Executive Branch

Canadian "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery hasn't even been formally sentenced yet, but he's already being punished for what he does best: opening his mouth for the cause of marijuana legalization. Emery's wife, Jodie, told Canada's CNews Saturday that Emery is now in solitary confinement for violating prison rules. According to Jodie Emery, she recorded his calls from prison and played them as a podcast on the couple's Cannabis Culture magazine web site. That violated a prison rule that phone calls can only be made between a prisoner and the intended recipient and cannot be directed to a third party. Jodie Emery said Marc had read the prison rules and did not think the podcast would be a violation. Now he will spend at least a week in solitary pending a hearing to determine the full extent of his punishment. Emery, Canada's most famous legalization activist, pleaded guilty May 24 to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, the culmination of a five-year battle between Emery and Canadian and US authorities to extradite and prosecute him for selling pot seeds over the Internet. Two of Emery's employees arrested along with him, Greg Williams and Michelle Rainey, earlier copped pleas and received probationary sentences to be served in Canada. Emery plowed the profits from his business back into the legalization movement, earning the wrath of drug prohibition establishment in both countries. When Emery was busted in 2005, then DEA administrator Karen Tandy gloated in a press release that it was "a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the US and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement." Under federal prison rules, Emery is allowed 300 minutes of phone calls a month and he can communicate via email through a closed computer system called CorrLinks, under which he can log onto a computer and compose a message that is read by prison officials before they send it over the Internet. Emery had used CorrLinks to post numerous dispatches from the gulag, but now, he is denied those privileges and could lose them for up to two months. Emery will remain in the Seattle-area federal detention facility until his formal sentencing September 10. Then he will be transferred to the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma, where prison officials will decide where he will be sent to serve his time. Emery's campaign to avoid extradition has now shifted to a campaign to persuade Canadian authorities to allow him to serve his sentence there, as has typically been the case with Canadians convicted of offenses in the US. But the Conservative government has in recent years begun to refuse to accept Canadians imprisoned on drug charges in the US.

Even though there was no Chronicle last week--due to your editor's death-battle with a vicious Mexican bug; I only returned to the land of the living on Friday--things continued to happen anyway. Here are a handful of items that would have been in the Chronicle had there been one last week: On Monday, the State Department released its annual state on the world on drugs report. The report, called the 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy, was going to be the subject of a feature story last week before I got sick. I may still go with it this coming week. Also on Monday, the New York City Health Department reported overdose deaths fell in 2008 to the lowest level since 1999. OD fatalities fell from 874 in 2006 to 666 in 2008. Increased use of naloxane, an opioid agonist used to undo overdoses may get some of the credit. On Tuesday, Guatemala's national police chief and its head narc were arrested for links to drug traffickers and for the murders of five policemen. Police Chief Batlazar Gomez and anti-drug head Nelly Bonilla were arrested during an "investigation into a drug robbery (in April 2009) in Amatitlan, which those detained today are believed to have participated in", said Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez. Five police officers were killed during the robbery. The pair currently face charges of conspiracy, breaking and entering, abuse of power, making illegal arrests, drug trafficking, obstruction of justice, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. On Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law a bill banning salvia divinorum. That makes Wisconsin the 19th state to move against Sally D. A few states have limited its sale to adults, but most of those states have simply banned salvia. The Wisconsin bill, AB 186, bans the manufacture, distribution, or sales of salvia—although not its possession—and backs it up with a $10,000 fine. I'm back at it now, and that means the Chronicle will be back on Friday. In the meantime, I'll most likely post a story or two in the blog just to see if you're paying attention.

