by TChris

Our country's misplaced priorties are exemplified by the attention given to marijuana smokers.

Last year, 755,187 people were arrested for marijuana violations in America, according to an FBI report released Oct. 25. The number of annual marijuana arrests has doubled since 1993. This year’s total is the largest in history.

Nearly half of all drug arrests are for marijuana. Does this make the country safer?

The number of marijuana arrests exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, manslaughter, robbery and aggravated assault. Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent were charged with possession only.

What a difference 35 years makes. In 1969, John Sinclair was sentenced to ten years for two joints. Tuesday, Ann Arbor passed a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana and lower fines for third and subquent offenses relating to non-medical marijuana use--including offenses of using, buying, selling or possessing marijuana.

Ann Arbor residents passed a ballot proposal, to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, yesterday. Proposal C will waive fines for medical marijuana patients and their caregivers who receive the recommendation of a physician or other qualified health professional to use marijuana for medical treatment.

The proposal also changes the current law in Ann Arbor to lower the fine for the third and all subsequent marijuana offenses for non medical users to $100. These fines include possession, control, use, giving away or selling of marijuana.

[link via Drug WarRant]

John Lennon wrote a song about John Sinclair, called "John Sinclair." Here are the lyrics.

by TChris

Proponents of California's Proposition 66 -- a defeated ballot measure that would have reduced the harshness of California's "three strikes" law -- believe voters would have approved a less ambitious reform. (Background on the initiative is here.) Opponents of the measure succeeded in the usual way: by frightening voters.

"It worked -- the electorate was frightened to death,'' said Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who worked to pass the proposition.

Supported by California's powerful prison guard union, opponents relied on dubious claims that "hardened criminals" would receive "get-out-of-jail-free passes." There may still be room for a fix to assure that no further "third strikes" are based on nonviolent offenses.

San Mateo County District Attorney James Fox, a vocal opponent of Prop. 66, said he believed there "was sentiment out there to make some corrections to three strikes to eliminate the possibility of prosecutorial indiscretion."

The opportunity for reform has not been irrevocably lost. Stay tuned.

The devil in California's current three-strikes law is in the details. So says the New York Times in an editorial today urging California voters to approve Proposition 66, limiting the third strike in three strikes cases to violent or serious offenses.

In marked contrast with the federal government and the 24 other states that have three-strikes laws, California does not require the third offense to be a violent, or even serious, crime to draw an enhanced sentence of 25 years to life. How prosecutors apply the law varies from county to county. But all too often, people get life sentences for stealing spare tires or T-shirts, or for possessing small amounts of narcotics. According to the Department of Corrections, the last crimes committed by more than half of California's 7,000 third-strikers were nonviolent.

by TChris

In response to the unnecessary death of a college student in Boston last week, the Seattle Police Department has suspended its use of pepper-spray pellet guns. The student, Victoria Snelgrove, died after she was shot in the eye as the police tried to disperse "a rowdy crowd of Red Sox fans."

The Boston Police Department also suspended use of the pepper gun.

The reassessment came as Boston police girded for another potential Sox-inspired frenzy, with the hometown team standing on the brink of a World Series victory against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Other police departments believe the weapon is safe and effective, and the manufacturer cautions against pointing the gun at a target's head. But Boston's experience provides evidence that the gun can cause greater harm than the need for crowd control justifies:

Officers fired into a crowd of fans, striking Snelgrove and at least two others. Paul Gately, 24, needed stitches to patch a hole in his cheek and suffered bruises and welts on his torso. Kapila Bhamidipati, of Bridgewater, N.J., was struck in the temple and said doctors had to remove small pieces of plastic from his forehead.

While Bush is touting the new FBI report showing violent crime (except for murder) is down, he neglects to mention some other important statistics. According to NORML, which has studied the report:

Police arrested an estimated 755,187 persons for marijuana violations in 2003.... The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 45 percent of all drug arrests in the United States....at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 42 seconds in America.

The cost of these marijuana arrests is $7.6 billion. Isn't it peculiar that Bush doesn't realize that this $7.6 million could be far better spent finding and stopping terrorists?

If you're thinking the numbers may reflect a lot of big dealer sales, forget it.

Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent - some 662,886 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 92,301 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

Marijuana arrests last year were up 8%. What does that mean?

The total number of marijuana arrests for 2003 far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

by TChris

Leave it to the Bush administration to explain to state voters what their own ballot initiatives mean.

Oregon voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998. Now a new ballot initiative seeks to give the law some teeth by legalizing marijuana dispensaries throughout the state and by allowing patients to possess more pot. Jackie Lamont, general manager of the Compassion Center in Eugene, says the initiative is designed "to make the existing law work better."

But John Horton, associate deputy director for state and local affairs of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there is "absolutely no question" that the measure is an attempt to legalize marijuana in Oregon.

