Iowa, America’s breadbasket, home to liberal scion Tom Harkin and conservative contrarian Charles Grassley, is vetting the issue of medical marijuana politically like no other previous state has by conducting a series of public testimonies, convened by the Iowa Pharmacy Board (who was ordered by a Polk County judge to do so in April in response to lawsuits brought by medical marijuana patients in Iowa against the IPB).
Two of the first four public hearings have already happened (August 19 in Des Moines and Sept. 2 in Mason City); the next hearings are:
October 7 in Iowa City and November 4, Council Bluffs
At the Mason City hearing on September 2, eight speakers, all but one in favor of medical marijuana law reforms, spoke out against the prohibition of medical marijuana in Iowa.
Des Moines resident and multiple sclerosis patient Ray Lakers, 42, who was jailed for possessing less than a gram of medical marijuana in 2005, spoke of medical marijuana’s utility and benefit to his life. Conversely, Maedene Sappenfield of Mason City spoke out against it in the Globe Gazette, “I have a son-in-law in North Carolina who has MS and he functions without marijuana very well, so it is possible.”
The IPB does not have the authority to legalize marijuana for medical use, but it could suggest to lawmakers to move marijuana to a schedule lower than I. In turn, Iowa lawmakers would have to pass amending legislation. An AP article indicates an interesting legislative challenge (some would say ‘poison pill’): “the [IPB] said that the drug [marijuana] would have to be used as treatment in all states for Iowa to reclassify it.”
No employee of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) sans the director has ever drawn more public and academic criticism than David Murray, ONDCP’s chief scientist.
Virtually an entire book was derived from the ONDCP’s twisting science and statistical data during Murray’s eight-year tenure—Dr. Matthew Robinson’s Lies, Damn Lies and Drug War Statistics, A Critical Analysis Of Claims Made By The ONDCP. You can watch Murray and Robinson debate about the drug war and ONDCP’s methodology at the Cato Institute here.
Question: When will Obama and Holder finally kick Murray to the curb and replace him with someone other than another anti-cannabis zealot masquerading as a ’scientist’?
The Washington Monthly’s Charlie Homans cast some much needed, white hot light in Mr. Murray’s direction.
******
The Bushie Obama Can’t Fire
by Charles Homans
August 25, 2009
Obama vowed to reverse Bush’s hard-line drug policies, but Dubya still has a man raising havoc in the White House drug office. Problem is, Obama can’t fire him.
The Bush years were not the finest hour for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. Drug czar John Walters, who ran the place beginning in late 2001, waged a militaristic drug war, pouring money into dubiously effective efforts to fight trafficking abroad while letting treatment programs stagnate at home, and obsessing over marijuana at the expense of more dangerous drugs.
It’s an approach that Barack Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, is now trying to steer away from. He has vowed to end the use of the phrase “war on drugs,” and the hard-liners who filled out Walters’ office are now gone. All of them, that is, except one guy: David Murray, the drug czar’s chief scientist, and Walters’ most enthusiastic disciple.
David Murray is a lone human memento of the Bush administration’s drug war, surrounded bypeople who are trying to undo the work on which he has spent the past eight years.
“He was brought in as a political hatchet man,” says Ross Deck, a former ONDCP analyst and a 16-year-veteran of the office who quit during the Walters years. Before joining in the ONDCP, Murray had no prior experience in addiction science, or law enforcement, or anything else particularly related to drug policy.
He is on the record questioning many of the drug policies espoused by Kerlikowske. Congress has spent three years trying to get him fired.
Why, then, does Murray somehow still have a job in the Obama administration? The reason can be found in the fine print of the federal bureaucracy. Midway through his tenure, Walters moved Murray—at the time his special assistant—from a politically appointed job to the chief scientist’s post, a theoretically apolitical position that makes him much harder to fire. By law, Kerlikowske can’t touch a hair on his head for the first 120 days of his own stint as drug czar. Which means that until the middle of September, Murray is living in a peculiar limbo: a lone human memento of the Bush administration’s botched prosecution of the drug war, surrounded by people who are trying to undo the work on which he has spent the past eight years.
