Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

– It’s not talked about much, but one of the biggest reasons to end marijuana prohibition is because of the environmental damage that’s done by having the crop grown illegally in our national forests and parks.

– Governor Gregoire has the rare chance to sign a truly progressive drug law reform bill.

– A reader pointed me to this post from Geoff Baker on the Mariners Blog at the Seattle Times. Towards the end of the post, he talks about new Mariner Tom Wilhelmsen, a one-time hot prospect who left the game in 2005 after being sent to a treatment program by his former club, the Brewers, for marijuana use. As someone who writes about sports and not drug policy, Baker’s thoughts came across as honest, insightful, and indicative of how people are having trouble accepting the long-unquestioned idea of treating marijuana the same way we treat other drugs. When some of the best athletes in the world – from Michael Phelps to Tim Lincecum to Santonio Holmes to countless NBA players – have all been exposed as occasional marijuana users despite excelling in what they do, it just doesn’t compute any more why a team like the Brewers would piss away their investment in Wilhelmsen the way they did. Now that he’s a Mariner and joins what might be their strongest pitching staff in years, let’s hope they’ll be rewarded for giving him a second chance.

– Last week, I was watching a rerun of The Chappelle Show and it was the sketch where they juxtaposed how an upper-class white criminal who committed a financial crime gets treated with how a lower-class minority criminal who committed a drug crime gets treated. The sketch contains a very graphic scene where the white criminal’s dog is shot by raiding police officers. It had been a while since I’d last seen this and it hadn’t occurred to me how similar this was to what happened to Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor Cheye Calvo – except for one major difference – Calvo was completely innocent of any crimes and this fact should have already been obvious to the Prince George County Sheriff’s Office.

Calvo is still fighting back against the reckless officers who invaded his home that day and shot his two dogs. And the latest development is even more sickening. One of the officers tried to get the charges against him dropped because he claims he shot one of Calvo’s dogs after it was already dead. The judge rejected the plea. How disturbed does one have to be to shoot a dead dog in the head? And how out-of-control is the Prince George County Sheriff’s Office that not only do they have psychos like this guy their police force, but that they continue to insist that their officers did nothing wrong during the raid?

This weekend should be a big one for I-1068 signature gatherers. Not only is Snoop Dogg playing two shows this weekend at Showbox SoDo, but Doug “Super High Me” Benson is also in town, across the lake at the Parlor Live in downtown Bellevue, doing stand-up shows Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as well. I reached out to the management of Parlor Live this week and they’re supportive of having Sensible Washington hang out and collect signatures. If you’d like to see Benson perform, buy your tickets through the Parlor Live website and use the “ADVANCE” promo code to receive a $5 discount. If you’d like to volunteer to help collect signatures, shoot me an email.

Last week’s contest was won in near-record time by Brian. It was Brunswick, Victoria, Australia.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I’ve been busy this week helping out the Sensible Washington folks with their signature gathering efforts. They now have their donation page set up, so please visit and throw a few pennies their way. This is a huge statewide volunteer signature gathering effort and they could use all the help they can get.

– The arrest and prosecution of Olympia Mayor Pro-Tem Joe Hyer for somewhat petty marijuana charges has given rise to a number of questions. There are tens of thousands of transactions like the one that Hyer was busted for happening in the state of Washington every month. Why was he specifically targeted despite clearly not being a large-scale dealer? Who was the confidential informant that Thurston County Narcotics Task Force used to bust Hyer? The Cannabis Defense Coalition is now trying to find these things out – and to highlight the fact that this arrest was likely politically motivated.

– In addition to being a high ranking political official who has both enemies and a pot plant, there’s one other thing that makes you far more likely to be busted for marijuana in this state: being black.

– I recently posted on the rogue DEA agent in Colorado, Jeff Sweetin, who openly violated the Obama Administration’s policy towards medical marijuana. Colorado Congressman Jared Polis is now fighting back. Last Thursday, President Obama was met by protests in Denver.

– Amanda Knox is not the only American being fucked over by the Italian legal system.

– As bad as the Italian legal system is, Utah might be worse.

