Last week’s contest was a tough one, but it was won by Brian. It was Fredericton, New Brunswick.

This week’s contest is related to a TV show or a movie, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by Milwhcky. It was the home near Orlando where the infamous Anthony family lives.

Here’s this week’s contest, a random location somewhere in the world, good luck!

Now that the dust has settled from Governor Gregoire’s epic fail on the recent medical marijuana bill, the state’s community of growers and patients are starting to pore over the new law to figure out how they can still provide safe access. After tonight’s meeting at the Cannabis Resource Center (the main Cannabis Defense Coalition office in SoDo), I feel like there’s actually a light at the end of this tunnel.

Of course, dispensaries who openly sell medical marijuana to any authorized patient are not allowed. And there will be no production facilities regulated by the Department of Agriculture. But what the law does allow, however, are collective gardens. This evening, defense attorney Aaron Pelley outlined what appear to be the parameters of any new system for distributing medical marijuana within that framework. This discussion stems from meetings that Pelley has had with King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. The relevant language can be found in Section 403 of the passed bill.

That section allows:
– 10 people to participate in a collective garden, which can have 15 plants and 24 ounces per person (up to 45 plants and 72 ounces total)
– The collective members to share in the costs of maintaining the collective

Interestingly, the section does not disallow:
– Multiple gardens to occupy the same space
– A single person to belong to multiple collectives
– Central offices where multiple collectives can establish an “access point”

My takeaway from this meeting is that what we’ll end up with (probably first in Seattle, then across the state) are these “access points” (not dispensaries!) where people can join a collective. Once part of a collective, you’d only be able to obtain medicine grown in that collective’s designated garden – and would probably have to pay for the upkeep of the garden (rather than directly paying for the medicine). From my reading of the law, that would be fully compliant with the statute, but hey, I’m not lawyer. And even Pelley wasn’t terribly sure how all of this will be interpreted once it inevitably ends up in a courtroom.

With Jay Inslee’s announcement that he’ll run for governor, another anticipated development took place. State Rep. Roger Goodman has amended his filing paperwork to officially run for Congress in the 1st CD – for the seat that Inslee will be vacating. Up until now, Goodman had filed to run in the 8th CD (he lives in the 1st CD, close to the boundary between the two districts).

As everyone here probably knows by now, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Goodman’s record both before and after he became an elected official. He’s been a pioneer in drug law reform – first at the King County Bar Association and later in the legislature – and has both solidly progressive sensibilities and a genuine talent for finding solutions to difficult problems that go beyond partisanship. I’m certain that whoever he ends up running against will try to use his background in drug law reform against him, and I expect that strategy to fail as spectacularly as it has for the two candidates who tried that strategy in the 45th LD races.

As scary as this article is, I don’t think Michelle Bachmann will be the VP selection for the 2012 GOP ticket. I think she’ll be at the top of the ticket figuring out who her running mate will be at this time next year.

UPDATE: I realized after I posted this that I still haven’t read Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece on Bachmann. I should probably read through that to be absolutely sure I’m not talking out of my ass.

UPDATE: [Darryl]: Is Michelle Bachmann really a flake? Or is her problem being fuckin’ nuts? We link…you decide.

UPDATE: [Darryl]: Her first post-announcement blunder: Bachmann compares her spirit to a notorious serial killer. Still unresolved: Is she a flake, or is she fuckin’ nuts?

I’m starting to wonder if anyone on the staff of the Tacoma News-Tribune has ever been outside the city of Tacoma. Here’s Brian O’Neill trying to figure out what happened at Tacoma Hempfest yesterday, where TPD busted several vendors for selling glass pipes:

The Trib article describing police arrests at Tacoma’s Hempfest also suggested that many of those given citations were also people deeply involved in the, pardon the pun, grassroots effort to legalize pot. The report also pointed out the general surprise regarding the police response, especially by those arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia and marijuana. One vendor commented that “I was dumbfounded” after being cited for having drug pipes.

That may be due to the potential changes many jurisdictions were expecting out of Olympia.

Um, no, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that selling glass pipes has long been legal in the state of Washington (as it’s not hard to find stores in the city of Tacoma that sell these items). In addition, these vendors weren’t bothered last year, nor have they ever been bothered at Seattle Hempfest.

