Rumors of a smoking ban in the Netherlands have long threatened Amsterdam's popular coffeeshop scene, where customers can openly buy and smoke marijuana. In a bizarre turn, however, it looks like they've come up with an interesting compromise:

New laws similar to those which took effect in England last summer, will ban the smoking of tobacco - but not cannabis - in enclosed public places in the Netherlands from July 1.

Critics say the change will encourage users to turn to much stronger forms of the drug.

Users will still be able to light up joints filled with pure cannabis but technically banned from mixing in tobacco. [The Telegraph]

I just don't even know what to say about this. Common sense ought to dictate that businesses be allowed to choose what environment to offer their customers, but if you're gonna have a smoking ban, the marijuana exemption certainly takes the teeth out of it.

For the hardcore marijuana enthusiasts among us, a friend sends this interesting assesment of the smoking ban's potential impact on Dutch marijuana culture:

The popularity of mixing tobacco into joints is due in part to the widespread use of chemical fertilizers used when growing the commercial cannabis that is typically available in Dutch coffeeshops. "Chemmy" pot doesn't burn properly without tobacco, thus we may soon face an epidemic of joints that won’t stay lit.

Lacking the tobacco option, coffeeshop customers may soon find themselves craving properly-grown organic cannabis, currently a rare find at most Dutch coffeeshops. If, to any extent, this change in the law results in increased use of more conscientious cultivation practices, the long term impact on the quality of Dutch cannabis could be substantial.

Organic cannabis is more flavorful, softer on the lungs, and produces a more satisfying high. Moreover, proper organic methods can achieve the same yields as the destructive chemical/hydroponic technique that many growers believe is necessary to produce a sizable harvest. Experts such as Jason King have long lamented the poor quality of commercial cannabis available in Amsterdam and this new law may have the unintended effect of pushing things back in the right direction.

Really? Well that sounds logical enough to me, I guess. You won't find that kind of analysis in The Telegraph, that's for sure.

A disturbing report from NPR illustrates that many police departments have become dependent on confiscated drug proceeds in order to fund their anti-drug operations:

Every year, about $12 billion in drug profits returns to Mexico from the world's largest narcotics market — the United States. As a tactic in the war on drugs, law enforcement pursues that drug money and is then allowed to keep a portion as an incentive to fight crime.
…

Federal and state rules governing asset forfeiture explicitly discourage law enforcement agencies from supplementing their budgets with seized drug money or allowing the prospect of those funds to influence law enforcement decisions.

There is a law enforcement culture — particularly in the South — in which police agencies have grown, in the words of one state senator from South Texas, "addicted to drug money."

Just pause for a second and think about the implications of a drug war that funds itself with dirty money. It is just laughable to think that such conditions could exist without inviting routine corruption, from our disgraceful forfeiture laws to the habitual thefts and misconduct that occur with such frequency that we're able to publish a weekly column dedicated to them.

It is truly symbolic of the drug war's inherent hopelessness that illicit drug proceeds are needed in order to subsidize narcotics operations. If we ever actually succeeded at shrinking the drug market, we'd be defunding law-enforcement! Progress is rather obviously impossible under such circumstances.

Drug enforcement is a job like any other, and police have mouths to feed, bills to pay, maybe a little alimony here or there. So they take their paycheck and sign out; I don’t blame anyone for that in and of itself. But consider that law-enforcement operations artificially inflate the value of drugs, only to then hunt down those same proceeds, collect, and redistribute them within the police department. Morally, is that any better than the dealer who pushes dope to put food on the table?

Really, a structure such as this is not designed to achieve forward momentum towards reducing drug abuse. It's the law-enforcement equivalent of subsistence farming and it ought to warrant income substitution programs not unlike those we push on the peasants of Colombia and Afghanistan. All of this lends substantial credence to the popular conception that "the drug war was meant to be waged, not won."

Each day that the drug war rages on, its finely tuned mechanisms become more effective at sustaining itself and less effective at addressing the issues of drug abuse and public safety that supposedly justify these policies in the first place.

Everyday I read the Drug Czar's blog hoping that one afternoon I might happen upon something vaguely resembling an actual response to the reform movement's detailed and ongoing critiques of his work. Yet it never comes. Instead, I read that marijuana makes people sad, medical marijuana makes people sick, and school children love having their urine collected.

Then today it happened. Overcome, perhaps, by excitement over the newest data on marijuana potency, the Drug Czar's blog linked editorials by MPP's Bruce Mirken and NORML's Paul Armentano. The post even contains quotes by Armentano and attempts to refute them:

Claim 1: "...even by the University of Mississippi's own admission, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana -- which comprises the bulk of the US market -- is less than five percent, a figure that's remained unchanged for nearly a decade." (via the HuffingtonPost)

Not exactly. The "domestic" samples analyzed in the University of Mississippi's report do not represent what's found in the U.S. market. "Domestic" samples refer to marijuana plants that were found in the process of being grown and were then eradicated by law enforcement in the U.S. The potency of these "domestic" specimens is far lower because those specimens are most often taken from immature plants that never reached full cultivation (maturity) for distribution and consumption in the illegal market.

