Again, cannabis consumers and activists should never shrink back from prohibitionist (and some in the media) arguments that “no one gets arrested for cannabis in the US (it’s practically legal!)” when over 755,000 cannabis consumers are busted annually for simple possession (94,000 others were charged with cultivation, distribution or conspiracy therein).

Even more so when there are outrageous claims made that ‘no goes to jail or prison for pot’.

Unfortunately for a Jackson Mississippi man named Ronald Sekul, he can attest to how wrong these false claims are as he stares down a lifetime sentence for cultivating 51 cannabis plants.

Man could get life in pot bust, Jackson resident was growing 51 plants, officials say
A 33-year-old Jackson man accused of growing marijuana in his apartment could get up to life in prison if convicted.

In the case of Ronald Christopher Sekul, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intends to ask prosecutors to apply a law called the “kingpin” statute, MBN Director Marshall Fisher said.

The statute can be applied to Sekul’s case because he allegedly had a drug operation for longer than 12 consecutive months and had more than 10 pounds of marijuana, Fisher said.

Sekul was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing 4-foot marijuana plants in the back bedroom of the fourplex he lives in at 1510 Myrtle St., according to MBN.

He is out of jail on $50,000 bond.

Read the entire article here.

Think about, life in prison for cultivating one of the most popular agricultural products in America–arguably the number one commercially cultivated commodity in the country. Think about the annual expense incurred by the taxpayers of Mississippi for the incarceration of Mr. Sekul: $22,000-30,000 a year; think about the total cost to the taxpayers if Mr. Sekul spends 10 years in prison (approx. $275,000), 20 years (approx. $600,000) or 30 years (approx. $1 million).

Rather than tax and actually control cannabis like more dangerous and addictive government-sanctioned drugs like tobacco and alcohol products, is it not remarkable beyond words that the state and federal governments still engages both massive number of annual cannabis-related arrests and the incarceration annually nationwide of an estimated 45,000-65,000 cannabis-only offenders, while still not achieving any of the stated goals of prohibition (view a comprehensive NORML report analyzing cannabis arrests in the US here, read page 45 to see where none of the government’s stated goals are achieved).

Feds Are The Ones Still Stirring Pot With Taxpayers’ Money

However, there is a potential policy silver-lining to buttress the expense to the taxpayers and tragedy of what our society is trying to do Mr. Sekul and that is that President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, can stop these kinds of foolish and expensive incarcerations for cannabis by de-funding the federal grants provided to local law enforcement and their ‘multi-jursidictional anti-drug task forces’, like JET, the Jackson Enforcement Team, which boasts of Mr. Sekul’s arrest.

How many fewer Americans would be arrested annually if the federal government didn’t fund local arrests?

Exactly how many taxpayer dollars could be saved if the expense and trouble of local cannabis arrests were not subsidized by the feds?

In the media rush to cover the DOJ memo on the Obama administration’s redirecting federal law enforcement efforts away from arresting and prosecuting state compliant medical cannabis providers CNN’s Lou Dobbs interviewed former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch…

Checkout Tim’s on-point rebuttal of McCaffrey’s usual double-speak, and that of others like blogger Joe Campbell, who’ve simply called out McCaffrey as, in Mr. Campbell’s view, “a liar”.

Any long time observer of Mr. Caffrey’s m.o. when being interviewed is to tell some whoppers to an unquestioning media, but in these recent videos McCaffrey, again, wrongly claims that no one gets arrested for cannabis; no one goes to jail or prison for cannabis-related offenses; that he didn’t lose in the seminal case Conant vs McCaffrey; cannabis is de facto legal in the United States, etc…Geesh! I guess when the hundreds of cannabis consumers who call the toll-free number (888-67-NORML) or email NORML this week post arrest looking for legal information and assistance, we”ll just inform them, ‘Don’t you know, according to Barry McCaffrey, cannabis is de facto legal, and that you didn’t really get arrested.’