ONDCP veterans speak fondly of Murray’s predecessor, a defense research veteran named Al Brandenstein, who was the drug czar office’s only previous chief scientist from 1991 until Walters removed him in 2004. Brandenstein worked to put advanced drug-detection technologies in the hands of law-enforcement agencies, but he was also interested in advancing the understanding of the demand side of the drug-use equation. In the 1990s, he got government funding for brain-scanning equipment that medical researchers would use to better understand the biochemistry of addiction. Critics in the drug-policy community argue that Brandenstein’s work produced little of value, and that his post existed mostly to provide a pretext for government spending on gadgetry—but for better or worse, that was what Congress had asked for when it created the chief scientist job.
Murray, on the other hand, was not. A former cultural anthropologist who had left academia for the conservative think-tank circuit, he had made a name for himself in Washington a decade earlier with an article in Policy Review about the danger out-of-wedlock births posed to the fabric of American society. (It began, memorably, “America is becoming a nation of bastards.”) As Walters’ special assistant, he had made headlines in Canada in 2003 by suggesting that the U.S.’s northern neighbor’s experiments with marijuana decriminalization could cause diplomatic problems along the border.
Shelving most of Brandenstein’s work, Murray pursued the occasional science project—he was enthusiastic about testing the Beltway’s sewage for traces of cocaine—but mostly used his office as a political soapbox, lambasting opponents and burying unflattering data that suggested his boss wasn’t exactly winning the drug war. (The Statistical Assessment Service, a research organization that Murray himself launched in 1994, has in recent years devoted much ink to debunking its own founder’s claims on drug-policy issues like needle exchange.)
In congressional testimony, Murray branded medical-marijuana advocates “modern-day snake-oil proponents”; in a 2007 appearance on a panel at the libertarian Cato Institute, he derided the think tank’s pro-legalization stance to be “an illusion” that “grows out of late-night dormitory engagements in college that one hopes one outgrows.” He also alienated more middle-of-the-road drug-policy experts both inside and outside the bureaucracy; one outside expert recalls attending a drug-research group meeting with Murray and hearing him offhandedly refer to the pot-friendly Netherlands as a “narco-state.”
“David acted as though he had said nothing the least bit unusual in saying that,” the expert says. “It’s indicative of how off the map he is—he simply doesn’t understand how strange his own views are about these things.”
Congress felt similarly. In the fall of 2005, as the panic over methamphetamine use in rural America was reaching its apex, Walters sent Murray to brief the members the House of Representatives’ Meth Caucus—a group formed by mostly rural and Western congressmen in 2001—on what the administration planned to do about the burgeoning problem. The assembled lawmakers were so spectacularly unimpressed that one of them, Indiana Republican Mark Souder, marched out of the meeting and promptly demanded that Murray step down from his post, calling his briefing “pathetic” and an “embarrassment.” Murray’s performance was so bad, Souder declared, that “if Director Walters and anyone else in that office agrees with what was said today, they should resign.”
This was grandstanding, of course. But Congress made more substantial efforts to oust Murray after the Democrats came to power in 2006. Over the next three years, the Senate Appropriations Committee—which controls the federal government’s purse strings—used its annual report to criticize the chief scientist directly, a highly unusual gesture. “The Committee,” one of the reports reads, “is highly disappointed in the director of this program”—Murray—“and is troubled by his ideas for research and development that appear to have little or no value.” When Walters insisted on keeping him in the post in the face of such criticism, the Appropriations Committee responded by slashing funding for it. Murray’s office, which received nearly $47 million in 2003, got just $1 million this year.
The committee has made it clear that ONDCP’s science shop won’t see another dime until Murray is gone, at least from his current job. What happens after that is an open question. (Repeated calls to the ONDCP’s press office for an interview with Murray or a comment on his future prospects went unreturned.) While most drug-policy watchers assume Kerlikowske will kick him out of the chief scientist post as soon as he can, actually firing him is trickier. There are ways to encourage burrowed-in ideologues to quit, however—ONDCP veterans recall that George Bush Sr.’s drug czar, Bob Martinez, used to do it by assigning them to an office with no windows, phones, or computers.