For the second time in as many weeks, DEA agents in Colorado raided a medical marijuana operation last Thursday. Highland Park medical marijuana patient and provider Chris Bartkowiscz had been seen showing off his basement garden Tuesday night in a blurb for an upcoming local news report. On Thursday, the DEA raided him, seizing his plants and growing equipment. Bartkowiscz has been jailed pending a decision from the US Attorney's Office on whether to charge him. That decision could come tomorrow. This despite last October's Department of Justice memorandum instructing federal agencies to lay off medical marijuana in states where it is legal—unless the provider is violating both state and federal law. DEA Denver Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Jeffrey Sweetin apparently didn't get the memo. Either that, or he is blatantly thumbing his nose at his bosses, the American attorney general and president. In a Saturday interview with local TV 9 News, Sweetin said that even though state law allows for medical marijuana, federal law does not. "We will continue to enforce the federal law. That's what we are paid to do," he said. Sweetin said the Justice Department guidelines give him discretion. "Discretion is: I can't send my DEA agents out on 10-plant grows. I'm not interested in that, it's not what we do. We work criminal organizations that are enterprises generating funds by distributing illegal substances," Sweetin said. Sweetin left open the door to go after medical marijuana dispensaries. "Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation of federal law. The time is coming when we go into a dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we seize the building and we arrest everybody. They're violating federal law; they're at risk of arrest and imprisonment," he told the Denver Post. "Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation of federal law." The October Justice Department memo said the feds should not go after people in "clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana." The memo said nothing about "large grows" or dispensaries not be included. Denver medical marijuana attorney Robert Corry is waiting to see whether the feds will charge Bartkowiscz. On Saturday, he filed a complaint with the Justice Department against Sweetin and the DEA, saying the raid on Bartkowiscz violated the agency's policy on enforcing drug laws in states that allow medical marijuana. Has Sweetin gone rogue? Or is the Obama administration retreating from the position staked out in the October memo? Stay tuned.

For a whole year now, the new administration has been proudly insisting over and over again that they're taking drug policy in a new direction, abandoning the "drug war" approach and prioritizing treatment instead of more arrests and incarceration. Apparently, someone forgot they'd have to release a budget for all this, which would kinda blatantly expose the illusion that anything's changed:



Anyone can just plainly see the two towers of "Domestic Law Enforcement" and "Interdiction," that together dwarf the resources to be spent on treatment. What the drug czar's office is calling a "Balanced Approach to Drug Control" is so obscenely imbalanced that anybody who knows how to read a bar graph could see it without having to put their contacts in.

We're still spending twice as much on the war as we are on treatment for the actual people our drug policy is supposed to help. The urge to describe this as "balanced" is just the trademark dishonesty we've come to expect from the drug czar's office anytime they're required to sum up their agenda in one sentence.

The whole situation is even more appalling when you consider the phenomenal lengths this administration has taken to convince everyone that their drug policy priorities aren't like this. I suppose it's a measure of success for our movement that we've at least made it unacceptably controversial for the White House to take any pride in its drug war spending, but that's still an early stage in the long battle to take interdiction off the table and leave enforcement to the states.

If Obama hopes to placate the public's growing disgust with the drug war status quo, he'll have to pay much more than lip service to the reform of our drug policy. Everything people hate about the war on drugs must be changed; the swelling prison population, the persecution of the sick, the subsidization of widespread violence, the vast corruption and the perpetual recycling of so many ridiculous lies all must come to an end or else the people refusing to end it will be blamed hard for the damage it keeps causing.

The public relations holiday that followed Obama's improved policy on medical marijuana is officially over and the reluctant support he enjoyed from so many reformers in 2008 will be hard to come by if the drug war is uglier in 2012 than it is today.

After stalling for a whole year, the White House has finally announced Obama's choice to head the DEA. And there isn’t anything good to be said about it:

For those hoping that Barack Obama would wage the war on drugs less aggressively than his predecessor, this is not a good sign: Yesterday he announced that the new head of the Drug Enforcement Administration will be Michele Leonhart, a career DEA agent who has been the agency's deputy administrator since March 2004 and its acting administrator since November 2007. [Reason]

For all the recent rhetoric about changing the focus of our drug policy and moving beyond the war mentality that's gripped this issue for decades, the White House now plans to promote a Bush Administration holdover who couldn’t more perfectly embody the ugly history we're all working so hard to put behind us.

