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Forum -- Marijuana Legalization: Legal and Practical Issues in California

Please join us on for a forum addressing the legal and practical implications of the California initiatve to tax and regulate marijuana, which will be on the ballot this fall. If a state were to legalize cannabis, as California's Proposition 19, or A.B. 2254, the Ammiano bill, are attempting to do, what legal tools might the federal government use to block operation of such laws? Additional areas of law - employment law, family law, municipal law, insurance law, corrections policy - would be implicated. What are the issues?

Please join the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers and our panel of experts in addressing the legal and practical issues when a state legalizes cannabis. CD'S with comprehensive literature will be available for attendees.

Speakers:

Sheriff Thomas D. Allman - Mendocino County Sheriff

Tom Ammiano - Assemblymember, 13th District, California

Robert Hirshon, Esq. - Professor of Law, University of Michigan; former President, American Bar Association

Allen Hopper, Esq. - Legal Director, ACLU Drug Law Reform Project

Alex Kreit, Esq. - Associate Professor of Law; Director, Center for Law and Social Justice, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Theshia Naidoo, Esq. - Staff Attorney, Office of Legal Affairs, Drug Policy Alliance

Moderators:

Roger E. Goodman, Esq. - State Representative, 45th District, Washington State; Executive Director, Voluntary Committee of Lawyers

Eric E. Sterling, Esq. - President, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation; President, Voluntary Committee of Lawyers

The forum is open to the public, and is followed by a reception from 6-7pm to give you a chance to meet our guest speakers and to network with attorneys and others attending.

Problems found in DEA cleanups of clandestine labs

Prohibition of drugs has resulted in the proliferation of clandestine drug labs, commonly used for manufacturing methamphetamine, creating range of health and safety hazards as people make use of potentially dangerous chemicals without the training or resources needed to handle them properly. It turns out the DEA hasn't been handling them very well either.

Dubai the Drug Hub

The UAE's modern facilities, combined with its strategic location, have proven to be a draw for drug traffickers, and Dubai has seen a significant rise in it in recent years. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime hasn't figured out yet that prohibition doesn't work, and so they are working on creating a Gulf Centre for Criminal Intelligence, to involve law enforcement agencies from all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council states. But while they'll undoubtedly seize drugs and arrest traffickers, that won't reduce the availability of drugs, as <a href="http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/638/UNODC_peru_colombia_coca_cocaine">the UN's own reports keep finding</a>.

Criminals Aren’t the Only Ones Getting Killed in the Drug War

Via Pete Guither, here's another breathtaking example of the drug war's indiscriminate violence:

President Calderón has sought to make his drug war palatable by asserting that the country’s war dead—estimated at 23,000 since January 2006 for the country as a whole—deserved to die: their deaths implicate them in illegal activities.

When he first learned about what Juarenses have come to call the “massacre at Villas de Salvarcar,” Calderón hinted that the thirteen teenagers who died at the hands of professional executioners were common criminals and city low life. He could not have been more wrong. In fact they were honor students and athletes who had gathered to celebrate a friend’s seventeenth birthday. They had the misfortune of belonging to a football club whose initials, “AA,” were mistaken for the initials of the Sinaloa cartel’s local enforcers, the Artistic Assassins. And so, in the middle of the night, while the teens danced in a room cleared of furniture, they were gunned down. Seven hours later, when the first daylight photos were taken, the concrete floor where they died still glistened with their clotting blood. [Boston Review]

It's sickening that the Mexican President would dare insinuate that these innocent young victims somehow deserved their fate, but misplacing blame is an essential and instinctive defense mechanism when drug warriors are confronted with the consequences of their desperate crusade. None of this comes as a surprise, but it does bother me that this incident happened back in January and I overlooked it amidst the overwhelming number of bloody tragedies just like this one that take place every day in Mexico.

We couldn't ask for a more perfect exhibit in the complete failure of drug prohibition on every imaginable level. At this point, the only thing that still surprises me is that so many among us persist in failing to understand what the problem is.

How to Get Away with Growing 100,000 Marijuana Plants

Just plant them in the woods:

Nearly 100,000 marijuana plants were found growing at four illegal farms in the San Bernardino National Forest, authorities said Tuesday.
…
No arrests have been made, said officials with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Forest Service. [LA Times]

If we can't even catch the people who do this, do you think they're ever going to stop?

It should be obvious to anyone who's seen these same stories published every summer that the problem is just getting worse. These ridiculous pot wars in our national forests are profitable for both sides. The cops get to go hiking and collect their paychecks without even seeing an actual criminal, and the growers just plant more every year to ensure that the police never find it all. What fun.

That's why police and illegal growers are united in their opposition to the legalization of marijuana.
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