Last week’s contest was won by 2cents, with a big assist from N in Seattle. The correct location was a bulldozed project in Lexington, KY.

Apparently, Microsoft moved their maps over to bing.com. It appears to work the same as the old site. Good luck!

Place your bets

UPDATE: Day 2 is posted. And it seems that the lying continues. SJ’s sock-puppet, Charlie Kee, made an appearance, but SJ claimed it’s not him:

BTW … my Google must be fucked up as it seems not to be able top find these posts you claim I mad as Charlie Kee.

FWIW, I did once know someone by that name. He was a Captain in the Navy Medical Core. I may have mentioned him in some post, but I do not remember.

Here’s the comment from September where you admitted to being Charlie Kee. Does that refresh your memory, you lying douchebag?

Max Blumenthal in Jerusalem interviewing young people (mostly American Jews) as they partied the night before Obama’s Cairo speech:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxt9HwfPwPo[/youtube]

Scott Sunde has the latest on Marc Emery’s deal to leave Canada and plead guilty to federal drug charges in Seattle. The circus is set to take place sometime this summer.

– The Cannabis Defense Coalition is closely following another trial – this one in Mason County. The defendants, Karen Mower and John Reed, were charged after a police raid on their home found 38 plants. Both are authorized patients. Mower is a terminally ill woman in her 40s who’s been given only 2 years to live by doctors, but the judge has disallowed a medical defense. The next pre-trial hearing is on Monday, June 8 at the Mason County Courthouse in Shelton. The CDC will be arranging for carpools so that concerned citizens can attend the hearing.

– Scott Morgan reminds us that despite what the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle keeps saying, the initial arrest and prosecution of Marc Emery was motivated by Emery’s politics more than anything else. In Emery’s home province of Ontario, lawyers are preparing a case that will challenge Canada’s marijuana prohibition in court.

– New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently posted a query about drug legalization to his facebook account, soliciting feedback for a column this week. It’s great to see some of the most well-respected journalists in the country starting to tackle this question. Here are what I consider the 5 most important reasons the U.S. should go down that path right now:

1. Reducing law enforcement/incarceration expenses – You can just peek ahead to the section below on LEAP’s Howard Woolridge for a good rundown on this one. He talks about the law enforcement side of the equation when it comes to marijuana, but the incarceration costs for all drug users is an even more enormous expense that would be greatly diminished if we invested public funds into treatment. We sometimes think of the economic benefits of ending drug prohibition from the standpoint of how much money would be raised from taxing it, but the real savings come from the amount of money we won’t spend trying to put the 20-30 million Americans who either use or distribute drugs through our criminal justice system. We’re in a very serious economic crisis across the country right now, and while ending drug prohibition won’t solve the problem alone, the problem is virtually unsolvable without reducing the amount of public money that we spend incarcerating as many people as we do.

2. Improving the situation in Mexico – The decades long “war on drugs” had one major effect on drug trafficking. It successfully pushed control of the supply chain to a place where American law couldn’t reach it – Mexico. Now, the Mexican government is completely unable to deal with an illegal industry that pulls in tens of billions of dollars per year from American drug consumption. This has had devastating effects on Mexico’s economy and even more dire consequences for its security.

3. Keeping drugs out the hands of children – Without a regulated market for recreational drugs, the supply chains are run by criminal organizations who have zero incentive to keep drugs out of the hands of children. This has led to a situation where children have greater access to dangerous drugs, and even worse, often become easily dispensible pawns to be used for risky border crossings and other dangerous situations. You can solve both of these problems by setting up regulated markets for drugs.

4. Improving public health – Drug abuse and mental illness are two very costly health problems that feed off of each other. Our emphasis on incarcerating people in order to combat drug addiction doesn’t work and it makes the problem worse. Decriminalization of personal drug use is a vital first step in reducing the public health costs associated with addiction. Allowing doctors to prescribe drugs to addicts is another necessary step on this path, along with needle exchanges and other effective ways to mitigate the effects of drug addiction on our overall public health. In countries where these tactics have been done, they’ve been extraordinarily successful, both at reducing public health problems and lowering drug abuse rates.

5. Setting an example for how other countries can help reduce global organized crime and terrorism – When it comes to the divide in international drug law reform, the United States is on the same side as countries like Iran, Russia, and China, and opposed to countries like Switzerland, Portugal, and Canada, who’ve had greater success in dealing with drug addiction. The result is that the demand for illegal drugs (primarily heroin) is fueling the resurgence in the power of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan in a very similar fashion to how American drug consumption has been fueling Mexican drug gangs. It’s vital that we switch sides in this debate and start working with the countries that are boldly using reason, compassion, and empiricism to deal with this issue and reduce the demand for heroin. As the numbers of drug users rise dramatically in emerging nations like China, an inability to keep that money from flowing to people who view the western world as their enemy will be truly catastrophic.

