Mom accused of giving child beer at Phoenix restaurant
Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down??? You know robbers, rapists and other real criminals that hurt people.Mom accused of giving child beer at Phoenix restaurant
by Haley Madden - Jul. 5, 2012 04:10 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
A mother was arrested and charged with child abuse after she put beer in her child's cup at a restaurant, police said Thursday.
Phoenix police were called to Peter Piper Pizza near Ray Road and 48th Street around 7:15 p.m. Tuesday. Officers were told that Valerie Marie Topete, 36, had poured what was believed to be beer from a pitcher into her 2-year-old's cup, said James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.
Police also were told that the child did drink from the cup and, at one point, Topete left the child alone at the table with alcohol in the cup, police said.
Police interviewed Topete about the claims and she explained that the 2-year-old "kept reaching" for the pitcher of beer, police said. The 36-year-old originally told officers her son did not drink any of the beer but later made comments indicating he may have, Holmes said.
The boy was taken to a hospital for precautionary measures, Holmes said.
The 2-year-old was released to his father. The boy's father and the boy's two siblings, ages 4 and 8, were all at the Peter Piper Pizza, Holmes said.
Topete was booked on one count of child abuse, police said.
Into the mind of Douglas Coleman
Jul. 7, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
In the war on drugs, who's winning?
I don't think there are any winners or losers. Drug dealers break the law and we arrest them for preying on people's weaknesses. Using a war analogy puts a time frame on a situation that doesn't have one.
[I guess he doesn't want to admit that the government has been losing their war on drugs for the last 100 years.]
As long as there are people who choose to victimize society by breaking our laws, there will be law-enforcement officers to bring them to justice.
What is the biggest obstacle your agency faces?
A public perception being pushed by some people that illegal drugs and drug abuse are not as bad as everyone says. As someone who has spent every day of the last 23 years watching the devastation that drug abuse causes, believe me: Drug abuse, what it does to people and to our society is much worse than what is publicized.
[So the only people who know the truth about drugs are cops who have a vested interest in the drug war. The rest of us who think drugs should be legalized and the drug war should be ended are just stupid]
Mexican drug cartels have turned parts of that country into a killing ground. What's the risk it will spill into this country?
Mexico is in a battle to determine its future course. Efforts in the past six years under President Calderon have caused great instability amongst the cartels. This instability and battles for control between rival cartels are fueling the violence.
While drug trafficking is and always has been an extremely violent and dangerous activity, I see no evidence that what is happening in Mexico is going to spill into the United States on a widespread basis.
[That is a lie. Sure the drug violence in the USA isn't as bad as that in Mexico. But it is the cause of a large number of crimes. Legalize drugs in the USA and the violent crime rate would drop like a rock, just like it did when the re-legalized booze after realizing the Prohibition was a big mistake]
What drug worries you the most?
I'm concerned about all of them, and I find a fairly recent trend of rising prescription drug abuse by young people disturbing. This trend of abusing opiate-based prescription drugs is leading to increased levels of opiate addiction by kids, which leads to an increase in heroin addiction by young people.
If we don't get it under control, we are going to lose a lot of young people to heroin addiction and overdose.
What would help more: tougher sentences or greater treatment?
When people talk about drug trafficking and abuse, we have to stop talking about either/or solutions. It's a complex problem that requires a multifaceted approach. Incarceration by itself is not a panacea, nor is treatment/prevention without the potential consequences of going to prison. The three have to be used together in a multi-tiered approach that deals with the complexities of the issue. [Translation - Please stick your head and the sand and lets proceed full speed ahead with the drug war]
Some people say this country should learn from prohibition and legalize drugs. Would that work?
This is an apples and oranges comparison that legalizers frequently cite. Two different substances, with vastly different levels of social approval at very different times in our country's history.
[Again that is a big lie. Liquor is just another drug like marijuana that makes people feel good and many times makes people do dumb things they would not do when they are straight. The real question is why are we throwing people in prisons for committing the victimless crime of taking drugs or booze???]
As a father and an American, I have a hard time understanding how making more mind-altering, addictive and destructive substances socially acceptable by legalizing them helps make the United States a better and stronger country, and a better place for future generations. [Well dude drugs are already socially acceptable. Millions of people would not be using them if they weren't. The real question is why are we still jailing people for committing socially acceptable victimless crimes???]
What's on your summer reading list?
I enjoy books about people in leadership positions and the individual processes they use to reach critical decisions. I also enjoy biographies about people overcoming difficult circumstances to persevere and succeed. This summer, I want to read "Presidential Leadership: 15 Decisions That changed the Nation," by Nick Ragone.
Mexico to keep fighting drug cartels
New leader commits to partnership with U.S.
by William Booth - Jul. 6, 2012 12:00 AM
Washington Post
Peña Nieto said he would consider hosting U.S. military instructors on Mexican soil, but in a training capacity only, to help his soldiers and marines benefit from U.S. counterinsurgency tactics learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also approves of the continuation of flights by U.S. surveillance drones over Mexico to gather intelligence on drug trafficking, but future missions would be run by Mexico with U.S. assistance and technology, he said.
"Without a doubt, I am committed to having an intense, close relationship of effective collaboration measured by results," Peña Nieto said in an interview that focused on Mexico's violent struggle with transnational crime organizations.
But he was clear that he did not endorse the two countries pursing the kind of joint armed counternarcotics operations carried out by U.S. forces in Colombia and Central America.
Mexican laws should be enforced by Mexicans, Peña Nieto said.
"It is just as if I asked you: 'Should our police operate on the other side of the border?' No. That would not be allowed by U.S. law. Our situation is the same," he said.
Peña Nieto is the projected winner of Sunday's presidential election, with final results due this weekend. His apparent victory restores to power the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico for more than 70 years before its ouster in 2000.
The president-elect was interviewed at the JW Marriott Hotel at the edge of Mexico City, where international companies have erected a canyon of glass corporate towers.
Peña Nieto has already faced wariness from U.S. lawmakers, who fear that he will pull back from the drug fight and return to the ways of his PRI forebears, notorious for accommodating drug smugglers to preserve public order.
He has aggressively pushed back against those allegations. But he said he would change the way success is measured in the drug war in Mexico.
Using what standard? he is asked.
"Homicides," Peña Nieto said.
After he assumes office in December, the new president will no longer judge success simply by the numbers of drug kingpins captured or killed, or the bricks of cocaine seized, he said -- metrics popular with America's Drug Enforcement Administration and Congress.
Mexico has had more than 60,000 drug-related killings since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and sent the army into the streets.
By setting Mexico's death toll as a primary measure of success, the president-elect sought to create a clear contrast with Calderon, who created a Most Wanted list and kept a running tally of kingpins he'd knocked off.
But drugs and drug lords have proved to be renewable resources in Mexico, and by making homicide reduction the center of his plan, Peña Nieto seems to be putting the fight back on Mexican terms, with the statistic that matters most to the Mexican public.
Peña Nieto repeated several times that the fight against crime needed to be "effective, with results."
"We should set measurable objectives over a determined period of time that are agreed by both governments," he said.
Last month, Peña Nieto announced that the former chief of the Colombian National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, will become his top security adviser.
Naranjo is close to the U.S. military and law-enforcement agencies, and his appointment was seen as a signal that Peña Nieto would remain a solid partner.
In Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and other parts of the region, American agents from the DEA and other agencies work side by side with local police and military to combat drug trafficking, gathering intelligence and staging strikes in U.S. helicopters. But Mexico has long resisted joint operations, and Peña Nieto said they would violate Mexican sovereignty.
"I think there should be an exchange of technology, of intelligence, but I insist there should be respect for the constitutions of both countries," he said.
While U.S. diplomats often highlight the $1.6 billion in drug-fighting aid provided to Mexico since 2008 -- the delivery of Black Hawk helicopters or the role retired FBI agents play as instructors at Mexican police academies -- the Mexican government prefers to play down the assistance.
Mexican military officers go north to the United States for training, but Mexico has never acknowledged any training taking place here.
"It could take place on either side (of the border)," Peña Nieto said. "It's not an issue of sovereignty."
Memories are long here of the 19th-century wars and U.S. military incursions that transferred huge swaths of Mexican territory into American hands. There are no U.S. military bases in Mexico, and American law-enforcement agents in the country are not allowed to carry weapons, even for personal protection.
Calderon has often criticized the United States as the world's most voracious drug consumer and complained that weapons smuggled south are stoking the violence.
Peña Nieto declined to blame U.S. guns.
"We're not trying to change the laws of the United States," he said. "I respect the laws of the United States as defined by the American people.
"But I am in favor of better gun-trafficking enforcement. Just as we've seen more control over the movement of migrants (across the border)."
To deal with Mexico's corrupt municipal police forces, Peña Nieto proposes to eliminate them outright.
Instead, he would create a single police force in each of Mexico's 31 states whose members would fight crime alongside an expanded force of federal police.
The military would be pulled back to the barracks and replaced by a new paramilitary-style national "gendarmerie" of 40,000 officers under civilian command.
"This is a plan that is still being developed," he said
Students march against Mexico's election result
By Yuri Cortez, AFP/Getty Images
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Mexico's capital on Saturday to protest Enrique Pena Nieto's apparent win in the country's presidential election, accusing his long ruling party of buying votes.
By Marco Ugarte, AP
Demonstrators shout slogans as they gather at the Zocalo Plaza in Mexico City on Saturday.
The protesters were angered by allegations that Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party gave out bags of groceries, pre-paid gift cards and other goods to voters ahead of July 1 national elections.
The students, unionists and leftists in the march carried signs reading, "Pena, how much did it cost to become president?" and "Mexico, you pawned your future for 500 pesos." Mexico City officials put the size of the crowd that reached its central Zocalo plaza at 50,000.
"The fraud was carried out before (the election), buying votes, tricking the people," said Gabriel Petatan Garcia, a geography student who carried a sign in Finnish.
Protesters also carried signs in English, Japanese, French, German and other languages to call the attention of the international press.
Pena Nieto, a youthful, 45-year-old married to a soap opera star, won last Sunday's election by 6.6 percentage points, according to the official count, bringing the PRI back to power after 12 years in opposition. The party had ruled Mexico for 71 consecutive years, with what critics say was the help of corruption, patronage and vote fraud.
PRI officials deny the vote-buying charge and say the vote was free and fair.
The final vote count had Pena Nieto getting 38.21 percent support, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party with 31.59 percent, and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the conservative National Action Party with 25.41. The small New Alliance Party got 2.29 percent.
The final vote count must be certified in September by the Federal Electoral Tribunal. The tribunal has declined to overturn previously contested elections, including a 2006 presidential vote that was far closer than last Sunday's.
Accusations of vote-buying began surfacing in June, but sharpened later when people rushed to grocery stores on the outskirts of Mexico City to redeem pre-paid gift cards worth about 100 pesos ($7.50). Many said they got the cards from PRI supporters before the elections.
Lopez Obrador said millions of voters had received either pre-paid cards, cash, groceries, construction materials or appliances.
Some marchers covered the heads of statues with plastic shopping bags from Soriana — the supermarket chain where the gift cards were redeemable — to underline their protest.
"We have to come out in the streets to denounce that the PRI bought votes, and there were people who sold them," said 32-year-old psychologist Raquel Ruiz.
Some protesters felt that overturning the election result would be difficult at this point, while others thought there were judicial means to still prevent Pena Nieto from assuming the presidency.
Lopez Obrador said he will file a formal legal challenge to the vote count in electoral courts in the coming days based on the allegation that PRI vote-buying illegally tilted millions of votes.
Simply giving away such gifts is not illegal under Mexican electoral law, as long as the expense is reported to electoral authorities. Giving gifts to influence votes is a crime, though is not generally viewed as grounds for overturning an election.
Leonardo Valdes, the president of the Federal Electoral Institute, has said he doesn't see any grounds for overturning the results but that an investigation into the gift cards had been launched.
PRI spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said earlier this week that the gift-card event had been "a theatrical representation" mounted by the left. Sanchez claimed supporters of Lopez Obrador took hundreds of people to the stores, dressed them in PRI T-shirts, gave them gift cards, emptied store shelves to create an appearance of panic buying, and brought TV cameras in to create the false impression that the PRI had given out the cards.
Cesar Yanez, the spokesman for Lopez Obrador's campaign, denied the PRI accusation.
Of course we know that's all a bunch of rubbish. The drug war began almost 100 years ago with the passage of the 1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act and it's been a dismal failure ever since then.
Of course the one thing the drug war is great at doing is proving high paying jobs to the cops, judges, prosecutors and other people in involved in the drug war. And for that reason these people who are all involved in the "drug war" will never recommend ending it. Even if the "drug war" is a dismal failure, a waste of our tax dollars, and an abuse of human rights.
Of course there is one group of honest ethical pigs who want to end it. They are LEAP or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. They know the drug was is a dismal failure and want to end it.
Maybe some of you pigs who read my emails and web pages should check them out. Of course you thugs don't want to end the drug war, because it will eliminate your high paying jobs.
Tempe part of major drug bust connected to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel
Posted: Friday, July 6, 2012 3:10 pm | Updated: 4:00 pm, Fri Jul 6, 2012.
By Mike Sakal, Tribune
Authorities say they have busted up a drug trafficking cell in Tempe that, in adddition to being linked to the Sinaloa Cartel from Mexico, has received shipments of drugs from South and Central America, only to have domestic traffickers distribute the drugs to all corners of the nation.
Tempe police and the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in Phoenix announced Friday that after a six-month investigation into the trafficking ring, agents performed 20 arrests, including alleged ringleaders Norberto Meza Montoya, Leonel Galvez and Jose Alonzo Rodriguez Rosas. At least three of the arrests made were of Tempe suspects, according to Tempe police.
Click here to find out more!
The trio was overseeing coordination and distribution of drug shipments in Arizona after loads were transported through hidden compartments in commercial tractor trailers coming across the Mexican border into the U.S., according to Ramona Sanchez, a DEA spokeswoman.
A Cessna 421 aircraft said to be intended for transporting drug shipments from Central and South America into Mexico before flying into the U.S. and transporting cash payments back into those countries also was seized from a hangar in a small air field south of Tucson, Sanchez said.
“We’ve cut off the head of the snake,” said Tempe police Lt. Noah Johnson, of the department’s special investigations unit. “This definitely makes it a lot harder for our children and residents to get drugs.”
Tempe Police Detectives began investigating the case after learning of possible drop houses in the 1200 block of West Jeanine Drive and the 1200 block South McClintock Drive in Tempe. In following up, Tempe police said detectives were able to obtain evidence of a drug trafficking organization they believe delivered illegal drugs to Tempe, as well as other customers in New York, Alabama, California, North and South Carolina and other parts of the country.
Doug Coleman, DEA Special Agent in Charge, said the bust was part of an effort called “Operation Nayarit Stampede” aimed at attacking a drug trafficking organization that stretched across the Mexico border and into Arizona.
“DEA and our partners have taken large quantities of drugs, millions of dollars in drug trafficker assets, and powerful weapons off our streets,” Coleman said. “We will continue to do everything in our power to bring to justice those who try to poison our communities.”
After executing 14 warrants that included raids at numerous stash houses in Phoenix, Tucson and Tempe, agents seized $2.4 million in cash, three tons of marijuana, 30 pounds of methamphetamine, 14 firearms, 10 vehicles and the aircraft. Cocaine also was seized during the investigation, but not in Tempe, according to authorities.
The word “Nayarit” is the name of one of the key Mexican states where the Sinaloa drug cartel is known to be deep-rooted — in addition to Sinaloa itself — Sanchez said.
The drugs that arrived in the U.S. also were smuggled in the hidden compartments above bunk beds of commercial tractor trailers crossing between the Mexico-U.S. border and stored at a number of houses throughout Phoenix, Tucson and Tempe, Sanchez said. Most of the suspects arrested at the stash houses were apprehended without incident, but at home, a number of the suspects ran but all were caught, Johnson said.
A specific number of homes where the drugs were being stored was not available as the investigation is ongoing and more arrests are expected, Sanchez said.
