication of criminal activity.

Whatever police agencies say their plans are now could change in coming months as medical marijuana becomes more accessible, DHS spokeswoman Carol Vack said. "How they bust people for marijuana might change. There are a lot of gray areas, a lot of undefined areas in this law," Vack said.


'Protective Sweeps' used to make and end run around the 4th Amendment!

Cops use 'protective sweeps' to flush the 4th Amendment down the toilet

"Police cannot use the unsubstantiated fear a residence might be occupied by someone dangerous to search it without a warrant" - a lame excuse to flush the 4th Amendment down the toilet.

Source

Arizona high court sets new rules for police's 'protective sweeps'

Posted: Thursday, May 19, 2011 2:35 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

Police cannot use the unsubstantiated fear a residence might be occupied by someone dangerous to search it without a warrant, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In the first ruling of its kind in the state, the justices said police had no legitimate reason to enter the apartment of Laquinn A. Fisher. That means the duffel bags of marijuana they found there cannot be used as evidence against him to sustain a drug conviction.

The ruling now sets the rules police need to obey in the future in what they call “protective sweeps.’’

In 2006, Mesa police responded to a report of an assault. The victim, bleeding from a cut on his head, told officers he had been pistol-whipped by a man known as “Taz.’’

He described the victim and directed police to the apartment complex where that person lived.

When police knocked at the door, Fisher and two others came out. Fisher, whose appearance matched the description given by the victim, identified himself as T.A.

Despite having this information, officers decided to do further investigation because the gun allegedly used in the assault was still “unaccounted for.’’ Then, without asking whether anyone was still inside, police entered the apartment to see who else was there.

Inside, they smelled marijuana and observed the duffels.

A trial judge and the court of appeals upheld the search as a legal “protective sweep.’’ But Supreme Court Justice Robert Brutinel, writing for the court, said that was a mistake.

Brutinel said police generally must get a warrant. But he said there is an exception when officers, as a precautionary matter, can look in closets and “other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could immediately be launched.’’

The judge said, though, there must be “articulable facts’’ which, with other information, would warrant a “reasonably prudent officer’’ to believe someone dangerous is in the area.

Brutinel said those facts are not present here.

First, he noted that Fisher was detained outside of his apartment. In fact, the judge said, police did not arrest him until after the protective sweep.

And the judge said the basis for the sweep needs to be more than mere suspicion.

“The officers in this case could not articulate specific facts indicating that another person was inside Fisher’s apartment,’’ Brutinel wrote. And he said there is nothing in the record showing whether police even attempted to find out how many people lived there.

“Officers cannot conduct protective sweeps based on mere speculation or the general risk inherent in all police work,’’ the judge wrote.

Brutinel said the justices recognize that police officers are placed in life-threatening situations on a regular basis. And he said that danger would be reduced if police were allowed to do whatever they feel necessary to protect their safety.

But he said the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, precluding unreasonable search and seizure, trumps all that.


Government tyrants refuse to issue pot licenses?

Government tyrants at DHS flush Arizona's medical marijuana law down the toilet? If I wasn't an atheist I would says this is the reason that God created the 2nd Amendment.

Source

Medical marijuana dispensaries' attorney seeks to force licensing

Posted: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:19 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

An attorney who represents some would-be marijuana dispensaries is taking the first steps he believes will convince a state judge to force Department of Health Services to issue the necessary permits.

Ryan Hurley said Tuesday he is working with clients to get one of them to submit an application this week to the health department. State health officials had said the first requests would be accepted Wednesday.

And Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the department, confirmed that any requests will be turned away.

Once that happens, Hurley said, there are grounds for demanding in court that state officials comply with the law that voters approved in November. Hurley said while the state has gone to federal court to seek a declaration of the legality of that law, at the moment it is still the law of this state.

Once an application is denied, he said, that provides the legal precursor to demanding in court that state health officials obey the law as approved by voters, a law that has never been declared illegal.

That could pave the way for a state judge forcing Arizona to implement the medical marijuana law even as the federal court decides whether it is in conflict with federal law.

The process is known as “mandamus.” In essence, it is a request that a judge issue an order to a public official to perform a duty that is required.

In this case, the voter-approved law requires the health department to issue licenses for one dispensary for every 10 pharmacies in the state. That computes out to about 125.

State Health Director Will Humble said he was prepared to start taking applications now. But that was before Gov. Jan Brewer, working with Attorney General Tom Horne, directed him to stall.

“On advice of our attorney, our program has been suspended,’’ Oxley said. In fact, her agency will not even make application forms available.

Oxley acknowledged that what’s needed for an application already is spelled out in both state law and the rules the health department already enacted. And she said someone could prepare an application of sorts with all the necessary information.

But she said anyone who walks in the door with such a form will be turned away, and anything submitted by mail will be returned.

Hurley said once someone’s completed application is rejected, the first step may be having to file an administrative appeal. But the final decision on that still rests with Humble as health director.

That then paves the way to ask a judge to order Humble to act.

Horne told Capitol Media Services he is not directing Humble and his department to disregard what voters mandated.

“We’re not ignoring the law,’’ he said.

“We’re just asking a (federal) judge to let us know how we should do it before we proceed further,’’ Horne continued. “I think that’s very reasonable.’’

He said it would be just “a slight delay.’’ But Horne said he cannot predict how long that would take but said legal questions like these take preference over other lawsuits.

The health department continues to issue cards for “qualified patients’’ who have a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana for a specific medical condition. Those cards allow the individual to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-regulated nonprofit dispensary.

Those who have one of these cards to grow enough for his or her own use until dispensaries are available.

Horne said he is not worried that prospective dispensary owners will get a ruling forcing the health department to start issuing the dispensary licenses.

“If you sue me about it, by the time you get a decision (from a state judge) I’ll have a decision out of federal court,’’ he said. “So it won’t make any difference.’’

That lawsuit Horne filed on behalf of the governor asks a federal judge whether the state marijuana law is pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession of the drug a felony. If a federal judge rules the laws conflict, that could allow Brewer, who opposed the initiative, to shut down the program.


Dutch 'drug tourism' set to go up in smoke

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Dutch 'drug tourism' set to go up in smoke

By Laura Bly, USA TODAY

A long-smoldering debate over the Netherlands' tolerance toward public marijuana use is heating up, with the Dutch government announcing last week that it will start banning tourists from pot-selling "coffee shops" by the end of the year.

"In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end," the Dutch health and justice ministers wrote in a letter to the country's parliament on Friday.

While marijuana is technically illegal in the Netherlands, it has been sold for decades in designated cafés and police make no arrests for possession of small amounts.

Under the new anti-drug rules, cannabis shops will be restricted to Dutch residents who sign up for a one-year membership, or "dope pass," London's Daily Mail reports.

The policy will roll out in the southern provinces of Limburg, Noord Brabant and Zeeland by the end of the year and the rest of the country next year, Reuters adds.

Amsterdam, home to about 220 coffee shops, is already in the process of closing some in its red light district. And some Dutch border towns including Maastricht and Terneuzen have already restricted the sale of marijuana to foreigners.

The new policy must still be approved by the country's supreme court, and "there will be many challenges in bringing the so-called pass system from a concept into a reality," says Jon Foster, an American who has owned Amsterdam's popular Grey Area coffee house since 1994.

But "drug tourism," which by some estimates draws up to 40% of Amsterdam's 16 million annual visitors, is already taking a hit.

"For the moment it's just bad for business, because everybody seems to think the law is already in effect as of this weekend," says Foster.

Most pot smokers "stay for three to ten days, eat at restaurants, go to museums and entertainment, and buy a little cannabis each day," he adds. " Many coffee shops will probably close because of the diminished tourism, but the effect will be much greater as the results of the ban trickle down to the hotel, restaurant, entertainment, and overall tourist industry."


Will Mendocino County become the Napa Valley of marijuana?

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Will Mendocino County become the Napa Valley of marijuana?

Updated 10/8/2010 4:44 AM

By Laura Bly, USA TODAY

MENDOCINO, Calif. — Swap the Dungeness crab cakes and peasant skirts for lobster rolls and L.L. Bean khakis, and this snug seaside hamlet a few hours north of San Francisco could be a dead ringer for a New England village. (It was a stand-in for Cabot Cove, Maine, in the long-running TV series Murder She Wrote.)

But if California voters approve a controversial ballot proposition in November to tax and legalize marijuana for recreational use — and it's ahead in several polls — some local growers say Mendocino, pop. 900, might become better known as the tourist capital of a "Napa Valley of cannabis."

The notion of opening marijuana-tasting rooms, meet-the-grower tours and ganja-friendly "bud and breakfasts" in Northern California's pot-farming "Emerald Triangle" is like "tearing down the Berlin Wall. It's not going to happen overnight," says Matthew Cohen of MendoGrown. His 12-member association promotes a "sustainably grown medical cannabis industry" in the county, where legal and illicit pot — sanctioned for medical use by California residents since 1996 — fuels an estimated half to two-thirds of an economy once anchored by fishing and timber.

Still, he says, passage of Proposition 19 would mobilize entrepreneurs and help jump-start a sluggish tourism industry by putting "Mendocino County on the map as a vision of what cannabis country could look like. The vibration is already here, and if you love (marijuana) enough to smoke it in a coffeehouse, why wouldn't you want to come out and enjoy it at the source?"

Efforts to prevent legalization "are like trying to put your finger in a 100-foot wave," adds longtime resident Tim Blake. Host of an annual Emerald Cup cannabis competition that drew 100 entries last year, the medical marijuana producer wants to turn Area 101, his 150-acre "spiritual and retreat center" near Laytonville, into a springboard for hemp burgers and public hayrides through his heavily guarded (and legal) collection of OG Kush and Sour Diesel plants.

'Entering uncharted territory'

Hemp shakes and cannabisseries? They're pipe dreams, counter many Mendocino tourism promoters, law officials and business owners.

While 14 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana use in some form, California's groundbreaking Prop 19 would authorize any adult 21 and older to possess, share or transport up to 1 ounce regardless of jurisdiction, and let each city and county decide whether to approve and tax commercial sales.

Proponents say legalization would weaken criminal activity by Mexican drug cartels and funnel as much as $1.4 billion a year into the state's dangerously depleted coffers.

But opponents, including most state officeholders and candidates, the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Police Chiefs Association, argue it would create a hodgepodge of enforcement, boost the ranks of impaired drivers and keep cartels underground to avoid paying taxes.

What's more, they say, it would be in direct conflict with — and superseded by — federal law.

Famous for its dramatic headlands, redwood groves and down-home wineries producing world-class Pinot Noirs, Mendocino County draws about 2 million visitors a year, mostly from Northern California, to an area that's bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined but home to just 90,000 residents.

Despite its reputation as a refuge for "back-to-the-landers" who took advantage of the rugged terrain and skimpy population to grow high-quality and highly profitable strains of pot, "I'd hate to see people coming up here because of what they think we are, instead of who we really are," says Lark Melesea. She sells hemp clothing at a Mendocino shop called Twist and wants the "sacred herb" used for healing rather than "getting blotto."

If Prop 19 passes, Melesea adds, "the last thing we want to be is a pot-based Disneyland."

Marijuana "is part of the social fabric of our nation, one way or another," says Sheriff Tom Allman, and "the days of sending people to prison for a seed are over. It's the green rush of the new millennium." But he says Prop 19's inconsistencies and loopholes doom it to failure, and it wouldn't stem a growing wave of cartel-related violence that has included multiple armed raids in the vast, deceptively scenic reaches of Mendocino National Forest.

"We're entering uncharted territory," says Visit Mendocino County's Scott Schneider, digging into a Thai burrito with organic tofu at the Mendocino Café. "But we're certainly not going to promote something that's still illegal at the federal level." Weed aficionados "are not our target audience," he says.

Pot at the end of the rainbow?

Right on cue, diner Matt Kotlarczyk lowers his fork to join the debate. A Cincinnati-based sculptor who's winding his way up the California coast, Kotlarczyk didn't choose Mendocino for its counterculture, ganja-friendly ambience. But, he says, "it's definitely an enhancement."

Mendocino isn't the only California destination calculating whether, and how, to attract similar-minded travelers.

Joey Luiz, a winery sales manager who's running for city council in neighboring Lake County, says marijuana tourism could be a plus: "We've struggled to find any kind of industry, and the more bodies you can bring in, the better." Farther north in Siskiyou County, Dunsmuir Mayor Peter Arth has been nicknamed "Mayor Juana" for his support of a downtown pot garden, across from the sheriff's substation, to draw visitors and provide organic marijuana to patients.

And in a hardscrabble swath of downtown Oakland dubbed "Oaksterdam," Segway tours already cruise by Oaksterdam University (a trade school that has trained more than 12,000 students in how to grow marijuana), medical dispensaries stocked with pot-laced Belgian chocolates, and a souvenir store that peddles ganja-themed boxer shorts.

But marijuana doesn't always translate to a tourist pot of gold: Though Amsterdam's laissez-faire coffeehouses have drawn smokers for decades, the Dutch border city of Maastricht recently voted to ban sales to foreigners in a bid to stave off an influx of weed-seeking backpackers.

Along Mendocino County's Anderson Valley wine trail, Raul Touzon of Miami and Andree Thorpe of Bermuda sip glasses of Pinot Noir rosé on a sun-dappled lawn at Goldeneye Winery. Would they return for a few tokes along with their liquid relaxers?

Not likely. "There's a mystique to sitting here, enjoying the experience: the land, the scenery, the grapes," Touzon says. "No one is going to come here to smoke a joint."

Adds Milla Handley, owner of the nearby Handley Winery: "How do you deal with driving and smoking? We try to be conscientious (in limiting wine samples) because our kids are on these roads. You add another drug, and it's a cause for concern."

But Mendocino County fisherman, construction worker and pot grower Tyler Kidwell begs to differ. "When I went to Hawaii," says Kidwell, "I got two questions: Have you ever surfed Point Arena (a famous county break), and did you bring us any pot?"

Whether or not it's legalized for recreational use, "Mendocino is known around the world as a pot mecca," adds Kidwell. "And if you're going to get stoned, the redwoods are a great place to do it."

---

IF YOU GO

Getting there: Mendocino County's closest major airports are in San Francisco and Sacramento; count on three to 3 1/2 hours to the village of Mendocino from SFO, and another hour to the northern part of the county, which encompasses nearly 4,000 square miles.

Where to stay: Most lodgings (more than two dozen B&Bs in Mendocino alone) and vacation rentals are located along the Pacific Coast or along Highway 101. In the heart of Mendocino, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Blue Door Group's Packard House and J.D. House offer a sleek, Restoration Hardware-esque ambiance for $130-$275 per night (888-453-2677; innsofmendocino.com). Near tiny Booneville, along the Anderson Valley wine trail, try the newly renovated, four-room Toll House Inn (rates $150-$250; 707-895-2572 or tollhouseinn.com).

What to do: Along with hiking through redwood groves in preserves like Hendy Woods State Park and beachombing along the Pacific (Glass Beach near Fort Bragg is a favorite), many visitors head for the Anderson Valley wine trail. It's a throwback to what Napa was like 40 years ago, with most of the wineries offering free tastings and a chance to hobnob with the owners.

More information: 866-466-3636 or visitmendocino.com


Government tyrant Will Humble refuses to accept Medical marijuana dispensary applications!!!

Our government master tell us that they are not our masters, but public servants. If they are really "public servants" they would accept the medical marijuana applications.

After all as our government masters tell us all the time "it is the law and you must obey it, even if it's wrong."

Our government masters then continue to tell us if we don't like the law we should obey it while we work to change it. Of course our government masters don't follow the advice they give us. In this case they are refusing to obey the law.

Medical-pot dispensary applications to be denied

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Medical-pot dispensary applications to be denied

by Mary K. Reinhart - Jun. 1, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

State health Director Will Humble was putting the finishing touches Tuesday on the letter he will give to prospective medical-marijuana dispensary owners when he declines their applications.

Though Humble and his staff have spent months preparing for today's start of the dispensary application process, the federal lawsuit filed Friday by Gov. Jan Brewer has put the kibosh on it.

"We'll explain to them that we're unable to accept applications right now and thank them for their efforts," he said. "At least they'll have something when they leave to document that they tried."

The first letter likely will be handed to attorney Ryan Hurley and his clients, who plan to try filing a dispensary application this morning at the state Department of Health Services' headquarters and be turned away. Hurley said getting denied will set the stage for a lawsuit against the state for failing to implement the provisions of the voter-approved medical-marijuana law.

Humble is a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, which seeks a declaratory judgment to determine if the new law conflicts with federal drug statutes and whether compliance with Arizona's voter-approved medical-pot law shields state employees, patients, dispensary owners and others from federal prosecution.

The state was to accept dispensary applications throughout the month of June and issue up to 126 permits by August. But Humble put the process on hold Friday, saying the court filing and advice from the Attorney General's Office made it legally dicey. The health department continues to accept applications for caregiver and patient ID cards as required under the law.

Hurley and his clients will not have an official application to submit, even though state rules require it, because Humble never posted one on the health department's website.

Attorney Lisa Hauser, who wrote Proposition 203 and represents several would-be dispensary owners, said she doesn't need to be turned away from Humble to take legal action. She said some of her clients may choose to file suit against the state for "failure to perform its duties under the act."

The federal lawsuit names U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke as defendants, along with voters who supported the ballot measure, patients and would-be dispensary owners. It contends that letters sent over the past several months by federal prosecutors have cast doubt on the legality of Arizona's law and the liability of state employees and others who abide by it. Arizona is among 16 states with medical-marijuana laws and all of them conflict with federal law, which outlaws the cultivation, sale and use of pot.

Dr. Nicholas Flores, a Scottsdale oncologist and potential dispensary medical director, said he agreed to be a defendant in the lawsuit because he believes patients deserve clarity on the issue. Federal prosecutors have said they won't prosecute patients but could go after growers and sellers.

"I'd like to see some kind of resolution for my patients," he said. "I'm tired of watching my 70-year-old patients try to figure out how to score an ounce in an alley."

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8603.


State turns away doctors' request for marijuana dispensary

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State turns away doctors' request for marijuana dispensary

Posted: Wednesday, June 1, 2011 1:13 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

State Health Director Will Humble turned away a request by doctors Wednesday to operate a marijuana dispensary, paving the way for a lawsuit.

Humble acknowledged that his refusal to even accept an application comes despite a voter-approved law requiring his agency to license about 125 dispensaries around the state. And it is directly contrary to the department's own rules that say the first requests would be considered Wednesday.

But Humble said the Attorney General's Office, which provides legal advice for his agency, said all applicants should be turned away until a federal court rules on whether Arizona can enforce its voter-approved medical marijuana law despite federal statutes making possession of the drug a felony.

"I'm a public health official. I'm not a lawyer," he said. "So I have to rely on the lawyers to provide me with good advice on actions we should take where public health issues intersect with the law."

But Ryan Hurley, the attorney for the Virtue Center, said he thinks Humble actions are both illegal and bad public policy.

"At the end of the day, what's happening is the law voters enacted is not going into place," he said. "Patients are going to suffer."

With a formal rejection of the application, Hurley said he will now start working on a legal challenge. But he said it remains unclear what will be the next step.

On one hand, state law generally requires someone who is denied a permit to file an administrative appeal. That involves an administrative law judge hearing the evidence and issuing a finding.

But there is no requirement for Humble to obey that finding. That would allow a further appeal into Maricopa County Superior Court.

But Hurley said a case can be made for arguing that Humble has no legal authority to even refuse to accept applications. And that would allow him to seek a court ruling mandating Humble's agency to act as required by the initiative passed by voters.

Hurley said the doctors he represents already have invested "significant" time and financial resources in planning the dispensary. He declined to provide a figure or say whether the medical group had already purchased or leased a site.

Dr. Richard Strand, a radiologist, said he and his two partners, also physicians, are approaching retirement age and saw the dispensary as an opportunity to "give something to the community." And Strand said dispensaries are a necessary part of making the program work.

"We want to allow patients in need and their caregivers not to have to go to the dark streets and back alleys to find medical marijuana," he said.

Under the voter-approved law, individuals with specific medical conditions can seek a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana. That recommendation, if approved by the health department, allows the person to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-regulated non-profit dispensary.

Dispensary owners could seek to grow their own marijuana or arrange to purchase it from other dispensaries that operate cultivation sites.

Humble said, though, that his decision to not accept or process applications for dispensaries does not leave marijuana patients without recourse.

He said one provision of the law allows anyone with a state-issued "qualified patient" card to grow up to 12 plants if there is no dispensary within 25 miles. And, at the moment, that means every one of the approximately 3,700 people who have those cards.

There are rules, though, with the plants either having to be grown indoors in a locked room, or outdoors behind a concrete wall with a locked gate.

That same right exists for individuals who are certified as "designated caregivers."

But Humble had no answers to the question of where the patients or the caregivers would get the seeds to start a crop.

"There are hydroponic stores around town that give advice for people on how to grow for their own benefit," he said.

"I did go incognito to a hydroponic store over the weekend," Humble said. "And I asked a few questions about how it all works."

One thing he did learn is that a plant can be started from cuttings.

"Apparently it's like cactus where you can snip off a branch and put it in the dirt," Humble said. But here, too, Humble had no answers where to get a cutting in the first place.

Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the health department, said the law is silent on the question of where people - including not just individuals but state-regulated dispensary owners - get a start for their crop. While there are medical marijuana shops in more than a dozen other states, bringing the product across state lines is a separate violation of federal laws.

Humble said he had been prepared to proceed with licensing dispensaries.

Last month, Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona, sent him a letter detailing that while going after medical marijuana patients was not a priority for his office, the possession, sale and transportation of the drugs remains illegal under federal law. And Burke said he could not offer immunity to anyone even if that person is acting in strict accordance with Arizona's medical marijuana law.

Even then, Humble was going to go ahead. But all that changed last week when Gov. Jan Brewer directed Attorney General Tom Horne to ask a federal court to decide if Arizona could implement its medical marijuana law despite federal statutes. Brewer also said she was halting the health department from issuing dispensary permits until there is a ruling.

Humble said he wasn't going to quibble with that.

"Near as I can tell, this is a responsible decision for now," he said.

Despite the concerns over conflicts with federal law, the health department continues to take applications for qualified patient cards. Humble said one reason is that refusal to do so would be meaningless: A provision in the law spells out that if an application has not been acted on within 45 days, it is automatically considered approved.

"We'd lose all oversight regarding the qualified patient process," he said.


TV Show glorifies Mexico's drug war

Felipe Calderon creates TV show to glorify his drug war?

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Cop show spawns real drama in Mexico

Was 'The Team' just another crime series or was it a propaganda tool for President Felipe Calderon's drug war?

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

June 1, 2011, 2:29 p.m.

Reporting from Mexico City— "The Team" aired for three short weeks and never scored high ratings.

It proved one thing, though. Amid sharpening divisions over Mexico's drug war, even a mediocre cop drama can be fuel on the fire.

The TV series debuted on the private Televisa network in early May and ended Friday, capping 15 prime-time episodes. But the controversy around it may outlast the reruns.

Was the series, featuring a coed team of elite (and muy attractive!) federal officers on the trail of drug traffickers, just an ordinary crime drama? Or was it (cue sinister organ music) an attempt by the government of President Felipe Calderon to secretly win support for his drug war?

The real drama may be just underway, as leftist lawmakers press for an investigation into whether the administration helped bankroll the show to glorify federal police.

"It's not just a television series," said Leticia Quezada, a congresswoman from the Democratic Revolution Party who filed a complaint asking whether the Calderon government invested public funds.

The dust-up is evidence of an intensifying battle to win Mexicans' hearts and minds as Calderon pursues a long and controversial drug war. A centerpiece of that drive is cleaning up and modernizing the federal police, with 35,000 officers.

Radio spots by the government regularly trumpet captures of drug capos. Police parade suspects as trophies before news cameras.

Recently, a Calderon spokesman, Alejandro Poire, launched a blog to explain the anticrime strategy to wary Mexicans. (This week's installment: 10 "myths" about the strategy, including, No. 1 on the list, that there is no strategy.) And the president has compared himself to Winston Churchill to argue that yielding is no option.

On the opposite side of the fence, protesters smear themselves with fake blood and blame Calderon — and not the murderous drug gangs — for the nearly 40,000 drug-related deaths since he took office in late 2006.

Mexicans seem conflicted: They tend to favor cracking down on the drug cartels, but aren't optimistic about winning.

On the face of it, "El Equipo," or "The Team," was harmless enough. A four-member squad of federal cops — three men and a woman — chased bad guys using high-tech gizmos and wiles honed through a demanding new training regimen for Mexican cops.

Scenes showed real-life helicopters and secret, state-of-the-art federal police installations in Mexico City. There were shootouts, episode-ending arrests and, naturally, romantic subplots.

So what if scripts carried little more surprise than your average installment of "Scooby-Doo"? Here at last was a flattering look at the work of Mexican police, who in real life can use an image boost.

But that's where things got sticky.

Calderon's foes were sure they smelled a rat when the show launched May 9 — a night after a march in Mexico City by tens of thousands of people decrying the death toll.

Critics saw the show as the equivalent of an infomercial for Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, who oversees the federal police and is a favored target of Calderon foes. The left-leaning Proceso magazine, citing sources it did not reveal, reported that Garcia Luna's agency had invested more than $12 million in the program.

"They're trying to clean up the image of the police … because they haven't done a good job," Quezada said. She asked the federal comptroller's office to find out whether public resources were used. While federal and state agencies in Mexico frequently buy television spots to tout supposed accomplishments, it would be highly unusual to spend public funds on a dramatic series.

A spokeswoman for the federal police declined to comment, citing the complaint.

The show's producer, Pedro Torres, said Mexicans' frustration over safety is born of many years of official corruption and mistrust toward law enforcement. But he said federal police deserved praise for making improvements.

In an interview, Torres scoffed at the idea of "The Team" as propaganda. "The intention was to make a police drama," he said. He referred questions about federal funding to Televisa, which did not respond to inquiries.

Torres said his production team began discussing the idea three years ago. Plans to air the show were in place long before the May 8 march, he said.

It doesn't take much to convince conspiracy-minded Mexicans of alleged government plots. The drug war has offered whispers aplenty of hidden hands at work: arrests that may have been staged, accidents that may not have been accidents, dead crime bosses who may, in fact, not be dead.

It's hard to say whether Mexican cops got any public-relations lift from "The Team." If not, they can take heart from a new holiday.

Calderon declared Thursday as Mexico's first-ever "Federal Police Day."

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com


Attorney seeks to force licensing of medical marijuana dispensaries

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Medical marijuana dispensaries' attorney seeks to force licensing

Posted: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:19 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

An attorney who represents some would-be marijuana dispensaries is taking the first steps he believes will convince a state judge to force Department of Health Services to issue the necessary permits.

Ryan Hurley said Tuesday he is working with clients to get one of them to submit an application this week to the health department. State health officials had said the first requests would be accepted Wednesday.

And Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the department, confirmed that any requests will be turned away.

Once that happens, Hurley said, there are grounds for demanding in court that state officials comply with the law that voters approved in November. Hurley said while the state has gone to federal court to seek a declaration of the legality of that law, at the moment it is still the law of this state.

Once an application is denied, he said, that provides the legal precursor to demanding in court that state health officials obey the law as approved by voters, a law that has never been declared illegal.

That could pave the way for a state judge forcing Arizona to implement the medical marijuana law even as the federal court decides whether it is in conflict with federal law.

The process is known as “mandamus.” In essence, it is a request that a judge issue an order to a public official to perform a duty that is required.

In this case, the voter-approved law requires the health department to issue licenses for one dispensary for every 10 pharmacies in the state. That computes out to about 125.

State Health Director Will Humble said he was prepared to start taking applications now. But that was before Gov. Jan Brewer, working with Attorney General Tom Horne, directed him to stall.

“On advice of our attorney, our program has been suspended,’’ Oxley said. In fact, her agency will not even make application forms available.

Oxley acknowledged that what’s needed for an application already is spelled out in both state law and the rules the health department already enacted. And she said someone could prepare an application of sorts with all the necessary information.

But she said anyone who walks in the door with such a form will be turned away, and anything submitted by mail will be returned.

Hurley said once someone’s completed application is rejected, the first step may be having to file an administrative appeal. But the final decision on that still rests with Humble as health director.

That then paves the way to ask a judge to order Humble to act.

Horne told Capitol Media Services he is not directing Humble and his department to disregard what voters mandated.

“We’re not ignoring the law,’’ he said.

“We’re just asking a (federal) judge to let us know how we should do it before we proceed further,’’ Horne continued. “I think that’s very reasonable.’’

He said it would be just “a slight delay.’’ But Horne said he cannot predict how long that would take but said legal questions like these take preference over other lawsuits.

The health department continues to issue cards for “qualified patients’’ who have a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana for a specific medical condition. Those cards allow the individual to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-regulated nonprofit dispensary.

Those who have one of these cards to grow enough for his or her own use until dispensaries are available.

Horne said he is not worried that prospective dispensary owners will get a ruling forcing the health department to start issuing the dispensary licenses.

“If you sue me about it, by the time you get a decision (from a state judge) I’ll have a decision out of federal court,’’ he said. “So it won’t make any difference.’’

That lawsuit Horne filed on behalf of the governor asks a federal judge whether the state marijuana law is pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession of the drug a felony. If a federal judge rules the laws conflict, that could allow Brewer, who opposed the initiative, to shut down the program.


Medical-marijuana superstore opens in Phoenix

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Medical-marijuana superstore opens in Phoenix

by Mary K. Reinhart - Jun. 2, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

It may not have been the grand opening he'd hoped for, but Dhar Mann says his Phoenix marijuana superstore will be a boon to first-time pot growers.

Mann opened his third weGrow store Wednesday - twice the size of his two California locations at 21,000 square feet - amid legal uncertainty about Arizona's voter-approved medical-pot law.

A federal lawsuit filed last week by Gov. Jan Brewer has halted the monthlong marijuana-dispensary-application process, which was to have started Wednesday. Mann said he expected to cater to large-scale cultivation operations that served dispensaries but instead will focus on folks setting up grow rooms and gardens at home.

"Now it's more about serving the patients so that they can grow their own medicine," he said. "Arizona is a state where there's high demand and very little information."

State health director Will Humble turned away the first dispensary applicants Wednesday, setting the stage for a possible legal challenge or administrative appeal based on the state's failure to implement the law.

Humble said dispensary applications won't be processed at least until a federal judge rules whether Arizona's new law conflicts with federal statutes banning marijuana.

About 4,000 Arizonans have state identification cards that permit them to use marijuana to treat a debilitating medical condition. State law allows people who live more than 25 miles from a dispensary to grow up to 12 plants for their personal use, and it allows a designated caregiver to grow marijuana for up to five people. Patients must indicate on their application that they plan to grow marijuana.

In addition to hydroponic supplies and other growing paraphernalia, Mann's store at 29th Avenue and Thomas Road features an adjacent clinic where people can get marijuana recommendations after submitting medical records and seeing a doctor.

A medical recommendation is required for a state-issued patient-identification card.


World governments urged to legalize all drugs

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High-profile panel urges non-criminal approach to world drug policy

The report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, was swiftly dismissed by the U.S. and Mexico.

By Ken Ellingwood and Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

June 1, 2011, 6:41 p.m.

Reporting from Mexico City and Washington— Calling the global war on drugs a costly failure, a group of high-profile world leaders is urging the Obama administration and other governments to end "the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but do no harm to others."

A report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, recommends that governments try new ways of legalizing and regulating drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to deny profits to drug cartels.

The recommendation was swiftly dismissed by the Obama administration and the government of Mexico, which are allied in a violent 4 1/2 -year-old crackdown on cartels that has killed more than 38,000 people in Mexico.

"The U.S. needs to open a debate," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, a member of the panel, said by telephone from New York, where the report is scheduled to be released Thursday. "When you have 40 years of a policy that is not bringing results, you have to ask if it's time to change it."

An advance copy of the report was provided to The Times.

Three of the report's Latin American signatories, Gaviria and former Presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, made similar recommendations two years ago. Their views failed to change the enforcement-based approach that dominates drug policies worldwide.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a conservative, has made the battle against drug cartels a centerpiece of his administration. Although the growing death toll has stirred widespread public dismay in Mexico, Calderon shows no sign of turning back before his six-year term ends next year. A poll on security matters released Wednesday found broad public opposition in Mexico to legalizing drug sales.

The U.S. government has backed the Mexican crackdown with law enforcement equipment, training and encouraging words from President Obama.

"Making drugs more available — as this report suggests — will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," said Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Although the Obama administration has emphasized a "public health" approach to drug policy, officials have taken a hard line against legalization.

"Legalizing dangerous drugs would be a profound mistake, leading to more use, and more harmful consequences," drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said this year. [Any government ruler with a title of czar isn't worth listening to]

Administration officials dispute the idea that nothing can be done to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States. A spokesman for the White House drug agency said U.S. consumption peaked in 1979, when surveys showed that 14% of respondents had used illegal drugs in the previous month. Now that figure has dropped to 7%.

"This is not a problem for law enforcement alone," Kerlikowske said in February at the George Washington University in Washington.

In its 2012 budget, the administration has requested $1.7 billion for drug prevention programs, a 7.9% increase from the previous year.

Administration officials have promoted the use of drug courts where judges can sentence offenders to treatment and other terms as alternatives to jail time. The White House also is working to expand reentry programs that aim to reduce recidivism rates by assisting the nearly 750,000 drug offenders released from prison each year to transition more easily back into communities.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has examined U.S. drug policy, said the Obama administration has pushed the issue in a "considerably better direction. Nonetheless, she added, "a lot of it stayed at the level of strategy and rhetoric."

"If [Obama] is going to spend his political capital on something, it won't be drug policy," said Felbab-Brown, author of "Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs."

Gaviria, the former Colombian president, said he saw signs of a shift in opinion last year, when Californians voted on a ballot measure that would have legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Although the measure failed, "people are changing their minds," he said.

The new report said the world's approach to limiting drugs, crafted 50 years ago when the United Nations adopted its "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs," has failed to cut the supply or use of drugs. The report, citing figures from the world body, said global marijuana consumption rose more than 8% and cocaine use 27% between 1998 and 2008.

The group cited a U.N. estimate that 250 million people worldwide use illegal drugs, concluding, "We simply cannot treat them all as criminals."

More treatment options for addicts are needed, the report said. And it argued that arresting and incarcerating "tens of millions" of drug-producing farmers, couriers and street dealers have not answered economic needs that push many people into the trade.

The assessment cited studies of nations, such as Portugal and Australia, that found decriminalizing the use and possession of at least some drugs has not led significantly to greater use.

The group's members include former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa and Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group.

In Mexico, thousands have died in drug-related violence since late 2006, when Calderon deployed the military in a stepped-up fight against organized crime. Most of the deaths stem from turf wars between rival trafficking gangs.

Last month, tens of thousands took to the streets in Mexico City to protest the violence and demand an end to the drug war. Calderon says it would be irresponsible to give up the fight now.

Calderon criticized the legalization measure in California, saying it would undermine his government's crime fight. The Mexican president has said he is open to differing views on the issue but that it would be "absurd" to consider legalization in Mexico as long as narcotics are barred north of the border, where the massive demand determines the prices and profitability of the drug trade.

Other analysts reject the notion that curbing drug profits through legalization would cut overall crime, arguing that many violent trafficking gangs have broadened into other criminal activities, such as kidnapping, extortion and producing and selling pirated merchandise.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Ellingwood reported from Mexico City and Bennett from Washington.


DARE sucks? Probably!

Source

<SNIP>

There has not been a single scientific study of the effects of DARE that has found it to be productive. There have even been some studies that have found that the students who were exposed to DARE ended up using more frequently or more heavily.

<SNIP>


Global war on drugs a failure, high-level panel says

More on the war on drugs being a miserable failure

The article says the full report is at this URL:

The full report is available at

www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report
Source

Global war on drugs a failure, high-level panel says

Reuters

– Thu Jun 2, 7:58 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A high-level international commission declared the global "war on drugs" a failure and urged nations to consider legalizing cannabis and other drugs to undermine organized crime and protect their citizens' health.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy called for a new approach to reducing drug abuse to replace the current strategy of strictly criminalizing drugs and incarcerating drug users while battling criminal cartels that control the drug trade.