– Frosty Woolridge, whose brother Howard is a former Michigan police officer and now the main lobbyist for LEAP in Washington DC working to end drug prohibition, posts some of Howard’s most compelling justifications for treating marijuana the same way we treat alcohol:

“Almost all of you reading this will have either been searched for marijuana or know someone who has. My profession has certainly changed its motto from ‘Protect and Serve’ to ‘Search and Arrest.’ A vehicle search will require two officers. Most officers operate alone, thus a colleague must be brought over from a neighboring district to assist. If a 911 call goes out in that district, the response time will be longer than necessary. Ditto for the district where the officer is searching the car. Reduction in Public Safety!

“The average search will require close to 60 minutes of total police time. So 750,000 possession cases equal only ¾ of a million hours, right? Wrong! According to my colleagues back in Bath Township, Michigan who spent most of their 12 hour shifts looking to bust the next Michael Phelps, they search an average of 15 cars to find one with a baggie. Now we are up to about 11 million hours or the equivalent of 5,500 street officers who do nothing but arrest the Willie Nelson’s of the world. Reduction in Public Safety!

…

Using a conservative figure of five hours per dealer bust, we are adding about 1.5 million more hours wasted. The hard number to calculate is how many hours are spent flying around in helicopters, locate an MJ garden and then spend a day cutting down the plants and airlifting them out….all without busting anyone. Now you have a clearer picture of the horrific amount of police time spent. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Wait! We are not done. These 845,000 MJ cases go to the lab that must show that the green stuff really is pot. Labs around the country are over-loaded with drug cases. Since drugs are the most important, guess what cases are not being processed? Rape kits & their DNA. According to National Public Radio and unrefuted, 400,000 rape kits some years old have never been opened. Rapists are running loose as labs process Willie’s last possession with intent to smoke bust. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Pop Quiz. According to our FBI, which crime receives more agent time: marijuana or child pornography? No brainer, right? And you are wrong! When FBI Director Mueller was asked by a not too happy Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz last year in a House hearing about the pitiful number of FBI agents (33 full-time equivalent) involved in kiddy porn crimes, his response was no new agents, no shifting of resources, nothing, nada, zip. IMO the expression on his face was ‘let them eat cake.’ Obviously he was never a street cop like me who has gently interviewed 7 year old rape victims and then arrested their tormentors. My blood is boiling as I write this, BTW. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Who else is unhappy with this criminal mis-direction of police resources? Some members of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They will admit in private that the millions of street cop hours could be refocused & spent reducing deaths due to DUI by thousands. In public they are forced by funders to support MJ prohibition but in private they told me they support ending marijuana prohibition.

“The No Illegal Entry Into the USA groups are now opening their eyes to the fact that MJ prohibition means millions of extra border crossings. Why? Federal agents like ICE and Border Patrol have as their #1 priority federal (Title 21) drug laws. #2 is the catching of illegal entry. So, they literally will let 100 illegals coming thru without hindrance to stop one guy with a 60 pound backpack of grass. Experienced agents have informed me that absent the smuggling of pot with today’s manpower and technology, they could almost stop illegal entry across the southern border.

The emphasis two paragraphs above is mine. I’m very curious to know who’s actually running MADD and why they have such a strong stake in keeping marijuana illegal.

As most of you probably remember, four men from Newburgh, New York were arrested a few weeks back after they took part in what they thought was a plot to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx. Instead, the bombs were fake, and the ringleader of the operation was a government informant trying to mitigate his own legal troubles.

The cable news shows made a huge deal about the arrest as if it were some chilling reminder of the dangers of homegrown terrorism, but the reality was that without the informant, these four morons couldn’t have plotted to change a light bulb. The “leader” was being paid in weed by the informant and was high when they got arrested. Another of the four was described by his own sister as being “the dumbest person on this earth”. And a third one had previously been judged insane in an immigration hearing. This was nothing more than a desperate and persistent man trying to work a deal with cops finding whatever patsies he could dreg up in order to give police some “bigger fish”.

It’s hard to have sympathy for anyone who would even go along with a plot to blow up a synagogue (or any other place with innocent people inside), but I’m also not afraid of people like the Newburgh four. People that stupid and gullible are far more likely to be a threat to themselves than anyone else. And as Zachary Roth writes, it leads to some questions about how useful it is to do this in the first place:

Let’s be clear about what all this might and might not add up to. If these men were willing to go through with planting what they believed to be deadly bombs — as they appear to have been — then they should be charged, and, if convicted, sentenced to jail-time. (Their lawyers, of course, will likely claim entrapment, and it’ll be up to a judge and jury to weigh that claim after hearing all the evidence.)

