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Matt
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Richard Lake
Doonesbury
In this Sunday’s Doonesbury comic strip, Zonker decides to head for Oaksterdam
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admin
#448 California’s Proposition 19
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010
Subject: #448 California’s Proposition 19CALIFORNIA’S PROPOSITION 19
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #448 – Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
Today the San Francisco Chronicle printed two OPEDs.
The first ‘Californians Must Look at Science of Marijuana’
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n677/a08.html is interesting for
what is not disclosed. It is by an addiction therapist. The
therapeutic community has a vested interest in continuing the current
system. About half of all users in therapy are there because of their
marijuana use. Of those, over 40% are there from court referrals –
they take therapy as a preferred alternative to jail whether they need
it or not. Many of the others are there because their parents’ health
insurance will buy therapy as an alternative to being expelled from
school or referred to the juvenile justice system.The second ‘Legalizing Marijuana Is Bad For California’
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n679.a06.html is by Susan
Manheimer, the president of the California Police Chiefs Association.
There is more spin and propaganda in the OPED than we can count.Your letters to the editor about either or both are invited.
Opinion items are always good letter targets. They are MAP archived
at http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htmThe same applies to Proposition 19 items which may be found at
http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Proposition+19
Please check out the new Proposition 19 website at http://yeson19.com/
- and please do whatever you can to support the effort.We have started a list of who appears to be for and against
Proposition 19 based on MAP’s news clippings.**********************************************************************
FOR
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union
The National Black Police Association
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union
The California National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
The Drug Policy Alliance Network
Students for Sensible Drug Policy
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
The American Civil Liberties Union
The Courage Campaign
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the former United States Surgeon General
The Cannabis Consumers Campaign
DRCNet
DrugSense
Common Sense for Drug Policy
Marijuana Policy Project
Citizens Opposing Prohibition
The California Black Chamber of Commerce
Retired Orange County Judge James Gray
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AGAINST
The California Chamber of Commerce
The California Police Chiefs Association
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
Mexican Marijuana Trafficking Organizations
The California Narcotics Officer’s Association
Gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer
The California League of Cities
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Suggestions for writing letters are at our Media Activism Center
http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides
For the latest facts about marijuana please see
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/53
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Prepared by: Richard Lake, Focus Alert Specialist http://www.mapinc.org
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Richard Lake
Letter Writer Of The Month – July – Wayne Phillips
Newshawk: Published Letters Awards http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm
DrugSense recognizes Wayne Phillips of Hamilton, Ontario for his
three letters published during July. This brings his total published
letters, that we know of, to 81. Wayne writes as the Communication
Director for Educators For Sensible Drug Policy http://efsdp.org/You may read his published letters at
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Matt
Black Cops Say Legalize Marijuana
Neill Franklin, a 33-year veteran cop from Baltimore, talks about why the National Black Police Association and many individual African American officers are supporting an initiative to legalize marijuana in California. Neill is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which any civilian can join for free at http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com/
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Matt
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Matt
Lessons Not Learned Since Tragic Drug Raid in Atlanta
By Bill Piper
Money spent prosecuting and jailing low-level offenders is money not being spent on drug treatment or education.
It’s been almost four years since Atlanta narcotics officers shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston and planted evidence in a failed attempt to frame her – and her family is just now receiving justice in the form of a $4.9 million settlement. That of course won’t bring Ms. Johnston back. And despite some cosmetic changes to how drug law enforcement works, very little has changed. City officials will continue to pressure police officers to meet informal arrest quotas, police will continue to violently raid the homes of people suspected of only nonviolent offenses, and taxpayers will continue to foot the bill of a failed drug policy. Real reform is needed.
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Richard Lake
Letter Of The Week – Harper Wants More Criminals
Newshawk: Published Letters Awards http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm
LETTER OF THE WEEK
HARPER WANTS MORE CRIMINALS
RE: “Call for prisons clashes with crime stats”, Dave Breakenridge, Aug. 9.
By now, it should be apparent that what the Harperites are doing is
trying to manufacture inmates. They want to impose a U.S.-style,
for-profit prison system onto Canada. This policy has been wildly
successful in the U.S. – what with more inmates than any country in
the history of the world and enormous debts. Meanwhile, a handful of
jailers get rich at taxpayers’ expense. The really scary part is
almost a third of the country is willing to ignore these facts and
allow Harper to blow $10 billion on jails, instead of making $10
billion off of legalized pot.Russell Barth
Federally Licensed Medical Marijuana User
Drug Reform Analyst and Consultant
Educators for Sensible Drug Policy
Pubdate: Tue, 10 Aug 2010
Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)
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Stephen Young
No Rational Basis: The Pragmatic Case For Marijuana Law Reform
By Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen, 17 Virginial Journal of Law and Public Policy 45 (2009)
FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE AT: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1366422
ABSTRACT: This article presents a critique of marijuana prohibition and suggests some alternative regulatory approaches that would be more productive and consonant with justice. Part I relies on a forty-year empirical record to demonstrate that (1) reliance on a law enforcement approach has aggravated rather than mitigated the risks involved with marijuana use, and (2) criminalization, which results in the arrest of more than 700,000 Americans annually for possession of any amount of marijuana, is an inhumane and destructive response to an act that almost 100 million Americans have committed. Part II assesses the relative merits of several alternative reform policies, including both decriminalization and legalization under a regulatory scheme.
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Stephen Young
Liberty Lost: The Moral Case For Marijuana Law Reform
By Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen, 85 Indiana Law Journal 279 (2010)
FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE AT: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1366426
ABSTRACT: Marijuana policy analyses typically focus on the relative costs and benefits of present policy and its feasible alternatives. This essay addresses a prior, threshold issue: whether marijuana criminal laws abridge fundamental individual rights, and if so, whether there are grounds that justify doing so.
Over 700,000 people are arrested annually for simple marijuana possession, a small but significant proportion of the one hundred million Americans who have committed the same crime. In this essay, we present a civil libertarian case for repealing marijuana possession crimes. We put forward two arguments, corresponding to the two distinct liberty concerns implicated by laws that both ban marijuana use and punish its users. The first argument opposes criminalization, demonstrating that marijuana use does not constitute the kind of wrongful conduct that is a prerequisite for just punishment. The second argument demonstrates that even in the absence of criminal penalties, prohibition of marijuana use violates a moral right to exercise autonomy in personal matters – a corollary to Mill’s harm principle in the utilitarian tradition, or, in the non-consequentialist tradition, to the respect for personhood that was well described by the Supreme Court in its recent Lawrence v. Texas opinion. Both arguments are based on principles of justice that are uncontroversial in other contexts.
