“Our opposition to legalizing marijuana is grounded not in ideology but in facts and experience,” say drug czar Gil Kerlikowske and his five predecessors in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece that urges Californians to vote against Proposition 19. They argue that voters should listen to them because they are “experts in the field of drug policy, policing, prevention, education and treatment.” If this is the best case the experts can make against marijuana legalization, they had better call in the amateurs
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Six Drug Czars, and Between Them They Can’t Muster a Decent Argument for Marijuana Prohibition
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Tags: barely-suppressed, bernadette, drugs, else-document-write, government, marijuana, paul, Political News, reason, reason-magazine, sarcasmic, stuff, time, wind, wind-rider
The annoying news, via press release from Americans for Safe Access: Federal agents raided at least four San Diego-area medical marijuana dispensaries today in the early morning hours. Sources say that Green Kross, Unified Collective, SDOC and Kush Lounge were all served federal search warrants and were subjected to aggressive SWAT-style raids which resulted in the arrest of as many as 8 people and the seizure of money, medical marijuana and patient records. These raids come as the City of San Diego is deliberating an ordinance to regulate the local distribution of medical marijuana….
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In the Obama Age of No More Federal Medical Marijuana Raids…More Federal Medical Marijuana Raids
Located in the pot-friendly ”Oaksterdam” section of Oakland, California, Oaksterdam University aims to teach its students the fundamentals of growing and marketing marijuana. The curriculum covers everything from law and politics to business and horticulture. The university also provides training for entrepreneurs in the pot industry as well as several dispensaries, a Bulldog Coffeeshop, and a gift shop
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Recently at Reason.tv: Welcome to Oaksterdam! Epicenter of the Marijuana Legalization Movement
Located in the pot-friendly ”Oaksterdam” section of Oakland, California, Oaksterdam University aims to teach its students the fundamentals of growing and marketing marijuana.
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Welcome to Oaksterdam! Epicenter of the Marijuana Legalization Movement
On Tuesday I noted USA Today ’s cover story on the prospects for marijuana law reform. Three recent legislative developments reinforce the impression of growing tolerance (or at least waning repression): On March 2, Hawaii’s Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would eliminate criminal penalties for possessing up to an ounce of marijuana, currently a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
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Marijuana Decriminalization Advances
Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Rob Kampia, the founder and head of the Marijuana Policy Project to discuss the drug war’s long past and (hopefully) short future. Celebrating its 15-year anniversay, MPP has been a leader in the fight against mindless and destructive prohibitionist policies. Approximately 8.40 minutes
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Reason.tv: Rob Kampia Discusses the Marijuana Policy Project—15 years of fighting prohibition is showing results.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition reports that the final version of the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act lifts the restriction that prevented the District of Columbia from implementing a medical marijuana law approved by voters in 1998. The restriction, which prohibited D.C. from using any money to put the law into effect, was originally known as the Barr Amendment , after Bob Barr, then a Republican congressman from Georgia
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D.C. Allowed to Implement Medical Marijuana Law
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition reports that the final version of the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act lifts the restriction that prevented the District of Columbia from implementing a medical marijuana law approved by voters in 1998. The restriction, which prohibited D.C. from using any money to put the law into effect, was originally known as the Barr Amendment , after Bob Barr, then a Republican congressman from Georgia.
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D.C. Allowed to Implement Medical Marijuana Law
In the January 2008 issue of Reason , I compared trends in marijuana arrests to trends in marijuana use and concluded that “there is no clear relationship between the number of arrests and the number of pot smokers.” That is, it did not seem to be the case that a) increases in use were driving up arrests or b) increases in arrests were driving down use. In the November issue of The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform , Jon Gettman takes a more detailed and sophisticated look at the numbers and reaches much the same conclusion: The most important characteristic of marijuana arrests in the United States is that they have been steadily increasing over the last 20 years with little or no impact on the level of marijuana use in this country….Marijuana arrests have nearly doubled from 1991 to 2008, increasing by 150% during the 1990s and increasing steadily in recent years, producing an annualized change of 6.56% per year during this period. Overall, levels of marijuana use in the United States have remained fundamentally unchanged during this period.
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What Do Pot Arrests Accomplish?
On Wednesday the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee heard testimony on a marijuana legalization bill introduced by its chairman, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). According to the Drug War Chronicle , “The hearing marked the first time legalization has been discussed in the legislature since California banned marijuana in 1913.” Judging from summaries of the testimony in various news accounts, prohibitionists needed more time to prepare their arguments
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California Assembly Committee Considers Life After Marijuana Legalization