According to TPD, the contracts those vendors signed didn’t allow them to sell paraphernalia. It looks like this will end up being sorted out in a courtroom, once again showing how eager the Tacoma Police have been (and their loyal servants at the TNT) to waste taxpayer money in their obsession with pot.

Last week’s contest was won by Liberal Scientist. It was along the Seattle/Shoreline boundary just south of the Highlands.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from the past month, good luck!

Two big announcements over the past 48 hours regarding the eventual death of marijuana prohibition:

– For the first time ever, a bill to end marijuana prohibition is being introduced in Congress. Barney Frank and Ron Paul are introducing a bill that would allow states to make the drug legal, while only focusing on interstate smuggling. I doubt the drug will go anywhere, but it’s certainly a milestone that shows how quickly things are starting to change.

– Here in Washington, a group called New Approach Washington is launching an effort to pass a marijuana legalization initiative. The group is led by former U.S. Attorney John McKay, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, and travel show host Rick Steves. The initiative represents the opposite strategy from what Sensible Washington has been trying to do with I-1149. While Sensible Washington focused on creating an initiative that puts the federal government in a difficult situation (by removing all state penalties), New Approach Washington focused on creating something that they feel is more certain to win a statewide vote.

As a result, New Approach Washington appears to have the big money necessary to get on the ballot. Their initiative is a different type of initiative, which once it collects the necessary signatures, goes directly to the Legislature first – who can pass it. If they don’t pass it, then it goes to a statewide vote in November 2012.

From what’s been released so far (I haven’t had a chance to read the text of the initiative yet), what they’ve put together is mostly workable, but has some drawbacks. For starters, private growing would become illegal (with an exception for medical growers). There’s no real rationale for this – establishing a personal cultivation limit would be smarter. This is like banning people from brewing their own beer at home.

Second, and more seriously, is their attempt to extend the DUI laws to marijuana. While this may play well politically, the science is not there yet to provide an accurate measurement of impairment. Even worse, people who have very high levels of THC in their system (usually people who use the drug medicinally), don’t become impaired at all when they use it. This was highlighted recently in Colorado when Denver Westword pot critic William Breathes tested nearly three times the 5ng/ml limit while completely sober.

As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the state’s medical marijuana community refuses to assist in this campaign. But if New Approach Washington is to be believed, they have the numbers to win anyway. And they probably do. Voters are ready to start treating marijuana like alcohol, and this initiative moves us a step closer to having an overly-regulated, somewhat-inefficient mess for providing the sale of marijuana to adults – just like what we have for hard liquor.

I’ve been at my new job for almost two weeks now. Things are going well – it’s always fun to work with smart people on new technology projects, and I’ve been very blessed throughout my career to be in that situation often.

But as always, getting to and from work is its own adventure. I still live out in the Fairwood area and this new job is downtown near the Convention Center. My last job was also a tough commute – to downtown Bellevue – but my early work schedule (6am-3pm) allowed me to avoid the traffic (mostly). For this job, I have little interest in getting into work that early – most people aren’t in by 9 – but I had a plan.

First of all, I do get reimbursed for monthly travel expenses, but not enough to cover the monthly rates at nearby garages. So my plan was to put a chunk of money on my Orca card every month and take the bus to and from the South Renton Park & Ride, but also drive in on days when having my car at the end of the day was necessary (like if I needed to go to DL and hang with Darryl and Carl – which might happen tomorrow night). I calculated out how many days a month I’d be able to drive in, pay for daily parking, and still get reimbursed. It was more than enough, about 7-8 times.

The plan was set. The first Monday rolls around and I arrive at the South Renton Park & Ride at about 8:20am. The whole damn lot was full. Not good. So I drive to the light rail station in Tukwila and get one of the last parking spots in the spillover lot at around 8:40am. I ride the light rail in.

So even after that, I’m still thinking I can get in via light rail every day. The ride from my house to the Tukwila light rail stop is a little longer. But I really like being able to read a book or work on my laptop while I commute. So Tuesday morning, I arrive at the light rail station at about 8:35am. No luck. Every spot is taken. I stewed in my car for a few minutes, checked traffic conditions on my phone, and decided to just drive in. I realized at that point that I had two options: either become more of an early bird, or just cough up the few extra bucks a month it would cost me for a monthly parking pass. I chose the latter.

