Search Results: criminal-justice (6)

This week, the Colorado Department of Human Services, in conjunction with Governor John Hickenlooper’s office, formally requested that the General Assembly allocate more than $6 million annually from the state’s marijuana-tax cash fund for a new program that would offer help to chronic drug users as opposed to criminalizing them. Art Way, senior director for criminal-justice reform and Colorado director with the national Drug Policy Alliance, which worked closely with state agencies in crafting the proposal (it’s on view below), sees the impact of this approach as potentially revolutionary for those struggling with addictions to heroin and other heavy narcotics.

If approved, Way says, “marijuana tax revenue and marijuana legalization will fund broader drug-policy purposes and drug-policy concerns that have long had more of an impact on society, both from a human perspective and a fiscal perspective. We’re talking about other substances on which users become truly dependent, and people who are on the chaotic end of the use spectrum. So for marijuana legalization to fund this is a game-changer.”

A little known aspect of busts.
Here’s your weekly dose of cannabis news from the newsletter WeedWeek.
An investigation in Reason finds “ widespread, unchecked violence against pets during drug raids.” Two Detroit officers it found have killed more than 100 dogs each.

The owner of Med-West, a San Diego extraction company that was raided by local authorities in January is seeking a return of his frozen assets. $324,000 cash was seized during the raid. No criminal charges have been filed.

Police departments are becoming more tolerant of applicants’ past pot smoking.

Las Vegas police said they would still pursue possession arrests, though the district attorney said they wouldn’t be prosecuted.

With Trump’s election, federal inmates incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses fear their window to win clemency is closing. “Some of these people are bad dudes,”  Trump said at an August rally “These are people out walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks.”

CBS tells the story of Harry Anslinger, a leading figure in passing the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which made it illegal.

The New Yorker sent Adrian Chen to the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte is waging a brutal drug war. The article is subtly titled “ When a Populist Demagogue Takes Over.

In California, police are concerned about home grows.

Time Magazine calls hmbldt vape pens one of the 25 best inventions of 2016.
Ozy discovers “ happy pizza” in Cambodia. A Barcelona cannabis club was closed by authorities. There’s a cannabis/comic book convention today in Colorado Springs.

Vice learns how to make “ the most potent weed oil.”

The Washington Post recommends four books to understand the new weed reality. They include Marijuana: A Short History, by John Hudak, Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto, Sacred Bliss: A Spiritual History of Cannabis by Mark S. Ferrara and Cooking with Cannabis by Laurie Goldrich.

The New Yorker published a pot-industry cartoon. It isn’t especially funny.

It’s looking like the start of a beautiful friendship between the next Harris County sheriff and district attorney — or however else you want to put that in criminal-justice speak.

DA-elect Kim Ogg has pushed decriminalizing misdemeanor amounts of marijuana for the past two years and will finally have the chance to implement it come January 1 — but the proposal likely will come to hold more weight given Ogg is far from the lone reformer trying to change the criminal-justice landscape in Harris County. Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez has publicly pushed for the end to arresting people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, too. And with the two foremost law enforcement officers in the third-largest county in the nation gunning for what is bound to be a sweeping reform, Houston NORML Communications Director Jason Miller says the message this will send across the state and even the country will no doubt be significant.

Here’s what they plan to do.

After working as a U.S. Senate page when he was sixteen, Jake Lilly went on to intern at the White House in 1998. After receiving his law degree at Cornell, he joined the Army and in 2005 served in Iraq, where he led search-and-rescue teams. Before all that, however, he was thirteen when his Boy Scout troop visited Colorado. He fell in love with the state, went home to Maryland, and told his parents that he would live here someday. Now 39, with thirteen years as a prosecutor, litigator and defense attorney under his belt, Lilly is running for district attorney of Jefferson and Gilpin counties, against incumbent Pete Weir.

His platform focuses on criminal-justice reform — reform he determined was needed after seeing the effects of the drug war up close. Lilly  believes in finding alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders and finding treatment alternatives for drug abusers. We sat down with Lilly to learn more about his positions, especially his support for continued legalization of marijuana.

We’re of the belief that the marijuana-ignorant just need the facts to help them understand this plant. Like the costs: nearly $7.7 billion in annual enforcement costs and $1 billion simply to prosecute all just for cannabis.
The folks over at Top-criminal-justice-schools.net put together this interesting infographic on cannabis decriminalization across the U.S. to help us keep it all together.

Pulsamerica
The groundbreaking meeting — the first time sitting presidents are seriously debating alternatives to drug prohibition — was initiated by and will be hosted by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina.

Saturday: Presidents To Hold Historic Meeting To Discuss Strategies To Reduce Prohibition-Related Crime, Violence and Corruption
 
First Time Ever That Sitting Presidents Are Calling For All Options, Including Legalization And Decriminalization, To Be Put On The Table
 
Momentum Builds for Unprecedented Debate at Summit of The Americas in Colombia in April
 
This Saturday, March 24, a historic meeting will take place when presidents from Central America come together in Guatemala to discuss legalization, decriminalization and other strategies for reducing the region’s prohibition-related violence, crime and corruption.
The meeting, initiated and hosted by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, represents the first time ever that sitting presidents are seriously debating alternatives to drug prohibition – and it comes just weeks before the topic will be considered for the first time at the Summit of the Americas meeting in Colombia in mid-April.