Tax Cannabis in 2010. Any Questions?

This is a great video for anybody who has questions about California's  Control and Tax Cannabis Initiative.



Any student can volunteer to help the campaign by signing up right here. You don't have to be in California to help out.

We are the Drug Policy Alliance

With a little help from their friends, the Drug Policy Alliance makes it clear - the war on drugs is a war on people.

I wonder if Sting wants to join SSDP's AMPLIFY Project?

Allen St. Pierre Vaporizes Oppostion in ABC Debate

The word destroy didn't do this justice so I searched for some synonyms: annihilate, demolish, obliterate, exterminate, consume, crush; and then I saw it. Vaporize. Allen St. Pierre vaporized this guy!

His opponent, Brian Darling from the Heritage Foundation clearly got in over his head on this one. He fumbles around looking for things to bring up while touting his alcohol and chewing tobacco habits. He never brings up any statistics throughout the entire debate.

This debate on marijuana legalization was part of ABC's Nightline Twittercast which allows viewers to tweet in their opinions on the subjects. 

Baltimore Murder Rate Drops as Police Focus on Violent Crime Instead of Drug Crimes

In Baltimore, one of the nation's most violent cities, police are beginning to rethink their zero tolerance strategy in order to reduce violent crimes. Over the past two years, arrests have declined. Along with that, homicides and shootings are down too - totals that haven't been that low since the late 1980s.

Instead of chasing suspected drug dealers, officers are focusing on people with violent backgrounds. Since Police Commissioner Fredrick H. Bealefeld III took over in 2007, homicides dipped from 282 to 234 in just a year. In 2008, nonfatal shootings dropped from 582 to 450 last year. Also in 2009, the department arrested 4,000 less people than in the previous year. Last year's arrest total was down nearly 20,000 from 2002 - when Baltimore was at the height of the zero tolerance strategy. With 64 slayings through May 11, the city is on pace for 178 homicides this year, the lowest total since 1977.

"Im not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, places Bealefeld among a handful of police chiefs willing to acknowledge that the strategies their departments used for decades were ineffective, even counter productive. He's confident that the big drops under Bealefeld are no coincidence.

Kennedy said, "It's common sense to focus on a small number of dangerous people instead of rounding up people for low-level nonsense."

It's a lot like a scene out of President Obama's favorite show, The Wire.

Rep. Mark Souder Resigns!

Rep. Mark Souder, the man who authored the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty, has resigned after acknowledging an affair with one of his female staffers. SSDP and the congressman from Indiana have a lot of history. In fact, if it weren't for Souder, SSDP might not even exist.

Souder has been one of the most vicious drug warriors in Congress. The HEA Aid Elmination Penalty has resulted in the loss of financial aid for over 250,000 students and he has done his best to oppose medical marijuana legislation. In the Showtime documentary, In Pot We Trust, you can see SSDP's new executive director Aaron Houston attempting to lobby this "foaming at the mouth prohibitionist" about medical marijuana.

Souder was chairman of that subcommittee between 2001 and 2007. During those years, nearly 200,000 students were denied college aid for drug violations, according to data unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), a longtime nemesis of Souder. (Here's Souder complaining the student group "harassed" him in his home district.) In Souder's own state, 8,903 students were denied aid during that time.

Opponents of Souder's law argued that it would be difficult to craft a more counter-productive public policy. Souder responded by calling those opponents -- largely teachers organizations and church groups -- a "small but determined coalition of drug-legalization groups."

This is a huge victory for anyone who supports sensible and evidence based approaches to both drug policy and sex education for youth. Souder's open seat gives Democrats an unexpected opportunity.

For a real good laugh, watch this video below of Souder being interviewed by his mistress, Tracy Jackson (also married), about his testimony in support of, you guessed it, abstinence only sex education.

AP Slams the Drug War

The Associated Press has hit the drug war hard with a piece that examines U.S. drug policy's efforts and claims that 40 years and $1 trillion later, we're actually worse off than we were before this thing started.

Even ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske admits that "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified." Attempting to grasp onto his fading limelight and defend the drug war is Kerlkowske's predecessor John Walters, who firmly disagreed.

"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

That's exactly what is being said. Though he's simply lumping in treatment and prevention professionals to try and save face. Many people involved in that field feel that the war on drugs has been misguided and that it makes their jobs, which is to help people overcome addictions and get back on their feet, much harder. 

 

The money spent on law enforcement of the drug war dwarfs what is spent on treatment and prevention leaving many facilities understaffed. Treatment and prevention specialists have long criticized the far reaching implications of having a drug conviction. After completing treatment, one of the most important things a person can do to help avoid relapse is to stay busy. That's kind of hard to do when you've lost your job after being arrested and can't get a new one because of the conviction on your record. If you were getting financial aid for college at the time of your arrest you can forget about going back to school. Need food stamps or public housing? You can forget about that too.

Walters continues to live in a fantasy world for people who believe that the devastating drug war violence occurring in Mexico is actually a victory for U.S. drug policy. He lives next door to Michelle Leonhardt, acting DEA Director and they both get their paper delivered by Andrea Barthwell while they watch a TV station where Asa Hutchinson actually wins debates. Living in this drug war utopia, they're able to ignore and distort facts like the ones the AP dug up:

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

- $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.
- $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
- $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
- $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
- $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

Does the new drug control strategy and budget go far enough to make the changes that we need to reduce drug abuse and the violence associated with the illegal drug trade? No. But did anyone really expect it to? It is a step in the right direction with modest increases in funding for treatment and prevention and we have an administration that is at least able to acknowledge the fact that drug war hasn't solved the problem. 