Sensible Washington is having its kickoff meeting for Olympia area volunteers tonight. Also, Philip Dawdy responds to the ACLU of Washington’s decision not to endorse I-1068:

Sensible Washington is disappointed that the ACLU of Washington is refusing to support I-1068. We believe that in so doing the group is ignoring the wishes of many of its members and contradicts its years of support for marijuana drug reform. We find it especially ironic that the organization which initially promoted legalization and reform in Washington State should retreat from its last 10 years of work on that front.

We are especially disturbed by the characterization of I-1068 as irresponsible based upon lack of regulation when the ACLU of Washington is well aware that the initiative could not include a regulatory scheme. Federal preemption issues make a comprehensive tax and regulate scheme impossible and the single issue rule for initiatives in Washington State does not help either. Those restrictions limit the scope of any initiative to removing criminal penalties for adults. If I-1068 is passed this November it will fall to the State Legislature to provide a legal framework for adult marijuana use, possession and cultivation. The ACLU of Washington has been involved in developing such frameworks, making its current position on I-1068 even more curious.

We are confused that the ACLU of Washington doesn’t seem to get that it is wrong for the State of Washington to continue to waste about $105 million a year in taxpayer funds to arrest, prosecute and imprison over 12,000 otherwise responsible citizens a year for marijuana-related offenses. We are confused that the ACLU of Washington would be willing to accept a state medical marijuana law which offers little legal protection to sick and dying patients. And we are utterly baffled that the ACLU of Washington does not get that the repeated failure of the Legislature to reform this state’s marijuana laws indicates that an initiative to the people is the only responsible method to achieve the kind of reform that the citizens of Washington State clearly desire.

I think the main stumbling block for the ACLU here is that they’ve become so enamored with having good relationships with certain powerful folks in the state that they’ve been willing to completely compromise on making any progress in order to keep that seat at the table. During the push to modify the medical marijuana law in 2007-2008, they ended up compromising so much that patients ended up more likely to be arrested (see update 2) with the new law than they were before. The ACLU was prominent in those discussions. The I-1068 initiative is a recognition that trying to negotiate with the legislature is no longer a good strategy. This initiative is a way to force the legislature’s hand to deal with this problem head on and stop dicking around. And my own hunch (and it’s just a hunch) is that this made the ACLU uncomfortable. Otherwise, as Philip explains quite well in that post, their opposition to the initiative simply doesn’t make sense logically.

UPDATE: One additional aspect of this that’s worth noting is that the ACLU of Washington was the main driver behind the recent decriminalization bills in the legislature (which didn’t pass either the House or the Senate, despite merely trying to make our marijuana laws more similar to states like Ohio and Mississippi). Some of the folks who put together I-1068 had been very vocal in their criticisms of Alison Holcomb and the ACLU of Washington over not pushing for full legalization. Again, I have no idea exactly what drove Holcomb to come out against I-1068 (which has been endorsed by a broad range of folks already), but considering the ACLU of Washington’s track record in drug law reform, it’s probably a good thing they’re not involved.

UPDATE 2: After being challenged on the assertion noted above, I’m going to remove it from the post. This has been my perception from following a number of cases, but I don’t have any data to prove it, so I’m striking it from my original post. I do feel confident in saying that the revision of the law did nothing to prevent patients from being arrested, since the recent State vs. Fry court decision affirmed that the law does nothing to prevent patients from being arrested. My larger point that the attempts to work with the legislature were a complete failure still stands.

Last week’s contest was unnecessarily difficult. Apologies to everyone who spent hours/days looking for that one. Wes.in.wa eventually got the right answer – Port Sutton, Florida.

This week’s shouldn’t be so hard, good luck!

From a Newsweek article in 1995:

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

[via Reddit]

– Another local overzealous prosecution of a medical marijuana patient goes down in flames.

– Olympia’s Mayor Pro-Tem arrested on suspicion of marijuana trafficking.

– California researchers have found that marijuana is effective for controlling neuropathic pain and muscle spasms.

– The Drug War Chronicle has a summary of the rogue DEA agents in Colorado who are ignoring the Obama Administration’s publicly stated policy and going after individuals within the state’s legal medical marijuana framework.