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world," said the report issued by the commission on Thursday.

The study urges "experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs," adding: "This recommendation applies especially to cannabis, but we also encourage other experiments in decriminalization and legal regulation."

There are 250 million users of illicit drugs worldwide, with less than a 10th of them classified as dependent, and millions are involved in cultivation, production and distribution, according to U.N. estimates quoted in the report.

The study adds that decriminalization initiatives do not result in significant increases in drug use.

"Now is the time to break the taboo on discussion of all drug policy options, including alternatives to drug prohibition," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said.

The 19-member panel includes current Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and former heads of state, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, British businessman Richard Branson and former Secretary of State George Shultz.

The commission said fundamental reforms were urgently needed in national and global drug control policies.

Additional recommendations:

-- Replace the criminalization and punishment of people who are drug users but do not hurt other people with the offer of health and treatment services to those who need them.

-- Countries that continue to invest mostly in a law enforcement approach should focus on violent organized crime and drug traffickers. [Duh! What idiots. If you legalize ALL drugs violent organized crime and drug traffickers will disappear almost overnight and the problem will be solved]

-- Promote alternative sentences for small-scale and first-time drug dealers as the majority of these people are not gangsters or organized criminals.

Other members of the panel include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker.

The report says "vast expenditure" had been spent on criminalization and repressive measures.

"Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use," it adds.

The commission's report adds that money spent by governments on futile efforts to reduce the supply of drugs and on jailing people on drug-related offenses could be better spent on different ways to reduce drug demand and the harm caused by drug abuse.

The full report is available at www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report.


Global leaders call for a major shift to decriminalize drugs

Source

Global leaders call for a major shift to decriminalize drugs

By Liz Goodwin liz Goodwin – Wed Jun 1, 2:49 pm ET

A slew of big-name former politicians are endorsing a report that says the war on drugs is not working and that drug enforcement policy needs to fundamentally change. The Global Commission on Drug Policy will urge a "paradigm shift" that emphasizes public health over criminalization tomorrow at a meeting in New York City, The Guardian reports.

Those backing the report include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Fed Chair Paul Volcker. Former elected leaders of Greece, Brazil and Colombia have also signed on. See the full list of backers here.

"What we have here is the greatest collection thus far of ex-presidents and prime ministers calling very clearly for decriminalization and experiments with legal regulation," Danny Kushlick, spokesman for the drug policy center Transform, told the Guardian. "It will be a watershed moment."

But, faced with the list of "formers" backing the new recommendation, The Lookout couldn't help but wonder: Where are all the current office-holders who think the drug war has been a failure?

Tom Angell, spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former and current police officers against the criminalization of drugs, tells The Lookout he thinks sitting politicians will have to change their tune as American public opinion changes.

"I think as this debate continues to heat up and move forward you'll start to see more and more sitting elected officials endorsing fundamental reforms," he says. Even among LEAP's membership, most are retired law enforcement officers. Only a "handful" are active-duty cops, Angell says, in part because it's difficult for police officers to question the value of laws that they risk their lives to enforce every day.

Despite the political pitfalls of challenging drug policy, a few recent signs point to something of a bipartisan consensus forming on the issue. In April, an NAACP report that said states send too many young people to jail for non-violent drug offenses picked up surprising endorsements from former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, the conservative activist who founded Americans for Tax Reform. The report said more than a quarter of the 2.3 million American prisoners are jailed for drug offenses, which bloats the system and eats up tax dollars. Christian talk show host Pat Robertson caused a stir in December when he endorsed on "The 700 Club" faith-based rehabilitation programs instead of jail time for drug use, and even appeared to support the legalization of marijuana. "I'm not exactly for the use of drugs, don't get me wrong," he said. "I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot--that kind of thing--it's costing us a fortune and it's ruining young people."

Public opinion polls show support is growing among Americans to legalize marijuana, but a majority still think the drug should be illegal. A greater share of Independents support its legalization than Democrats or Republicans.

The U.S. government has sent $1.4 billion in aid to Mexico and Central America to help fight the bloody war against the drug cartels. More than 35,000 people have died over the past four years in the drug-related violence. Drug cartels have turned to the use of narco-submarines and ultra-light aircraft to get their product to the U.S. market, in an effort to foil increased enforcement measur


Cannabinoid Patent 6,630,507

Source

The Significance of US Govt Cannabinoid Patent 6,630,507

by , July 23, 2008, 01:05am

When I was at the Patients Out of Time Medical Cannabis conference in Asilomar this last April, I overheard a remark that startled me: "The US Government has a patent on cannabis." I couldn't locate the person who made the comment, so I went home and did some online research. Sure enough, patent number 6,630,507 states unequivocally that cannabinoids are useful in the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of diseases including auto-immune disorders, stroke, trauma, Parkinson's, Alzeheimer's and HIV dementia. The patent, awarded in 2003, is based on research done by the National Institute of Health, and is assigned to the US Dept. of Health and Human Services.

So, why is this important? Here is a legal document, in the public domain, which flies in the face of the US Government's stated position with regard to the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance having no "currently accepted medical use".

Believe me, citing this patent stops the "medical marijuana is a myth" advocates dead in their tracks. They simply cannot argue with it. The forces that would keep cannabis illegal are vocal and well funded, but they are not impervious to persistent effort. The lynch pin in the War on Drugs is cannabis. Without the suppression and interdiction of this popular and widely used substance, there simply would not be enough "illegal drug use" going on to justify the huge amount of money and resources spent on "fighting drugs." I believe disseminating information about this patent as widely as possible, and to as many people as possible is a crucial strategy in loosening that lynch pin, and changing public perception about cannabis.

I, personally, downloaded the first page of this patent and sent a copy (with the assignee highlighted) to every one of my elected representatives. I have also included information about it in "letters to the editor" referencing any cannabis related news story I come across, I use it as an argument in every State medical cannabis and decriminalization initiative, and have mentioned it in all my comments to online posts and blogs of the same nature. I would be delighted if everyone who believes the War on Drugs is a failed and destructive policy, would do the same, until the existence of this irrefutable patent becomes widely held public knowledge, and government's rhetoric is shown to be as hollow as a busted drum.


U.S. Patent # 6630507

Source

U.S. Patent # 6630507

In 2003, the U.S. Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services filed for, and was awarded a patent on cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. U.S. Patent 6630507

Abstract

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH.sub.3, and COCH.sub.3.


U.S. Patent # 6630507

Here is a link to U.S. Patent # 6630507 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office


40,000+ deaths in Mexico's drug war? Felipe Calderon won't say

Source

Debate rises over death toll in Mexico drug war

Jun. 2, 2011 12:27 PM

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - The debate over how many people have died in Mexico's 4 1/2-year-old drug war is intensifying as the government's silence over the figure grows longer.

The last official count, more than 34,600 dead, came almost six months ago, and the number of lives lost is now obviously far higher, with daily reports of slayings and shootouts in drug hot spots and the occasional horror of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies.

Some Mexican news media are reporting that their counts show the death toll has risen past 40,000, a number that includes rival gang members killed in turf battles, as well as innocent bystanders, extortion victims, police and soldiers.

The most recent official count came in January, when the government released a database of drug-related deaths as a gesture of openness about President Felipe Calderon's military assault on drug cartels, which began as he took office in December 2006.

Government officials also had occasionally released updated numbers in past years when pressed by the news media. But they have not given any figures since the database was released, nor have they updated the database since.

The government also has cut back on the public dialogues with activists and nongovernmental organizations it started last year, even as new and shocking crimes come to the fore. Mass graves holding more than 400 corpses were discovered in two northern Mexico states in April and May, and thousands of people have massed in protests against the violence in several Mexican cities.

Anti-crime activist Francisco Torres said Wednesday that the lack of openness on the issue only increases Mexicans' insecurity.

"Transparency, and the chance that it will eventually create accountability, is fundamental for making the public feel we live in a nation of laws," said Torres, who heads the group Mexico United Against Crime.

"But when this doesn't happen, as long as the figures remain hidden and information isn't forthcoming, the public lacks the tools that enable people to make decisions about what to do and what not to do, where to work or study," he said.

But Mexico's federal security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, refused to confirm or deny those figures or to release a new count when asked earlier this week.

"At some point, the appropriate update will be made," Poire said.

Security consultant Eduardo Guerrero Gutierrez wrote in the June issue of Nexos magazine that he believes the figure has already surpassed 40,000.

The issue isn't just a mathematical question for poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed along with six friends on March 28 in Cuernavaca, a resort and industrial city south of Mexico City. Prosecutors say drug gang members killed them after a couple of Sicilia's friends had a chance scuffle with the gangsters 10 days before.

Sicilia, who also believes the total death toll is now about 40,000, has mounted a series of protests against the drug-war violence, and has proposed writing the names of the dead on plaques at the spots where they were killed throughout the country so that they won't just be numbers.

Jorge Chabat, en expert in Mexico who studies the drug trade, said releasing the figures has a cost for the government.

"Obviously, if the number is high, it provides a tool to identify the problem, but it also opens the government to criticism," Chabat said. "I think in these cases one has to choose the least costly option, and I think releasing the figures is less costly."

Many critics allege that Calderon's offensive, which ramped up Mexico's existing use of troops against traffickers, was launched without adequate preparation, strategy or understanding of how strong the cartels had become.

The government has launched an ad campaign branding those accusations as false.

Roy Campos, president of the polling firm Mitofsky, said it would be understandable if the government stopped releasing figures, if it had some strategic reason to do so.

"All government actions, including information, should be part of a strategy," Campos said. "If releasing the figures threatens to hurt the strategy, then don't release them."

Campos thinks the strategy might be just simple public relations: better a big storm of criticism every few months when figures are finally released, than a steady drumbeat every day.

Campos suggest administration officials may feel "it's better for them to criticize us every six months, than to criticize us every day for 10 more deaths."


U.S. Patent # 6,630,507

Here is a link to U.S. Patent # 6,630,507 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office


Source

Arizona demanda al gobierno federal por uso legal de marihuana

Associated Press | 31-05-2011 | 23:33

Phoenix— El Procurador General de Arizona, Tom Horne, demandó a nombre de la gobernadora de Arizona Jan Brewer, al Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos para que permita el uso de mariguana medicinal.

La demanda solicita que un juez federal resuelva de conformidad con las leyes de Arizona y proteja bajo las leyes federales el proceso interpuesto de antemano en Arizona.

El estado aprobó en noviembre por votación, al igual que en otros estados, despenalizar la distribución, posesión y uso de la marihuana con propósitos medicinales bajo circunstancias específicas.

Sin embargo, el procurador general por Arizona le recordó a funcionarios estatales que bajo las leyes federales la mariguana aún es considerada ilegal.

Horne comentó que la demanda Arizona tiene la intención de conseguir una resolución de la corte “que aclare cuál es el camino más seguro para continuar—ya sea implementando la ley o no”.

La demanda también menciona a partidarios de la marihuana de uso médico.


Source

28/05/2011

Arizona entabló demanda por ley estatal sobre uso medicinal de la marihuana

El Gobierno de Arizona entabló una demanda contra el Departamento de Justicia para determinar la legalidad de una ley aprobada en el estado en noviembre pasado sobre el uso médico de la marihuana, informaron las autoridades.

El fiscal general de Arizona, Tom Horne, presentó la demanda a nombre del Estado y de la gobernadora republicana Jan Brewer, quien ya había adelantado su intención de iniciar el litigio el martes pasado.

Horne precisó que el Gobierno de Arizona quiere una guía "clara" del Gobierno federal sobre la legalidad de la ley y si puede o no aplicarse en el estado.

Así, la demanda pide que un tribunal federal determine si el cumplimiento de la ley aprobada por los votantes en noviembre de 2010 garantiza protecciones contra cualquier acción judicial del Gobierno federal o si las leyes federales prohíben la puesta en marcha de la medida estatal.

La ley elimina la penalización por la posesión, distribución y consumo de la marihuana para fines médicos y bajo determinadas circunstancias.

El Gobierno federal prohíbe el uso terapéutico de la marihuana, pero varios estados han aprobado medidas con el objetivo de ayudar a pacientes con enfermedades crónicas y que usan la droga para aliviar sus síntomas.


Pima county cops moonlight by robbing drug dealers.

Source

Arizona deputies charged with theft of drug money

Jun. 3, 2011 02:43 PM

Associated Press

TUCSON - Two former deputies with a southern Arizona sheriff's office have been charged with stealing money that they believed came from drug smugglers and trying to distribute drugs.

The U.S. Attorney's Office announced the charges Friday after a superseding indictment was unsealed Thursday.

The indictment alleges that former Pima County Sheriff's Deputy Miguel Arvizu arranged for fellow Deputy Francisco Jimenez to perform traffic stops last year on vehicles belonging to drug traffickers and steal the money inside.

The indictment also says that on Nov. 24, Arvizu arranged for Jimenez to provide "security," while others stole drugs and money from a storage facility in Green Valley.

In all, Arvizu is charged with eight counts that include theft of government money and attempted distribution of 3 kilograms of cocaine. Jimenez faces similar charges.


Medical pot grower kills marijuana thief who pulls a gun on him

Of course the real problem is the insane drug war. Legalize drugs and these crimes will stop the next day.

Source

Phoenix medical-pot grower fatally shoots man

Jun. 3, 2011 03:44 PM

Associated Press

A Phoenix man who recently was authorized to grow his own marijuana fatally shot a man who tried to steal his pot at gunpoint.

Phoenix police said Friday that the 30-year-old marijuana grower, whose name was not released, got his medical marijuana card from the Arizona Department of Health Services on May 25 and began advertising pot for sale to others who could show him their own marijuana ID cards.

On Thursday, two men contacted the grower, saying they had ID cards and wanted to buy marijuana.

But when the group met, police say one of the men, 38-year-old Larry Miller, pulled a gun and demanded the pot.

A struggle ensued, and the grower pulled his own gun and shot Miller as the other man fled with the marijuana.

The grower called 911 and performed first aid on Miller, but he soon after died.

Police say no arrest was made but that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office will determine whether the grower committed a crime.


It sure seems like the government tyrants at the city, county and state level are doing everything possible to throw roadblocks into the path of people that want to use medical marijuana which is now LEGAL in Arizona.

While Phoenix suspending this 180 day requirement may seem like an attempt to help people that want to get licenses it is only as a result of the tyrants at the state level suing in Federal court for what seems to be an attempt to get the medical marijuana laws declared unconstitutional.

Source

Phoenix suspends time requirement on marijuana permits

by Michael Clancy - Jun. 7, 2011 11:09 AM

The Arizona Republic

Phoenix has suspended its 180-day requirement for holders of medical-marijuana permits to seek state licenses.

The move is a result of the state lawsuit against the federal government regarding clarification of Arizona's medical-marijuana law.

City officials anticipated that with the state scheduled to begin issuing licenses this month, the three-month period was plenty of time for permit winners to take action.

Every medical-marijuana site approved in Phoenix came with stipulations or requirements that the permit holder seek a license. If none was granted within 180 days, the permit would be revoked. The city ordinance also gave applicants 180 days to seek building permits.

Larry Tom, a city planner who is assembling medical-marijuana information, said days up to June 1 will be counted against the time limit but the count now will be be suspended until the state lawsuit is resolved.

The first permit holders received their permits March 17.

Tom noted that 87 applications for medical-marijuana operations came into the city since Jan. 1. Of those, only about 20 have been approved. The rest have been denied or withdrawn or the applicants never followed through. Twenty-two still await permit hearings.

The state had planned to award one medical-marijuana business for each community health-analysis area. The State Department of Health Services created the areas, based on population, to enable department officials to do a better job of analyzing health trends, such as cancer clusters. Phoenix covers, in whole or in part, 19 such areas.

------------------------------

More on this topic

Dispensary sites

According to the Phoenix Planning Department, which oversees the permit process for medical marijuana, fewer than a quarter of the applications have been approved.

Of the 20 or so that have been approved, none has been OK'd if it violated the city's spacing requirements. Those requirements state that medical-marijuana sites be at least 250 feet from homes, a quarter mile from schools, parks and community centers and 500 feet from churches.

The only variances granted so far are for operations within a mile of each other.

The medical-marijuana sites in Phoenix mostly are clustered in just a few areas:

• Deer Valley Airport: At least 11 sites have been requested. Three have been approved, two have expired or been withdrawn, and six await action.

• Grand Avenue: Of 15 applications that appear to be clustered near Grand Avenue, only two have been approved. One has been denied, and eight applications expired or were withdrawn. Four await city action.

• Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport: At least 14 sites have been requested around the airport. Four have won approval, and seven expired or were withdrawn Three others await action.

Such clustering is not likely to lead to numerous medical-marijuana locations. State law allows only one per community health-analysis area. The Deer Valley sites are in the same area. Only on Grand Avenue might multiple locations co-exist, because several health-analysis areas use Grand Avenue as a boundary.


Marijuana Decriminalization

Source

New York Marijuana Bill May Stall; Connecticut To Decriminalize Pot Possession

First Posted: 06/ 7/11 06:12 PM ET

More than 30 years ago, New York state decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. But one line in that 1977 law has led to the annual arrest of thousands of New Yorkers under the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk searches.

Having fewer than 25 grams of marijuana at home is not a criminal offense, but displaying or smoking the same substance out on the street (or in any public place) is. The police have used that fact as part of an aggressive, and critics say unconstitutional, campaign to deter crime by detaining large numbers of people in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods.

New York police arrested 50,377 people for misdemeanor possession of marijuana last year. Last month, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) and Senator Mark Grisanti (R-Buffalo) introduced a bill in Albany to decriminalize public possession.

So far, Jeffries told HuffPost, the response has been encouraging, but time is running out before the end of the session on June 20.

"If we are able to advance it out of committee, it has a shot of passing in the Assembly," he said.

Gabriel Sayegh, the director of state organizing for the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports the bill, said he was not optimistic the measure would become law this year. But he added that the proposal has sparked "quite the conversation" in the capital.

"In short, this is Albany, so this is going to be a very a difficult fight. It's not going to pass without a major, major push," Sayegh said.

Both Sayegh and Jeffries pointed to one sign of hope for advocates of further decriminalization: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, have yet to take a public position on the decriminalization push.

Across the border in Connecticut, a bill to decriminalize pot possession in general passed in the Senate on Sunday and the House on Tuesday.

When Gov. Dan Malloy (D) signs the measure into law, as he has promised to do, a first-time violation for possessing less than a half ounce of pot will carry a $150 fine. Possession of less than four ounces can currently be punished with a $1,000 fine and a year in prison.

Connecticut would become the 14th state to decriminalize some amount of marijuana.

Michael Lawlor, Governor Malloy's undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, told HuffPost the bill was intended to "free up a lot of resources in the criminal justice system to focus on more serious and violent offenses."

Instead of sending suspects to be booked and enter the criminal justice system, they will receive a fine, and in Lawlor's experience as a criminal justice professor, "swift and certain punishment is more effective than potential severity of punishment."

Another bill in Connecticut, to legalize medical marijuana, faces a more uncertain future. Lawlor sees "strong bipartisan support" in his state, but is also concerned about a filibuster threat in the Senate.

"If we could get it debated, it would certainly pass," Lawlor said. Another such bill passed in 2007 but was vetoed by then-Governor M. Jodi Rell.

State Sen. Toni Boucher (R) opposes both the decriminalization of marijuana and the current version of the medical marijuana bill. She has gone so far as to claim that Malloy supports the legislation out of a personal interest, according to an interview with the Stonington Patch:

“Malloy is promoting this bill," she said. "One of his sons has had serious problems with drugs. [The governor] has a personal interest in this."

Boucher was referring to Benjamin Malloy's arrests for dealing marijuana and robbing a man with marijuana at gunpoint. Governor Malloy declined to comment to Patch.


Source

California seniors' medical pot collective stirs up trouble

Jun. 8, 2011 07:04 AM

Associated Press

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. - Joe Schwartz is a 90-year-old great-grandfather of three who enjoys a few puffs of pot each night before he crawls into bed in the Southern California retirement community he calls home.

The World War II veteran and stroke sufferer smokes the drug to alleviate debilitating nausea and is one of about 150 senior citizens on this sprawling, 18,000-person gated campus who belongs to a thriving - and controversial - medical marijuana collective operating in the middle of one of the largest retirement communities in the United States.

The fledgling collective mirrors a nationwide trend as more and more senior citizens turn to marijuana, legal or not, to ease the aches and pains of aging. But in Laguna Woods Village, tucked in the heart of one of the most conservative and wealthiest counties in California, these ganja-smoking grandparents have stirred up a heated debate with their collective, attracting a crackdown from within the self-governed community.

Many members of the 2-year-old collective keep a low profile, but others grow seedlings on their patios and set up workshops to show other seniors how to turn the marijuana leaves into tea, milk and a vapor that can be inhaled for relief from everything from chemotherapy-related nausea to multiple sclerosis to arthritis.

The most recent project involves getting collective members to plant 40 seeds from experimental varieties of marijuana that are high in a compound said to have anti-inflammatory properties best suited for elderly ailments. The tiny plastic vials, each containing 10 seeds, are stamped with names like "Sour Tsunami."

Under California law, people with a variety of conditions, from migraines to cancer, can get a medical marijuana card with a doctor's recommendation and join a pot collective to get what they need. All the members of Laguna Woods Village's collective have medical marijuana cards and are legal users under state law, but the drug is still banned under federal law.

Lonnie Painter, the collective's president and perhaps most activist member, worries daily about his high-profile position within the tiny community of pot users. The 65-year-old grandfather supplements regular painkillers with marijuana tea for osteoarthritis and keeps stacks of marijuana collective applications on a desk in the living room, just a few feet from the Lego bricks his 7-year-old grandson plays with on his frequent visits.

"We've got people who don't like it here, they don't like marijuana and they still have that communism' and perversion' and killer weed' attitude," said Painter, who has shoulder-length gray hair, a white goatee and wears several gold necklaces. "What I get more worried about is myself getting put in jail. If you were just a patient you'd be safe, but if you are active and involved in any way in making it available for others, the federal government can come and scoop you up."

In the first two years of the collective's life, however, Painter and other members have had more trouble from their fellow residents than from the government.

When things first got under way, Painter and three others were growing about two dozen plants with names like Super Silver Haze in the Laguna Woods Village community garden. Photos show his 800-square-foot plot overflowing with marijuana plants taller than a grown man butting up against the staked tomatoes and purple flowering clematis of other gardeners.

But the Golden Rain Foundation, the all-volunteer board that governs the community, cracked down and prohibited the cultivation of marijuana on all Laguna Woods Village property. The vote followed the report of the theft of two marijuana plants, tangerines and a rake and shovel from the community garden, according to meeting minutes of the Community Activities Committee's Garden Center Advisory Group.

The foundation, which maintains the 3-square-mile community's 153 acres of golf courses, seven clubhouses and other amenities, adopted the policy late last year after a lengthy legal review.

"We thought that it was not proper. It sets a precedent. Our gardens are for flowers and vegetables, and that's all, and it's been that way since 1964 or 1965 when this was started," said Howard Feichtmann, who was chairman of the Garden Advisory Group. "We thought that's what it should remain and not get involved with medical marijuana or anything else that is considered on the fringe."

Those with medical marijuana cards can still grow the state limit of six mature plants per person in their private residences.

Susan Margolis, who sat on the Garden Center Advisory Group, said the debate has divided people along generational lines in a community where the average age is 78 but new residents can move in at 55. She estimated that up to 10 of her younger neighbors take medical pot for ailments but said many older residents are fiercely opposed.

"This did stir up a lot of feelings," said Margolis, 67, who said those opposed the public pot plots had valid safety concerns. "There are a lot of people that have never used marijuana and there are younger people who have used marijuana who say, Come on now, this is just ridiculous.' "

After the vote, the collective had to rip its plants out and has struggled to produce the pot it needs for its members.

At first, the senior citizens tried to run their own grow site by creating a greenhouse in a rented facility off-site, but they lost thousands of dollars of crop when someone plugged a grow light into the wrong outlet, giving the plants 24 hours of light a day during the critical flowering period instead of 12 hours. Then, they gave seedlings to a grower operating a greenhouse in Los Angeles, but that ended just as badly: The place was busted by police, and all the plants were confiscated and destroyed.

Now, a fellow Laguna Woods Village resident and collective member recently started growing for the group in two off-site greenhouses whose location Painter and others declined to provide. The all-organic supply is distributed to members on a sliding scale, from $35 an ounce to about $200 an ounce based on ability to pay and need. Many members also grow their legal limit of six seedlings on private patios or in space-age looking indoor tents designed to coddle the growing weed.

The collective's website, which includes three albums of photos of the pot plants growing alongside regular produce, dresses down the community's board members for the collective's rocky path, calling them "ill-informed, intolerant tyrants" who have violated members' rights.

"It's just so difficult and it shouldn't be because it makes me feel like I'm doing something criminal but I'm not," said Barbara Ayala, a Laguna Woods Village resident and collective member who says she received nasty emails when she organized a daylong medical marijuana workshop. "I'm only trying to provide people with medicine ... that is the best quality that we can provide."


Think of it as a government welfare program for cops and generals. Kind of like the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but 80 years older.

Source

U.S. can't justify its drug war spending, reports say

By Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

June 9, 2011

Reporting from Washington— As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts.

The reports specifically criticize the government's growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years.

"We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports, which was released Wednesday.

"I think we have wasted our money hugely," agreed Bruce Bagley, who studies U.S. counter-narcotics efforts and chairs international studies at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Fla. "The effort has had corrosive effects on every country it has touched."

Obama administration officials strongly deny that U.S. efforts have failed to reduce drug production or smuggling in Latin America. [We are winning the drug war, we are winning the drug war! Honest! Swear to God!]

White House officials say the expanding U.S. counter-narcotics effort occupies a growing portion of time for President Obama's national security team even though it garners few headlines or congressional hearings in Washington.

The majority of U.S. counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT and ARINC, according to the report for the contracting oversight subcommittee, part of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Counter-narcotics contract spending increased 32% over the five-year period, from $482 million in 2005 to $635 million in 2009. DynCorp, based in Falls Church, Va., received the largest total, $1.1 billion.

Among other jobs, the U.S. contractors train local police and investigators, provide logistical support to intelligence collection centers and fly airplanes and helicopters that spray herbicides to eradicate coca crops grown to produce cocaine.

The Department of Defense has spent $6.1 billion since 2005 to help detect planes and boats heading to the U.S. with drug payloads, as well as on surveillance and other intelligence operations.

Senate staff members described some of the expenses as "difficult to characterize." The Army spent $75,000 for paintball supplies for training exercises in 2007, for example, and $5,000 for what the military calls "rubber ducks." The ducks are rubber replicas of M-16 rifles that are used in training exercises, a Pentagon spokesman said.

The Defense Department described its own system for tracking those contracts as "error prone," according to the Senate report. The report also said the Defense Department doesn't have reliable data about how successful its efforts have been.

A separate report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that the State Department "does not have a centralized inventory of counter-narcotics contracts" and said the department does not evaluate the overall success of its counter-narcotics program.

"It's become increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed," McCaskill said.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on U.S. drug policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, said the U.S. military and other government agencies, not private contractors, should take the lead in training foreign armies and police in drug eradication and control.

"But unless we are able to resource our government properly, that is the only way we can do it," Felbab-Brown said.

The latest assault on the United States' counter-narcotics strategy comes a week after a high-profile group of world leaders called the global war on drugs a costly failure. [Of course that report was written by commie, pinko fags who hate America and can't be trusted - Well at least that's what Obama wants us to think!]

The group, which included former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, recommended that regional governments try legalizing and regulating drugs to help stop the flood of cash going to drug mafias and other organized crime groups.

But James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department's efforts against the drug trade "have been among the most successful and cost-effective programs" in decades. He cited the U.S. success in the 1980s in stopping cocaine shipments from Colombia that had been inundating Florida, and the efforts in the 1990s at helping Colombia overcome a drug-fueled insurgency. [We are winning the war on drugs! Swear to God!]

"By any reasonable assessment, the U.S. has received ample strategic national security benefits in return for its investments in this area," he said. [Wow! Please, lets hear the facts on that!]

Administration officials say that the counter-narcotics program is producing more recent benefits as well.

Along the Mexican border, increased patrols and other efforts have helped seize 31% more drugs, 75% more cash and 64% more weapons during the first 21/2 years of the Obama administration than in the previous 21/2 years, the Homeland Security Department says. [Translation - Nothing new on the drug war front, but we have been busting one percent of the drugs that flow into the US as we always have. Other then that we are losing the drug war as we always have]

After a decade of U.S. assistance to Colombia and years of using U.S. contractors there, annual cocaine production in Colombia has fallen 60% since 2001, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some of that cocaine production has shifted to Peru, however. [So we are still losing the drug war, but now we are losing it in Colombia and Peru]

Backed by the U.S., Mexico's stepped-up offensive against drug cartels similarly has had the unintended effect of pushing them deeper into Central America, especially Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Violence has soared in those countries.

One result has been a new emphasis on surveillance technology and intelligence collection.

In particular, the U.S. effort has focused on improving efforts to intercept cellphone and Internet traffic of drug cartels in the region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. [So in addition to losing the drug war we are also flushing the Constitution and Bill of Rights down the toilet]

During a visit to El Salvador in February, the head of the State Department's counter-narcotics programs, William Brownfield, opened a wiretapping center in San Salvador, as well as a regional office to share fingerprints and other data with U.S. law enforcement. El Salvador is the hub for U.S. law enforcement efforts in Central America. [So in addition to losing the drug war we are turning most of the world into a police state]

brian.bennett@latimes.com


Source

Ahwatukee schools battle marijuana-dispensary proposal

by Cathryn Creno - Jun. 9, 2011 08:55 AM

The Arizona Republic

Attorney Steve White says if his clients open a medical-marijuana dispensary at 46th Street and Chandler Boulevard in Ahwatukee Foothills, it would be "the most boring business in the neighborhood."

Nowak Wellness Inc. has no plans to sell clothing with marijuana emblems or other items that one might find at a smoke shops, White said.

So even though under Phoenix law the planned dispensary is too close to St. John Bosco Catholic School and Summit School of Ahwatukee, White has asked for a zoning variance so Nowak can run a dispensary at 4611 E. Chandler Blvd. anyway.

"It will be a place that is small and tucked away," White said. "It's not going to be a place that alerts people that it is there."

Not so fast, say the heads of two area schools, a pediatrician and residents who showed up at a hearing last week to protest the plans.

"We don't know if the dispensary will attract crime, who the people involved with it will be or what it even will look like," said St. John Bosco Principal Shelley Conner.

Medical marijuana "is so new in this state we don't know what the impact of it is going to be," Conner said. "To experiment and put a dispensary within a short distance of four schools is wrong."

A decision is expected on the proposed dispensary soon.

"I believe it would directly impact my practice," said Dr. Mary Jo Kutler, who owns Ahwatukee Pediatrics near the center where the dispensary is proposed. "There are a lot of children in the area. I have 100 patients on a busy winter day and their deliveries (of medical marijuana) will come right by my front door.

"Pediatricians don't normally have break-ins, because we don't keep drugs or money around," Kutler added. "But if people who commit crimes are attracted to this area by a dispensary, who knows what could happen. I would have to increase my security."

Bill Thompson, interim director of Horizon Community Learning Center, on 48th Street south of Chandler Boulevard, did not attend the hearing but sent a letter asking the zoning administrator to reject the dispensary.

"The location of the marijuana dispensary is less than 1,500 feet from Horizon Community Learning Center, a K-12 charter school with more than 1,550 students," he wrote. "The location is also 1,291 feet from St. John Bosco School and only 600 feet from Summit School. In addition, it is located within 2,000 feet of a Kyrene public school."

Officials from the Kyrene School District and Summit did not return phone calls and e-mails from The Republic about their position on the dispensary.

White maintains that state officials designated Ahwatukee as one of the Arizona 126 communities that should have dispensaries when earlier this year they plotted out where the state's new medical-marijuana facilities would be.

The problem in Ahwatukee, White said, is that it is almost impossible to find a suitable spot in a shopping center that is less than 1,320 feet away from a school or public community center as required by Phoenix law. That's probably why the tyrants on the City of Phoenix Council passed the law. To effectively ban medical marijuana sales in most of Phoenix. Don't get me wrong but I suspect the Founders passed the Second Amendment to give the people a way to deal with government tyrants like them.

"Anywhere you stand in Ahwatukee, you are going to have a school, church or day-care facility nearby," White said.

Which is why opponents such as Kutler of Ahwatukee Pediatrics think medical-marijuana facilities belong in industrial areas, not shopping centers that attract children and families.

"There is no reason why a dispensary could not serve Ahwatukee from an industrial center on the east side of I-10," she said. "I don't understand the argument that the existence of this somehow endangers children. You have a CVS nearby that is dispensing much more dangerous drugs to all kind of people. Alcohol is being served in the area, there is a gun shop and there is a tobacco shop that anyone can walk into."


Government nannies reject pot dispensary because its near an "unofficial park" - "dispensaries were located less than 1,000 feet from water- rentention basins and grassy areas that, while not necessarily an official park, were used by residents for recreation"

Source

Gilbert rejects proposals for 2 medical-marijuana dispensaries

by Srianthi Perera - Jun. 10, 2011 12:03 PM

The Arizona Republic

Gilbert Town Council has sided with opponents of two proposed medical marijuana dispensaries and rejected a Planning Commission recommendation the two facilities be approved and sent to the state for further action.

The council on Thursday granted the appeals of several nearby residents and business owners who contended the two proposed dispensaries in the town's northwestern part of town violated the town's requirement that they be located a minimum 1,000 feet away from a community park.

Opponents also said one of the dispensaries violated the required distance from a church.

The two businesses -- Sonoran Star Remedies and Beleaf Inc. -- would have been the first two medical marijuana dispensaries approved by the town. However, the state has decided not to approve any medical marijuana dispensaries pending its suit in federal court over whether Arizona's marijuana law violates federal drug statutes.

The council's action also gives town officials more time to analyze the issue that arose from opponents of Beleaf and Sonoran Star.

That issue involves the town's definition of a park.

Dispensary opponents claimed both dispensaries were located less than 1,000 feet from water- rentention basins and grassy areas that, while not necessarily an official park, were used by residents for recreation.

Town staffers had rejected that claim, and the planning commission agreed with the staffers.

State regulations allow one dispensary in each "community health analysis area" -- or CHAA -- as defined by a map drawn by the Department of Health Services. Gilbert has two essentially divided by Lindsay Road.

If more than one dispensary in the same area meets all qualifications, the certificate will be granted by random selection.

Would-be dispensary operators are having trouble finding suitable property in Gilbert's eastern CHAA, because of a code restriction that requires the businesses be at least 1,000 feet from any public or private park, prospective owner Brett Paulson had told the commission.

Paul Schroeder, operations manager for Sonoran Star Remedies, asked Gilbert officials to request that the state allow two dispensaries in the town's western CHAA instead.

As of April 27, there were at least 12 medical-marijuana patient applications in Gilbert's western zone and at least 29 applications in the eastern area, Gilbert senior planner Mike Milillo has said.

The commission plans next month to discuss how to regulate "caregivers," who currently can grow marijuana at home for up to five patients who live more than 25 miles away from a dispensary.


Michigan bureaucrats - F*ck the law, were are going to use the medical marijuana program to raise revenue - "Marijuana patient advocates contend that the licensing fees (currently set at $100 a year) were supposed to be set only high enough to run the program"

Source

Michigan's medical pot profit: $8 million

by Dawson Bell - Jun. 11, 2011 01:19 PM

Detroit Free Press

Medical marijuana aimed at helping Michiganders with their pain turns out to be a helpful prescription for the state's challenged budget, as well.

In its first two years of operation, state licensing of marijuana patients and their caregivers has turned more than an $8 million profit -- generating nearly $9.7 million in revenue against $1.5 million in expenses, according to a new state report.

Marijuana fees topped $4.8 million between just Oct. 1, 2010, and March 31. And the growth continues at a rapid pace, said program manager Rae Ramsdell.

More than 100,000 Michiganders are registered to use and provide medical marijuana, Ramsdell said, far exceeding projections made after state voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana in 2008.

But Ramsdell said costs are growing, too. The office she supervises was initially staffed by three people and now has 17, she said.

