Video: SSDP Confronts Drug Czar

This morning, SSDP member Daniel Pacheco presented our Just Say Now petition with 52,000 signatures calling for an end to marijuana prohbition to Gil Kerlikowske, the U.S. Drug Czar during a press conference for Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month.

Daniel, a student at Georgetown University and originally from Colombia, asks why the ONDCP continues to deny that legalizing marijuana would take away drug cartel's massive profits. When Dir. Kerlikowske says that marijuana is only a small part of their income, Daniel tells him he's downplaying marijuana's role in the black market drug trade and disrespecting the 28,000 people murdered in Mexico's drug prohibition violence. He then hands the petition to Director Kerlikowske. You have to watch this video.

Kerlikowske is basically discrediting the findings of his own department, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, by saying that their report citing that 60% of cartel revenue is coming from marijuana is from 2006 and used data from 1997 and therefore is too old to be trusted. He flat out lies by saying that legalizing marijuana would only take away a small part of DTO profits (and essentially admitting that legalization would take away some profit). But we don't have to go all the way back to 1997 for this information. In 2008, the FBI released a report with these findings:

Mexico is the number one foreign supplier of marijuana abused in the United States. In fact, according to a 2008 inter-agency report, marijuana is the top revenue generator for Mexican DTOs—a cash crop that finances corruption and the carnage of violence year after year. The profits derived from marijuana trafficking—an industry with minimal overhead costs, controlled entirely by the traffickers—are used not only to finance other drug enterprises by Mexico’s poly-drug cartels, but also to pay recurring “business” expenses, purchase weapons, and bribe corrupt officials.

So basically, ONDCP now has to discredit their own findings and ignore those of the FBI in order to defend their backwards stance on marijuana legalization!

SSDP is the only student organization putting political leaders on the spot about marijuana legalization and drug policy reform. Help us continue this important work by making a donation today.

Top 10 Schools Leading Marijuana Petition Drive

Students across the country hit the ground running this fall semester, collecting hundreds of petition signatures to legalize marijuana. One month ago, we launched the Just Say Now Campus Challenge for our chapters to compete against each other to see who can gather the most signatures. Through this competition, over 150 SSDP chapters are competing for prizes such as hemp t-shirts, flip video cameras, and other Just Say Now merchandise.

Let's take a look at which schools are leading the pack...*

1. Northern Virginia Community College: 423
   Woodbridge, VA
2. University of Cincinnati: 255
   Cincinnati, OH
3. West Virginia University: 214
   Morgantown, WV
4. Albert Einstein High School: 142
   Silver Spring, MD
5. University of Connecticut: 114
   Storrs, CT
6. SUNY Canton: 108
   Canton, NY
7. University of Utah: 105
   Salt Lake City, UT
8. University of New Mexico: 58
   Albuquerque, NM
9. University of Maryland: 45
   College Park, MD
10. Seton Hill University: 33
    Greensburg, PA

* as of noon EST 9/14/10. Congratulations to members of these 10 SSDP chapters on your hard work. If your school hasn't gotten the ball rolling on campus yet, don't worry it's certainly not too late! All of our chapters should have received their Just Say Now campaign materials in the mail, so get out there and show us what you can do! And as always, feel free to contact your regional outreach director for advice or with questions.

As students head back to school this fall semester, and as we get closer to Election Day, I know the competition will only grow more and more intense, so stay tuned. To learn more about the Just Say Now Campus Challenge visit this page.

