– This weekend is Seattle Hempfest. During the festivities today, Sensible Washington is expected to announce their plans to try again in 2011 to get a marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot.
– Proposition 19 in California picked up another great endorsement this week, the National Black Police Association. At their conference in Sacramento, they pointed to the racial disparity in drug arrests and the overall negative impact on black communities in supporting the effort. However, not all police groups are supporting Proposition 19. Susan E. Manheimer, the president of the California Police Chiefs Association, throws down this whopper in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Prop. 19 allows a state and a workplace where any driver over the age of 21 can get on the road with marijuana in their system.
Proposition 19 does absolutely nothing to change the laws with respect to driving while intoxicated. Operating a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana will still be illegal in California. Manheimer was very clever in how she constructed this sentence, talking about “marijuana in their system”, rather than being under the influence. If someone smokes pot today, they’ll still have marijuana in their system three days from now. At that point, to insist that they’re still incapable of driving is foolish, but Manheimer seems to indicate that she may actually believe that.
– Dominic Holden notes that the number of marijuana arrests in Seattle has shot up sharply this year. And this is despite the fact that City Attorney Pete Holmes refuses to prosecute any of those arrested. Every person who gets arrested solely for marijuana possession in this city is being arrested for no reason. It’s not clear whether the increase in arrests is the result of SPD being more aggressive towards marijuana enforcement, or if Seattle residents are less afraid of using marijuana openly in the city, but this is another good piece of evidence demonstrating that Mayor McGinn was absolutely correct for opposing additional hires for SPD. If they have time to do this (and enforce jaywalking), it’s really hard to argue that we should be hiring additional officers in the budget crisis we’re in.
– Also in The Stranger this week, Brendan Kiley has an interesting piece on how much of the cocaine making its way into this country is cut with levamisole, a drug that can do a lot of damage to your immune system. What’s odd about this is that illegal drugs generally aren’t cut with anything until they make it into the United States, but this appears to be an instance where the levamisole is being added closer to the source of production. One data point that Kiley neglected to collect was whether or not the same trend was being seen in Europe, where large amounts of South American cocaine are also consumed.
Fugitive sex offender captured at Hempfest
http://www.seattlepi.com/local.....ive20.html
Yep, here’s a second story of one of Lee’s stoner pals checking into the gray bar hotel:
http://www.bellinghamherald.co.....after.html
A nugget from the (really good) Stranger piece: The levamisole is a potentiator (effects increase) of the cocaine buzz:
How can it be a “weekend roundup” on Saturday morning?
@4
It’s the roundup of the week’s news that I post on the weekend.
@2
That’s the same story as Troll’s first comment, Einstein.
Dance, monkeys, dance!!
I didn’t work for the last initiative attempt, but I’ll work for the next one.
The time has come for some sensibility.
@6,
Me,too!
Maybe the increase in marijuana arrests in Seattle is to show the stupidity of our laws against pot. Perhaps the Seattle PD is trying to show their activities and efforts might be better used for violent crimes rather than busting some poor dude for smokin’ a doobie!
Not to judge, but perhaps this time the legalization campaign could be a little more focuses and organized?
This year they seemed to go a long way to confirm the stereotypes.
At least they’ll have some support, it appears that there is now a serious national movement with some actual cash.
@8
I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my binoculars watching the new sewer outfall go in. Fun to watch, but what’s it going to do to my sewer bill?
Hey Troll,
You can admire Dr Laura here: http://www.pencilnecks.com/Laura.html
10
I’ll bet your post got Troll all worked up. At least it seems to have gotten him off this thread as he attends to other “matters.”
I thought McGinn has said repeatedly that the police hires were a budget issue, and not related to any police conduct/policy, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to link the two.
You gotta think it’s a “open use” issue. Why on earth go through all the hassle (and paperwork) of busting somebody when you know they’re not going to get prosecuted, unless it’s blatant?
@9 the capacity upgrades (like the new outfall) are paid for with new connections so take satisfaction in that it shouldn’t cost you anything. But we’ll be raising rates about 20% over the next few years to pay for existing deficiencies.
Yay!
Actually, our whole water bill is pretty low, the extra 20% shouldn’t be a big deal.
Hehehe…
There’s a banner ad for drugfreeworld.com up right now.
@12
I thought McGinn has said repeatedly that the police hires were a budget issue, and not related to any police conduct/policy, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to link the two.