But the emerging evidence that “Maqsood” aggressively targeted these men, and may have convinced them to participate in the plot only by offering them money and gifts, raises a different question: is pursuing “plots” that may well never have existed in the first place were it not for the work of a government informant, really the most effective way for the federal government to spend its finite terror-fighting resources?

I think what we should do is take some folks who’ve been arrested for various offenses like fraud and tax evasion and allow them to mitigate their sentences by going into churches around the country and recruiting disaffected crazies who would be willing to help them blow up a Planned Parenthood office. Then, after we bust like 4 or 5 “terrorist plots” in middle America, we can ask that question again.

Milwhcky just keeps on rolling. He won last week’s contest for his fourth win a row. It was the London Zoo in the UK (thanks to wes.in.wa for posting the link). This week’s is a tough one. I may have to throw out a clue a little later today. Good luck!

– Kitsap County was forced to pay Bruce Olson $2,000 as reimbursement for the grow lights that they confiscated from him and never returned after the ill-conceived 2007 raid on his legal marijuana patch.

– The Marc Emery extradition hearings have been pushed back another few weeks as a potential plea deal is being worked out.

– Melissa Gira Grant writes in Slate about why the crackdown on Craigslist for their erotic classifieds will just lead to more problems when it comes to dealing with prostitution. Dominic Holden and Jonah Spangenthal-Lee write about a local case that illustrates the pointlessness of maintaining an absolute prohibition on paying for erotic services rather than regulating it.

– Scott Morgan dismantles the myth that marijuana is a “gateway drug”.

– In Mexico, the political party that most openly advocates for drug legalization has seen some of its candidates violently attacked, allegedly by the cartels. It’s an important reminder that those who steadfastly oppose drug legalization are on the same side of the debate as the organized crime groups who profit from the illegal drugs.

– Time Magazine writes about one of the most morally bankrupt aspects of the international war on drugs – the attempts to use the U.N. to ban the ancient practice of chewing coca leaves in indigenous areas of South America.

Last week, the first Washington resident took advantage of the new Death with Dignity law, and chose to end her terminal illness with her family and her dog by her side. Another half-dozen individuals in the state have received the medication after being certified by physicians. This law, as in Oregon, is only used by a few dozen people a year. No one gets excited about people using the law, but supporters still work to make sure that people know it and can discuss it with their doctor. As Barbara Coombs Lee from Compassion & Choices explains in the Huffington Post, it pays off:

Most Compassion & Choices supporters would eagerly bargain away a few days of extended life in an intensive care unit in exchange for final days spent at home, in relative comfort and meaningful communion with those they love. Such folks don’t adhere to the doctrine of redemptive suffering and would rather slip away peacefully if imminent dying would be otherwise prolonged and agonized.

Well, the evidence is in. Recent studies indicate the single most powerful thing a person can do to improve the chance for gentle dying is — simply and courageously — to talk about it.
Talk to whom? First and foremost, talk to your personal physician. It’s never too early for this conversation. This March an important study appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine. A large, multi-institutional study, it evaluated the quality of life at the end of life for people with advanced cancer.

Lo and behold! Those individuals who had discussed end-of-life values and preferences with their doctors experienced significantly less suffering in their final week of life. A significant reduction in intensive care hospitalizations and high technology interventions accounted for this desirable outcome. Not too surprising, the patients who had talked with their doctors, and who experienced a more peaceful, pain-free end of life, also received less costly care than those tethered to the tubes and machines meant to extend their lives.

But one finding is stunning enough to be a game-changer in end-of-life care. For all the suffering they inflicted and all the cost they incurred, the tubes and machines actually bought no life extension. None.

Coombs Lee goes on to give some good advice on how to start up that conversation with your doctor, as most doctors will not initiate it. Compassion & Choices has been doing a tremendous amount of work making sure that Washington’s law works as well as Oregon’s, where even death with dignity opponent Sen. Ron Wyden conceded in front of Congress that the law has worked incredibly well when it comes to improving end-of-life care:

While I do not know how I would vote if the issue were to appear on the Oregon ballot once more, I believe it is time for me to acknowledge that my fears concerning the poor elderly were thankfully never realized, and the safeguards appear to have worked quite well in preventing potential abuses.

What is often not discussed by opponents of the Oregon law is the Oregon Death With Dignity Act has brought about many improvements in end of life care in Oregon. Pain management has improved. My state remains the only state to discipline a physician for the under-treatment of pain. However, perhaps the most important side effect of the law is that families, health professionals and patients know they can, and should have conversations about how they want to die and what their wishes are concerning treatment.

The end-of-life rules before I-1000 was passed into law allowed for physicians to make decisions on end-of-life care that should have been left up to patients. Changing that protocol and allowing for conversations about different choices to take place is not just giving patients better options, it’s also improving their care overall.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Rush: “I think that they say that Rush Limbaugh is the 800 lb. gorilla in the Republican Party, but I think that’s mean spirited to say that because I think he’s down to 650 lbs., so I think one should be fair to him about this whole thing.”