SSDP Heads Back to School

The 2010 fall semester brings with it SSDP's largest chapter network to date. SSDP now has chapters on 135 college campuses throughout the U.S., and we expect to reach nearly 200 chapters by early 2011! We're also holding five regional conferences across the country and will be hosting our first training conference at the University of Maryland in March. Back to School Fundraising Drive  A donation of $100, $50, $25 or $10 to SSDP will help us provide materials and resources to our chapters so that they can wage successful campaigns on and off their campuses. Please consider making a one-time donation or signing up as a monthly sustainer and donating as little as $10 per month to SSDP. If you can't support us financially right now, you can help us grow by spreading the word and telling a friend about our Action Alert list, becoming a fan of us on Facebook, joining our Facebook Cause, and by following us on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Just Say Now! We have officially launched our "Just Say Now" campaign with Firedoglake.com, one of the world's biggest political blogs, to combine their online presence with our grassroots organizing strength. Together we will be working to identify supporters of marijuana reform across the country to get them engaged in the battle, while simultaneously attracting the attention of the nation and the world. Sign the petition and make a $10 donation to get your awesome Just Say Now sticker! Through the Just Say Now Campus Challenge our chapters are competing to see which school can gather the most signatures. New Student Organizing Manual! SSDP's outreach staff has launched a revamped student organizing manual, arming every SSDP chapter and activist with guides on lobbying, working with the media, running productive meetings, organizing successful events and much more. Your donation of $20 will pay for 10 manuals to be printed and shipped to chapters! SSDP Regional Conferences Northeast Regional - October 16-17 University of Connecticut Mid-Atlantic Regional - October 9-10 Virgina Commonwealth University West Coast Regional - October 16 San Francisco State University Mountain Plains Regional - November 6 University of Colorado Boulder Midwest Regional - Date TBD Kent State University Help Us Reach 10,000 Fans on Facebook! Are you a fan of SSDP on Facebook? We are currently at almost 9,000 fans and we hope that after this message is sent out, we will top 10,000. All you have to do is visit our Facebook page and click "like". Then update your status with "I like SSDP! Can you do the same?" and attach this link: facebook.com/schoolsnotprisons SSDP Training Conference and Lobby Day SSDP is excited to be holding our first three-track training conference aimed at delivering chapter members with intensive participatory workshops and trainings on campaign management, running a chapter and lobbying. Location: University of Maryland College Park Date: March 2010 RSVP HERE Donate to our conference scholarship fund   Can you make a donation to SSDP today? Read Online Not interested in this email? Read it On the Web. Are you registered to vote? Register online right now! SSDP Endorses California's Proposition 19 Unsubscribe Not interested in this email? Click here to unsubscribe SSDP Logo is a registered trademark of Students for Sensible Drug Policy Students for Sensible Dr - 1623 Connecticut Avenue NW; Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009. ph +1 (202) 293-4414

University of Arkansas Reverses Policy Change Decision

 

Last week, the SSDP chapter at the University of Arkansas worked with campus administrators to adopt new guidelines equalizing the school penalties for student alcohol and marijuana use. The policy was announced and the change was made in the UA student handbook. Victory was ours and a sensible policy was enacted. Or so we thought...

This week, UA Chancellor Dave Gearhart repealed the change in policy.

SSDP worked on the SAFER campaign, passing a referendum with 67 percent of student voters agreeing that the penalties for marijuana possession should be equal to the penalties for student alcohol violations. Members of the UA board of administrators (including the dean of students and assistant dean for student life) worked with the students to develop new guidelines to reflect the referendum and student concerns.

But after the new guidelines were released on-line and posted throughout the residence halls, UA Chancellor Dave Gearhart called off the change in policy because he and other university officials felt it sent the wrong message. Just look at this:

1) The new campus guidelines, now moot.
2) The old sanctions.

Send a letter to the Chancellor Gearhart and tell him to respect the vote of the students and the hard work that SSDP members put into creating a sensible drug policy on campus.

Drug Testing for the Scrap-Booking Club

Parents of a student in the Delaware Valley School District have threatened a law suit over the student drug testing policy that requires all students to be tested if they want to participate in sports, extra curricular activities or have campus parking permits.

The student in question wanted to be part of the scrap-booking club and her parents asked that she be exempt from the testing.

Parent Kathy Kiederer, who has debated privacy issues with the board before, was there following her letter asking that her daughter be exempted from drug testing to take part in a scrap-booking club. “I’ve written to ask an exemption and you haven’t changed the guidelines,” she said.

Don't Trust Dragonflies

When it comes to California's Prop. 19, I've found there are roughly 3 types of people opposed to the initiative.

• Some politicians or law enforcement types who think it is in their best interest to oppose cannabis reform. 
• People who have not read the initiative and have been relying only on hearsay and urban legends (or who misunderstand the language in the initiative). 
• Those with investments in the medical marijuana industry who are more concerned about losing money if the price of cannabis goes down or if CA residents no longer have to pay MediCann $200 to get a doctor's note saying it's ok for them to use medical marijuana.

Below are parts of a post from Opposing Views that includes a debate going on between Chris Conrad, NORML and Dragonfly de la Luz. Dragonfly is the author of a blog called "Stoners Against Prop 19" in which she states mountains of misinformation and lies that were quickly and easily refuted by Chris Conrad and Russ Belville at NORML.

Dragonfly: Nowhere in my article do I claim that marijuana is more legal when it’s decriminalized. I said it is more legal now because it IS legal now. Marijuana has been legal in California since 1996.

