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Free Weeds - The marijuana debate
(William F. Buckley, National Review Online, June 29, 2004)
Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating. General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or — exulting in life in the paradigm — committing adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo? What we face is the politician's fear of endorsing any change in existing marijuana laws. You can imagine what a call for reform in those laws would do to an upward mobile political figure. Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico, came out in favor of legalization — and went on to private life. George Shultz, former secretary of state, long ago called for legalization, but he was not running for office, and at his age, and with his distinctions, he is immune to slurred charges of indifference to the fate of children and humankind. But Kurt Schmoke, mayor of Baltimore, did it, and survived a reelection challenge. Critics of reform do make a pretty plausible case when they say that whatever is said about using marijuana only for medical relief masks what the advocates are really after, which is legal marijuana for whoever wants it. Today we have illegal marijuana for whoever wants it. Two of every five Americans, according to a 2003 Zogby poll cited by Dr. Nadelmann, believe "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children." It is de facto legal in the Netherlands, and the percentage of users there is the same as here. The Dutch do odd things, but here they teach us a lesson.

. . . Read more!


posted by A Curmudgeon 12:13 PM

 

Bush administration seeking to overturn state law protecting marijuana patients
(Bob Egelko and Patrick Hoge, SFGate.com, June 29, 2004)
The U.S. Supreme Court cast a cloud on the medical marijuana movement's biggest legal victory Monday when the justices agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal of a ruling that protects marijuana patients in California from federal prosecution. . . . The administration is challenging a decision in December by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that barred federal drug agents from interfering with the growing and use of marijuana by two women, Angel Raich of Oakland and Diane Monson of Oroville (Butte County). . . . The court will hear the case in the term that starts in October, with a ruling due by the end of June 2005. . . . Raich, 38, who uses marijuana with her doctor's approval to treat pain, nausea and seizures associated with a brain tumor and a wasting syndrome, made a fervent plea at a news conference Monday. . . . "Medical cannabis has saved my life,'' she said, but "this case is not just about medical cannabis. It's about whether or not the federal government in this country has the right to decide who may live and who may die.'' . . . Raich, disabled since 1995, takes marijuana about every two waking hours. Her primary physician, Dr. Frank Lucido of Berkeley, told reporters that Raich needs marijuana to fight off her physical deterioration. . . . Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state also have medical marijuana laws, though federal enforcement efforts have been largely concentrated on California. All those states except Colorado and Maine are in the Ninth Circuit and thus were covered by December's ruling. . . . Medical marijuana advocates put the best face possible on the Supreme Court's decision to review the case. . . . "The Supreme Court has a chance to protect the right of patients everywhere who need medical cannabis to treat their afflictions,'' said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 11:05 AM

 

Supreme Court Will Hear Argument on Medical Marijuana Laws
(Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, June 29, 2004)
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether Congress has the authority to prohibit the medical use of marijuana in states where the voters or the legislature have approved the drug's use under a doctor's care. . . . The case, certain to be one of the most closely watched of the court's next term, is an appeal by the Bush administration of a preliminary ruling issued last December by the federal appeals court in San Francisco. That court, finding that the federal Controlled Substances Act was "likely unconstitutional" as applied to two California patients and their suppliers of marijuana, issued an injunction that barred federal enforcement while the case proceeded. . . . In addition to its implications for social policy, the case also raises important federalism questions. One question is whether the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce extends to marijuana that is cultivated for noncommercial use within the borders of a single state, never traveling in interstate commerce. . . . Attorney General John Ashcroft has strongly opposed the state laws. The case the Supreme Court accepted began with a confrontation between sheriff's deputies in Butte County, Calif., and federal drug agents, who both showed up at the home of Diana Monson, a patient whose severe back spasms are not helped by prescription drugs but are alleviated by marijuana, which she uses under her doctor's care. The sheriff's deputies concluded that the marijuana she was growing was legal, but the federal agents seized and destroyed her plants after a three-hour standoff with the deputies.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 7:49 PM

 

Utah Peyote Case
Peyote is a psychotropic cactus that has been used as a religious sacrament for centuries. Today, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that a federal exemption for peyote-using members of the Native American Church must be interpreted as applying to non-Indians and Indians alike. Utah’s Controlled Substances Act incorporates the federal exemption, ruled the court, and because the plain language of the federal exemption is not limited to Indians, it must be read as applicable to Linda and James Mooney, both of whom are non-Indian members of the Native American Church.