“He’ll be there until somebody runs him off,” Ross Deck, the former ONDCP analyst, says of Murray. “What can they do with him? They can give him a job counting paperclips.”
Hempfest’s massive crowds last weekend spurred Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells and former state Rep. Toby Nixon to pen a bipartisan letter in the Seattle Times on the need for Washington State to join the other 13 states that have ‘decriminalized’ possession of cannabis–as well as the state’s largest population center, King County (Seattle), which effectively decriminalized possession by popular vote in 2003. Checkout this CNN iReport about this year’s Hempfest here (and kudos for the closing shot on the wrap).
Time for Washington state to decriminalize marijuana
By Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Toby Nixon
Special to The Times
Once again, the Seattle Hempfest drew tens of thousands to parks along the waterfront this weekend. In its mission statement, the all-volunteer organization that produces the event says, “The public is better served when citizens and public officials work cooperatively in order to successfully accomplish common goals.”
We agree. That is why we, as a Democratic state senator and former Republican state representative, support state Senate Bill 5615. This bill would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan “do pass” recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.
The bill makes a lot of sense, especially in this time of severely strapped budgets. Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes. Of that $1 million, $590,000 would be earmarked for the Washington State Criminal Justice Treatment Account to increase support of our underfunded drug-treatment and drug-prevention services.
The idea of decriminalizing marijuana is far from new. In 1970, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. A bipartisan body with 13 members — nine appointed by President Nixon and four by Congress — the commission was tasked with conducting a yearlong, authoritative study of marijuana. When the commission issued its report, “Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” in1972, it surprised many by recommending decriminalization:
Possession of marijuana in private for personal use would no longer be an offense; and distribution of small amounts of marijuana for no remuneration or insignificant remuneration not involving profit would no longer be an offense.
Twelve states took action and decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s. Nevada decriminalized in 2001, and Massachusetts did so in 2008. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, states where marijuana possession is decriminalized represent more than 35 percent of our nation’s population.
These states have not seen a corresponding increase in use. Nor have the 14 states that have adopted legal protections for patients whose doctors recommend the medical use of marijuana. Nor the several cities and counties that have adopted “lowest law enforcement priority” ordinances like Seattle’s Initiative 75, which made adult marijuana use the city’s lowest law enforcement priority in 2003.
On the flip side of the coin, escalating law enforcement against marijuana users has not achieved its intended goals. From 1991 to 2007, marijuana arrests nationwide tripled from 287,900 to a record 872,720, comprising 47 percent of all drug arrests combined. Of those, 89 percent were for possession only. Nevertheless, according to a study released earlier this year by two University of Washington faculty members:
• The price of marijuana has dropped;
• Its average potency has increased;
• It has become more readily available; and
• Use rates have often increased during times of escalating enforcement.
We now have decades of proof that treating marijuana use as a crime is a failed strategy. It continues to damage the credibility of our public health officials and compromise our public safety. At a fundamental level, it has eroded our respect for the law and what it means to be charged with a criminal offense: 40 percent of Americans have tried marijuana at some point in their lives. It cannot be that 40 percent of Americans truly are criminals.
We hope that the citizens of this state will work with us to help pass SB 5615, the right step for Washington to take toward a more effective, less costly and fairer approach to marijuana use.
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Seattle, left, chairs the Senate Labor, Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee. Toby Nixon was state representative for the 45th legislative district, 2002-2006, and served as vice-chair of the House Republican Caucus and ranking member of the House Committee on State Government Operations and Accountability.
Fire up the ol’ DVR this weekend because C-SPAN TV is airing Washington Times‘ ‘Inside the Beltway’ columnist and author John McCaslin being interviewed by NORML founder and legal counsel Keith Stroup.
Keith interviews John for an entire hour about his new book Weed Man, a biography about Jimmy Divine–one of America’s most prolific cannabis smugglers.
Broadcast times for this one-on-one interview on C-SPAN2, BookTV are:
If you’re confused over the term ‘jury nullification’, a prime example of such emerged from a courtroom in Boulder, Colorado last week. Many legal and sociology experts recognize a significant change in society by whether or not juries, made up of one’s local peers, will continue to enforce what many in a society have come to believe are bad and/or antiquated laws.
