| Photo: Alejandro Bringas |
| People mourn the death of victims of a Drug War shootout in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico |
More people were killed in Drug War-related violence in Mexico last year than died in the war in Afghanistan, according to year-end reports from both countries.
In Afghanistan, about 10,000 people — 2,043 of them civilians — died in the fighting last year.
Although that conflict involves air power, heavy weapons, and numerous roadside bombs, it was less deadly last year than the Mexican Drug War, with a death toll estimated at around 13,000 by CNN.
In mid-December, the Mexican attorney general’s office reported that 12,456 people had been killed through the end of November, reports Phillip Smith at AlterNet. With a death toll of more than 1,000 per month in 2010, a year-end figure of more than 13,000 looks to be accurate.
| Photo: Huffington Post |
| Michele Leonhart, just confirmed by the Senate as administrator of the DEA, is a Bush-era drug warrior who has overseen raids of legal medical marijuana dispensaries |
The U.S. Senate has unanimously confirmed Michele Leonhart, a Bush-era holdover who has overseen dozens of federal raids on medical marijuana providers and producers, to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“Ms. Leonhart’s actions and ambitions are incompatible with state law, public opinion, and with the policies of this administration,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “It is unlikely that we will see any serious change in the DEA’s direction under Ms. Leonhart’s leadership.”
Leonhart had served as interim director of the agency since November 2007. President Barack Obama nominated Leonhart in February 2010 to serve as the agency’s permanent director, NORML reports.
Numerous drug policy reform groups, including NORML, Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and others had opposed Leonhart’s confirmation, arguing that her actions as interim DEA administrator violated the Obama Administration’s pledge to allow science, rather than politics, rhetoric and ideology, to guide public policy.
| Graphic: Patient and Caregiver Rights Litigation Project |
A medical marijuana advocacy group in Colorado has filed a lawsuit to overturn parts of that state’s medical marijuana law dealing with patient privacy, safe access, Department of Revenue regulation, and physician recommendations.
Kathleen Chippi and the Patient and Caregiver Rights Litigation Project want to scrap parts of House Bill 1284 and Senate Bill 109. The suit was filed by Wednesday with the state Supreme Court, in an attempt to fast-track the process and bypass lower appellate courts.
“This petition was necessary to stop the state’s blatant attack on fundamental constitutional patient and caregiver rights,” Chippi said. “Coloradans need immediate clarification on rights they enjoyed from 2000 through 2009, and why some of those rights were extinguished by the state Legislature in 2010.”
“Medical marijuana patients are sick of being treated like second-class citizens,” Chippi said.
| Graphic: The Fresh Scent |
”As of this moment I have enough committed votes to pass the bill”
~ Rep. Lou Lang
The Illinois House may vote on a bill to legalize medical marijuana on Thursday, January 6, the sponsor, Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), said this morning.
“As of this moment I have enough committed votes to pass the bill if, number one, everyone’s here, and number two, everyone told me the truth,” Lang said, reports Hannah Hess at STLtoday.
The bill would allow people receiving treatment for cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses to use marijuana for pain and nausea, with a doctor’s authorization and state certification.
| Photo: The Independent |
The mother of a six-year-old formerly in the Richmond Public Schools said she’s appealing the one-year expulsion of her first grade son for possession of marijuana.
The student, enrolled at G.H. Reid Elementary in Richmond, Virginia, approached the physical education teacher in November on the playground and pulled out a bag of pot, according to his mother, reports Vernal Coleman at Style Weekly.
“Look at this,” the boy said. “This is weed. My mother gave it to me.”
The P.E. instructor and another teacher questioned the boy and escorted him to the school’s front office, where he was questioned again by a school security officer.
| Graphic: Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Directory |
| Dispensaries already exist in at least King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, but if a new bill passes the Washington Legislature in 2011, they could operate statewide |
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles will introduce a bill in the Legislature this week which would permit medical marijuana dispensaries to open across Washington state.
