I want to apologize for the truly excessive number of marijuana posts recently. This has been quite a week and month for drug law reform, and as I’ve found myself with lots more free time than I’m used to having, I’ve been ramping up my volunteer time with some local organizations. As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m leading the monthly Cannabis Defense Coalition public meetings (next one is Monday, May 2 at 7pm). I’ve also recently agreed to play a bigger role with Sensible Washington, helping them out with both media relations and tech stuff. Between that and the Gregoire veto threat, for the first time in about two months, I have no idea what the hell is happening in Libya right now (although I’m having lunch with my Libyan friend tomorrow).

I’m hoping things get back to normal here soon, but I also wanted to throw in my two cents on Carl’s post from yesterday. First and foremost, I’d like to see more writers here. I’ve privately recommended adding some new front-pagers. I’ve done that in part because I realize that I’m easily the biggest culprit in the lack of topic diversity. And as awesome as Darryl and Carl are, we’re all greatly limited in the amount of time we can devote to posting. The best way to overcome that is to have more people posting here. And I think we have a couple of people in our online community who would be amazing additions to the blog.

In the meantime, there are a number of stories that I’m hoping to catch up on this week. There’s the DOJ attack on online poker, the inexcusable treatment of Bradley Manning, the uprising in Syria, the tension between Israel and the new leadership in Egypt, and perhaps scariest of all, the fact that Donald Trump is both insane and leading the 2012 GOP field. What else has been happening while I’ve been knee-deep in pot news?

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa, who made it four in a row. It was Bodie’s Corner in Baltimore, one the many filming locations in that city for The Wire, but one of the few that hasn’t been torn down.

Here’s this week’s contest, a random location somewhere in Washington. Good luck!

Following up on Friday’s post on the medical marijuana bill, there are a few additional items I wanted to comment on:

– In this AP report from Gene Johnson, I completely agree with Governor Gregoire’s comment at the end:

“She’s making a mistake,” said Morgan Fox, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project. “The letter from the U.S. attorneys says that they can prosecute, not that they will prosecute. In Maine, in Rhode Island, in New Jersey, those states all went ahead and set up dispensary system. They haven’t received any threats or reaction from federal law enforcement.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which has promoted the state’s legislation, echoed that.

Gregoire said it didn’t matter: “I don’t care what any other state does.”

This is unquestionably true, because if the Governor actually cared about what’s happened in other states, she would know that she’s about to make the same crucial mistake that allowed California’s system to become such a mess. Because it’s a large state with a lot of patients, California was the first state to have an underground dispensary system supplying patients and striving to do it in a legal way. At the time, the Bush Administration was absolutely clear about the issue. They would go after anyone trying to produce or sell medical marijuana. As a result, the state of California balked at establishing state-wide measures, and a bill was passed that allowed cities and counties to regulate it.

Many of those cities struggled to make regulations and they ended up with situations like Los Angeles – where they couldn’t establish regulations and ended up with over a thousand dispensaries throughout the city that they later tried to shut down – and like Morro Bay, where an honest dispensary operator who had the blessing of its community was railroaded by the feds. Even today, California’s system has problems and cities are still struggling to come up with appropriate regulations. One of the reasons that the Obama Administration changed their policy to take a more hands-off approach towards the state medical marijuana laws was so that this situation could be avoided and states could be free to regulate this better. They don’t like coming right out and saying that, so when they’re asked directly about their policy, they couch their response in language that explains that they “could” go after it without making it clear that Obama has specified that they won’t. And Governor Gregoire could easily figure this out for herself simply by looking at the other states that are regulating medical marijuana at the state level using state employees (like New Mexico, Colorado, New Jersey, and Rhode Island). But as she’s clearly stated, she “doesn’t care what any other state does”. And it will be us who pays for the Governor’s willful ignorance.

– Ironically, members of the Cannabis Defense Coalition also continue to support a veto of the bill. A big part of their opposition is from late amendments that strip away some protections from being searched and arrested and from greater emphasis on having people sign up in a patient registry, which is extremely unpopular among the organization’s members. No formal vote has been taken by the group, but I’d be surprised if even 25% of CDC members want this bill to pass. With that said, I want to explain my rationale for continuing to support the bill despite these amendments.