Throughout America’s relatively short history, when elected policymakers and bureaucrats are not responsive to the will of the citizens or pass laws not supported by society, citizens sitting on a jury have an absolute right to vote their conscience, which also means in effect nullifying the law by not voting for conviction.
The effect of this becomes abundantly clear when jurors consistently refuse to convict so-called ‘criminal offenders’, and numerous examples abound from prior civil rights movements in America: Abolitionists, Women’s Sufferage, Minority Rights and Access To The Vote and Gay/Lesbian.
In time, and NORML is observing this right now around the country in ever-increasing amounts, prosecutors are having an increasingly harder time winning criminal convictions for ‘crimes’ a majority of the citizens do not in fact believe is a crime.
Want to know more about the awesome power each of us possess as jurors to stop ‘bad’ laws from their continued enforcement? Check out FIJA!
I want to personally thank ‘D. Walters, Erie, CO’ for both voting their conscience while sitting in judgment of a fellow cannabis consumer, and for letting their fellow citizens in the Boulder area know via a letter-to-the-editor what a waste of time and valuable social resources cannabis prohibition enforcement is for the criminal justice system.
Medical marijuana case a waste of resources
Posted by Camera staff in Tuesday, August 11th 2009
I was a member of the jury on the medical marijuana case and beg to differ with Mr. Garnett’s assessment as presented in this Open Forum on Tuesday.
This case was both a waste of taxpayer money and a travesty of justice that the charges against this man were ever brought in the first place. First of all, Mr. Garnett’s assertion that the jury found “that the amount of marijuana in Mr. Lauve’s home was medically necessary” is an inaccurate statement. The job of the prosecution was to prove that the amount in possession was NOT medically necessary and that Mr. Lauve was aware that he was in violation of the law. The prosecution presented absolutely NO EVIDENCE regarding either point of law. They brought no witnesses to show that the amount was not medically necessary. They did not even assert that the amount was not medically necessary. In fact, they prevented the defense from offering evidence regarding medical necessity. The prosecution did not even attempt to assert that Mr. Lauve knew the amount was excessive or suggest that he was doing anything inappropriate with the ‘excess’.
This jury admired Jason Lauve for standing up to an unfair prosecution. The physical, emotional and legal costs to Jason Lauve of defending himself do not seem to be of concern of Mr. Garnett.
And the cost to taxpayers? 4 full days spent by a judge, two prosecutors, a bailiff, a clerk, a detective, assorted police officers and 12 jurors! Plus laboratory time and expense to prove that it was ‘real’ marijuana. All of us could have spent these 4 days doing something that actually involved prosecuting a crime.
While states like Michigan, New Mexico and Rhode Island have recipriocity for out-of-state medical cannabis patients, to date NORML was not aware of a AUSA recognizing such (though, on occasion, we’ve seen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) not act upon medical cannabis patients caught with small amounts of their medicine). This may well be another change under the current Obama administration as both the Clinton and Bush 2.0 administrations prosecuted state authorized medical cannabis patients caught up in federal arrests.
PRESS RELEASE – AUGUST 2, 2009 – FROM JOHN MCCALL, ATTORNEY
On June 30, 2009 in the Federal District Court of New Mexico, Assistant US Attorney John Anderson agreed, on the record, to Honor the Medical Marijuana Recommendation of Charles Smith of Shasta Lake, California. Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Lorenzo Garcia further agreed to accept the State’s proposed recommendation of a Conditional Discharge upon provision of Mr. Smith’s Medical Marijuana Recommendation to the US Attorney’s office. This historic moment occurred during the federal Government’s prosecution of cases related to the Annual Rainbow Gathering that occurs in different states around the country and involves a large Federal Law Enforcement presence. The cases were prosecuted as civil collateral forfeitures and the records have been transferred to the Central Violations Bureau for the Federal Government. Five Medical marijuana recommendations were honored including those from Wyoming, California, Hawaii and Washington State. This is the first time in modern history, in which it is known that the US Attorney and the Federal District Court agreed to accept medical marijuana recommendations and licenses in order to dismiss marijuana possession charges.
