Search Results: law enforcement against prohibition (209)

Photo: Randy Pench/Sacramento Bee
A special agent with the Bureau of Land Management looks at marijuana plants illegally growing on BLM land in El Dorado County, California.

​​California’s public lands are overrun with medical marijuana growing operations, guarded by armed crews toting powerful weaponry — and hunters are at risk, according to a law enforcement panel including game wardens and a Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement task force commander.

The message came Sunday during the 24th International Sportsmen’s Exposition at Cal Expo in Sacramento, reports Loretta Kalb of The Sacramento Bee.
The Mexican drug cartels have turned to California for their operations that now supply much of the United States with weed, according to the panelists.

Photo: Lash & Associates Publishing

​A Pennsylvania legislator intends to introduce a bill which would double penalties for first-time marijuana possession in the Keystone State.

Rep. Dick Hess, a Republican, wants to double penalties for first-time possession convictions for all Schedule I and Schedule II drugs, reports Derek Rosenzweig at Philly NORML. Marijuana is classed as a Schedule I drug, so the penalty for first-time pot possession would at one fell swoop go up from one year in jail and a $5,000 fine to two years and $10,000. For subsequent convictions it rises to three years and $25,000.
This backwards bill would also increase penalties for possession, distribution and manufacturing of “drug paraphernalia,” whatever the hell that is, to two years and $5,000 for the first offense. A second offense brings three years and $10,000 in fines.

Stoners Against Prop 19
Dragonfly De La Luz: The smugly self-satisfied new face of cannabis prohibition in California.

​It didn’t take long after the defeat of Proposition 19, which would have taxed and regulated marijuana in California, for the cannabis community to realize that legalization’s ignominious defeat was fueled by the duplicity — some would say outright treachery — of certain greedy, reactionary elements within the community itself. Boycotts against anti-Prop 19 businesses are now being organized.

So-called “Stoners Against Prop 19” — traitors to the movement such as Dennis Peron, Dragonfly De La Luz and J. Craig Canada — whether through stunning ignorance or outright malice, spread disinformation about exactly what the measure would have done.
They busily sowed division, distrust, and fear among a community that should have been united in striving to loosen the death grip of 70+ years of cannabis prohibition.
Offered the opportunity to embrace the future, these reactionary elements formed a fifth column within the medical cannabis community.
For who knows what reasons — maybe the miserly interest of preserving big pot profits? — they shamelessly allied themselves with the law enforcement and prison lobbies, with the Religious Right, and with the same intolerant fundamentalists behind the No On 19 campaign — the very same people, in the case of one statewide organization, that headed up the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative two years ago.

Graphic: Cal Pot News

​Support for Proposition 19, the voter initiative on November’s ballot which would legalize, control and tax marijuana in California, continues to grow in the law enforcement community.

A group of police officers, judges, and prosecutors who support Prop 19 will hold simultaneous press conferences Monday, September 13 in front of Oakland City Hall and in West Hollywood Park near Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PDT to release a letter of endorsement by dozens of law enforcers across the state.
“At each step of my law enforcement career — from beat officer up to chief of police in two major American cities — I saw the futility of our marijuana prohibition laws,” said Joseph McNamara, former police chief in San Jose and in Kansas City, Mo.
“But our marijuana laws are much worse than ineffective; they waste valuable police resources and also create a lucrative black market that funds cartels and criminal gangs with billions of tax-free dollars,” said McNamara, who is now a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

Photo: The Straits Times
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske has joined with the past five Drug Czars under Bush and Clinton administrations to fight against marijuana legalization under Prop 19 in California.

​What do you get when you put six Drug Czars together? Same old bullshit, except more of it.

It was probably inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less deplorable. Obama Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske has joined forces with five past directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including czars who served under Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush, against California’s marijuana legalization voter initiative, Proposition 19.