These amendments aren’t great (and I don’t like the registry), but they’re more illogical than dangerous. In the past, law enforcement have generally gone after patients for one of three reasons: 1. Because the patient is growing for himself or herself and law enforcement is convinced that they’re growing too much for it to be for one person. 2. Because law enforcement will see a patient as an soft target to roll over on a provider. 3. Because law enforcement simply doesn’t care about medical marijuana and sees all use as illegal.

Even though the late amendment from Rep. Christopher Hurst gives law enforcement greater ability to search and arrest people, the other parts of the bill cut off much of the rationale for law enforcement to go after patients for the first two reasons above. For instance, in the Snoqualmie case, a patient like Jeff Roetter (who died of an epileptic seizure as Snoqualmie police were squeezing him to testify against his provider) doesn’t have to be at risk of being used like a pawn in order to get to a bigger fish if he’s getting marijuana at state-licensed dispensary. And for people who live in areas where growing is still very risky (like the Olsons in Kitsap county), they no longer have to take that risk.

Even if this bill were to pass, though, I’d still expect a very small number of law enforcement officials in the state to go after patients for the third reason – purely out of a belief that medical marijuana is invalid and that patients are criminals. The initial bill had fines for law enforcement officials who did this, but those were stripped out right away. This is a problem that isn’t going to go away with any bill, at least not one that could pass the legislature. There are other potential problems with the bill (and they’re listed out here), but I still think the best approach is to pass this bill and fix those problems after we get a lay of the land rather than scrap this bill and try to start from scratch again.

– Finally, the Tacoma News Tribune’s latest comedic output is here. I could write a rather lengthy post pointing out all the factual inaccuracies and flaws in their logic, but I’ve done that before and don’t need to do that again.

I just want to cut to the heart of the matter, since the major difference between the “responsible medical marijuana bill” they touted on March 10 and the “Legislature’s plans to expand medical marijuana far beyond the voters’ original mandate” they referred to it as on April 17 is that dispensaries can now be for-profit. The only other major difference that I’m aware of is the supremacy of the state regulations, something that the city of Tacoma supports and which is vital to keep Washington’s system from looking more like California’s. So the question is, why is it such a problem for a marijuana dispensary to operate for profit? And why does this expand it beyond the voters’ original mandate? I realize that the Tacoma News Tribune probably isn’t interested in serious debate on this topic, but I know there are a lot of residents down there who are, and they’re not being served by a paper that hasn’t been willing to be serious on this topic for as long as I’ve been following it.

There’s been some big news regarding the medical marijuana bill that appeared ready to be signed into law this week:

The top federal prosecutors in Washington sent a stern warning to Washington State that a medical-marijuana law passed by the legislature this week, which would license dispensaries and growers, could result in a wave of criminal charges against cannabis providers and even state employees. At the same time, in a mixed message, they telegraphed that the Obama Administration’s policy of tacitly permitting states with medical marijuana laws would proceed.

“The Washington legislative proposals will create a licensing scheme that permits large-scale marijuana cultivation and distributions,” wrote US Attorneys Jenny Durkan and Michael Ormsby, respectively representing the Western and Eastern districts of Washington State, in a letter sent today to Governor Chris Gregoire. “This would authorize conduct contrary to federal law and thus, would undermine the federal government’s efforts to regulate the possession, manufacturing, and trafficking of controlled substances. Accordingly, the Department could consider civil and criminal legal remedies regarding those who set up marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries as they will be doing so in violation of federal law. … In addition, state employees who conducted activities mandated by the Washington legislative proposals would not be immune from liability…” including “criminal prosecution.”

The letter was sent in response to an inquiry from Governor Gregoire to Attorney General Eric Holder (The federal prosecutors’ letter is here and Gregoire’s letter is here).

Dominic’s take is that Gregoire sent this letter and received the predictable reply because she intends to veto the bill. There’s a good chance he’s right. Eli Sanders speculates even further:

Someone who works in Democratic politics floated this theory my way last night, and it makes sense: Gregoire is looking at the medical marijuana bill with an eye toward future confirmation hearings—her possible future confirmation hearings.

Think about it. No one expects Gregoire to run for governor again. Everyone knows she’s been brought up as a possible Team Obama member in the past. And, obviously, having signed a medical pot bill that can be seen as flouting federal law would be a liability during any upcoming D.C. confirmation process.