It was Leonhart who gave marching orders in the federal war on medical marijuana, right up to and even after the Obama Administration pledged to respect state laws. She celebrated the inauguration with a cleverly-timed, though transparently dishonest move to continue blocking medical marijuana research despite the ruling of a DEA administrative law judge. She's been closely tied to the sketchiest career informant in DEA history, even making light of his reputation for perjury. And she even managed to get her name in the press by wasting $123,000 in taxpayer money on a private flight to Colombia, even though the DEA owns 106 airplanes.

Leonhart's nomination is an affront to the Obama Administration's promises of a more enlightened drug policy approach. It's also a clear statement that they don't think we're paying attention to the faces behind the drug war's rich and recent history of arrogance, ignorance and injustice. Let's prove them wrong by opposing this embarrassing nomination as loudly as we can.

Please contact the White House today to tell them that Michele Leonhart's DEA career has already gone on far too long.

Editor's Note: We wanted to get this important story posted today, but we will develop it further for the Drug War Chronicle on Friday. In a new federal medical marijuana policy memo issued this morning to the DEA, FBI, and US Attorneys around the country, the Justice Department told prosecutors that medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal should not be targeted for federal prosecution. The memo formalizes statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder in February and March that going after pot-smoking patients and their suppliers would not be a high Justice Department priority. The memo marks a sharp break with federal policy under the Clinton and Bush administrations, both of which aggressively targeted medical marijuana operations, especially in California, the state that has the broadest law and the highest number of medical marijuana patients. The announcement of the policy shift won kudos from the marijuana and broader drug reform movement. But some reformers questioned what the shift would actually mean on the ground, pointing to DEA raids and federal prosecutions that have occurred since Holder's signal this spring that the feds were to back off, as well as continuing controversies, especially in California, over what exactly is legal under state law. Others noted that for real protection to be in place, federal law—not just prosecutorial policy—needs to change. In the memo, federal prosecutors were told that going after people who use or provide medical marijuana in accordance with state law was not the best use of their time or resources. According to the memo, while the Justice Department continues to make enforcing federal drug laws a key mission:

"As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources."

But the memo also said that federal prosecutors should continue to target marijuana production or sales operations that are illicit but hiding behind state medical marijuana laws. It explicitly singled out cases involving which involve violence, the illegal use of firearms, selling pot to minors, money laundering or involvement in other crimes. "It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," said Attorney General Holder. "This is a huge victory for medical marijuana patients," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, the nationwide medical marijuana advocacy organization, which had been in negotiations with the Justice Department to get written guidelines issued. "This indicates that President Obama intends to keep his promise not to undermine state medical marijuana laws and represents a significant departure from the policies of the Bush Administration," continued Sherer. "We will continue to work with President Obama, the Justice Department, and the US Congress to establish a comprehensive national policy, but it's good to know that in the meantime states can implement medical marijuana laws without interference from the federal government." "This is the most significant, positive policy development on the federal level for medical marijuana since 1978," said the Marijuana Policy Project in a message to its list members today. "It's great to see the Obama administration making good on the promises that candidate Obama made last year. These new guidelines effectively open the door to sensible collaboration between state governments and medical marijuana providers in ensuring that patients have safe and reliable access to their medicine," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "What remains unclear is how the Justice Department will respond to rogue state attorneys, such as San Diego's Bonnie Dumanis, who persist in undermining state medical marijuana laws in their local jurisdictions. Now is the right time for the Obama administration to move forward with federal legislation to end the irrational prohibition of medical marijuana under federal law." While the policy memo was "encouraging," the "proof will be in the pudding," said California NORML head Dale Gieringer, who also cited the recent raids in San Diego, as well as the August federal indictment of two Lake County medical marijuana providers. "Note that the new Obama policy has a glaring loophole, emphasizing that 'prosecutors have wide discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, and ... it is not a good use of federal manpower to prosecute those who are without a doubt in compliance with state law,'" Gieringer said. "The salient question is, who decides what is 'without a doubt' in compliance with state law? As shown by the recent statements of LA's DA and City Attorney, there exist significant doubts about the legality of most dispensaries in California. It remains to be seen how far the administration's new policy guidelines will go to prevent further abuses, when what is really needed is fundamental reform of federal laws and regulations." And so opens the next chapter in America's long, twisted path to the acceptance of medical marijuana.

