Pot Is Safer Than Booze: So Why Is Celebrating 4/20 a Crime, While It’s OK to Get Wasted on St. Paddy’s Day?

Pot Is Safer Than Booze: So Why Is Celebrating 4/20 a Crime, While It’s OK to Get Wasted on St. Paddy’s Day? | Alternet.

AlterNet / By Kristen Gwynne

Happy 4/20. Don’t get arrested.

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com

April 19, 2013  |

I spent last St. Patrick’s Day at the marijuana policy reform group NORML’s conference in Philadelphia. It was pouring rain when I arrived, and as I ran from my car through the University of Pennsylvania campus, I tried to discern the green-clad marijuana activists from St. Patrick’s Day revelers. I quickly realized it was not that hard: the pro-pot advocates, as quirky as the some of them were, appeared to have better control of their footing.

St. Patrick’s Day, though an Irish holiday rooted in history and tradition, is regarded by many Americans (perhaps on college campuses, in particular) as an opportunity to get wasted. Meanwhile, today, April 20, is known as the marijuana user’s holiday, 4/20. Across the country, stoners are gathering to defy the law and get high.

Both holidays, to some extent, celebrate mind-altering substances, but they couldn’t be seen as more different by the law. You wouldn’t speak with your boss about your 4/20 plans or come to the office in weed-themed garb. That’s because while alcohol is legal, marijuana is grouped alongside drugs like heroin in the most restrictive category of the Controlled Substances Act, Schedule I. This is despite the fact that marijuana is by far the safer substance of the two. A scene full of stoners is far more peaceful (and safer) than a bar or city full of people who are trashed. But while weed is the subject of a decades-old onslaught of government propaganda decrying its supposed harm, our society glamorizes alcohol.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana use is not linked to increase in injury or reckless behavior, nor is it linked to violence or sexual assault. Alcohol, however, is.

From the National Center for Alcohol Law Enforcement:

• Almost one in four victims of violent crime report that the perpetrator had been drinking prior to committing the violence.

• Over one-third of victims of rapes or sexual assaults report that the offender was drinking at the time of the act.

• It is estimated that 32 to 50 percent of homicides are preceded by alcohol consumption by the perpetrator.

• Between 31 percent and 36 percent of prisoners convicted of a violent crime against an intimate reported that they were drinking alcohol at the time of the offense.

Nonetheless, alcohol is so normalized and integral to our culture that it’s considered OK for hundreds of thousands of people to gather in one location — a football stadium, for example — and get drunk. Some will leave these mass drinking events inebriated, dangerously swerving down the road in their cars. 

While public celebrations and smoke-outs will occur across the country today, doing it is still very much illegal. Last year on 4/20, after smoking marijuana at a friend’s house, 23-year-old University of California-San Diego student Daniel Chong was thrown in a jail cell, handcuffed, for five days without food or water. Chong, who says agents offered to drive him home after saying he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” was not charged with any crime. Agents had raided the home where he was staying in the early hours of April 21, and uncovered marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms and 18,000 ecstasy pills, along with guns and ammunition. Seven of the nine people they arrested were taken to county jail, one was released, and one — Chong — was forgotten about, and effectively left for dead.

Forced to drink his own urine to survive, Chong says he lost 15 pounds while he was alone in the cell for five days. Hallucinating by the third day, he ate a “powdery substance” he found in the cell, later revealed to be methamphetamine. He tried to kill himself by breaking his glasses with his teeth and carving “Sorry mom” on his wrists. According to NBC, “He said nurses also found pieces of glass in his throat, which led him to believe he ingested the pieces purposefully.”

While Chong’s situation may extremely rare, a marijuana arrest occurred every 42 seconds in 2011. As Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said at the time:

“Being incarcerated, even for just a few days, can be devastating. People guilty of nothing more than possessing a little marijuana are locked up with people who may be violent criminals. Some are abused, beaten and raped, and others deprived of essential medication or contact with their families. A few commit suicide. Many are otherwise traumatized by the experience of being tossed into jail even when their jailers don’t forget about them. And even greater numbers suffer serious and sometimes permanent consequences from whatever conviction results, including loss of employment, housing and government assistance, loss of custody of one’s children, and much more.”