For links to the Utah Supreme Court's opinion and an AP article about the case, please click on the link above.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 3:17 PM

 

A Renaissance in Psychedelic Research

On June 13, 2004, a historic all-day meeting took place just prior to the opening of the 16th International Transpersonal Conference in Palm Springs, California. This pre-conference workshop was sponsored and organized by Rick Doblin and his team from MAPS. Considering the climate of the U.S. in these dark days, this was a truly remarkable event, for it brought together most of the women and men who are currently conducting human research studies of psychedelic medicines in the U.S.

To put this into perspective, from 1943 until 1973 over a thousand clinical papers were published in the professional literature discussing the experiences of 40,000 patients treated with hallucinogens. Since then, there has been almost no government approved research involving psychedelic medicines and human subjects. While there has been a significant amount of individual experimentation with these substances since 1973, this research is highly subjective and is dismissed as "anecdotal" by mainstream science. And so it has fallen to a small (but highly courageous) group of medical and scientific professionals to keep the flame of this important research alive . . . and what a wonderful job of it they have done!

Against all odds this hardy band of researchers, along with their dedicated team members, have been able to break the logjam of bureaucratic regulations to obtain FDA, DEA, and IRB approvals for their work. And if you think this is no small matter, consider the fact that some of these study applications have been "in the approval process" for over a decade. The studies that are now underway and in various stages of completion include (study, principal investigator, location):

The Effects of Psilocybin on Terminally Ill Cancer Patients, Charles S. Grob, M.D., Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

Psilocybin/Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Study, Francisco Moreno, M.D., University of Arizona Medical Center

MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Michael Mithoefer, M.D., Private Clinic in South Carolina

Additionally, there was a very interesting panel discussion led by the people who are currently operating clinics in Mexico and Canada where they are using the hallucinogen Ibogaine to treat severe drug and alcohol dependencies.

The preliminary information these researchers revealed was remarkable. Once these studies are completed and the data fully analyzed, these researchers will be publishing their results in peer reviewed journals. From their preliminary findings, however, we should expect a great deal of renewed professional interest in these important and sadly neglected medicines.

[COMMENT:  In 1978, I attended the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, California. At the time, personal computers were still thought of as not much more than expensive toys by the mainstream computing world. Thus the section of that trade show dealing with PCs was confined to the basement of a nearby hotel, away from where the "real" computing action was taking place. As I remember it, the Microsoft booth didn't consist of much more that a single table and a few hand made signs. Of the 57,000 people who attended that conference, only a handful made a visit to that basement full of geeks and their toys. In the quarter century that has passed since then, personal computing has become mainstream. Sitting in that little conference room yesterday, listening to these pioneering psychedelic researchers, brought to mind the fact that a small group of dedicated people really can change the world. Perhaps we are about to see a similar quantum leap in psychedelic medicine . . . and not a moment too soon!         —Lorenzo ]

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 3:03 PM

 

LEGALIZE IT, EX-COP TELLS HILL POT RALLY
(Media Awareness Project, 06 Jun 2004)
Jack Cole is not the type of person you would expect to see at a rally to legalize pot. During his 26-year career with the New Jersey state police, Cole spent 12 years as an undercover narcotics officer. His investigations ran the gamut from street drug dealers to international drug trafficking organizations. Now retired, the Medford, Me., resident has taken a decidedly different stance on illegal drugs. Cole is a founding member and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an international, drug-policy-reform organization consisting of current and former members of law enforcement. "I believe in legalizing all drugs," he said, explaining that legalization would allow the government to regulate and control the distribution, consumption and production of these substances, forcing criminals out of the equation. Cole said his views on the legalization of drugs are shared by many in law enforcement, but most don't speak out for fear of retribution within the ranks. "When I speak to police officers on a one-to-one basis, they almost always agree with me that the war on drugs is a dismal failure," he said. The retired cop found an attentive crowd in those who gathered on Parliament Hill yesterday to protest marijuana prohibition and advocate regulation. The Fill the Hill rally drew an estimated crowd of 1,500 people. Later, a man was arrested at nearby Nepean Point for having a hockey bag full of marijuana. The 1,330 grams of pot had been divided into 400 separate baggies and had a street value of about $20,000.

. . . Read more!


posted by A Curmudgeon 4:59 PM

 

'Can't Find My Way Home': Higher and Higher
[ New York Times-Book Review, By HAL ESPEN, June 6, 2004]
Much of ''Can't Find My Way Home'' is driven by a desire to understand how substances like marijuana, heroin, peyote, cocaine, LSD and amphetamines escaped their original milieu -- whether pharmaceutical or ethnographic -- and infiltrated American life, first the fringes and then the mainstream. Torgoff ladles out familiar dollops of counterculture history -- he explores the history of the Beats, the links between jazz and heroin, the careers of Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, Haight-Ashbury and the hippie movement, Warhol and the Factory. And along the way he lucidly traces the daisy chain of influence and bohemian proselytizing that brought dope out of the lower depths, with the result that a middle-class boy like Martin Torgoff found himself unaccountably transformed, along with so many others, into a dope fiend.