“These guys spread their risk,” Sanchez. “They’re not about to store their drugs in one location because if law enforcement finds out where they are storing their drugs, they always have more drugs at another location. There is no communication between the drug runners in Mexico and the domestic ones here. It makes it extremely difficult for authorities to connect the drug activity here to Mexico and South America.”
Assistance and support for the investigation was provided by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Phoenix Police Department, ASU Police Department, HIDTA (High intensity drug trafficking area team), Maricopa County Drug Suppression Task Force, Attorney General’s Office, Tucson Police Department, DEA Nogales, DEA offices in Alabama and Phoenix, Pima County Sheriff, Mesa Police Department, and Surprise Police Department.
“This operation demonstrated a collaborative effort by state and federal law enforcement agencies,” Tempe police Chief Tom Ryff said. “As chief of police I am committed to working in partnership with the community, state and federal law enforcement agencies to curtail drug trafficking in the City of Tempe and throughout the Valley.”
Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com
But I do get annoyed when crooked jackbooted police thugs
that illegally stop me without the required "probable cause" or
"reasonable suspicion" call me names as they shake me down
for the crime of having long hair and looking like a homeless person.
I still remember back in Feb of 1997 when some jackbooted Phoenix Police
thugs broke into my home and one of pigs who was a racist Mexican
told me I was scum and I would never amount to anything compared to him.
That really p*ssed me off.
Here I am handcuffed in my backyard while
10 or 15 police criminals are trashing my home
and one of the police criminals, a racist Mexican
who doesn't like White people is calling me names.
I wonder what you pigs who routinely monitor these
web pages are going to say about my complaints.
Politicians find foul words now fair game
Does this trend reflect a coarsening culture or more media attention?
by Jennifer Peltz - Jul. 7, 2012 12:00 AM
Associated Press
NEW YORK - What the $?&! is going on with our politicians?
The mayors of New York and Philadelphia and the governor of New Jersey let loose with a few choice vulgarities over the past two weeks in otherwise G-rated public settings, including a town-hall meeting and a City Hall event.
And all three men knew full well the microphone was on.
While foul language has been uttered in politics before, the blue streak is making some wonder whether it reflects the coarsening effects of pop culture in this reality-TV era of "Jersey Shore" and "The Real Housewives," a decline in public discourse, a desire by politicians to come across as average Joes, or just a really hot summer.
First, there was famously blunt New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie branding a lawmaker "one arrogant S.O.B." at a town hall last month (and using some stronger epithets in discussing his passion for the music, though not the politics, of Bruce Springsteen in an interview published in the Atlantic this month.)
Then, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, apparently having trouble stomaching a slew of puns in his prepared remarks for Tuesday's contestant weigh-in at City Hall before the Fourth of July hot dog-eating contest, chuckled, "Who wrote this s---t?" to guffaws from the crowd.
Then it was Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's turn on Thursday at a news conference at which he discussed a shooting a few blocks from the center of the city's July Fourth celebration. He said he wasn't going to let the city's image be harmed by "some little a--hole 16-year-old."
"My sense is: Because they want to appear to be in tune with popular culture, politicians feel free to express themselves in profane ways," said Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker. And he finds that troubling: "I honestly do believe that, in aping the coarseness of popular culture, people in public life are really dragging us into a discourse of fang and claw."
President Harry S. Truman was criticized for his use of such salty language -- for his time -- as "hell" and "damn." And many Americans were shocked by Richard Nixon's liberal use of profanities on the Watergate tapes, which made "expletive deleted" a pop-culture catchphrase.
In more recent years, then-candidate George W. Bush was caught on what he didn't realize was a live microphone describing a reporter as a "major-league a--hole," and Vice President Dick Cheney hurled the F-word at Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor.
In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden was heard using the F-word on live television in a whispered congratulation to President Barack Obama at the signing of his health care bill.
The seeming proliferation of political swearing reflects changes in both social norms and the media landscape, said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
Offhand remarks that might once not have been reported now get captured on video and posted online.
"Politics has been nasty" for years, Thompson said. "The difference is we now have media that show this stuff."
Nutter, who has used vulgarities before in response to street violence, has described his language as an "honest, clear, direct response."
Christie has built his political career on his brash style. His warning to people to "get the hell off the beach" as Hurricane Irene approached last year appeared in big front-page headlines around the state.
As for the lawmaker who was the target of the Republican governor's salty remark last month, he's not complaining.
"He actually gave me national attention," Democratic state Sen. Paul Sarlo said. "The term is more of an insult to my mom, who is not politically involved."
Still, Sarlo saw the comment as unbecoming of a governor who has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential contender.
And what of the average citizens politicians are trying to reach -- or, perhaps, emulate?
Kristina Klimovich, for one, doesn't like to hear them swear.
"I think there's always a line, and as a public servant there are certain standards they have to adhere to," said Klimovich, of New York.
But Lisa Garfield of Springfield, Mass., said, "It makes them more human."
"I'm 52 years old," she said, "and I don't know anyone who's never used a cuss word in their life."
Mexico discovers drug tunnel under Arizona border
Jul. 8, 2012 02:01 PM
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's army has uncovered a 755-foot (230-meter) tunnel running under the Sonora-Arizona border that was used to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Mexico's defense secretariat says the tunnel linked a soon-to-be-opened ice and purified water business in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora to a business in San Luis, Arizona.
Gen. Raul Guereca said Saturday that the tunnel was 4.25 feet (1.3 meters) high and reached a depth of almost 60 feet (18 meters) below ground. It had electricity, ventilation and small cars to transport the drugs through the tunnel.
Officials did not say which cartel they thought had built the tunnel. As U.S. authorities have tightened land crossings, tunnels have become a popular way for Mexico's cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S.
US official: DEA agents shot dead pilot of cocaine flight in Honduras earlier in week
By The Associated Press
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - A U.S. official says that two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents shot and killed the pilot of a suspected drug flight that crashed earlier in the week while being chased by government aircraft.
At the time, officials said they found cocaine on board the plane that went down in eastern Honduras. They said one pilot died in the July 3 incident, but did not say how.
DEA spokeswoman Dawn Dearden said Sunday that when police arrived at the scene they found the plane's two pilots.
She said one was arrested and the other was shot dead by two DEA agents after he ignored an order to surrender and made a threatening gesture.
It was the second time a DEA agent has killed someone in Honduras since the agency began deploying agents several years ago to accompany local law enforcement personnel on drug raids.
Efforts target underage drinking in Valley
Focus is on adults who supply alcohol
by Jim Walsh - Jul. 8, 2012 08:02 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Valley parents who are worried about teens using drugs may be overlooking another threat in their own refrigerator or cabinet.
Addiction counselors say alcohol is still the most popular gateway drug in Arizona.
Although many accept that underage drinking is a chronic problem unlikely to disappear, educational efforts are under way throughout the Valley to tighten the spigot on teens and make alcohol harder to buy. One of those ways involves "undercover teens" who are helping to reduce the number of adults who buy alcohol for underage drinkers.
While programs aimed at underage drinking vary from one community to another across the Valley, teens act as undercover agents in "shoulder-tapping" operations in Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale and Phoenix. They ask adults, usually strangers, to buy them beer while off-duty, undercover police officers watch in unmarked cars to ensure their safety.
The focus is on education. No one gets arrested, but anyone who agrees to buy alcohol for underage teens gets a warning that he or she could be found guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor and face a $2,500 fine and up to six months in jail.
"We tend to overlook alcohol because it is so pervasive and so accepted in our society," said Meredith Mechenbier, director of clinical services for Community Bridges, a statewide behavioral-health agency that offers prevention and treatment programs.
"When you introduce substances to brains that are not fully developed, you're tipping the scales," she said. "The outcomes for people who started substance abuse at young age are much worse."
Medical studies have found that underage drinking can damage the development of the brain, according to the National Institutes of Health. And although genetic factors also contribute to the development of alcoholism, studies have found that adolescents who drink before the age of 15 are four times more likely to become alcohol-dependent, the NIH said.
"The kids are drinking at home. They know they will get in trouble if they drink in public," said Lindsay Dietz, a coordinator with the Scottsdale Prevention Institute.
Thalia Williams, prevention coordinator with Touchstone Behavioral Health in Glendale, said Phoenix police had been citing adults who agreed to buy alcohol for undercover teens, but that practice was slowing down the operation.
In the future, adults who agree to buy alcohol will only receive warnings -- similar to other Valley cities -- so that more potential buyers can be educated about the law, she said.
Many programs sponsored by Community Outreach Prevention and Education in west Phoenix are aimed more at adults than teens, Williams said.
"Our message is to stop providing alcohol to youths," she said.
As the home of Arizona State University, Tempe passed a "social host" ordinance in February. So far, police have issued 46 citations to adults, mostly college students in their early 20s who supplied alcohol to underage teens, said Cassidy Olson of the Tempe Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking and Drug Use.
She said a "police service fee" similar to a fine can be reduced from $250 to $100 upon completion of a drug-education class. She added that fees climb to $1,000 for a second offense and $1,500 for a third offense.
"With this, you are hitting home the message that we are not going to tolerate underaged drinking," said Sgt. Jeff Glover, a Tempe police spokesman.
Williams said Phoenix is also drafting a social-host ordinance. She said Tucson and Buckeye also already have such ordinances.
"We have a lot of underaged people partying," said Israel Montero, a prevention specialist at the Scottsdale Prevention Institute. "I want to give kids options. It's to live a positive and healthy life."
The Scottsdale program also includes an enforcement element. Teens act as covert undercover buyers, or CUBs. They go into restaurants and order a meal and an alcoholic drink to see if they get carded, with undercover officers on hand to issue citations.
Dietz said she is looking for more teens to serve as CUBs. None of them has been served so far, but restaurant employees are also getting wise to the tactic, calling friends at other restaurants to warn them.
In seven Mesa operations since November that are part of the "Protect. Don't Provide" campaign, nearly 20 percent, or 56 of 287 adults questioned, agreed to buy beer for teenagers.
But on a recent operation, only three out of 57 adults questioned, or 5 percent, agreed to buy alcohol. They were two transients outside of a liquor store and a fast-food employee on a smoke break outside the Walmart at Mesa Riverview mall.
Mesa police Sgt. Rob Scantlebury, who supervised the undercover operation, called the restaurant manager to report the employee, hoping to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
"We want to tighten up the faucet a little bit," Scantlebury said.
The results of shoulder-tapping exercises in west Phoenix were similar to those in Mesa.
In February and March, 26 adults were approached by an undercover 19-year-old. Six of them, or 23 percent, agreed to buy alcohol, Williams said.
During a recent Mesa shoulder-tapping operation, managers of supermarkets, liquor stores and convenience stores often told the undercover teen to leave or called police.
"It's obvious people are learning from this exercise," said Karen Frias-Long, community services manager for Community Bridges, who supervises the operations.
Underage drinking in Arizona
The average age that teenagers have their first drink is 13.
In 2010, 21.9 percent of 8th graders, 34.7 percent of 10th graders and 45 percent of high-school seniors reported drinking in the past 30 days.
From 2004 to 2010, underage drinking dropped from 36.6 percent to 31.9 percent for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students.
Arizona eighth-graders had a 7 percent higher rate of alcohol use than their peers had nationally.
Source: A 2011 report by the Substance Abuse Epidemiology Work Group and Bach Harrison LLC for the Governor's Office for Children Youth and Families.
Sadly many cellphone carriers will give this information to the cops without a search warrant.
Surveillance requests to cellphone carriers surge
Jul. 9, 2012 05:29 PM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers' cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology.
Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a member of Congress, reported responding to as many as thousands of police requests daily for customers' locations, text messages and call details, frequently without warrants. Special legal teams operating round-the-clock have been set up to field requests, and some carriers hoping to recoup their costs have created detailed menus of what records can be provided -- and for what price.
The reports -- the first comprehensive review of the extent of law enforcement requests in the U.S. -- shed light on the difficulties cellphone carriers face in balancing consumer privacy and public safety. They also prompted civil libertarians to decry the lack of legal clarity about when and how carriers should hand over information about their customers.
At AT&T, a team of more than 100 workers handles the requests pouring in from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. More than 250,000 such requests came in last year -- a more than two-fold increase over five years ago.
Sprint said it received about 500,000 subpoenas in 2011. Verizon and T-Mobile, two other major U.S. carriers, both reported annual increases in requests exceeding 12 percent. Cricket has seen a steady increase every year since 2007, and although the company once had a 10-person team handling inquiries, it has now outsourced that task to a company called Neustar.
Many of the requests cover a number of cellphone subscribers.
The costs have become so large that carriers have started charging law enforcement for the records they turn over. AT&T collected almost $8.3 million in 2011 in fees from police agencies, although the company said it believes that number falls far short of what it costs AT&T to accommodate the requests.
Police requesting data from U.S. Cellular are asked to pay $25 to locate a cellphone using GPS (the first three requests are free), $25 to retrieve a user's text messages and $50 for a "cell tower dump" -- a breakdown of all the cellphones that interacted with a given cellphone tower at a specific time.
"Cell phone records have clearly become central to many, many law enforcement investigations," said Chris Calabrese, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "The danger is that the standard is very unclear."
All the companies who responded to letters from Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said that under normal circumstances, only requests that came with a warrant attached were granted. T-Mobile said it had referred two inappropriate requests from law enforcement to the FBI, and rejected other requests where people had impersonated police officers. Others said they complied with subpoenas, which don't require sign-off from a judge.
But there's a major exception for emergencies, or "exigent circumstances." If a 911 call center believes there is an immediate threat to someone's life, it can bypass the need for a prosecutor or a judge to sign off on the request. All that's needed, in most circumstances, is a simple form.
"If a victim goes missing and they had a cell phone with GPS technology, would you, as a loved one, want us to have to wait for a subpoena or court order even though we know someone might be in dire straits?" said Chris Perkins, the police chief in Roanoke, Va.
Federal law, which has yet to fully adapt to today's high-tech, wireless society, has much to say about wiretaps and home searches but surprisingly little to say about cellphone records. The law is especially vague when it comes to GPS tracking, a relatively new issue triggered by the widespread adoption of smartphones that help users navigate from place to place.
Many states and local courts have been left to come up with their own requirements for when a warrant is required to track someone's location, leading to an array of conflicting policies that create a headache for those tracking suspects of victims across state lines.
In May, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked the Justice Department how many requests for location information it had filed with cellphone carriers, and what legal standard applies when making such requests. The department said it didn't keep a running tally and couldn't offer numbers, but that in regular criminal investigations, a court order is used to compel carriers to provide the information.
"This information is critical to such investigations into a wide variety of offenses, including murder, bank robbery, gang activity, fraud, sexual exploitation of children and kidnapping," wrote Acting Assistant Attorney General Judith Appelbaum.
Franken said he was troubled by magnitude of the requests revealed Monday in Markey's reports, which were first reported by The New York Times. He said it's unacceptable that the Justice Department isn't tracking its own requests.
"The department has a lot of questions to answer, and it's clear we must do more to strike the right balance between the needs of law enforcement and privacy," Franken.
Those seeking clarification for what is in or out of bounds looked hopefully in January to the U.S. Supreme Court, which took up the GPS issue when it ruled that law enforcement cannot attach GPS tracking devices to someone's vehicle without a warrant. But the ruling was narrow and didn't deal specifically with cellphones already in someone's possession that happen to have GPS capabilities.
Bipartisan bills to address the issue were introduced in the House and Senate a year ago but never moved out of committees. The Digital Due Process Coalition, an assortment of groups including cellphone carriers and civil liberties advocates, wants the Electronic Communications Privacy Act amended to deal with it. That law was enacted in 1986, long before cellphones became a basic accessory.
"We don't know the standard that is used for the gathering, handling or disposal of information about innocent Americans," Markey said in an interview. "We need a Fourth Amendment for the 21st century. Technologies change."
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Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at twitter.com/joshledermanAP.
Police requesting Americans' cellphone data at staggering rate
By Matt Pearce
July 9, 2012, 3:39 p.m.