The "non-domestic" specimens in the report are from actual DEA street or border seizures, which are a different set of specimens from the "domestic" eradications. These samples more accurately represent the quality of marijuana that's smoked in the U.S. (The "non-domestic" label has been misinterpreted because the origin of the seized marijuana is not known.)

It's just a jaw-dropping lecture to receive from the Drug Czar, who previously claimed that marijuana potency had increased "as much as 30 times" precisely by using weak domestic samples as his baseline. Well thanks for clarifying that, finally. Maybe ONDCP should send a press release to 2002 to warn everyone how full of crap they are.

Moreover, if I understand this correctly, the Drug Czar is saying that all cultivated marijuana was labeled as "non-domestic" for the purposes of the latest report. It's true that police can't determine where the finished product originated, but calling it all "non-domestic" ignores the reality that most U.S. marijuana is grown here by Americans and not some terrorist overseas. The study thus implies wrongly that all domestic marijuana was seized before cultivation and that our entire market is dominated by imported foreign pot. And remember, they brought all this up in order to assure us that we don’t know what we're talking about.

The Drug Czar's second point is similarly problematic:

Claim 2: "If and when consumers encounter unusually strong varieties of marijuana, they adjust their use accordingly and smoke less."

The research cited in this argument undermines the author's own claim. The almost 20-year old study found that the effects of the marijuana were greater for the high THC doses of marijuana. Even though the 12 experienced users in the study were titrating, they ended up more intoxicated, and that was with marijuana that only had 1.3 percent versus 2.7 percent THC.

It's just not true. As "Understanding Marijuana" author Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D. explains via email:

…the Pushing Back website says "Even though the 12 experienced users in the study were titrating, they ended up more intoxicated," while the abstract of the article they are mentioning says "Active marijuana also increased subjective reports of drug effect over placebo, but not dose dependently" That is, the folks smoking real pot got higher than folks smoking placebo, but the folks with the stronger dose didn't get higher than the folks with the weaker dose.

As always, it is just impossible to overstate the factual vacuum from which the Drug Czar's claims emerge before being tossed into the public debate like a turd into a hot sauna. These reflexive, involuntary fabrications are all the more galling when one considers that marijuana potency actually has increased and could theoretically be demonstrated without lying at all.

We'd just as soon let them have their day if these recent reports didn’t contradict numerous hysterical prior claims by these very same people, and if they didn’t give rise to all sorts of nonsense about the fictitious risks of marijuana with more THC in it. Anyone struggling with that concept need look no further than the fact that FDA has approved a 100% THC pill called Marinol and the Drug Czar doesn't even pretend to worry about that.

Increasing potency is not an argument against reforming marijuana laws; it's a symptom of marijuana prohibition as well as a towering exhibit of its failure.

Note: For more on this, visit Marijuana Evolves Faster Than Human Beings, which I'm proud to say generated quite a bit of traffic to this site.

Vancouver has a new police chief.In a speech recorded by BCTV he can be seen saying that some addicts have said that they were grateful for federal sentences because it helped them with their addictio

It's a popular tactic in an emergency, but it can easily backfire:

His mouth packed with marijuana, a teenager asked a deputy if he could spit the cannabis out before he was arrested on multiple drug charges, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.

Andrew Alexander Alvarez, 17, of Merioneth Drive, Fort Walton Beach, is charged with possession of Percocet, tampering with evidence, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

A deputy stopped a vehicle in front of the Coast Guard station and noticed the driver and Alvarez seemed to be hiding something, he wrote in the arrest report.

Alvarez would only mumble after he got out for questioning. Then he "requested that I allow him to spit the cannabis out onto the shoulder," the deputy wrote. [nwfdailynews.com]

I've never tried eating a bag of pot, but I suspect it's considerably more chewy than panicked potheads anticipate. Good stuff is like gum, and the schwag is full of gross seeds and stems. You can't win. A gram or less might go down easily enough, but you're left with skunk breath and green teeth.

The advantage of no longer having actual pot may be tipped on its head when a pissed off cop charges you with tampering and DUI. At the very least, don't try to eat your pot when you absolutely have no chance of eating it all. Come on, have some respect for yourself and other people who enjoy marijuana and don’t want to be associated with this silliness.

That said, I cannot blame anyone who lives in fear of our cruel laws and endeavors desperately to protect themselves from the pernicious, haunting consequences of even the pettiest drug arrest. I understand. If our drug laws cause people to freak out and try to eat all their drugs when they get pulled over, then there's something wrong with our drug laws.

But as long as you're living amidst this madness, you're better off knowing your rights than making a meal of your marijuana.