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Beating Marlboro to the Joint: How Federal Prohibition Allows Micro Marijuana Companies to Thrive

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It’s the first time in economic history that a growing, multi-billion market has no big, multinational players. 

By David Downs / AlterNet

Friday afternoon in a cozy, hip bar in downtown Oakland, California called Cafe Van Kleef, and I’m sitting across the table from the frizzy-haired, denim-jacket-clad blogger for StuffStonersLike.com. He’s sliding a glimmering, dark, cigar-looking package across the table as a big smile breaks out across his face.

“Is this it? This is awesome!” he exclaims, holding up the Schedule 1 illegal drug.

None of the happy hour crowd or the bartenders seem to care. This is Oakland — among the most progressive cities in America, where marijuana is officially the “lowest enforcement priority” for the police.

StuffStonersLike’s founder has a medical cannabis doctor’s recommendation, there are pot clubs down the street, and even though pre-rolled joints are literally given away for free in the San Francisco Bay Area, he’s mesmerized. The office workers enjoying cocktails don’t bat nary an eyelash.

Call it ‘the Cohiba of chronic’.  Or, ‘the seventeen dollar doobie.’ This spring, celebrity pot professor Ed Rosenthal brings to market the Ed Rosenthal Select Sativa Medi-Cone — an elegantly packaged, $17 marijuana cigarette that’s destined to give weed heads a major buzz and legalization’s critics fits.   [Read more…]

Poll Shows Latinos Do Not Support the War on Drugs

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Latino community most disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs and unprecedented levels of incarceration

By Phillip Smith / Drug War Chronicles

A bill that would significantly reform California’s drug sentencing laws is poised for approval in the state Senate, and a new poll showing strong support for sentencing reform among Latino voters could help push it over the top.

Senate Bill 1010, the Fair Sentencing Act, would equalize the penalties for sale of crack and powder cocaine. Under current California law, crack offenses are treated more harshly than powder cocaine offenses. The bill would also equalize probation requirements and asset forfeiture rules for offenses involving the two forms of the same drug.

Sponsored by Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the bill passed the Senate Public Safety Committee last month and the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. It now heads for the Senate floor. It needs to pass in its chamber of origin this month or it dies.

The bill is supported by dozens of community, religious, civil liberty, civil rights, drug reform, and other groups. It is opposed by the California Narcotics Officers Association and the California Police Chiefs Association.   [Read more…]

Science Debunks 10 Biggest Pot Myths

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By any objective analysis, cannabis and cannabinoids exceed the FDA’s existing standards for medicine.

By Paul Armentano / AlterNet

Medical cannabis opponents are fond of promoting many myths and misconceptions about the herb. Here are the facts.

Medical cannabis is too dangerous to recommend as a medicine
The cannabis plant and its biologically active constituents, known as cannabinoids, possess an impressive safety profile compared to other conventional therapeutic agents. According to the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, marijuana possesses an estimated dependence liability of less than ten percent. (Others have acknowledged that pot’s true dependence potential is likely even lower.) This percentage is approximately the same as anxiolytic drugs like Xanax and Valium and far lower than that of many other licit prescription drugs or recreational substances, like alcohol (15 percent) and tobacco (32 percent).

Moreover, unlike the active compounds in many conventional prescription medicines, cannabinoids are relatively non-toxic to fully developed healthy cells and organs. Cannabis also possesses no lethal overdose potential. As acknowledged by no less than the DEA’s own administrative law judge, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”
   [Read more…]

5 Reasons the War on Drugs Is a Costly Economic Disaster

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A new report reveals obscene wastes of money and humanitarian disasters.

By April M. Short / AlterNet

The global war on drugs is the cause of some of the biggest public health and social justice disasters of our time, from violent, billion-dollar cartels to mass incarceration targeting communities of color and locking people up for profit. On top of everything, the drug war is shockingly expensive according to a groundbreaking report released May 7 by the London School of Economics.

The report exposes the injustices of the drug war by examining its true costs. Five Nobel Prize economists, as well as national leaders and professors, weighed in, reaching the overall conclusion that policies need to move away from heavy law enforcement to public health and humanitarian-based efforts.

The forward of the report states, “It is time to end the ‘war on drugs’ and massively redirect resources towards effective evidence-based policies underpinned by rigorous economic analysis.”   [Read more…]

12 of the Biggest Myths About Marijuana Debunked

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The arguments against legalization simply don’t hold up.

By Owen Poindexter / AlterNet

For decades, cannabis opponents controlled the messaging around the popular plant and cultivated any number of lies about its effects. This built up a powerful stigma against marijuana, the effects of which have not worn off. The racist, expensive and failed U.S. war on drugs continues to rage on. The criminalization of cannabis users and distributors remains a top priority in that war. The government stubbornly classifies it as a dangerous Schedule I substance with no medical value, despite stacks of evidence to the contrary.

While many acknowledge the truth about cannabis—that it is healthier than alcohol and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in treating a number of illnesses—and more than half of all Americans want it legalized, marijuana myths are still repeated in some mainstream circles. Legalization opponents, determined to ignore the evidence, are grasping to justify their outdated position.

But the evidence is in, and the arguments against legalization simply don’t hold up. As more people feel comfortable discussing the actual facts about marijuana, the falsehoods that dominated much of the 20th century are dissipating from the zeitgeist.

Here are a dozen marijuana myths that persist to some degree today, and the facts that debunk them.   [Read more…]

Marijuana May Heal Health Problems That Come With Old Age: How Can People Living in Senior Homes Get It?

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From pain and trouble sleeping to cancer and dementia, pot can be a godsend for seniors.