Police are monitoring Americans’ cellphone use at a staggering rate, according to new information released in a congressional inquiry.
In letters released by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), cellphone companies described seeing a huge uptick in requests from law enforcement agencies, with 1.3 million federal, state and local requests for phone records in 2011 alone.
“We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers,” Markey said in a statement Monday. “Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack? We need to know how law enforcement differentiates between records of innocent people, and those that are subjects of investigation, as well as how it handles, administers, and disposes of this information.”
The data obtained by law enforcement in some requests included location information, text messages and “cell tower dumps” that include any calls made through a tower for a certain period of time. The carriers say the information is given away in response to warrants or emergencies where someone is in “imminent” danger.
“There is no comprehensive reporting of these information requests anywhere,” Markey’s office said in a statement. “This is the first ever accounting of this.”
According to a May 29 letter, AT&T said it responds to roughly 230 emergency requests a day for kidnappings, missing persons and attempted suicides and similar incidents, with 100 full-time workers responding to requests 24 hours a day.
AT&T said it had responded to 131,400 criminal subpoenas in 2011, up from 63,100 in 2007.
Verizon Wireless, in a less detailed response, gave a similar figure to AT&T for criminal subpoena requests in 2011. Such subpoenas grant law enforcement access to records similar to those that appear on a phone bill.
T-Mobile said it would not release data on how many requests it receives but said “the number of requests has risen dramatically in the last decade with an annual increase of approximately 12-16%.” The company also said it had received two inappropriate requests for information over the past three years and had referred the cases to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sprint estimated it had received 500,000 subpoenas in 2011 -- the most of all the phone companies, although it is only the third-largest carrier -- but noted that the figure is not representative of how many people were getting caught up in police requests. “Each subpoena typically requested subscriber information on multiple subscribers,” the company said.
Sprint also asked that Congress clarify the law on the disclosure of location information, citing “contradictory” legal standards.
The growth of cellphone use, private computing and social-media use in recent years has greatly expanded the wealth of information available to law enforcement agencies in investigations, a development in which police investigative abilities have expanded faster than the public has been able to keep track of the extent to which it’s being watched.
Last week, Twitter made a similar announcement on its website regarding police surveillance requests, reporting that government requests for user data in the first six months of 2012 had already surpassed the number of requests in all of 2011.
The phone carriers are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which limits subpoena requests to basic subscriber information and requires warrants or court orders to grant access to access the content of text messages. Wiretaps require court orders with probable cause.
The new information released by Markey provoked a slightly surprised response from communications experts and privacy advocates.
“The numbers don’t lie: location tracking is out of control,” Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU, noted in an analysis of the new data.
Over at the libertarian Cato Institute, Julian Sanchez spotted a discrepancy between the number of wiretaps reported by Sprint over the past five years -- 52,029 -- and the numbers that the government itself has been keeping, which only total 24,270. That suggests either Sprint’s data is wrong or that the government isn’t counting or disclosing all of its wiretaps.
“The disconnect between the official figures and what’s suggested by Sprint’s response is profound,” Sanchez wrote. “Congress has a responsibility to keep probing until we understand why.”
On the other hand many American politicians probably don't think there is anything wrong with that. Those are the same politicians who want to have the death penalty for people that use drugs in America.
Iran confronts its alcohol problem
By Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2012
TEHRAN — On most days, Mohsen can be found driving around the capital in his old Peugeot with a hired female relative, trying to pass himself off as a father shopping with his daughter.
But the errands he's running involve delivering homemade beer and wine or smuggled vodka and whiskey to customers across the city. He doesn't work nights; that's when the country's moral police set up checkpoints to catch bootleggers like him.
If arrested, the 59-year-old former high school teacher faces jail, thousands of dollars in fines and possibly lashings for flouting the Islamic Republic's blanket ban on drinking, which is prohibited under Islam. Meanwhile, his customer base continues to grow.
After years of being in public denial over the amount of illegal drinking in the country, officials in Iran are for the first time publicly addressing the issue of alcoholism and the health problems drinking can cause, exacerbated by sometimes dangerous homemade brews.
"We sometimes get reports from hospitals and doctors on the consumption of alcohol from neighborhoods in the south of Tehran; low-income and traditional walks of people live there, which is worrying," Deputy Health Minister Baqer Larijani said in May.
In his comments — the first time such a high-ranking government official had acknowledged widespread drinking in Iran — Larijani, whose brother is the country's powerful parliament speaker, said alcoholism now merits more attention than diabetes or heart disease.
And last month, at a ceremony marking the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi announced, "We have prepared a road map to treat alcoholism and reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the society."
But even as officials acknowledge the problem, the government continues to treat drinking as a sin and a crime.
Recently, two men in a northeastern province were given rare death sentences for drinking, as part of the country's three-strikes law. Each man had been convicted of drinking twice before.
Amnesty International urged Iranian authorities to drop the death sentences, saying, "Alcohol consumption cannot reasonably be classified as one of the 'most serious crimes,' the internationally agreed minimum standard for capital crimes."
"They are making examples out of a few to show they are serious about the infractions," said Mehdi Semati, author of "Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living With Globalization and the Islamic State."
More than 200,000 people in Iran are estimated to be involved in bootlegging, and about $800 million is spent annually on smuggling. The country's leading economic newspaper this year quoted border police as saying that the amount of confiscated alcohol had risen 69% in the last year.
Iran has also long had a serious problem with opium and heroin addiction, with official statistics putting the number of addicts at 1.2 million, a number some call conservative. In Iran, drinking is commonly used as a method to try to break drug addiction.
The increase in alcohol use has political ramifications for the Islamic leadership, said Hosein Ghazian, a sociologist and visiting scholar at Syracuse University.
"If a lot of people use alcohol, it means the people are not as Islamic as the government says, so why should they tolerate an Islamic government?" Ghazian said.
The government's reluctance to openly discuss Iranians' drinking habits — even clerics avoid preaching on the topic in Friday sermons — stems from the belief or eagerness to pretend that Iran's forcefully imposed theocracy is prevailing and only a minority of people are not practicing Muslims.
"These are real social problems, these are not just ideological issues," Semati said. "In some ways it's an admission of the failure of the government … to regulate all aspects of social life, where young people and older people would be willing to live by the code of the state of the Islamic Republic."
In Iran, drinking has long been a deeply rooted part of Persian society, from the upper-class elite who hold discreet parties in their Tehran apartments to the blue-collar workers who drink the sometimes toxic homemade brews. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 attempted to squelch the custom, as part of a greater effort to erase the Persian culture in favor of an Islamic one, Semati said.
Part of the culture that thrived before the revolution celebrated the lifestyle of working-class machismo epitomized in popular action films.
Today, young people are increasingly turning to alcohol as an escape from their lives, which they feel are boxed in politically, socially and economically.
"Young people express that they can't go where they want to go and do what they want to do, and sometimes those things are mundane, like gathering in a park and listening to music," Semati said. "So when all those doors are closed, they will do what they can to create their own leisure time and live a life that is free of constraints by the government."
Mohammad Majidi, a doctor who works in several Tehran clinics, says that each day he sees half a dozen young patients who come in with fatty liver, hypertension and intestinal ailments. He treats and releases them, knowing they might soon return, and lists their illnesses as something other than alcohol-related, to protect them from possibly being branded as criminals.
"I only warn them, but I do not think they take my advice to stop drinking," Majidi said.
Alcohol's health toll in Iran is worsened because many people can't afford to buy what's smuggled in. A bottle of French wine can go for about $40, whereas a bottle of Iran-made alcohol sells for less than $6.
Many rely on what's made in people's basements or gardens in unsanitary conditions. While drinking or making the alcohol, people have suffered from alcohol poisoning, blindness or death. The alcohol content of the homemade liquor is often higher than normal, supplemented with drugs or contaminated.
When Shahin, a sociologist whose clients are often young people who binge-drink, talks to his patients, he stays away from religious precepts and instead speaks to them in terms of the dangers to mind and body.
"The religious education at home and at schools has obviously failed," said Shahin, who asked that his last name not be used.
In the absence of other forms of leisure and amusement, he said, "drinking alcoholic beverages is a way to vent your disappointment at the country's injustice, lack of jobs and decent life and future, and political disappointment."
Mostaghim is a special correspondent.
Of course if you are rich and can afford to spend mega bucks on lawyers you still have your Constitutional rights, but for the rest of they have been flushed down the toilet.
I am sure the pigs are paid to read these emails and web pages agree with that. You guys know that if you have a gun and a badge you are the law and that the Constitution is just a piece of toilet paper you wipe your *sses with.
Stop-and-Frisk May Soon Hit Judicial Roadblocks
By RUSS BUETTNER and WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: July 10, 2012 30 Comments
New York City’s accelerating use of police stop-and-frisk tactics has brought a growing chorus of opponents who have been matched in intensity only by the officials who defend the policy. But recent rulings by federal and state courts have now cast judges as the most potent critics of the practice, raising sharp questions about whether the city has sidestepped the Constitution in the drive to keep crime rates low.
The inescapable conclusion is that the city will eventually have to redefine its stop-and-frisk policy, legal experts say, and that the changes — whether voluntary or forced — will fundamentally alter how the police interact with young minority men on the streets.
Some legal experts say the police could be pushed into reducing the numbers of street stops of New Yorkers by hundreds of thousands a year, and that the proportion of stop-and-frisk subjects who are black and Latino would be sharply reduced.
A settlement last year of a class-action case involving stop-and-frisk policies in Philadelphia laid out a model that, if followed in New York, could call for the courts to supervise an imposed system of police monitoring and accountability.
The courts have been energized to step in, some lawyers say, as the debate has intensified over police tactics that have brought legal challenges, academic analysis and news coverage. “The decisions show that the courts are suspicious of the current police practices,” said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell.
Randolph M. McLaughlin, a law professor at Pace University, said the new judicial attention was a product of the numbers: More than 80 percent of those stopped in New York are black or Latino, and last year there were 686,000 stops, with this year’s numbers heading higher.
“People are starting to wonder: ‘What’s really going on here? Is this a racial policy?’ And judges read the newspaper too,” Professor McLaughlin said.
In May, a federal judge granted class-action status to a civil suit filed on behalf of people who were frisked on the streets and released. The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, condemned what she called the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.”
Separately, in recent weeks in two cases involving teenagers caught with guns, a midlevel state appeals court in Manhattan overturned weapons convictions. In those cases, too, there was a burst of judicial hostility toward police policies in minority neighborhoods.
In the first case, the majority opinion in the 3-to-2 decision from a panel of the court, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said a “gradual erosion of this basic liberty can only tatter the constitutional fabric upon which this nation was built.”
The city says that the stop-and-frisk program, which dates to the 1990s, is concentrated in high-crime areas, and is not targeted at minorities. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg says it “saves lives” and the city has fought its critics in court. On Tuesday, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, would not speculate about whether court rulings might hurt the city’s efforts to curb crime. “I don’t know what the courts are going to do,” he said.
Mr. Kelly has taken steps that he said could reduce the number of stop-and-frisk encounters, including better training of officers. But both he and the mayor have suggested the judicial branch was out of step with most New Yorkers’ goal of keeping crime rates low.
The city has said it is pursuing appeals of all of the rulings. In an interview, Michael A. Cardozo, who as the city’s corporation counsel serves as its top lawyer, argued that the recent decisions were not part of any larger trend in the courts. He noted that the issue before the federal judge was merely whether the suit was appropriately a class action and that the state appeals rulings involved split courts analyzing the detailed facts of specific searches. “I don’t know that you can draw a conclusion that there’s some major change,” he said.
The decision to appeal the rulings is risky, lawyers say, because it could lead to appeals court rulings clearing the way for fuller judicial criticism. If the federal appeals court in New York were to approve Judge Scheindlin’s ruling or to simply decline to hear the city’s appeal, a trial is expected as soon as this fall.
David Rudovsky, the lead lawyer in a similar class-action case against Philadelphia that led to a settlement last year, said that the views that Judge Scheindlin expressed in May suggested that however the case comes to a conclusion, significant changes should be anticipated in New York’s stop-and-frisk policy.
“One would expect a fairly substantial change in the number of stops,” Mr. Rudovsky said. “And you would expect fewer stops of minority young men.”
[This article seems to have been partly mangled at this point. I suspect it was an error by somebody at the NY Times]
New York City’s accelerating use of police stop-and-frisk tactics has brought a growing chorus of opponents who have been matched in intensity only by the officials who defend the policy. But recent rulings by federal and state courts have now cast judges as the most potent critics of the practice, raising sharp questions about whether the city has sidestepped the Constitution in the drive to keep crime rates low.
The inescapable conclusion is that the city will eventually have to redefine its stop-and-frisk policy, legal experts say, and that the changes — whether voluntary or forced — will fundamentally alter how the police interact with young minority men on the streets.
Some legal experts say the police could be pushed into reducing the numbers of street stops of New Yorkers by hundreds of thousands a year, and that the proportion of stop-and-frisk subjects who are black and Latino would be sharply reduced.
A settlement last year of a class-action case involving stop-and-frisk policies in Philadelphia laid out a model that, if followed in New York, could call for the courts to supervise an imposed system of police monitoring and accountability.
The courts have been energized to step in, some lawyers say, as the debate has intensified over police tactics that have brought legal challenges, academic analysis and news coverage. “The decisions show that the courts are suspicious of the current police practices,” said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell.
Randolph M. McLaughlin, a law professor at Pace University, said the new judicial attention was a product of the numbers: More than 80 percent of those stopped in New York are black or Latino, and last year there were 686,000 stops, with this year’s numbers heading higher.
“People are starting to wonder: ‘What’s really going on here? Is this a racial policy?’ And judges read the newspaper too,” Professor McLaughlin said.
In May, a federal judge granted class-action status to a civil suit filed on behalf of people who were frisked on the streets and released. The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, condemned what she called the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.”
Separately, in recent weeks in two cases involving teenagers caught with guns, a midlevel state appeals court in Manhattan overturned weapons convictions. In those cases, too, there was a burst of judicial hostility toward police policies in minority neighborhoods.
In the first case, the majority opinion in the 3-to-2 decision from a panel of the court, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said a “gradual erosion of this basic liberty can only tatter the constitutional fabric upon which this nation was built.”
The city says that the stop-and-frisk program, which dates to the 1990s, is concentrated in high-crime areas, and is not targeted at minorities. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg says it “saves lives” and the city has fought its critics in court. On Tuesday, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, would not speculate about whether court rulings might hurt the city’s efforts to curb crime. “I don’t know what the courts are going to do,” he said.
Mr. Kelly has taken steps that he said could reduce the number of stop-and-frisk encounters, including better training of officers. But both he and the mayor have suggested the judicial branch was out of step with most New Yorkers’ goal of keeping crime rates low.
The city has said it is pursuing appeals of all of the rulings. In an interview, Michael A. Cardozo, who as the city’s corporation counsel serves as its top lawyer, argued that the recent decisions were not part of any larger trend in the courts. He noted that the issue before the federal judge was merely whether the suit was appropriately a class action and that the state appeals rulings involved split courts analyzing the detailed facts of specific searches. “I don’t know that you can draw a conclusion that there’s some major change,” he said.
The decision to appeal the rulings is risky, lawyers say, because it could lead to appeals court rulings clearing the way for fuller judicial criticism. If the federal appeals court in New York were to approve Judge Scheindlin’s ruling or to simply decline to hear the city’s appeal, a trial is expected as soon as this fall.
David Rudovsky, the lead lawyer in a similar class-action case against Philadelphia that led to a settlement last year, said that the views that Judge Scheindlin expressed in May suggested that however the case comes to a conclusion, significant changes should be anticipated in New York’s stop-and-frisk policy.
“One would expect a fairly substantial change in the number of stops,” Mr. Rudovsky said. “And you would expect fewer stops of minority young men.”
Critics of New York’s policies say the results — a small percentage of the stops produced an arrest — do not warrant the intrusion on lives and the lost respect for law enforcement by a generation of young men stopped on the city streets.