So it’s worth asking: In Gregoire’s political calculus, is it the Washington State medical marijuana bill vs. her future in Washington, D.C.?

The answer here is probably no, and here’s why. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico championed and signed a medical marijuana bill in 2007 that was groundbreaking in that it was the first to try to involve state agencies in the implementation. And this was at a time when the Bush Administration was still aggressively going after state medical marijuana laws. Here’s what Governor Richardson said:

“So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do,” said Richardson, one of the candidates in the crowded 2008 field. “What we’re talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them.”

The legislation would create a program under which some patients – with a doctor’s recommendation – could use marijuana provided by the state health department. Lawmakers approved the bill Wednesday. The governor is expected to sign it in the next few weeks.

Despite this very bold flouting of federal law, Richardson was still chosen by Obama to be his Secretary of Commerce (although he later withdrew for reasons completely unrelated to the medical marijuana law). It may be hard for a lot of Democrats in this state to admit, but if Gregoire vetoes this bill because of an imagined conflict with federal law, it’s because she’s a shitty Governor. This bill is not much different from what Colorado already allows and what other states are already planning to implement.

UPDATE: The interesting irony here is that some of the most recent changes to the bill have been causing some medical marijuana advocates to call for the bill to be scrapped as well. The concerns are definitely over different areas though. Gregoire’s main concern is over the licensing of production and distribution, while the CDC is concerned with the extra power that a late amendment from Rep. Christopher Hurst has given to law enforcement to continue to search and arrest authorized patients. I’m not convinced the CDC’s concerns are bad enough to scrap the bill (I think some law enforcement folks will screw over some patients regardless of what the law says), but Gregoire’s concerns over the bill are far less grounded in reality.

Even sadder (or perhaps funnier, depending on your predisposition), folks like Steve Sarich – who’s been fighting this bill since the beginning of the session – would be the big winner if this bill gets scrapped. Sarich, as you’re probably familiar with, is the entrepreneur who holds clinics where a doctor comes in for a fee and authorizes patients (occasionally those patients are 19-year-olds who later try to rob Sarich in the middle of the night) and then supplies them with their “medicine”. This bill pretty clearly shuts down operations like that. That’s just one more of the problems that this bill was meant to solve that reappears if Gregoire takes out the veto pen.

UPDATE 2: While I was writing up this post, Dominic posted a follow-up that makes it clearer that Gregoire intends to veto the bill. Please call her office if you have time: 360-902-4111

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I’m going to have trouble holding back the snark on this one. As the State House today passed the medical marijuana bill (which is not perfect, but a step up from the mess we currently have) this quote somehow managed to come out of the mouth of a legislator:

Opponents argue that this moves the state one step closer to full-blown legalization and doesn’t set up enough safeguards to keep marijuana out of the hands of children.

“It fosters ambiguity,” said Rep. Kevin Parker, R-Spokane. “We are confusing kids, we are confusing the law, and we are making it harder on law enforcement when the budgets we’re writing are reducing law enforcement in this state.”

That’s an overwhelming amount of stupid right there, so I’ll break this up into three parts:

We are confusing kids

In a word, no. It’s not confusing to any child anywhere in this state that there are stores that sell a plant product to sick people any more than it confuses kids that there are pharmacies that sell drugs to sick people. We tell kids not to use prescription drugs, yet those drugs are still sold in pharmacies to people whose doctors tell them they can have it. Is that confusing to kids? No. Our kids aren’t that stupid, and our legislators shouldn’t be either.

We are confusing the law

What? The reason that this bill came about was because the existing law was really unclear and confusing about what was allowed when it came to supplying medical marijuana patients. What SB 5073 represents is an attempt to make the law less confusing, and it’s impossible to look at the bill today and claim that it’s more gray than the status quo. I still have concerns with it, but it’s a big clarification of what had been very unclear up until now.

We are making it harder on law enforcement when the budgets we’re writing are reducing law enforcement in this state

This is just award-winning stupid. Every time we have a case where a patient or provider is clearly getting screwed over, we hear the same exact excuse from law enforcement, “We just want the rules to be clear, until then, we have to arrest people.” This bill does that. This bill makes the rules clear so that law enforcement can stop wasting money and time trying to figure out who’s supplying medical marijuana for people suffering from MS, cancer and other ailments and finally focus more of their time on real criminals and real crime. This bill will save law enforcement and our criminal justice system a significant amount of money by making it clearer who’s following the law and who isn’t. Anyone who says otherwise is either clueless or being stupid on purpose.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa for his third in a row. It was Leipzig, Germany. And for the second week in a row, others were guessing really close to the actual location before wes found the exact spot.