As much as I enjoy being able to ride into work, I just had little interest in having to worry about whether or not there’d be a parking spot at a transit point every day. Car commutes are stressful, but I do like to know with certainty how I’m getting to Point B when I walk out the door. It was a bit of a rude awakening that my transit options weren’t as convenient as I’d hoped they be.

Last week’s contest was won by Deathfrogg. It was the mansion from the TV show “Dallas”.

This week’s is a random location somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

As we marked the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s jihad against pot this week, I thought about posting in a snippet of a reply I’d gotten from Patty Murray’s office in response to an action alert I’d sent out regarding upcoming medical marijuana legislation. Like every other Senator, Patty Murray opposes the creation of legal and regulated marijuana sales for adults, so her position is not a surprise. But the action alert I sent out was about medical marijuana, so I’m not sure why I got this reply in my inbox:

Like many Americans, I am concerned about the high use of drugs, including marijuana, among our citizens, especially for young people. I believe we must continue to work to reduce drug use. One important aspect of our efforts is to send a consistent message to young people about the use of drugs and alcohol. Therefore, I do not support legalizing or decriminalizing currently illegal drugs, including marijuana.

She could’ve dodged the question entirely, but she didn’t. Kudos to that, but seriously, that’s an idiotic response. What consistent message is being sent to young people by having alcohol legal and marijuana illegal? That makes absolutely no sense. And even worse, this policy results in marijuana being far easier for a young person to obtain than alcohol. Any time someone wonders what message we’d be sending to kids if we legalize marijuana, the appropriate reply should be, “the message is that high school freshmen won’t be able to buy it from the kid sitting next to them in math class any more“. And that’s the appropriate message we should be sending. It’s for adults only, just like alcohol.

But I wasn’t the only person in the state who sent out this action item to our various representatives. Another gentleman from Eastern Washington sent it out and shared with me this spectacular reefer-madness reply from Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (hold on to your hat):

The alleged “medicinal benefits” of marijuana to treat glaucoma and other ailments are assertions that have been examined and debated for decades. Although I support research into alternative medical treatments, studies have shown that marijuana possesses significant addictive chemical properties that have had devastating effects on users. Moreover, a study conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy indicates that 374,000 people annually enter an emergency room with a primary marijuana addiction diagnosis.

Holy fuck.

For starters, the medicinal benefits of marijuana have been examined and debated for centuries, not decades. In fact, when marijuana was made illegal in 1937, the American Medical Association protested the action on the basis that marijuana had well-known medicinal properties. And today, the American Medical Association has recommended that the government look into rescheduling marijuana precisely because it’s known to have medicinal benefits. There’s no debate here. Marijuana has medicinal properties. Everyone knows this, pharmaceutical companies are already growing the plant for use in legal drugs like Sativex, and the Department of Health and Human Services has even filed for a patent on “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants“.

Second, marijuana is not chemically addictive. That’s just an outright lie. Even long-term users experience little to no physical effects from cessation of use. It’s certainly psychologically addictive (similar to addictions to video games, gambling, or sex), but calling it chemically addictive is simply a lie. It’s not. And I have no idea what “devastating effects” it’s had on users, but the vast majority of marijuana users in this country lead pretty normal lives. And of course, alcohol – a legal drug sold in grocery stores and gas stations throughout the state – is actually more addictive than marijuana.

But that last statement there from McMorris-Rodgers is just spectacular:

Moreover, a study conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy indicates that 374,000 people annually enter an emergency room with a primary marijuana addiction diagnosis.

I nearly laughed out loud when I read this. At first, I assumed she just made the statistic up out of thin air, but then realized that even McMorris-Rodgers isn’t dumb enough to cite the ONDCP for a completely made-up statistic. Instead, it turns out that she just embellished what was already a pretty embellished statistic. Here’s what it says on the ONDCP’s page:

Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, with nearly 17 million Americans age 12 and older reporting past-month use, and 374,000 people entering an emergency room annually with a primary marijuana problem.

Obviously, the word “addiction” does not appear in the ONDCP headline – for a good reason. They’re not talking about addiction. And when they say “primary marijuana problem”, this is one of the things they’re referencing:

Although DAWN includes only suicide attempts that involve drugs, these attempts are not limited to drug overdoses. If there is drug involvement in a suicide attempt by other means (e.g., if a patient cuts his or her wrists while under the influence of marijuana), the case is included as drug related.