Darius Charney, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is handling the New York class-action case, said the suit was seeking independent oversight of the New York Police Department. He said that even when stop-and-frisk numbers climbed sharply over the last decade, the city would not “even acknowledge it has a problem.”
In the two teenagers’ gun cases, the city is appealing to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. That could open the way for the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who has forged numerous liberal rulings during his tenure, to help redefine complex legal precedents that set out stop-and-frisk rules.
“These two cases might create the perfect opportunity for the Court of Appeals” to wade into the controversy over police tactics, said Vincent Bonventre, an expert on the court who is a professor at Albany Law School.
Some experts on police practices said the Court of Appeals might consider it time to update its stop-and-frisk rulings.
Eugene J. O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, called one court precedent on the issue “laughably complex” in ways that can be confusing to officers who must make quick decisions in dangerous situations.
“How can you be legitimately following the law, when no one can explain what the law means?” he said.
In the interview, Mr. Cardozo, whose office is handling the stop-and-frisk appeals, noted that appeals courts regularly approve stop-and-frisk searches. But some lawyers said that tendency was what made the recent rulings against the city so notable.
Professor Bonventre said it seemed the majority in the Manhattan appeals court rulings was announcing what amounted to a new policy: “We are going to start looking at these stop-and-frisks a lot more closely.”
Alain Delaquérière and Wendy Ruderman contributed reporting.
Of course if drugs were legalized none of these crimes would be committed. And we wouldn't be paying these cops, prosecutors and judges big bucks to hunt down these harmless drug users. Nor would we be paying big bucks to jail these harmless drug users in prisons.
Opana abuse in USA overtakes OxyContin
By Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY
In many cases, robbers are asking specifically for Opana when they enter pharmacy stores. This attempted robbery occured on Feb. 27 at a Kroger Pharmacy in Fort Wayne, Ind.
A masked man walked into a Fort Wayne, Ind., drugstore early one Saturday morning, approached the pharmacy counter and, realizing it was closed, left. An hour later, wearing the same mask, he entered the store across the street, handed the pharmacist a list of drugs scrawled on a napkin and threatened to kill the pharmacist if he didn't get them, police say.
Police were waiting, having been notified by employees of the first account. As the suspect dashed from the store, prescription painkillers clutched in his hand, a police officer caught him.
The June 2 incident was the 11th pharmacy robbery in Fort Wayne this year, an unusually high number for this city of 250,000 people, police spokeswoman Raquel Foster said. In almost every case, the robbers asked specifically for Opana, the trade name for oxymorphone, a powerful prescription painkiller.
"A few years ago, it was OxyContin. Now it's Opana," Foster said. "These people are desperate to get it."
Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, the White House Office on National Drug Policy says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the misuse of these powerful painkillers as an epidemic, with 1.3 million emergency room visits in 2010, a 115% increase since 2004. Overdose deaths on opioid pain relievers surpassed deaths from heroin and cocaine for the first time in 2008.
This rise of Opana abuse illustrates the adaptability of drug addicts and the never-ending challenge facing law enforcement authorities, addiction specialists and pharmaceutical companies. Just when they think they have curbed abuse and stopped trafficking of one drug, another fills the void. Opana's dangerous new popularity arose when OxyContin's manufacturer changed its formula to deter users from crushing, breaking or dissolving the pill so it could be snorted or injected to achieve a high.
"It's almost like a game of Whac-A-Mole. You get a handle on OxyContin; they switch to Opana," said Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Mineola, N.Y. "My guess is it will be something new tomorrow."
As a new, harder-to-abuse Opana formulation replaces the old formula, police and addiction experts expect heroin to fill that void.
"They will adapt the same way drug traffickers or criminals will adapt to a new law. They are going to find a way to satisfy their addiction," said DEA Special Agent Gary Boggs of the Office of Diversion Control. "When they either can't get those particular pharmaceuticals or can't afford them, they now gravitate to heroin."
For years, drug abusers favored an extended-release version of OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller, for a powerful high. Over the past decade, its abuse was so prevalent that the drug became a household name.
Drug abusers could crush or dissolve the pill's time-release coating to get the full punch of the opioid oxycodone. But Purdue Pharma, OxyContin's manufacturer, reformulated it in August 2010, making it nearly impossible to crush, dissolve and inject. By the beginning of 2011, more than 95% of prescriptions were being filled with reformulated OxyContin, Purdue spokesman James Heins said.
Though people could still abuse the drug by taking larger quantities, some addicts craved the injectable high.
As the supply of the old formulation dwindled, panicked drug abusers flooded Internet chat rooms in attempts to find ways to outsmart the new technology, from pounding it with hammers to soaking it in acid, said Sgt. John McGuire, head of the prescription drug diversion unit at the Louisville Metro Police Department.
"At first, people tried to defeat it," McGuire said. "Then, Opana started to pop up like crazy."
Opana ER, an extended-release painkiller containing oxymorphone, came on the market in 2006. Endo Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer, completed development of a crush-resistant pill in 2010 but did not get approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until late last year, said Endo senior vice president Blaine Davis.
On June 14, the FDA moved the old Opana formulation to its list of discontinued drugs. Davis said he doesn't know how much remains on the market.
Meanwhile, the Opana problem grew swiftly and sharply, particularly in several states where prescription drug abuse is deeply ingrained:
•Nassau County, N.Y., issued a health alert in 2011 when the New York City suburb saw the first signs of an alarming spike in Opana use. Medicaid data for the county showed prescriptions for extended-release Opana had increased 45% in six months. Since then, Reynolds said, the problem has worsened. "Opana has emerged as the key drug of choice," said Reynolds, who estimates that 80% of the 600 people who seek help each month from the Long Island Council use Opana.
•A DEA intelligence briefing noted increases in Opana uses in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, and Delaware. In New Castle, Del., the DEA said, drug users had switched from uncrushable OxyContin to the crushable oxymorphone "for ease of use," pushing the price for a 40 mg tablet to $65. A tablet costs $4 to $8 when purchased legitimately at a pharmacy.
•In Ohio, authorities in Akron, Cincinnati and Athens noted surges in Opana as a replacement for OxyContin, the state's Substance Abuse Monitoring Network reported earlier this year. One unnamed drug abuser in Youngstown told network monitors "no one wants the new oxys now that (Purdue) change the makeup of them," the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network noted in its January surveillance report. Opana 40 mg tablets sell for $60 to $70 each, outpacing the once-popular old formulation OxyContin, which now sells for at least $1 a milligram, the report said. The less popular new formulation of OxyContin 40 mg sells for $20 to $30, the report said.
The spike is particularly pronounced in Kentucky. In 2010, toxicology tests identified oxymorphone, the key ingredient in Opana, in 2% of the state's overdose cases, said Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. By 2011, oxymorphone was present in the blood of 23% of overdose victims.
The numbers so alarmed Ingram that he asked the CDC to do an epidemiological study to pinpoint where the drug was coming from and why use had increased. Ingram is waiting to hear from the CDC, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Ingram fears the problem will get worse this year. "I don't think we've hit the apex yet," he said. "We're just now seeing how big this is."
Abuse, then the overdoses
A similar switch happened in Indiana, where the pill problem began a decade ago with hydrocodone — known by trade names Vicodin and Lortab — and then to oxycodone, said Sgt. Jerry Goodin of the Indiana State Police.
"When OxyContin changed, the drug abusers looked for a different thing. Opana emerged immediately," Goodin said. "Seems like every time we get a handle on something, another evil pops its head up."
Soon after Opana came on the scene, the overdoses began, Goodin said. "When you abuse it and manipulate it and do all the things you're not supposed to do, it turns deadly."
Oxycodone abuse was well established in Scott County, Ind., when Sheriff Dan McClain took office in January 2011. He expected more of the same. Instead, the small-town sheriff in the sparsely populated county of 24,000 people in southeast Indiana confronted a rash of Opana overdoses.
"We were starting to see it emerge and surpass OxyContin early that year," McClain said.
Last year, 19 people in the tiny county died of overdoses, the majority on Opana in combination with alcohol and other drugs, Scott County Coroner Kevin Collins said. This year, 13 people have died from drug overdoses, he said.
McClain said in some cases the people purchased the drugs from elderly people with legitimate prescriptions who sold the drugs to supplement their Social Security income. Others bought the drugs from drug dealers who traveled to out-of-state "pill mills" — clinics where doctors perform cursory examinations on people with dubious injuries and prescribe large quantities of the pills, he said.
The number of overdose deaths is unusually high for the county and has pushed the number of coroner's cases from an average of 28 a year to 39 in the first six months of 2012. The coroner must investigate all unattended or suspicious deaths, he said.
Collins, who has been coroner or deputy coroner for 27 years, said he won't seek office again this year. The overdoses — mostly of people ages 18 to 30 — weigh heavily on him.
"It's depressing. It's still somebody's son or brother or dad," he said. "They got hooked on this crap, and it takes their lives."
Lori Croasdell, coordinator for the Coalition to Eliminate Abuse of Substances in Scott County and a member of the Governor's Commission for a Drug-Free Indiana, said she sees signs of an Opana shortage that might be the result of the new formulation. Pharmacists report that desperate addicts call to ask whether the old formulation is in stock, she said.
"People are going to find something else," Croasdell said.
When a production snafu caused a nationwide shortage of Opana earlier this year, the price in Louisville soared from $65 for a 40 mg pill to $185, McGuire said. "That is a crazy amount of money. For a heavy abuser who will give up anything in his life to make sure he gets that pill, there's no way one will get them through the day."
The price spike sparked a surge in heroin use, which might foreshadow what will happen when the supply of old Opana dries up, McGuire said.
Indiana's Goodin agrees. "We're battling that uptick like we're battling everything else. We've got a war on our hands. We're fighting it every day."
The shortages drive crime as people steal the drugs or steal other things to get money to buy drugs, he said.
A desperate cycle
The man charged with the Fort Wayne drug store robbery — 36-year-old Aaron McAtee — has struggled since his teens with a drug addiction that began with cocaine and progressed to painkillers, according to his wife, April. Court records show McAtee has been in and out of prison for forgery, cocaine possession and other drug convictions. His court-appointed public defender, Michelle Kraus, declined to comment while the case is underway.
April McAtee said Opana and other prescription narcotics sell for high prices on the street. "You could snort a piece of Opana and you're high like you're on heroin. Because of that, the street usage went up big time," she said.
McAtee, who has pleaded not guilty, was released from prison Feb. 8 after serving two years for forgery. His wife said he forged payroll checks to get money to buy drugs. After his release, he stayed drug-free for 16 weeks, but relapsed the night before the alleged robbery, she said.
"He doesn't need to be locked in prison with a bunch of criminals," she said. "He needs medical help."
What did you expect? How are you going to frame somebody is you allow them to defend themselves????
L.A. County law enforcers accused of withholding key evidence
By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times
July 11, 2012, 3:29 a.m.
Los Angeles County prosecutors and sheriff's officials have for years concealed complaints about law enforcement misconduct and other important evidence from defendants in criminal cases, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by civil rights attorneys and legal scholars.
At a news conference announcing the suit, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California blasted the Sheriff's Department and district attorney's office for following policies he said played "fast and loose with evidence of innocence of those prosecuted."
The lawsuit cited several cases in which authorities allegedly failed to disclose information about misconduct complaints filed by inmates against deputies who were to be witnesses in criminal cases. Attorneys behind the lawsuit claimed that similar evidence might have been kept hidden in far more cases — possibly thousands — over the last decade.
"In Los Angeles County, we have a system of injustice for all criminal defendants," Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the local ACLU, told reporters.
The Sheriff's Department and district attorney's office denied the allegations, saying the lawsuit mischaracterized how they decide what evidence is turned over.
"The lawsuit ... is a blatant attempt to mislead the public and the court," Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in a statement. "This office is confident that our ... policy complies with the highest constitutional and statutory standards."
In addition to filing a lawsuit, the ACLU submitted a state bar complaint against Cooley and called for a civil grand jury investigation as well as the appointment of an independent counsel to review cases that have resulted in convictions since the controversial policies were adopted.
The lawsuit's claims go to the heart of the legal duty that prosecutors have to ensure defendants receive a fair trial by disclosing information favorable to the defense.
The broad outline of the district attorney's policy about what should be disclosed dates to 2002 and has been hailed by some as a model. But others, including many defense attorneys, have criticized its approach.
Tuesday's lawsuit contends that the district attorney's office violates the rights of inmates by preventing prosecutors from disclosing information about law enforcement misconduct complaints and other evidence unless there is "clear and convincing evidence" that the information is true. That is a higher burden than the "preponderance of evidence" standard required for police departments to discipline or fire officers. Prosecutors in other counties, such as Ventura, do not require such a high standard, the ACLU said.
The suit also claims that the district attorney's office improperly withholds evidence that involves ongoing investigations and requires prosecutors to decide for themselves what evidence would probably affect the outcome of the defendant's case.
Harry Caldwell, a professor at Pepperdine School of Law, examined a copy of the district attorney's policy at the request of The Times and suggested that prosecutors should be advised to more often ask judges whether certain evidence needs to be disclosed.
"Let the judge, that neutral, independent, detached magistrate, make the determination," said Caldwell, a former Riverside and Santa Barbara county prosecutor who now represents inmates on death row.
The lawsuit also takes aim at the way the Sheriff's Department keeps track of inmate complaints against deputies.
The suit cited testimony earlier this year by a sheriff's lieutenant who acknowledged that the department does not keep inmate complaints in the personnel files of the deputies accused of misconduct, requiring officials to hand-search thousands of documents to find complaints against specific jailers.
Jonathan Goodwin was one of four inmates cited in the lawsuit who claim they were beaten by deputies but then falsely accused of being the aggressors and charged with assault. Goodwin's attorney sought evidence of complaints against the deputies involved in the incident but was told none existed, the lawsuit said. Only when she contacted the ACLU did she discover that one of the deputies had been the subject of several excessive force complaints by inmates.
Goodwin was acquitted of assaulting deputies in May, according to the suit.
"I am lucky to be here rather than in state prison, but I am sure that there are lots of other people who are not so lucky," he told reporters.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the department has yet to review the lawsuit but disputed the claim that inmates are beaten and then falsely accused of assault. Assistant County Counsel Roger Granbo declined to discuss the lawsuit's claims but said the Sheriff's Department complied with a subpoena from a defense attorney earlier this year seeking inmate complaints against specific deputies.
"There has never been an attempt by anyone in the Sheriff's Department to hide anything from anybody, especially the court," Granbo said.
jack.leonard@latimes.com
But don't expect the government to do the right thing.
The cops will probably make these people prove their innocence.
Justice Dept., FBI to review use of forensic evidence in thousands of cases
By Spencer S. Hsu, Published: July 10
The Justice Department and the FBI have launched a review of thousands of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted or deserve a new trial because of flawed forensic evidence, officials said Tuesday.
The undertaking is the largest post-conviction review ever done by the FBI. It will include cases conducted by all FBI Laboratory hair and fiber examiners since at least 1985 and may reach earlier if records are available, people familiar with the process said. Such FBI examinations have taken place in federal and local cases across the country, often in violent crimes, such as rape, murder and robbery.
The review comes after The Washington Post reported in April that Justice Department officials had known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people but had not performed a thorough review of the cases. In addition, prosecutors did not notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that it will conduct the more expansive review.
“The Department and the FBI are in the process of identifying historical cases for review where a microscopic hair examination conducted by the FBI was among the evidence in a case that resulted in a conviction,” spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said in a statement. “We have dedicated considerable time and resources to addressing these issues, with the goal of reaching final determinations in the coming months.”
FBI spokeswoman Ann Todd deferred comment to the Justice Department.
In its April report, The Post identified two District men convicted largely on the testimony of FBI hair analysts who wrongly placed them at crime scenes. Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1981. Since the Post report, Tribble’s conviction was vacated, and on Tuesday, prosecutors moved to overturn Odom’s conviction and declare him innocent. The Justice Department had not previously reviewed their cases.