People who drink (and those around them) might face myriad consequences from alcohol use, but legal troubles raised by marijuana use are not among them. For this reason, many reformers argue that marijuana prohibition creates a drinking culture that pushes people who may otherwise use pot — a safer substance — toward booze. The idea that choosing weed over alcohol is a decision adults should be allowed to make without consequence played a large role in Colorado’s legalization legislation (Amendment 64), which was titled “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.”

Like voters in Colorado and Washington, Americans participating in 4/20 activism today are pushing back against a false narrative that suggests alcohol is the vice that’s been chosen for America, and that legalizing pot would only add another, bad substance to the mix. They are not the minority. Draconian punishments for marijuana crimes continue in America despite public opinion shifting largely in favor of reform. A Pew Research Center poll recently found that a record breaking 52% of Americans now support marijuana legalization, with young people holding increasingly reformist opinions about marijuana policy. Increasingly, Americans — 77% of them, according to Pew —  think marijuana has medical purposes.

Despite a vast majority of Americans being way ahead of lawmakers when it comes to policy, Attorney General Eric Holder recently made remarks suggesting he is not interested in following the will of the people. Holder told Congress on Thursday that the Justice Department will make a decision about how to respond to marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado “As quick as we can.” Offering few details, other than that “We are certainly going to enforce federal law” and consider the impact of legalization on children, Holder offered little in the way of explaining why the federal government’s policy strays so far from public opinion.

President Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, also said earlier this week that, “No state, no executive can nullify a statute that has been passed by Congress,” and said law enforcement will continue to pursue drug sellers. 

What gives?

Kristen Gwynne is an associate editor and drug policy reporter at AlterNet.  Follow her on Twitter: @KristenGwynne

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Rise in Teen Marijuana Use Demonstrates Continued Failure of War on Drugs

Keep in mind people that since Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, the teenage use of marijuana has actually declined . Lou

AlterNet

May 2, 2012

By Jag Davies | Sourced from AlterNet

The 23rd annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) was released today, showing an increase in teen marijuana use and reductions in prescription drug misuse, and especially cigarette smoking.

Smoking rates have declined with 22 percent of teens reporting smoking cigarettes in the past month – down 19 percent from 27 percent last year. Past-month usage of marijuana, though, grew from 19 percent in 2008 to 27 percent last year.

The continued decline in teen cigarette smoking is great news – not just because it’s the most deadly drug but also because it reveals that legal regulation and honest education are more effective than prohibition and criminalization. Although the U.S. arrests 750,000 people every year for nothing more than possessing a small amount of marijuana, teens consistently report that marijuana is easier to obtain than alcohol.

It’s time we developed a comprehensive strategy for dealing with drug abuse in the 21st century by focusing on what works and what doesn’t. It’s time to step back and ask ourselves what’s the best way to solve the problem we’re trying to solve—how to reduce drug abuse and addiction—and use the best available evidence to guide us. And, ultimately, it’s time to bring marijuana out of the shadows and under the rule of law. The evidence shows that the most effective way to reduce teen marijuana use would be to regulate it in a manner similar to alcohol, with age limits, licensing controls, and other regulatory restrictions.

Rather than measuring success based on slight fluctuations in drug use, the primary measure of the effectiveness of our nation’s drug policies should be the reduction of drug-related harm. A rational drug policy would prioritize reducing the problems associated with drug misuse itself – such as overdose, addiction and disease transmission – and the problems associated with drug prohibition, such as mass incarceration, erosion of civil liberties, and egregious racial disparities in enforcement, prosecution and sentencing. When evaluating policy options, we must consider the fiscal, health and human costs of arresting more than 1.6 million Americans each year on drug charges, including more than 750,000 for marijuana possession alone. Looking at use rates in a vacuum is missing the forest for the trees.