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

I haven’t been following the Wisconsin stuff as closely as my esteemed colleagues here, but WTF?

I linked to this story in last night’s post on Mexico, but what’s happening in Spokane is causing a lot head-scratching today:

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Spokane face federal prosecution if they do not end their operations immediately, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.

Federal authorities hope for voluntary compliance but are prepared “for quick and direct action against the operators of the stores,” according to a statement by Mike Ormsby, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington.

Federal authorities will target both the operators of the stores and the owners of the properties where the stores are located, he said.

The Obama Administration’s stated policy for states like Washington that have medical marijuana laws has been that U.S. Attorneys should only get involved in enforcing the federal marijuana prohibition if people aren’t following the state laws. So while Ormsby is technically following the directive, it’s the timing that’s curious. Our legislature is currently working to make the dispensaries legal, and Spokane isn’t the only city with dispensaries in limbo. In fact, most urban areas in Washington already have dispensaries that serve patients. So why Spokane? And why now?

What makes this even more curious is the fact that we have a looming government shutdown this week. And while much of the work of the Justice Department continues during a shutdown, those offices have to scale back their workload. In light of those circumstances, what in the hell was Ormsby thinking?

Mexican protesters took to the streets in more than 20 cities on Wednesday to protest President Felipe Calderon and his drug war. The impetus for these marches was the death of Juan Francisco Sicilia, 24. Sicilia is only one of the roughly 35,000 Mexicans who’ve been killed in the violence, but his death struck a chord with the nation because his father happened to be the famous poet and journalist Javier Sicilia. And fittingly, as the demonstrators marched, authorities in northern Mexico found another mass grave with about 60 bodies.

The most frustrating aspect of the carnage in Mexico is that it remains a direct consequence of American drug policies. Even Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, has been outspoken about this very simple fact, but being right about how to defeat Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations is still not acceptable discourse in Washington. The Obama Administration has only been marginally better than previous administrations (although that may stop being true soon), still foolishly believing that this is a problem that can be solved by law enforcement (nope), even while claiming that they’re trying a different approach.

The 35,000 deaths since Felipe Calderon launched his ill-fated drug crackdown aren’t just his fault, they’re also ours. American drug policy rewards Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations with the billions of dollars in easy profits that they then use to battle each other for an even greater piece of the pie. Every time a major player in the trade is arrested, dozens step up to take his place and the violence escalates. Yet to the head of the DEA, Michele Leonhart, this is somehow seen as winning:

“It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” the DEA chief said.

The cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another,” she added.

No, they’re not. And one has to have their head lodged really fucking far up their own ass to believe that. These are organizations that have so much money that they were able to launder their money directly through the U.S. banking system in order to buy airplanes. They’re not caged animals, they’re pretty goddamn free to do what they want. A lot freer than the Mexicans who took to the street today to protest against a gruesome quagmire that they have essentially no control over.

Last night’s Cannabis Defense Coalition public meeting saw another large crowd. For the second month in a row, I moderated the meeting. The discussion was recorded and the audio should be posted up at the CDC webpage soon (UPDATE: It’s posted).

As expected, the main focus of the discussion was about the medical marijuana bill, SB 5073, which has been amended and re-amended a number of times so far. In its most recent incarnation, it provides for arrest protection for non-registered patients in only the most superficial sense. It prevents law enforcement from taking you to jail, but it doesn’t stop them from searching your house or charging you – and forcing you to use your affirmative defense in court. Of course, signing up for the registry gives you complete arrest protection, but the general sense from most patients is that signing up for the registry is a absolute non-starter, as these lists often end up in the wrong hands.

This dilemma of trust is really the heart of the remaining disagreements with the bill in its current form. The bill represents an attempt to craft a system that protects patients, but many of them are still convinced that they won’t be protected from overzealous law enforcement. For instance, the medical language in sections 301.2a and 2b were written with the help of a physician who had worked on the initial voter initiative in 1998. From a purely technical standpoint, the language of the bill should protect doctors who recommend and authorize medical marijuana use. But from an historical standpoint, there remains a lot of concern that doctors who do so will still be targeted, and that even well-written regulations will be enough to make doctors wary of inviting suspicion. As an example, Douglas Hiatt brought up Grant County, where law enforcement has repeatedly reported legitimate doctors to MQAC because they still believe that any authorization of medical marijuana is improper.