Still, delays of four months or more in processing applications remain common.

Marijuana patient advocates contend that the licensing fees (currently set at $100 a year) were supposed to be set only high enough to run the program.

An Oakland County marijuana patient, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of being targeted by police, said the state's profit at the expense of legal marijuana users was predictable.

"They should have known this would happen," he said. "I know they're trying to keep up, but they need to get rid of the backlog."


If "having a photo of Jesus Malverde ... proves you're a drug-runner, then having a picture of Robin Hood under your bed proves you're a poacher" - OK, it's just a lame excuse for the cops to justify the murder of Jose Guerena, but I guess any lame excuse will do to justify a police murder.

Source

Another senseless, deadly SWAT raid

Posted: Jun. 12, 2011 | 2:02 a.m.

They don't look like cops to me. Dressed in helmets and camouflage fatigues and carrying .223 rifles handed down from the U.S. Army, they look like some ragtag Third World militia as they shuffle up to a suburban front door in broad daylight in a shambling, casual cluster that no non-com who's ever seen the results of a hand grenade would tolerate.

But they're cops, all right. It's 9:15 on a Thursday morning in sunny Tucson, Ariz., May 5, and you can see them force open the door of the three-tour Marine combat veteran who they knew would be sound asleep after returning from his midnight shift at the local copper mine.

You can also listen in as they hit the Marine with 22 of their 71 rounds for the "offense" of answering his door in his high-crime neighborhood carrying his AR-15 -- he never flicked off the safety -- after his wife woke him up, screaming that there were armed invaders outside.

Watch the "helmet cam" video at

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnYV4nrNdjA
After serving honorably for two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, Jose Guerena came home and got a good job in the Asarco copper mine, 18 miles south of Tucson. In the hours before he died, Jose had worked a 12-hour graveyard shift. After arriving home, he went to sleep.

Two hours later, his wife, Vanessa, heard a noise outside their home and peered out the window. Their younger son, 4-year-old Joel, was with her when she spotted the gunmen. "Jose, Jose, come quickly."

Vanessa thought the intruders were part of a home invasion. Two members of her sister-in-law's family, Cynthia and Manny Orozco, were killed last year in their Tucson home.

According to Vanessa, Jose's last words were: "Vani, go into the closet with the kid. Go!" Then he grabbed his AR-15 and went to confront the people who threatened his family. Seven seconds later, he was dead.

At no time during Vanessa's 911 call does she say police had shot her husband. In an interview shortly after he died, Vanessa said neither she nor Jose knew who was making noise outside their home. The police did not announce themselves, Vanessa said, until after they'd shot Jose.

"Please send me an ambulance and you can ask more questions later, please!" Vanessa told the 911 dispatcher.

The dispatcher asks her to put her cheek next to her husband's nose and mouth to determine whether he's breathing, but she replies in Spanish that her husband is face-down.

The operator tells Guerena to grab a cloth and apply pressure to his wounds, but the wife responds frantically: "I can't! I can't! There's a bunch of people outside of my house. I don't know what the heck is happening! ... Is anybody coming?" she asks.

The operator told Vanessa Guerena help was on the way. It wasn't.

A computer check on Jose Guerena revealed a couple of traffic tickets but no criminal history.

Joe Waldman of Tucson's KGUN-TV says the SWAT team prevented paramedics from going to work on Jose Guerena for one hour and fourteen minutes.

Other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While Pima County sheriff's deputies initially claimed Guerena fired his weapon, the department now says it was a "misfire" by one of the deputies that caused the deadly fusillade inside a home with a woman and a small child. A deputy's bullet struck the side of the doorway, causing chips of wood to fall on his shield. That prompted some members of the team to think the deputy had been shot, Pima County sheriff's spokesman Michael O'Connor said.

Vanessa Guerena says her husband died thinking he was protecting his family from an invasion.

"You're saying (they) only yelled 'SWAT' after the shootout?" asked KGUN reporter Waldman. "Oh, yes! Yes," said the widow, who insists there were no drugs or money in the home.

Police sure haven't produced any. They say they were serving a search warrant in a complicated drug case, and that they had found a large amount of cash in a different house in the neighborhood. Most of the search warrant documents remain sealed. [ If the cops are demonizing him because of his photo of Jesus Malverde don't you think they would be showing any drugs they seized to the media demonizing him for being a dope dealer? Which means the cops probably didn't find ANY illegal drugs in this raid where they murdered Jose Guerena. Oh well, I guess the only thing they will use to demonize Jose Guerena is that photo of Jesus Malverde they found or perhaps planted. ]

Mike Storie, a lawyer for the Pima County SWAT team, said at a news conference that weapons and body armor were found in the Guerena home as well as a photo of Jesus Malverde, whom Storie called a "patron saint drug runner," according to KGUN.

Mike Storie a lawyer for the Pima County Sheriff 
     says your a dope dealer if you have an image of Jesus Malverde 
     like this, and that justifies the police killing you like they did to Jose Guerena

None of these things is illegal. If you don't think ex-Marines tend to own a few firearms and an old Kevlar vest, you probably live in New York, New England or San Francisco. And if having a photo of Jesus Malverde, the unofficial Sinaloan "bandit saint" killed in 1909, proves you're a drug-runner, then having a picture of Robin Hood under your bed proves you're a poacher.

Storie defended the long delay in allowing paramedics to enter the home, saying, "They still don't know how many shooters are inside, how many guns are inside, and they still have to assume that they will be ambushed if they walk in this house."

Yeah. I'm sure that defense would get you off if you spent an hour and a quarter watching a wounded cop bleed to death.

These days, our troops in Afghanistan are a lot more careful about avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties than the Pima County police.

When an American does get shot and killed in Afghanistan -- like 23-year-old Lance Cpl. Peter Clore, leading a mine-clearing patrol with his combat dog, Duke, in the Helmand Province on May 28 -- what do you think happens? Marines chase the shooters into a compound from which they can fire on our forces. So Marines finally call in an airstrike, and the airstrike ends up killing women and children behind whom the murderers were sheltering.

And you know what they do? Our guys apologize.

I don't happen to think actual combat troops should have to apologize in a case like that. (I also don't think our guys should be in Afghanistan, though I'm sure no one asked Lance Cpl. Clore.)

I do think someone should apologize for killing former Marine Jose Guerena in his own home, though, instead of trying to sully his reputation by talking about the pictures under his bed.

But unlike druggists and store owners who open fire on armed bandits (look up former Air Force Lt. Col. Jerome Ersland), those Tucson bumblers are never going to be sentenced to prison for "firing too many rounds," are they?

Oh, the widow Guerena will get a settlement -- of which those cops will pay not a penny. Jose Guerena's neighbors, the taxpayers of the Tucson area, will pay every penny, as part of the cost of their ongoing occupation by a bunch of trigger-happy drug warriors dressed up like real G.I.s.

Watch the video. How do you think this gang is going to fare when guys with combat training finally get fed up enough to really start shooting back?


Jesus Malverde: The 'Saint of Drug Dealers'

Source

posted by The Fuzion Team on November 23, 2010 1:44 AM

Jesus Malverde: The “Saint of Drug Dealers”

When we think of saints we do not usually think of drug dealers. Jesus Malverde, however, known to law enforcement officials as the “Narco Saint” is considered by many to be the patron saints of drug dealers. Smugglers bringing drugs across the border from Mexico pray to him to deliver them safely across and carry icons and images of the saint with them.

For example, it is said that in Bakersfield, California, 80% of Mexican nationals involved in the drug trade possess at least one likeness of Jesus Malverde: such as on a prayer card, a candle, or a statue. Police in such areas often look for these types of items to see if a person is involved in the drug trade.

But Malverde is more than just a “Narco Saint.” He is revered by many across Mexico and the United States as a protector and defender of the poor. To them Jesus Malverde is the “Generous One,” or “The Angel of the Poor.”

The Story of Jesus Malverde

Biographical details of Jesus Malverde are sketchy at best. There is not even evidence to show that such a man ever really existed. However his story, in its various forms, has gone to inspire thousands upon thousands of Mexicans.

The story goes that Jesus Malverde was born sometime around 1870. He lived during the reign of Mexico’s longest running dictator: Porfirio Diaz. During this period, known to history as the Porfiriato, was marked by the influx of foreignors in Mexico, a time of progress for the richest Mexicans but a time of poverty and despair for the lowest classes.

Some people say that Jesus Malverde was a railway worker, or a construction worker, or even a tailor. Whatever his profession, at some point during his career he turned to crime. Stories say that his parents died of hunger, unable even to afford food.

A 20th century Robin Hood, Jesus Malverde is said to have robbed from the rich to give to the poor. The bandit worked in the hills near the town of Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, Mexico.

He was eventually eventually caught by the state and put to death. To tie his story even more to his namesake, Jesus Christ, some say that he was betrayed by a friend for the sum of 10,000 pesos. The most popular version of the story says that the governor of Sinaloa was hung from a tree, but others say that he was shot.

Jesus Malverde’s death came on the 3rd of May, 1909, just two years before the end of Porfirio Diaz’s regime and the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Jesus Malverde would never live to see the end of the dictator’s reign or the beginning of the new era in Mexican history and the rise of such other folk heroes as Emilio Zapata and Pancho Villa.

Jesus Malverde the Narco-Saint

Not long after his death, stories of miraculous events featuring Jesus Malverde begin to appear. In one story he returns a woman’s lost cow. In another Malverde returns to rescue lost mules of one of his friends carrying loads of gold and silver.

But tales of the Narco Saint involve more than just lost mules and cows. Sinaloa, where Jesus Malverde’s legend began, is also where drug smuggling began in earnest in Mexico. It is only logical that the region’s bandit saint would sooner or later become associated with drugs, drug smugglers and drug dealers. Today he is revered by almost all Mexican born drug smugglers.


Source

A double standard - One set of rules for the cops, another set of rules for the rest of us?

Of course from a Libertarian point of view we don't need any of these stinking laws. The people who own the land should be allowed to decide how it is used.

Source

Federal legislation pits environment against security

Plan to ease conservation laws for Border Patrol draws outcry

by Shaun McKinnon - Jun. 13, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Federal authorities can't secure sections of the U.S. border because of environmental laws that block access to public lands and slow efforts to stop drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, say backers of legislation that would waive those laws along the border.

But conservation groups say the congressional bills, two in the U.S. House and one in the Senate, create solutions for non-existent problems and are largely driven by opportunistic, anti-environmental lawmakers who want to weaken laws they always have opposed.

The proposals thrust together two of the West's most volatile issues, border security and environmental regulation, and pit activists on both sides in a fight that likely will spill over into the 2012 elections.

The bills' backers have tried to frame the debate as a choice between securing dangerous borders or complying with onerous, bureaucratic rules. The endangered desert pupfish emerged as a symbol last month of the clashing priorities. Both sides have cited the same federal audit of border-law enforcement to prove points.

The dispute is centered on thousands of acres of public lands along the border, most of them under the jurisdiction of federal agencies that enforce an array of restrictive environmental regulations.

The rules apply to any potential land user, including the Border Patrol and other Homeland Security agencies. They require the agencies to complete detailed environmental assessments to gauge the effects of roads or other developments, and they impose limits on various activities, such as crossing into protected wildlife habitats.

Supporters of the bills say the rules impede quick action on the border and give land-management agencies more authority over national-security decisions than the security agencies.

"The different trails that drug smugglers and human smugglers use change depending on where Border Patrol agents are stationed," said Rep. Ben Quayle, R-Ariz., author of one of the three bills. "Our agents need to have the ability to move quickly. But sometimes it's taking as much as four months to get them through all the hoops."

Quayle's bill would give the U.S. Customs and Border Protection ready access to federal lands for security activities, including motorized patrols and the deployment of temporary tactical infrastructure, such as surveillance equipment.

The agencies would be directed to protect natural and cultural resources as much as possible, but they would not be forced to comply with land-management rules. The unrestricted access would extend 150 miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, a distance that would stretch north of Phoenix.

Republican Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl included a similar provision in a broader border-security bill, waiving environmental laws within the same 150-mile band along the southwestern border.

But a wider-reaching bill, introduced by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, pushed the issue to center stage. Bishop's bill is more specific and expansive than the others. It lists nearly three dozen laws that would be waived along the border, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Wilderness Act.

It would also allow the federal government to waive those laws within a 100-mile corridor around the entire U.S. border for border-enforcement agencies.

Critics jumped on that provision and produced a map to illustrate the reach of the bill. It would extend across all of Florida, most of the Northeast and all of Hawaii.

"It's clear to me this is a political game being played by someone whose district is nowhere near the border, someone who doesn't understand what's going on along the border, someone with a political agenda," said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. "This is bad government waiting to happen."

Bishop, who toured the Arizona border region earlier this year, said the environmental laws allow land managers to impose what he called "unacceptable restrictions" that give them more influence over border security than law-enforcement agencies have.

In a 2010 report, the Government Accountability Office found that environmental laws had led to restrictions on border enforcement and delays in patrolling and monitoring activities. The GAO said 14 Border Patrol agents in charge reported blocked access to land or slow response times by land agencies in issuing permits.

Those delays often occurred when agents needed access to an area without roads or when the agency needed to locate monitoring equipment. The report cited one instance when the Border Patrol asked to move a mobile surveillance system, but in the four months needed to process the request, illegal traffic had shifted to other areas.

Allowing bureaucratic procedures to dictate border-security measures, Bishop said, "has jeopardized the safety and security of all Americans."

The GAO report also found that 22 of 26 patrol agents in charge said the overall security of their area had not been affected by environmental regulations despite the delays or time spent on paperwork. Conservation groups cite those findings, along with comments by patrol agents that their most pressing needs are more agents and more resources.

Although the GAO found issues at several locations along the U.S. border, the potential for conflict was highest in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, where there is a high concentration of public lands: three national wildlife refuges, two national monuments, a national conservation area, a national forest and the Tohono O'odham Reservation.

In many cases, say supporters of the three bills, the multiple jurisdictions mean patrol agents can't even keep up a chase because they don't have permission to enter certain areas.

"The difficulties encountered by the Border Patrol to gain operational control are not the result of poor management or lack of resources," said retired patrol agent Gene Wood, who testified at a hearing on behalf of Bishop's bill. "It is simply an issue of denied access."

Quayle and Bishop both say their bills ultimately could protect the environment if fewer illegal border crossers make their way north into the parks and monuments.

"The environmental damage that is currently occurring from drug smugglers and human smugglers will vastly outweigh any damages by the Border Patrol," Quayle said. "The Border Patrol will have much better sense and take much better care of the area."

Critics of the environmental laws also have complained about rules that protect riparian areas and wildlife habitat. One group tried to elevate the endangered desert pupfish to symbol status, alleging that Border Patrol agents had to chase illegal border crossers on foot in one area of southern Arizona to avoid disturbing the fish.

Homeland Security officials said the fish did not impede regular patrols or other activities.

The conservation groups say almost all of the complaints have been from outside the security agencies. They cite testimony by Ronald Vitiello, the Border Patrol's deputy chief, during an April hearing in Washington. He gave numerous examples of his agency working with land managers in the border area and talked about the patrol's commitment to protecting resources.

"There is no access issue for the Border Patrol," said Jenny Neeley, an advocate for the Sky Island Alliance, a group that focuses on fragile habitats near the border. "They're not asking for these additional waivers. To say that environmental rules are getting in the way of border security is just a complete farce. There's no evidence of it."

Vitiello, in his testimony, talked about cooperative agreements, signed in 2006 and 2008, that have provided guidelines for the various agencies, including the Border Patrol, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service to work with one another. Those agreements have resulted in successes, he said.

Matt Skroch, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, said both security and resource protection would be better served by continued cooperation.

"It's about balance," he said. "Border security and natural resources are both very important. They can work with one another, not against one another. This waiver authority would set the clock back a decade."


Source

Burns: Misclassification behind medical-marijuana fiasco

by Elaine Burns - Jun. 13, 2011 12:00 AM

My Turn

Confusion over the conflicts, both imagined and real, between Arizona's voter-approved medical-marijuana law and federal law has been running rampant in recent weeks.

On one hand, the federal government has warned growers and sellers of the potential for prosecution while stating a hands-off policy toward those who have been certified for use.

On the other hand, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne have replied to U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke's warnings with yet another lawsuit, incurring more needless legal fees for Arizona taxpayers and seriously delaying full implementation of the new law.

Patients who can benefit from the medication are caught in the middle.

They are eager for the relief they know they can get from medical marijuana but do not understand how all the political maneuvering is in their best interest.

Fortunately for patients, the medical-marijuana community has been operating without dispensaries since April and can continue to do so even though the state's lawsuit has put a hold on any dispensaries opening in the foreseeable future. [Fortunately? Sure sounds like she is biased against the medical marijuana laws]

Doctors have been guiding patients through the certification process, and the state is still accepting applications for certification and issuing cards.

Voters must place pressure for legalization where it belongs on Washington, D.C.

Federal law classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug and prohibits its cultivation, sale or use.

Schedule I drugs are considered to be substances with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

But marijuana's medical uses are extensive and include efficacy for such debilitating conditions as glaucoma, cancer, AIDS and chronic pain.

The two largest physician groups in the country - the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians - have called on the federal government to review marijuana's Schedule I classification.

It is time for marijuana to be reclassified.

The real problem is at the federal level, where marijuana has been misclassified as a Schedule I drug.

Those who support medical marijuana must make their voices heard in Washington.

They need to ask that marijuana be removed from a classification that includes drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine - drugs that are not only highly addictive but that also have no medical use.

As long as marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, the medical-marijuana community will continue to have problems.

People must make themselves heard.

Individuals can begin by educating themselves via Americans for Safe Access (www.AmericansForSafeAccess.org), a national organization spearheading a call to action on the issue of reclassifying marijuana.

But most importantly, voters should contact their congressional representatives to make their position known and bring pressure to reclassify marijuana.

Dr. Elaine M. Burns is an Arizona-licensed and board-certified naturopathic medical doctor. She is medical director at the Southwest Medical Marijuana Evaluation Center and a founding member and president of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Physicians Association.


Source

Arizona sued over stalled process for medical pot dispensaries

by Mary K. Reinhart - Jun. 14, 2011 03:01 PM

Two prospective medical marijuana dispensary owners sued the Arizona Department of Health Services and its director Tuesday in hopes of forcing the state to launch the stalled permit application process.

Serenity Arizona and Medzona Group had the property leases, zoning permits and capital to open up to six dispensaries across the state and planned to apply for permits this month.

But state Department of Health Services Director Will Humble put the dispensary permit process on hold just days before it was to begin, citing a federal lawsuit filed by Gov. Jan Brewer that asks a judge to decide whether Arizona's voter-approved law is enforceable since it conflicts with federal drug statutes.

Attorney Ken Frakes, representing the dispensary owners, said the pending federal case does not give the state license to ignore its own law.

The state was to accept permit applications for a month, beginning June 1. The law requires the health department to initiate and oversee the process and requires the dispensaries to be non-profit operations. Rules approved by the department limit the number of dispensaries to 126 statewide and include a variety of minimum requirements for potential dispensary owners.

Jane Christensen said she met those requirements and intended to open three dispensaries, including one in Paradise Valley and another in Payson.

"We are concerned that the state is putting medical marijuana into a crisis situation," she said. "A lot of caregivers will be growing marijuana in backyards with no oversight."

Proposition 203, approved by voters in November, legalized medical marijuana use for people with certain debilitating conditions and allowed them to designate someone as a "caregiver" to grow or otherwise obtain marijuana for them.

Since there are not yet any licensed dispensaries, caregivers and patients are allowed to grow their own. The state has licensed nearly 3,800 growers so far.

Frakes said Humble and the health department have no right to upend the dispensary application process and withhold the required state application.

"The ultimate goal here is to require the Department of Health Services to publish the application . . . and to live up to the obligation of their non-discretionary duties," Frakes said.

The health department was preparing a statement to respond to the suit.

Arizona and 15 other states have medical marijuana laws that conflict with federal law, which outlaws the cultivation, sale or use of marijuana.

Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne said their federal lawsuit was prompted by a letter from U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to Humble, warning that prospective pot growers and sellers could be prosecuted under federal drug-trafficking laws.

Horne and Brewer maintain that his letter, along with a raft of memos from federal prosecutors in other states, signaled a harder-line policy and the threat that state workers could be prosecuted.


Miracle-Gro works great for marijuana?

I wouldn't doubt it. But I wonder if some jackbooted Federal government thugs will soon be visiting the folks that manufacture Miracle-Gro and arresting them on conspiracy charges that will put them in prison for the rest of their lives.

Source

Scotts Miracle-Gro exploring role in medical marijuana market

Posted: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 5:18 pm

Scotts Miracle-Gro exploring role in medical marijuana market By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

The company that promises it will help you grow bigger tomatoes is showing some interest in helping you grow more potent pot.

“I want to target the pot market,” Jim Hagedorn, chief executive of Scotts Miracle-Gro company told the Wall Street Journal. “There’s no good reason we haven’t.”

But Hagedorn’s desire to have his company become the first thing marijuana growers think of when planning their crop appears to be little more than aspirational, at least for the time being.

“Currently, this is one of many different niche markets the company might explore,’’ Scotts spokesman Lance Latham told Capitol Media Services. “But we have not actively pursued opportunities in this market.”

The need for some horticultural help for home hemp operations is particularly acute in Arizona.

State health officials, citing possible conflicts with federal law, are refusing to accept applications from individuals and companies interested in opening up one of 125 dispensaries mandated under last year’s voter-approved law.

But they are continuing to process requests by individuals who have a doctor’s recommendation that they would benefit from being able to use marijuana. And state law says these people are entitled to request to grow their own marijuana if there is no dispensary within 25 miles — which, for the time being, means all of the more than 5,000 people who are now “qualified patients.”

More to the point, the law allows each user to grow up to 12 plants at any one time. But there is no limit on the potency or the size of the plants.

And that’s where good fertilizer could come in.

Latham said that Hagedorn’s comments were part of a broader conversation where he was discussing the “vast diversity of lawn and garden consumers and why he believes it’s important for us to explore and understand new opportunities in niche markets.”


Source

Would-be pot shops sue Arizona for right to open

Posted: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 12:18

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

Attorneys for the owners of two would-be marijuana dispensaries asked a state judge Tuesday to force the Department of Health Services to accept and process their applications.

Legal papers filed in Maricopa County Superior Court contend that the agency and its director, Will Humble, are violating the mandate by voters that they license 125 shops to legally sell marijuana to Arizonans who are entitled to purchase it as medicine. They want an order compelling Humble to proceed with the licensing.

Humble is refusing to proceed based on advice from Attorney General Tom Horne that the state law may conflict with federal statutes that make it a felony to sell, possess or transport marijuana. More to the point, Horne is questioning whether having state employees processing dispensary applications leaves them liable for helping others to violate federal law.

In fact, Humble will not even make blank applications available.

“That’s a violation of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act,” said Ken Frakes, one of the attorneys.

Frakes said the statute, approved in November, requires the health department to adopt rules to license dispensaries. And those rules, he noted, spell out that applications were supposed to be accepted beginning June 1.

Refusing to even accept the applications, he said, “thwarts the will of the voters in this state.”

Horne acknowledged he advised Humble not to implement the licensing provision despite the specific direction of voters to set up the system of dispensaries. But Horne said he is doing nothing wrong — and nothing illegal — in putting the law on hold, at least for the time being.

He pointed out that last month, at the direction of Gov. Jan Brewer, he filed a separate lawsuit asking a federal judge to decide whether Arizona can implement its medical marijuana law despite the federal statutes.

“I think everybody would agree that it’s reasonable for me to try to get a judge to tell us what we should do when we have two conflicting laws,” Horne said. “As soon as we have that direction, if that direction is consistent with proceeding with the state law, we will.”

At this point there is no hearing set on that lawsuit — and no date for a judge to rule.

Frakes said it makes no sense to wait for that federal court case to proceed.

He also predicted the federal judge will refuse to rule on the issue, as the state is simply asking for what amounts to an advisory ruling. Frakes said only when a medical marijuana user or dispensary owner is being prosecuted under federal drug laws would the case be considered “ripe” for ruling.

The law approved by voters last November entitles anyone with a doctor’s recommendation to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. It also mandates that the health department license dispensaries that also would have the legal right to cultivate their own marijuana or purchase it from another.

But one provision of the law says individuals who are entitled to legally obtain and use marijuana for medical reasons are entitled to grow their own if they live more than 25 miles from any state-licensed dispensary. With the health department refusing to accept applications, however, there are no dispensaries, meaning anyone is entitled to request permission for self-cultivation.

The health department said that at the end of last week it had approved 5,504 applications from individuals to be considered “qualified patients.” Agency spokeswoman Laura Oxley said nearly three-quarters of those individuals sought and were granted the right to grow their own plants.

Mitchell Stravitz, one of the owners of Serenity Arizona, said he has invested about $100,000 so far in his bid to set up dispensaries in Scottsdale and Prescott.

Arizona law requires the dispensaries to be nonprofit operations. However, they are not required to be charities and there are no restrictions on how much the owners can pay themselves.


He must have been a criminal, so his murder was justified. Well at least that's what the cops say.

Source

Man killed by SWAT tied to multiple inquiries

by Robert Anglen - Jun. 15, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Two years before a former Marine was shot 22 times by a SWAT team during a May search of his Tucson home, he was arrested on drug and weapons charges and became the focus of multiple investigations. [But he wasn't convicted of anything]

Jose Guerena, 26, had been arrested on five felony counts and was "a person of interest" in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation of a marijuana-distribution ring, newly released documents show.

He was never convicted of any charge, the records show.

In incident reports following the fatal May 5 shooting, Pima County SWAT officers said that Guerena was suspected of participating in robberies of drug dealers and being involved in a 2010 home-invasion murder of a Tucson couple to whom he was related.

On Monday, the Pima County Attorney's Office said the shooting was justified.

The details of Guerena's past, which are contained in search-warrant affidavits and other records released last week by the county Sheriff's Department, contrast with the picture relatives and friends painted of a war hero and hardworking father gunned down by overzealous law-enforcement officers.

Guerena armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and confronted police entering his home about 9:30 a.m. while his wife and 4-year-old son hid in a closet.

He was shot 22 times by officers, who fired more than 70 rounds in less than 30 seconds. Police had played a siren and knocked on the door before entering.

Questions over the shooting and the search of Guerena's home, which netted no drugs or illegal weapons, garnered national media attention.

Relatives, including Guerena's widow, participated in a Memorial Day march protesting excessive force by police in cases nationwide.

Family members had said that Guerena, an Iraq war veteran who served in the Marines from 2003 to '06 and worked an overnight shift at a local mine, was just trying to protect his family from an unidentified threat.

The five officers involved in the shooting were cleared Monday of any wrongdoing by the Pima County Attorney's Office, which said the "use of deadly force by the SWAT team members was reasonable and justified."

Investigators from the County Attorney's Office concluded that Guerena was facing officers at the end of a hallway with his rifle raised in firing position when officers shot him.

Guerena never fired his weapon, and the safety was still engaged when it was recovered next to his body.

"(The) assault rifle held by Mr. Guerena held numerous rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber," Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney David Berkman wrote in a letter Monday to county Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

"The officers were mistaken in believing that Mr. Guerena fired at them. However, when Mr. Guerena raised the AR-15 . . . in their direction, they needed to take immediate action to stop the deadly threat against them," Berkman wrote.

The SWAT team members who fired at Guerena included two officers from the Sheriff's Department and officers from the Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita police departments.

Berkman said the first officer fired when Guerena raised his rifle. Other officers mistook the muzzle flash from the officer's gun as coming from Guerena's rifle and responded with shots of their own.

Two officers said they heard him say, "I've got something for you guys."

Guerena's house, in an isolated new subdivision south of Tucson, was one of four residences targeted in a series of searches coordinated to take place that morning.

Officers were looking for evidence connecting Guerena to a suspected drug organization involving his brother, his sister-in-law and his father-in-law, among others, according to police documents.

Berkman said officers were primed for potential violence.

"The SWAT team had been briefed on the nature of the operation and the fact that the occupants of the homes to be searched were potentially violent and could be armed," Berkman wrote in the letter Monday.

After the shooting, officers found a Border Patrol hat, body armor and another AR-15 under the mattress in the master bedroom and a handgun on a dresser in an extra bedroom of Guerena's home.

It is common knowledge among law enforcement that drug traffickers steal from each other while masquerading as law-enforcement officers, including SWAT units.

In the affidavit for the residences searched May 5, a sheriff's detective reported that Guerena's brother, Alejandro, and his father-in-law, Jose Celaya, were targets of the investigation. Other family members were also named.

The affidavit says Celaya, 57, was arrested by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 1993 and convicted on cocaine-distribution and conspiracy charges. It noted that Celaya and his wife are wanted on outstanding civil-arrest warrants.

Law-enforcement interest in Jose Guerena began in January 2009, when he was arrested by state Department of Public Safety officers on drug and gun charges in Pinal County.

The affidavit does not include the dispositions of those cases, but a court-record check shows that he was not convicted.

The affidavit noted that Guerena was also part of a 2009 ICE investigation into marijuana smuggling.

ICE spokesman Vincent Picard said Tuesday that "the information contained in the affidavit is related to an ongoing investigation" and that his office could not comment on it.

In September 2009, Guerena was a passenger in a vehicle that officers had under surveillance. When they stopped it, they found large, commercial-size rolls of plastic wrap that investigators say is used to wrap marijuana.

The affidavit also provided a detailed summary of what officers described as countersurveillance measures employed at Guerena's house.

It reported an incident in April in which an officer drove past Guerena's home and another vehicle began trailing the officer. The affidavit said the officer attempted to evade the tail but was unable to shake it.

The affidavit said two days after the incident, a Motor Vehicle Division employee ran a record check on the officer's vehicle.

The affidavit also reported that Guerena was the registered owner of six vehicles with a combined value of at least $105,385.

Republic reporter Sean Holstege contributed to this article.


It's not perjury, it's testilying. Well at least that's how cops feel about commiting perjury to frame suspected criminals.

Source

Phoenix drug-case wiretaps tossed

Charges dismissed amid questions about Glendale detective's methods

by Lisa Halverstadt - Jun. 15, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Sixteen suspects in a drug ring will walk and the futures of at least 17 others are unclear after a Valley wiretapping case was dismissed amid questions about a veteran Glendale detective's reliability.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Paul McMurdie on Thursday dismissed the case after ruling that information obtained during nearly a year of wiretapping could not be used in court. The decision came with doubts about a longtime narcotics detective, Laura Beeler.

Beeler's courtroom testimony varied from her written reports. And the judge ruled she supplied unproven information to obtain a search warrant to wiretap the suspects' phones.

"Detective Beeler made a number of assumptions, and these assumptions are presented as fact," the judge ruled.

The eight-year narcotics detective who was once named the agency's investigator of the year won't face perjury charges, but she has been reassigned as Glendale launched an internal investigation last week.

Beeler had worked with a multiagency taskforce investigating a suspected drug ring alleged to have used semitrucks to haul drugs from Phoenix to cities as far as Philadelphia.

Beeler in 2009 reported that she got a tip that a truck was headed to Phoenix from Detroit carrying drug money destined for an Arizona man, Noel Contreras.

Arizona Department of Public Safety officers pulled over the semitruck and found more than $1.3 million. A police K-9 smelled drugs on the bundled cash.

The connection Beeler made between the truck driver and Contreras was eventually used to show probable cause in obtaining a search warrant for wiretaps.

By early 2010, 44 people were indicted on charges from money laundering to drug sales.

Authorities had seized $4.26 million, 13 vehicles, 12 firearms, 95 kilos of cocaine, 26 pounds of heroin and 4,548 pounds of marijuana, according to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

Eventually, at least 17 of the suspects took plea deals.

Defense attorneys for some of the others began to raise questions about Beeler's tip, which helped obtain the wiretaps.

In a court hearing to explore those concerns, defense attorneys chipped away at the connection Beeler had made between Contreras and the truck.

Then, Beeler stunned defense attorneys and prosecutors when she testified that she had a second interview with the truck driver, but didn't record it.

"This was the first time she told anyone this information," said Cameron Morgan, who represented Luis Hernandez-Flores, 39, a Laveen resident indicted on multiple drug-related charges.

She also got tripped up with other questions related to her contact with the truck driver.

The judge put the case on hold, and Glendale police conducted a criminal-perjury investigation of Beeler that started in late March.

In some cases, Beeler told a Glendale investigator that she misunderstood the defense attorneys' questions. In others, "she was upset and did not listen well to questions," a report of the investigation said.

Beeler acknowledged she was frustrated on the stand as attorneys "asked the same question over and over again," the report said.

Beeler said her contact with the truck driver was in hopes he would become a confidential source, although she said he chose not to meet.

Prosecutors eventually decided against perjury charges.

However, the detective's actions were enough to alarm the judge, who sided with defense attorneys who dubbed Beeler unreliable and requested the wiretap evidence be suppressed.

Alan Simpson, another attorney representing Hernandez-Flores, said the decision ensured the court's veracity.

"The system will fail lacking integrity, and that integrity has got to start with the police," Simpson said.

Deputy County Attorney Brett Harames in court filings had said Beeler's story could've been bolstered, but authorities were protecting a confidential source.

Robert Kavanagh, an attorney representing Beeler, said she never intended to deceive the court but was "at a disadvantage" because they wanted to ensure a tipster's safety.

Kavanagh said Beeler's second interview that came under question could've been confirmed by another detective.

As the latest investigation into Beeler continues, the future of the cases against more than 40 suspected drug traffickers remained unclear.

County Attorney's Office spokesman Jerry Cobb said prosecutors must decide whether they have enough evidence without the wiretaps to refile charges.


 

Stanford protests Felipe Calderon's drug war

Stanford protests Felipe Calderon's drug war - No! 40,000+ dead!!! How many more?

  Lucky this didn't happen at a speech by Emperor Obama, F-16 fighter planes would have shot the plane with the protest message out of the sky.

I would say this is also an indication that the Secret Service uses it's tight police state security to flush the free speech of American down the toilet where ever President Obama goes.

Source

Flying protest banner intrudes on Mexican president's graduation speech at Stanford

June 13, 2011 | 3:38 pm

President Felipe Calderon of Mexico delivered the 2011 commencement address before 30,000 people at Stanford University on Sunday. The event made headlines in Mexico after an unidentified airplane carried a banner over Stanford Stadium during the president's speech with a protest message directed at Mexico's drug war.

"40,000 DEAD!" the banner read. "HOW MANY MORE?"

In a video that Calderon's office released of the speech, the sound of a light aircraft is heard at about the 15-minute mark into the 18-minute address, which Calderon delivered in English.

The president appears either to ignore or not notice the plane with a few quick glances he makes toward the sky, the video shows. Here's an amateur YouTube clip showing the airplane flying over the stadium. Several amateur photos of the plane and banner also quickly popped up on Twitter.

The banner was marked with the logo of an antiwar group in Mexico known as "No más sangre," or, "No more blood." Yet as of Monday, no one had come forward claiming responsibility for the intrusion on Stanford's commencement, and a spokeswoman for the group in Mexico City said they were not involved.

"We would have loved if it were us, but it was not," spokeswoman Nelly Muñohierro told La Plaza on Monday.

"Obviously it had to have been someone with a lot of cash, possibly even a political party, maybe the PRI," she added, referring to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which dominated institutions in Mexico until 2000 and was the brunt of fierce criticism in Calderon's speech.

Another member of the collective organization, the Mexico-based political scientist John Ackerman, said the group is "not in any way a structured or financed movement that in any way could pay for an airplane over there."

[Update: 11:50 a.m. June 14: Activist poet Javier Sicilia suggested in a press report on Monday that the San Francisco-based organization Global Exchange was behind the protest banner. However, Ted Lewis, human-rights director at Global Exchange, said in an interview Tuesday that the banner was not directly financed by the organization but by a group of "local citizens, Mexican and U.S. citizens, that decided they wanted to ask the president that question."]

The incident was the first signal that Mexico's nascent grassroots peace movement had made inroads with like-minded activists in the United States and is willing to engage in political publicity stunts to get its message across to U.S. voters and policymakers. The "No + sangre" insignia was designed by a political cartoonist in Mexico and has been taken up as a rallying symbol by many different branches and organizations represented within the country's antiwar movement.