Jag Davies is the publications manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York.

By Jag Davies | Sourced from AlterNet

Posted at May 2, 2012, 3:47 pm

via Rise in Teen Marijuana Use Demonstrates Continued Failure of War on Drugs | AlterNet.

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In Latin America, ‘critical mass’ urges end to drug war

In Latin America, ‘critical mass’ urges end to drug war | GlobalPost.

From GlobalPost.com

Alex Leff

April 16, 2012

Anti-narcotics forces blow up a laboratory for processing cocaine belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the municipality of Puerto Concordia, Meta department, Colombia, on Jan. 25, 2011. (Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images)

BOSTON — When the world looks back at 2012 in the Americas, one burning debate will stand out amid the year’s usual chatter: Should Latin America legalize drugs?

What was once taboo has now got presidents talking in public and writing charged commentaries. They’re trying to frame the new drugs debate in terms that Washington — which firmly stands by the drug war solution — will understand: supply and demand. 

The US government says it will listen, but will not bend. 

Some Latin leaders are discussing the need to experiment further with decriminalizing possession of drugs. Lawmakers are also proposing to scrap jail terms for growing coca and cannabis.

The bottom line: Softening anti-drug laws would ultimately drive down narcotics prices, advocates say, and that would crimp revenues for the deadly cartels that wreak havoc from the Andes to Mexico — and across its US border.

Though far from concrete, the push comes as Latin leaders flex their might and independent voices as Washington’s influence wanes in the Americas. What’s more, some of the United States’ closest allies — moderates and conservatives alike — are leading the charge toward change.

Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based independent research and advocacy group, and has advised Latin American leaders on this bold policy rethink. GlobalPost caught up with him during his recent visit to a conference at Brown University.

GlobalPost: Why that racket on legalizing drugs in Latin America?

Ethan Nadelmann: What’s emerged is a critical mass of support for opening up the debate and putting all options on the table. And all options include decriminalization, legal regulation and other alternatives to the drug war.

Why now?

One [factor] is the ongoing and mounting frustration that not just governments but many people in Latin America feel with the negative consequences of the US war on drugs in Latin America. Many have concluded that there’s no way to defeat what is essentially a dynamic global commodities market. … Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin — they are global commodities markets much in the same way that alcohol, tobacco, sugar or coffee are. So long as there is a demand, especially a significant demand in a country like the United States, there will be a supply. The demand is growing worldwide in many respects.

More from GlobalPost: Latin America’s push to ‘legalize it’

What stands out among the consequences of the drug war?

The escalating violence in Mexico. [President Felipe] Calderon’s attempt to take on the criminal organizations. The 50,000 dead. The spread of this traffic and violence to Central America. The widespread realization that it’s only a matter of time before it floods into the Caribbean, once again, as it did back in the ‘80s.

How has the debate been shaping up?

You now have [Colombian] President Juan Manuel Santos who has, in a very cautious way, been very strategic in speaking out a bit more, looking for other allies. You have President Calderon who’s been frustrated in his relationship with the United States on this area. He came to the US last year and began to say that the US should look at ‘market alternatives’ if they were unable to reduce the demand.

You’ve had some growing movement of decriminalization of [drug] possession in countries from Mexico to Colombia to Ecuador to Brazil to Argentina.

You also have, in the last few years, the rapid growth of the drug-policy movement, activist groups like we have in the US, also spreading around Latin America.

More from GlobalPost: The Argentine economy’s fuzzy math problem

And then you have the thing that finally clinched it, when President Otto Perez Molina [of Guatemala] decided shortly after he entered office to make this a priority. That really was a transformative moment. He emerged as the ally that President Santos in Colombia had been looking for.

So that wasn’t just political posturing?

Initially people were suspect about [Perez’s] motives, but it became apparent that he was serious about this, engaging it for substantive reasons and he began to clearly show a commitment on this issue and to educate himself more deeply. And then he began to make a more active effort to interact with other Central American leaders, and to interact with Santos, Calderon and the others. That is what enabled this critical mass to emerge.