If you look through those statistics even closer, you’ll see that marijuana is far less common than alcohol, pharmaceuticals, and even the far more sparsely used cocaine in those numbers – which makes sense, because you can’t kill yourself by overdosing on pot. The number there should be zero, but the ONDCP doesn’t like that, so they fuck with the numbers to make it seem as if it actually leads to people dying.

But that’s still only a fraction of the 374,000 people who are supposedly showing up at ER’s across the country needing treatment for their pot addictions. Where do the rest come from? It appears they’re in that magic category called “Other” [emphasis mine]:

How are drug abuse cases denoted in DAWN?

…

Each case reported to DAWN is assigned to one of eight case types according to the following hierarchy:

1. Suicide attempt
2. Seeking detox
3. Alcohol only (age < 21) 4. Adverse reaction 5. Overmedication 6. Malicious poisoning 7. Accidental ingestion 8. Other Cases not falling into any of the first seven case types are classified as "Other." Most drug abuse cases are classified as "Other."

So what we likely have here are people coming into the emergency room for various reasons, testing positive for pot and then ending up being tagged that they have a “primary marijuana problem” even though it likely had no influence at all on why they were in the ER. But this sleight of hand gives idiot politicians like McMorris-Rodgers the ability to claim that thousands of Americans are coming into hospitals every day needing to be treated for their pot addictions. Reefer madness lives on.

Tomorrow marks the 40th Anniversary of Richard Nixon’s declaration that America needs to wage a war against drugs and drug abuse. And since that time, there’s never been such a widespread consensus as there is today that it’s a complete failure and needs to end.

I’ve written endlessly about this and won’t bore everyone with another post listing out the reasons why we need to make major changes in how we deal with drugs and the problem of drug addiction. But one thing that has struck me in recent years is the odd ideological pairing of drug war zealotry and being terrified of Sharia Law.

Of course, the idea of Sharia Law “taking over” in America is world-class stupidity. But at its root, this hysteria is about a fear of having members of another faith or culture making laws that dictate morality. Yet while the war on drugs has always been painted as a way of protecting us from drugs, that’s never been what it’s really about. It’s about government dictating our moral choices. And not surprisingly, Sharia Law does exactly the same thing when it comes to wine consumption and other moral taboos.

The reasons for ending the war on drugs are numerous, but the central cause of all of that calamity is a single failing. It’s a mistaken belief that government should make moral decisions in our lives that should instead be left to the spiritual world. This endeavor is both impossible and reckless. And it’s a failure that extends to nearly every nation on this planet in various ways – particularly in the Middle East.

In America, we have a high tolerance and acceptance for some moral failings – extreme avarice being a big one – but for reasons that never made sense to me, we turn into shrieking nannies at the thought of anyone using a mind-altering substance. And 40 years after Ayatollah Nixon ignored his own government commission’s advice and declared war on our private actions, it’s long past time to reassess the damage that’s been done.

Last week’s winner was Siberian dog. It was Oulu, Finland.

Here’s this week’s contest, related to a TV show or a movie. Good luck!

On Thursday, the State Supreme Court ruled against “Jane Roe”, a woman in Bremerton who was fired by TeleTech because she was a medical marijuana patient. The Seattle Times explains why they had no other choice:

The plaintiff, who sued under the pseudonym Jane Roe, was pulled out of her training class after a week and fired Oct. 18, 2006, because she failed a pre-employment drug test. She had a valid medical-marijuana authorization from a doctor.

In court documents, the company said its contract with Sprint required drug testing and makes no exception for medical marijuana.

Thankfully, we have choices in cell phone providers. I’ll be contacting Sprint regarding this case, and asking why their policy makes no exception for medical marijuana. For those of you out there with Sprint coverage, here’s a page edited by Wired that gives you tips on how to get out of your cellular contract.

UPDATE: Danny Westneat has a great column about the Jane Roe at the center of this case.

I start a new job tomorrow. As it goes with these things, I never know how much time I’ll still have to write up posts (that likely depends on whether or not I start taking the bus). So if I stay pretty quiet for a while here, that’s why. Either way, I should be able to keep the Bird’s Eye View Contests going every Sunday.

– Sensible Washington is having a week-long money bomb. Please donate!

– Law Enforcement Against Prohibition will be holding a press conference on June 14 to mark the 40th anniversary of the “war on drugs” and call for its end.