Chitre said the new review would include help from the Innocence Project, a New York-based advocacy group for people seeking exoneration through DNA testing. It also would include the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Steven D. Benjamin, a Richmond lawyer who is incoming president of the association, called the review “an important collaboration” and a departure from one-sided government reviews that left defendants in the dark.
“Mistakes were made. What is important now is our working together to correct those mistakes,” Benjamin said, adding that his organization will “fully assist in finding and notifying all those who may have been affected.”
The review comes as the National Academy of Sciences is urging the White House and Congress to remove crime labs from police and prosecutors’ control, or at least to strengthen the science and standards underpinning the nation’s forensic science system.
The last time the FBI abandoned a forensic practice was in 2005, when it ended efforts to trace bullets to a specific manufacturer’s batch through analyzing their chemical composition after its methodology was scientifically debunked. The bureau released files in an estimated 2,500 bullet-lead cases only after “60 Minutes” and The Post reported the problem in 2007.
Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department official who investigated the FBI Laboratory in the mid-1990s as inspector general and, more recently, the city of Houston’s crime lab, said the review is important as the nation’s crime labs come under scrutiny.
“These recent developments remind us of the profound questions about the validity of many forensic techniques that have been used over the course of many decades and underscore the need for continuing attention at every level to ensuring the scientific validity and accuracy of the forensic science that is used every day in our criminal justice system,” Bromwich said.
The Post reported in April that hair and fiber analysis was subjective and lacked grounding in solid research and that the FBI lab lacked protocols to ensure that agent testimony was scientifically accurate. But bureau managers kept their reviews limited to one agent, even as they learned that many examiners’ “matches” were often wrong and that numerous examiners overstated the significance of matches, using bogus statistics or exaggerated claims.
Details of how the new FBI review will be conducted remain unclear. The exact number of cases that will be reviewed is unknown. The FBI is starting with more than 10,000 cases referred to all hair and fiber examiners. From those, the focus will be on a smaller number of hair examinations that resulted in positive findings and a conviction.
It also is unclear whether the review will focus only on exaggerated testimony by FBI examiners or also on scientifically unfounded statements made by others trained by the FBI, or made by prosecutors. Also unclear is at what point government officials will notify defense attorneys or the Innocence Project.
In past reviews, the department kept results secret and gave findings only to prosecutors, who then determined whether to turn them over to the defense.
California medical marijuana operation targeted by feds
By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times
July 11, 2012, 9:10 p.m.
The federal government is moving to shut down the nation's largest and highest-profile medical marijuana dispensary operation, filing papers to seize properties in Oakland and San Jose where Harborside Health Center does business.
Copies of the federal Complaint for Forfeiture were taped to the front doors of the two dispensaries Tuesday, alleging that they were "operating in violation of federal law."
Medical marijuana advocates, as well as some state and local officials, decried the action, saying it hurts patients in legitimate need of the drug and breaks repeated promises by President Obama's Justice Department that it was targeting only operations near schools and parks or otherwise in violation of the state's laws.
The U.S. attorney for Northern California, Melinda Haag, said she now found "the need to consider actions regarding marijuana superstores such as Harborside" because they presented unique opportunities for abuse.
Harborside was co-founded by outspoken marijuana activist Steve DeAngelo in 2006 and was the subject of a reality show, "Weed Wars," on the Discovery Channel last year. While other dispensary operators have sought a low profile since California's four U.S. attorneys began cracking down on the industry in October, DeAngelo has consistently railed against the federal intervention, advocated for better state regulations and become a leader in the movement.
"People are not going to stop using cannabis, they're just going to buy it in the illegal marketplace … on the streets," he said Wednesday in an interview. "Why are federal prosecutors using their discretion to do something so profoundly destructive?"
DeAngelo said that he would fight the Justice Department "openly and in public" and that he would resist any effort by his landlords to evict the dispensaries in response to the federal complaint — which targeted the property owners, not the tenants.
While all marijuana use and sales are illegal under federal law, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee last month that federal agents were targeting only those large-scale growers and dispensaries that have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws, and going beyond that which the states have authorized."
In a statement released late Wednesday, Haag suggested "superstores such as Harborside" fit that bill.
"The larger the operation, the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state's medical marijuana laws, and marijuana in the hands of individuals who do not have a demonstrated medical need."
She noted that Harborside claims to have "over 108,000 customers."
California's medical marijuana laws are nebulous in regard to how the drug is to be distributed and courts have yet to settle the matter. Still, marijuana activists often hail Harborside as a model of professionalism and compliance. Its main facility in Oakland is one of four independent enterprises permitted and strictly regulated by the city.
"If Harborside is not in compliance with state law, no one is," said DeAngelo, 54.
The Oakland dispensary was awarded its permit in 2006 after the city put out a request for proposals. DeAngelo says it does about $22 million in annual sales, and the San Jose shop does about $8 million. Together they pay about $3 million in city and state sales taxes, and employ more than 100 people.
The state Board of Equalization estimates it collects $58 million to $105 million in annual sales tax from dispensaries.
"If we continue to drive everything underground, we're going to create an unsafe environment for patients who need this product … and lose revenue," board member Betty Yee said.
This week's move against Harborside further highlights the continuing conflict between local and federal officials over the drug.
"The city of Oakland has developed a system to assure such distribution occurs according to state law in a fair and orderly process," Nancy Nadel, member of the Oakland City Council and vice mayor of the city, said in a statement. "It is most unjust to our citizen patients and distributors who have followed local guidelines to be harassed and treated as criminals by federal officials."
Medical marijuana advocates said the Obama administration has repeatedly reneged on its promises that it would not meddle with the state laws.
"This is the most obvious and significant step by the federal government in attacking completely law-abiding dispensaries," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. "It becomes more untenable for them to say they are just going after certain facilities and not just undermining the state's marijuana laws."
Hermes said the Justice Department has sent more than 200 letters to dispensaries and their landlords, threatening to seize their property if the shops do not close. It has been an effective strategy. With the letters, raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration and IRS audits, the government has forced more than 400 to close in the state, Hermes said, including the nearby Berkeley Patients Group, which was also seen as a model in the industry and closely regulated by local officials.
He knew only of half a dozen cases in which federal prosecutors actually filed an asset forfeiture complaint, as they did with Harborside.
Already, Harborside was embroiled in a battle with the IRS, which was seeking $2.5 million in back taxes, using an obscure provision of the tax code to say dispensaries cannot deduct routine expenses such as rent and wages.
Under Haag's supervision, agents and prosecutors have targeted a number of leaders in the medical pot movement. In October, DEA agents raided the Mendocino County marijuana farm of Matthew Cohen, who helped push for permitting and regulating cannabis cultivation in that county. And in April, they targeted a pot trade school and dispensary run by Richard Lee, who put the legalization measure Proposition 19 on the ballot in 2010.
In her statement, Haag said: "The filing of the civil forfeiture complaints against the two Harborside properties is part of our measured effort to address the proliferation of illegal marijuana businesses in the Northern District of California."
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
Medical marijuana sales becoming cash only
Andrew S. Ross
Updated 07:41 p.m., Wednesday, July 11, 2012
If you're about ready to refill your supply of medical marijuana, you might want to stop by an ATM first.
In the past few days, a number of Bay Area dispensaries have told their clients that from now on it's cash only, because Visa and MasterCard aren't allowing their cards to be used for marijuana purchases anymore.
"Visa and MasterCard are now refusing to accept your credit card charges for your medicine at many Bay Area dispensaries. We are working diligently to address this issue quickly," Vapor Room, a Haight Street dispensary, told members Sunday.
Harborside Health Center in Oakland sent its patients a similar message, blaming a "continuing federal threat of seizure against financial institutions."
In fact, Harborside, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, is facing a federal seizure threat of its own. On Wednesday, it was served notice from the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco that its facilities in Oakland and San Jose are subject to forfeiture because they are being used to "distribute and cultivate marijuana."
The decision by the credit card companies is an apparent reaction to the ongoing federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries nationwide. Although marijuana for medical use is legal in 17 states plus the District of Columbia, it remains verboten as far as federal law, and the feds continue to take a dim view of commerce surrounding the practice.
"This has been going on for at least two years, with major financial institutions purging medical marijuana dispensaries from their transactions," said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a national advocacy group based in Oakland.
For its part, San Francisco's Visa said Wednesday, "Our policy is that Visa cards should only be used in connection with legal transactions. We do not allow the Visa payment system to be used for any illegal activity and have banned illegal transactions on Visa cards. Merchant banks, also known as acquirers, are responsible for ensuring that their merchant customers comply with all applicable laws."
Calls and e-mails to MasterCard were not returned.
Turned away at banks: Hermes said that the dispensaries are also having trouble finding a bank that will take their business. Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase are reported to have closed off their teller windows to the businesses, as has San Francisco's Wells Fargo, which up until last year was offering accounts to local dispensaries.
"In view of the complex, inconsistent legal environment relating to medical marijuana dispensaries, Wells Fargo Regional Banking has opted not to bank these businesses," the bank said last year. "The policy extends to all medical marijuana dispensaries, and ... we have advised all such businesses that bank with us that they will need to close their deposit accounts. Additionally, it has been our policy not to provide merchant card processing services to businesses of this type."
That means Wells Fargo debit cards can't be used either, which comes as an additional blow to the dispensaries. Meanwhile, Square, the San Francisco mobile payments platform, is also cracking down on dispensaries that use its service. "Dispensaries are a violation of our terms of service. We have and will continue to shut down any users who do not follow the rules," Square said Wednesday.
Deaf ears: Responding to the concerns raised by the banks, 15 members of Congress, including Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, Pete Stark, D-Fremont, Sam Farr, D-Monterey - oh, and Ron Paul, R-Texas - asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in May 2010 to assure financial institutions "whose account holders are involved in a business ostensibly operating in compliance with a state medical marijuana law," that they would not be targeted by the department. Two years on and Geithner has yet to respond.
Earlier, in October 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo telling U.S. attorneys around the country they "should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana."
The congressional appeals and Obama administration memos appear to have had little effect. Besides the threat of foreclosure, Harborside, for example, is embroiled in a $2.5 million dispute with the IRS over a claim the dispensary illegally deducted business expenses such as payroll taxes, rent, health insurance and workers' compensation, because it was involved in what the IRS labeled "the trafficking of controlled substances."
All this means that legalized medical marijuana businesses are having to conduct transactions in the same way as those who traffic in the substance illegally - in cold, hard cash. Some dispensaries already have ATMs in their offices, but that doesn't lessen the potential criminal hazards.
"Dispensaries are now having to deal with large amounts of cash," said Hermes. "That's not to say security at the facilities aren't adequate, but it does put them at greater risk of being robbed. These are issues everyone is struggling with."
Andrew S. Ross is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: bottomline@sfchronicle.com Blogging: www.sfgate.com/columns/bottomline Twitter: @andrewsross Facebook page: sfg.ly/doACKM
2 sophisticated border drug tunnels found
Jul. 12, 2012 02:58 PM
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO -- Two sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnels outfitted with lighting and ventilation systems were discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border, including one in Arizona that authorities said Thursday was likely built with engineering expertise seldom seen in previous, crude passageways.
Both tunnels were more than 200 yards long. One began under a bathroom sink inside a warehouse in Tijuana but was unfinished and didn't cross the border into San Diego. The Mexican army found the tunnel Wednesday.
The other was discovered Saturday in a vacant strip mall storefront in the southwestern Arizona city of San Luis. It showed a level of sophistication not typically associated with other crude smuggling passageways that often tie into storm drains in the state.
"When you see what is there and the way they designed it, it wasn't something that your average miner could put together," said Douglas Coleman, special agent in charge of the Phoenix division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You would need someone with some engineering expertise to put something together like this."
As U.S. authorities heighten enforcement on land, tunnels have become an increasingly common way to smuggle enormous loads of heroin, marijuana and other drugs into the country. More than 70 passages have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years.
A total of 156 secret tunnels have been found along the border since 1990, but the vast majority were incomplete.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 52 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border. In early December 2009, authorities found an incomplete tunnel that stretched nearly 900 feet into San Diego from Tijuana, equipped with an elevator at the Mexican entrance.
The latest Arizona tunnel was discovered after state police pulled over a man who had 39 pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle and mentioned the strip mall.
The tunnel was found beneath a water tank in a storage room and stretched across the border to an ice-plant business in the Mexican city of San Luis Rio Colorado. It was reinforced with four-by-six beams and lined with plywood.
Investigators believe the tunnel wasn't in operation for long because there was little wear on its floor, and 55-gallon drums containing extracted dirt hadn't been removed from the property.
Coleman said investigators can't yet say for sure if the tunnel, estimated to cost $1.5 million to build, was operated by the brutal Sinaloa cartel. Still, authorities suspect cartel involvement because the group from Sinaloa controls smuggling routes into Arizona.
"Another cartel wasn't going to roll into that area and put down that kind of money in Sinaloa territory," Coleman said. "Nobody is going to construct this tunnel without significant cartel leadership knowing what's going on."
The Tijuana tunnel and been under investigation by U.S authorities for three months, and they found no connections to the smuggling operation involving the Arizona passageway.
It takes six months to a year to build a tunnel, authorities say. Workers use shovels and pickaxes to slowly dig through the soil, sleeping in buildings where the tunnels begin until the job is done. Sometimes they use pneumatic tools.
'Extraordinary' U.S.-Mexico drug tunnel may be Sinaloa cartel's
By William C. Rempel
July 12, 2012, 4:51 p.m.
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — The powerful Sinaloa drug cartel is believed to be behind one of the most sophisticated and well-engineered smuggling tunnels ever found along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. drug enforcement officials who announced the discovery Thursday in Yuma.
The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.
It is outfitted with lights, fans and a ventilation system. The vertical shafts on both sides of the border descend 57 feet, creating what officials said were significant engineering challenges.
“I would suspect that professional engineers were cooperating with the builders, if not working on site,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA's Phoenix field office. He said construction might have taken at least a year and cost an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million.
It was unclear how much, if any, contraband may have been smuggled through the recently completed tunnel, but authorities said its existence was exposed by the seizure last week of a 39-pound load of methamphetamine. The drugs were found by state police during a traffic stop on the highway between San Luis and Yuma and then traced back to the warehouse.
Two couriers were arrested, one of them a U.S. citizen. A third person also has been arrested in a case that Coleman said was “only beginning.” Coleman declined to answer questions about the continuing investigation.
DEA investigators who searched the warehouse found tons of sandy soil stored in dozens of 55-gallon drums. The stored dirt “suggested there must be a tunnel,” Coleman said at a news conference Thursday.
Access to the tunnel was located under a 2,000-gallon water tank that could be moved only with the use of a forklift. Investigators found the vertical shaft lined with 4-by-6-inch wooden planks. The tunnel itself is lined with plywood and reinforced with the same planks. It is about 6 feet 6 high and 4 feet wide.
On the Mexico side, access was found in the ice house, where investigators also found stacks of 200-pound seed bags apparently filled with additional tons of excavated sand and dirt. Entry to the vertical shaft was underwater. Investigators had to drain a large tank to get to it.
Asked to compare the tunnel to nearly 140 others found along the Mexican border with Arizona and California in the past 10 years, Coleman said he had seen nothing like it. “It's an extraordinary piece of engineering,” he said.
The one-story warehouse, part of a strip mall only a few steps from the San Luis border crossing, had been under surveillance by DEA agents for several months as a suspected stash location. The ice house also had been a suspect site in the past, raided at various times in recent years by Mexican drug agents without anything suspicious turning up.
Coleman said that although the people behind the tunnel had yet to be identified, “it's a good guess” that it will be tied to the Sinaloa cartel and people employed by drug boss Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
DEA officials said estimates that the tunnel could have cost as much as $2 million were based on initial analysis of the materials used in construction. They speculated that sophisticated underground sensors and directional devices might have been used to assure that the tunnel from the Mexico side actually met the vertical shaft under the San Luis warehouse.
Also found at the warehouse were two vans formerly operated by the U.S. Postal Service, faded remnants of their identifying decals still visible. Investigators believe the cartel intended to disguise some of its drug shipments as U.S. mail.