These are bold proposals. Has it helped that Washington’s dominance seems to have waned in the region?

The sense of fear and intimidation that many of these governments feel regarding the United States has diminished. There’s a growing sense of independence and willingness to speak their mind and not be so under the thumb of the US government as they were in the past. Mexico, Brazil, Colombia … many of these countries have booming economies, there’s a greater sense of independence.

Are these leaders just talking about decriminalizing marijuana possession, or something else?

They’re putting forward different ideas about how you deal with bigger problems of the large-scale production and trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. If you look at the spectrum you’ll have somebody like former President of Mexico Vicente Fox saying clearly the time has come to legalize all of it. You’ll have somebody like [Colombia’s] Santos giving an interview to the Guardian saying legalize cannabis, and maybe cocaine too — but he’s just kind of floating an idea.

Is this the first time we’re hearing ‘legalize it’ from Latin America?

This debate has been bungling around for many years. And over the years, more and more people have been exposed to the arguments regarding the failures of a prohibitionist drug-control policy and the potential benefits of an alternative.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy — chaired by former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso [of Brazil], Cesar Gaviria [of Colombia] and Ernesto Zedillo [of Mexico] — released its report in early 2009 and that was really a breakthrough. These were three distinguished presidents all from the center, center-right of the political spectrum, joined by many other prominent ministers and intellectuals and publishers, saying we need to move in a new direction, we need to break the taboo, to understand the European harm-reduction approach better, to move in a direction of decriminalization of cannabis. That planted a lot of seeds in Latin America.

More from GlobalPost: Peru backs the US drug war

That was followed up by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which issued its report in June of last year. It was not just presidents. They also had former Secretary of State George Shultz, [ex-chair of the Federal Reserve] Paul Volcker, Kofi Annan, [Virgin entrepreneur] Richard Branson and a whole range of distinguished people. That report went a step further. They talked about experiments in legal regulation of cannabis, a whole range of other innovative strategies. You had … distinguished folks legitimizing this thing.

Did you work on those reports?

I was an adviser to both.

How far has this debate come today?

For most of [the leaders involved], including Santos and Perez Molina, right now it’s more about sparking a discussion. It’s about saying ‘we spent the last 20, 30, 40 years experimenting with different drug war options — interdiction efforts, law enforcement strategies — and look at the mess we have today. We need to systematically look at the alternatives. We need to have government officials interacting with experts in public health, criminal justice and economics.’

There’s a growing consensus that the movement toward legal regulation of cannabis is perhaps inevitable and certainly the right thing to do. There’s also an emerging consensus that the personal possession of smaller amounts of any drug should be decriminalized. That’s important because [criminalizing possession] basically results in the arrest and incarceration of large numbers of people who are mostly poor and of darker skin.

It’s not that they’re saying legalize drugs tomorrow, it’s the provocative sort of statement that gets people paying attention, and realizing that we better start talking about this in earnest.

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Insane War on Drugs Stories: How an Attractive, Undercover Cop Posed as a Student — Then Entrapped a Smitten Teen to “Sell” Her Marijuana

After spending weeks sharing stories about his life, texting and flirting, one 18-year-old honor student fell in love with the cop who busted him.

February 15, 2012 |

Working at the Drug Policy Alliance for the last twelve years I have read and heard countless stories of people having their lives ruined because of our country’s cruel war on drugs. Last weekend, the nationally syndicated show This American Life highlighted a story that is so insane, you don’t know whether to laugh or puke.

Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other.

One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn’t smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn’t want the money — he got it for her as a present.

A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students — including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.

This story is not unique to Florida and it reminds me of an 18-year-old Mitchell Lawrence, a young man from Great Barrington, Mass., who served two years in jail for selling a joint to an undercover cop. The officer befriended Lawrence and his friends and would hang out with them. One day the cop asked if Lawrence had any weed. Lawrence gave the cop a joint. The cop handed him $20. Lawrence hesitated, but the cop insisted on giving him the money. “Selling” the joint, because they were hanging out less than a 1000 feet from a school, and thus was considered a “drug free school zone,” carried a mandatory minimum two-year sentence.