U.S. media reports from the commencement at one of the country's premiere private universities barely mentioned the stunt, but the incident was being parroted by news outlets and on social networking sites in Mexico as Calderon faces sustained pressure to change his government's strategy against the powerful drug cartels. The San Jose Mercury News reported some protesters were present outside the event, with one holding a sign that read: "Calderon stay here. Mexico is better off without you."

An estimated 38,000 people -- but possibly many more -- have been killed since Calderon dispatched the Mexican military to take on the country's main drug-trafficking organizations. Opponents of the government's campaign against the cartels say 40,000 have been killed in the past 4 1/2 years since Calderon took office.

The Mexican president exhorted Stanford graduates to stick to their ideals no matter the odds, citing his own political upbringing as a young activist for the National Action Party, or PAN, in his native state of Michoacan. Following in his father's footsteps, Calderon worked for the PAN during a period in which the PRI machine was at its strongest and most corrupt.

"You must never stop defending your ideas and dreams," said the president, whose term ends in 2012. "Do not hesitate in your efforts because in the end man's power to create is bigger than his power to destroy."

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City


 

Arizona is #1 in dope smuggling tunnels!

Dope smuggling tunnels along the U.S. border by Homeland Security
  Arizona is number one!!! In dope smuggling tunnels! Source

Smugglers target Arizona for two of every three illegal border tunnels

Posted: Friday, June 17, 2011 2:15 am

By Maggie Pingolt, Cronkite News Service East Valley Tribune

WASHINGTON • Arizona has more than 90 illegal tunnels under its border with Mexico, the most discovered in any state in the Southwest, law enforcement officials told senators this week.

Investigators have uncovered 88 in Nogales, Ariz., alone since the 1990s, accounting for more than half of the 153 tunnels found on the border.

“Tunnels are unique because it’s almost a foolproof way of getting narcotics into the United States,” said Kevin Kelly, assistant special agent in charge of the Homeland Security investigations directorate in Nogales.

He said Nogales has several things that make it attractive for tunnels: Houses are close together, ownership is often unclear and two large storm drains flow south under the city into Sonora, Mexico.

Besides making tunneling easier, the short distance between Sonora and Nogales also provides a wealth of potential drop sites for smuggled goods, Kelly said.

Investigators said tunnels vary in size and sophistication — from some that only allow for one man to crawl through, to others with complete lighting and ventilation.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game to investigate a tunnel,” Kelly said.

The Department of Homeland Security said that since 1990, officials have found 42 tunnels into San Diego, 12 to Calexico, Calif., and two to Tierra Del Sol, Calif. In Arizona in that time, they have discovered three in San Luis, 88 in Nogales, one in Naco and three in Douglas.

“In Arizona, there’s already an existing infrastructure for smugglers to utilize,” said Tim Durst, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

Durst also told the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control on Wednesday that climate makes it easier to build tunnels in Arizona and Southern California.

“I think Arizona and California just have more appropriate conditions for drug smugglers to take advantage of,” he said at the hearing on prosecution of tunnel crimes along the Southwest border.

James Dinkins, executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations, said the increased number and sophistication of tunnels is a direct response to law enforcement efforts.

“We’re literally forcing them to go underground,” Dinkins said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., co-chair of the caucus, said she has visited numerous tunnels, noting the scale and size as well as their depth — one was more than nine stories below ground, complete with ventilation and concrete floors.

“The only reason they build a tunnel is to avoid authorities,” Feinstein said. “It’s a real way of serious criminal penetration into the United States.”

Feinstein said she will introduce a bill next week to strengthen the existing Border Tunnel Protection Act of 2006 by making “the use, construction or financing of a border tunnel a conspiracy offense.”

Kelly welcomes the bill.

“I think anything we can do to enhance or bolster existing authorities is good for us,” Kelly said.


Gilbert police arrest medical marijuana patient

While medical marijuana is legal in Arizona it sure seems like the government tyrants are doing everything they can to flush the law down the toilet and arrest people with medical marijuana.

This should be a no brainer, but if you involved in any type of illegal activity or kind of sort of illegal activity, never, never, never tell anyone else. In this case a worker from DirecTV call the cops on this guy after seeing his medical marijuana.

Source

Police raid on Gilbert home sparks medical marijuana outcry

Posted: Friday, June 17, 2011 3:58 pm

By Mike Sakal, Tribune East Valley Tribune

A couple hours after a DirecTV worker saw marijuana and hashish inside a bedroom closet of Ross Taylor’s Gilbert home during the installation process of a satellite dish, 12 Gilbert police officers wearing masks and toting guns busted into his house and took his pot.

Taylor, 35, is a card-carrying medical marijuana patient under Arizona’s new voter-approved law, who said he uses it for a severe loss of appetite and sleep due to post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.

But police said Taylor was not in legal possession of about 2 ounces of pot and a small amount of hashish that officers confiscated with some paraphernalia from his Gilbert home in the 7100 block of South Fawn Avenue on June 9.

Whether legitimate medical marijuana patients will become targets of prosecution involving how they obtained marijuana remains to be seen, as no such cases have reached the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, but Taylor said he believes the satellite worker overstepped his bounds by calling police after he showed him his medical marijuana card.

“The worker saw the marijuana in my closet and I told him, ‘Don’t get weird on me, I’m a medical marijuana patient,’ ” Taylor said. “He proceeded to tell me he was OK with it, and that he voted for it. I feel the police overreacted.”

Arizona voters approved medical marijuana with Proposition 203 in the November general election, and regulations were finalized in April, but police said there still is no legal way marijuana can be obtained as no dispensaries have been opened or licensed to sell it.

Taylor, who also lives in Prescott, was moving into his Gilbert residence at the time he was handcuffed and cited. He told the Tribune on Friday that he received a call from Gilbert police Cmdr. Ken Buckland, who told him on Thursday they were going to try to charge him for possession of a narcotic drug and possession of paraphernalia because he said he bought the marijuana from another person.

Taylor owns Cannabis Patient Screening Centers, a company that refers patients to doctors for medical marijuana purposes.

“People are masking themselves as medical marijuana dispensaries, but no one is licensed to sell it and no dispensaries are open, yet,” said Sgt. Bill Balafas, a Gilbert police spokesman. “Gov. Jan Brewer is waiting on a response from the federal government, because although we’re following state law, selling and distributing marijuana violates federal laws.”

As for the number of officers that responded to Taylor’s home, Balafas said, it’s not unusual to have that many officers respond. “There were five undercover officers and seven from the criminal apprehension team,” he said.

“By law, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the cards issued to medical marijuana patients, does not release the names of the patients. We don’t know if someone is a medical marijuana patient and possesses a card until we ask them.”

Balafas also told the Tribune on Friday that the satellite worker who reported the possession told investigators that Taylor said he was selling the marijuana, which is illegal.

“That’s not what I said,” Taylor told the Tribune. “I said I got it from someone in Prescott. I freely received it from them.”

Taylor said if he is charged he will fight prosecution with the help of an attorney.

Under provisions in the Medical Marijuana Act, there are three ways a medical marijuana patient can legally obtain the drug: through a dispensary, through a caregiver or from another medical marijuana patient.

Legally, medical marijuana patients can possess up to two and a half ounces of marijuana. Buying it from someone else is illegal, according to the state Health Department.

Three workers for the Phoenix-based company All My Sons Moving and Storage, who were moving items into Taylor house at the time officers executed a search warrant, also were handcuffed.

“A couple of the guys were upstairs and heard someone shout, ‘Gilbert police!’ and they thought somebody was joking,” said Kevin Anderson, a manager for All My Sons. “The workers were detained, police confiscated the pot and then our guys finished their job.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of red tape involved,” Anderson said of the issue.

Meanwhile, the Maricopa County Attorneys Office still is waiting to see if there will be an onslaught of cases involving people who possess marijuana for medical purposes. It isn’t known whether the office will receive Taylor’s case.

“This is all new to us,” said Jerry Cobb, a spokesman in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. “One of the problems we have with the law is that it’s vague, but we have been very careful not to create a road map and create a criteria that would lead to formal charging. So far, no agencies have submitted any cases for formal charging involving marijuana medical card carriers. Either people aren’t being caught, or if they are being caught, agencies aren’t submitting them to us.”

• Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com


"The War on Drugs is a failure" - Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle

She forgot to mention that the "War on Drugs" is also a jobs program for the overpaid police, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and prison guards and other government nannies involved in it.

Source

Preckwinkle says war on drugs a failure

By Hal Dardick Clout Street

5:31 p.m. CDT, June 17, 2011

In a step few politicians would take, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today declared the nation’s decades-old war on drugs a failure.

What’s more, she said, it has resulted in the incarceration of millions of non-violent offenders, the vast majority of whom are African American and Latino. That’s come “at a tremendous social and economic cost to all of us. The cost is too great to continue fighting this war on drugs with so little success.

“Rather than invest in detaining people in the Cook County Jail at almost $150 a day . . . we need to invest in treatment, education and job-skills training. That’s the only way . . . we are going to reduce crime and stabilize our communities,” she said.

Preckwinkle, just six months into her tenure, was addressing a lunchtime rally crowd outside the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop. The group assembled to call for an end to the war on drugs 40 years to the day after it was declared by then-President Richard Nixon.

“We all know that the war on drugs has failed to end drug use. Instead, it’s resulted in the incarceration of millions of people around the country, and 100,000 here in Cook County on an annual basis,” she said. “Drugs and the failed war on the drugs have devastated lives, families and communities. For too long we’ve treated drug use as a criminal justice issue, rather than a public issue, which is what it is.”

Academics, religious leaders and social-service providers spoke out, but Preckwinkle was the sole politician to address the crowd, which cheered her on.

Kathleen Kane-Willis, director of Roosevelt University’s Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, kicked off the rally by citing recent statistics indicating Illinois leads the nation when it comes to putting far greater percentages of African Americans behind bars for drug crimes than whites.

“The sad thing about the war on the drugs is that most people know it has failed,” added Rev. Alexander Sharp of Protestants for the Common Good. “They just don’t have the courage to say so, and that is why we are so grateful to have Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle with us here. She is willing to speak the truth, a leader with courage.”

Preckwinkle’s call for more treatment and less punishment was in keeping with her statements on the campaign trail, when she often talked about diverting drug users into treatment programs. She said she now is working with the courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys and the sheriff’s office to find ways to do that.

“If 70 percent of the people in the jail are there for non-violent offenses, and 83 percent of the people who walk through the door have illicit drugs in their system, clearly the issue we’ve got is around addiction as much as it is around criminal justice,” she said after making her speech. “It is a public health issue.”

Preckwinkle, who came up through the liberal bastion of the Kenwood-Hyde Park area, also said politicians have gone too far with drug laws in an effort to appear tough on crime.

“They have criminalized a lot more behaviors and we’ve enhanced penalties for behaviors,” she said. “The consequence of that is that a lot more people are in jail at a tremendous cost to society as a whole. . . . We’re going to have to re-examine our drug policies and look at effectively treating addiction and not just criminalizing large portions of our African American and Latino population.”

Before the rally, new Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he understood the concerns of those staging the rally.

“It becomes the issue of mass incarceration,” he said during an interview for WBBM Radio’s “At Issue” program set to air at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday. “There is an issue here. And law enforcement has gotten this wrong. Narcotics use is a criminalized social issue. It causes crime. Drug dealers get into violent disputes over turf. It’s about the money.”

He added: “It’s been so twisted up that law enforcement looks at narcotics as the crime, when it’s not. It’s the cause of the crime. So, we’ve had this wrong for a long time in law enforcement.”

McCarthy went on to say that he wants to implement a strategy to close outdoor drug markets, then help those neighborhoods stay safe, clean up and form community groups.


Narco Polo Shirts - the latest in drug war fashion?

Source

June 12, 2011

Mexico's narcos adopt Lauren-style polo shirts

So-called "Narco Polo" shirts are becoming ubiquitous in street vendors' stalls after seven high-ranking drug traffickers who were arrested wearing the familiar horseman-with-a-stick emblem.

By Mark Stevenson

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — "Narco Polo" is the new fashion trend sweeping lower-class neighborhoods in Mexico, inspired by seven high-ranking drug traffickers who were arrested over a three-month stretch wearing open-neck, short-sleeved jerseys with the familiar horseman-with-a-stick emblem.

The polo shirts are becoming ubiquitous in street vendors' stalls from the drug-war-ravaged state of Tamaulipas to the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, Sinaloa.

Demand is so high that a Mexico City street vendor named Felipe stocks several colors, and names them after the drug lord who was wearing that color at the time of his arrest.

"This is the 'J.J'," he says, pointing to a blue one, "and this is 'La Barbie,'" indicating a green number. That was a reference to Jose Jorge ("J.J.") Balderas, who allegedly dealt drugs and shot soccer star Salvador Cabanas in the head, and to U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, "La Barbie."

Despite their Ralph Lauren labels, the shirts on sale on Mexico City streets for 160 pesos ($13.50) are clearly pirated goods, sold by unlicensed vendors like Felipe who don't want their full names used for fear of attracting police attention.

But some of Felipe's customers have their first names embroidered on the back of the shirts, a service he offers for an extra fee, as a sort of dare.

It's probably not the demographic that designers at Ralph Lauren were thinking of for their polo shirts. The company did not respond to several requests for comment about the shirts' popularity in Mexican criminal circles.

The shirt La Barbie wore when captured appeared to be the only potentially authentic one of the bunch. The rest of the drug traffickers appeared to be wearing cheap knockoffs of the $98 to $145 Ralph Lauren "Big Pony" jerseys.

The shirt is becoming so pervasive that it provoked public grumbling from Sinaloa Gov. Mario Lopez Valdez.

"Now you see how these shirts like La Barbie's have become the fashion," said Lopez Valdez. While he didn't suggest an outright ban, he told a local radio station that "I think we have to close off everything that promotes criminal behavior."

He complained that the fad glorifies traffickers.

"Many young people want to emulate them as idols in some way ... and they want to be drug traffickers. And there are a lot of young girls who want to be the girlfriends of drug traffickers."

But it may not be sheer adulation; wearing the shirts may also be a way for youths to thumb their noses at authority, a time-honored pastime among young people around the world.

"To the police, it's a message that says 'I could be a drug trafficker and walk right in front of you and you can't say anything to me because I'm just wearing a shirt,'" said Oscar Galicia Castillo, a psychologist at the IberoAmerican University who studies prison inmates. "Many youths are also using it as a way of making fun of snobbish status markers."

For Pedro, who sells snacks at a stand on a downtown Mexico City street, his light blue polo shirt just represents an indefinable sense of cool. He said the shirts had become all the rage in his tough neighborhood of Tepito, and that his wife bought him one as a surprise.

"It looks good. It gives you class," he said. He declined to give his last name, saying police had recently caught him selling cigarettes to minors.

In some rough barrios, a shirt that conveys a vague sense of menace and a "don't mess with me" attitude may be helpful.

"The guys who buy them want people to think they're tough," said Cesar, a counterfeit-shirt vendor who said most of the customers at his downtown Mexico City stall are young males. "It's about putting on a look."

For at least two decades, Mexicans have fretted about youths emulating drug traffickers, from the days when narcos favored the designs of Versace and exotic-leather boots, or marijuana-leaf insignia on belt buckles, shirts and baseball caps. But such trends remained largely regional, and were derided as tacky.

But the new fashion trend has been helped along by a new, more urbane and sophisticated generation of drug traffickers, who dress more like Mexico's wealthier classes.

In 2010, Vicente Zambada Niebla, the son of drug lord Vicente "El Mayo" Zambada, was arrested in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood, wearing a preppy ensemble of sports coat, designer jeans and striped cotton shirt.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva, the son of another drug lord, was collared around the same time wearing a jogging suit emblazoned with the name "Abercrombie."

Media coverage also can promote the trend. Newly captured capos are paraded before television cameras wearing the latest narco-fashion, often with beautiful girlfriends at their sides. Authorities allow some, like J.J., to sit down for interviews looking self-assured, fit and unrepentant.

"My business improved. Everybody wanted to work with me," Balderas said of the notoriety he achieved while a wanted man.

It wouldn't be the first time designers have faced an unexpected market. Uber-preppy designer Tommy Hilfiger's clothes became a must-have item for inner-city youths a few years ago.

For Galicia Castillo, the psychologist, it's all about standing out, identifying oneself as a member of a certain sector of a crowded world, probably much the same reason people shell out $145 for the original: "That's why I wear it, so that everyone will look at me, will see that I can afford this. And I could be a narco, so don't mess with me."

Source

Narco Polo Ralph Lauren Knock-Offs Become Fashion Trend in Mexico

Inspired by seven high-ranking Mexican drug traffickers who were arrested over a three-month stretch, all of whom wore open-neck, short-sleeved jerseys with the familiar horseman-with-a-stick emblem of Ralph Lauren, a new fashion craze is sweeping lower-class areas of Mexico: Narco Polo.

Narco refers, of course, to Mexico's drug wars as well as the high-profile and high-level drug traffickers that have recently been arrested. Polo, of course, refers to the polo shirt, and Ralph Lauren in particular.

One of the biggest Narco traffickers was "La Barbie." An iconic image of him shows him wearing a green Ralph Lauren Big Pony polo with "London" emblazoned on the front. That model is available for $125 on the Ralph Lauren website.

Demand is high, but of course the versions that are being sold by street vendors are cheap knock-offs. MSNBC reported on a Mexico City street vendor named Felipe. He stocked several colors of polos, and nicknamed them based on the drug lord who was caught while wearing that color of Narco Polo.

Pointing to a blue shirt, he said "This is the 'J.J'," referrring to Jose Jorge ("J.J.") Balderas, who allegedly dealt drugs and shot soccer star Salvador Cabanas in the head. Pointing to a green one, he mentioned "La Barbie," who as indicated above, was caught in a green version. In reality, "La Barbie" is U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal. These shirts, unlike the real deal, cost a mere $13.50.

A number of knock offs can be found on MercadoLibre, itself sort of a knock-off of the popular auction site eBay. One seller has a shirt he claims is “exactly the same as La Barbie.” The image he uses to advertise the shirt is of "La Barbie" wearing it at the press conference of his arrest.

In fact, it appears that "La Barbie" was the only drug trafficker captured so far who was wearing an official Ralph Lauren Big Pony shirt. The rest of them seem to have been wearing cheap clones of the $98 - $125 shirts.

Why such emulation? Sinaloa Gov. Mario Lopez Valdez put it succinctly: "Now you see how these shirts like La Barbie's have become the fashion. I think we have to close off everything that promotes criminal behavior. Many young people want to emulate them [traffickers] as idols in some way ... and they want to be drug traffickers. And there are a lot of young girls who want to be the girlfriends of drug traffickers."


Sen. Dianne Feinstein pushes bill targeting border tunnels

Last time I checked smuggling dope into the USA was illegal. I find it silly that they want to pass a law making narcotunnels illegal, when it's already illegal to use them to smuggle dope into the USA.

Of course this law seems to be another one of those laws that flushes the Constitutional rights of suspect criminals and allow the government to jail them and seize their assets.

If Sen. Dianne Feinstein would come to me I could tell her how to stop this problem overnight. Legalize drugs and the problem will stop. Of course that is too simple of a solution for our royal government rulers.

Source

Feinstein pushes bill targeting border tunnels

By JEANNA SMIALEK

Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle

June 16, 2011, 12:11AM

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers joined with immigration and border security officials Wednesday to unveil legislation aimed at helping prosecute smugglers who bring drugs and humans into the U.S. through underground tunnels.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is sponsoring a measure that she said would give law enforcement and prosecutors new tools to find and punish tunnel builders.

"Underground tunnels present a serious national security threat," said Feinstein at a hearing of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, which she co-chairs along with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

More authority

The bill, which Feinstein will introduce today, would punish people for conspiring to build smuggler tunnels, regardless of whether the tunnel is completed. It would allow law enforcement to use wiretaps in tunnel cases and permit authorities to seize a tunnel constructor's assets - legal powers law enforcement officials currently do not hold.

Feinstein said the law is needed to halt the growing number of border tunnels in recent years. Authorities have found 137 completed passageways along the U.S.-Mexico border since uncovering the first in 1990. Of those, 125 have been discovered since 2001.

Grassley said the recent growth has occurred because improved border security has forced criminals to find alternate routes to smuggle drugs into the country.

Although most of the tunnels have been found in California or Arizona - 42 have been found in San Diego and 88 in Nogales, Ariz., - two have been uncovered in El Paso.

"Arizona and California have more appropriate conditions," said Tim Durst, assistant special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Diego office. He said the Rio Grande keeps traffickers out of Texas. By contrast, tunnel building is easier in Arizona and California because the land border makes excavation easier.

While the tunnels are concentrated geographically, Grassley said, the smugglers pose a major threat to the entire country.

"Although the border tunnels don't extend all the way from the Southwest border to Iowa, the devastating effects of the contraband moved through those tunnels do," he said. Tunnel Task Force

To combat the growing problem, ICE is leading a multi-agency Tunnel Task Force, which has the sole purpose of uncovering and ending tunnel operations.

Ralph DeSio, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection - a partner in the task force - said tunnels often cost upward of a million dollars and function primarily for drug trafficking, which is more lucrative and poses less of a security risk than human trafficking.

He said the task force finds the tunnels based on tips, electronic surveillance or tracking seized drugs back to warehouses that conceal tunnel entrances. Once a tunnel is uncovered, it may be shut down using a process called remediation, in which it is filled with concrete and sealed with steel plates.

However, finding a tunnel does not end the problem. Laura Duffy, U.S. Attorney in San Diego, said criminals in tunnel cases often are difficult to find and punish.

"There are unique challenges to prosecuting these cases," Duffy said. She explained that most of the illegal activity occurs across the border in Mexico and if tunnels are found, they must be shut down immediately. Sealing tunnels often prevents law enforcement from apprehending the traffickers who operate them.

She said Feinstein's legislation would give prosecutors and law enforcement new legal abilities to combat tunneling.

jeanna.smialek@chron.com

Source

Senadora propone endurecer ley contra los narcotúneles entre México y EEUU

Internacionales 16 junio, 2011

Washington, (EFE).- La senadora estadounidense del Partido Demócrata Dianne Feinstein, propuso ayer endurecer la ley para combatir la construcción de los narcotúneles por los que trasiegan clandestinamente dinero, armas, drogas y personas entre México y Estados Unidos.

Más de 150 túneles clandestinos para el narcotráfico e ingreso de migrantes indocumentados han sido detectados en los últimos años en la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos.

Feinstein anunció que presentará hoy una propuesta para reforzar la ley de Prevención de Túneles en la Frontera que introdujo en 2006, que criminaliza la construcción, la financiación o el uso de los subterráneos ilegales hacia Estados Unidos.

La legisladora hizo su propuesta en una audiencia del comité del Senado del control internacional de narcóticos dedicada a los túneles, una práctica cada vez más extendida entre las organizaciones criminales trasnacionales para burlar la seguridad fronteriza estadounidense.

Con esta ampliación de la normativa, la senadora busca que la construcción, uso o financiación de un túnel sea un delito de “conspiración” y que se faciliten las herramientas a los fiscales para que puedan autorizar escuchas e incautar bienes en los túneles.

El director ejecutivo adjunto del departamento de investigaciones de la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE), James Dinkens, señaló que las organizaciones criminales continúan buscando formas “creativas” para delinquir y la actividad de los túneles ha ido en aumento desde que se descubrió el primero en 1990.

Desde entonces, se han registrado 154, todos menos uno situados en la frontera suroeste y cada vez “más sofisticados”, como el encontrado el 25 de noviembre en San Diego (California) con una profundidad de 27 metros, al que se accedía por la puerta de una cocina en Tijuana (México) y tenía electricidad, ventilación y un sistema de raíles para ayudar a los contrabandistas.

“La considerable sofisticación, así como el largo tiempo y el trabajo invertido en estos túneles, muestran que los traficantes consideran los túneles como una inversión que merece la pena el riesgo”, señaló.

Para tener éxito en la lucha contra este método de contrabando Dinkens indicó que es necesario más investigación para saber cómo se planean, financian y construyen esos túneles, así como para detectarlos.


I guess this is pretty good evidence that it is impossible for the government to win it's "drug war"

Source

Drug war: One cartel falls, another rises

By William C. Rempel

June 19, 2011

Forty years after President Nixon declared war on drugs, the soaring body count from narco-violence in Mexico seems to mock the very notion of progress in that effort. But what is most discouraging about the rampant brutality across our border is that it's largely a consequence of one of the drug war's greatest triumphs.

Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel, once the richest and most powerful crime syndicate in the world, fell as a direct result of U.S.-led law enforcement and diplomatic pressure about a decade ago. Its toppling remains one of the most significant blows inflicted on modern organized crime.

But the giant cartel's collapse left a power vacuum, and Mexican drug gangs are still fighting, with often grisly methods, to determine who will fill it.

The Cali cartel could be as ruthless as any other, but it preferred bribery to violence in the normal course of business. The vertically integrated corporate-style enterprise was run by four billionaires who reigned over a global monopoly that controlled every aspect of the drug trade, from jungle coca production to New York street sales.

In its prime, the cartel was a $7-billion-a-year criminal masterpiece that had bought off an entire country. Colombia was the original "narco-democracy" and a haven for narco-gangsters.

During the 1990s, Cali cartel lawyers rewrote portions of the national constitution outlawing extradition. Drug bosses picked who ran the Cali telephone utility and secretly donated $6 million to elect presidential underdog Ernesto Samper.

Millions of cartel dollars were spent building community police stations. The bosses financed a hospital and a law library. They owned and operated Cali's professional soccer team. In a nod to civic sensibilities, they refrained from carrying out most contract killings within the city limits. Over time, they came to be known as "the gentlemen of Cali."

But the gentlemen were deadly serious about removing impediments to their business. The cartel had its own intelligence force and the capacity to tap any telephone in Cali. Its paid sources included street cops, senators and members of the elite anti-narcotics task force. American drug enforcement agents complained that the cartel seemed always to be a step ahead of them. They called its intelligence wing "the Cali KGB."

Besides a staff of local lawyers, the bosses hired top U.S. defense lawyers, including several former federal prosecutors in Florida and a onetime Justice Department official from Washington, who was later convicted of racketeering.

The cartel accounting department tracked and processed massive volumes of cash. Paper currency from sales around the world was shipped by the ton, often aboard disposable aircraft. Old jetliners, typically stripped-down Boeing 727s, were bought for a few hundred thousand dollars and abandoned on airfields from Bogota to the Amazon jungle after discharging multimillion-dollar loads of $10's, $20's and $100 bills.

A revolving door of former legislators, governors and mayors formed the cartel's lobbying division. They were paid to arrange meetings for the bosses with politicians and to spread the word that the gentlemen of Cali would be generous to friends. Elected officials were constantly wooed with cash, cars, women and luxury vacations.

And the cartel had its own war department. The bosses once paid more than $1 million to hire a team of British mercenaries to hunt down rival drug lord Pablo Escobar, outfitting the commandos with better arms than those of most Colombian military units. They also employed about 150 bodyguards to protect the godfathers and their families.

Armed employees included a small team of sicarios, or assassins, paid to enforce cartel discipline and eliminate security risks. Whenever possible their victims were to "disappear." Unlike beheaded Mexican corpses, often left on prominent display, victims of the Cali cartel typically went into the Cauca River, never to be seen again.

What made the Cali cartel most dangerous, and the greatest menace to U.S. interests, was the way it bought off the Colombian government.

Imagine a country in which its president sends an emissary to apologize to drug lords when American diplomatic pressure forces him to crack down on traffickers. Or where police hotlines for anonymous crime tips are monitored 24/7 by the traffickers themselves. That was Colombia in the 1990s.

So far, there is no evidence that Mexican drug gangs are financing presidential elections. Traffickers are not picking who runs the national telephone company. And gangland lawyers aren't drafting legislation to block extradition of their bosses. Mexico is not the sanctuary that Colombia once was.

But Mexico remains in jeopardy. So does much of Latin America. Unless cocaine demand and its enormous trafficking profits fall, drug war successes are likely to generate similar patterns: simply forcing major narco-operations from one country to another.

And after Mexico, who's next?

William C. Rempel is the author of "At the Devil's Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel."


Dope Smugglers & Wetbacks caused those forest fires - John McCain

Those forest fires were cause by dope smugglers & illegal immigrants! Honest, that's what John McCain says!

"wildfires in Arizona (across our southern border) are regrettably caused by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants"

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

H. L. Mencken
Source

McCain, Kyl, Flake and Gosar issue joint statement on wildfires

Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl and Reps. Jeff Flake and Paul Gosar have issued a joint statement following-up on McCain's comment over the weekend that some Arizona wildfires are caused by illegal border-crossers. His remarks sparked a fury of criticism, and earlier today his Senate spokeswoman clarified that McCain was not talking about the Wallow Fire that has devastated parts of eastern Arizona.

Here is the joint statement from the four Arizona Republicans:

“Arizona is currently facing the worst wildfire season in its history. After touring the devastation in eastern Arizona, we would like to express our gratitude to the brave firefighters, first responders, and public lands personnel who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to preserve communities, homes, and our natural habitats.

“During our tour of the damaged areas caused by the Wallow Fire on Saturday, we were briefed by senior Forest Service officials, one of whom informed us that some wildfires in Arizona (across our southern border) are regrettably caused by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants. This statement is consistent with what we’ve been hearing for years, as well as testimony by the Forest Service and media reports dating back as far as 2006.

“While Arizonans continue to face the enormous challenges related to these wildfires, it’s unfortunate that some are inserting their political agenda into this tragedy.”

Source

Sen. John McCain ties fires to illegal border crossings

by Laurie Merrill and Edythe Jensen - Jun. 19, 2011 11:28 PM

The Arizona Republic

Sen. John McCain fanned some political flames when he said some wildfires blazing in Arizona were likely started by people who crossed the border illegally.

"There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally," McCain, R-Ariz., said during a news conference in Springerville on Saturday, apparently referring to blazes in southern Arizona. "The answer to that part of the problem is to get a secure border."

However, when he was asked which fires were started by immigrants, he did not provide any specific examples.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R- Ariz., who also was at the news conference, offered an answer.

"Horseshoe was one," he said, referring to a May 2010 blaze near Portal (not this year's Horseshoe Two Fire).

The senators' remarks came a day after Gov. Jan Brewer said that the causes and sources of two southern Arizona fires have not been determined and that an investigation is under way.

Authorities are blaming the Wallow Fire in northern Arizona on an abandoned campfire and questioned two "persons of interest," but the people's identities were not released and no arrests were made. The U.S. Forest Service said an investigation is ongoing.

When asked whether illegal immigrants may have played a role in the Wallow Fire, Tom Berglund, a Forest Service spokesman, said, "Absolutely not, according to what I've been told."

"It is frustrating that John McCain is saying things that are baseless and unsubstantiated," said Randy Parraz of Scottsdale, an immigration activist who sought the Democratic nomination in 2010 to challenge for McCain's Senate seat. "Is he connected to reality or trying to fan the flames of fear and intolerance?"

Calls and e-mails to McCain's and Kyl's staffs were not returned Sunday.

Source

John McCain: Political pyromaniac

Sen. John McCain always has been a political pyromaniac although it seemed that lately he was growing less inclined to toss gasoline onto any partisan fire.

But… the forest fires raging in Arizona seems to have lit a match under the senator, causing him to spark what could be a blazing controversy by suggesting that at least one of the big fires in Arizona was caused by an illegal immigrant, and saying so before anything close to a conclusion has been reached by investigators.

And now "clarifying" comments to indicate that he wasn't speaking about the fires raging now but previous fires. Really?

McCain's comments will smolder, creating the kind of thick smoke around the issue of immigration and fire suppression that causes everyone to yell and nothing to get done since no one involved will be able to clearly see solutions.

Perhaps the government should set up a "no burn" policy for politicians, as they do with campfires, requiring elected officials to keep their yaps shut when conditions are ripe for a social or political firestorm.

Once these things get started there's no putting them out.


Narco tanks enter the drug war?

Source

Mexican drug traffickers' latest weapon: 'monster' narco-tanks

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / June 7, 2011

Drug traffickers have never been faulted for lack of ingenuity. They have dug and ventilated thousands of feet of underground tunnel from Mexico to California, refashioned light aircraft that release packages of drugs into remote areas, and invented homemade “semi-submersibles” that cruise the Pacific Coast of South America northward.

Now they have done it again.

The latest invention is the “narco-tank,” an armored truck created to resist fire from even a machine gun. Resembling tanks off a battlefield, narco-tanks have been appearing throughout Mexico in recent months. Over the weekend, soldiers discovered two more in the town of Camargo in Tamaulipas, according to a defense department statement.

The trucks were armored with steel, one inch-thick, welded over the doors and cargo container. They were also outfitted with air conditioning and firing portholes.

More than two dozen additional trucks, in the process of transformation, were also found at the metalworking shop that authorities raided over the weekend.

So-called narco-tanks, dubbed “monsters” here, have been found where the Gulf and Zetas cartels have been battling one another. Local media reports say that authorities have seized more than 100 of them.

Some have balked at the characterization that Mexico is at “war,” but these “monsters” leave little doubt that the country’s traffickers are ready for combat.

Source

Mexico soldiers find narco 'tank' factory

(AFP) – Jun 6, 2011

MONTERREY, Mexico — Soldiers on patrol in a Mexican border town discovered a warehouse where armor-plated "tanks" were being prepared for the Gulf drug cartel, a military source said Monday.

The patrol came across the warehouse when they clashed with a group of armed men in the town of Ciudad Camargo, in the far northeastern state of Tamaulipas. Two of the gunmen were killed in a firefight, while two hid inside the warehouse.

"We found two home-made armored trucks in the warehouse, which belongs to the Gulf Cartel," the military source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The trucks were covered in steel plates one inch (2.5 centimeters) thick, strong enough to "resist the caliber of personal weapons the soldiers use," said the source.

The air-conditioned armored vehicles were equipped with portholes where snipers could open fire from and remain protected.

Soldiers also found two other trucks that were in the process of being armored, as well as 23 powerful big-rig trucks that were apparently going to be armored.

The vehicles, locally known as "monsters," can even resist fire from a heavy .50 caliber machine gun and can only be destroyed with anti-tank weapons, according to the military.

The home-made tanks are used in clashes with other drug cartels as well as to protect drug shipments.

In recent years, soldiers deployed in the northeastern Mexican border region have confiscated 109 home-made armored vehicles -- including one dubbed the "Popemobile" because it carried an armored cabin similar to that used to protect Pope Benedict XVI in foreign trips.

In May, police in the western state of Jalisco carrying out a sweep against the Los Zetas drug cartel discovered an armored vehicle large enough to carry 20 armed men and also equipped with weapons portholes.

Members of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas are engaged in a bitter fight to control the lucrative smuggling routes in eastern Mexico into the United States.

Separately, investigators in the northern state of Coahuila said Monday that they had discovered 1,314 pieces of human bones that they believe are the remains of victims whose bodies were burned.

Soldiers found the remains in 20 pits near the town of Guerrero along with 60 bullet shells and personal items such as clothing and watches.

Mexico has seen an explosion in drug-related violence which has left some 37,000 dead, according to media reports, since the government launched a military crackdown on organized crime in 2006.

Source

'Narco tank' is latest find in cartels' armored vehicles

May 25, 2011 | 12:09 pm

Authorities in the Mexican state of Jalisco have discovered a so-called narco tank, an abandoned armored vehicle believed to have been used by drug cartels. It looks as though it belongs in a "Terminator" movie.

The "narco tank" was seized after a series of deadly shootouts (link in Spanish) between local police and unidentified gunmen over the weekend near the border with Zacatecas state. The central-western region of Mexico has seen an uptick in drug-related violence in recent months due to an internal split in the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The "narco tank," reportedly a 2011 Ford F-Series Super Duty truck, was radically altered, with plates of armor and a gun turret. From the website PickupTrucks.com:

As you can see, it's a one-of-a-kind armored up-fit. The front bumper has a folding battering ram -- which we call the "man-ram" -- and sloping metal plates have been welded to almost every surface. The cargo box is fully enclosed with gun ports and a protected turret that can rotate to spot rival drug cartels or Mexican government troops.