Makes one wonder how honest and credible McCaffrey has been for the last nine years as a paid, on-air military consultant for NBC News when his track record for anti-pot prevarications (I’m in DC…and therefore not suppose to use the word ‘lie’) are so obviously refuted. If he’d so obviously twist the truth about cannabis, would he mislead an audience or interviewer about America’s military and defense contractors?

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.”

Charles Homans is an editor of the Washington Monthly.

7/24/09, 12:34 am EST
This is a major disappointment:

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.

Tim Dickinson

14 May 2009
——-
Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S.  is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said.  “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

View Full Image Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government’s approach to fighting drug use.

Mr.  Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems.  Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr.  Kerlikowske said.

Already, the administration has called for an end to the disparity in how crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine are dealt with.  Critics of the law say it unfairly targeted African-American communities, where crack is more prevalent.

The administration also said federal authorities would no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries in the 13 states where voters have made medical marijuana legal.  Agents had previously done so under federal law, which doesn’t provide for any exceptions to its marijuana prohibition.

During the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama also talked about ending the federal ban on funding for needle-exchange programs, which are used to stem the spread of HIV among intravenous-drug users.

The drug czar doesn’t have the power to enforce any of these changes himself, but Mr.  Kerlikowske plans to work with Congress and other agencies to alter current policies.  He said he hasn’t yet focused on U.S.  policy toward fighting drug-related crime in other countries.

Mr.  Kerlikowske was most recently the police chief in Seattle, a city known for experimenting with drug programs.  In 2003, voters there passed an initiative making the enforcement of simple marijuana violations a low priority.  The city has long had a needle-exchange program and hosts Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of hemp and marijuana advocates.

Seattle currently is considering setting up a project that would divert drug defendants to treatment programs.

Mr.  Kerlikowske said he opposed the city’s 2003 initiative on police priorities.  His officers, however, say drug enforcement — especially for pot crimes — took a back seat, according to Sgt.  Richard O’Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.  One result was an open-air drug market in the downtown business district, Mr.  O’Neill said.

“The average rank-and-file officer is saying, ‘He can’t control two blocks of Seattle, how is he going to control the nation?’ ” Mr.  O’Neill said.

Sen.  Tom Coburn, the lone senator to vote against Mr.  Kerlikowske, was concerned about the permissive attitude toward marijuana enforcement, a spokesman for the conservative Oklahoma Republican said.  [drug war]

Others said they are pleased by the way Seattle police balanced the available options.  “I think he believes there is a place for using the criminal sanctions to address the drug-abuse problem, but he’s more open to giving a hard look to solutions that look at the demand side of the equation,” said Alison Holcomb, drug-policy director with the Washington state American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr.  Kerlikowske said the issue was one of limited police resources, adding that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs.  He also said he supports needle-exchange programs, calling them “part of a complete public-health model for dealing with addiction.”

Mr.  Kerlikowske’s career began in St.  Petersburg, Fla.  He recalled one incident as a Florida undercover officer during the 1970s that spurred his thinking that arrests alone wouldn’t fix matters.

“While we were sitting there, the guy we’re buying from is smoking pot and his toddler comes over and he blows smoke in the toddler’s face,” Mr.  Kerlikowske said.  “You go home at night, and you think of your own kids and your own family and you realize” the depth of the problem.

Since then, he has run four police departments, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of Community Policing during the Clinton administration.

Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that supports legalization of medical marijuana, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Mr.  Kerlikowske.  “The analogy we have is this is like turning around an ocean liner,” he said.  “What’s important is the damn thing is beginning to turn.”

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr.  Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.

“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement.  People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”

Unlike the prior Drug Czar, John ‘Unicorn’ Walters, a moral crusader (aptly dubbed Bill Bennett’s ‘Mini-Me’ by the DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann), Chief Kerlikowske crafted pragmatic public policies and law enforcement practices that immediately distinguish him from his predecessors such as Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Walters.

To wit:

-200,000 pro-reform cannabis law supporters converge on the waterfront in Seattle in mid-August for the world famous Hempfest, where adults openly consume cannabis and the hundreds of police present make few to no arrests (and where, ironically, alcohol use is strictly forbidden).