The drug war is sick. How much money was wasted by our law enforcement to get these few bags of marijuana “off the streets”? How do these cops look themselves in the mirror? Seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love or pretending to be friends and then tricking them into procuring small amounts of marijuana so they can charge them with felonies is beyond slimy and diametrically opposed to the officers’ charge to “serve and protect.”

We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people’s lives and doing more harm than good.

Tony Newman is communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

via How an Attractive, Undercover Cop Posed as a Student — Then Entrapped a Smitten Teen to “Sell” Her Marijuana | | AlterNet.

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How This Week’s Events Make LA the Center of the Anti-Drug-War Movement

To mark the drug war’s 40th anniversary, hundreds of people will gather to demand an end to the criminalization of drug users and call for health-centered policies instead.

October 31, 2011 |

This week Los Angeles will be the site of the largest-ever mass protest against the war on drugs. Hundreds of people from around the country will gather in MacArthur Park at the No More Drug War rally and concert to mark the 40th anniversary of the drug war, to demand an end to the criminalization of drug users and to call for health-centered policies instead.

When President Nixon declared drugs “Public Enemy No. 1” back in 1971, even he couldn’t possibly have imagined the lengths to which this country would go, the resources it would waste and the lives it would destroy all in the name of the impossible goal of eradicating drug use.

It’s long past time we acknowledge what we all know: Prohibition has failed – again.

The U.S. is home to about 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. The U.S. incarcerates more people for drug offenses than Western Europe incarcerates for all offenses. Meanwhile, the criminalization of drug use (and laws foolishly limiting access to sterile syringes) has fuelled the HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C epidemics. And drug overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in this country for people between the ages of 35-54. For these results, the U.S. has invested $1 trillion – and $50 billion more every year the drug war continues.

If the war on drugs were waged equally against all Americans, it would have been over long ago. It continues because those who enforce the war on drugs largely ignore drug use by the wealthy, powerful and white. Instead, they target groups they wish to keep powerless: people living in poverty and especially African Americans and other people of color living in poverty.

From the vantage point of LA’s Skid Row, the war on drugs is the ultimate hypocrisy. It is being waged here, not on Pennsylvania Avenue or Wall Street. Residents of Skid Row and other places like it are policed at wartime levels and regularly persecuted under laws that call for lengthy terms of incarceration for nothing more than holding, ingesting or sharing an illicit substance. Meanwhile, politicians all the way up to President Obama openly joke about their own experiences with drugs – not just marijuana anymore, but cocaine. And no one doubts that cocaine and other drugs flow freely amongst Wall Street bankers and traders.

The economic crisis is forcing us to rethink our priorities. Just as the Depression forced a rethink of alcohol Prohibition, we must force politicians to acknowledge that we cannot afford to continue this costly and destructive failed war – not one more cent of drug war waste. It is unconscionable to allow any further cuts to education, while we continue to arrest and lock up thousands of people every year for petty drug offenses.

But we must be careful that we don’t simply end up with a cheaper drug war.

Driven by massive prison overcrowding and budget shortfalls, California is undergoing the most dramatic change to its criminal justice system in decades that should see many fewer people incarcerated for drug offenses. Governor Brown’s plan, which took effect on October 1, will send fewer people to prison by keeping them at the county level – either in jail or on probation. None of these actions, however, will change the laws or reduce the spending that leads to these petty drug arrests in the first place.

At the No More Drug War rally and at this week’s International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organized by the Drug Policy Alliance, the international drug policy reform movement will reassert our call for an end to criminalizing, harassing and stigmatizing drug users. We will demand that all people be allowed to live with dignity and respect. And we will recommit to the fight to end this failed war on drugs in order to put in place a health-centered approach to drugs that helps individuals and supports communities.