The vehicle found in Jalisco is similar to other heavily armored trucks and cars that have been used by the Zetas and Gulf cartels in confrontations with the military. One recently seized in Ciudad Mier, in Tamaulipas, was nicknamed "El Monstruo 2011."

The Zetas and Gulf cartels are known to move around the territory they are warring over in military-style uniforms that often make them indistinguishable from actual soldiers, confusing local residents. In addition to armored vehicles clearly built for battle, cartels employ homemade submarines to move narcotics from South America, as well as ultra-lightweight aircraft to smuggle drugs across the border into the United States, as reported by the Los Angeles Times' Richard Marosi.

Here's a video report in Spanish from Milenio TV on the cartels' outfitted rides, including one that is referred to as a "narco Pope-mobile" for its tall and narrow armored shooting turret.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City


Source

NCAA drug testing shows increase in pot use

By Jack Carey, USA TODAY

The number of college athletes testing positive for marijuana at postseason events nearly tripled in the NCAA's most recent analysis.

Though the association says it's too early to draw conclusions from the finding, one anti-doping official says it raises concern. The number of positive marijuana tests across all three divisions increased from 28 in 2008-09 to 71 in 2009-10.

Although the positives represent less than 3% of the total samples tested by the NCAA, the increase worries Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which is the national anti-doping organization for the Olympic movement.

Tygart said with medical marijuana use on the rise and increased calls in some states for legalization of the drug, more positive tests for athletes are not surprising.

"It's a fear we've had that as marijuana and even some performance-enhancing drugs become more socially acceptable that athletes will think it might be acceptable within sports," he said. "Sports have a totally different set of rules in place to provide a level, healthy, safe environment for athletes. Even if the use was not criminal or was for medicinal purposes, sports are unique and are supposed to present human competition at its finest."

College athletes are subject to NCAA-mandated drug testing for marijuana at NCAA championship events and football bowl games only, although most drug testing conducted by individual schools during the year includes marijuana. Results of testing for 2010-11 are not yet complete.

"It's too early to tell if this is a one-year spike or indication of a larger problem," NCAA spokesman Christopher Radford said. "The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport, which oversees the drug-testing program, is aware of the increase and is monitoring the issue ."

The current NCAA-testing policy requires that athletes testing positive sit out one full season and lose a year of eligibility. However, sanctions levied by individual schools that test can vary.


Source

New bill would end federal marijuana prohibition

By Josh Richman

Oakland Tribune

Posted: 06/22/2011 01:33:38 PM PDT

Members of Congress will bring forth a bill Thursday that supporters say is the first ever introduced to end federal law's blanket prohibition of marijuana.

The legislation -- authored by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas -- would limit the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or interstate smuggling, letting people legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states that allow it without fear of federal prosecution.

The bill's original co-sponsors include Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich.; Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.; Jared Polis, D-Colo.; and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland.

"The human cost of the failed drug war has been enormous -- egregious racial disparities, shattered families, poverty, public health crises, prohibition-related violence, and the erosion of civil liberties. And of course the cost in dollars and cents has been staggering as well -- over a trillion dollars spent to incarcerate tens of millions of young people," Lee said Wednesday. "I co-sponsored this bipartisan legislation because I believe it is time to turn the page from this failed drug war."

Lee has backed earlier marijuana reform efforts, including Frank's bill in 2008 which would've eliminated federal criminal penalties for adults possessing up to 100 grams.

But Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Morgan Fox said that earlier bill would not have lifted all aspects of federal prohibition, while the current bill removes all federal involvement in marijuana law aside from controlling marijuana crossing the U.S. border or between states with different marijuana laws. "Each state would be free to make its own marijuana policy and would be solely responsible for enforcing it," he said.

This is the first bill to repeal the set of laws criminalizing not only possession and use but also sales, Drug Policy Alliance national affairs director Bill Piper explained.

"For instance, alcohol use was legal during alcohol Prohibition. What caused all the violence, corruption, injuries ... was the prohibition on sales and distribution," Piper said. "That would be the key difference. I guess it depends on whether you're using the word prohibition as 'illegal' versus describing the broader institution that is similar to alcohol Prohibition."

Drug reform advocates have been making much of the fact that last week was the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a war on drugs.

Former President Jimmy Carter authored an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week calling for the reform of marijuana laws. And the Global Commission on Drug Policy -- including figures such as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan; former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz; and former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Switzerland -- released a report June 2 calling for drug reforms including legal regulation of marijuana.

In November, 53.5 percent of California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana use; other states may be voting on similar measures soon, and at least five state legislatures have considered legalization legislation in the past year. Medical use of marijuana is now legal in 16 states including California plus the District of Columbia.


Source

Nova Scotia Government Pays Woman to Grow Marijuana

June 21

In the United States, it takes a special permit to grow marijuana for medical purposes, and one can only do so in certain states where medical marijuana has been legalized. From a federal standpoint, though, the use and cultivation of marijuana, for medical purposes or otherwise, is still considered illegal.

It will be surprising for any American to hear that in Nova Scotia, the government has been told to pay for the equipment that a woman from the town of Amherst, in Cumberland County, uses to grow medical marijuana for herself and her husband.

According to a feature on The Globe and Mail, the Income Assistance Appeals Board ruled that the Department of Community Services should pay a one-time setup cost of$2,500, and a fee of $100 every three months, which will allow the couple to grow medical marijuana in their backyard.

The couple has a license from Health Canada to grow up to 25 plants for medical purposes. A feature on UPI.com shared that the husband is suffering from a blood disorder and glaucoma, while the woman has injuries due to a car crash; the marijuana is used to manage the couple’s pain, but they could only afford to grow six plants, which cannot sustain their needs at times.

The Income Assistance Appeals Board concluded that the couple’s needs for the medical marijuana was genuine, and ordered the Department of Community Services to assist her.

Kristen Tynes, spokeswoman for the Department of Community Services, revealed that the department has referred the decision of the Income Assistance Appeals Board to its legal counsel.


Source

Nova Scotia told to help with medical marijuana costs

Amherst - The province of Nova Scotia has been ordered to help cover the costs of a growing operation for a woman's medical marijuana.

Tanya and Sam, who are in their 40s, have licences from Health Canada to grow up to 25 plants but the couple, who are on social assistance, said they can only afford to have six.

When the Department of Community Services turned down a request for help Tanya went to the Income Assistance Appeals Board, which decided the agency should pay a setup cost of $2,500 (£1,569), and $100 (£63) every three months for supplies.

"When I don't smoke marijuana I have so much pain that I don't want to get out of bed," Tanya, who was injured in a car crash, told the CBC. "I have no energy, I don't want to do nothing."

Her husband, who has glaucoma and a blood disorder, is preparing a separate lawsuit against the department, the cabinet minister and the appeals board.

"It's seriously a miracle drug that needs to be recognized a lot more than it's recognized at this point in time," he told the CBC.

The Chronicle Herald reported that Community Services spokeswoman Kristen Tynes said the department has referred the appeals board'sdecision to its legal counsel, but would not say if they planned to appeal.

Last year, a Halifax woman on social assistance who suffers from several health issues, won a five-year battle to have the costs of her medical marijuana covered.

The National Post reported that, , according to Statistics Canada, Nova Scotia had the most licensed grow operations per capita in the country last year.

Police report that some people abuse their licences by growing more plants than they are allowed. Earlier this year, a man with a licence to grow 15 plants was caught with 312.


Arizona DPS computers hacked over SB1070 & Drug War

Hmmm ... I think the war on drug sucks too. Same for the racist SB1070 law

Source

Arizona DPS system hacked: LulzSec group claims responsibility

by Matt Haldane - Jun. 23, 2011 06:08 PM

The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

An international group identifying itself as LulzSec claims it hacked into the Arizona Department of Public Safety's computer and downloaded a trove of sensitive law enforcement files now being distributed on the Internet.

LulzSec said in a bulletin that it targeted DPS because it opposes SB 1070, a law the Arizona Legislature passed that widened state law-enforcement officers' ability to target illegal immigrants. The law, which has been copied by several states, is largely on hold pending a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Steve Harrison, a DPS spokesperson, confirmed late Thursday that the agency's system had been hacked earlier in the day. He told 12 News the agency had heard rumors that someone was working on hacking the agency's system, but DPS could not do anything until the system was actually breached.

Experts are working on closing the loopholes and have closed external access to the DPS system.

Officers can still communicate internally, Harrison said.

According to news reports, the anonymous computer-hacking group has taken credit for breaching websites of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Senate, the Public Broadcast System, and numerous video game companies -- Sony being the latest target.

LulzSec posts its exploits on Twitter, and as of Thursday, claimed more than 261,200 followers.

On Thursday afternoon, LulzSec taunted Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on his official account, saying, "Media? Heat? You?" The tweet included an expletive in Spanish aimed at the Border Patrol. [Perhaps Ch*nga la Migra?]

Asked if Maricopa County was taking special precautions amid the high-profile attacks, a county spokesman declined to provide details, saying only, "We are always vigilant."

In a bulletin accompanying the latest torrent of information, LulzSec said:

"We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona."

The group said it would release more information every week to embarrass military and law enforcement officials "in an effort not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust 'war on drugs.' "

For more articles on the hack see:

dps_computers_hacked.html.


Source

Man killed in attempt to steal pot, police say

Jun. 23, 2011 12:08 PM

Associated Press

BREA, Calif. - A Southern California man was shot to death while trying to steal marijuana from a medical marijuana deliveryman, and three other men were jailed on suspicion of robbery and felony murder for their alleged role in the crime, a police spokesman said Thursday.

Minh Kinh Dang, 20, of Santa Ana and at least three friends confronted the pot dispensary deliveryman and his armed security guard Wednesday night in the alley of an apartment complex, Brea police Sgt. Jim Griffin said.

The security guard fired three shots at Dang, who was holding a handgun, he said. Arriving officers found Dang dead at the scene.

Earl Augustus Austin, 19, of Santa Ana and James Yi, 18, of Irvine were arrested on suspicion of robbery and murder. A third suspect whom police have not yet identified also was arrested.

Austin and Yi were being held on $1 million in bail each, according to jail records.

The case has not yet been referred to the district attorney's office. Griffin did not know if the men, who have yet to make a first court appearance, had retained attorneys. Jail records show they will make a first court appearance on Friday.

The deliveryman and security guard were questioned and released.

Delivery services for medical marijuana patients in California are not uncommon and their numbers have been growing since voters approved the use of the drug for medicinal purposes in 1996.

Some services in particular cater to elderly patients who are less mobile and prefer the discretion of the home delivery.


Cops - How do you expect us to convict people if you expect us to give them a fair trail?????

If you ask me the Supremes did the right thing here.

Source

Supreme Court puts extra burden on crime labs

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

June 24, 2011

Reporting from Washington— The Supreme Court on Thursday put an extra burden on crime labs, declaring that a man accused of drunken driving has the right to demand that a lab technician testify in person about a blood test that showed he was impaired.

The 5-4 decision was the latest to extend the reach of a defendant's constitutional right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." And once again, the outcome was driven by an unusual coalition of conservative and liberal justices.

Two years ago, the court said a crime lab technician was a witness for the prosecution and, therefore, must be available to testify. In Thursday's decision, the court went a step further, saying it will not suffice to send any technician or lab analyst who can explain the testing. Rather, the prosecution must supply the same technician who conducted the blood test and signed to certify the result.

"We hold that surrogate testimony … does not meet the constitutional requirement," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court majority, which also included Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The Constitution does not permit shortcuts, the court said, and in many cases, a crime lab report is the prosecution's strongest evidence.

Prosecutors from 34 states had urged the court to pull back on this requirement. They said crime labs were overburdened already, and argued it was costly and unwise to force technicians and analysts to spend many of their work days in court.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cited this criticism in his dissent. For example, he noted that 10 toxicologists in the Los Angeles Police Department spent 782 hours at 261 court appearances during a single year. He called the latest decision a "new and serious misstep" that will make a bad situation worse.

Although the decision arose in a drunken driving case, the requirement for live testimony from lab technicians extends to all manner of crime lab reports, including those involving drugs and DNA.

It is not clear, however, whether most defendants will demand that lab technicians testify at their trials. Defendants may waive their right to confront such a witness. But Kennedy said defense lawyers would be emboldened to demand live testimony more often.

david.savage@latimes.com


Gilbert cops raid Tempe Medical Marijuana group

More on f*ck the will of the people who voted for Prop 230, the drug war is a jobs program for cops and we want to keep it that way!

Source

Gilbert police raid of medical-marijuana group stirs debate

by John Genovese - Jun. 23, 2011 11:48 AM

The Republic | azcentral.com

A Gilbert police raid on a Tempe medical marijuana advocacy group is raising questions over whether the sale of the drug from a qualified patient to another qualified patient is allowed.

Gilbert police said five arrests were made last week after officers seized several marijuana plants that were allegedly being grown for sale at the office of the Medical Marijuana Advocacy Group, 2011 E. Fifth St. in Tempe.

Tempe police were unaware of the raid until they were asked to process one of the suspects, who had an outstanding warrant.

Sgt. Bill Balafas, a Gilbert police spokesman, said officers were acting on a tip from a Gilbert informant. Undercover detectives observed several people smoking and purchasing marijuana in the office before additional units were called in, he said.

According to Balafas, of the eight people present during the raid, only two were able to produce valid medical marijuana cards.

The group's founder, Garry Ferguson, disputed that, saying that everyone inside the office had either a valid medical marijuana card or documentation to prove that they met the requirements to use the drug.

Arizona's voter-approved medical-marijuana program allows patients with valid cards from the Department of Health Services to grow their own plants if they live more than 25 miles from an authorized dispensary.

In May, the state attorney general filed for declaratory judgment from the federal government regarding the legality of Arizona's medical-marijuana act. As a result, the issuance of dispensary licenses, which was set to begin in June, has been stalled.

"There is currently no legal way to purchase marijuana in the state of Arizona," Balafas said. "No dispensary licenses have been issued. We're going to respect those people who follow the law."

Ferguson said that Gilbert police are not completely versed in the legislation, which he said allows for card-holding patients to sell to other patients, as long as they, too, have valid medical marijuana documentation.

He cited a portion of the law, ARS 36-2815, that only prohibits selling to someone who doesn't possess valid medical marijuana documentation. The fact that it does not specifically say that marijuana cannot be sold from patient to patient implies that it can, he says.

"I do not act or portray myself as a dispensary," Ferguson said.

Still, questions exist about the legality of where registered patients or caregivers can get the seeds to grow the drug.

"With no dispensaries currently permitted to operate in the state, it's not clear how and where one legally obtains seeds," said Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the county attorney's office. The Department of Health Services offers no solutions for registered patients, stating on its website that they "cannot advise anyone on where to obtain the means to grow marijuana." As for the legality of patient to patient sales, Cobb simply responded "No."

County prosecutors have yet to see any cases involving medical-marijuana cardholders or possession.

Ferguson said his business serves to guide people through the process of obtaining medical marijuana in Arizona from start to finish, not to act solely as a place to purchase it. The office is a safe haven for members of the group to come and do as they please, he says. If a member of the advocacy chooses to use the drug inside the facility or sell to another registered patient, he believes they have the right to do so.

"People come to me solely to fill out paperwork," he said. "We're here to serve as a friendly advocacy group."

Ferguson said he did not believe any clients were actually arrested during the raid. Rather, they were cited and released.

Balafas said, however, that criminal charges will be filed and that the five suspects will have to appear in court just like any other case.

Ferguson said Gilbert police told him that medical marijuana laws are "up in the air" and that the department will return the cannabis plants back to him after the federal government clarifies the law.

Ferguson said that the fact his plants were taken by police in the first place is violating the new law.

"Anybody and everybody who is a member of this group is allowed to come in and do as they please," he said. "Soliciting is absolutely allowed."

The five individuals were arrested by Gilbert police on suspicion of unlawful marijuana possession.

Ferguson has a valid Arizona medical marijuana patient card, and has yet to face any criminal charges.


Source

Genetically Modified marijuana growing in Colombia

The title of the article below calls it a "problem" but I don't see anything other then some damn good weed.

It's interesting that pot was legally grown in Colombia until 1962. I suspect that Colombia signed onto some UN Treaty in that year, making the drug illegal there.

Pot was legal in the USA until 1937 when the "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937" made it illegal. Other drugs were made illegal 23 years before that in the USA in 1914 with the "Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914".

Source

GM marijuana problem growing in Colombia

by Luis Robayo – Fri Jun 24, 2:00 am ET

CALI, Colombia (AFP) – Greenhouses lined with genetically modified marijuana sit on a mountainside just an hour ride from Cali, Colombia, where farmers say the enhanced plants are more powerful and profitable.

One greenhouse owner said she can sell the modified marijuana for 100,000 pesos ($54) per kilo (2.2 pounds), which is nearly 10 times more than the price she can get for ordinary marijuana.

Local authorities said the arrival of genetically modified seeds, which are imported from Europe and the United States have allowed "a bigger production and better quality at the same time".

A police commander in the Cauca region where Cali is located, Carlos Rodriguez, said one of the modified varieties goes by the name, "Creepy".

Another seed modified in The Netherlands is fetching a good price in the area, said a foreign researcher, who asked to remain anonymous. That version, well-known in Europe as "La Cominera", is named for the Colombian village where it grows.

"La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC, the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two to seven percent, said the researcher.

Despite the fact that marijuana production is illegal in Colombia, farmers say they continue to sell both traditional and modified marijuana because of economic advantages. One resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he can sell 11 kilograms of marijuana for 160,000 Colombian pesos ($87).

In the greenhouses outside of Cali, in a secret location accessible only by foot, it is easy to recognize the famous plant with star-shaped leaves, where it grows amid other legal crops.

"I don't like growing marijuana, but it ended up that way," one farmer said. "I received a loan to grow coffee, but I was drowning and I had to sell my harvest very cheap. My sister told me it would be better to plant marijuana."

Marijuana was first introduced to the country in the 1930s and residents of Cali said that for economic reasons, they have never stopped cultivating the plant since.

They added they cannot sustain themselves on coffee and banana crops alone, because prices fluctuate widely and it is difficult to reach markets in time to sell the perishable items before they spoil, due to a poor road network.

The hemp plant was originally legally used in the production of textiles and soccer balls until 1962, when authorities banned the use of marijauana in those products in order to comply with international standards.

According to botanist Luis Miguel Alvarez, a teacher at the University of Caldas in Manizales and the author of several marijuana studies, after marijuana is grown and dried, it can endure long periods without spoiling, which is a strong economic advantage.

Police commander Rodriguez said the crop's growth poses a problem for local law enforcement, because profits are often used to finance other criminal activity.

"We believe that the sixth front of the FARC guerrilla forces are 90 percent financed by marijuana," he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is Latin America's largest and longest-fighting insurgency with 47 years of armed struggle and 8,000 fighters.

Marijuana production and sales are growing in Colombia, which was also the world's biggest producer of cocaine in 2009, according to available statistics, he said.

"This year we have already seized 27 tons (of marijuana by June), compared to 23 tons last year. It is troubling that the resources of armed groups are growing and because of this they can acquire arms and explosives," Rodriguez said.

Nationwide, authorities say they have seized 41.8 tons of marijuana to date in 2011, compared to a total of 228 tons in 2010.


Does this mean we are going to have a witch hunt against doctors who recommend medical marijuana.

Source

Jun. 24, 2011 3:17 PM ET

Medical pot called a challenge for Arizona board

PHOENIX (AP) — State auditors report that the Arizona board that regulates and disciplines medical doctors says that board likely faces an early challenge in dealing with any complaints about physicians concerning medical marijuana.

The auditors' report notes that the Arizona Medical Board hires physicians as expert consultants on a case-by-case basis to help the board review the quality of care provided by doctors who are named in complaints.

But the report says medical marijuana is still an "emerging practice" for physicians in Arizona and that the board anticipates facing a challenge in finding doctors to serve as consultants qualified to review other doctors' performance.

Overall, the report says the board feels it can cope with the modest increase in complaints expected as a result of the medical marijuana law taking effect.

Associated Press


Bar - Lawyers can give advice on medical marijuana laws

Source

Arizona State Bar protects checks and balances

Nick Dranias

Goldwater Institute Daily Email

June 29, 2011

In a recently issued ethics opinion, the Arizona State Bar declared, “a lawyer may ethically counsel or assist a client in legal matters expressly permissible under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act...despite the fact that such conduct potentially may violate applicable federal law.” Whatever one may think of the wisdom of Arizona’s new medical marijuana law, the Bar apparently takes principles of state sovereignty seriously enough to shield lawyers from blanket claims that helping clients violate federal law is unethical.

Of course, the ethics ruling is subject to many caveats, including the proviso that it “is limited to the specific facts discussed herein.” But it would be outrageous if the Bar’s opinion were merely a special favor for the medical marijuana industry. Hopefully, the ruling signals that the Bar will stand by attorneys who, in good faith, advance state law when it clashes with federal law.

In an era when the federal government increasingly exceeds its constitutional authority, it is imperative that bar associations support good faith efforts by attorneys to enforce state laws. Without this protection, bar associations would be giving the federal government carte blanche to dictate laws without any checks or balances arising from the states.

With the federal government claiming the power to force everyone to buy health insurance, and administrative agencies like the National Labor Relations Board going after states that seek to protect the right to vote by secret ballot in union elections, the freedom for attorneys to advance state laws is essential.

Nick Dranias holds the Clarence J. and Katherine P. Duncan Chair for Constitutional Government and is director of the Joseph and Dorothy Donnelly Moller Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute.


Jack booted Federal Thugs to arrest medical pot users?

Source Feds won't give assurance on medical pot

Posted: Friday, July 1, 2011 1:15 am

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department says that marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws could face prosecution for violating federal drug and money-laundering laws.

In a policy memo to federal prosecutors obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said a 2009 memo by then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden did not give states cover from prosecution.

Starting in February, 10 U.S. attorney's offices have asserted they have the authority to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws. Prosecutors, the states complained, are not even willing to declare that state employees who implement such laws are immune from prosecution.

State officials say that following a two-year period in which federal prosecutors gave breathing room to state medical marijuana laws, the Justice Department is now toughening up its position as more states move toward opening facilities to dispense marijuana.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana, with programs in various phases of development. The states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

In 2009, the Justice Department told prosecutors they should not focus investigative resources on patients and caregivers complying with state medical marijuana laws.

The new memo says that view has not changed.

"There has, however, been an increase in the scope of commercial cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana for purported medical purposes," says the new memo by Cole.

The deputy attorney general said within the past 12 months, several jurisdictions have considered or enacted legislation to authorize multiple large-scale, privately operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers.

"Some of these planned facilities have revenue projections of millions of dollars based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants," Cole wrote.

Cole said that the Ogden memorandum "was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law."

Cole added: "Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law."

On Thursday night, Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that the medical marijuana statement by Cole does not represent a new policy, but rather clarifies the policy, as reflected in the recent letters by U.S. attorney's offices to officials in a number of states.

In view of the letters sent by the prosecutors in recent months, Arizona officials have taken the U.S. government to court, seeking a ruling on whether strict compliance with the state's medical marijuana law protects Arizona residents and state employees from federal prosecution.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee suspended plans to license three dispensaries after U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha warned that opening such facilities could lead to prosecution.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said he wanted assurances from federal officials that they won't pursue criminal charges against state-sanctioned medical marijuana programs before he agrees to implement a state law that allows the programs. New Jersey adopted a law to allow medical marijuana in January 2010, just before Christie took office.

Chris Goldstein, a spokesman for the Coalition for Medical Marijuana of New Jersey, said what the latest Justice Department memo means to New Jersey depends on how Christie interprets it and whether he uses it as a reason to halt the program.

"It doesn't change the situation much other than that the governor continues to leave patients hanging out on a limb," Goldstein said.

A spokesman for Christie declined to comment on the letter. A spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general also said they were reviewing the letter.

The letters from federal prosecutors started coming five months ago, in all but one instance in response to requests for guidance from state or local officials.

The first came from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who advised the Oakland, Calif., city attorney that "we will enforce" federal marijuana law "vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law."

Haag's letter addressed an unusual situation: the fact that a year ago, Oakland became the first city in the country to authorize the licensing of marijuana cultivation operations.

But the issue quickly spread beyond Oakland.

In a five-week span starting in mid-April, officials in Hawaii, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Rhode Island, Arizona, Vermont and Maine received letters with wording similar to that in the Oakland letter, all but Rhode Island in response to requests for clarification from the states.

In Rhode Island, Neronha, the U.S. attorney, wrote to the governor that the anticipated operations "of the three centers appear to permit large-scale marijuana cultivation and distribution."

"Such conduct," Neronha wrote, "is contrary to federal law and thus, undermines the federal government's efforts to regulate the possession, manufacturing and trafficking of controlled substances. Accordingly, the Department of Justice could consider civil and criminal legal remedies against those individuals and entities who set up marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries."

On June 20, Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., asked Holder to clarify the Obama administration's policy on medical marijuana.

A week ago, Frank and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced a bill to remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances and cede to the states enforcement of laws governing pot.

___

DeFalco reported from Trenton, N.J. Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvilhill in Trenton contributed to this report.


Jan Brewer asks Feds to shut down Arizona Medical Marijuana

Government tyrants doing the best they can to flush Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet.

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Federal memo grim for Arizona's voter-approved medical marijuana system

Posted: Friday, July 1, 2011 1:42 pm

Federal memo grim for Arizona's voter-approved medical marijuana system By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune | 0 comments

A new memo from a top Department of Justice official could undermine the chances of ever setting up a system of medical marijuana growers and dispensaries in Arizona.

In a memo obtained by Capitol Media Services, Deputy Attorney General James Cole reiterated the conclusion of an earlier memo from another official that his agency is unlikely to use its resources to go after individuals who use marijuana “as part of a recommended treatment regiment consistent with applicable state law.’’ And Cole said the same remains true of caregivers who hand the drug.

But Cole said his agency has noticed that several states have enacted laws to allow “multiple large-scale, privately-operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers.’’ And Cole said some of these could have revenues of millions of dollars a year “based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants.’’

“The (earlier) memo was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law,’’ Cole wrote. He said anyone in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana IS violating the federal Controlled Substances Act, “regardless of state law.’’

Potentially more significant, Cole said that also applies to those “who knowingly facilities such activities.’’

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said that reinforces one of his main fears.

“The biggest concern has been whether or not government employees are facilitating distribution by processing the licenses’’ of those who want to grow and sell the drug. “And there’s also the concern, obviously, for the dispensaries themselves.’’

In fact, Horne said, Cole’s memo actually appears to have the government taking a step back from what appear to have been earlier assurances that federal prosecutors will take a hands-off approach.

He noted that the 2009 memo by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden to federal prosecutors suggested that, as a general matter, they should not focus their efforts “on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance’’ with existing state laws allowing for the medical use of marijuana.

“That has been removed,’’ Horne said of the new memo. “I would say that makes things worse.’’

But Ryan Hurley, whose firm represents prospective marijuana dealers, disagreed.

“It’s consistent with the advice we’ve been giving our clients since Day 1,’’ he said. Hurley said he and his colleagues have been telling would-be dispensary owners that they should not see the state’s medical marijuana law as a shield from federal prosecution.

Hurley also said that the failure of Cole to spell out in his memo that state employees could be prosecuted should provide comfort to Horne and state Health Director Will Humble. Horne, however, said if Cole wanted to signal that prosecution of state workers was a low priority, like that of marijuana users, he would have said that.

“I can how you see how you might interpret that,’’ Hurley responded.

“But to me, if that was something that was a prosecution priority, they would have put it in there,’’ he continued. “I think that they indicated what would be a priority and what wouldn’t, and certainly state employees weren’t on that.’’

For the moment, though, nothing will change.

In May, state Health Director Will Humble said he and Gov. Jan Brewer decided not to process or even accept applications from those who want to grow and sell the drug amid fears of federal prosecution. Brewer and Horne then filed suit in federal court, asking a judge to decide whether Arizona can proceed with its medical marijuana program despite federal laws which make sale, possession and transportation of the drug a felony.

There has been no action in that case.

But would-be dispensary owners are not waiting around for an answer.

One lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court contends that Humble, in refusing to accept applications for dispensaries, is violating the provisions of the law voters approved last November.

That law says those who have a doctor’s recommendation can obtain a state-issued ID card allowing them to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. Humble’s agency has continued to process those applications.

But it also requires the state to license about 125 dispensaries around the state where those with the ID cards can legally purchase the drug. Those dispensaries are entitled to grow their own marijuana or purchase it from others.

Separately, another attorney filed a complaint with the Arizona Court of Appeals asking the judges to order Humble to start processing applications. But the judges earlier this week tossed out the request.

While Humble won’t license any dispensaries, that does not preclude patients from getting the drug.

The law spells out that those who are farther than 25 miles from a dispensary can grow their own marijuana. And with no dispensaries, that means everyone who already has received a card.

As of this week, the state had approved 6,557 applications for medical marijuana use. Of that total, about three quarters requested — and obtained — permission to grow their own medicine.

In analyzing the new memo, Hurley said one thing that remains a big unknown is what federal prosecutors will consider “large-scale’’ cultivation and sales operations, the things that Cole said remain a priority.

Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the state health department, said the law voters approved in November and the rules her agency enacted have no limit on how large a cultivation facility can be. She said the only limits are practical, with any outside operation having to be made secure, surrounded by a 10-foot high concrete wall with a metal gate.

Similarly, she said, there are no size limits on dispensaries, with the only requirement that they are operated on a nonprofit basis. That, however, does not require they be a charity or that those who own the facility do not take a salary.


Narcocorridos? Mexican drug war ballads

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Mexican artists confront violence with song, brush

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Dozens of plastic foam heads rain onto the stage. Four drug traffickers in fringed jackets and sparkly pink cowboy hats bat them into the audience with toy AK-47s. All the while, the cast croons, "Let them slit our throats, let them pack us up … let them not ask any questions, let them not investigate."

This is cabaret, Mexico style. Las Reinas Chulas, or the Beautiful Queens, parody drug violence in a show the women first produced in 2005 and that still fills nightclubs around Mexico, including a performance in the tourist town of Taxco this weekend.

Like other aspects of Mexican society, violence now pervades the arts. From paintings to movies to opera, the killings and kidnappings that dominate headlines are now the topic du jour for artists trying to process what's happening to their country. Many artists say they also hope their work helps to spark change in a society that seems to be growing numb to the daily bloodshed.

Dead bodies, blindfolded and hands tied, blot bucolic landscape paintings. Pieces of a car window shattered in a shootout provide material for glittery bracelets that are part of an art installation. A famous narco-ballad about a female drug trafficker who kills her lover becomes an opera.

"Art always tries to talk about where we are heading," said Ana Francis Mor, a performer with Las Reinas Chulas, who have been invited to perform in the U.S. and Europe. "It's a thermometer for society."

Even as the art flourishes, audience reaction and public support have been mixed, mirroring Mexico's ambivalence about how to cope with the wave of violence that government figures show has so far taken at least 35,000 lives. Other estimates peg the body count at around 40,000.

"Every day we hear about the corruption, the killings, the impunity, and it feels like all of that is closer and closer to us, yet no one does anything, no one says anything" said Semiramis Huerta, a cabaret actress in another show, "The United Narcos of Mexico," which closes with corrupt police and drug traffickers dancing in a chorus line.

Mexican art has long reflected the country's violent history, from the murals of Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros that dramatized the horrors of the Mexican Revolution to novels and narcocorridos detailing in word and song the entrails of the drug trade.

Narco themes have been showing up in visual arts for at least a decade, especially in states such as Sinaloa, home to a powerful cartel of the same name, where violence long predated President Felipe Calderon's late 2006 crackdown on organized crime. But in the last two years, more exhibits have gone national and even international, and the sheer amount of such art has climbed.

A movie, starkly titled "Hell," about a town overtaken by a drug lord who is also the mayor, swept the Arieles, the Mexican Oscars, this year. A Mexican art installation that reached the 2009 Venice Art Biennial in Italy includes a person mopping the bare floor with a mixture of water and blood.

Painter Ricardo Delgado Herbert showed his portraits of monster-like hit men holding handguns or automatic rifles at an exhibit of Latin American art in Miami Beach in March. The title of the collection, "Glorious Pistols from A to the Zetas," refers to the Zetas drug cartel, which is notorious for its gruesome violence.

Now the 36-year-old artist from the city of Tampico is working on a series of paintings depicting drug traffickers and soldiers as both saviors and executioners in the Stations of the Cross. It's his way of expressing how Mexicans are trapped in the crossfire between two forces that are neither completely good nor completely bad, Delgado Herbert said.

The artist grew up in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas listening to corridos and watching low-budget movies about cowboy detectives who chase after narcos.

He began painting the characters with crooked teeth and popped-out eyes in the aftermath of a 2004 shootout between soldiers and gunmen in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. He said that's when he realized "those characters I heard about growing up were among us and were confronting us."

"My work has been my constant complaint," he said. "I paint what I don't like."

A similar sense of disillusionment drives painter Gilda Lorena Martinez, whose series, "City of Sand and Blood," hung in the halls of the Mexican Congress in April.

Martinez has called Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent city, home for 20 years and she started putting her feelings on canvas in 2008, as murders in the city were soaring.

She had to shut down her art school, moving it to her home, after a neighboring business received a bomb threat. One of her art students was killed outside his house. Conversations about who was leaving the city or where mothers were sending their teenagers to study outside of town became common.

In her series, ghostly figures with anguished faces are captured in beige and gray, the hues of the desert that surrounds Ciudad Juarez, accented with blood-red brush strokes.

"I was simply painting what I was feeling, as an outlet," she said, adding that for five months she became seriously ill from the stress of the insecurity surrounding her. "It's my way of saying, 'Look how fractured we are as a society.'"

While some artists say working with violent themes has helped them process how the lives of Mexicans have changed, others have a more political message. They say they're chronicling the complexity of the country's security situation and how it's tied to the insatiable demand for drugs in the U.S. and other first-world countries.

Artist Lenin Marquez Salazar, who was born and grew up in the Sinaloan town of Mocorito, paints the rich landscapes of his agricultural state, but with a macabre twist. Into the pastoral frame, he adds bodies of blindfolded men with their hands and feet tied or wrapped in blankets, duplicating the daily images of drug trafficker victims.

"We forget we're a global society and that what happens somewhere else is affecting us here," said Marquez Salazar, 42, who has exhibited his work in the United States and Colombia. "I want to create awareness about this, not as a complaint, but as a way of expressing what I'm seeing."

Another Sinaloan artist, Teresa Margolles, included the floor-mopping piece in her installation at the Mexican Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Art Biennial. She collects artifacts from crime scenes, which are rarely secured in Mexico, unlike in the U.S., such as pieces of glass or cloth dabbed with mud and blood.

Margolles, who's based in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan and has long worked violent themes, created the art show to fulfill "a social function of mourning, of marking the disappearance of a generation," said Cuauhtemoc Medina, who curated Margolle's 2009 exhibit.

"Theresa and I were guided by our disbelief that the 8,000 people killed nationwide by then didn't count," added Medina, one of Mexico's top art curators and critics. "There is such a social blindness that they need 35,000 dead people to realize this is a total disaster."

In some cases, artists have been asked to exhibit their work at government-run museums, only to have them blocked or edited for being too violent.

Medina said Margolles' installation titled "What Else Can We Talk About?" was supported by federal and private funds, but Mexico's Foreign Relations Department pulled out of the exhibit's organizing committee two weeks before the inauguration at the biennial. He said the government didn't want to be associated with the themes of the work.

The Foreign Relations Department didn't respond to a request for comment.

In Ciudad Juarez, officials at the city's Archaeology Museum of the Chamizal edited the name of Martinez's series down to "City of Sand," eliminating the world "blood," when it premiered in February.

The Reinas Chulas have resisted softening their work, and the change in their audience's mood has been palpable as real-life violence has grown, said Mor, one of the group's founding performers.

The crowds used to laugh at the group's antics, which include political satire and outlandish costumes. Now, many of the narco jokes elicit an awkward silence.

"In the last two years, the jokes began to take on a different meaning," Mor said. "Some people do seem shocked, but in the end we all laugh, because what's happening hurts us too much."


Jackbooted Federal Thugs to arrest Medical Marijuana users?

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Feds won't give assurance on medical pot

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department says that marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws could face prosecution for violating federal drug and money-laundering laws.