Jay Crede of Homeland Security Investigations said the tunnel was of obvious concern to his department, but he celebrated its discovery. He called the loss of the tunnel “a blow to … traffickers.”
Another DEA veteran, Coleman aide Chris Feistl, went further. “As drug cases go, we didn't get a whole lot of dope in this seizure,” he said, “but when you think about how much cartel time and effort and money went into this tunnel — we really ruined somebody's day.”
The 39 pounds of methamphetamine has an estimated wholesale value to the cartel of nearly $700,000. Its street value is about five times higher.
Cops view this as a reason to demand that they get more money to fight the drug war - which is throwing more money down the rat hole. The rest of us should view this as a reason to admit the "drug war" is a dismal failure that should be ended.
In the article Richardson seems to say we should arrest drug addicts to stop the crime caused by the drug war.
Of course that logic is wrong. The only reason addicts steal is because of the super high cost of drugs, which is created by the black market.
If you legalized drugs, the price of drugs would drop so addicts would not have to steal to feed their habits.
Richardson: Targeting addicts the more effective way to reduce crime in our cities
Posted: Thursday, July 12, 2012 8:30 am
Guest commentary by Bill Richardson
“We’ve cut off the head of the snake. This definitely makes it a lot harder for our children and residents to get drugs. We can go out all day and arrest people with marijuana or a sixteenth of an ounce of meth. Or we can go out and do an investigation like this for six months and affect thousands of people.” -- Tempe police Lt. Noah Johnson, East Valley Tribune story Tempe part of major drug bust connected to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, July 6, 2012
On July 6 at a press conference Tempe police announced with the help of the Drug Enforcement Administration they’d busted 20 members of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel who’d been running drugs out of a residence near a Tempe police station. Police said the lengthy investigation resulted in 14 warrants served statewide and the seizure of $2.4 million dollars, 3 tons of marijuana, 30 pounds of meth, 14 guns, 10 vehicles and one airplane.
This is Tempe’s third case since 2009 against the global Sinaloa cartel that’s considered the biggest and baddest in the world. Its leader Joaquin Guzman is on Forbe’s list of billionaires. Guzman controls drugs in Arizona, the state he’s made a major transshipment in his hemispheric supply chain.
While the latest Tempe bust sounds like it might impact “thousands of people,” the feds estimate Mexican drug traffickers generate $20-$40 billion dollars annually from U.S. drug sales. Heroin production in 2009 was estimated at 110,000 pounds. Marijuana production is measured in the tens of thousands of tons. Drug availability, production and demand are up. A 2012 story in the Texas Tribune said “Mexican traffickers make $5 billion annually from meth.”
The May 22 edition of insightcrime.com reported Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Matthew Allen testified before Congress, "approximately 23 percent of the narcotics and approximately 53 percent of the currency" linked to the drug trade and seized by ICE officials came from Arizona last fiscal year.
Unfortunately, the proverbial snake Johnson mentions has thousands of heads. There’s nothing in my 20 years working drug investigations or anything I can find that tells me this bust will “make it a lot harder to get drugs.”
Thousands of people, many of whom are associated with Arizona’s massive gang and career criminal population, work for the Sinaloans delivering an uninterrupted supply of dope to buyers.
Police officials love to tough talk after a drug bust. I’ve heard the same spiel for decades and all I can see that’s changed is Mexico-based drug businesses have gone from mom-and-pop operations to global criminal enterprises -- and Arizona has become an illegal drug super-store.
Big busts haven’t solved or even slowed the crime that’s linked to heroin and meth addicts.
Cops from across the state told me addicts commit as much as 85 percent to 90 percent of Arizona’s burglaries and thefts, and many criminals are high on heroin or meth when they commit armed robberies and murders. Most are career criminals. Many have warrants for their arrest.
Over a quarter of a million serious felony crimes were committed in Arizona during 2010. About 20 percent were solved.
While not politically correct, the one thing that has proven to reduce crime is targeting addicts for arrest.
Targeting users has been highly successful in reducing DUI related accidents.
The Arizona Republic reported on Jan. 25, 2012 that “Mesa police reported a 34 percent increase in drug arrests during the past two years.” Mesa targets addicts who commit crimes. Its crime rate is almost 20 points lower than Tempe’s.
Should Tempe police leave the Sinaloa Cartel to the DEA and ICE and concentrate on addicts with a “sixteenth ounce of meth” who are responsible for most serious crime?
We can argue all day about what to do about America’s ongoing drug problems.
But the one thing we do know for sure is when addicts who commit crimes are locked up, they’re not committing crimes in our cities.
Lets face it marijuana must do something to make people feel good. Millions of people wouldn't be using marijuana and risking arrest if the drug didn't make them feel good.
Ariz. researchers: Pot not effective in treating PTSD, anxiety, migraines, depression
Posted: Friday, July 13, 2012 4:01 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Researchers at the University of Arizona report they've found precious little credible research that shows marijuana is effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ditto for migraines, depression and general anxiety disorder, said the doctors from the school's College of Public Health.
And those findings -- or, more to the point, the lack of findings -- could prove to be a fatal blow to efforts by some to expand the list of ailments for which a doctor in Arizona can legally recommend marijuana. State Health Director Will Humble, who gets the final word, said he expects to make his decision by the end of the month.
The reports are a direct outgrowth of the 2010 voter-approved law which allows the use of marijuana by patients suffering from a list of several specified medical conditions. These range from glaucoma and AIDS to any chronic or debilitating condition that leads to severe and chronic pain.
With a doctor's recommendation, patients can get a card from the state allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. So far the state has issued close to 31,000 of these cards.
That 2010 law, though, requires Humble to regularly consider requests for expanding the list of conditions for which marijuana can be recommended.
Proponents submitted requests for four new conditions. And Humble heard hours of testimony from those who said they are afflicted along with how marijuana -- used by many now without legal permission -- has helped.
Backers also submitted everything from news and magazine articles to what they claimed was scientific backing.
But Humble said state law requires something more substantial for him to expand the list. And that, he said, means full-blown, double-blind, peer-reviewed scientific studies.
So Humble contracted with the UA to review everything that is out there and see if there is anything credible.
The researchers found precious little.
Looking at PTSD, for example, they rated the most of the studies of "very low quality.''
Among the problems were not only the small size of many of the studies, but that those who were participating were "self selected'' as opposed as being drawn at random from the population at large.
They did find one study they rated as of moderate to high quality. But the researchers said they found no studies at all which actually researched the benefits -- or harms -- of marijuana use among those with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Similarly, they found only two systematic reviews that directly attempted to explore the association between depression and marijuana use.
"Both reviews were of low quality,'' the researchers said.
They said there is "conflicting evidence'' of whether marijuana use and various forms of anxiety are related. Among the problems is the question of whether anxiety causes marijuana use or even that marijuana use causes anxiety.
Nor could researchers find credible reports on the issue of marijuana and migraines.
Humble said while the UA reports are helpful, he still wants to discuss the findings with his staff before issuing a final ruling.
He said the lack of research supporting the theory that marijuana is helpful in treating the conditions is only part of the problem. The health director said he wants to make sure that allowing patients to use marijuana does not make matters worse.
And that fear, he said, is complicated by the fact that the 2010 law only allows him to add to the list of conditions. Humble said there are no provisions for shrinking the list if subsequent research shows that marijuana use actually would be detrimental.
Humble said he has another concern: He does not want to be in a position of essentially allowing patients with some serious conditions to self-medicate with marijuana rather than getting treatment to deal with an underlying condition that is causing a problem like depression in the first place.
Personally I support legalizing all drugs, even if there is no
medical use for them and people only want to use them for
recreational uses.
You should be able to decide what foods and drugs you put
in your body, not some government nanny.
Source
Evidence pot aids PTSD is slim
PHOENIX - Researchers at the University of Arizona report they've found little credible research showing marijuana is effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ditto for migraines, depression and general anxiety disorder, said the doctors from the school's College of Public Health.
And those findings - or, more to the point, the lack of findings - could prove to be a fatal blow to efforts by some to expand the list of ailments for which a doctor in Arizona can legally recommend marijuana. State Health Director Will Humble, who gets the final word, said he expects to make his decision by the end of the month.
The reports are an outgrowth of the 2010 voter-approved law allowing the use of marijuana by patients suffering from a list of several specified medical conditions. These range from glaucoma and AIDS to any chronic or debilitating condition that leads to severe and chronic pain.
With a doctor's recommendation, patients can get a card from the state allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. So far the state has issued almost 31,000 of these cards.
The 2010 law, though, requires Humble to regularly consider requests for expanding the list of conditions for which marijuana can be recommended.
Proponents submitted requests for four new conditions. Humble heard hours of testimony from those who said they are afflicted, along with how marijuana, used by many now without legal permission, has helped.
Backers also submitted everything from news and magazine articles to what they claimed was scientific backing.
But Humble said state law requires something more substantial for him to expand the list. And that, he said, means full-blown, double-blind, peer-reviewed scientific studies.
So Humble contracted with the UA to review all the information that is out there and see if there is anything credible.
The researchers found precious little.
Looking at PTSD, for example, they rated most of the studies of "very low quality."
Among the problems were not only the small size of many of the studies, but also that participants were "self-selected" as opposed as being drawn at random from the population at large.
They did find one study they rated as being of moderate to high quality. But the researchers said they found no studies at all that actually researched the benefit or harm of marijuana use among those with post-traumatic stress disorder. Similarly, they found only two systematic reviews that directly attempted to explore the association between depression and marijuana use.
"Both reviews were of low quality," the researchers said.
They said there is "conflicting evidence" about whether marijuana use and various forms of anxiety are related. Among the problems is the question of whether anxiety causes marijuana use or even that marijuana use causes anxiety.
Nor could researchers find credible reports on the issue of marijuana and migraines.
Humble said that while the UA reports are helpful, he still wants to discuss the findings with his staff before issuing a final ruling.
He said the lack of research supporting the theory that marijuana is helpful in treating the conditions is only part of the problem. The health director said he wants to make sure allowing patients to use marijuana does not make matters worse.
And that fear, he said, is complicated by the fact that the 2010 law only allows him to add to the list of conditions. Humble said there are no provisions for shrinking the list if subsequent research shows that marijuana use actually would be detrimental.
Humble said he has another concern: He does not want to be in a position of essentially allowing patients with some serious conditions to self-medicate with marijuana rather than getting treatment to deal with an underlying condition that is causing a problem like depression in the first place.
Measure permitting pot clubs in Palo Alto likely headed to voters
By Jason Green
Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: 07/14/2012 12:21:43 AM PDT
Voters in Palo Alto could be asked in November to pass an initiative that clears the way for three medical marijuana dispensaries to set up shop, although the future of such establishments remains hazy.
The city council is expected to approve a resolution Monday night that would put the question on the fall ballot.
Brought forward by Palo Alto residents Thomas and Cassandra Moore, the initiative calls for an ordinance that would essentially reverse a ban on cannabis clubs the city enacted in 1997 following the passage of Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act.
However, City Attorney Molly Stump warned council members in a report that questions continue to swirl around the legality of dispensaries and prohibitions against them. State legislation passed in 2004 provided patients access to medical marijuana through "collective, cooperative cultivation projects," but federal law contains no exception for medical use.
In two cases, the Fourth District Court of Appeal issued conflicting opinions about whether local governments can prohibit cannabis clubs completely. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled in a third case that federal law prohibits the establishment of dispensaries.
The California Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the three cases, as well as one other in which a ban on cannabis clubs in San Bernardino County was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
"In summary, depending on the outcome of the
four cases pending with the Supreme Court, if the initiative measure is adopted by the voters, it is possible that it would be vulnerable to judicial challenge," the city attorney wrote in her report. "Similarly, if the initiative measure is not adopted, the city's existing ban may also be vulnerable to challenge."
The city could sidestep the problem by passing a companion initiative that prevents the first one from taking affect until there is a "definitive judicial decision removing any question that local jurisdictions may lawfully regulate medical marijuana dispensaries" as proposed.
"At this point, it is difficult to predict how long this will be," Stump said. "Briefing is under way in the cases accepted by the California Supreme Court. Because at least some of the issues involve federal pre-emption they may be resolved by the United States Supreme Court."
The three cannabis clubs in Palo Alto would be prohibited from operating within 150 feet of any residential zone, 600 feet of any school, and 500 feet of any library, park, licensed day care center or substance-abuse rehabilitation center. They could only operate between the hours of 9 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The initiative, which needs a simple majority to pass, would also establish a 4 percent tax on gross receipts of all dispensaries in the city.
The Palo Alto City Council is scheduled to meet Monday at 5:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
Email Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com; follow him at twitter.com/jgreendailynews.
In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 14, 2012
WASHINGTON — A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.
Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and “defamatory” information about the agency.
F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.
While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.
The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.
The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists’ claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation.
A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists’ medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed “a substantial and specific danger to public safety.”
The documents captured in the surveillance effort — including confidential letters to at least a half-dozen Congressional offices and oversight committees, drafts of legal filings and grievances, and personal e-mails — were posted on a public Web site, apparently by mistake, by a private document-handling contractor that works for the F.D.A. The New York Times reviewed the records and their day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour accounting of the scientists’ communications.
With the documents from the surveillance cataloged in 66 huge directories, many Congressional staff members regarded as sympathetic to the scientists each got their own files containing all their e-mails to or from the whistle-blowers. Drafts and final copies of letters the scientists sent to Mr. Obama about their safety concerns were also included.
Last year, the scientists found that a few dozen of their e-mails had been intercepted by the agency. They filed a lawsuit over the issue in September, after four of the scientists had been let go, and The Washington Post first disclosed the monitoring in January. But the wide scope of the F.D.A. surveillance operation, its broad range of targets across Washington, and the huge volume of computer information that it generated were not previously known, even to some of the targets.
F.D.A. officials said that in monitoring the communication of the five scientists, their e-mails “were collected without regard to the identity of the individuals with whom the user may have been corresponding.” While the F.D.A. memo described the Congressional officials and other “actors” as collaborating in the scientists’ effort to attract negative publicity, the F.D.A. said that those outside the agency were never targets of the surveillance operation, but were suspected of receiving confidential information.
While federal agencies have broad discretion to monitor their employees’ computer use, the F.D.A. program may have crossed legal lines by grabbing and analyzing confidential information that is specifically protected under the law, including attorney-client communications, whistle-blower complaints to Congress and workplace grievances filed with the government.
Other administration officials were so concerned to learn of the F.D.A. operation that the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a governmentwide memo last month emphasizing that while the internal monitoring of employee communications was allowed, it could not be used under the law to intimidate whistle-blowers. Any monitoring must be done in ways that “do not interfere with or chill employees’ use of appropriate channels to disclose wrongdoing,” the memo said.
Although some senior F.D.A. officials appear to have been made aware of aspects of the surveillance, which went on for months, the documents do not make clear who at the agency authorized the program or whether it is still in operation.
But Stephen Kohn, a lawyer who represents six scientists who are suing the agency, said he planned to go to federal court this month seeking an injunction to stop any surveillance that may be continuing against the two medical researchers among the group who are still employed there.
The scientists who have been let go say in a lawsuit that their treatment was retaliation for reporting their claims of mismanagement and safety abuses in the F.D.A.’s medical reviews.
Members of Congress from both parties were irate to learn that correspondence between the scientists and their own staff had been gathered and analyzed.
Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has examined the agency’s medical review procedures, was listed as No. 14 on the surveillance operation’s list of targets — an “ancillary actor” in the efforts to put out negative information on the agency. (An aide to Mr. Van Hollen was No. 13.)
Mr. Van Hollen said on Friday after learning of his status on the list that “it is absolutely unacceptable for the F.D.A. to be spying on employees who reach out to members of Congress to expose abuses or wrongdoing in government agencies.”
Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican whose former staff member’s e-mails were cataloged in the surveillance database, said that “the F.D.A. is discouraging whistle-blowers.” He added that agency officials “have absolutely no business reading the private e-mails of their employees. They think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want.”
While national security agencies have become more aggressive in monitoring employee communications, such tactics are unusual at domestic agencies that do not handle classified information.