 

Our focus now should be to urge the Senate to not confirm Michelle Leonhart as DEA administrator.  

SSDP Board Member Gov. Gary Johnson on the Colbert Report!

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Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was on the Colbert Report yesterday and he wasted no time giving his opinions about marijuana prohibition.

SWAT Raid Comes Under Fire

Judge Napolitano, host of Fox News' Freedom Watch has got to be TV's most outspoken opponent of the war on drugs. Check out the video above where he even calls for the arrest of the police officers that raided the home of a Columbia, Missouri family in February only to find a "small amount of marijuana."

SSDP and our friend Dave Borden were quoted in the Columbia Tribune's Sunday paper about the raid.

Advocates with Students for a Sensible Drug Policy — a national organization with a University of Missouri chapter — have taken notice of the Feb. 11 raid of Jonathan Whitworth’s home, where a SWAT team found a misdemeanor amount of marijuana and shot two dogs, one fatally. Associate Director Jonathan Perri said the war on drugs is a failure because of the violence associated with the illegal activity of distributing marijuana. The legalization of the drug would take the criminal aspect out its distribution, he said.

“By making it illegal, you are making it criminal,” Perri said. “If a local liquor store breaks a law, you are not going to see a SWAT team raid the place and kill a dog. … You still have the alcohol abuse but don’t have people killing each other over it.”

David Borden, the executive director of Americans for Swat Reform, said his organization’s philosophy is that SWAT teams should be used rarely. SWAT’s participation in the execution of search warrants, he believes, is an abuse of authority.

“The idea of SWAT was created for hostage situations and when military-style power is required and there is no other choice,” he said. “When going into a situation that the purpose is to preserve evidence, it’s not a good enough reason to put these thousands of people that are served search warrants each year through the aggressive and traumatic experience of a para-militarized police squadron entering your home.”

Obama Drug Strategy to Focus on Prevention and Treatment

The Office of National Drug Control Policy will release its new drug control strategy tomorrow.

The new drug control strategy to be released Tuesday boosts community-based anti-drug programs, encourages health care providers to screen for drug problems before addiction sets in and expands treatment beyond specialty centers to mainstream health care facilities.

"It changes the whole discussion about ending the war on drugs and recognizes that we have a responsibility to reduce our own drug use in this country," Gil Kerlikowske, the White House drug czar, said in an interview.

The administration has made it crystal clear that they are not going to embrace marijuana legalization but they have made some positive drug policy moves:

• Repealed the federal ban on needle exchange funding
• DoJ issued a memo instructing that people or dispensaries in compliance with state medical marijuana laws not be prosecuted by the federal government.
• Obama and Biden support ending the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity

These are clearly steps in the right direction but how much further will the Obama administration go? Despite Kerlikowske calling for an end to the war on drugs, the administration's drug control budget calls for twice as much spending on law enforcement than it does on treatment and prevention. It does propose a 13% increase in funding for alcohol and drug prevention programs and a 3.7% increase for addiction treatment.

We're looking forward to reading the new strategy. 

SWAT Team Kills Family Dog with Child Present

If you needed something else to push you toward accepting marijuana legalization, here you go.

A SWAT team in Columbia, MO executed a narcotics search warrant in mid February. It was your typical smash the door down in the middle of the night and kill the family pets while the house is ransacked for a few grams of marijuana drug raid. When 100-150 of these raids occur every single day, incidents like the one that happened at Jonathan Witworth's home in Missouri mostly go unnoticed.

Unless they're caught on tape.

The whole raid took place in front of a 7 year old boy and according to a police spokesperson the police discovered a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana. They then charged the father with child endangerment because, clearly, marijuana possession has the potential to cause a child more physical and mental harm then ramming down the front door in the middle of the night, firing 4 gun shots inside the house and killing the little boy's puppy.

What's even more typical about these raids is the lack of responsibility the police take. Here is the police chief's explanation of what happened: 

The chief, who is personally conducting the internal investigation, walked reporters through his understanding of the incident. Three officers shot at the pit bull, and the first missed completely, which is when the corgi is believed to have been shot in the paw, he said. The pit bull acted aggressively toward a SWAT member again as they pushed into the home, which resulted in the animal being shot, he said. After being shot, it moved to attack a SWAT member, which is when the dog was killed.

That sounds like a little kid lying to his mom about how that antique china collection ended up smashed on the floor. "Uhh, well. I was trying to sweep the floor for you mommy but I missed the floor completely and killed your dog instead."

Before I watched the video I already knew what was going to happen. I was aware that a dog dies. But that still doesn't prepare you to listen to this man's agony when he realizes that the officers have shot and killed his pet.

Amidst the screaming and yelling of orders by the officers, the confused suspect asks "What is happening?"

SEARCH WARRANT! NARCOTICS SEARCH WARRANT!

"Ok. Search. I don't care. Why does it have to be like this? Please don't hurt my dogs. They're nice dogs."