Fresh from the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) annual convention last weekend in Washington, DC, a pair of real life farmers who want to plant hemp farmers joined with hemp industry figures and spokesmen to travel across the Potomac River to DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where, in an act of civil disobedience, they took shovels to the lawn and planted hemp seeds. Within a few minutes, they were arrested and charged with trespassing. Hoping to focus the attention of the Obama administration on halting DEA interference, North Dakota farmer Wayne Hauge, Vermont farmer Will Allen, HIA President Steve Levine; hemp-based soap producer and Vote Hemp director David Bronner, Vote Hemp communications director Adam Eidinger, and hemp clothing company owner Isaac Nichelson were arrested in the action as another dozen or so supporters and puzzled DEA employees looked on. "Who has a permit?" demanded a DEA security official. "A permit--that's what we want from the DEA," Bronner responded. After being held a few hours, the Hemp Six were released late Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, two pleaded guilty to trespassing and were fined $240. The others are expected to face similar treatment. Although products made with hemp—everything from foods to fabrics to paper to auto body panels—are legal in the US, under the DEA's strained interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act, hemp is considered indistinguishable from marijuana and cannot be planted in the US. According to the hemp industry, it is currently importing about $360 million worth of hemp products each year from countries where hemp production is legal, including Canada, China, and several European nations. The DEA refused to comment on the action or the issue, referring queries instead to the Department of Justice, which also refused to comment beside pointing reporters to its filings in the ongoing hemp lawsuit. Currently, eight states-- Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia--have programs allowing for industrial hemp research or production, but their implementation has been blocked by DEA bureaucratic intransigence. This spring, however, President Obama instructed federal agencies to respect state laws in a presidential directive on federal pre-emption: "Executive departments and agencies should be mindful that in our federal system, the citizens of the several States have distinctive circumstances and values, and that in many instances it is appropriate for them to apply to themselves rules and principles that reflect these circumstances and values," said Obama. "As Justice Brandeis explained more than 70 years ago, 'it is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'" The hemp industry and hemp supporters see several paths forward. Farmer Hauge is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challengingly the DEA's interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act. That lawsuit is now before the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. US Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) are sponsoring a bill that would allow farmers to plant hemp in states where it is permitted, and the industry is urging President Obama and the Justice Department to follow their own example on medical marijuana and leave hemp farmers alone as long as they are legal under state law. But despite all their efforts, nothing is happening. Tuesday's civil disobedience was designed to begin breaking up the logjam. "We're getting frustrated," said Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, which has been used hemp oil in its soaps since 1999. "This is supposed to be change with Obama, and things aren't changing. We just had the DEA and local DA go nuts on the dispensaries in San Diego where I live. We spent money on a lobbying firm to get a statement from the Justice Department along the lines of Holder's statement on medical marijuana, but nothing is happening. This would be easy to do, but it's not happening. We understand that Obama has a lot going on, but we're getting increasingly disappointed and frustrated. We hope this will help catalyze something in this administration." "We're like the fired-up hempsters, we're keeping Jack Herer's ideas alive," said Eidinger still fired up a day after his arrest Tuesday. "We're beginning a new chapter of hemp activism, and there needs to be a lot more of this stuff. Civil disobedience has to be part of a comprehensive campaign in the courts, in Congress, and out on the streets, in front of DEA offices all over the country." "We've passed a law in Vermont that you can grow industrial hemp," said Allen, the white-haired, pony-tailed proprietor of Cedar Circle Farm. "The only barrier now is the DEA, so we're trying to convince them to back off on this like they backed off on enforcing the medical marijuana law in California. Here, we have a crop that isn't going to get anybody high. We grow organic sunflower and canola, and we'd like to have another oil crop in rotation at our location. It just makes economic sense, and it's a states' rights thing. The DEA shouldn’t be involved in this; this isn't a drug." "We want to get some attention for the cause and show the distinction between industrial hemp and marijuana," said North Dakota farmer Hauge, who is licensed by the state to grow hemp and who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the DEA now before the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals. "It's not a drug; it's just another crop that can be grown in rotation. If it wasn't for the DEA, I would be harvesting my crop right now." Getting himself arrested for hemp activism in Washington, DC, was a totally new experience for Hauge, who is usually hunkered down on a few hundred acres of North Dakota prairie just south of the Canadian border and just east of the Montana state line. "It was definitely a first for me," said Hauge. "I've never even been stopped for anything." "We need industrial hemp here in the US, we need to bring jobs to this country," said Nichelsen, founder, owner, and CEO of Livity Outernational, a California-based fashion and accessory company that mixes art and activism. "I'm sick of making all our stuff in China cause that’s the only place I can get the raw materials. We sent the message that there is a clear distinction between marijuana and industrial hemp," Nicholson said. "We need the support of our president and our law enforcement branches. They need to understand that the US is missing out on a giant opportunity. The myth that hemp causes any problems in society has been completely dispelled." Even DEA underlings—if not their higher ups—get it, said Nicholson, recounting his exchange with one agency employee on Monday. "One DEA official came out and said, 'What's the connection between weed and hemp?' and we said, 'Exactly.'" The action brought some much-needed media attention to the issue, said Eidinger. "We got a really good article in the Washington Post, the Washington Times wrote about it, too, CNN used our video, NPR talked about the action, the Associated Press picked it up, we had a number of TV stations do reports, so we definitely reached a national audience," he recounted. "And North Dakota media has covered this closely; I've been on the phone with all the media in Bismarck. It wasn't just civil disobedience in front of the cameras. After the HIA convention ended, hempsters headed for Capitol Hill, where dozens of people attended over 20 scheduled meetings with representatives of their staffs to lobby for the Frank-Paul hemp bill. Some unannounced, unscheduled meetings also took place, Eidinger said. If the hemp movement indeed adopts further civil disobedience actions, it will have added another prong to its multi-prong strategy of pressing for the end of the prohibition on industrial hemp planting in the US. It might be time for other segments of the drug reform movement to start thinking about civil disobedience, too.

