Latest
Latest News
Blog
Will Foster Extradited to Oklahoma
Medical marijuana patient Will Foster is en route to prison in Oklahoma after being picked up Friday by Oklahoma law enforcement officials. He had been held at the Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa, California, for the past 15 months as he fought bogus marijuana cultivation charges there--he was a registered patient with a legal grow--and, after the California charges were dropped, on a parole violation warrant from the Sooner State.
Foster had been arrested and convicted of growing marijuana in Oklahoma and sentenced to 93 years in prison in the 1990s. After that draconian sentence focused national attention on his case, he was eventually resentenced to 20 years in prison. He later won parole and moved to California, where he served three years on parole and was discharged from parole by California authorities.
That wasn't good enough for vindictive Oklahoma authorities, who wanted to squeeze more years out of Foster. He refused to sign Oklahoma paperwork requiring him to return there to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He also refused to sign paperback that extended his original service. Oklahoma authorities issued a parole violation warrant, and the governors of both states signed it.
Foster had sought to block extradition by filing a writ of habeas corpus--he had won a similar writ against Oklahoma earlier--but that effort failed on Friday, and Oklahoma authorities were there to whisk him away. Foster is scheduled to be held at the Tulsa County Jail before being assigned to a prison in the Oklahoma gulag.
Efforts by Foster supporters to secure his release continue and are now focusing on Oklahoma parole authorities and the state governor. For more information about the Foster case, see our Chronicle story here and at Ed Rosenthal's blog here.
Drug War Chronicle will continue to follow the Foster case. Look for a feature article next week.
Blog
Every Year is a Record Year for Marijuana Eradication
Each August, like clockwork, you can expect to see announcements like this one about the success of this year's marijuana eradication efforts:
According to the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a multiagency task force managed by the stateâs Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, this year is already one for the record books. In more than 425 raids since late June, some 3.4 million plants have been seized, up from 2.9 million all of last year. And, officials note, they still have roughly a month and a half before the campaign expires with the end of harvest season. [NYT]So, if more marijuana is seized each year, what does that mean? It means there's more marijuana every year. The harder you try to stop people from growing marijuana in the forest, the more marijuana they will plant. It's a very simple and predictable routine, such that one could easily republish last year's news coverage of this same phenomenon without changing a word and no one would know the difference.
The only variable in this equation is the finite acreage of our forests, which will eventually be destroyed under a policy that serves to increase rather than eliminate the practice of illicit outdoor marijuana cultivation.
Actually, come to think of it, there's a second variable here: our marijuana laws. If we changed them to allow personal marijuana growing on private property, then nobody would grow pot in virtually inaccessible patches of fragile wilderness. How many more harvest season eradication records will be set before that reality begins to sink in?
Blog
Cato Unbound Looks at the Mexican Drug War
Cato Unbound has a series of essays debating what to do about the situation in Mexico. I haven't had time to dig through it, but previous drug policy discussions at Cato Unbound have been very interesting, so I recommend checking it out. Pete Guither has some reactions here.
Blog
Mexico's new drug laws
Supposedly, as part of a plan to reduce small-time drug sales, the Mexican government has decriminalized the possession of what they consider appropriate for personal use.
Latest News
Blog
Trust is not one of the things an undercover cop has a lot of
I spent 12 years working undercover drugs, in the beginning we were told this was a war, and the enemy was drugs.
Latest News
Latest News
Blog
If you have chronic pain, you're male, and take opioids. Please read this.
If you use opioids for chronic pain, have you doctor test your Testosterone levels. I've found that opioids deplete Testosterone levels.
Blog
Imitation is the sincerist form of flattery
"...I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." - George Wallace, Governor of Alabama; 1963
"Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine," - Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy; 2009
In The Trenches
LEAP Volunteers Needed
Dear friends, |
In The Trenches
Press Release: Study -- Marijuana May Protect Against Alcohol Brain Damage
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEÂ Â Â
AUGUST 21, 2009Â Â Â
Study: Marijuana May Protect Against Alcohol Brain Damage
CONTACT: Bruce Mirken, MPP director of communications ............... 415-585-6404 or 202-215-4205
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A study just published online by the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology suggests that marijuana may protect the brain from some of the damage caused by binge drinking.
    The study, by researchers at the University of California San Diego, used a type of high-tech scan called diffusion tensor imaging to compare microscopic changes in brain white matter. The subjects were students aged 16-to-19, divided into three groups: binge drinkers (defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting for boys or four or more for girls), binge drinkers who also smoked marijuana, and a control group who had very little or no experience with either alcohol or drugs.
    As expected, the binge-drinking-only group showed evidence of white matter damage in eight regions examined, as demonstrated by lower fractional anisotropy (FA) scores. But in a finding the researchers describe as "unexpected," the binge-drinking/marijuana group had lower FA scores than the controls in only three of eight regions, and in seven regions the binge-drinking/marijuana group had higher scores -- indicating less damage -- than the binge drinkers who did not use marijuana.
    Brain white matter tracts were "more coherent in adolescents who binge drink and use marijuana than in adolescents who report only binge drinking," the researchers wrote. "It is possible that marijuana may have some neuroprotective properties in mitigating alcohol-related oxidative stress or excitotoxic cell death," as has already been shown in lab and animal studies.
    "This study suggests that not only is marijuana safer than alcohol, it may actually protect against some of the damage that booze causes," said Steve Fox, Marijuana Policy Project director of state campaigns and co-author of the new book, "Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?" (which hit number 17 on the Amazon.com bestseller list). "It's far better for teens not to drink or smoke marijuana, but our nation's leaders send a dangerous message by defending laws that encourage the use of alcohol over marijuana."
    REFERENCE: Jacobus, J. et al. "White matter integrity in adolescents with histories of marijuana use and binge drinking." Neurotoxicology and Teratology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ntt.2009.07.006
    With more than 27,000 members and 100,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit http://MarijuanaPolicy.org.
####
In The Trenches
You Call That Change?
You Can Make a Difference |
Dear friends,
Earlier this month, we told the Obama administration to stop sending mixed messages on medical marijuana. The drug czar has responded, but he still has his facts wrong. Let's ask President Obama to set his drug czar straight on medical marijuana. In a recent news interview, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske tried to amend his claim that "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,â saying that he was referring only to smoked marijuana. That's not good enough, because itâs still not true. The science is clear: marijuana can be highly effective as a medicine when itâs smoked. For some patients, thatâs the easiest and most effective way to consume it, and the harms of smoking it pale compared to the benefits. The president has repeatedly said that science should trump politics. Heâs also acknowledged that marijuana can be an effective medicine. We hoped this drug czar would be different from his predecessors. We still hope so, but he needs to abandon the falsehoods and rhetoric of the past. Our job is to hold the White House and its appointees accountable both to fulfill the promises made by candidate Obama and to ensure that the lies of the drug war become a thing of the past. Write to the president today and ask him to make clear that politics will no longer trump science when it comes to medical marijuana. Sincerely, Bill Piper  |
Latest News
Latest News
Chronicle
Latin America: Mexican Decriminalization Bill Now Law of the Land
A bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of drug for personal use is now the law of the land in Mexico. Although there was some doubt President Calderon would approve it, it appeared in the official gazette Thursday. It also includes provisions to allow the state and localities to go after small-time drug dealers, a power previously reserved to the federal government.
Chronicle
Announcement: The 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 12-14
Every two years drug policy reformers from across the United States and around the world come to the International Drug Policy Reform Conference to listen, learn, network and strategize together for change. This year the conference is in Albuquerque, in November, and StoptheDrugWar.org is a partner.