Right. Because people who actually live in Oregon couldn't possibly know what their ballot initiatives mean. They need Big Brother Bush and his Washington minions to tell them the "truth" about their own proposed laws.

The "truth" that Horton is peddling: marijuana has no medicinal value. He'll likely have a rough time persuading the nearly 9,000 patients in Oregon who depend on marijuana for relief from pain, nausea, muscle spasms, glaucoma, and other infirmities.

by TChris

Have voters finally grown weary of the "tough on crime" rhetoric that politicians have spewed mindlessly for the last quarter century? California may provide an answer as voters consider Proposition 66, a proposal to modify the state's extreme three-strikes law by limiting the "strikes" that trigger sentences of 25-to-life. The need for change is clear.

Currently, even crimes not defined as serious or violent can count as a third strike, leading to instances in which multiple offenders have received the maximum penalty for committing crimes like shoplifting or possessing small amounts of narcotics. Last year, the United States Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to sentences of 25 years without parole for a man who stole three golf clubs from a pro shop and 50 years without parole for another man for stealing children's videotapes from a Kmart store.

Prosecutors love the existing law. They say "they need that option to lock up dangerous criminals, even those caught for relatively minor crimes." But it should be a judge, not a prosecutor, who decides that an offender committing a minor crime deserves a lengthy sentence. California's law reflects an unhealthy trend to shift power from the judicial branch to the executive branch by allowing a prosecutor rather than a judge to decide whether an offender deserves harsh punishment.

Three western states have marijuana reform measures on the ballot this year--Oregon, Alaska and Montana. White House Drug Czar John Walters has been out campaigning in these states to defeat the measure.

If all three measures are approved, Montana would become the 10th state to legalize pot for medical purposes, Oregon would dramatically expand its existing medical-marijuana program, and Alaska would become the first state to decriminalize marijuana altogether.

Walters may be making headway in Oregon. Montana and Alaska, on the other hand, may succeed in their reform efforts. The Alaska measure goes the furthest. If it passes, it would

...prohibit prosecution of anyone 21 or older who consumes, grows or distributes pot for private personal use. It would allow authorities to regulate marijuana along the lines of alcohol and tobacco _ for example, taxing it and barring its use in public.

The Marijuana Policy Project has been funding much of the reform movement. Their Alaska campaign website is here. The White House isn't giving up though. You can expect to see a new ad this week, Open Letter to Parents . MPP argues that the Alaska measure will:

Is the conservative right undermining morality and therefore contributing to the crimes committed by "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib and the corporate fraud crowd? The American Constitution Society blog says one progressive think tank so posits:

Right-wing commentators have insisted that in both cases the problem was caused by a few misguided and troubled individuals. No need for any further scrutiny; the only issue is to punish the bad guys. But this resort to the “bad apple” theory is actually the leading edge of “the new right-wing permissiveness”. Conservatives have long blamed the permissiveness of liberals for many of our society’s most intractable problems–crime, delinquency, and drug use. But the Right now has embraced a more insidious form of permissiveness that is creating an “anything goes” moral culture. The elements of this new permissiveness are the bad apple theory and the idea that reliance on a “higher authority” eliminates the need for moral judgments. Together these undermine a culture of moral responsibility.

Ten years after former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuiliani decided to clean up New York by ridding it of sex shops and arresting street violators, sex shops have returned to Greenwich Village. How?

The former mayor's restrictions on the industry, passed in 1995 as a centerpiece of his quality-of-life campaign, proved toothless after numerous court challenges, and an intransigent industry has found a way to dodge nearly every regulation imposed upon it. While these stores still dot the western edges of Times Square, the Village, which has always prided itself on being a national symbol of tolerance, has become an example of how loopholes and weak language can undermine a once-celebrated law.

Residents and elected officials from the area estimate that 20 new sex-related stores have opened in the area in the past 18 months, and say that glaring neon confronts them along Christopher Street, Seventh Avenue South and Avenue of the Americas.

The loophole is one that allows stores with more than 60% of their merchandise in non-adult rated goods to operate outside "adult entertainment zones." Cops call this "sham compliance" because to fit into the exception, stores are filling the front with things like "Popeye cartoon videos dubbed in Spanish," instuctional golf and Ozzie and Harriet videos. In the back, are the thousands of adult dvds.

Bloomberg is sympathetic to the residents of the area who don't want the shops in their neighboorhood.

An editorial in the New York Times today cheers California's "bold step" in treating drug addiction. First, the problem:

Intravenous-drug users who spread disease by sharing dirty needles and engaging in unprotected sex are responsible for more than a third of all the AIDS cases in the United States and more than half of the new cases of hepatitis C. Addicts will continue to drive these epidemics until the country takes a more enlightened approach to drug treatment. That means discarding the laws that criminalize needle possession because such laws encourage addicts to share needles.

California's response: Proposition 36