This historic series of events followed the filing of a law suit by Bryan Krumm of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use in New Mexico Federal District Court in 2008. During those proceedings members of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use were able to speak to Justice Department representatives about the statements in March of 2009 by Eric Holder, US Attorney General, that medical marijuana would no longer be prosecuted. After this conversation in May of 2009, Attorney General Holder came to New Mexico in June of 2009 and again gave a public presentation on the matter stating that legally established medical marijuana distribution operations and legally sanctioned medical marijuana users (all under state laws), would not be prosecuted by the Federal Government. During the proceedings it was revealed that the AUSA’s prosecuting the cases in New Mexico told Defendants that they were not returning the medicine and that they would be prosecuted if they were caught with Marijuana in the National Forest again. During discussions with the US Attorney and his Assistants at the Court, long time Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Judy Rosenstein discovered that the US Attorney for New Mexico, Gregory J. Fouratt, was not involved in that decision to impose conditions on the Defendants.
Contact Attorney John McCall for more information on this case. Charles Smith has given permission for this information to be released to the public and is available, somewhere in the woods around Shasta Lake, if you want to find him and talk to him about his experience.
You can go to Youtube Lisa Law for video of the Rainbow Gathering and Law Enforcement activities.
While the government contract to date has been pro forma–the University of Mississippi/Oxford has won the contract every year since the late 1960s and MAPS’ and Prof. Lyle Craker’s successful lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to effectively break Ol’ Miss’ monopoly on cultivating cannabis for research and approximately five Compassionate IND patients, and allow the University of Massachusetts/Amherst to cultivate research and therapeutic grade cannabis, is being appealed by DEA–competition can only help science, and the free market place of ideas and research.
Production, Analysis, & Distribution of Cannabis & Marijuana Cigarettes
Solicitation Number: N01DA-10-7773
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: National Institutes of Health
Location: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Synopsis:
Added: Aug 05, 2009 9:03 am
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to (1) grow, harvest, analyze, store and distribute GMP grade cannabis (marijuana) on large and small scales; (2) extract cannabis to obtain purified phytocannabinoids including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC), analyze, and store; (3) prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products; and (4) distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products for research and other Government programs upon NIDA authorization.
Offerors must possess suitable and secure DEA approved outdoor and indoor growing facilities, research laboratory with appropriate analytical instruments, and experienced personnel to conduct the project tasks. Appropriate DEA approved secure facility for manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, and their storage, and DEA Schedule I registration for marijuana and THC are essential. NIDA anticipates a 1-year with four 1 year options cost reimbursement type contract will be awarded. Additional quantity options for manufacturing cigarettes may also be required. In order to handle substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it is mandatory that offerors possess a DEA Research Registration for Schedules II to V and demonstrate the capability to obtain a DEA registration for Schedule I controlled substances. All studies must be carried out under pertinent FDA regulations, such as current Good Clinical Practice (cGCP) and current Good Laboratory Practice (cGLP) regulations. The pertinent FDA’s guidelines/guidance shall be followed. RFP No. N01DA-10-7773 will be available electronically on or about August 25, 2009. You can access the RFP through the FedBizOpps:
The electronic RFP contains all information needed to submit a proposal. No printed version of the solicitation document or source list is available. NIDA will consider proposals submitted by any responsible offeror. Proposals will be due on or about October 9, 2009. This advertisement does not commit the Government to award a contract. Based upon market research, the Government is not using the policies contained in Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, in its solicitation for the described supplies or services. However, interested persons may identify to the contracting officer their interest and capability to satisfy the Government’s requirement with a commercial item within 15 days of this notice.
In an attempt to clarify an apparent gaffe made a few weeks ago to California media stating that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal value”, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in a new interview with his hometown media in Seattle has only slightly, almost imperceptibly, modified his remarks by now implying that somehow how ‘smoked‘ medical cannabis is not a legitimate and effective drug delivery method:
When asked about his comments a few weeks ago Kerlikowske told KOMO news “I certainly said that legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary nor is it in mine. But the other question was in reference to smoked marijuana. And as we know, the FDA has not determined that smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question that should be answered by the medical community.”