Pete White is Founder and co-director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA-CAN), which helps people dealing with poverty create and discover opportunities, while serving as a vehicle to ensure they have voice, power and opinion in the decisions that directly affect them.

via How This Week’s Events Make LA the Center of the Anti-Drug-War Movement | Drugs | AlterNet.

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U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill

U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill.

  10/7/11

Huffington Post

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they’re carried out. H.R. 313, the “Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act of 2011,” is sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the CSA, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication.

“Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country’s drug laws. “The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you’re there wouldn’t be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime.”

The law could also potentially affect academics and medical professionals. For example, a U.S. doctor who works with overseas doctors or government officials on needle exchange programs could be subject to criminal prosecution. A U.S. resident who advises someone in another country on how to grow marijuana or how to run a medical marijuana dispensary would also be in violation of the new law, even if medical marijuana is legal in the country where the recipient of the advice resides. If interpreted broadly enough, a prosecutor could possibly even charge doctors, academics and policymakers from contributing their expertise to additional experiments like the drug decriminalization project Portugal, which has successfully reduced drug crime, addiction and overdose deaths.

The Controlled Substances Act also regulates the distribution of prescription drugs, so something as simple as emailing a friend vacationing in Tijuana some suggestions on where to buy prescription medication over the counter could subject a U.S. resident to criminal prosecution. “It could even be something like advising them where to buy cold medicine overseas that they’d have to show I.D. to get here in the U.S.,” Piper says.

Civil libertarian attorney and author Harvey Silverglate says the bill raises several concerns. “Just when you think you can’t get any more cynical, a bill like this comes along. I mean, it just sounds like an abomination. First, there’s no intuitive reason for an American to think that planning an activity that’s perfectly legal in another country would have any effect on America,” Silverglate says. “So we’re getting further away from the common law tradition that laws should be intuitive, and should include a mens rea component. Second, this is just an act of shameless cultural and legal imperialism. It’s just outrageous.”

Conspiracy laws in general are problematic when applied to the drug war. They give prosecutors extraordinary discretion to charge minor players, such as girlfriends or young siblings, with the crimes committed by major drug distributors. They’re also easier convictions to win, and can allow prosecutors to navigate around restrictions like statutes of limitations, so long as the old offense can be loosely linked to a newer one. The Smith bill would expand those powers. Under the Amsterdam wedding scenario, anyone who participated in the planning of the wedding with knowledge of the planned pot purchase would be guilty of conspiracy, even if their particular role was limited to buying flowers or booking the hotel.

The law is a reaction to a 2007 case in which the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals threw out the convictions of two men who planned the transfer of cocaine from a Colombian drug cartel to a Saudi prince for distribution in Europe. Though the men planned the transaction from Miami, the court found that because the cocaine never reached the U.S. and was never intended to reach the U.S., the men hadn’t committed any crime against the United States.

But the Smith bill goes farther than necessary to address that outcome in that case. “They could have limited this law to prohibiting the planning of activities that are illegal in the countries where they take place,” Piper says. “That would have allowed them to convict the guys in the Miami case. There was an amendment proposed to do that and it was voted down on party lines. They intentionally made sure the bill includes activities that are legal in other countries. Which means this is an attempt to apply U.S. law all over the globe.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. Over the last several years, a number of executives from online gambling companies have been arrested in U.S. airports and charged with felony violations of U.S. gambling, racketeering and money laundering laws, even though the executives were citizens of and the companies were incorporated in countries where online gambling is legal.

Last May, one U.S. citizen saw how the policy can apply in reverse. Joe Gordon, a native of Thailand who has lived in America for 30 years, was arrested while visiting his native country for violating Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, which bans criticism of the Thai royal family. Gordon had posted a link on his blog to a biography of Thailand’s king that has been banned in Thailand.

In recent years, officials have also attempted to impose U.S. white collar crime policies on other countries as well, such as pressuring Switzerland to soften its privacy laws to help American officials to catch tax cheats and money launderers.