NORML: Really, I’ll have to mention that to the 78,514 Californians arrested in 2008 for marijuana offenses.  In fact, marijuana IS NOT legal in California and since 1996 a handful of Californians have only been exempted from criminal prosecution under Prop 215 (except, of course, Eugene Davidovich, Donna Lambert, James Stacy, Jovan Jackson, Felix Kha, and a whole bunch of other people who thought they were legal under Prop 215 yet still ended up in a courtroom and behind bars for a time).
Specifically in Prop 215:

…patients and their primary caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.

Which means that criminal prosecutions and sanctions for marijuana still exist.  Shorter: it ain’t legal.

You really have to read the whole thing to believe this nonsense. She even goes so far as to speak on behalf of Jack Herer, a man who died months ago. We're assuming she hasn't seen the statement that the Herer family released calling on people like Dragonfly to stop using Jack Herer's name to spread lies about Prop 19.

Unfortunately, Jack passed away before Prop 19 made the 2010 ballot; so many people think he would still oppose it. We don’t believe that, and we ask that everyone stop saying he would cling to that position as we move toward the Nov. 2 vote.

As his family, we want the world to know that the last thing Jack Herer would want is for Californians to vote to keep Cannabis illegal. He was smart and had the political savvy to know that once a measure is on the ballot, the time for bickering has passed. That is why he campaigned for Prop 215 despite its shortcomings. That is why, were he able, he would now be telling voters to rally around and Vote Yes on Prop 19.

Dragonfly calls herself a marijuana activist because she "travel(s) the world, find(s) the best ganja, smoke(s) it, and write(s) about it for pot magazines."

I'm sorry Dragonfly, that's not called activism, that's called partying. And while you're busy partying, nearly 900,000 people are being arrested for marijuana charges every year in this country and about 10% of those arrests are coming from California.

Step aside and let the real activists do our work.

Google Runs Our Ad After Facebook Censored It

SIGN THE PETITION!

Google has accepted our Just Say Now marijuana legalization ads.

Just this week, the ads were removed by Facebook, which claimed that the image of a marijuana leaf was in violation of its policy – despite the fact that the ad had at least 38 million impressions on Facebook earlier this month. The ads will begin running on Google’s advertising network immediately.

Clearly, Google is more mature than Facebook when it comes to political speech.

Bruce Fein, former Associate Attorney General for President Ronald Reagan and Just Say Now advisory board member, had this to say:

“Facebook’s concocted prissiness over political advocacy is more to be disparaged than imitated. Freedom of expression is made of sterner stuff.  Google deserves applause for exposing Facebook to shame.”

The Mawkish and the Macabre: Mexico's Museum of Enervantes

It's a private museum housed in the Secretary of Defense in Mexico City.

It's a museum filled with objects and information about the drug war but collected by the military.

Its keepers say that it's a museum with a message, and an explicit training purpose for public officials about the lives, lifestyles, deaths, and activities of the drug trafficking organizations, especially so these officials can resist being corrupted.

And yet it's never been open to anybody but members of the military and public officials.

Until this past week.

On Wednesday 18 August, for the first time since its construction in 1985, the Mexican military allowed reporters to tour its Museum of Enervantes. (In English, "enervantes" roughly translates as "nerve wracking" and in Spanish sometimes refers to drugs.)

Most of the museum contains articles confiscated from drug traffickers -- gold machine guns and pistols, examples of bags of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin, a diamond-encrusted cell phone, images of dead drug chiefs -- leading one British newspaper to write that it was filled with "narcobling."

But there was more than that.

For the first time the Mexican military revealed how many of its members have died since 1976 and also since 2006. The latter year is crucial as it includes the start date of President Felipe Calderon's expanded militarized strategy against the drug trafficking organizations. Since 2006, and according to Agence France Presse 191 Mexican military have died. Of these, thirty five were officers, one a cadet, and 148 were troops. Since 1976, 694 military have died fighting drug traffickers.

The military has rarely made its losses public.

But since it granted access to the Museum of Enervantes to reporters, all had to file past an entryway which newspaper La Cronica observes included a mural to fallen military.

It's important to note that the numbers of military are included in the figure of 28,000 people killed since Calderon's drug war began in 2006. The great number of those people are nameless, and the large part of those were civilians caught up in the turf wars between the drug trafficking organizations and the military.

Of course, the drug trafficking organizations have been able to maintain their operations since 2006. And so have the military. Which means that irrespective of the romantic displays of paraphernalia in the museum, civilians have been the losers in Mexico's war on drugs.