On Tuesday, a medical marijuana grower in Wallingford named Roger Spohn was raided by what appeared to be four FBI agents. He soon realized that the agents were actually robbers and called the police. When the police arrived, however, they confiscated most of his plants. Spohn is a registered medical marijuana patient who was maintaining a grow for multiple patients, something which is not allowed by state law but in recent years has been overlooked in King County according to attorney Douglas Hiatt.

When Washington’s medical marijuana law was being revised in 2008, this was one of the major concerns from the patient community. At the time, I’d spoken with individuals who had grown for patients who were either too ill or too frail to grow for themselves. Some of these folks were known by law enforcement to be growing for multiple patients, but were left alone because they weren’t selling to non-patients. Many were worried that codifying a specific plant limit would lead to situations like the one that happened on Tuesday. They were right. After the police came to his house, Spohn was left with only the state-mandated limit of 15 plants (out of the nearly 200 he’d been growing).

At this point, I can’t say for sure whether or not Spohn was diverting any of his grow output to non-patients, but I’ve known Douglas Hiatt long enough that I’d be surprised if he stood up for a grower who was doing that. Most growers are patients themselves and worry greatly about going to jail. And Spohn hasn’t been charged with anything, meaning that the police don’t have any evidence that Spohn was diverting any of his supply. Hopefully, SPD is more concerned with finding the robbers who are not only guilty of breaking and entering and theft, but also of impersonating law enforcement.

If the police are unable to prove that Spohn wasn’t just growing for authorized patients in this state, SPD should return his plants. That’s not a legal judgement on my part, it’s a pragmatic one. Medical marijuana patients who were relying on Spohn for their medicine are now going to have to find alternative avenues. For a city that is so concerned with street dealers and gang violence, this was an incredibly short-sighted move by those officers. They just gave some very brazen criminals a larger customer base along with their stolen goods. To believe that that move couldn’t come back to bite SPD in the ass is wishful thinking.

The last time we had an incident with SPD confiscating medicine from an authorized patient, the DEA eventually got involved and the marijuana was never returned. Unfortunately, because Spohn was technically in violation of state law, even Obama’s DEA could get involved and the same outcome may transpire. If that happens, it will be another illustration of how last year’s attempt to improve our state’s medical marijuana law to protect patients was a failure.

There’s quite a bit going on across the country in the effort to repeal the 70+ year old federal ban on marijuana. The fight is at various stages within each state, so I wanted to give a run down of where each effort is at. Some states are fighting for full legalization already, while others are still just trying to ensure that those with medical uses for the drug can legally use it.

If I’ve missed a state, please shoot me an email and I’ll update this post.

[Read more…]

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky for a three-peat. It was Monmouth Junction, NJ. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Newly confirmed drug czar Gil Kerlikowske was interviewed on KUOW this week. Pete at Drug WarRant has a post up with excerpts from the interview. Here’s one Q&A that was reminiscent of drug czars past:

Q: Marijuana. Do you support legalization of marijuana?
Kerlikowske: No.
Q: And why is that?
Kerlikowske: It’s a dangerous drug.
Q: Now, why is it a dangerous drug?
Kerlikowske: It is a dangerous drug. There are numbers of calls to hotlines for people requesting help from marijuana. A number of people that have been arrested, and we test people and have data on this, that are arrested throughout the country, come in to the system with marijuana in their system, as arrests.

One of the reasons why people have been optimistic about Kerlikowske’s appointment is because he was the police chief in a city that tolerated the annual Hempfest gathering. At Hempfest, hundreds of thousands of people gather in a park near downtown Seattle, many of whom use marijuana while they’re there, and yet bad things almost never happen. People listen to music, they discuss drug law reform, they buy bongs, they hang out on the rocks along the Sound, and they happily mingle among the Seattle Police officers on duty for the event.

If marijuana were such a dangerous drug, how would that even be possible? I’ve been to 5 Hempfests so far, and I haven’t seen so much as an argument, let alone a fight or some other incident (ok, I’ve seen arguments in the Hemposium tent, but those are over politics).

I understand that Seattle is a bit more progressive on this when compared to the rest of the country (although you wouldn’t know it by looking at the state legislature), but that’s not an excuse for Kerlikowske to lie. As the police chief who sent his officers to 8 Hempfests, he knows full-well that marijuana is no more dangerous a drug than alcohol. In fact, I dare him to find any of his former officers who says they’d rather be assigned to keep the peace at an event the size of Hempfest where people were consuming alcohol instead.

I just finished playing soccer at Twin Pond Park in Shoreline. No bears, but lots of rain.