You would think that six so-called “drug experts” working together could come up with better-reasoned arguments against Prop 19 than these tired old talking points by tired old bureaucrats.
Not that anybody’s surprised that Kerlikowske, and by extension, the Obama Administration, opposes pot legalization. Gil’s already helpfully let us know that legalization isn’t in his vocabulary.
“No country in the world has legalized marijuana to the extent envisioned by Proposition 19, so it is impossible to predict precisely the consequences of wholesale legalization,” write Kerlikowske, John Walters, Barry McCaffrey, Lee Brown, Bob Martinez and William Bennett in an August 25 Los Angeles Times op-ed piece.
Of course, “no country in the world” had tried representative democracy “to the extent envisioned” by our Founding Fathers, either, but we didn’t let that stop us, did we?

Graphic: Just Say Now

​​The mainstreaming of marijuana means that it is no longer considered a “right” or “left” issue. Pot legalization is now receiving support from across the political spectrum. 

And that’s a good thing, according to Jane Hamsher, founder and publisher of leading progressive blog Firedoglake.com.
“It is very important to us that this is not viewed as a partisan issue, because we don’t think that it is,” Hamsher said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters.
“Young people want marijuana to be legalized in overwhelming numbers: young voters are not just excited to support legalization, but are much more likely to turn out to vote if marijuana is on the ballot,” Hamsher said. “We’re delighted about organizing legalization supporters and getting them to the polls on Election Day.”

Photo: OregonLive.com
John Stossel: “It’s not the intoxicant that causes crime — it’s prohibition.”

​Host John Stossel will take a look at the effects of prohibition during part of his Fox Business Network show, Stossel, Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

“In part of my show tonight, I’ll talk about how laws against prostitution, organ selling, and drug use hurt more people than prostitution, organ selling, and drug use do,” Stossel wrote Thursday.
Stossel notes that the first argument against legalizing drugs is usually “Then more kids will abuse drugs!”
“But there’s little evidence for that,” Stossel points out. “The Netherlands has officially ‘tolerated’ marijuana for 30 years. So is there violent marijuana crime? No. Fewer young people in Holland smoke marijuana than do Americans. Legalization took the mystique away. A Dutch minister of health said, ‘We’ve succeeded in making pot… boring.’ “

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

LEAP Is Hiring
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is seeking a talented and motivated individual to work in its media relations department on a part-time basis. LEAP is a nonprofit organization representing police officers, judges, prosecutors and other criminal justice professionals who want to legalize and regulate marijuana and other drugs after witnessing the failure of the “War On Drugs” up close.
The assistant media relations director will report to and work alongside LEAP’s full-time media relations director in efforts to inject the voices of pro-legalization law enforcers into high-profile news coverage of the rapidly advancing public debate about failed drug policies.
Specifically, duties will include but are not limited to:
• Writing op-eds and letters-to-the-editor.
• Drafting, editing and distributing press releases.
• Making follow-up pitch calls to reporters and producers.

Sabrina At NORML


NORML Women’s Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and other Reform Organizations Team Up for “Cops & Moms Week of Action”
Mothers from around the country will join with law enforcement and students at the National Press Club on May 2 in honor of Mother’s Day. The press conference will launch a new coalition of national organizations that will represent mothers, police and students that seek to finally end the disastrous Drug War.
The NORML Women’s Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and others will share powerful stories of losing loved ones to the criminal justice system, and the social repercussions of prohibition. The coalition will unveil the “Mom’s Bill of Rights” and highlight a series of activities around the country timed to Mother’s Day.
“‘Mother’s Day’ was derived out of an intensely political effort to organize women on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line against the Civil War,” explained Sabrina Fendrick, coordinator for the NORML Women’s Alliance. “The reason mothers were made the vehicle was because they were the ones whose children were dying in that war.

Cannabis Culture

​While Canada moves toward stricter sentencing with the mandatory minimums included with Bill C-10, many states in the U.S. are shifting in the opposite direction, toward control and regulation of the marijuana trade, according to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

A high-profile group of current and former law enforcement officials allied under the LEAP banner points to the 16 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that have already passed laws allowing the medicinal use of cannabis, the 14 states that have taken steps to decriminalize marijuana possession.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian senators, the law-enforcement officials point out the failure of the War On Drugs in the U.S., and that the country now seems to be moving in another direction even as Canada is poised to tighten the screws.
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