In a policy memo to federal prosecutors obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said a 2009 memo by then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden did not give states cover from prosecution.

Starting in February, 10 U.S. attorney's offices have asserted they have the authority to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws. Prosecutors, the states complained, are not even willing to declare that state employees who implement such laws are immune from prosecution.

State officials say that following a two-year period in which federal prosecutors gave breathing room to state medical marijuana laws, the Justice Department is now toughening up its position as more states move toward opening facilities to dispense marijuana.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana, with programs in various phases of development. The states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

In 2009, the Justice Department told prosecutors they should not focus investigative resources on patients and caregivers complying with state medical marijuana laws.

The new memo says that view has not changed.

"There has, however, been an increase in the scope of commercial cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana for purported medical purposes," says the new memo by Cole.

The deputy attorney general said within the past 12 months, several jurisdictions have considered or enacted legislation to authorize multiple large-scale, privately operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers.

"Some of these planned facilities have revenue projections of millions of dollars based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants," Cole wrote.

Cole said that the Ogden memorandum "was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law."

Cole added: "Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law."

On Thursday night, Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that the medical marijuana statement by Cole does not represent a new policy, but rather clarifies the policy, as reflected in the recent letters by U.S. attorney's offices to officials in a number of states.

In view of the letters sent by the prosecutors in recent months, Arizona officials have taken the U.S. government to court, seeking a ruling on whether strict compliance with the state's medical marijuana law protects Arizona residents and state employees from federal prosecution.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee suspended plans to license three dispensaries after U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha warned that opening such facilities could lead to prosecution.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said he wanted assurances from federal officials that they won't pursue criminal charges against state-sanctioned medical marijuana programs before he agrees to implement a state law that allows the programs. New Jersey adopted a law to allow medical marijuana in January 2010, just before Christie took office.

Chris Goldstein, a spokesman for the Coalition for Medical Marijuana of New Jersey, said what the latest Justice Department memo means to New Jersey depends on how Christie interprets it and whether he uses it as a reason to halt the program.

"It doesn't change the situation much other than that the governor continues to leave patients hanging out on a limb," Goldstein said.

A spokesman for Christie declined to comment on the letter. A spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general also said they were reviewing the letter.

The letters from federal prosecutors started coming five months ago, in all but one instance in response to requests for guidance from state or local officials.

The first came from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who advised the Oakland, Calif., city attorney that "we will enforce" federal marijuana law "vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law."

Haag's letter addressed an unusual situation: the fact that a year ago, Oakland became the first city in the country to authorize the licensing of marijuana cultivation operations.

But the issue quickly spread beyond Oakland.

In a five-week span starting in mid-April, officials in Hawaii, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Rhode Island, Arizona, Vermont and Maine received letters with wording similar to that in the Oakland letter, all but Rhode Island in response to requests for clarification from the states.

In Rhode Island, Neronha, the U.S. attorney, wrote to the governor that the anticipated operations "of the three centers appear to permit large-scale marijuana cultivation and distribution."

"Such conduct," Neronha wrote, "is contrary to federal law and thus, undermines the federal government's efforts to regulate the possession, manufacturing and trafficking of controlled substances. Accordingly, the Department of Justice could consider civil and criminal legal remedies against those individuals and entities who set up marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries."

On June 20, Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., asked Holder to clarify the Obama administration's policy on medical marijuana.

A week ago, Frank and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced a bill to remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances and cede to the states enforcement of laws governing pot.

———

DeFalco reported from Trenton, N.J. Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvilhill in Trenton contributed to this report.


Justice Department shoots down commercial marijuana cultivation

Obama made certain campaign promises, and he's not carrying through on them. - Not just on medical marijuana, but in a lot of other areas. He lied about gay marriage, and he lied about the war in Iraq. (He has always been a war monger on Afghanistan)

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Justice Department shoots down commercial marijuana cultivation

By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

July 2, 2011

With marijuana sold openly at retail stores throughout California, some advocates, pot growers and even city officials believed authorized commercial cultivation could be next. But the Obama administration dashed that notion this week, making clear it will not allow such operations.

In a letter sent Wednesday to federal prosecutors, Deputy Atty. Gen. James M. Cole noted that some cities and states have considered plans for "multiple large-scale, privately-operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers" and wrote that the administration's hands-off policy on medical marijuana patients was "never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law."

Across the country, proposals to bring marijuana cultivation into the open have drawn warnings from federal prosecutors. But it was Oakland's vision of four enormous enterprises with astounding revenue projections that started the federal pushback against the thriving and increasingly bold marijuana industry.

"Unfortunately, this is a step backward," said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access. "We kind of regard this as kind of the equivalent of 'don't ask, don't tell.' Obama made certain campaign promises, and he's not carrying through on them."

Elford said the letter could embolden prosecutors in California to take on dispensaries — and lead prosecutors elsewhere to take steps to derail medical marijuana distribution systems set up by the states. "I would be hearing, 'If you get too big, we may well put a target on your back,' " he said.

In California, some collectives have made an effort to raise their own marijuana or develop a network of patient-growers. But many buy from operations hidden in warehouses, industrial buildings, hollowed-out rental homes, secluded farms and forest lands.

Until earlier this year, Oakland had pursued an ambitious cultivation plan, drawing worldwide attention. City officials imagined Oakland as the capital of the fast-emerging industry. One entrepreneur, Jeff Wilcox, hoped to convert 172,000 square feet of aging and largely empty brick buildings into a marijuana industrial park with growing and manufacturing businesses. He commissioned a report that concluded his proposal could cultivate marijuana worth $59 million a year and send as much as $3.4 million in annual taxes to the city.

But in February, Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for the state's Northern District, warned Oakland officials that she would consider prosecuting anyone authorized by the city to set up an industrial pot farm, as well as anyone who assisted them, including property owners and financiers.

Wilcox put his plans on hold but believes the city needs to push forward. "Oakland is so broke, and Oakland is going to be more broke next year and the year after," he said.

After Haag's threat, the city hired a law firm to rework its proposal. Under the far more restrained plan, which was unveiled Friday, only nonprofit collectives could apply for growing permits and each cultivation site would be limited to 25,000 square feet.

Arturo Sanchez, the assistant to the city administrator, said the proposal does not conflict with the Justice Department's position. "I think they're saying, 'We didn't envision large-scale grows for profit,' " he said. "At no point have we said this is a profiteering endeavor."

Berkeley was planning much smaller operations, in the range of 5,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. It has frozen those plans, but Mayor Tom Bates said the city intends to pursue them. "We see a lot of advantages," he said, but stressed that Berkeley would not proceed without approval from local, state and federal prosecutors. "We're going to go with our eyes wide open."

Bates said that having the city's collectives grow in industrial areas would be much safer — allowing Berkeley officials to do more to prevent crimes and fires caused by faulty wiring, as well as inspect the crop to ensure that it was free of pesticides and other potentially harmful substances.

But he was not sanguine about the prospects. "I'm under the view that the Department of Justice will never sanction this," he said. "I think that they're going to be the stumbling block."

Isleton, a Sacramento River town with 840 residents, last month shelved plans to allow a 30,000-square-foot pot farm that was projected to pump as much as $600,000 a year into its treasury. The plan was attacked by the Sacramento County district attorney, the county grand jury and the U.S. attorney for the area. The grand jury foreman said the growing operation was "perched on the blurry edge of marijuana law."

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said the federal government should not raid medical marijuana users and caregivers. Three months after he was inaugurated, his attorney general announced that as the administration's official policy, which later was spelled out in an October 2009 letter to prosecutors.

The policy, in part, set off the explosion of dispensaries and pot-growing operations in California. The Justice Department's letter this week halts what some saw as the next phase: commercial cultivation.

In his letter, Cole indicated that he was reiterating the department's stance. But it contained a subtle shift. In the 2009 letter, the department advised prosecutors not to focus on "individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws" — pointing to people with cancer or other serious illnesses and their caregivers as examples. The new letter cites patients and caregivers not as an example, but as the only exception, and it defines caregiver as an individual and "not commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana."

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the document was intended to restate department policy after more than half a dozen letters were sent by U.S. attorneys in response to medical marijuana developments in their states. "It's not really a new policy," he said.

Miller declined to say whether any large-scale cultivation operation, such as one run by a nonprofit patient collective, could pass muster with the federal government.

Under guidelines issued by Jerry Brown when he was attorney general, most dispensaries in California are organized as nonprofit collectives. The state's new attorney general, Kamala Harris, declined to comment on the Justice Department letter. Her office is currently working to revise the nearly 3-year-old guidelines.

Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney in Los Angeles, said court cases have repeatedly shown that the city's dispensaries operate outside those guidelines. "Strangers, unidentified strangers, are bringing in large satchels and suitcases and bags of dried marijuana," she said.

The state requires collectives to grow their own marijuana, but Usher said she was awaiting clarification on whether state law requires them to grow on site. She declined to speculate on whether a collective could set up a major growing operation that would be legal under state law. "I don't want to go there," she said. "It's so at odds with the facts on the ground that I don't want to endorse a hypothetical."

john.hoeffel@latimes.com


Arizona to expand private prisons

Every day the police state gets bigger and bigger. If we legalized all victimless drug war crimes we wouldn't need any of these prisons. Victimless drug war crimes account for about two thirds of the people in American prisons.

Source

Arizona to expand private prisons

by Bob Ortega - Jul. 3, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

This month, and possibly as early as next week, the Arizona Department of Corrections is expected to recommend what company or companies should be awarded a contract to provide 5,000 new minimum- and medium-security prison beds.

That contract, put out to bid last January, is moving forward even though, after years of steady growth, Arizona's state-prison population has leveled off for the past year and a half - and even though all five bidders have checkered records of managing other private prisons.

Plans to add 5,000 new prison beds first surfaced last year as part of an unprecedented and massive bill legislators passed to privatize the entire state prison system. That ambitious privatization plan fizzled when no corporations showed any interest in a wholesale takeover. The proposal for 5,000 new private-prison beds survived, however.

Growth projected

At the time, based on growth rates, the Department of Corrections projected that Arizona would need another 8,500 prison beds by 2017. But since the end of 2009, when there were 40,585 inmates in the state prison system (including five private-contract prisons), the daily inmate count has fallen 1 percent to 40,181 at the end of June.

The Department of Corrections was the only major state agency to avoid a budget cut for the 2012 fiscal year, which began Friday. Its budget rose $10 million from last fiscal year, to $1.06 billion.

Some observers say that, given tight economic times, the state should reconsider paying to build more prisons.

"I don't think there's a need for it," said Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, who tried unsuccessfully last legislative session to promote sentencing reforms.

Ash noted that Texas, Missouri, South Carolina and other states have managed in recent years to reduce their prison populations and their crime rates at the same time.

He says Arizona should move in that direction instead of expanding private prisons.

A variety of federal and state studies have shown that Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Kansas, Michigan and other states have managed to reduce both their crime rates and their prison populations by increasing alternatives to prison for some drug and nonviolent offenders, and creating more flexible sentencing practices.

The plan for the new beds was part of Gov. Jan Brewer's executive budget in 2010. The Governor's Office did not return calls seeking comment on the need for the contract.

Over capacity

Corrections Director Charles Ryan said that even with prison population growth tailing off, essentially all the state prisons are over capacity.

"There are temporary beds that have been there 30 years," he said recently, at the state prison at Florence. The new beds would allow the state to eliminate many double bunks in cells or overcrowding in dorms that weren't built for the number of prisoners they now hold, he said.

Ryan also said he doesn't expect the number of inmates to stay level indefinitely.

The department didn't offer any theories as to why the inmate population has stayed level of late.

In any event, Ryan noted, the state's request for proposals would phase in the beds, with 2,000 to be filled by April 2013, and the remaining 3,000 to be completed by April 2015. The request notes that everything is subject to the legislative appropriations process.

All five companies that bid on the project have experienced escapes and other issues at other prisons they operate. All of the companies are supposed to disclose, in their bids, any escapes, homicides, assaults on staff or inmates, riots or other disturbances, and various other issues at any prisons they operate. That history, however, accounts for less than five percent of the point total in the criteria used to evaluate the bids.

The bidders

Those companies are:

- Geo Group Inc., of Boca Raton, Fla. A publicly-traded company, Geo operates about 80,000 prison beds at 116 federal, state and local prisons and treatment facilities in the U.S. and three other countries. It reported $62.8 million in net income on $1.27 billion in revenues for its most recent fiscal year ending Jan. 2. It operates three prisons under contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections: the Central Arizona Correctional Facility (medium security) in Florence, and the minimum-security Phoenix West and Florence West prisons.

Geo has had at least 27 escapes in the past seven years, according to press accounts, including one three years ago that led to a murder in a convenience store in Houston. In 2007, Texas canceled an $8 million contract with Geo and closed the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, citing filthy conditions. The company is currently fighting a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union alleging the use of excessive force, and unconstitutional and barbaric conditions at its Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Walnut Grove, Miss. Meanwhile, the FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating alleged illegalities in the appropriations and the construction of Geo's $120 million Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Florida. The company did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

- Management & Training Corp., of Centerville, Utah. A privately-held company, MTC operates 20 prisons in seven states, with a capacity of 26,000 prisoners. It does not publicly release financial data. It began in 1981 operating federal Job Corps centers. MTC operates two prisons under contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections, a medium/minimum security facility in Kingman and a minimum-security facility at Marana.

MTC currently faces lawsuits over the deaths of an Oklahoma couple killed after three inmates escaped from its Kingman prison last year. The company has also had escapes from prisons it operates in Texas and Utah. In two separate instances, it has been ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor to repay a total of more than $650,000 in back wages to officers from whom it withheld overtime pay in Texas and four other states. MTC spokeswoman Issa Arnita noted that the Utah escapees were inmates working outside the prison. And she said MTC added razor wire - not then required by Texas at minimum-security facilities - after the Texas escapes. She said that after the Department of Labor determination, MTC voluntarily audited all its facilities and compensated any employees who were due back wages.

- Correctional Corp. of America, of Nashville, Tenn. CCA is the largest private-prison company in the U.S., housing about 80,000 federal and state prisoners in 66 facilities across 19 states and the District of Columbia. A publicly-traded company, CCA reported net income of $157 million on $1.67 billion in revenues for 2010. It has no contracts with the Arizona Department of Corrections, but houses federal inmates and inmates from Hawaii, California and Washington at six prisons in Eloy and Florence.

CCA has had at least 21 escapes at various facilities over the past decade, including several that have led to assaults and other crimes. CCA also faces several lawsuits over its Idaho Correctional Center, dubbed the "Gladiator School" for allegations that guards and supervisors there regularly allowed violent inmates to assault and beat other inmates during 2009 and 2010. In January 2010, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered hundreds of female prisoners removed from CCA's Otter Creek Correctional Complex after a series of charges that guards regularly sexually assaulted female inmates there. CCA did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

- Emerald Correctional Management, of Lafayette, La. A privately-held company, Emerald operates about 3,800 beds at six federal, state and local prisons. It has no contracts with the Arizona Department of Corrections, but operates the San Luis Regional Detention Center south of Yuma in partnership with the U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It has had at least five escapes in the past decade.

Last year, the Houston Chronicle, reporting on the death of a Cuban immigrant, investigated the company's Rolling Plains Regional Jail and Detention Center in Texas. It noted that the company had no doctors to care for more than 500 immigration detainees at the facility, using only poorly supervised vocational nurses. Emerald did not respond to calls for comment.

- LaSalle Southwest Corrections, of Ruston, La. A privately-held company, LaSalle operates about 7,700 beds at 12 prisons in Texas and Louisiana. It has no contracts with the Arizona Department of Corrections. It has had eight escapes in the past six years, including three of minimum-security prisoners who walked away while on work crews outside the prisons.

Billy McConnell, a managing director of LaSalle, said that the company has never had an injury to a citizen or staff member as a result of an escape. "Anytime something like that happens we review our policies and procedure to make sure we know what went wrong, and we try to eliminate the possibility of that happening again," he said.


Marijuana has no accepted medical use

Swear to God, that's what Uncle Sam says!

More head in the sand news - U.S. decrees that marijuana has no accepted medical use.

Legalize pot and every jackbooted Federal thug that hunts down pot smokers is out of a job. That's why they want to keep pot illegal.

Please don't blame me for this horrible news. I'm just the messenger.

Source

U.S. decrees that marijuana has no accepted medical use

By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

July 9, 2011

Marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation's capital to treat a range of illnesses, but in a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

Advocates for the medical use of the drug criticized the ruling but were elated that the Obama administration has finally acted, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts. The decision to deny the request was made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and comes less than two months after advocates asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to force the administration to respond to their petition.

"We have foiled the government's strategy of delay, and we can now go head-to-head on the merits," said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access and the lead attorney on the lawsuit.

Elford said he was not surprised by the decision, which comes after the Obama administration announced it would not tolerate large-scale commercial marijuana cultivation. "It is clearly motivated by a political decision that is anti-marijuana," he said. He noted that studies demonstrate pot has beneficial effects, including appetite stimulation for people undergoing chemotherapy. "One of the things people say about marijuana is that it gives you the munchies and the truth is that it does, and for some people that's a very positive thing."

In a June 21 letter to the organizations that filed the petition, DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said she rejected the request because marijuana "has a high potential for abuse," "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" and "lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision." The letter and 37 pages of supporting documents were published Friday in the Federal Register.

This is the third time that petitions to reclassify marijuana have been spurned. The first was filed in 1972 and denied 17 years later. The second was filed in 1995 and denied six years later. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government.

The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis filed its petition in October 2002. In 2004, the DEA asked the Department of Health and Human Services to review the science. The department recommended in 2006 that marijuana remain classified as a dangerous drug. Four and a half years then elapsed before the current administration issued a final denial.

"The regulatory process is just a time-consuming one that usually takes years to go through," said Barbara Carreno, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The DEA's decision comes as researchers continue to identify beneficial effects. Dr. Igor Grant, a neuropsychiatrist who is the director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego, said state-supported clinical trials show that marijuana helps with neuropathic pain and muscle spasticity. He said the federal government's position discourages scientists from pursuing research needed to test the drug's medical effectiveness. "We're trapped in kind of a vicious cycle here," he said. "It's always a danger if the government acts on certain kinds of persuasions or beliefs rather than evidence."

Popular opinion has also swung behind medical marijuana. Americans overwhelmingly support it in national polls. When the petition was filed, eight states had approved medical marijuana. Now 16 states and the District of Columbia have done so. In 2009, the American Medical Assn. urged the government to review its classification of marijuana "with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery methods."

When Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, it listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive of five categories. But some federal officials have questioned that decision. In 1972, a commission recommended that marijuana be decriminalized. And in 1988, a DEA administrative law judge concluded that "marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people." The National Cancer Institute, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, notes that marijuana may help with nausea, loss of appetite, pain and insomnia.

Nonetheless, the DEA concluded that marijuana has no accepted medical use, Leonhart wrote in her letter, because its chemistry is not known and adequate studies have not been done on its usefulness or safety. "At this time," she said, "the known risks of marijuana use have not been shown to be outweighed by specific benefits in well-controlled clinical trials that scientifically evaluate safety and efficacy."

john.hoeffel@latimes.com


40 killed in Mexico's drug war in last 24 hours

The politicians tell us the drug war will make our lives better. Can anybody please tell me how this is making our lives better?

Source

At least 40 killed in Mexico in 24 hours

by Nacha Cattan - Jul. 9, 2011 01:27 PM

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Battles between the vicious Zetas gang and other drug cartels led to the discovery of more than 40 bodies in a 24-hour span, a government official said Saturday.

At least 20 people were killed and five injured when gunmen opened fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire.

Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan.

He said another 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the gang is fighting the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"The violence is a product of this criminal rivalry ... surrounding the intent to control illegal activities in a community, and not the only the earnings that come with it, but also with transporting drugs to the United States," Poire said in a news conference.

Poire provided no more details on the killings in Torreon in the border state of Coahuila.

Coahuila state officials said the 10 bodies in Torreon had been mutilated and left in a sports-utility vehicle. Seven of the victims were men and three were women, and all had been killed several days earlier, said Fernando Olivas, a state prosecutor's representative in Torreon.

In Monterrey, 16 people died at the Sabino Gordo bar in the worst mass killing in memory in the northern industrial city, where violence has spiked since the Gulf and Zetas broke their alliance early last year. Four others died later at the hospital and five were injured, said Jorge Domene, security spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located.

Other downtown businesses closed earlier than usual after news of the massacre broke.

In Valle de Chalco, a working class suburb southeast of Mexico City, a man was found alive among the dumped bodies and was taken to a hospital, said Antonio Ortega, a spokesman for the Mexico State police.

He said some of the bodies were blindfolded and had their hands tied. Poire said one woman was found seriously injured.

State officials said police found another body nearby a few hours later but could not confirm it was related to the mass attack.

Ortega said he didn't know if the victims were shot at the scene or were taken to site.

The capital region has been largely spared the widespread drug violence that grips parts of Mexico.

But some poorer areas of the sprawling metropolis of 20 million people have begun to see killings and decapitations committed by street gangs that are remnants of splintered drug cartels.

In another incident allegedly involving Zetas, the Mexican Navy said Friday it rescued a former mayor of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, who had been kidnapped along with his son.

Four alleged Zeta members were arrested at the scene after an anonymous tip informed the navy of former Mayor Humberto Valdez's abduction Thursday, according to the Navy statement.

Poire repeated the government insistence that criminals, not the government's crackdown on organized crime, are causing the violence. More than 35,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon stepped up the attack on organized crime in 2006, according to official figures. Some groups put the number at more than 40,000.

"The violence won't stop if we stop battling criminals," Poire said. "The violence will diminish as we accelerate our capacity to debilitate the gangs that produce it." [Rubbish! Legalize drugs and the violence will stop overnight! It did in the USA when the American government ended it's war on booze, which was called the Prohibition]

Federal authorities apprehended La Familia's alleged leader in late June, claiming the arrest was a debilitating blow to the gang. Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas was alleged to be the last remaining head of the cartel, whose splinter group, the Knights Templar, continues to fight for control of areas La Familia once dominated.

Mexican authorities also arrested Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, a co-founder of the Zetas drug cartel who is suspected of involvement in the February killing of a U.S. customs agent.


Obama administration slams medical marijuana

Source

Obama administration slams medical marijuana

By Liz Goodwin

National Affairs Reporter

The Obama administration's newly released drug control strategy slams states that have legalized medical marijuana, arguing that smoking any drug is unsafe--and that marijuana's medical benefits have yet to be evaluated by the FDA.

"While there may be medical value for some of the individual components of the cannabis plant, the fact remains that smoking marijuana is an inefficient and harmful method for delivering the constituent elements that have or may have medicinal value," the White House's National Drug Control Strategy for 2011 says.

The strongly anti-marijuana report comes on the heels of the Justice Department's decision against reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. As The Los Angeles Times reports, the government took nine years to respond to marijuana advocates' request that they take into account studies that show marijuana has medical benefits and reclassify the drug. At the end of its review, the Justice Department held firm to its earlier decision that marijuana should be classified alongside other dangerous drugs such as heroin. The Americans for Safe Access group is now appealing the decision in federal court, the paper says.

It's unclear what the consequences will be for people involved in the medical marijuana business in the 16 states (and Washington, D.C.) that currently allow it. The report states unequivocally that "outside the context of Federally approved research, the use and distribution of marijuana is prohibited in the United States," and the Justice Department recently suggested in a memo that state-approved marijuana dispensaries and growers could face prosecution.

The report also made a detailed case against legalization or decriminalization of marijuana, an idea that has won the endorsement of a group of ex-global leaders who called the war on drugs a "failure." The report says that while tobacco and alcohol are legalized and taxed, neither provide a "net economic benefit to society," due to health-care expenses and various criminal justice costs, such as drunken driving arrests.

Neil Franklin, the director of a pro-legalization group of former police and other law-enforcement agents called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said in a statement that the anti-marijuana tone of the administration is disappointing.

"It's sad that the drug czar decided to insert a multi-page rant against legalizing and regulating drugs into the National Drug Control Strategy instead of actually doing his job and shifting limited resources to combat the public health problem of drug abuse," Franklin said.


Gasp! Pot smokers on Arizona Corporation Commission?

Members of the Arizona Corporation Commission are pot smokers? Maybe! On the other hand, don't worry. It was probably medical marijuana!

Source

Marijuana found in a private area at Corporation Commission

by Ryan Randazzo - Jul. 11, 2011 02:59 PM

The Arizona Republic

The chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission wants to invite police to inspect the building where utility regulators work after a small amount of marijuana was found in the building last week.

Chairman Gary Pierce is concerned about the reputation of the five-member elected commission that sets utility rates, his adviser said Monday.

An employee cleaning out the private commissioners' shower area on July 5 found a pile of loose change sitting atop newspapers, according to the Arizona Capitol Police report.

The employee and Pierce's aide, Antonio Gill, were counting the change Thursday when Gill noticed marijuana mixed with the $5.85 in coins, the report said.

Capitol Police were called and an officer trained in marijuana recognition identified the green plant material and confirmed it was marijuana, the report said.

The marijuana was placed in a locker to be destroyed, and the change is being kept at the station as found property. The police are not pursuing a case, Sgt. Hollis Corey said.

Pierce requested that the issue be discussed at a Tuesday staff meeting, and specifically mentioned the marijuana in the public agenda.

"Chairman Pierce wants recognition that there was marijuana found in the commissioners' bathroom," Pierce's adviser, John LeSueur, said Monday. "(He) is concerned how this reflects on the reputation of the commission and wants to make sure the commission takes appropriate action to ensure building is free of any marijuana."

He also said Pierce wants to discuss a search of the building, if the majority of commissioners agree.

"I don't know that we know whose marijuana it was," LeSueur said.

Each corporation commissioner has an adviser and a personal aide on staff.

The office keeps records of who enters the private area of the building at 1200 W. Washington St., but because the newspapers had not been cleared from the shower area in a week, there is a large window of time during which the marijuana could have been left, spokeswoman Rebecca Wilder said.

The shower area where the marijuana was found is not accessible to the public, and only the commissioners and staff have access, she said.


Source

Our view: Should warrantless GPS tracking be allowed?

Drivers who remember having to use maps or ask for directions are probably still astonished at how GPS units have aided road navigation. Thanks to satellites, it's hard to get lost anymore.

But breakthroughs such as the Global Positioning System always come with unforeseen complications, and just as with smart phones and the Internet, the complication with GPS technology is privacy. With GPS, police can plant a locator on your vehicle and track where you are second by second on a remote computer screen.

This is an important and effective tool for law enforcement, but its widespread use has sharply divided the courts. Some judges say it's no big deal; GPS locators simply allow the police to do with technology what they would otherwise do by tailing someone on public streets, where no one has an expectation of privacy.

But other courts have said — correctly, we think — that surreptitiously planting GPS devices on suspects' vehicles and tracking them 24/7 for days on end is the sort of invasive electronic monitoring that should require the government to prove probable cause to a judge and get a warrant, just as police have to do to tap your phone.

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to settle the issue, and we hope the justices interpret the constitutional right to privacy broadly — not just because it's deeply worrisome to give the government an unfettered right to track anyone on any pretext, but also because these are just the early days of working out how privacy law will apply to endless new ways to watch all Americans.

As tracking tools, cameras and other devices get tinier, cheaper, more widespread and more capable, it will be possible to monitor people in ways that are hard to imagine today. The Fourth Amendment right to privacy has never been more crucial, and this case could define it in ways that will last for years.

As often happens in disputes over core rights such as privacy or free speech, the case that brings this issue to the high court evokes no sympathy for the defendant. In 2005, a joint FBI-police operation caught an alleged crack cocaine dealer in Washington, D.C., after planting a GPS device on his Jeep and tracking him for 28 days. A federal appeals court threw out his conviction because the device had been placed without a warrant.

The government typically argues in cases like this that GPS tracking is no different from assigning officers to physically track someone, but the appeals court noted how wildly impractical, costly and unlikely that is.

As for whether someone should expect any privacy on public streets, the appeals court again applied a common sense test, noting that the likelihood that anyone would observe all of someone's movements on public streets for 28 days "is not just remote, it is essentially nil." By contrast, the court said, prolonged police monitoring by GPS "reveals an intimate picture of the subject's life that he expects no one to have — short perhaps of his spouse."

Most GPS tracking by law enforcement is surely justified, but the long, sad history of giving government unbridled power is that it inevitably gets abused. Even national security authorities are required to apply to the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for warrants to tap the phones of suspected terrorists.

Are the needs of police tracking drug dealers and other common criminals really more urgent? "Trust us" is not a valid substitute for requiring police to go before a judge and show why they need to monitor someone as thoroughly as a GPS device allows, and it's hardly an unreasonable burden.


Fair Trial? The government ain't going to give you a "fair trial"!

"U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson, in Norfolk, ruled that prosecutors withheld or ignored crucial evidence and potential testimony that could have helped Wolfe’s defense"

Source

Va. judge throws out drug dealer’s death sentence in slaying

By Josh White, Published: July 12

A federal judge has thrown out the capital murder conviction and death sentence of Justin Michael Wolfe and lambasted the veteran Prince William County prosecutors who alleged that the drug dealer orchestrated the slaying of his marijuana supplier more than a decade ago.

U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson, in Norfolk, ruled that prosecutors withheld or ignored crucial evidence and potential testimony that could have helped Wolfe’s defense.

Wolfe, 30, has spent more than nine years on death row after he was convicted of hiring another member of his drug ring to kill the 21-year-old son of a Secret Service agent.

Wolfe owed money to Daniel Petrole Jr. for high-grade marijuana, and the case cast a spotlight on the growing drug trade among young upper-middle-class suburban men in Northern Virginia. Wolfe admitted his involvement in the drug ring but always maintained that he had nothing to do with Petrole’s death.

Jackson found that Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert and his assistant, Richard A. Conway, supported the use of false testimony from the admitted shooter to link Wolfe to the slaying; failed to disclose evidence that others in the drug ring might have wanted to kill Petrole; and orchestrated testimony of key witnesses, among other irregularities.

In a strongly worded 57-page opinion released Tuesday, Jackson called the government’s case against Wolfe “tenuous” and accused prosecutors of having “stifled a vigorous truth-seeking process in this criminal case.”

“Ebert and Conway’s actions served to deprive Wolfe of any substantive defense in a case where his life would rest on the jury’s verdict,” Jackson wrote. “The Court finds these actions not only unconstitutional in regards to due process, but abhorrent to the judicial process.”

The ruling was a harsh public upbraiding of Ebert, who is considered the dean of Virginia’s prosecutors and garnered national renown for his successful capital murder prosecution of Washington area sniper John Allen Muhammad. Ebert, the longest-serving prosecutor in the state, has put more defendants on death row than anyone in Virginia.

“It’s very upsetting,” said Ebert, who considers himself to be tough but fair. “It offends me to have anyone say that about me or my office.”

Conway said: “We respectfully but strongly disagree with the findings and conclusions of the court.”

It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a habeas corpus petition to result in an overturned conviction and sentence. Wolfe also was convicted of drug-related crimes and likely would not be freed because he is serving a three-decade sentence for those crimes. But he could be moved off death row.

Jackson sent the case back to the Virginia Supreme Court, and a spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) said state lawyers are reviewing the opinion. They could appeal to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered Jackson to hold evidentiary hearings last year.

Terri Steinberg, Wolfe’s mother, said that her family was “ecstatic” to learn of Jackson’s ruling. She said she spoke with her son several times Tuesday.

“It’s the best we could have hoped for,” Steinberg said, adding that she thinks that nearly a decade on death row should earn her son release from prison altogether. “Judge Jackson is the first judge to be presented all of the facts, and this was the decision he came back with. It’s huge.”

Alan R. Dial, one of the lead attorneys representing Wolfe, said the government should accept the ruling and end the case.

“We are gratified by the District Court’s thorough and thoughtful review of this case,” Dial said. “Obviously, we agree with Judge Jackson’s opinion, and we are hopeful the commonwealth will accept the court’s decision and move on.”

But Ebert said that he thinks the state will appeal the decision. He said that even if the ruling stands, he would likely go forward with a new trial against Wolfe.

“I see no reason not to try Justin Wolfe again,” Ebert said. “The evidence was clear and convincing to 12 people, and I see no reason it would not be clear and convincing to 12 people again.”

Wolfe was convicted in January 2002 after a trial that featured testimony from numerous people in their late teens and 20s who were involved in a drug ring that distributed millions of dollars of high-grade marijuana in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

Owen M. Barber IV confessed to shooting Petrole 10 times outside his Bristow townhouse in March 2001, and he testified that Wolfe hired him to do it as part of a scheme to erase tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Barber has recanted that testimony, taken back his recantation and ultimately told Jackson that he originally lied under oath during Wolfe’s trial to evade a death sentence himself. Barber was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 38 years.

Jackson ruled that Barber’s testimony last year — that he lied at trial — was most credible and that prosecutors did not provide enough evidence to defense attorneys to have allowed them to discredit his original version of events. According to Jackson, witnesses told prosecutors that Barber had a direct link to Petrole and owed him money and that others might have wanted to kill Petrole, too.

Wolfe testified at trial that he was part of the drug ring and lived lavishly from its profits — part of a defense strategy to show that it wouldn’t make sense for him to kill his supplier.

Jackson ruled that Wolfe was denied the opportunity to present alternative theories of the killing because he was kept in the dark about a parallel DEA investigation that discovered information about a brewing feud between Petrole and a middleman. Jackson wrote that Petrole had told his girlfriend that he was expecting trouble for cutting the middleman out of a recent lucrative drug deal with a connection in Washington state.

Jackson also found that a potential juror in the case was inappropriately excluded from the panel because he initially said he could not impose a death sentence. That juror later clarified that he might be able to. Virginia law requires jurors to follow court instructions that mandate them to at least consider the death sentence when someone is convicted of a capital crime.


AZ Corporation Commissioners concerned about legality of drug sniffing dog searching their offices. I wonder how come our government masters don't have the same concerns when they use their drug sniffing dogs to search grade and high school lockers.

Source

Drug-sniffing dog requested at Arizona Corporation Commission

by Ryan Randazzo - Jul. 13, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Arizona Corporation Commission Chairman Gary Pierce requested Tuesday that a Department of Public Safety drug-sniffing dog search the offices where regulators set utility policy.

The request came a week after a tiny amount of marijuana was found in a private restroom amid the offices used by the five elected regulators and their staff.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, it was unclear if the DPS would comply with the request and whose offices would be searched.

Pierce, a Republican, said he would allow a drug-sniffing dog into his office, but commission attorney Janice Alward advised him that such a search would be legal only in the private offices of those who offered their consent.

Fellow Republican Commissioners Bob Stump and Brenda Burns offered their consent to a search of their offices.

Democrats Paul Newman and Sandra Kennedy remained silent, even when Pierce asked for input from all four of his colleagues during a public meeting Tuesday. [Come on don't tell me only Democrats smoke pot! I know a few Republicans who smoke pot! Of course its "medical marijuana", not the illegal street marijuana :) ]

As the commission and Pierce's staff worked Tuesday to arrange for the dog's visit, it remained unclear whether it would visit Newman and Kennedy's offices and, if so, which staff members' offices would be searched, spokeswoman Rebecca Wilder said.

Neither the staff nor the elected officials at the commission face pre-employment drug screenings, she said.

Pierce said he felt the need to sweep the offices for drugs and personally submit himself to a drug test to prove to constituents that commission decisions are made sober. [Or is it because he would like to get some dirt on the Democrats who are members of the Corporation Commission?]

"I feel the need to prove to the best of my ability that my decisions at the commission are not made under the influence of marijuana and I am not responsible for its presence in the bathroom," Pierce said.

"Marijuana could have been placed in the bathroom by anyone who has access to the area. We may never know who placed it there."

He said he had not used the restroom where the drug was found in years, opting for the public restrooms, instead. [How convenient! Since pot was discovered in the room he denies using it.]

Pierce also suggested additional security cameras at the facility and locking some of the rooms after normal business hours. He added that he recently noticed a maintenance worker standing unsafely on the second-to-top rung of a ladder in the office.

DPS spokesman Bart Graves said the agency had been asked to bring in a dog from its canine unit to sweep the Corporation Commission offices at 1200 W. Washington St. for drugs. He said the department was deciding how to handle the request.