It's fascinating to hear, for example, how an addict and charming scoundrel named Herbert Huncke -- the man who became a key emissary from the drug demimonde for Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac -- had himself been drawn to heroin by tales of Shanghai opium dens, ''posh layouts with cushions on the floor and naked or half-naked men and women laying about,'' as he tells Torgoff. ''It was called 'lying on the hip,' and that's where the word hip comes from, of course.'' The etymology may be questionable, but similar bright shards of archaeological lore help to make up for the author's sometimes tedious reprising of material familiar from earlier works, notably Tom Wolfe's ''Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''

>>The book winds up with a sympathetic account of the decriminalization movement, whose key insight -- ''the vast majority of American illegal drug users do so responsibly'' -- is a far cry from the revolutionary claims and pirate swagger of the long-gone drug culture. Meanwhile, the standoff continues: the permanent scandal of drug use for pleasure and oblivion versus the ''pharmacological Calvinism'' of a legal system that puts nonviolent users and violent drug criminals alike in prison.

In recent years neuroscience has learned just enough about the fantastically complex chemical, electrical and genetic functions of the human brain to teach us how little we know about consciousness and how to alter it or expand it, and why some of us become enslaved by addictions while others go free. In studying brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, we've just begun to discern why highs are so often paid for with lows. Until we know more, our experiments with illicit drugs will continue on the margins, and crazy compendiums like Torgoff's will hold us in their sway. And the truth will still sound very much like something the novelist and skeptical former Merry Prankster Robert Stone tells Torgoff: ''I never felt that drugs were a good thing, but they were something that was wild and open and free.''

. . . Read more!


posted by moshido 1:18 PM

 

Justice Department Barred From Enforcing Restriction on Drug Policy Reform Advertising
On June 2, 2004, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman issued a permanent injunction against the Justice Department's enforcement of a provision of a federal law that would have denied federal funding to any mass transit system "involved directly or indirectly in any activity that promotes the legalization or medical use" of any Schedule I drug such as marijuana. . . . The lawsuit against Congress and the DC Metro system was filed by several drug policy reform and civil liberties organizations, after an ad reading "Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up Non-violent Americans" was refused by Metro earlier this year. Even as this ad was refused, ads by the Office of National Drug Control Policy supporting the enforcement of current marijuana laws were accepted and posted in Metro buses and trains. . . . Justice Department lawyers defending the law argued that federally funded mass transit systems are not required to provide an opportunity for the expression of views by political groups, and claimed that some of the ads encouraged illegal behavior. The Court disagreed, noting that the law did not merely restrict certain content – the public discussion and debate of drug laws – but a particular viewpoint – support for legislative reform of certain laws. The Court determined that "[t]he government has articulated no legitimate state interest in the suppression of this particular speech other than the fact that it disapproves of the message."

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 9:03 AM

 

Top Police Educator Opposes War on Drugs
[COMMENT: The link above will take you to the full text of this essay, which is also on this site. We highly recommend that you read this important essay in its entirety.]

(Dr. A.C. Germann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, Long Beach)
We need adult, serious, balanced, and dignified coverage of information that is not distorted, paranoid, self-serving, politicized, or seriously misleading. If the ears of all the people in the nation who had ingested illicit substances in the past six months were to turn bright green for one whole week, the nation would be amazed, confused, astounded, and quickly taught something very important as they identified friends, relatives, neighbors, doctors, lawyers, accountants, priests, nuns, ministers, rabbis, soldiers, policemen, firemen, military personnel, businessmen, teachers, students, politicians, respected policy makers, administrators, supervisors, and workers from a variety of private and government institutions everywhere. The nation could, reasonably, come to realize that there is such a thing as useful, pleasurable and responsible drug use, as well as useless, damaging and irresponsible drug abuse. . . . It is a national embarrassment that many o four approaches to drug use and drug abuse remain so puerile, ignorant, and vindictive. . . . And we need all media professionals to probe the reliability of drug data sources, and to refuse to write or print questionable, exaggerated, anachronistic, self-serving material. . . . Military pragmatism can "destroy a village in order to save it" and likewise, a drug war can destroy people in order to save them, be savagely draconian, ruthless in application, inanely mechanical, and ruin salvageable lives by incarcerating non-violent, non-predatory addicts, and cost far more than educational programs.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 5:28 PM