But Silverglate says the Smith bill breaks new ground. “I’m horrified by the pressure on Switzerland, and that’s probably the libertarian in me, but at least there you have an argument that there’s an American interest at stake. Here, I don’t see any interest other than to a desire to impose our moral and cultural preferences on the rest of the world.”

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Soros gives $1.3m to legalise pot

Image via Wikipedia

Billionaire financier George Soros has thrown his weight behind California’s marijuana legalization measure with a $1 million donation a week before the vote.

The contribution reported Tuesday by The Sacramento Bee is the single biggest donation from an individual other than Proposition 19′s main sponsor, Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee.

Soros, a high-profile liberal and philanthropist, has long backed drug law reform. He was one of the top financial backers of California’s first-in-the-nation measure that legalized medical marijuana in the state in 1996.

But Soros held off on openly endorsing the current measure until writing an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. In the piece, Soros said legalizing and taxing marijuana would save taxpayers the costs of incarceration and law enforcement while raising revenue for the state.

“Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws,” Soros wrote.

The $1 million donation comes a day after the Yes on 19 campaign launched its first television ad. The opposition’s campaign also recently took to the airwaves for the first time with a radio ad sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, claiming the law would threaten workplace safety and harm the state’s economy.

Soros’ money went to a campaign committee overseen by the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug legalization advocacy group. Soros sits on the group’s board and is a major donor.

The money will be spent on get-out-the-vote efforts, on-the-ground campaigning and television advertising, said Ethan Nadelmann, the alliance’s executive director and a longtime adviser to Soros on drug policy issues.

Soros has long supported medical marijuana and decriminalizing the drug for personal use but has in fact been ambivalent about broader legalization, Nadelmann said. The 80-year-old investor finally decided to support Proposition 19 after seeing how the ballot measure had “elevated the discourse” around drug law reform, he said.

“For him, it’s not been about legalization per se, but about rolling back the drug war,” said Nadelmann.

Until now, neither side in the ballot measure contest has seen a huge outpouring of cash, though supporters have significantly out-raised opponents. Supporters of the measure have raised about $3.8 million, including the Soros donation. The No campaign has raised about $300,000.

Other high-profile donations to Proposition 19 in recent days include $50,000 from Men’s Wearhouse chief executive George Zimmer and $70,000 from hedge fund president and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, according to campaign finance records.

Roger Salazar, spokesman for the No on Prop 19 campaign, called the big-ticket donations to the other side a sign of panic as polls show support for the measure dropping.

“We’ve always known that they would outspend us. In fact, they’ve outspent us from Day One,” Salazar said. “It seems to us the more they’ve spent, the more they’ve gone down in the polls.”

Despite the large sums, fundraising for Proposition 19 has been modest compared to other campaigns. For example, campaign finance records show supporters of Proposition 23 to suspend California’s greenhouse gas emissions law have raised more than $10 million, while opponents have raised more than $30 million.

- AP

$1.3m to legalise pot – World – NZ Herald News.

Facebook founder donates to California marijuana vote

Image by takomabibelot via Flickr

The new generation.

Finally. The new generation will not put up with the lies that have tainted the whole discourses of the drug wars. And now they have money. Real money.

“Facebook co-founder Sean Parker has donated $100,000 (£62,000) to support the US state of California’s ballot measure to legalise marijuana.

Financial filings for the Proposition 19 campaign revealed the donation.

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz also made donations totalling $70,000 to the measure last month. The pair are no longer with Facebook.

Californians vote next month on whether to legalise the possession and sale of marijuana.

“What’s interesting here is that [Parker] is a member of the generation that really gets it,” Drug Policy Alliance spokesman Stephen Gutwillig told the Associated Press news agency.

“We think he’s pivotal to the future of drug policy reform in the country,” said Mr Gutwillig, whose organization will be the main beneficiary of Mr Parker’s donation.”

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BBC News – Facebook founder donates to California marijuana vote.