-Local law enforcement in Seattle apparently does not harass the artisans who craft and market the remarkable glass paraphernalia (AKA, medical delivery devices) for which Seattle is famous.

Compare that with Walters’ and former Attorney General Ashcroft’s zealous pursuit and culture-smashing symbolism of arresting, prosecuting and actually incarcerating NORML Advisory Board member Tommy Chong for nine months in a federal prison for the ‘crime’ of selling high-end artisan, Chong Bongs.

-Seattle police have a generally good track record working with medical cannabis providers, physicians and patients—including Chief Kerlikowske meeting with medical cannabis stakeholders about how to best implement Washington State’s 2000 medical cannabis laws. Compare this with Walters and McCaffrey who collectively spent 14 years insisting that there is no such thing at all as medical cannabis (often comparing it to crack cocaine), patients who claim efficacy or relief from cannabis as ‘fakers’, recommending physicians as ‘kooks’ and the majority of citizens who’ve voted for medical cannabis law reform as ‘easily duped by legalizers’.

-Rumor has it that Chief Kerlikowske has actually employed the term ‘harm reduction‘ in a sentence without employing foul language! In fact, under his leadership (and that of former Seattle Police Chief and NORML Advisory Board member Norm Stamper before him) Seattle police both recognize and practice the increasingly popular, European-inspired police/public health doctrine known as harm reduction. Two of the important tenets of harm reduction are concentrating police resources on so-called ‘hard’ drugs rather than cannabis consumers and needle exchange to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases–both championed by Chief Kerlikowske, and totally dismissed as ‘tools for legalization’ by McCaffrey and Walters.

-Despite publicly opposing a reform effort in 2003 in Seattle to make adult cannabis possession a low law enforcement priority, once I-75 was passed by a majority of voters, Chief Kerlikowske shrugged off the lost, embraced the public-health centric arguments advanced by reform advocates, and met with law reformers in the Seattle-area like I-75 campaigner and NORML board member Dominic Holden, defense attorney and NORML Board member Jeff Steinborn, popular travel author/TV host and NORML advisory board member Rick Steves.

John Walters on the otherhand would not even appear in the same green room with me backstage on TV news show, let alone debate live on the same sound stage.

Looks to me like Chief Kerlikowske is a real man…not a moralistic, lie-to-beat-the-band bureaucrat.

-Chief Kerlikowske’s former colleagues on the police force, cannabis law reform activists, medical patients, civil rights lawyers and public health officials all seem to recognize that science and ‘smart on crime’ (as compared to ‘tough on crime’ and ineffective platitudes like ‘just say no’ or ‘drug-free America’) drive his policing—not ideology and a twisted sense of personal morality.

With the recent report from a pair of WA researchers affirming that the ONDCP under McCaffrey and Walters obsessed too much on cannabis prohibition, and not enough on meth, crack, heroin…a decided change in leadership at ONDCP can’t happen fast enough.

Lastly, it was also announced yesterday by the 1980s congressional author of the ONDCP charter, no less and with sweet karmic irony, Vice President Joe Biden, that despite the best intentions of placing the ONDCP into the President’s cabinet in 1988, from this point forward the ONDCP is no longer going to be a cabinet-level office.

Whoa. Now that is change NORML and taxpayers can believe in!

In the last few days, led in the media by the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, Massachusetts media outlets–and now even National Public Radio–have picked up on the absurd arguments recently advanced by the losing side of the November statewide election to decriminalize cannabis that: employment drug testing is now in jeopardy, police will be able to use cannabis anytime they want and that if police confront a cannabis consumer seeking to write them a ticket for possessing and/or using cannabis and the individual refuses to produce an ID, police will have pot smoke blown in their face by sneering, goading cannabis users fearless of receiving a fine.

All are untrue.