In a report released Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has found that drug-related deaths—the vast majority of them overdoses—increased dramatically between 1999 and 2006, and that drug-related deaths now outpace deaths from motor vehicle accidents in 16 states. That's up from 12 states the previous year and double the eight states in 2003. More people died from drug-related causes than traffic accidents in the following states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. According to CDC researchers, who examined death certificate data from around the country, some 45,000 died in traffic accidents in 2006, while 39,000 people suffered drug-related deaths. About 90% of the drug deaths were from overdoses, but researchers also included in that figure people who died of organ damage from long-term drug use. Researchers reported a sharp increase in deaths tied to cocaine and to the opioid analgesics, a class of powerful drug that includes fentanyl, methadone, morphine, and popular pain relievers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Cocaine-related deaths jumped from about 4,000 in 1999 to more than 7,000 in 2006, but methadone-related deaths increased seven-fold to about 5,000, and other opioid deaths more than doubled from less than 3,000 to more than 6,000. Oddly enough, heroin-related deaths actually declined slightly, hovering just below 2,000 a year throughout the period in question. And despite all the alarums about young people dying of drug overdoses, the 15-24 age group had the lowest drug-related death rate of any group except those over 65. Only about three per 100,000 young people died of drug-related causes in 2006, compared to six per 100,000 among the 25-34 age group, eight per 100,000 in the 35-44 age group, and 10 per 100,000 in the 45-54 age group. CDC researchers did not discuss causes for the increase in overall drug-related deaths or the rate of drug-related deaths, but several plausible (and complementary) explanations come to mind: the introduction and widespread use of Oxycontin, the fentanyl-tainted heroin epidemic that appeared in 2006, the increasing non-medical use of prescription pain relievers, and the increasing use of methadone as a pain reliever.