KOMO also reports:
Kerlikowske’s stand on legalizing marijuana for everyone is more clear-cut. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, by law, actively works against legalizing drugs.
Kerlikowske takes on last jab at cannabis by continuing his predecessor’s proclivity to mislead the media and public by claiming “You know from the University of Washington, the number one call from young people for treatment here, after alcohol, is marijuana. So I’m not seeing the benefit to society with legalization here.”
Number one, cannabis is not legal in Washington state, or anywhere in the US, 2) youth in Washington, and all around the US, after being ensnared by the hundreds of thousands per year by cannabis prohibition laws enforced by the criminal justice system (or university police), are provided with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or so-called ‘treatment’.
Mr. Kerlikowske should cease employing this rhetorical straw man as he is intelligent enough to know its inaccuracy, but continues to adopt the failed rhetoric of prior hardliner drug czars Gen. Barry McCaffrey and John Walters, who consistently made the same claims during their tenure, and lost credibility every time they continued to propound such obviously misleading propaganda.
Kerlikowske’s latest unfortunate remarks affirm cannabis law reformers have much work left to do! Maybe our good drug czar should call actor Patrick Swayze and ask him ‘if he is benefiting from smoked medical cannabis?’
Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer over a year ago, is using medical marijuana to relieve the pain of his last days of chemotherapy.
According to a family insider, Swayze, 56, has found that smoking marijuana helps with his nausea, inability to sleep, and anxiety. The insider noted on the actor’s slight weight gain as well as adding that he (Swayze) feels more “normal than he has in months.”
Pictures have surfaced of Swayze out with his brother Donnie looking much healthier than he had weeks before.
“Patrick was rapidly losing weight because he couldn’t keep good down. He was so weak, he needed help getting around,” the source told the magazine.
“Marijuana works extremely well for many cancer patients. It helps fight nausea from chemotherapy treatments and may alleviate anorexia or loss of appetite,” Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa, CA, said of the situation.
Here is an update from South Dakota where the judge who placed a one year gag order on South Dakota NORML’s Bob Newland not to publicly advocate for cannabis law reform whilst on probation for a minor cannabis offense has had to defend his sentencing and constitutionally-questionable limitations on Mr. Newland’s First Amendment rights to free speech; the right to peaceably assemble; petition the government for a redress of grievances.
To place this into sharper political context, in their first attempt two years ago, South Dakotan voters narrowly defeated a pro-medical cannabis initiative, 51%-49%.
Therefore, placing First Amendment restrictions on the state’s most vocal and notable cannabis law reform advocate for a minor cannabis offense sets a wretched legal precedent for personal freedom and political organizing in South Dakota.
To make matters worse, now an anti-drug state senator is gratuitously misleading the public by claiming that medical cannabis advocates in South Dakota are disingenuous:
“Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.”
The voters of South Dakota need to run another pro-cannabis law reform initiative and pass it ASAP, making politicos like Adelstein and Judge Delaney eat crow—like hundreds of other politicos since the early 1990s who’ve opposed cannabis law reform, only to see voter-driven initiatives wash over them, and their opposition to these important–and popular–public law reforms.
——————————–
28 July 2009
Hello everyone,
I write today to tell a tale of an execrable and gratuitous lie told by SD State Senator Stanford Adelstein.
First, on Monday, July 27, the following story appeared in the Rapid City Journal
Judge defends marijuana sentence
Jack Delaney imposed a gag order on political activist Bob Newland
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Monday, July 27, 2009
The well-known public advocate for the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes had previously pleaded guilty to felony possession of the drug. And Delaney wanted to make the sentence sting without imposing an unduly harsh prison term on a 60-year-old man with a relatively clean criminal record.
So in essence, he told him to shut up for a year about one thing: medical marijuana, and an ongoing campaign to bring the issue to another public vote in 2010.
Delaney sentenced Newland to one year in Pennington County Jail but suspended all but 45 days under a set of stipulations that included weekly drug tests, random searches and a one-year ban on public advocacy for medical marijuana.
Delaney rejects assertions by some that he was imposing his personal beliefs on medical marijuana through the sentence.