Much of the material the F.D.A. was eager to protect centered on trade secrets submitted by drug and medical device manufacturers seeking approval for products. Particular issues were raised by a March 2010 article in The New York Times that examined the safety concerns about imaging devices and quoted two agency scientists who would come under surveillance, Dr. Robert C. Smith and Dr. Julian Nicholas.
Agency officials saw Dr. Smith as the ringleader, or “point man” as one memo from the agency put it, for the complaining scientists, and the surveillance documents included hundreds of e-mails that he wrote on ways to make their concerns heard. (Dr. Smith and the other scientists would not comment for this article because of their pending litigation.)
Lawyers for GE Healthcare charged that the 2010 article in The Times — written by Gardiner Harris, who would be placed first on the surveillance program’s list of “media outlet actors” — included proprietary information about their imaging devices that may have been improperly leaked by F.D.A. employees.
F.D.A. officials went to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services to seek a criminal investigation into the possible leak, but they were turned down. The inspector general found that there was no evidence of a crime, noting that “matters of public safety” can legally be released to the news media.
Undeterred, agency officials began the electronic monitoring operation on their own.
The software used to track the F.D.A. scientists, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., costs as little as $99.95 for individual use, or $2,875 to place the program on 25 computers. It is marketed mainly to employers to monitor their workers and to parents to keep tabs on their children’s computer activities.
“Monitor everything they do,” says SpectorSoft’s Web site. “Catch them red-handed by receiving instant alerts when keywords or phrases are typed or are contained in an e-mail, chat, instant message or Web site.”
The F.D.A. program did all of that and more, as its operators analyzed the results from their early e-mail interceptions and used them to search for new “actors,” develop new keywords to search and map out future areas of concern.
The intercepted e-mails revealed, for instance, that a few of the scientists under surveillance were drafting a complaint in 2010 that they planned to take to the Office of Special Counsel. A short time later, before the complaint was filed, Dr. Smith and another complaining scientist were let go and a third was suspended.
In another case, the intercepted e-mails indicated that Paul T. Hardy, another of the dissident employees, had reapplied for an F.D.A. job “and is being considered for a position.” (He did not get it.)
F.D.A. officials were eager to track future media stories too. When they learned from Mr. Hardy’s e-mails that he was considering talking to PBS’s “Frontline” for a documentary, they ordered a search for anything else on the same topic.
While the surveillance was intended to protect trade secrets for companies like G.E., it may have done just the opposite. The data posted publicly by the F.D.A. contractor — and taken down late Friday after inquiries by The Times — includes hundreds of confidential documents on the design of imaging devices and other detailed, proprietary information.
The posting of the documents was discovered inadvertently by one of the researchers whose e-mails were monitored. The researcher did Google searches for scientists involved in the case to check for negative publicity that might hinder chances of finding work. Within a few minutes, the researcher stumbled upon the database.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said the researcher, who did not want to be identified because of pending job applications. “I thought: ‘Oh my God, everything is out there. It’s all about us.’ It was just outrageous.”
Andy Lehren contributed reporting.
I suspect if he does allow any new conditions his boss
Jan Brewer who is also a drug war tyrant will fire him.
Medical marijuana: Arizona mulls adding qualifying conditions
Depression, PTSD among cases weighed for pot use
by Lindsey Erdody - Jul. 14, 2012 08:46 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona health officials are considering adding post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and migraines as qualifying conditions to use medical marijuana. Department of Health Services Director Will Humble is expected to decide this week.
Voters approved Proposition 203 in November 2010, and it went in effect in April 2011.
Under the law, individuals can use marijuana to treat debilitating medical conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, Lou Gehrig's disease, Crohn's disease or Alzheimer's disease.
The measure also gave the Department of Health Services the ability to expand conditions.
As of May 8, about 28,000 patients have participated in the program.
If the state expands qualifying conditions to include PTSD, Humble estimates the program will add 15,000 to 20,000 patients.
Activists square off over expansion of pot program
The Republic turned to two Arizona activists to discuss whether the state should add post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and migraines as qualifying conditions to use medical marijuana.
Ingrid Joya oversees Elements Caregivers Collective, a medical-marijuana caregiver collective in northeast Phoenix.
Carolyn Short is chairwoman of Keep Arizona Drug Free, an organization that opposed Proposition 203.
PRO: Ingrid Joya
Question: Do you think the state should expand the medical-marijuana program to include PTSD, depression, anxiety and migraines?
Answer: I absolutely think the program should be expanded. We were one of the co-sponsors of the PTSD application. The state didn't touch on any mental-health issues. And I think with PTSD, there's enough data and research that suggests marijuana can work very effectively on it. When you think of how marijuana works as a blocker in the brain, it makes sense that it would work with PTSD because most people suffering from it are reliving those memories.
Q: If the state adds these conditions, how will it impact the program?
A: I think it will expand the program with all of the veterans that are coming back with PTSD and the rape victims and other people that need it. You're going to have quite a few more patients on board, and you should.
Q: What conditions should be covered or not covered with the expansion? Are there any conditions you would add?
A: PTSD is the one we're most focused on. I know there was a testimony on migraines, but I don't know to add them or not. I don't know as much about them.
Q: What will happen if the state adds more than 15,000 people to the program?
A: I think they will seek the legal methods of being able to get medical marijuana. I think these people that want to go through the time and effort to get these cards, they deserve it. I think these people want to follow the law. I think the system can handle it, and I think the dispensaries can handle it. I think what you might see is 15,000-20,000 people added to the program and that many less being prescribed other pain medicines. And that would be a good thing.
CON: Carolyn Short
Question: Do you think the state should expand the medical-marijuana program?
Answer: I think they should voluntarily get rid of it before the federal government comes into the state and shuts it down. It's illegal. It's an unconstitutional law that is going to get struck down, and I think we're wasting a whole lot of time. Under federal law, marijuana is illegal to use, grow or sell. There is no exception for marijuana sold for so-called medical marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. [What part of the 10th Amendment doesn't Carolyn Short understand??? OK, maybe I should also says what part of the 10th Amendment doesn't the Supreme Court understand???]
Q: If the state adds these conditions, how will it impact the program?
A: The only other state that has PTSD as a qualifying condition is New Mexico, and the health director there has already said they want to get rid of that condition and the severe-pain condition because these are the two conditions that are most frequently abused. [That is a lie. In California you can pretty much use ANY condition to get medical marijuana. Doctor, I have a headache and need a joint is all that's needed in California] I think we're totally off-base moving forward. Adding to it just makes it more abusive.
Q: What conditions do you believe should be covered or not covered with the expansion? Are there any conditions you would add?
A: I wouldn't add anything to it because I believe we need to get rid of the program. This whole hoax was started by people who wanted to legalize marijuana through the back door. It's a strategy to try and get marijuana legalized in this country. [Yes a lot of people want marijuana legalized just so they can get high, but so what. Marijuana is a wonder drug for treating some medical conditions such as glaucoma]
Q: What will happen if the state adds more than 15,000 people to the program?
A: We have more than enough conditions, and anyone who really wants to smoke it can say, "I've got horrible pain," and there are plenty of doctors that will prescribe it. There is no research that would support adding PTSD as a condition. I don't know why we would add that.
From this article it seems like the Feds have a secret database
of who they consider criminals. The secret part is what bothers me.
The database seems to be named "SAVE" for "Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements"
AP NewsBreak: Feds OK Fla. access to citizens list
By CHARLES BABINGTON | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a victory for Republicans, the federal government has agreed to let Florida use a law enforcement database to challenge people's right to vote if they are suspected of not being U.S. citizens.
The agreement, made in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott's administration that was obtained by The Associated Press, grants the state access to a list of resident noncitizens maintained by the Homeland Security Department. The Obama administration had denied Florida's request for months but relented after a judge ruled in the state's favor in a related voter-purge matter.
Voting rights groups, while acknowledging that noncitizens have no right to vote, have expressed alarm about using such data for a purpose not originally intended: purging voter lists of ineligible people. They also say voter purges less than four months before a presidential election might leave insufficient time to correct mistakes stemming from faulty data or other problems.
Democrats say that the government's concession is less troubling than some GOP-controlled states' push to require voters to show photo identification.
But Republicans count it as a victory nonetheless in their broad-based fight over voter eligibility, an issue that could play a big role in the White House race. That's especially true in pivotal states such as Florida, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina.
Republican officials in several states say they are trying to combat voter fraud. Democrats, however, note that proven cases of voter fraud are rare. They accuse Republicans of cynical efforts to suppress voting by people in lower socio-economic groups who tend to vote Democratic.
The Homeland Security decision may affect places beyond Florida, because Colorado and other states have asked for similar access to the federal database.
After a judge recently ruled against federal efforts to stop Florida's aggressive voter-list review, Homeland Security agreed to work on details for how the state can access the federal SAVE database — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — to challenge registered voters suspected of being noncitizens.
Florida has agreed that it can challenge voters only if the state provides a "unique identifier," such as an "alien number," for each person in question. Alien numbers generally are assigned to foreigners living in the country legally, often with visas or other permits such as green cards.
Unless they become naturalized citizens, however, they cannot vote.
The agreement will prevent Florida from using only a name and birthdate to seek federal data about a suspected noncitizen on voter rolls.
The SAVE list is unlikely to catch illegal immigrants in any state who might have managed to register to vote because such people typically would not have an alien number.
Scott, whose administration had sued Homeland Security for access to the SAVE list, said the agreement "marks a significant victory for Florida and for the integrity of our election system."
"Access to the SAVE database will ensure that noncitizens do not vote in future Florida elections," Scott said in a statement Saturday.
In a letter Monday, the department told Florida it was ready to work out details for providing access to the SAVE list. The letter was signed by Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
It follows a flurry of legal actions between Florida and the federal government. On June 11, the Justice Department said it would sue Scott's administration on grounds that the state's voter-purge efforts violated voting rights laws.
The same day, Scott announced a lawsuit against Homeland Security seeking access to the SAVE list. He said it could be a valuable tool in determining who is a citizen. Two weeks later, a U.S. judge blocked the federal attempts to stop Florida's voter review efforts; the Mayorkas letter soon followed.
A Homeland Security spokesman said Saturday the agency had no further comment.
Department officials told the Orlando Sentinel last month they had concerns about using the SAVE list for voter-review purposes. They said the list's information is incomplete and does not provide comprehensive data on all eligible voters, the newspaper reported.
Scott's administration hopes to restart a suspended voter registration purge that was hampered this year by faulty data and bad publicity. The review, using driver's license information, initially produced 180,000 voters' names considered worthy of checking. County election supervisors examined 2,625 people on the list. But more than 500 were soon found to be citizens, and the review was halted.
State records show that 86 noncitizens were removed from the voter rolls since April 11, and more than half of them had voted in previous elections.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner asked election officials Saturday to restart the review. He said it will "include a carefully calibrated matching process" between the state's driver and voter data "before any records are verified through SAVE."
But Florida Sen. Arthenia Joyner, a Tampa Democrat, said Scott and his team should not be purging voter lists so close to a big election.
"This is just another in the continuing saga of his efforts to suppress the vote, along with a lot of the other Republican governors," Joyner said. "They are all caught up in trying to keep this president from getting re-elected."
While some noncitizens who are legal residents may knowingly try to register and vote, others apparently do so unwittingly. After obtaining a driver's license, some assume they also can vote, officials say.
Access to the federal SAVE list may catch such ineligible voters in Florida. They presumably would have an alien number and be listed in state motor vehicle records.
Voter-rights groups expressed concerns about Florida's efforts.
"No matter what database Florida has access to, purging voters from the rolls using faulty criteria on the eve of an election could prevent thousands of eligible voters from exercising their rights," said Jonathan Brater, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. "Florida must use a more transparent and accurate process and must leave enough time for voters targeted for removal to be notified and correct errors," he said.
Some state governments have sought access to the federal database for years. Federal officials told Washington state in 2005 they saw no way to compare voters and the Homeland Security information.
Colorado has sought the federal data for a year. Colorado, which has a Democratic governor but a Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler, has identified about 5,000 registered voters that it wants to check against the federal information.
Officials in the politically competitive states of Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico and Iowa — all led by GOP governors — are backing his efforts.
Gessler said 430 registered voters have acknowledged being ineligible, but an "unenforceable honor system does not build confidence in our elections."
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
In 2007, five years after the George W. Bush administration launched a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department found virtually no evidence of organized efforts to influence federal elections with ineligible voters.
___
Associated Press writers Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Fla., and Mike Baker in Olympia, Wash., contributed to this report.
Research is lacking to expand program
Jul. 18, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
If Arizona's medical marijuana program is to expand, the state's health director says, it should be based on solid, objective information that the drug makes a difference.
If no research supports expansion, the program should remain just the way voters approved it.
A new University of Arizona study found little to support the proposition that marijuana eases anxiety, migraines, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The best the UA team could find were inconclusive studies recommending more research.
Granted, the illegal nature of marijuana leaves doctors and scientists reluctant to put much effort into studies of the drug.
Supporters knew that before they put this issue on the ballot.
They knew that, when it came to expansion, they would likely be left with only anecdoctal stories and belief to support the idea that marijuana has any medical value.
No other drug would be allowed on the market based on anecdotes. No other industry would be allowed to sell what may be nothing more than a placebo with approval of the state.
If we're going to call it medical marijuana and require a prescription to use it, lesser standards should not be acceptable.
That would only confirm the suspicions of those who suspect that this initiative was never about medicine but only a back-door attempt at legalizing a drug.
The article says:
Prior to the passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act marijuana was legal in just about every country in the world. And prior to the passage of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act all drugs including heroin and cocaine were legal in almost every country in the world.
In both cases the American government exported our draconian drug laws to the rest of the world by bribing or giving money to other countries to get them to enforce our draconian drug war laws.
As 3 states mull marijuana legalization, experts warn: 'Beware'
By Ian Duncan
July 17, 2012, 12:29 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- Legalizing marijuana in even a single state could drive down prices dramatically across the country, encouraging more people to smoke the drug, a panel of experts said at a briefing Tuesday.
Last week, Oregon became the third state that will vote this November on a ballot measure to legalize marijuana, joining Colorado and Washington.
“Legalization is unprecedented – not even the Netherlands has done it – it is entirely possible it will happen this year,” said Jonathan Caulkins, co-author of "Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know."
“The effects will be enormous,” said Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, during an event at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Obama administration opposes legalizing marijuana and has taken action to shut down some medical marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado.
Caulkins said one of the main reasons for outlawing the drug is to make it riskier to produce and sell, driving up prices and curbing use. A price collapse following legalization in some states could undermine marijuana laws nationally, the experts warned.
Caulkins said Colorado’s proposition would allow residents to obtain a grower’s license fairly easily, making the state a good home for exporters of marijuana.
“They would be able to provide marijuana to New York state markets at one quarter of the current price,” he said, predicting similar price declines in other states.
Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA, said his advice to federal officials would be “to sit down with the governor of the state and say, 'Look, we can make your life completely miserable -- and we will - unless you figure out a way to avoid the exports.”
One option would be to impose strict limits on how much of the drug retailers could sell to each customer.
Washington’s proposal would present authorities with a different problem. The state is proposing to create a strong system of regulations with the aim of propping up prices. Caulkins said the federal government could strike down the regulations but would leave a free-for-all behind.
“The federal government will face some really difficult choices where actions are like double-edged swords,” Caulkins said.
No medical pot for PTSD, White House says
by Patricia Kime - Jul. 18, 2012 10:31 AM
Military Times
Responding to a petition signed by 8,258 people on the White House website, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske wrote last month that marijuana is not a "benign drug" and does not meet standards of safe or effective medicine.
"When the President took office, he directed all his policymakers to develop policies on science and research, not ideology or politics," Kerlikowske wrote.
The White House usually requires 25,000 signatures before it will respond to such petitions.
The "Allow United States Disabled Military Veterans Access To Medical Marijuana To Treat Their PTSD" petition was launched last year by former Air Force Sgt. Mike Krawitz, executive director of Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access.