By April M. Short / AlterNet 

Sue Taylor, a retired Catholic school principal and grandmother from Oakland, California, was living in Atlanta, Georgia writing a parenting handbook when she got a phone call from her son that would disrupt her life.

“He told me, ‘Mom, I know how you can open up your metaphysical holistic center,’ which had been my goal,” Taylor said. Taylor had earned a degree in divinity in Atlanta and is now a metaphysical minister. “He said, ‘It will be supported by a cannabis dispensary.’”

“Cannabis dispensary?” Taylor asked him. “You talkin’ about that marijuana stuff?”

Yes, he was.   [Read more…]

How Should California Test for Marijuana DUIs?

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By Law Enforcement Against Prohibition via OB Rag

Editor:  A bill in the California legislation that would have created per se limits on driving under the influence of specified drugs – like marijuana – based on blood tests even absent other evidence of impairment, AB 2500, just failed in the Public Safety Committee. More bills like this are expected. So, this may be a good time to see what a law enforcement group in favor of marijuana legalization has to say on marijuana DUIs.   [Read more…]

Obama May Grant Clemency to Thousands Convicted of Drug Violations

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The Obama Administration continues to rollback oppressive sentences for those with non-violent drug convictions

By Cliff Weathers / AlterNet

An unnamed White House official has told Yahoo! News that President Barack Obama is preparing to grant clemency to “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of people who have been imprisoned for non-violent drug violations.

This news comes a few months after the administration’s announcement that it has encouraged defense attorneys to suggest inmates who should be considered for early release from prison. This indicates that the Obama administration will continue in its efforts to curtail severe penalties in low-level drug cases.

Late last year, President Obama commuted the sentences of nine people serving time in federal prison for non-violent offenses involving crack cocaine, saying that they had been sentenced under an “unfair system.” There is a huge disparity in sentences handed down between crack and powder cocaine offenses. This has been reduced somewhat by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which brought a long-sought reduction in the penalties for crack cocaine.   [Read more…]

The Drug War Fuels Mass Deportation of Nonviolent Migrants

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250,000 people have been deported for drug offenses in the last 6 years.

By Daniel Robelo / AlterNet

The drug war has increasingly become a war against migrant communities. It fuels racial profiling, border militarization, violence against immigrants, intrusive government surveillance and, especially, widespread detentions and deportations. 

Media and politicians have tried to convince us that everyone who gets deported is a violent criminal, a terrorist or a drug kingpin. But a newly released, first-of-its-kind report shatters that notion, showing instead that the majority (some two-thirds) of those deported last year were guilty of minor, nonviolent offenses – including thousands deported for nothing more than possessing small quantities of drugs, typically marijuana.   [Read more…]

Politicians Who Oppose Marijuana Legalization Are On the Wrong Side of History

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A majority of Americans support marijuana legalization.

By Tony Newman via AlterNet

A majority of Americans support marijuana legalization – yet not one sitting governor or U.S. Senator supports it, according to a New York Times piece.  

Marijuana prohibition is a disastrous failure. 43 years after President Nixon launched the “war on drugs,” the U.S. arrests 650,000 people a year for marijuana possession – yet marijuana and other illegal drugs are as available as ever. Thanks to the drug war, the U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet nearly 25 percent of its prisoners.

Colorado and Washington made history in 2012 becoming the first states – and the first two political jurisdictions anywhere in the world – to legally regulate the production and distribution of marijuana, and many states are looking to follow soon. National polls showing majority support for marijuana legalization have been confirmed in states across the country – and not just in states you’d expect but even in Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio and Texas.   [Read more…]

Debunking the 5 Biggest Myths About Pot

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The more research is released, the more legalization makes sense.

By Owen Poindexter / AlterNet

Back in the 1930s, the arguments to criminalize cannabis were bizarre and openly racist. The anti-pot crusader Harry Anslinger made all sorts of over-the-top claims, such as, “Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters.”

Nowadays more than 100 million Americans say they’ve smoke pot, millions use cannabis regularly to treat illnesses and it is as legal as alcohol in two U.S. states. However, it remains illegal under federal law largely due to scare tactics ingrained in our society, which date back even prior to Anslinger.

Today, pot legalization opponents try a little harder to sound reasonable, but their claims don’t do much better than Anslinger’s under scrutiny. Recent studies have picked apart the justifications for criminalizing marijuana. Here are five of the most popular arguments against cannabis legalization that are easily undermined by objective data.   [Read more…]

The Truth About the ‘Marijuana Effect’ in America’s Elections

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Marijuana on the ballot boosts voter turnout, but that may not help many Democrats this year.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

Last week, a bipartisan George Washington University Battleground poll made national headlines when the top Democratic researcher, Celinda Lake, said that ballot questions on marijuana could increase young voter turnout.

“We’re very excited about our marijuana numbers in this poll, not only for personal consumption to get through this election, but in terms of turnout,” Lake told USA Today. “What’s really interesting and, I think, a totally unwritten story is that everyone taks about marriage equality hitting a tipping point (of acceptance). Marijuana is hitting the tipping point. It’s really astounding how fast it’s moved.”

Lake’s findings may be good news for the legalization movement in the long run. But Democrats should not conclude that the presence of pot issues on a handful of ballots in 2014 will bring out a wider youth vote and help them stay in power nationally. That’s because there aren’t many states with marijuana initiatives on the ballot in 2014—just Alaska and Florida so far, although Oregon is expecting a measure on the fall ballot. Pot may help turn out voters in those states, but that’s not unfolding on a scale that would impact whether the Senate keeps its Democratic majority.   [Read more…]

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