“I have no concern whatsoever about whether medical marijuana is legalized,” Delaney said during an interview with the Journal in his office. “The important thing was to have a sentence crafted to impose a penalty on Mr. Newland that was significant to him.”
The advocacy ban was an infringement on Newland’s First Amendment rights. Delaney doesn’t deny that. But neither does he consider it more onerous or any less appropriate than many other infringements imposed as part of felony sentences.
The random searches Newland faces in the next year would be violations of his constitutional rights, but for the felony plea. Felons can face otherwise unconstitutional firearms restrictions and the right to associate with certain people or go to certain establishments, Delaney said.
“We restrict speech as well in a lot of protection orders, or in divorces, where in some cases the parties’ freedom to speak to one another may be limited,” he said.
And given the fact that the maximum penalty for Class 6 felony marijuana possession was two years in prison and a $4,000 fine, Newland’s sentence could be considered light by others who face similar charges, Delaney said. He was particularly concerned about younger minority defendants who might get a longer jail term for the same crime.
“I’m sitting there faced with a gentleman who is older, well known, who is thought by many to be considerably more well off than he is, and he is seeking a sentence that is going to be considerably more lenient that what they (minority defendants) might receive,” Delaney said. “So my thought was that I have to take something from him that is as valuable or maybe even more valuable than his freedom.”
Delaney settled on what he calls the “partial infringement of speech,” as well as limits on his freedom of association in support of medical marijuana. Newland may still meet in private with medical marijuana advocates to plan the medical-marijuana campaign. But he cannot appear publicly in or speak on or for the campaign.
“I’m taking away a legal right of the person to associate,” Delaney said. “I’m taking away his liberties. But not nearly as much as if he were in jail.”
Typical sentences for the same felony possession charge range from 45 days to 120 days in jail, Delaney said. But many of those who receive such sentences have more criminal marks on their record, he said.
Delaney has received about 40 e-mails commenting on the verdict, with many critical of the ban on speech and public involvement in the medical marijuana campaign. Many of the e-mails came from people active in the medical marijuana movement, he said, and some engaged in “name calling.”
Others, however, were more understanding when Delaney explained his rationale.
“All felonies are serious crimes, and they have a wide range of impacts on anybody who’s a felon,” he said. “This is unusual. And if it hadn’t been Bob Newland, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.”
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com
*************
In the online “Comments” on this story, Sen. Adelstein said this (reprinted as written, bad grammar and spelling intact):
Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.
I met with him at the Capitol in Room 411, (or maybe 412) during the session to offer, to assist for MRDICAL purposes in a Bill, as Chair of Health and Human Services. I said that I would only do so if there were 3 (three) simple changes in the legislation he was proposing.
1. There would be a required prescription from and MD legally authorized to issue drug prescription
2.The prescription could only be given if either there was no FDA drug that would accomplish the same as the marijuana or that drug cost three more times the cost of the pot.
3. The marijuana could only come from one or two sites approved and inspected by the SD Dept of Health
He and his friends in the room flatly rejected all three saying that anyone could grow the stuff for anyone else at any time that it was needed
I walked out of the room, knowing that they had no true interest in the help for people with pain and/or suffering. I of course opposed their bill vigorously and it did not even get to the House floor.
Newland is and should be treated as a common felon. The Judge was correct from stopping his phone posturing, I only wish that it was for more than a single year.
Stan Adelstein, State Senator District 32
The details of the meeting as described by Adelstein are a lie. You can read the true story at the decorum Forum Blog, and you can comment there or at the Journal “Comments” site above.
Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske hit the road this week to rail against the perils of pot:
“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” he said at an appearance in Fresno, California.
This is a striking departure from what Kerlikowske told me in an interview in May.
Because of the restrictive terms the Vice President’s office imposed on our interview, I’m not at liberty to quote the drug czar directly.
But when I asked Kerlikowske for an example of how he hoped to bring sound science back to Office of National Drug Control Policy, he told me that science would answer whether smoked marijuana has any medical benefit.
That’s a question that science answers, he told me, not ideology.
From this week’s comments, it appears it took just two more months on the job for Kerlikowske’s openness to scientific uncertainty to snap shut in a fit of ideological conviction.