But you can’t separate the two. If police are spending time on offenses that are trivial and inconsequential, then they’re not understaffed. An understaffed police department modifies it’s policies to only deal with pressing crime issues. There’s a reason the first time I was served in a bar was in a bad neighborhood in West Philly when I was 18. As one of the other college freshmen that were in the bar with me told me, “the police here have more important things to do”.
A good question was posed to me over email as well. Are there federal incentives that are causing SPD to do this? It’s a question that’s worth looking into.
You gotta think it’s a “open use” issue. Why on earth go through all the hassle (and paperwork) of busting somebody when you know they’re not going to get prosecuted, unless it’s blatant?
I don’t know if the law makes this distinction. Using marijuana in public may not be any more illegal than using it in a private residence. Another thing worth looking into. Thanks for the good comment.
One can only assume that the way they propose to test if you “have marijuana in your system” is through urine testing, which everyone knows does not test impairment, anymore than a urine test for alcohol tests for impairment.
As for the marijuana in your system, it needs to be hammered into the head of these idiots, that urine tests don’t show marijuana in your system, they only show metabolite by-products that supposedly show that you had cannabis in your system at some indeterminate time in the past, and some indeterminate strength our amount of THC in your system.
As far as alcohol is concerned, the urine test is absolutely worthless, mainly because it doesn’t show impairment, which is what is against the law. Cannabis should have the same exact legal standard, which would make the ubiquitous urine test completely worthless. They are a harassment tool, financed and backed up by the multi-million dollar drug testing companies.
If they want to test your for THC impairment, they can always give you a blood test. They don’t want to do this because the level of THC, which is the ingredient that gets you high, diminishes at exactly the rate the drug affects you. So they won’t be able to slap your ass in jail for something you did three days ago, which has absolutely no bearing on whether you were impaired when driving.
As for these assholes who pompously proclaim “just don’t do drugs,” these are the same assholes who are smoking tobacco like a chimney, which is hundreds of times more deadly addictive than cannabis. These pompous assholes also loudly proclaim this as they down a six pack of beer, another drug that is thousands of times more deadly and dangerous than cannabis. These are the same assholes begging their doctors for extremely addictive, mood altering prescription drugs, which are also thousands of times worse than cannabis.
Virtually every single opponent of cannabis legalization are either incredibly stupid and naive, lacking a basic understanding of simple science, or they are the worst kind of pompous hypocrites.
There is a good article on Alternet which clearly shows that millions of dollars from the Feds is going to local police department around the country. The way these police departments get this money is by jacking up their arrest rates. (This reminds me of the immoral “body count” situation in Vietnam, which was an absolutely horrible way to fight a war and measure progress, but I digress.) The point is, police officers are targeting minor marijuana smokers because it is an incredibly easy bust, partly because these users are passive and relaxed, unlike drunks, who are extremely dangerous to arrest. So police are targeting non-violent people who aren’t harming a fly, while letting the real serious criminals get away with literally murder. And the Federal government is paying them vast amounts of money to do this virtually useless police work, all while the real serious police work never gets done.
To make it even worse, the police officers who get ahead, are the ones who “stack up the arrest numbers,” most of which are pure useless bullshit busts. So the really good police officers, doing the really difficult, time consuming work of pursuing serious criminals, don’t get the promotions they deserve. The lazy fucking asshole officers are getting ahead because they are busting four or five people a night who get caught with a joint in their sock.
The best police work is extremely time consuming. You don’t stack up a bunch of arrests doing serious police work.
So the reality is the system we have in place, grossly encouraged by the DEA, is not only promoting the worst possible police officers — the lazy fucks who don’t give a shit about solving real crime, just stacking up arrest numbers — it is actually penalizing the most thoughtful and useful officers and detectives, the ones who understand that it takes time and effort to fight real crime. Instead the kiss-ass, lazy fucks are getting ahead, all with the blessing the federal government. It is a system which rewards laziness and penalizes intelligent police work. Stupid and wasteful are the words that come to mind, not to mention all the innocent peoples lives, many minorities, whose lives are being destroyed and tainted with bogus arrest records.
All of this if further encouraged by an increasingly privatized prison system, in which these private companies are paid more money to lock more people up, regardless if they are real criminals or not.
And the worst thing of all is that the ridiculous pursuit of low level cannabis users, is keeping police from going after the real serious criminals.
Our society is extremely sick. The priorities of police departments aren’t to fight actual serious crime, especially rampant violent crime, it is to pad their bottom line by increasing the body count of arrests.
This system rewards the worst police officers, “pigs” in sixties parlance, and penalizes anyone with integrity and a brain. And the fed is dangling this carrot in front of police departments, actually feeding this corruption. Sick.