How do you think the drug war will end?

When it comes to ending the drug war, what's your theory of the pace of change: fast, slow, gradual, or revolutionary?

Recent evidence from U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress suggests that the drug war is ending.

But that it's ending in a piecemeal, or gradual, fashion.

Consider the recent example of the U.S. Congress "narrowing" -- a term used by the New York Times in its article -- the disparities for crack and powder cocaine possession. Under previous sentencing guidelines from 1986 threshold levels for powder cocaine possession were one hundred times higher than for crack cocaine. The new guidelines just signed into law by President Obama elevate the thresholds for crack cocaine. At least two generations of Black men have been treated unfairly by courts and prosecutors.

The previous guidelines came from the mid-1980s and have been seen as a motor for black and Latino overincarceration.

So, that's one piece of good news.

Now here's another. This time the U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing on a criminal justice issue -- and it did so as a majority!

The Court ruled as a majority in favor of petitioner José Angel Carachuri-Rosendo, a lawful permanent resident and a Mexican national. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought to deport Carachuri-Rosendo, even though he had spent most of his life since the age of five in the United States. A U.S. immigration court confirmed his deportation because of two state misdemeanor drug offenses in Texas. The first was a twenty-day sentence for possession of a joint of marijuana; a year later, the second was a ten day sentence for possession of one tablet of Xanax without prescription. At the time of his deportation, Carachuri-Rosendo petitioned ICE for cancellation of removal based upon the elevation of his second sentence to a felony, and not on the first marijuana conviction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a notoriously reactionary court, sided with the Immigration Court. The Supreme Court eventually decided to hear his case in Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder.

The Supreme Court found in his favor, meaning that only actual felonies, not elevated misdemeanors, can qualify for a reason for deporation.

You may think that Carachuri-Rosendo's case is unique. It's not. Time and time and time again, lawful permanent residents, people who may be one step from citizenship, have fallen foul of a simple drug possession being seen as a a felony in the immigration process, often making them automatically liable for deportation. According to a University of California study reported by Immigration, Law, and Policy Blog, 87,884 lawful permanent residents were deported in a ten year period from 1997 to 2007. Of this number, 68 per cent were deported of non-violent crimes. That's a whole lot of disruption to a family's life for one Xanax.

In both these scenarios -- sentencing disparities reformed in Congress or the Supreme Court ending the elevating of non-violent offenses into felonies under immigration law -- drug reformers can say that the winds of change are blowing in a favorable direction.

Gradually, it seems, though, no?

And, maybe we need to go a little faster? As these cases show we can't keep people in prison forever and we can't deport them on flimsy legal fictions. To end the abuses to fairness and justice that stem from prohibition, why not Just Say Now?

Drug Reform in Rio: The Second Latin American Drug Policy Conference

Latin America continues to be a vibrant place for government officials, anti-drug war activists, and drug reform professionals. At the beginning of August, Mexican president Felipe Calderon and his immediate predecessor Vicente Fox, showed their willingness to debate, if not support outright and immediately, the legalization of marijuana. Now a gathering in Rio will further the debate.

At next week's end, Latin America's committed drug policy professionals, brought together by conference organizers Psicotropicus of Brazil and Intercambios of Argentina, will burnish the region's repuation for tackling the excesses of the drug war. Across two session-packed days on 26 and 27 August, parties from across the Americas -- including SSDP Colombia and SSDP USA -- will discuss reining in the drug war at the Law Faculty at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. It's the second such conference of its kind, and it builds on a decade of similar conferences held in Argentina. And, of course, within that timespan Argentina has decriminalized small quantities of drugs.



The program opens with addresses from Brazil's Ministries of Justice, Health, Human Rights, and Secretary of Drug Policy. (By the way, it's impossible to think of a conference in the U.S. which manages to bring government representatives together with non-profit groups and other reform-minded advocates.)



The two days of events include the following panels:

Human Rights and Drug Policy

Drug Users in the Agenda of Multilateral Organizations

Social Health Policies

Structural Determinants of Problems Associated with
Drugs

Holistic Attention to Drug Users

Consequences of the War against Drugs

Legislative Reforms in Latin America

There is also plenty of time built into the schedule to network with other activists, and reach out to future partners. SSDP's delighted that a representative of our newest international chapter, SSDP Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota will be in attendance, meaning that the student presence at such meetings continues to be welcomed and celebrated.


We'll be blogging about the conference after its dust has settled, so to speak.