Marc Emery is no longer a free man. Canada's Prince of Pot was taken into custody today. He turned himself in at the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver, and is now jailed in Vancouver awaiting imminent extradition to the US, where he is set to plead guilty to one count of marijuana distribution for selling pot seeds over the Internet. Emery is expected to be sentenced to five years in federal prison in the US for his seed sales. He sold millions of seeds in the decade prior to his 2005 arrest and became a leading hemispheric advocate for marijuana legalization, using the profits from his seed sales to fund reformers across the continent. He also called out then drug czar John Walters for lying about marijuana and interfering in Canadian domestic politics, leading then DEA head Karen Tandy to issue this press release lauding his arrest as a blow to the legalization movement:

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- is a signficant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement. His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today. Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets -- one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canda. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

Can you say politically motivated? I knew you could. One American attorney familiar with his case told me this weekend that Emery could have fought the prosecution and sought to have shown that it was unlawfully politically motivated, but that Emery and his Canadian legal team didn't want to take that risk. That's understandable, given that Emery was looking at decades or even life in prison if he lost. Now, America's legions of unknown marijuana martyrs are being joined by one very big name. Let's hope that Emery's unjust imprisonment turns a spotlight on the hideousness of a US federal legal system that turns a blind eye to torture but cages a man for selling pot seeds. The Vancouver Sun's Ian Mulgrew sums it up nicely in an op-ed piece entitled Marc Emery's Sentence Reeks of Injustice and Mocks Our Sovreignty:

After two decades as Canada's Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country's first Marijuana Martyr. Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind bars as Uncle Sam's prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow. It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis. Emery hasn't even visited America but he was arrested in July 2005 at the request of a Republican administration that abhorred his politics. He is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are loath to prosecute because we don't think selling seeds is a major problem. There are at least a score of seed-sellers downtown and many, many more such retail outlets across the country. In the days ahead, once the federal justice minister signs the extradition papers, Emery will be frog-marched south to Seattle where his plea bargain will be rubber-stamped and he will be sent to a U.S. penitentiary. For comparison, consider that the B.C. Court of Appeal last year said a one-month jail sentence plus probation was appropriate punishment for drug and money-laundering offences of this ilk. The last time Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, back in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine.

There's more at the link above, but you get the gist. Mulgrew, of course, is right on the money. The Canadian government has shamefully failed to protect one of its citizens from the crazed drug war machine south of the border, and the US government is shamelessly imprisoning yet another non-violent pot person--this time mainly to shut him up. We should demand that Marc Emery and all other marijuana prisoners be immediately released. Short of that, we should, as Emery requests, demand that he be allowed to serve his time at home in a Canadian prison.

The government's war against pain doctors hit a new low last spring, when federal prosecutor Tanya Treadway, busy prosecuting Kansans Steve and Linda Schneider, subpoenaed pain control advocate Siobhan Reynolds for information on the Pain Relief Network's (PRN) public advocacy in support of the Schneiders. Despite ACLU efforts to quash the subpoena as an attempt to shut down free speech, judge US District Judge Julie Robinson allowed it. Friday, according an update from Jacob Sullum on Reason, Robinson imposed a $200/day civil contempt fine on both Reynolds and PRN, to begin in 10 days if she does not comply with the subpoena. An appeal is planned -- stay tuned. Earlier in the week, Boston-based civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate criticized Treadway in a column in Forbes magazine. We reprint a few paragraphs, also via Sullum:

When Reynolds wrote op-eds in local newspapers and granted interviews to other media outlets, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway attempted to impose a gag order on her public advocacy. The district judge correctly denied this extraordinary request. Undeterred, Treadway filed on March 27 a subpoena demanding a broad range of documents and records, obviously hoping to deter the peripatetic pain relief advocate, or even target her for a criminal trial of her own. Just what was Reynolds' suspected criminal activity? "Obstruction of justice" is the subpoena's listed offense being investigated, but some of the requested records could, in no possible way, prove such a crime. The prosecutor has demanded copies of an ominous-sounding "movie," which, in reality, is a PRN-produced documentary showing the plight of pain physicians. Also requested were records relating to a billboard Reynolds paid to have erected over a busy Wichita highway. It read: "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone." Suddenly, a rather ordinary exercise in free speech and political activism became evidence of an obstruction of justice.