At the meeting, Alison Holcomb of the ACLU of Washington defended the language concerning doctors in Section 301, and assured everyone that doctors wouldn’t be targeted. It’s very possible she’s right and that the concerns expressed by the doctors who’ve been at the last two meetings won’t materialize. The ACLU has been a main driving force for this bill, and yesterday distributed this flyer in support. As has always been the case within drug law reform in Washington state, the ACLU has been more willing to work directly with institutional actors and to believe that they’ll act in good faith, while many in the patient community are more wary. The truth ends up being somewhere in the middle, with cases of law enforcement overreach and administrative cruelty that shock us, but with conditions slowly getting better for patients as we move forward. Much of the problem is one of culture and perception, something that the law can’t address.

One good illustration of this came at the end of the meeting, when defense attorney Kurt Boehl discussed a case he’s currently working on in Bellevue, where a medical marijuana patient used his marijuana while parked in the Bellevue Square parking lot. Very wisely, instead of using his marijuana before he drove, he waited until he got to his destination. The man had tinted windows, but opened his sunroof to allow for ventilation. Unfortunately, some Bellevue Police officers climbed to a high vantage point to see through his sunroof and claimed that he was using his medical marijuana in public view. In this environment, where many police officers are so eager to play gotcha with the law, it’s not hard to understand why many are wary of protections that are anything less than absolute.

Those debates aside, however, there remains one aspect of the bill that is truly bad and needs to be fixed. It’s the “lottery” provision that puts an artificially low cap on the number of dispensaries and could allow for a system where licenses are either given out randomly or to well-connected folks looking for easy profits, as has just happened in New Jersey. We need to push for a system that allows medical marijuana dispensaries to compete and fail based upon how well they serve customers, not based upon whether they possess the only license in town. Establishing a system where dispensaries are protected from competition is the best way to see them artificially inflate their prices and not give a crap about the people who rely on them.

Just a quick note to anyone who was stupid enough to buy tickets to the Charlie Sheen “show” in Everett. You appear to be among the many victims of the greatest crackhead swindle of all time.

Jeralyn Merritt writes about how the DEA now appears to be an organization that enforces American drug laws anywhere in the world, regardless of whether or not the drugs were destined for the United States. In this particular case, our DEA conducted a sting of people running a drug smuggling ring from South America to Europe, through Africa. And American taxpayers will now bear the costs of trying and incarcerating those caught in the sting. When exactly did we vote to become the moral nannies for the whole world? As Pete Guither points out, this would be like sending DEA agents to French bars to arrest underage drinkers.

This AP report on what it’s like to be reporting from Tripoli right now is a fascinating read. None of it is surprising to anyone who’s been following what’s going on there, but it does provide a good illustration of how Gaddafi has been able to portray what’s happening there as a civil war against an armed insurrection. In a bizarre sense, one could refer to what’s happening there as a civil war, but it’s more accurately a war of optical illusion. What Gaddafi is trying to do is to convince these journalists (and by extension, the rest of the world) that he’s still vastly popular. He’s been shelling cities, killing thousands of civilians in their homes, then busing journalists on these “magical mystery tours” to witness bizarrely staged “celebrations”. The fact that Libyans are desperately trying to figure out ways to defend themselves from this madness doesn’t really make it a civil war.

None of this is to say whether or not our intervention there is wise. That’s an issue I’ve weighed in on and I still agree with the decision to intervene. But there are good arguments against, and unlike Iraq – where it was overwhelmingly obvious intervention was a disaster – we’ll be debating the wisdom of this move for years to come.

But the Gaddafi regime, and their reaction to the uprising, has been a terrifying display of homicidal pathology that I’m not sure I know a real precedent for. Gaddafi is like a cross between Idi Amin and Willy Wonka, living in a fictional world that he desperately wants the rest of the world to see; and he can still pay enough willing subjects (many of whom don’t appear to be Libyan) to carry out his plan.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was St. Louis, where a Deputy U.S. Marshall was killed in a shootout with a man he was trying to take into custody.

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