Washington’s medical marijuana law doesn’t specifically allow dispensaries, reports Dominic Holden at The Stranger, but the shops are already proliferating in some areas, existing in a legal gray area that is yet to be sorted out.
Existing dispensaries — concentrated in the Seattle and Tacoma areas — often avoid drawing attention by inconspicuously setting up shop in industrial areas and office buildings (although I’ve personally been to more than one storefront dispensary in King County). If Kohl-Welles’s bill passes, though, the state Department of health would permit the shops to operate statewide as nonprofit corporations, likely resulting in more open advertising and more visibility.
| Artwork by Jimmy Wheeler (R.I.P.) |
An attorney representing a majority of the 12 San Luis Obispo County, California residents arrested last week for allegedly operating mobile medical marijuana delivery services said Tuesday that they received “appalling treatment” when task force officers arrested them at their homes.
According to one report of the raids, the police kept people, including a grandmother and two children, handcuffed facedown on the ground. The children were later hauled off to CPS after their parents were thrown in jail.
The arrests were made on December 27. Three other people from around Southern California were also arrested, reports Cynthia Lambert at The San Luis Obispo Tribune.
Two of the arrestees, Valerie Hosking, 41, and David Hosking, 46, both of Pismo Beach, were arraigned December 30 and each charged with two counts or selling or furnishing marijuana or hashish. A pre-preliminary hearing is set for January 20 for the two.
| Photo: Grand Rapids Press |
A hearing is set next week in the federal government’s fight to access medical marijuana patient records from the state of Michigan.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents are asking Michigan to turn over the patient records as part of an investigation in the Lansing area. The request is a sign that voter approval won’t stop the DEA from enforcing federal drug laws. Sixty-three percent of Michigan voters approved medical marijuana in 2008.
In June, the DEA served a subpoena on the Michigan Department of Community Health, but the state refused to turn over the records, citing confidentiality laws, reports John Agar at The Grand Rapids Press.
| Photo: The Daily Voice |
| Montel Williams uses marijuana to ease the symptoms of MS, but Wisconsin doesn’t recognize the medicinal uses of cannabis — yet. |
Former talk-show host Montel Williams, a medical marijuana advocate, has reportedly been fined for possession of a pipe of the sort “commonly used to smoke pot,” according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.
The pipe was found Tuesday at a routine security checkpoint by Transportation Security Administration agents at the General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reports Jennifer LaRue Huget at the Washington Post.
Williams paid his $484 fine and went on his way, according to the sheriff’s office.
Williams, 54, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. Laws in the 15 states which allow medical marijuana typically include MS among the conditions which qualify. But neither New York state, where Montel lives, nor Wisconsin, where he was fined, allows medicinal cannabis.
| Photo: News and Tribune |
| Here’s Steven Hubbard, the genius who walked into an Indiana State Police post smelling to high heaven of weed. He was there to pick up his belongings, but got picked up himself. |
An Indiana man was arrested on drug charges Monday while picking up his belongings at a State Police post, because “an odor of burned marijuana” was smelled on and around him, police said.
While it would seem pretty basic not to show up at a police station smelling to high heaven of weed, evidently that was too much to ask of Steven Hubbard, 22, of New Albany, Ind.
Just before 4 p.m. on Monday, Hubbard was picking up items he said belonged to him at the Indiana State Police Post in Sellersburg, reports Matthew Thomas at WLKY.
After Indiana State Police personnel noticed he smelled like weed, they sent “Kilo,” a K-9 drug-sniffing dog, to give Hubbard’s car a walk-around while he dealt with troopers and an evidence clerk inside, reports Matt Thacker at the Jeffersonville News and Tribune.
When Kilo alerted on the 2001 Chevrolet Monte Carlo that Hubbard had driven to the post, according to officers, they searched the car and found marijuana and $600 in cash.
Hubbard was arrested for possession of marijuana, under 30 grams, a misdemeanor, and possession of marijuana with a prior conviction, a felony.