How do I know? Duh. Look around people…almost 100 million Americans live in a state or municipality that have had decriminalized cannabis possession laws on the books for decades (From west to east: AK, OR, CA, NV, CO, NE, MS, OH, NC, NY and ME). Do these states unfortunately still have employee drug testing? Are police sanctioned in these states to consume cannabis without drug testing and fear of job loss? Do police seek and receive citizens’ IDs before writing them a citation for cannabis? Did these states contribute to the ever-increasing arrest rates for cannabis consumers?

You betcha!

Listen to the NPR story from yesterday, December 26, to get the flavor of the MDAA’s unfounded timidity.

Now, the way Massachusetts law enforcement is acting is not new for the profession that gets away with the whopper that ‘they don’t make the laws, they only enforce them’.

In fact a cursory review of the history of cannabis law reform in America readily demonstrates that when these important and long overdue reforms occur by popular voter initiative–rather than by the legislative process–law enforcement tend to strongly resist the will of the voters, seek ways to obfuscate the voters’ will, set up dilatory tactics to fully implement the changes sought by citizens, and in some odd and bizarre cases, such as in cannabis unfriendly San Diego, where law enforcement and city officials continuously seek federal intervention that will prohibit them from implementing their own citizens’ will, effectively abdicating their local authority. (This is truly bizarre behavior for a large municipality, especially in otherwise cannabis tolerant California).

Truth be told that the Massachusetts initiative could have been better worded in numerous ways, notably regarding law enforcement’s complaint regarding compelling confronted offenders to produce a valid ID card for the purposes of citation issuance. However, what Massachusetts law enforcement fails to acknowledge in their ‘the sky is going to fall’ scenario if the Bay State formalizes cannabis decriminalization is that the Massachusetts legislature can amend voter initiative, and if need be, can readily amend the popularly passed cannabis decriminalization initiative (65% voter approval rate!) to compel citizens confronted by law enforcement of possessing cannabis to show a valid ID–just like the way tens of millions of citizens suspected of cannabis-related offenses and law enforcement have been conducting themselves since Oregon became the first state to decriminalize cannabis possession in 1973.

What I fear is that during the upcoming legislative session where amending the recently passed decriminalization initiative is likely to happen is that prohibition-leaning elected policy makers, under strong lobbying pressure from the Massachusetts law enforcement community (and the federal government’s drug czar, a.k.a Office of National Drug Control Policy) will seek to effectively gut the decriminalization initiative and stiff the 65% of voters who loudly called for the state to formalize and make functional a statewide decriminalization model for adult possession of cannabis.

Cannabis law reform advocates, especially in Massachusetts, need to be ever vigilant going into this 2009 legislative session and make sure that law enforcement and prosecutors live up to their claims that they don’t make the laws, they only enforce them.

By Dominic Holden, NORML Board Member

Originally published by the Seattle Stranger’s Slog.

Last week White House appointee John Walters claimed on C-SPAN that finding people in jail for “first-time nonviolent possession of marijuana… is like finding a unicorn … because it doesn’t exist.” I had a hunch that some of the 775,138 people arrested for pot possession last year were actually unicorns…

But the drug czar probably assumed that it’s a freebie to call people with criminal convictions anything he wants, because they’re likely to be too ashamed to defend themselves. That’s certainly true, but it didn’t take me long to find credible people willing to vouch for the existence of first-time, non-violent marijuana offenders—excuse me, unicorns.

In just one hour, I’ve found five people who have seen the Drug Czar’s unicorns with their own eyes. Here are Slog’s exclusive unicorn reports:

Andy Robertson, criminal defense attorney for 10 years at the Rosen Law Firm in Seattle.I have had it happen where [my client] goes to jail where they have one joint on them, and they have never gone to jail before. This is their first and only brush with the law. I don’t think that I have ever had a case where the person charged for marijuana is anything but the most peaceful person you can imagine.

A judge who I spoke to recently said that about every afternoon, he’ll put at least one person a day in jail for possession of marijuana or paraphernalia. He’s bee pro tem-ing for at least five years.