Random requests for drug searches typically are handled by municipal police departments, he said, but the situation is unique because it is in a state office.

The small amount of marijuana was found last week by an employee who was cleaning up the restroom and picked it up with $5.85 in loose change.

On Thursday, Pierce's aide was counting the change with the staff member when he recognized marijuana flakes with the coins.

Capitol Police were called in and confirmed it was marijuana, but they didn't pursue a case because they had no leads.

Pierce said the commissioners, in addition to deciding utility rates for large companies such as Arizona Public Service Co., also make decisions on some securities matters that could have "severe financial consequences on victims."

The commissioners regulate gas, electric, water and telephone utilities, as well as securities, and have some other duties, such as overseeing railroad crossings.

Pierce and Newman had a brief debate over the issue. Pierce placed a discussion of the marijuana on a public agenda for a staff meeting Tuesday, typically not well-attended by the public.

When Newman didn't show up for the 9 a.m. meeting, Pierce said he would postpone until all the commissioners were present.

The five commissioners took their seats for a scheduled 10 a.m. meeting to cover issues for several utilities across the state, and Pierce resumed the staff meeting, starting off with the marijuana issue in front of about 30 utility executives and members of the public.

"I just don't understand why that is appropriate," Newman interrupted.

"I think there is recourse to discuss this off the record."

Pierce insisted that the discussion continue.


Source

Arizonans getting medical marijuana cards, despite court tangle

by Cristina Rayas - Jul. 14, 2011 09:06 PM

Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON - More than 7,500 Arizonans had been approved for personal medical marijuana licenses as of Wednesday, despite a well-publicized court battle that has delayed implementation of other parts of the law.

The court fight between the state and federal governments has temporarily halted approval of marijuana dispensaries but not personal licenses, which had been granted to 7,570 individuals and 270 caregivers by this week. The Arizona Department of Health Services could not say how many of the caregivers, if any, also had patient licenses.

Only seven patient applications have been denied so far and 93 percent of applications for caregivers -- who help patients administer their medical marijuana -- have been approved.

Three-quarters of approved patients are men and about 60 percent are older than 41. But the department said two minors have also had applications approved. The vast majority of applicants cited chronic pain as the reason they needed medical marijuana.

Close to 80 percent of applicants have asked for approval to grow their own marijuana, which is allowed under Arizona law for anyone who does not live within 25 miles of a dispensary. Individuals approved to grow their own can legally maintain up to 12 plants in their homes and caregivers can grow for up to five patients at a time.

Those numbers have even some medical marijuana activists concerned about quality control and safety issues surrounding home-grown marijuana in residential areas.

"It's hard to ensure quality and standards on something that should be regulated," said Vincent Palazzotto, executive director of the Medical Marijuana Assistance Program of America. "It is about the safety of the patient at the end of this."

Palazzotto said he would not be comfortable with neighbors growing marijuana in his apartment building in the absence of dispensaries, since the lack of regulation would mean increased risks like fire or theft, for the value of the medicine or the equipment used to grow it.

State health officials declined to comment on the approvals, referring all questions to Department Director Will Humble's blog on the subject.

The state in May stopped processing dispensary applications after concerns were raised that state employees might face federal prosecution for assisting in marijuana distribution. The state sued the Justice Department on May 27 seeking clarification of the federal government's position before proceeding on the dispensary applications.

The Justice Department issued a memo in June that was supposed to give guidance to states with medical marijuana laws, but Gov. Jan Brewer said it offered "little more than continued confusion and doublespeak."

"If this memo was an attempt at clarity, it failed," she said.

The delay in dispensary decisions has sparked other lawsuits by groups trying to force the state to begin processing applications. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion last week asking a federal judge to dismiss the suit brought by Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.

"Arizona is in a very gray area because the law passed at an unfortuitous time when the federal government is unclear," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director for the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

If no dispensaries are approved in the state, every medical marijuana patient would theoretically be able to grow their own. Those who did not get that permission initially could pay $10 and apply to amend their license.

If a home-grown market sprouts up in Arizona, Dhar Mann is ready to cultivate it.

Mann, founder of the weGrow Store, said his business has heard from an "overwhelming amount of patients" in need of information and help building safe grow-rooms. His company opened its Phoenix store June 1, just days after the medical marijuana dispensary program was put on hold.

"A lack of support and training for medical marijuana growers leads to unsafe cultivation practices, causing electrical fires, floods, unsafe product and many other dangerous problems," Mann said in an email.

Officials in Peoria are prepared for dispensaries there should the state ever approve a license. The town has given zoning approval for the location of two dispensaries, if they can win state operating licenses.

So far, there has been no public outcry, said Chris Jacques, the Peoria city planning manager, adding that citizens were "a no-show" at the planning and zoning commission meeting on the issue.

"They are pretty well away from children and residential communities," Jacques said of the approved locations. He said the city put them in commercial districts for easier policing, and that only four or five sites in the city qualified for zoning.

Mann, meanwhile, is ready for any outcome of the "ongoing tug-of-war between state and federal government."

"If there are lower barriers to entry for cultivating medical marijuana it would open up a larger customer base, which would be great for business," said Mann. "Until that happens, two steps forward, one step backward."


300 acres of pot? That's almost a half square mile!!!!

Source

Army finds Mexico's biggest marijuana plantation

Jul. 14, 2011 05:00 PM

Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Mexican soldiers found the largest marijuana plantation ever detected in Mexico, a huge field covering almost 300 acres (120 hectares), the Defense Department said Thursday.

The plantation is four times larger than the previous record discovery by authorities at a ranch in northern Chihuahua state in 1984.

The pot plants sheltered under black screen-cloth in a huge square on the floor of the Baja California desert, more than 150 miles (250 kilometers) south of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

Army Gen. Alfonso Duarte said the screening, which is often used by regular farmers to protect crops from too much sun or heat, made it difficult to detect from the air what was growing underneath.

It was only when soldiers on the ground reached the isolated area Tuesday that they found thousands of pot plants as high as 2.5 yards (meters) tall. The average height of the plants was about 1.5 yards (meters). Duarte said they were not yet ready for harvest.

"We estimate that in this area, approximately 60 people were working. When they saw the military personnel, they fled," Duarte told reporters. A few were later reportedly detained at a nearby roadblock, but Duarte said no arrests were made at the scene.

He said traffickers could have harvested about 120 tons of marijuana from the plantation, worth about 1.8 billion pesos (about $160 million).

Video of the plantation showed a sophisticated system of piped-in irrigation to support the plants, which Duarte said was fed by two wells. The plantation also included some wooden outbuildings, presumably for use by people caring for the plants.

Troops will destroy the fields by burning them, Duarte said.

While it's unknown how much of Mexican drug cartels' income comes from marijuana, recent discoveries suggest it remains a large-scale trade.

Last October, Mexican authorities made their largest-ever seizure of marijuana packaged for sale, a record 148 tons (134 metric tons) found in a number of tractor trailers and houses in Tijuana. They appeared to make up a major distribution center traced directly to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, who has expanded the reach of his Sinaloa cartel along the U.S.-Mexico border since escaping from prison in 2001.

In November, U.S. and Mexican investigators found two long, sophisticated tunnels under the border between Baja California and California, along with more than 40 tons of marijuana in and around the tunnels. The tunnels ran about 2,000 feet from Mexico to San Diego and were equipped with lighting, ventilation and a rail system for drugs to be carried on a small cart.

U.S. officials say they believe the tunnels also were the work of the Sinaloa cartel.

While the Arellano Felix or Tijuana cartel long dominated the drug trade in Baja California, the cartel has been greatly weakened by government hits on its leadership, and authorities say there are signs that the Sinaloa cartel now also operates in the area.

Duarte said he did not know which group operated the plantation found Tuesday.


The article is almost identical to a previous article I posted here. It contains a few new pieces of information, which is why I reposted it.

Source

Thousands of Arizonans get medical marijuana cards, despite legal tangle

Personal medical marijuana cards have been approved for patients and caregivers across the state, giving thousands of Arizonans a license to own, use and in some cases grow their own marijuana.

Medical marijuana personal licenses, by county

Numbers as of July 13. Because Health Department regions overlap county borders, total does not equal 7,570.

Apache:22
Cochise: 86
Coconino, Navajo and Apache: 211
Gila, Pinal and Graham: 87
Graham: 31
Greenlee: 5
La Paz: 10
Maricopa: 4,920
Maricopa and Pinal: 1
Mohave and Coconino: 194
Navajo: 79
Pima: 809
Pinal: 443
Santa Cruz: 19
Yavapai: 547
Yuma: 45

Posted: Thursday, July 14, 2011 10:36 pm

Thousands of Arizonans get medical marijuana cards, despite legal tangle By CRISTINA RAYAS Cronkite News Service East Valley Tribune | 1 comment

WASHINGTON – More than 7,500 Arizonans had been approved for personal medical marijuana licenses as of Wednesday, despite a well-publicized court battle that has delayed implementation of other parts of the law.

The court fight between the state and federal governments has temporarily halted approval of marijuana dispensaries but not personal licenses, which had been granted to 7,570 individuals and 270 caregivers by this week. The Arizona Department of Health Services could not say how many of the caregivers, if any, also had patient licenses.

Only seven patient applications have been denied so far and 93 percent of applications for caregivers — who help patients administer their medical marijuana — have been approved.

Three-quarters of approved patients are men and about 60 percent are older than 41. But the department said two minors have also had applications approved. The vast majority of applicants cited chronic pain as the reason they needed medical marijuana.

Close to 80 percent of applicants have asked for approval to grow their own marijuana, which is allowed under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act for anyone who does not live within 25 miles of a dispensary. Individuals approved to grow their own can legally maintain up to 12 plants in their homes and caregivers can grow for up to five patients at a time.

Those numbers have even some medical marijuana activists concerned about quality control and safety issues surrounding home-grown marijuana in residential areas.

“It’s hard to ensure quality and standards on something that should be regulated,” said Vincent Palazzotto, executive director of the Medical Marijuana Assistance Program of America. “It is about the safety of the patient at the end of this.”

Palazzotto said he would not be comfortable with neighbors growing marijuana in his apartment building in the absence of dispensaries, since the lack of regulation would mean increased risks like fire or theft, for the value of the medicine or the equipment used to grow it.

State health officials declined to comment on the approvals, referring all questions to Department Director Will Humble’s blog on the subject.

The state in May stopped processing dispensary applications after concerns were raised that state employees might face federal prosecution for assisting in marijuana distribution. The state sued the Justice Department on May 27 seeking clarification of the federal government’s position before proceeding on the dispensary applications.

The Justice Department issued a memo in June that was supposed to give guidance to states with medical marijuana laws, but Gov. Jan Brewer said it offered “little more than continued confusion and doublespeak.”

“If this memo was an attempt at clarity, it failed,” she said.

The delay in dispensary decisions has sparked other lawsuits by groups trying to force the state to begin processing applications. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion last week asking a federal judge to dismiss the suit brought by Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.

“Arizona is in a very gray area because the law passed at an unfortuitous time when the federal government is unclear,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director for the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

If no dispensaries are approved in the state, every medical marijuana patient would theoretically be able to grow their own. Those who did not get that permission initially could pay $10 and apply to amend their license.

If a home-grown market sprouts up in Arizona, Dhar Mann is ready to cultivate it.

Mann, founder of the weGrow Store, said his business has heard from an “overwhelming amount of patients” in need of information and help building safe grow-rooms. His company opened its Phoenix store June 1, just days after the medical marijuana dispensary program was put on hold.

“A lack of support and training for medical marijuana growers leads to unsafe cultivation practices, causing electrical fires, floods, unsafe product and many other dangerous problems,” Mann said in an email.

Officials in Peoria are prepared for dispensaries there should the state ever approve a license. The town has given zoning approval for the location of two dispensaries, if they can win state operating licenses.

So far, there has been no public outcry, said Chris Jacques, the Peoria city planning manager, adding that citizens were “a no-show” at the planning and zoning commission meeting on the issue.

“They are pretty well away from children and residential communities,” Jacques said of the approved locations. He said the city put them in commercial districts for easier policing, and that only four or five sites in the city qualified for zoning.

Mann, meanwhile, is ready for any outcome of the “ongoing tug-of-war between state and federal government.”

“If there are lower barriers to entry for cultivating medical marijuana it would open up a larger customer base, which would be great for business,” said Mann. “Until that happens, two steps forward, one step backward.”


Source

Medical marijuana: A science-free zone at the White House [Blowback]

July 14, 2011 | 4:37 pm

Stephen Gutwillig and Bill Piper respond to The Times' July 9 article "U.S. decrees that marijuana has no accepted medical use." Gutwillig is the Drug Policy Alliance's California state director; Piper is the group's national affairs director.

President Obama came into office promising to reverse George W. Bush administration practices and elevate science over politics. He explicitly applied that principle to drug policy, an area long driven by ideology and prejudice. He quickly began to make good on the pledge by promoting three evidence-based drug policies: eliminating the ban on states using federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis; reforming the racially unjust crack-cocaine sentencing disparity that punished crack offenses more harshly than powder offenses; and vowing to end years of federal interference in the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.

But as The Times' July 9 article makes dismayingly clear, the White House is putting the "science-free zone" sign back up.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice issued medical marijuana guidelines to U.S. attorneys that are at best confusing and at worst a flip-flop on administration policy. The department’s much-heralded 2009 memo on the subject fulfilled candidate Obama’s campaign promise and established a principle that federal resources would not be wasted prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers who are in "clear and unambiguous compliance" with state medical marijuana laws. The department's update reiterates that the feds won't target individual medical marijuana patients but might bust large-scale, commercial medical marijuana providers. The memo unequivocally threatens federal prosecution of large-scale medical marijuana providers even if they are in compliance with state law, a significant step away from the principle at the heart of the 2009 policy. Disturbingly, the new "clarification" doesn't explain what the federal government considers to be the line between small and large-scale production -- likely an attempt to slow state-sponsored medical marijuana distribution programs while sowing anxiety and confusion for patients.

Most recently, the Drug Enforcement Administration rejected a formal citizen petition filed nine years ago to reschedule marijuana to make it available for medical use. When the DEA considered a similar petition during the Reagan administration, the agency's administrative law judge concluded, "Marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people." The Obama administration’s rejection of the petition claims marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States … lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision… [and] has a high potential for abuse." Lest one think the DEA's ruling is just law enforcement run amok, the White House released its 2011 National Drug Control Strategy earlier this week, calling marijuana "addictive and unsafe." That document devotes five pages attacking marijuana legalization and medical marijuana.

The administration's disconnect from science is shocking. A federally commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine more than a decade ago determined that nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety "all can be mitigated by marijuana." The esteemed medical journal the Lancet Neurology reports that marijuana's active components "inhibit pain in virtually every experimental pain paradigm." The National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, notes that marijuana may help with nausea, loss of appetite, pain and insomnia. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia, home to 90 million Americans, have adopted laws allowing the medical use of marijuana to treat AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and other ailments. The federal government itself cultivates and supplies marijuana to a handful of patients through its "compassionate-use investigative new drug program," which was established in 1978 but closed to new patients in 1992.

Marijuana use, like any drug, certainly carries risks. When it comes to policy, however, these risks should be weighed against the harms associated with current marijuana laws. It is notable that every comprehensive, objective government commission that has examined marijuana throughout the past 100 years has concluded that criminalization of adult marijuana use does more harm than marijuana use itself. Moreover, the risks associated with marijuana use are demonstrably far less than those associated with Oxycontin, methamphetamine, morphine and other drugs currently available for medical use. It defies not just science but common sense for the Obama administration to be so aggressively anti-marijuana, especially for medical use.

It is not too late to reverse this science-phobic trend. The Department of Justice's recent medical marijuana guidance is vague enough that the administration can clarify it intends to scrutinize only massive, rogue medical marijuana operations and that the DEA won't waste resources going after most providers in most states. The administration should clearly support responsible state and local regulations designed to make marijuana legally available to patients while enhancing public safety and health. If the federal government is unable to provide leadership in this area, then the very least it can do is get out of the way and allow local governments to determine the policies that best serve their interests. The president who promised change rooted in rational reflection shouldn't stand in the way of it.

-- Stephen Gutwillig and Bill Piper

Also check out this URL

whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/strategy/2011ndcs.html
on "2011 National Drug Control Strategy" which was issued by the White House


"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

H. L. Mencken
Source

U.S. border cities prove havens from Mexico's drug violence

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has warned of human skulls rolling through her state's deserts. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, says violence on the U.S. side of the border is "out of control." Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., has suggested sending a military brigade to protect Americans.

"Of course there is spillover violence along the border," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said during a recent congressional hearing. "It is not secure and it has never been more violent or dangerous than it is today. Anyone who lives down there will tell you that."

That's not actually the case, according to a USA TODAY analysis that draws upon more than a decade of detailed crime data reported by more than 1,600 local law enforcement agencies in four states, federal crime statistics and interviews along the border from California to Texas.

The analysis found that rates of violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border have been falling for years — even before the U.S. security buildup that has included thousands of law enforcement officers and expansion of a massive fence along the border.

U.S. border cities were statistically safer on average than other cities in their states. Those border cities, big and small, have maintained lower crime rates than the national average, which itself has been falling.

The appearance of an out-of-control border region, though, has had wide-ranging effects — stalling efforts to pass a national immigration reform law, fueling stringent anti-immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, and increasing the amount of federal tax dollars going to build more fencing and add security personnel along the southwestern border.

The perception of rising violence is so engrained that 83% of Americans said they believe the rate of violence along the southwestern border is higher than national rates, according to a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 999 adults.

The findings "are contrary to conventional speculation that the border is an out-of-control place," said Steven Messner, a criminologist and sociology professor at the University at Albany-SUNY, who reviewed USA TODAY's analysis.

Some observers say the numbers don't reflect realities on the ground and give cover to a federal government that is not adequately protecting hundreds of border communities.

"Don't tell me that the violence isn't spilling over," said Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriff Paul Babeu. "When you have American citizens who don't feel safe in their own home or free in their own country, this should be appalling to everyone."

Others read the numbers as proof the issue of "spillover violence" from Mexico is being exaggerated and used as an impetus for anti-immigration legislation and stepped-up federal and state funding to law enforcement agencies along the border.

"The data really spells out the irresponsibility of many of our elected leaders in their role in this immigration debate," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which backs a plan to legalize some of the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. "This is the ugliest version of the politics of fear that our country has seen for quite a while."

Mining the data

For this story, USA TODAY studied crime trends along the U.S.-Mexico border, using data reported to the FBI from city and county police agencies in the four border states — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

It found that violent crime rates were on average lower in cities within 30, 50 and 100 miles of the border — the distances used to fit various definitions of the "border region." Statisticians interviewed by USA TODAY confirmed the results.

Because the data reported by the local agencies does not include kidnapping, the newspaper also had the FBI review its kidnapping investigations along the border.

Among the major findings:

•The murder rate for cities within 50 miles of the border was lower in nearly every year from 1998 to 2009, compared with the respective state average. For example, California had its lowest murder rate during that time period in 2009, when 5.3 people were murdered per 100,000 residents. In cities within 50 miles of the border, the highest murder rate over that time period occurred in 2003, when 4.6 people were murdered per 100,000 residents.

•The robbery rate for cities within 50 miles of the border was lower each year compared with the state average. In Texas over that time span, the robbery rate ranged from 145 to 173 per 100,000 people in the state, while the robbery rate throughout Texas' border region never rose above 100 per 100,000.

•Kidnapping cases investigated by the FBI along the border are on the decline. The bureau's Southwestern offices identified 62 cartel-related kidnapping cases on U.S. soil that involved cartels or illegal immigrants in 2009. That fell to 25 in 2010 and 10 so far in 2011.

When presented with USA TODAY's findings, a majority of law enforcement officials throughout the border region said the numbers accurately represent what they see.

"Over the last five years, whether you take a look at violent crime or property crime, we've seen a 30% decrease," said Chula Vista (Calif.) Police Chief David Bejarano, whose city is 7 miles from Tijuana.

In Arizona, the epicenter of the immigration debate since the state passed a tough immigration enforcement law last year, some police officials are frustrated by the rhetoric.

"Everything looks really good, which is why it's so distressing and frustrating to read about these reports about crime going up everywhere along the border, when I know for a fact that the numbers don't support those allegations," Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor said.

And in Texas, El Paso has seen sharp declines in violent crimes despite being in the shadow of Ciudad Juárez, one of the main battlegrounds of Mexico's drug wars where 3,400 people were murdered last year.

"I'm not trying to paint a picture here that nothing ever happens, because it does," El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said. "But some have tried to suggest that El Paso is a violent city just because of its location. Unfortunately, some people's misperceptions have become their reality."

Unreported crime

Critics express doubts about the credibility of the FBI data, known as the Uniform Crime Reports, the government's only national repository for local crime data.

One concern is that many crimes go unreported, and the FBI reports don't include some of the money-making crimes used frequently by Mexican drug cartels: kidnapping and extortion.

"There's actually a private industry that negotiates ransoms with kidnappers," said San Diego Sheriff's Dept. Capt. David Myers, who heads the office's Border Crime Suppression Team. "There are actual people you can call who can negotiate that ransom for you if your loved ones have been kidnapped, without involving law enforcement."

But the available data indicate kidnappings are on the decline.

FBI Assistant Director Kevin Perkins, who heads the agency's criminal investigative division, said crime statistics reported by border communities and daily contacts with local officials do not show surges in such crimes as kidnapping and extortion.

"We don't see giant spikes in violence," Perkins said.

Others say crime reports don't reflect the measure of the crime along the border.

U.S. Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a Texas Republican, joined Miller and McCaul in proposing a bill that would require Homeland Security to track border-related crimes to better account for kidnappings, property-related crimes and simple acts of trespassing when farmers and ranchers encounter smugglers crossing their lands.

"There is spillover crime," Canseco said. "We need to be able to measure it."

Critics also point to high-profile killings in the border region as proof that the cartel violence is spilling over.

For example, on March 27, 2010, Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was murdered. The killing remains unsolved, but the case sparked outrage from advocates of increased immigration enforcement who suspect that the murder was committed by an illegal immigrant.

Echoes of the Wild West

Partly based on that case and others, the image of the U.S. side of the southwestern border as a lawless region reminiscent of the Wild West lives on.

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore visited Washington in November to brief members of Congress and found himself battling misconceptions.

"A lot of it was anecdotal information that was not based on fact," he said.

Angela Kelley, vice president of the Center for American Progress, a group pushing for immigration reform legislation that would allow some illegal immigrants a way to become citizens, said the perceived connection between immigrants and crime makes it impossible for Congress to reach a rational solution for the country's broken immigration system.

"There's this conflation that some like to make between crime rates and immigrants, and throw in there guns and drugs and violence generally," Kelley said. "It's very toxic and it impacts the debate in such a substantial way that you can't have a responsible debate about what does work."

The toll of extra security

Starting with the administration of President George W. Bush, money flowing to the southwestern border has substantially increased.

In 2000, there were fewer than 9,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents and officers patrolling the border. By 2010, that number was nearly 23,000. Homeland Security has increased funding for border security and interior enforcement by more than $5 billion since 2006, with most of that going to the southwestern border.

Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans from Arizona, have endorsed a 10-point plan that would deploy 3,000 National Guard troops, increase funding for local law enforcement agencies by $60 million and add more fencing.

"While our border with Mexico has always seen some level of illegal immigration, it has not seen the powerful threat of deadly violence that exists today due to Mexico's ongoing war against its drug cartels," McCain told a group of border sheriffs last year.

Others think the nation already has the appropriate level of security along the border and should shift some of the funding toward easing the gridlock that exists for those trying to get through the built-up border.

Crossing back and forth used to be simple, but the added layers of security and teams of Border Patrol officers inspecting vehicles and people coming into the country have caused hours-long delays for people legally entering the USA through the points of entry along the southwestern border, according to a report from the San Diego Association of Governments.

Those delays lead to slowed business production as freight trucks carrying goods to the U.S. are held up, and discourage many Mexicans from crossing into the USA to shop as they once did, according to the report. Put together, those delays cost California about $1 billion in revenue in 2007, the report found.

San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez said some of the money going to border security should instead be going to expanding the existing ports of entry and adding new ones to allow the state's already-hurting economy a chance to recover.

However, he said, the image of a lawless border makes it hard to even discuss the topic.

"When you've got the national rhetoric about illegal immigration, you can never get to a conversation about legal immigration," Alvarez said. "Effective border crossings and better regional economics don't sell newspapers."

Contributing: Gomez reported from San Diego; Gillum from Tucson; and Johnson from El Paso and Ciudad Ju?rez, Mexico.


Legalize drugs and these crimes will stop the next day. At $50 an ounce the street value of a pound of weed is $800. Legalize drugs and a kilo of weed won't cost any more then a head of lettuce.

Source

Police: Teens target man over medical marijuana card

by Matt Haldane - Jul. 15, 2011 09:07 PM

The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

Four teenagers attempted to rob a 71-year-old man Thursday after they learned he had applied for a medical marijuana card, Phoenix police said.

The victim was home when the teenagers, all males, forced entry into an apartment near Seventh Avenue and Camelback Road at about 5:30 p.m., police said. Someone who witnessed the break-in called 911. When officers responded, the suspects fled towards the light rail station, but all four were detained, police said.

Police said it became clear after interviews that the man was targeted once the suspects learned he had applied for the right to posses and grow marijuana.

Three of the teenagers are ages 16 and 17 years old; one is 18 years old. They were arrested on suspicion of burglary and criminal damage.


ADHS Director Will Humble continues to flush Prop 203 down the toilet.

Thank God, that's why the founders created the 2nd Amendment to let the People deal with government tyrants like Will Humble.

Source

'Marijuana clubs' test limits of embattled Arizona medical pot law

Posted: Friday, July 15, 2011 6:00 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

You could soon have a marijuana club down the block or around the corner.

An entrepreneur in the state’s nascent medical marijuana industry has found what he believes is a loophole in the law that restricts the distribution of the drug to just 125 specially licensed dispensaries. Allan Sobol already has opened his first club in north Phoenix and has plans with his business partners to expand elsewhere.

But the exception Sobol has found means more than the possibility of these clubs showing up in every strip mall. It also gets around the fact that health officials are refusing to even accept applications for those who want to operate one of those limited number of heavily regulated dispensaries.

The move has not gone unnoticed by state Health Director Will Humble. He is asking the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether these clubs are little more than thinly disguised places where marijuana is being sold illegally.

Sobol, however, said he is unconcerned. In fact, he told Capitol Media Services he would welcome a court challenge.

“We’ll win,’’ he said.

The voter-approved law allows anyone with a doctor’s recommendation to obtain a state-issued card allowing the purchase of up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-licensed dispensary. It also permits cardholders to grow their own if they are at least 25 miles from an outlet.

Humble, after consulting with Gov. Jan Brewer, decided in May not to even take applications for the dispensaries until a federal judge decides whether Arizona can implement its law despite federal statutes making possession, sale and distribution of the drug a felony. And of the 7,570 patient applications already approved, 6,067 have state permission to cultivate.

Where Sobol comes in relates to a little-known provision of the law that allows one certified patient or caregiver to give marijuana to another “if nothing of value is transferred in return.’’

That is the model of the Arizona Compassion Association, a nonprofit corporation that gives away samples that are donated by patients who have grown more than they need or have given the association the right to grow on their behalf.

The only thing is, you have to belong to Sobol’s 2811 Club — so named for the section of law dealing with giving away marijuana — to get access to the association and its free marijuana. And that requires paying a fee.

The cost to get into one of the largest, the 2811 Club in north Phoenix, is $75 each time, or $700 annually. And that has gotten Humble’s attention.

“They’re using a shell game to make it appear that nothing of value has exchanged,’’ he said.

Sobol said that’s not the case.

He said the fees pay for everything from the building security and staff to the classes on growing marijuana that are free for members.

Those fees, he said, also pay for testing and grading the marijuana.

But it is more complex than that.

Sobol acknowledged that his company does make donations to the nonprofit organization. And he said that organization, in turn, can legally reimburse growers for their costs, like the purchase of hydroponic equipment, though he said growers cannot charge for their time and labor.

“I’m not a lawyer,’’ Humble said. “But on its surface, to me it looks like it very well could be an illegal transaction.’’

So far, though, Phoenix police do not appear concerned. Sobol said several officers showed up to check the place out, hear his description of the operation and went away, apparently satisfied.

Humble said even if this concept of a marijuana club is not a crime, this kind of operation may be beyond what the medical marijuana law anticipated.

“In fact, something of value has been exchanged,’’ he said.

The samples are not large, running about three grams — slightly more than a tenth of an ounce.

But this isn’t your mother’s marijuana, with the psychoactive ingredient running into the 15-plus percent range, far above the 1 to 3 percent stuff available in the 1960s. So it doesn’t take much to get the same effect.

The resolution of the legal issues Humble is raising will determine whether marijuana clubs could be sprouting up all over the state.

Under the voter-approved measure, there is a limit of one dispensary for each 10 pharmacies in the state. That computes out to 125.

Humble’s agency has decided to spread those out among each of the health planning districts, which are roughly divided by population.

The law also permits cities and counties to enact “reasonable zoning restrictions’’ to limit where dispensaries can be located.

Several communities have limited these operations to specific industrial or commercial zones. And there also are requirements that keep them a certain distance from schools and churches.

But Sobol has his business classified as a school, based on the classes that are offered there. That escapes all the other zoning requirements, allowing clubs to operate anywhere a school can be established.

Sobol said even if Humble’s agency eventually starts licensing dispensaries, the clubs are likely to multiply because of the advantages to operating that way.

The concept of marijuana clubs is not the only way Sobol is testing the limits of the law.

Under the terms of the statute, anyone with permission to cultivate for self-use can grow up to 12 plants at any one time. But Sobol said someone with a medical marijuana card and the right to grow is entitled to assign that right to another patient or a designated state-licensed caregiver.

Caregivers, in turn, can provide for the needs of up to five patients. That means growing 60 plants at a time — 72 if the caregiver also is a patient.

Sobol said members of his club are told of their option to designate that right to the Arizona Compassion Club, which then finds qualified individuals to each grow 72 plants — marijuana that eventually finds its way onto the shelves in the sample bottles.


Source

Bid to put DUI jury trials before voters fails

Posted: Friday, July 15, 2011 6:00 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune

Arizonans will not get to vote whether they want to preserve the right of a jury trial for those charged with drunk driving.

Attorney Clifford Girard told Capitol Media Services on Friday he will be unable to gather the necessary 86,405 signatures to put the question on the 2012 ballot by Tuesday’s deadline. The failure means that a new law stripping defendants of that right will take effect as scheduled this coming Wednesday. Click here to find out more!

But Girard said that is not the end of the fight. He promised to challenge the new law, arguing the Legislature is ignoring constitutional rights.

Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, who ushered the change through the Legislature, said there is no reason for the time and expenses of a jury trial for what, in the broad scheme of criminal laws, is a relatively minor offense.

Girard, whose practice includes representing those accused of breaking the drunk-driving law, said he and Tucson attorney Stephen Barnard initially tried to use volunteers to gather the signatures to refer the issue to the ballot. Girard said he quickly learned that doesn’t work.

“You can’t do it unless you use paid circulators,’’ he said.

“So many volunteers meant well,’’ Girard explained. “But when it came down to it, they didn’t have the time.’’

A last-minute bid to get funding to hire circulators, he said, fell short.

Girard said, though, there is reason to believe that the measure could be overturned.

Generally speaking, Arizona courts have said jury trials are required only for any crime that carries a penalty of more than six months in jail. But the state’s high court has said a defendant is entitled to demand a trial by jury for any offense where trial by jury was considered a matter of right under common law when Arizona became a state.

In this case, he said, driving while intoxicated could be considered a version of the common law crime of breach of the peace. And Girard said anyone charged with that in territorial days was entitled to a jury trial.

Girard said he expects some sort of test case to take that question to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Nothing in the new law alters the right to a trial by jury for repeat offenders, or those charged with “extreme’’ DUI, those with a blood-alcohol content of at least 0.15. A person is generally presumed to be legally intoxicated in Arizona with a BAC of 0.08.

Jury trials also are entitled to those charged with “aggravated’’ DUI. That covers those driving drunk while a license is suspended, someone who is supposed to have an ignition interlock, or if there is someone younger than 15 in the vehicle.

The change is law is part of a far-reaching measure approved by lawmakers earlier this year dealing with drunken-driving suspects.

One reduces the amount of time that those convicted are permitted to drive only a vehicle equipped with an ignition interlock. That device prevents the vehicle from starting if a breath sample shows intoxication.

Another eliminates the requirement for anyone convicted of simple drunken driving to serve at least 24 consecutive hours in jail. The law as of Wednesday will read “one day,’’ which could mean simply being locked up overnight.

The referendum drive did not seek to overturn those provisions.


I guess any time a government nanny says "we need to do xxx to save the world", it means that any parts of the Constitution that apply to xxx are null and void. At least according to this appeals court.

Again the reason the Founders gave us the 2nd Amendment is so we can protect ourselves from tyrants like these Federal judges ,bureaucrats and cops.

Source

Court rejects challenge to airport body scanners

The need to detect hidden explosives outweighs privacy concerns, says the ruling. Body scanners at airports

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

July 16, 2011

Reporting from Washington— A U.S. appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge to the government's use of body-imaging scanners at the nation's airports, ruling that the need to detect hidden explosives outweighs the privacy rights of travelers.

The 3-0 decision announced Friday noted that passengers may avoid the scans by opting to undergo a pat-down by a screening agent.

But since the body scanners became standard last year, more than 98% of air travelers have chosen to step into a machine, raise their arms and pose for "advanced imaging," the Transportation Security Administration said.

Before last year, the standard screening devices at airports detected guns, knives, bombs or other metallic items. But the case of the so-called "underwear bomber" in December 2009 prompted the agency to adopt the body scanners as an additional primary screening device. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, boarded a Northwest Airlines flight in Amsterdam with plastic explosives in his underwear. He planned to detonate them before the plane landed in Detroit, but he was thwarted by other passengers and the crew.

The "advanced imaging technology" permits a screener to see nonmetallic images, including powders or liquids. But the electronic image of naked bodies set off alarms over privacy. Critics have called it a "virtual strip search."

Last year, the TSA installed 486 scanners at 78 airports, and it plans to add 500 machines this year.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington sued the TSA last year and called the full body scans "the most sweeping, most invasive and the most unaccountable suspicionless search of American travelers in history."

Its suit said the scans violate privacy rights, including the Constitution's protection against "unreasonable searches."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reviews challenges to federal regulations. Its judges upheld the use of the scanners Friday, but not before agreeing that travelers were giving up some privacy.

"Despite the precautions taken by the TSA, it is clear that producing an image of the unclothed passenger … intrudes on his or her personal privacy in a way that a magnetometer does not," said Judge Douglas Ginsburg.

But Ginsburg concluded that the close-up searches were are reasonable and justified because lives are at stake and because the scanners — or the optional pat-down — offer the best way to prevent nonmetallic explosives from being carried on to an airplane.

"That balance [between privacy and security] clearly favors the government here," he said.

The ruling was a not a total win for the government. The judges said the TSA had not given the public the required opportunity to comment on the screening program before it was put into effect. The court ruled that the agency must do so now, but the use of body scanners could continue "without interruption," Ginsburg wrote.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was pleased the court made it clear that "travelers have a legal right to opt out of the body-scanner search."

TSA officials said they were reviewing the ruling. They also said they were testing software that would produce a "generic outline" of a human figure, but not the more revealing "passenger-specific image."

david.savage@latimes.com


If good, safe, time tested recreational drugs like cocaine and marijuana were legal people wouldn't be taking legal drugs like bath salts and spice to get high.

I don't know if the dangers of bath salts and spice are real or if the newspapers are exaggerating the dangers to sell newspapers, but the problem isn't the drugs, the problem is the laws against drugs.

Legalized drugs and people will stop taking these potentially harmful drugs like bath salts and spice and switch back to the time tested drugs like marijuana and cocaine.

Marijuana has never cause any deaths in the 1,000s of years it has been used (other then deaths caused by cops killing suspected marijuana smokers, which is a result of the drug laws, not the marijuana).