Sensible Washington will be holding a press conference today at 1:30pm at 3161 Elliott Avenue Ste 340 (near the PI building) to announce the start of signature gathering for their ballot initiative to legalize adult marijuana use. They’ve already received an endorsement from former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper and the folks at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Seattle Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher has banned all forms of tobacco use in Seattle parks. Gallagher made this rule despite protests from the city’s parks board. Even worse, he openly admits that this is being done to protect people from their own decisions, not to protect people from second-hand smoke (even chewing tobacco is banned). As far as I can tell, this rule applies to Seattle’s three municipal golf courses, so if you want to smoke a cigarette while playing a round at Jackson Park, make sure none of Gallagher’s foot soldiers are watching.

Dick Cheney giving advice on foreign policy is like Kevin Smith giving advice on dieting.

Last week, I wrote about the story of Kathy Parkins. Parkins was a 51-year-old medical marijuana patient from Washington who was arrested in late 2007 after being pulled over in Arizona with a small amount of marijuana. She was allowed to serve out her probation in Seattle, but ran into some corruption and incompetence within the Washington Department of Corruptions, including being illegally detained and kept in jail for a week in May 2008 without any charges. Following that, she spent over a year trying to get a hold of a document that showed that a corrections officer falsified information in an attempt to have her sent back to Arizona. The document was finally released in the most recent public disclosure request and contained several fabrications – things that clearly could not have been accidental.

I’d also mentioned that Carla Cole, Parkins’ roommate at the time of the arrest, had been trying to get an explanation from the DOC. In February 2009, DOC Head Eldon Vail sent Cole a reply claiming that the officers didn’t inaccurately fill out paperwork or fabricate anything. At the time, the DOC was still refusing to let Parkins actually see the report in question, an Interstate Compact form that allowed for her to serve out her probation here. So after the report was revealed in the public disclosure request – proving that, in fact, Officer Jeremy Praven made several things up – she sent off another letter to Vail asking for an explanation.

In a letter dated last Wednesday, February 10, the DOC once again tried to claim that there’s nothing to see here, although the letter did not come directly from Vail. It was from Regional Administrator Jim Harms:

I have been asked to respond to your letter dated January 24, 2010 addressed to Secretary Eldon Vail. You wrote about information contained in a public disclosure request response concerning the Washington State Department of Corrections and medical marijuana, and the circumstances of the arrest of your former tenant, Kathleen Merry in May 2008.

We take the concerns of you, and in fact, all citizens very seriously and carefully review all complaints. As Secretary Vail indicated in his February 20, 2009 letter to you, your allegations of misconduct were investigated. Both the Unit Supervisor and the Field Administrator followed up with identified staff.

I apologize for any confusion or frustration this incident caused you, but no indications of misconduct, intended inaccuracies or fabrications have been found in this case.

Once again, you can see the document in question in this PDF file of released documents, pages 20 to 22. As I documented last week, within that report, Praven makes a number of completely fictional claims:

– That Parkins has no family ties to Washington state and only came here because of the medical marijuana laws. In fact, Parkins has lived in Washington state nearly her entire life, only recently deciding to move to California. Her children and grandchild live here, along with 9 aunts and uncles.

– That Cole belongs to an organization called the ‘Marijuana’s Growers Association of Washington’. No such organization has ever existed.

– That Parkins was not authorized to use medical marijuana in Washington state. Parkins had received an updated authorization that morning. She claims that when she offered to show it to Officer Praven, he wasn’t interested in seeing it.

There simply isn’t any ambiguity about this. Anyone with rudimentary critical thinking skills can recognize that these lies showed up in Praven’s report as an attempt to have Parkins sent back to Arizona. Coupled with the fact that Praven illegally detained Parkins before filling out this document – and then left her in jail for a week without any information about why she was being held – there’s no justification at all for claiming that no misconduct occurred. And it’s a clear lie that no intended inaccuracies or fabrications ended up in Parkins’ paperwork.

Last week’s contest was won by Dave Gibney. It was Karlstrup Strand, Denmark.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

The signature gathering for I-1068, the Marijuana Reform Act, has begun. If you’re on Facebook, Sensible Washington has a page here.

UDPATE: Here are some upcoming kickoff meetings:

Tacoma Meeting: February 16th – 6pm-8pm – Anna Lemon Wheelock Library (3722 North 26th Street)
Seattle Meeting: February 17th – 6:30pm – 7:45pm – Ballard Library (5614 22nd Ave. N.W.)