Sunil Abraham, public defender for the King County Defender Association. When asked how many people he has personally encountered with no prior record who have served time in jail for a nonviolent marijuana-possession charge, here’s what he said: I’d say 50 people and they have all done time in jail. I’d guess that if you obtained the booking history for the last 100 marijuana arrests for somebody who has no criminal history, 80 percent of them do time in jail. It may be one day, but they serve time in jail. [Police] don’t commonly arrest for marijuana and release; you are going to go to jail.

Alison Holcomb, drug policy director of the ACLU of Washington.
According to data compiled by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs and requested by the ACLU of Washington, Washington police agencies reported 11,553 arrests for possession of marijuana in 2007. Misdemeanor possession of marijuana carries a mandatory day in jail, and up to ninety. Data obtained from the Washington State Patrol’s Identification and Criminal History Section reveals that 3,588 convictions for misdemeanor marijuana possession were entered in Washington courts in 2007.

Muraco Kyashana-tocha, works in the law offices of Jeffrey Steinborn and Douglas Hiatt, the city’s leading marijuana-defense attorneys. I know of two cases that were handled … in the last year. They were both over in Redmond. I know both of them by name. One gram [possessed] by one of them, and 12 grams by the other one. They were squeaky clean: no record no juvenile record. I know a lot of people who went to jail while their case was processing. They may be in jail over the weekend for three days. A lot of the people charged with misdemeanor [possession] cannot afford $3000-5000 for legal representation, so they are doing time.

Jeffrey Steinborn, the city’s leading marijuana defense attorney. Walters is either shamefully ignorant, or intentionally lying to us. Sometimes we get lucky because a big shot in white shirt shows up. Sometimes the prosecutor will say the statute is mandatory, so they say, “Fuck you, your client’s going to jail.” Sometimes the judge will convert that to community service but the law says they can’t. To avoid that day in jail is the exception rather than the rule.

Surely, more of these magical animals walk among us. Have you seen a unicorn? Are you a unicorn? Put your unicorn-sighting story in comments or send me an email.

Obama selecting Biden is a punch to the gut. Like that sickening feeling you got as a high school freshman, walking up the steps to the big party—and you’re telling yourself, if I fuck this up, my dreams are shot. But if things go well, this could be an excellent four years.

I am anything but a single-issue voter, but I’m also a die-hard zealot against the drug war. Everything that could have gone wrong has been an unbridled catastrophe: Drug epidemics and cartel routes breeze across the continent, privacy laws are gutted for sport, kids try drugs younger and younger, our prisons are stuffed with young black men…

And it’s Joe Biden’s fault.As former chairman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden is the person most responsible for passing a package of laws in the mid-80s that we think of as today’s drug war. Biden presided over the mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines that required judges to sentence dealers’ girlfriends and small-time peddlers to decades-long terms in state and federal prisons, where thousands are rotting to this day.

He used hearings “to mislead his colleagues and the public… on drug policy where police, prosecutors and DEA officials got the opportunity [to speak] while opponents were kept out,” says Kevin Zeese, a former director of Common Sense for Drug Policy and a leading drug-law reformer in Washington, D.C. since the 1980s. “Pick a drug law you don’t like from the last 25 years and thank Senator Biden.”

But, since this is Obama’s campaign, I’m trying to hope—hope that Biden can change.

Read the rest of this blog originally posted to the Seattle Stranger’s Slog.

To date, this unofficial debate between NORML and ONDCP has been one of the most popular public discussions ever at The Hill’s blog, which informs their editors (as well as other major publications’ and broadcast editors) that the issue of cannabis law reform is of great public concern and ripe for ongoing public policy debates about the future of cannabis prohibition.

Preview: In advance of you reading, and hopefully weighing in on The Hill’s blog, rather than engage in what I describe as the ‘flash card’ game–where every misapplication of science or anti-pot myth needs to be addressed–in my reply to the ONDCP’s rebuttal of NORML’s pro-reform advocacy efforts I try to focus on the larger issues at hand regarding personal freedom, autonomy, the proper role of the government in the private lives of it’s citizens and the obvious juxtaposition of the legal ‘drug’ industries (alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals) to the failed 70-year old prohibition of cannabis.