While cocaine can cause people to die from overdoses the health problems caused by cocaine use seem mild compared to the health problems caused by bath salts.

You can say the same thing about the health problems caused by kids sniffing glue or paint. The only reason kids take these dangerous but legal drugs is because they can't legally buy the much safer but illegal drugs like alcohol or marijuana.

End the "drug war" and you will also end the problems of using harmful drugs like paint and glue to get high.

I remembers when I found out my brother was sniffing glue in high school to get high. I ordered him to stop sniffing glue and switch to a safer drug like marijuana or booze. Thank God he took my advice and started smoking pot instead of sniffing glue.

Source

An Alarming New Stimulant, Legal in Many States

By ABBY GOODNOUGH and KATIE ZEZIMA

Published: July 16, 2011

Dr. Jeffrey J. Narmi could not believe what he was seeing this spring in the emergency room at Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa.: people arriving so agitated, violent and psychotic that a small army of medical workers was needed to hold them down.

They had taken new stimulant drugs that people are calling “bath salts,” and sometimes even large doses of sedatives failed to quiet them.

“There were some who were admitted overnight for treatment and subsequently admitted to the psych floor upstairs,” Dr. Narmi said. “These people were completely disconnected from reality and in a very bad place.”

Similar reports are emerging from hospitals around the country, as doctors scramble to figure out the best treatment for people high on bath salts. The drugs started turning up regularly in the United States last year and have proliferated in recent months, alarming doctors, who say they have unusually dangerous and long-lasting effects.

Though they come in powder and crystal form like traditional bath salts — hence their name — they differ in one crucial way: they are used as recreational drugs. People typically snort, inject or smoke them.

Poison control centers around the country received 3,470 calls about bath salts from January through June, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, up from 303 in all of 2010.

“Some of these folks aren’t right for a long time,” said Karen E. Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center. “If you gave me a list of drugs that I wouldn’t want to touch, this would be at the top.”

At least 28 states have banned bath salts, which are typically sold for $25 to $50 per 50-milligram packet at convenience stores and head shops under names like Aura, Ivory Wave, Loco-Motion and Vanilla Sky. Most of the bans are in the South and the Midwest, where the drugs have grown quickly in popularity. But states like Maine, New Jersey and New York have also outlawed them after seeing evidence that their use was spreading.

The cases are jarring and similar to those involving PCP in the 1970s. Some of the recent incidents include a man in Indiana who climbed a roadside flagpole and jumped into traffic, a man in Pennsylvania who broke into a monastery and stabbed a priest, and a woman in West Virginia who scratched herself “to pieces” over several days because she thought there was something under her skin.

“She looked like she had been dragged through a briar bush for several miles,” said Dr. Owen M. Lander, an emergency room doctor at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va.

Bath salts contain manmade chemicals like mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV, also known as substituted cathinones. Both drugs are related to khat, an organic stimulant found in Arab and East African countries that is illegal in the United States.

They are similar to so-called synthetic marijuana, which has also caused a surge in medical emergencies and been banned in a number of states. In March, the Drug Enforcement Administration used emergency powers to temporarily ban five chemicals used in synthetic marijuana, which is sold in the same types of shops as bath salts.

Shortly afterward, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, asked the agency to enact a similar ban on the chemicals in bath salts. It has not done so, although Gary Boggs, a special agent at D.E.A. headquarters in Washington, said the agency had started looking into whether to make MDPV and mephedrone controlled Schedule I drugs like heroin and ecstasy.

Mr. Casey said in a recent interview that he was frustrated by the lack of a temporary ban. “There has to be some authority that is not being exercised,” he said. “I’m not fully convinced they can’t take action in a way that’s commensurate with the action taken at the state level.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced federal legislation in February to classify bath salts as controlled Schedule I substances, but it remains in committee. Meanwhile, the drugs remain widely available on the Internet, and experts say the state bans can be thwarted by chemists who need change only one molecule in salts to make them legal again.

And while some states with bans have seen fewer episodes involving bath salts, others where they remain fully legal, like Arizona, are starting to see a surge of cases.

Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency room doctor at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, said he had to administer general anesthesia in recent weeks to bath salt users so agitated that they did not respond to large doses of sedatives.

Dr. Justin Strittmatter, an emergency room doctor at the Gulf Coast Medical Center in Panama City, Fla., said he had treated one man whose temperature had shot up to 107.5 degrees after snorting bath salts. “You could fry an egg on his forehead,” Dr. Strittmatter said.

Other doctors described dangerously elevated blood pressure and heart rates and people so agitated that their muscles started to break down, releasing chemicals that led to kidney failure.

Mark Ryan, the director of the Louisiana Poison Center, said some doctors had turned to powerful antipsychotics to calm users after sedatives failed. “If you take the worst attributes of meth, coke, PCP, LSD and ecstasy and put them together,” he said, “that’s what we’re seeing sometimes.”

Dr. Ryan added, “Some people who used it back in November or December, their family members say they’re still experiencing noticeable paranoid tendencies that they did not have prior.”

Before hitting this country, bath salts swept Britain, which banned them in April 2010. Experts say much of the supply is coming from China and India, where chemical manufacturers have less government oversight.

They are labeled “not for human consumption,” which helps them skirt the federal Analog Act, under which any substance “substantially similar” to a banned drug is deemed illegal if it is intended for consumption.

Last month, the drug agency made its first arrests involving bath salts under the Analog Act through a special task force in New York. Undercover agents bought bath salts from stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where clerks discussed how to ingest them and boasted that they would not show up on a drug test.

“We were sending out a message that if you’re going to sell these bath salts, it’s a violation and we will be looking at you,” said John P. Gilbride, special agent in charge of the New York field division of the D.E.A.

The authorities in Alton, Ill., are looking at the Analog Act as they prepare to file criminal charges in the death of a woman who overdosed on bath salts bought at a liquor store in April.

“We think we can prove that these folks were selling it across the counter for the purposes of humans getting high,” said Chief David Hayes of the Alton police.

Chief Hayes and other law enforcement officials said they had been shocked by how quickly bath salts turned into a major problem. “I have never seen a drug that took off as fast as this one,” Chief Hayes said. Others said some people on the drugs could not be subdued with pepper spray or even Tasers.

Chief Joseph H. Murton of the Pottsville police said the number of bath salt cases had dropped significantly since the city banned the drugs last month. But before the ban, he said, the episodes were overwhelming the police and two local hospitals.

“We had two instances in particular where they were acting out in a very violent manner and they were Tasered and it had no effect,” he said. “One was only a small female, but it took four officers to hold her down, along with two orderlies. That’s how out of control she was.”


These poor people need to try medical marijuana! It works wonders on those migraine headaches.

Source

Valley sees increase in migraine reports

Monsoon pressure changes often cause severe headaches

by Maria Polletta - Jul. 18, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

When Rob Perez started "seeing stars" last week, he thought his contact lenses were the problem.

But taking out his contacts didn't stop the dizziness. After the throbbing in his head couldn't be relieved by ibuprofen, ice or a nap, the 38-year-old knew this headache wasn't typical.

"It was on-and-off for more than eight hours," he said. "I didn't go in to work. It was pretty gruesome."

Perez believes the head pain that left him bedridden Tuesday night was a migraine, a painful yet fairly common type of headache that can cause nausea, vomiting, light-headedness, and light and sound sensitivity, among other issues.

Some emergency-room and primary-care doctors in the Valley have seen an uptick in patients reporting migraines and severe headaches in recent weeks, according to representatives for St. Luke's Medical Center, Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center and Phoenix Baptist Hospital.

Banner neurologist Todd Levine attributes the increase in part to changes in barometric pressure, often spurred by monsoon storms like the one that hit the Valley early last Monday.

"With the monsoon season causing weather patterns to change daily - or, in some cases, hourly - it's really that fluctuation that can cause the headaches," Levine said.

Along with stress and hormonal changes, shifts in weather patterns are one of the three most common migraine triggers, he said.

"July and August are some of the worst times for our migraine sufferers," said Christine Harter, a migraine specialist who practices in Phoenix.

With intermittent storms and "extreme temperatures going up to 118 . . . one thing leads to another," she said.

Dehydration and changes in diet, altitude and sleep patterns also can prompt migraines.

Though over-the-counter painkillers such as Aleve and Excedrin may work for milder headaches, preventative medications are often necessary once migraines become a pattern, Harter said.

Specialists urge migraine and headache sufferers not to wait too long for treatment.

"People will start to feel it coming on, and they'll try to ignore it and hope it goes away," Levine said. "Then, it gets very severe. Once you start to feel it develop, try and address that early."


Source

Medical-marijuana clubs pop up as Arizona law is debated

by Emily Holden - Jul. 18, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Medical-marijuana dispensaries can't yet operate in Arizona pending a judge's ruling on Proposition 203. But that doesn't necessarily keep cardholders from finding pot.

At least a handful of clubs that provide patients with medical marijuana have opened up in the Valley to fill that void.

Because the new state law allows most medical-marijuana cardholders to grow their own pot and share it with each other - as long as there are no dispensaries near - these clubs have developed as a go-between.

Joe Yuhas, a spokesman for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Association, which led the campaign for Prop. 203, said the law was meant to create a "regulated industry" of dispensaries. Instead, Yuhas said, the pot clubs are an unintended consequence of the state and federal dispute over whether Arizona's new law conflicts with federal statutes banning marijuana.

"We're going to see more and more developments like this," Yuhas said.

The development of marijuana clubs has raised questions about their legality in two areas: the payment for the product and local zoning of the clubs.

The state Department of Health Services said it has "serious concerns about the legality of so-called cannabis clubs." Health officials have asked the Attorney General's Office to determine if the clubs are legal.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery agreed the clubs are an "untested area" but said he will prosecute anyone trying to operate outside the narrow provisions of the law.

However, club owners said they're operating legally.

Dispensaries stalled

In November, voters approved Prop. 203, which legalized medical-marijuana use for people with certain debilitating conditions. The law allowed patients - as long as they don't live within 25 miles of a dispensary - and caregivers to grow marijuana.

The state was expected to issue up to 126 dispensary permits by August.

But U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, following the lead of other federal prosecutors, warned prospective pot growers and sellers that they could be prosecuted under federal drug-trafficking laws.

In response to the warning, Gov. Jan Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne filed a lawsuit in late May asking a federal judge to determine whether compliance with the law would leave state employees, dispensary owners and patients vulnerable to prosecution for violating federal drug statutes.

The ADHS then halted its dispensary-licensing process.

Meanwhile, the state has licensed 5,697 patients with medical-marijuana cards to grow their own.

The department also has approved 270 caregivers to grow marijuana for their patients.

Under the law, medical-marijuana patients can grow up to 12 plants of their own. Patients and caregivers can share it with other cardholders "if nothing of value is transferred in return."

Patients can pay caregivers for the costs and materials they use to grow pot but not for their work.

Inside the clubs

Caregivers can grow up to 72 plants total for themselves and five others. Some have given excess marijuana to these new clubs.

Since the clubs aren't regulated, there is no way to say for sure how many operate in the Valley.

But at least seven advertise and operate openly. Others are underground and recruit patients by word of mouth.

Owners of the 2811 Club in Phoenix have heavily promoted their club. Founder Al Sobol said hundreds of people have visited.

Tucked away in a shopping center off Bell Road, members of the 2811 Club lounge on plush-leather couches and gather around small coffee tables to read about strains of marijuana. Smoking is not allowed in the club.

In a back room, an instructor demonstrates how to make Italian salad dressing with pot. And, at a glass display counter, a volunteer hands out 3-gram samples of marijuana to cardholders.

The club scans the cards and verifies the patients' identity with a thumb-print machine. An armed security guard stands by.

Sobol said that most members are older than 50 and that only a few are in their 20s. Members can consult with volunteers to find the best sample for insomnia or chronic pain.

Mike Miller said he spends his days at the 2811 Club so he can be around people who understand his health problems.

Miller, a diabetic, had to have a leg amputated five years ago after a wound in his foot never healed. He said he has been on painkillers and other medications since then. Miller said he hardly left his house until he got his medical-marijuana card and found the 2811 Club.

"I'm hoping that the only time I would ever need a pain pill again is aspirin," Miller said. Donating for pot

There is no set payment arrangement for the various clubs.

The 2811 Club charges members an initial application fee of $25 and a $75 entry fee each visit to attend classes and get a free sample.

The club offers marijuana through the Arizona Compassion Association, a co-op of patients and legal caregivers that has a display in the club. Sobol said the 2811 Club makes donations to the growers to help with expenses of growing marijuana.

Sobol said as long as patients aren't directly paying for pot, the 2811 Club and the Arizona Compassion Association aren't acting as dispensaries.

"We don't sell marijuana here," Sobol said, adding that clubs that do sell are "absolutely wrong" in their interpretation of Prop. 203.

Yoki A Má, another club in Mesa, has a similar payment arrangement, charging a $65 visit fee and giving members an eighth of an ounce of pot.

Club President Craig Scherf also said he is confident that his club is operating within the confines of the law.

But state and local authorities have not yet determined whether this arrangement constitutes transferring something of value.

Montgomery, the county attorney, said he hasn't received any cases about medical-marijuana clubs, but he wouldn't be surprised to get some soon. He said he can't determine whether they're all illegal because each case is unique.

"It sounds to me like someone is asking for something of value in order to participate," Montgomery said. "The closer you get to asking someone to provide money to receive marijuana sounds like a salient violation of the statute."

Ryan Hurley, an attorney who represents potential dispensary owners for Rose Law Group, said he would advise the potential medical-marijuana dispensary owners he represents against opening clubs.

"At best, it's a stretch under the law," Hurley said. "I think it's very, very risky." Local zoning

Aside from the legality of payment issues, there are also some questions about where medical-marijuana clubs can operate.

Because clubs aren't dispensaries, zoning regulations don't apply to them.

Ken Strobeck, executive director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, worked with localities earlier this year to set up dispensary-zoning laws. Strobeck said he hasn't heard of anyone trying to zone a medical-marijuana club.

Scherf said he is trying to open a second Yoki A Má club in Tempe.

Tempe Planning Manager Lisa Collins said she isn't sure how local law enforcement would react to a medical-marijuana club, but the club would not need special approval to open.

She said a club might need a sales-tax license to operate as a retail business, but it wouldn't need one if it was only providing a service for a fee.

A club would need to get construction plans approved, but it probably wouldn't need to disclose the nature of its business, she said.

Because clubs aren't regulated like dispensaries, they're easier to open and run.

Sobol said he initially meant for the 2811 Club to someday become a dispensary, but he has changed his mind, in part, because there are no zoning laws about clubs.

Still, Scherf said clubs are setting up far from residential areas, schools, churches and parks to avoid trouble. His club in Mesa is surrounded by industrial businesses. Enforcing the laws

Because there's so much ambiguity, Phoenix police said it's still too premature to determine whether the clubs are operating legally.

Sgt. Steve Martos, a police spokesman, said his agency hasn't made any arrests relating to medical-marijuana clubs.

"We are looking into whether or not they are covered by the new law," Martos said.

Gilbert police have arrested several cardholders for possession but said those arrests involved other crimes.

Robbie Sherwood, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for Arizona, recently reiterated his agency's stance on medical marijuana: Nobody is safe from prosecution.


Nationally, there are 14,000 to 15,000 school resource officers - or in English, cops that patrol grade and high school campuses. Think of it as a jobs program for cops. Does a 2nd grade teacher really need a police officer to help her deal with an unruly 8 year old child?

Source

Supreme Court ruling, rising police presence in schools spur Miranda questions

By Donna St. George, Published: July 17

A few weeks before summer break, an eighth-grader in Fairfax County was pulled from his civics class and led into an office. An assistant principal told him that classmates had reported hearing him say he’d smoked marijuana with five other boys — days earlier, after school hours, off campus.

A uniformed police officer joined the interview.

The boy did not want to talk, his mother, Dawn Daugherty, later said, but did so after the officer told him to confess or risk “doing time.” Fairfax school officials said there was no such threat. They said the boy was told what other students had said and about the importance of telling the truth.

Daugherty did not learn of the interrogation until afterward. “I was really shocked by the whole thing,” she said.

What happened that June day at Langston Hughes Middle School led to no criminal charges, only a disciplinary action for breaking the school system’s code of conduct. But the episode illustrates some of the questions raised as the police presence has grown in public schools over the past two decades: When should students be advised they have a right to remain silent? And when should parents be notified?

Wading into this fray, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that police must factor the age of young suspects they intend to question into their decisions about giving Miranda warnings. The split decision emphasized that children are more vulnerable to pressure than adults and stressed using common sense. But it did not give specific guidelines, leaving much open to interpretation.

The ruling came in a case, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, that focused on a seventh-grader interviewed by police and school officials about a residential break-in. The 13-year-old was not given a chance to phone home before he was taken to a closed-door school conference room for questioning or told at the outset that he was free to leave. There were no Miranda warnings about his right not to talk and to have a lawyer.

In the weeks since the ruling, lawyers, school leaders and advocates have begun to weigh how the ruling could reshape student questioning. Many experts expect more Miranda-style warnings from police — and more caution from educators.

The ruling also could prompt more police in schools to call parents before questioning, said lawyer Ken Schmetterer, who wrote a brief on the case for the American Bar Association. “It’s a very significant decision for kids,” he said, noting that the court recognized that children are more easily coerced and impulsive than adults, less likely to foresee the implications of their actions and more likely to make false confessions.

But some predict complications.

“I’m afraid it signals a sea change in what was, if not a perfect rule, an easy-to-understand rule,” said Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh. Many in law enforcement, he said, will now wonder: “Should we read every 13-year-old his rights?”

Only sworn police are required to give Miranda warnings — and only if a suspect is in police custody, which is defined as when a “reasonable person” would not feel free to leave police questioning. Under the ruling, age is now part of that custody determination.

Morrogh said he would not be surprised to see more Miranda warnings in Fairfax schools but is recommending a case-by-case approach. In practice, he said, it may be so confusing that he will need a “Bat phone” to dispense advice.

Another possible effect, he said, is more “separation” between questioning by educators and questioning by police. Educators and other staff members are not required to give Miranda warnings.

“It’s a bit of a knuckleball that the high court has thrown at us,” he said.

In Alexandria, Commonwealth’s Attorney S. Randolph Sengel said he has started briefing police. Especially in circumstances that resemble the court case, with school-based questioning and no parental notification, Sengel has advised: “Be careful, and give us a call first.”

Experts said the ruling points to the complex role of police on campus.

Sometimes officers visit schools to question students. But often schools have their own police force or use sworn police as “school resource officers” who enforce laws, mentor students and teach safety. Fairfax has 51 such officers, including the one who was at Hughes Middle.

Resource officers

Nationally, there are 14,000 to 15,000 school resource officers — a number that has doubled since the late 1990s, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

When officers encounter a potential Miranda situation, much will depend on how the questioning unfolds, said Paul Holland, a Seattle University law professor. In an interview behind a closed door, he said, “they’d be safer to issue Miranda warnings.” A casual exchange in a hallway, he said, might not require the same precaution.

Historically, courts have given educators leeway to ensure safe and orderly schools. The assumption, said Perry Zirkel, an education law professor at Lehigh University, has been that school officials are acting in children’s best interests.

But the rising number of police officers and security staff members in schools, especially after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, has led to questions about juvenile rights.

Some suggest that new district policies or state laws will be proposed as a result of the court ruling.

And in some areas, police say, Miranda warnings in schools are nothing new.

In Charlottesville, police Lt. Ronnie Roberts said school resource officers have advised students of Miranda rights during interrogations for as long as he can recall. “Some people keep talking,” Roberts said, “and some don’t.”

The irony is that many children don’t understand the language or meaning of the warnings, said Tamar R. Birckhead, who teaches at the University of North Carolina law school. “In most cases, when Miranda warnings are given, juveniles talk anyway,” she said.

In the Fairfax episode, county schools spokesman Paul Regnier said, the ruling was not germane because the case was disciplinary, not criminal. The student was suspended for two days for “behavior that disrupted the school environment.”

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the ruling applies if police are involved in a case with criminal possibilities. “What if the student had revealed he had a significant amount of drugs or had sold drugs?” he asked.

Supreme Court ruling, rising police presence in schools spur Miranda questions

Officials, parents respond

Last month, the Fairfax County School Board revamped discipline policies after more than four months of debate.

One of the proposals that failed would have required that parents be notified in advance of questioning for serious offenses when no urgent safety issues exist. Another would have required Miranda-like warnings in certain circumstances.

In the wake of the court ruling, some board members want to revive the discussion. But member Stuart D. Gibson (Hunter Mill) predicted “very minimal effect.” School resource officers are focused on campus safety, not prosecution, he said.

Helen Russell, whose daughter, Hayley, then 13, was suspended from a Fairfax school last year for more than seven weeks for stowing prescription acne pills in her locker, said Miranda rights would have been helpful.

The teen was questioned by four adults, including a school resource officer, then taken to a room to write a statement, her family said. Her mother was called afterward.

“I think it would have made Hayley a little less terrified and in control knowing she had the right to remain silent and could have had an advocate with her through the process,” Russell said.

In Reston, Dawn Daugherty was so upset about the way her son had been questioned at Hughes Middle — and in her view, intimidated into a confession — that she wrote four members of the School Board.

Daugherty said her son recounted the events in detail: Being interviewed by an assistant principal and a school resource officer who carried a gun. Taken to another room to write a statement. Kept there an hour. Told his statement was too short.

She was called after her son wrote the statement.

“If he could have, I think he would have said he didn’t want to say anything without me there,” Daugherty said.

When asked about Daugherty’s account, Fairfax officials expressed concern and investigated her allegations. They provided The Washington Post with a detailed written response from Margaret Barnes, the assistant principal in the episode.

Fairfax police said they received no complaint in the case.

Barnes wrote that by the time she interviewed Daugherty’s son, two or three of the other boys accused had said he was part of the incident.

Daugherty’s son “was never ordered to admit anything,” Barnes wrote. “There were no lies, intimidations, or threats.” The school resource officer “never said anything about making things difficult” or “jail time,” she wrote.

Barnes wrote that she brought the officer into the room to have another adult present while she searched the boy. “We talked to [him] about how serious this was,” she wrote.

Fairfax officials said that Barnes was the primary interviewer and that she could not recall whether the school resource officer asked questions.

Barnes said she never told the boy that his written statement was too short: “I asked him if he was sure that was all he wanted to write.”

The off-campus incident was school-related, Barnes wrote, because six students had a conversation that “suggested they were going to be high or bring marijuana to school. It would be in­cred­ibly irresponsible of us as school officials not to respond to an incident of this nature.”

The day it happened, Daugherty said, her son was “terrified” and reminded of a class essay he wrote in April. His topic was the Fifth Amendment, which he argued was very important “because without it, people would be sending themselves to jail in cases for which they had not meant to do so.”


Arizona isn't the only state where government tyrants are trying to flush the medical marijuana laws down the toilet!!!

Source

Marijuana for Patients Remains Off-Limits

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: July 17, 2011

Irvina Booker makes a most unlikely criminal. She lives in constant pain, disabled by multiple sclerosis and arthritis, a grandmother whose limited mobility depends on her walker, her daughter and marijuana.

Irvina Booker at her home in Englewood, N.J. She expressed frustration about the lack of access to medical marijuana.

“I never smoked it before I got sick, and I don’t smoke it for fun,” said Ms. Booker, 59, who lives in Englewood, N.J. She would not divulge how she obtains her marijuana, but said, “I don’t want to be sneaking around, afraid someone is going to get arrested getting it for me.”

Like many people who contend that marijuana eases pain and appetite loss from serious diseases, Ms. Booker cheered in January 2010, when New Jersey legalized its use in cases like hers. But a year and a half later, there is still no state-sanctioned marijuana available for patients, and none being grown, and there is no sign of when there might be.

In the last few months, officials in New Jersey, as well as several other states, have said that mixed signals from the Obama administration have left them unsure whether their medical marijuana programs could draw federal prosecution of the people involved, including state employees.

A Justice Department memorandum issued late last month left unanswered questions, and Gov. Chris Christie has not said how he will proceed. But medical marijuana advocates say that in New Jersey, at least, the state law is stringent enough not to run afoul of federal policy, and that the governor’s true goal has been to block the program.

“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out,” said State Senator Nicholas P. Scutari, a Democrat. “He’s used every tactic he can to delay and deny.”

The governor, a Republican, and his aides have insisted that every delay has been a genuine attempt to make the program work properly.

“In light of the Obama administration’s memorandum, the governor’s office is performing its due diligence to ensure implementation of the program is not in conflict with federal law and does not put state employees charged with directing the program at risk,” Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said.

On Thursday, Mr. Scutari — who is a local prosecutor — and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, the law’s primary sponsors, met with the governor’s legal advisers.

“They told us they don’t have their minds made up; that they want our input,” Mr. Scutari said.

But for the first time, he said, “the possibility of just scrapping the program” came up, though only in passing. Aides to the governor denied that there was any discussion of abandoning the program.

The state has named six nonprofit organizations to grow and dispense marijuana. The would-be growers say that if they were given the go-ahead, it would take at least four months to get up and running.

“A lot of people ask when, how, if we’re really going to open, and we can’t tell them anything,” said Ida Umanskaya, a director of Greenleaf Compassion Center, which plans to operate in Montclair.

Another operator, Compassionate Care Centers of America Foundation, which would be based in New Brunswick, “remains cautiously hopeful,” said Raj Mukherji, a spokesman for the group.

Though marijuana remains illegal under federal law, in 2009 David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general at the time, sent a memo to federal prosecutors across the country saying that they should not focus “on individuals who are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

But the memo came with caveats, stressing the Justice Department’s commitment to prosecute commercial marijuana growers and traffickers who feed the illegal market but hide behind “claims of compliance with state or local law.”

In March of this year, federal agents raided marijuana dispensaries in Montana, and some states wondered about the extent of Justice Department tolerance. Including New Jersey, 16 states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing medical use of marijuana.

Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, vetoed proposed changes to the state’s marijuana program, which she said could expose state workers to prosecution. Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, an independent, suspended plans to license marijuana dispensaries. Arizona sued the federal government.

On June 29, Deputy Attorney General James Cole sent a memo to prosecutors, citing “an increase in the scope of commercial cultivation, sale, distribution and use of marijuana for purported medical purposes.” The 2009 memo, he wrote, was never meant to shield operations with “revenue projections of millions of dollars based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants.” He said nothing about the legal status of state employees.

Mr. Christie has not said whether Mr. Cole’s memo allayed his concerns. Jessica Smith, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to discuss New Jersey, saying, “We do not speculate on what action we might or might not take in any situation.”

Medical marijuana advocates note that as a former federal prosecutor himself, Mr. Christie is well aware of that policy, and that the memo suggests that New Jersey would be in the clear because its program would involve relatively small, nonprofit operations.

“To us the Justice Department memo was good news for New Jersey,” said Meagan Glaser, policy coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance.

New Jersey’s law was designed to be the strictest in the country, in reaction to programs in California and Colorado that were widely seen as too expansive, and it specified that only six centers would be licensed. It limited marijuana to use for a specific list of severe conditions like cancer, H.I.V. and Lou Gehrig’s disease, or when the patient has less than a year to live.

The Legislature passed the bill despite opposition by Mr. Christie, then the governor-elect. Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed it into law on his last day as governor.

Mr. Christie sought to designate Rutgers University as the sole grower and hospitals as the sole dispensers, but the university and the hospitals declined to take part. The governor then asked the Legislature to postpone the start of the program, and it did.

Late last year, the Christie administration proposed regulations limiting the program further. Some were later dropped, but the rules that were adopted limit the strength of the marijuana, prohibit home delivery, ban edible forms of the drug and require patients to show that they have exhausted conventional treatments.

The wait has been frustrating to patients like Sandy Fiola, of Asbury Park, who has multiple sclerosis and sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease. She said no one questioned her right to take far more dangerous painkillers, like oxycodone, morphine and fentanyl.

“Using marijuana lets me cut way back on steroids and morphine, it works better, and I’m more lucid,” Ms. Fiola, 54, said. “God, I hope they do this thing. It’s been so long already.”


Does burning marijuana fields cause global warming? I am skeptical on the "global warming" issue, but if I can use it as a lame excuse to stop the war on drugs I will go alone with it for a little while.

Also it sounds like a huge waste of money flying around all these pigs who are just searching for marijuana out in the boondocks.

Last the articles says the cops found guns at this site. I am sure if these guns had silencers the cops would have said that in an attempt to demonize the marijuana farmers.

I am wondering why these pot farmers didn't have guns with silencers. I mean if you get busted for growing this much pot I suspect it is a mandatory life sentence in prison. So in that case I doubt it would add one day to their prison sentences if they had a bunch of guns with silencers on them so you can pick off any cops that attempted to arrest them. And if they had guns for poaching, silencers on the guns would also help them from being accidentally busted for poaching.

Source

Record marijuana plant seizure reported by authorities

July 18, 2011 | 8:22 am

Los Angeles Times

Ventura County Sheriff's officials announced Monday they had found the largest single seizure of marijuana plants in their jurisdiction from an outdoor grow operation in the Pine Mountain area of Los Padres National Forest.

Nearly 68,500 pot plants valued at $205.46 million were eradicated after the discovery last week in the rugged mountains north of Ojai, according to a sheriff's statement. No suspects were arrested.

So far this year, more than 100,000 marijuana plants have been eradicated.

Sheriff's investigators initially found several large plots on the north slope of Pine Mountain south of Lockwood Valley Road.

Investigators were airlifted to other sites on the mountain where they discovered several campsites used by the growers that included tents, propane stoves, sleeping bags, fertilizers, pesticides and "an enormous amount of trash."

They also discovered a 9mm handgun, a .22 caliber rifle and ammunition for a variety of other handguns and rifles, Ventura County Sheriff's officials said.

They noted there was "evidence of poaching" near the campsite including remains of deer and other small animals. Several water reservoirs, lined with plastic tarps, were found dug into the terrain.

Several thousand feet of irrigation hose had been spread throughout the hillside to provide water to the plants on "huge sections" of terraced land. Bags of fertilizer, pesticides and poisons were also found within each of the cultivation areas.

The Ventura County Fire Department, Oxnard Police Department and the U.S. Forest Service also participated in the operation.


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Confusion abounds in Arizona's tricky medical marijuana marketplace

Posted: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 4:52 pm

By Dan Zeiger, Tribune East Valley Tribune

The waiting area looks like that of any doctor’s office, with magazines, television and water cooler, but those who come through the doors of Arizona Compassionate Alternatives seek treatment that is unorthodox.

It has become less so since Arizona voters in November made medical marijuana state law. However, amid police raids, lawsuits and federal memos, many of the clinic’s 85 visitors this month have had questions concerning the legality of the treatment they seek.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation,” said Judy Spillman, manager of Arizona Compassionate Alternatives, whose two doctors determine whether patients qualify for use under guidelines in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.

Under the law, those with a patient registration card issued by the state Department of Health Services can legally possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

However, Gov. Jan Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne filed suit in U.S. District Court in May, citing concerns about exposing state employees who oversee the medical marijuana program to potential federal prosecution. Marijuana possession remains illegal under federal law.

As a result, the state is not processing applications for dispensaries, where patients could acquire marijuana.

Last week, Maricopa County became a co-plaintiff in the suit.

“We are in an odd period now,” said Jerry Cobb, spokesman for Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. “The law has been approved, the policy argument is over because the voters have spoken. Our office respects that. We’re not trying to change what voters have approved, but we have a responsibility to make sure that the county is not exposed to additional liability.”

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana. In 1996, California became the first state to enact such a law, and medical marijuana has evolved into a billion-dollar industry in that state.

Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans For Safe Access, said that a “culture of resistance” to medical marijuana exists among law enforcement, even in states where it has been legalized.

In June, Gilbert police conducted raids on the home of a registered medical marijuana patient and the Tempe office of an advocacy group.

Medical marijuana supporters were jolted by a June memo by U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole stating that state laws “are not a defense” from federal action. Congress has labeled marijuana a “dangerous drug” whose distribution is a “serious crime,” the memo reads.

“Local law enforcement seems to be stuck in a decades-old drug war whose casualties really are people who are using for medical reasons,” Hermes said.

“It doesn’t help when the federal government positions itself in this arena by saying it doesn’t respect even laws that are passed by the people or state legislatures. That sort of emboldens local law enforcement all over again to resist upholding them.”

Under Article VI of the Constitution, federal law supersedes state law. But Tucson-based attorney Jenne Sandy Forbes said she does not think medical marijuana patients in Arizona will be prosecution targets.

“In its suit, states seems to be asking for an advisory opinion — if we do this, will our people be violating federal law? Frankly, they probably would be,” Forbes said.

“My sense with the feds and the (Cole memo) that have been sent out is that they aren’t interested in going after individual marijuana users for medical purposes. I think they’re more interested in large growers. I don’t know if that includes dispensaries licensed under the new statute, but it certainly could. The dispensaries in California have been up and running, and the feds don’t seem terribly interested in shutting them down.”

In a May letter to Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble, Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, reiterated that marijuana is illegal under U.S. law but echoed recent stated policy of not focusing limited resources on those using the drug for medically recommended treatment.

“What his letter said is that while people complying with the state law are not a priority for this office, we can’t provide haven from prosecution because marijuana is still illegal under federal law,” U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Robbie Sherwood wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Mr. Burke has since reiterated that he has no intention of going after state employees; in fact, his letter doesn’t indicate an effort to go after anybody.”

So where does that leave the thousands of Arizonans who have been issued patient registration cards since April?

With dispensaries not an option, advocates have seized on a part of the law stating that “qualified patients” can provide marijuana to one another if “nothing of value is transferred in return.”

The Arizona Compassion Club — a self-described “network of patients assisting patients” — has three locations in the Valley, including one in the same Tempe complex as Arizona Compassionate Alternatives.

Spillman said that, if a patient qualifies under the law, her clinic will help with the filing of state paperwork and provide referrals of providers, including the Arizona Compassion Club.

“The dispensary portion of the law is on hold, for better or worse, but I don’t think it’s limiting patient access,” Spillman said.

Cobb said that the county attorney has not received cases involving registered patients possessing a legal amount of medical marijuana. He added that some cardholders have been charged with related crimes.

But federal law could continue to make the medical marijuana issue hazy.

“That’s why you’re seeing states sue to get clarification from federal court,” Cobb said. “The confusion stems from policy as opposed to law. The federal administration has said that its policy is not to go after medical marijuana patients, but that can change with a new administration, or it could change if the current administration chooses.”

• Contact writer: (480) 898-6301 or dzeiger@evtrib.com


The Feds like to say that any law they pass is the Supreme law of the land, per Article VI of the US Constitution.

But that's not exactly true. Or perhaps that is only PART of the what the Constitution says.

First you have to look at the 10th Amendment which reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If you will read the Constitution you will find that there is NOT one word in it giving the Feds the power to regulate marijuana, booze or any other drug.

Which means that the Feds don't have the power to regulate marijuana, booze or any other drug and that power is reserved for the States and the People.

Now when the Feds wanted to regulate, or better said make booze illegal they obeyed the Constitution and passed the 18th Amendment which gave the Feds the power to regulate booze.

As of yet the Feds have not passed a Constitutional Amendment giving them the power to regulate marijuana or any other drug.

Many legal experts say the 14th Amendment which was passed just after the Civil War also forbids the States from passing any laws regulating marijuana and other drugs. But I won't get into that. I am not comfortable talking about the 14th Amendment.

Now here is article VI. Yes it does say the "laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme law of the land;" But that only applies to laws which the Constitution allows the Feds to pass.

Article VI

...

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Feds like to say that the "Interstate Commerce Clause" of the Constitution gives them to power to regulate marijuana, guns and anything else they want to regulate.

In fact when the Supreme Court ruled on medical marijuana in it's last case in California they agreed with the Feds on this. But many legal experts disagree and say the Supreme Court ruling was wrong.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which is the Interstate Commerce clause says this:

[Congress shall have Power] "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;"
I am not comfortable talking about the Interstate Commerce clause, but in a nutshell the Feds seem to says that the Interstate Commerce clause gives them the power to do anything they want to.

The legal experts who talk about this stuff say why would the Founders write the Constitution which severely limits the power of the Federal government and then stick in the Interstate Commerce clause which gives the Feds infinite power.


More articles on medical marijuana and the drug war.

 

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