Krawitz said he launched the drive partially out of concern that veterans sometimes risk losing their Veterans Affairs Department medical coverage if they are found to smoke pot.
"For many, cannabis not only treats PTSD, it's a lifesaver," Krawitz told Military Times in October.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes, but it remains illegal under federal law.
The Obama administration has held steadfast in enforcing federal laws applicable to medical marijuana production, sales and distribution. Kerlikowske said the administration maintains that marijuana use is associated with cognitive impairment, respiratory illnesses and addiction.
"We know from an array of treatment admission information and federal data that marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms," he wrote.
He added that the administration supports research on the phytochemicals in marijuana that might have medicinal value.
Arizona Congressman David Schweikert is just another drug war tyrant
who doesn't get it and in this
letter
responds to Steven Boring with his illogical and insane views on the
drug war.
I predicted this a while ago. I am not a psychic or a genius, but based the fact that in the past drug war tyrant Will Humble said he would not allow any new illnesses to be treated with medical marijuana unless there was well documented scientific proof that marijuana works.
And of course with that statement Will Humble created a Catch 22 which allowed him to refuse to allow any new illnesses to be treated with medical marijuana. For all practical purposes the DEA will not allow anyone to do medical research proving that marijuana is a useful drug. And of course that means there is not medical research documenting that marijuana is a wonder drug that helps sick people with a number of illnesses.
Of course Will Humbles refusal to allow any new uses for medical marijuana is a slap in the face for the people who voted for Prop 203.
Most of us who voted for Prop 203 knew that the DEA classified marijuana as a drug with no medical use whatsoever. And of course the drug warriors who wanted to keep marijuana illegal reminded voters with that in their propaganda against Prop 203 that according to the twits at the DEA marijuana has no medical use whatsoever.
Prop 203 does not require any double blind scientific medical studies to allow new illnesses to be added to the list of illnesses that can be treated with medical marijuana. Again Will Humble invented this roadblock on his own, or probably at the request of his boss, Jan Brewer who is also a drug war tyrant.
One odd thing is Will Humble rejected migraine headaches as a illnesses that can be treated by medical marijuana. I know several people who currently have medical marijuana prescriptions because of migraine headaches.
In the Arizona Republic article Will Humble grudgingly admitted that migraine headaches are currently a condition which people can get medical marijuana prescriptions for.
I think it is time to boot both Jan Brewer and Will Humble out of office on this issue.
Arizona official refuses to expand health conditions for medical marijuana
Ross D. Franklin, The Associated Press
Medical Marijuana
Posted: Thursday, July 19, 2012 9:14 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Humble said there were many "moving stories'' from people who said that their use of marijuana helped them deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and migraines. He also said his agency received numerous articles about the effectiveness of marijuana.
But Humble said all that, by itself, was not enough.
"My guiding principle for making the decision was to use science and research to guide when deciding whether to add petitioned conditions,'' he wrote in his findings. And Humble pointed out that he specifically asked the University of Arizona College of Public Health to find that research.
[So it looks like this "research" was rigged so that Will Humble could use the results to reject any new uses for medical marijuana. I suspect that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was also involved in createing this rigged study againts medical marijuana]
But that, he said, came up lacking.
"In short, I didn't approve the petitions because of the lack of published data regarding the risks and benefits of using cannabis to treat or provide relief for the petitioned conditions,'' Humble said.
The decision was not surprising: Humble's own medical advisory committee recommended earlier this week he do just that.
"Because marijuana has not been subjected to any high quality, scientifically controlled testing for any of the petitioned conditions, we find no convincing evidence that marijuana provides a benefit,'' wrote Dr. Laura Nelson, the agency's chief medical officer.
"We acknowledge there is anecdotal evidence that using marijuana has helped patients,'' Nelson continued. "But there is no way to exclude the possibility that the improvement is due solely to placebo.''
And Nelson worried that allowing patients with any of the four conditions to use marijuana for treatment might actually cause harm.
"Patients may use marijuana to self medicate, and avoid seeking care from a trained medical professional,'' she wrote. "Delaying initiation of appropriate, proven treatments and therapies could result in a worsening of their condition or misdiagnosis of a more serious condition.''
Humble's decision disappointed Suzanne Sisley. She is a physician with the Telemedicine Program at the UA College of Medicine and a specialist in internal medicine and psychiatry.
She said that, despite the lack of formal full-blown scientific studies, she believes marijuana works.
"A large proportion of my medical practice is taking care of combat vets with PTSD and first responders who have PTSD,'' Sisley said.
"All these folks have gone through all the standard conventional meds,'' she said, in hopes for finding something that works.
"Often what these folks find is they cannot achieve enough stability to be able to work and be functional,'' Sisley continued. "And when they've exhausted all the conventional treatment, they end up being forced to buy cannabis on the street illegally.''
Sisley said, though, the decision comes as no real surprise.
She said that Humble, in demanding evidence from scientifically backed peer-reviewed studies, essentially set the requests to expand the medical marijuana program up for rejection. That's because the National Institute for Drug Abuse, which controls the only legal supply of marijuana for medical research has consistently refused to give the go-ahead for the kind of studies Humble said he needs.
The 2010 voter-approved law allows doctors to issue formal recommendations for marijuana use to patients who have a specific set of conditions spelled out in statute. These range from glaucoma and AIDS to chronic or debilitating conditions that lead to severe and chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, or severe and persistent muscle spasms.
Someone with a doctor's recommendation then can get a card from the Department of Health Services allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.
But the law also requires the health director to consider adding to that list every year. That led to the requests to add the four specific conditions.
While the statute does not restrict how Humble makes that decision, his agency adopted rules which require consideration of whether marijuana use would provide "a therapeutic or palliative benefit'' to the individual.
But the rules also require those requesting an addition to provide a summary of the evidence not only that the use of marijuana will help but also "articles, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, reporting the results of research on the effects of marijuana on the medical condition or a treatment of the medical condition supporting why the medical condition should be added.''
Sisley, who helped prepare the request to add PTSD to the list, said that pretty much predetermined the outcome.
"I knew there certainly wasn't data that rose to the level of scientific rigor that he's looking for,'' she said. "He set an unattainable standard because there will not be any randomized trials that look at the efficacy of marijuana.''
That, she said, is because of the ability of NIDA to block research on marijuana, which the federal government classifies as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning there is no medical uses for it.
Sisley said she is proof of that. She said the Food and Drug Administration gave its approval in April 2011 for a study she wants to do but that, without NIDA action, "it's sitting in limbo.''
Humble has acknowledged the lack of those kinds of studies.
But he also pointed out that more than a dozen other states have medical marijuana laws. And he said that health professionals there may be able to do some kinds of studies with marijuana made available through those state laws, getting around the federal restrictions.
Despite his decision, Humble said there may be a loophole of sorts.
He pointed out that the 2010 voter-approved measure has a list of conditions for which marijuana is presumed to be medically effective. Humble said those who suffer from migraines may already qualify under the "chronic pain'' provision in that law.
Arizona medical marijuana list expansion rejected
by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Jul. 19, 2012 09:58 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Over the past several months, Humble has been weighing whether to expand the program to allow legal use of the drug by those who have post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression or migraines. He's heard from patients, their families and physicians who said the drug helps manage pain at public hearings. He's listened to opponents who say the drug leads to dangerous situations in the home and on the road. He's read new University of Arizona studies that concluded there is simply not enough evidence to prove whether marijuana is medically effective. And back in college, he even tested the drug himself.
The state's program already permits medical marijuana use for conditions such as chronic pain, cancer and hepatitis C. As of late June, about 30,000 people participated in the state's program, which in certain instances, allows them to grow marijuana.
Arizona is one of 17 states nationally that allows medical marijuana. It would become the only one in the nation to allow medical marijuana for anxiety and depression if those options were approved.
In a Thursday interview with The Arizona Republic, Humble shed light on his long-awaited decision, which can be appealed.
Question: Will you put post-traumatic stress disorder on the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana? Why or why not?
Answer: No. There's just not the scientific evidence out there yet to support permanently adding any of the conditions to the qualified list, at least right now. I recognize there's a real shortage of studies and data that's out there. You base your policy decisions on science and research, and not ideology or a predetermined political point of view.
Q: You have drawn criticism from some veterans and their advocates who accuse of you of being unsympathetic to their stories of how pot has changed their lives. How do you respond to that?
A: All I can say is, from the bottom of my heart, I'm not unsympathetic. The stories that the veterans told when we had our hearing were compelling. But the bottom line is, the science isn't there yet. And maybe someday there will be additional research -- and there's some research that's ... at least being proposed right now.
Q: Will you put depression on the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana? Why or why not?
A: No. Same thing for depression. Depression is sort of in the category where there is very good treatment these days for depression -- very effective medications that have been through rigorous clinical trials.
Q: Will you put anxiety on the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana? Why or why not?
A: No. Anxiety was probably the one that had the least amount of research.
Q: Will you put migraines on the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana? Why or why not?
A: No. On migraines, there were almost no studies out there. Migraines is probably already on the list if it causes severe and chronic pain, which it does in a lot of patients. Migraine headaches are, by their definition, severe. The question is, at what point does a clinician think they're chronic as well? A typical clinical presentation could easily qualify a patient for a card if a clinician really thought that was the best or appropriate treatment.
Q: You have asked for scientific evidence that marijuana is medically effective. Some physicians have said that request is unreasonable because of restrictions by some agencies on testing the efficacy of marijuana. What is your response?
A: I'll concede that the clinical-trial type of research is controlled by NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) and they are pretty strict when it comes to clinical trials, when it comes to the use of testing medical marijuana. But there are all kinds of studies that can be conducted that don't need NIDA approval. The barriers that exist are really around those clinical types of studies. I've never said ... that I would have to have a clinical-trial type of design in order to convince me something should be added to the list. Observational studies that are not under the control of NIDA can be very powerful if they're designed properly and eliminate ... things that would confuse the results. The challenge is getting it funded. The typical federal funding sources like National Institutes of Health and NIDA aren't jumping all over this to fund it. There are challenges, but I disagree with people that research can't be done.
Q: You've heard hundreds of personal stories from people attesting marijuana has helped them manage pain and stop taking prescription pills. Do you believe them?
A: I believe that the folks -- especially the folks that came to the hearing --were very sincere in what it's done for them. And a lot of the testimony was moving. But this decision is one that I need to stay true to the principals of public health with. Using scientific literature and research to inform these kinds of policy decisions is just the bread and butter of everything we do in public health and medicine. I can't make that leap to make decisions based on individual testimony -- that's just something I can't do professionally, but I am very sympathetic and I do believe the testimony the folks had at the hearing.
Q: Has Gov. Jan Brewer, who has opposed medical marijuana, influenced your decision?
A: No.
Q: How is the program working overall in Arizona?
A: I honestly believe we have a model program ... We set up the regulations, especially regarding the dispensaries and the issuance of the cards that give, I think, the best medical character in the country. Our regulations, I think, are the best in the country at trying to keep this a medical program. Part of the commitment to keeping it a medical program means ... making sure we're using scientific principals to guide our way. You can see that in the decisions to not approve these petitions.
Q: Do you believe people are taking advantage of any particular diagnoses to participate in the program?
A: Are there recreational users that have accessed the system for the legal protections that it provides? Of course. But I think those folks are in the minority, in just looking at the demographics of our card users -- the ages, the types of chronic medical conditions ... the vast majority are legitimately accessing the system.
Q: Have you ever tried pot either recreationally or medically?
A: Yes. Recreationally. When I was in college at NAU (Northern Arizona University). But I didn't particularly like it.
Q: Did you inhale?
A: Yes, I inhaled.
And of course that is an impossiblity because for all practical purposes the DEA does not allow any research on medical marijuana, unless it will prove marijuana is bad, bad, bad.
Recently a studly was released by the U of A saying that medical marijuana has no documented proof it helps any illnesses on the list submitted to Will Humble.
I suspected all along that this was a "rigged" studly ordered by Will Humble and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to give them one reason to reject the proposed new uses of medical marijuana.
This article give me more ammunition to suspect that the study was intentionally created by Will Humble and Jan Brewer to demonize and discredit medical marijuana.
The article points out that Will Humble ordered the the U of A study: "Humble pointed out that he specifically asked the University of Arizona College of Public Health to find that research."
It would be nice to do a request for public records and find out when the study was ordered, and by who. And also get a copy of the study.
As I have said I suspect the study was "rigged" and the only purpose of it was to give Will Humble a reason to reject any new uses for medical marijuana.
Arizona official refuses to expand health conditions for medical marijuana
Ross D. Franklin, The Associated Press
Medical Marijuana
Posted: Thursday, July 19, 2012 9:14 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Humble said there were many "moving stories'' from people who said that their use of marijuana helped them deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and migraines. He also said his agency received numerous articles about the effectiveness of marijuana.
But Humble said all that, by itself, was not enough.
"My guiding principle for making the decision was to use science and research to guide when deciding whether to add petitioned conditions,'' he wrote in his findings. And Humble pointed out that he specifically asked the University of Arizona College of Public Health to find that research.
But that, he said, came up lacking.
"In short, I didn't approve the petitions because of the lack of published data regarding the risks and benefits of using cannabis to treat or provide relief for the petitioned conditions,'' Humble said.
The decision was not surprising: Humble's own medical advisory committee recommended earlier this week he do just that.
"Because marijuana has not been subjected to any high quality, scientifically controlled testing for any of the petitioned conditions, we find no convincing evidence that marijuana provides a benefit,'' wrote Dr. Laura Nelson, the agency's chief medical officer.
"We acknowledge there is anecdotal evidence that using marijuana has helped patients,'' Nelson continued. "But there is no way to exclude the possibility that the improvement is due solely to placebo.''
And Nelson worried that allowing patients with any of the four conditions to use marijuana for treatment might actually cause harm.
"Patients may use marijuana to self medicate, and avoid seeking care from a trained medical professional,'' she wrote. "Delaying initiation of appropriate, proven treatments and therapies could result in a worsening of their condition or misdiagnosis of a more serious condition.''
Humble's decision disappointed Suzanne Sisley. She is a physician with the Telemedicine Program at the UA College of Medicine and a specialist in internal medicine and psychiatry.
She said that, despite the lack of formal full-blown scientific studies, she believes marijuana works.
"A large proportion of my medical practice is taking care of combat vets with PTSD and first responders who have PTSD,'' Sisley said.
"All these folks have gone through all the standard conventional meds,'' she said, in hopes for finding something that works.
"Often what these folks find is they cannot achieve enough stability to be able to work and be functional,'' Sisley continued. "And when they've exhausted all the conventional treatment, they end up being forced to buy cannabis on the street illegally.''
Sisley said, though, the decision comes as no real surprise.
She said that Humble, in demanding evidence from scientifically backed peer-reviewed studies, essentially set the requests to expand the medical marijuana program up for rejection. That's because the National Institute for Drug Abuse, which controls the only legal supply of marijuana for medical research has consistently refused to give the go-ahead for the kind of studies Humble said he needs.
The 2010 voter-approved law allows doctors to issue formal recommendations for marijuana use to patients who have a specific set of conditions spelled out in statute. These range from glaucoma and AIDS to chronic or debilitating conditions that lead to severe and chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, or severe and persistent muscle spasms.
Someone with a doctor's recommendation then can get a card from the Department of Health Services allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.
But the law also requires the health director to consider adding to that list every year. That led to the requests to add the four specific conditions.
While the statute does not restrict how Humble makes that decision, his agency adopted rules which require consideration of whether marijuana use would provide "a therapeutic or palliative benefit'' to the individual.
[So basically Will Humble created a bureaucratic reason all on his own to give him an excuse to reject any new uses for medical marijuana. Prop 203 doesn't contain this requirement!!!]
But the rules also require those requesting an addition to provide a summary of the evidence not only that the use of marijuana will help but also "articles, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, reporting the results of research on the effects of marijuana on the medical condition or a treatment of the medical condition supporting why the medical condition should be added.''
Sisley, who helped prepare the request to add PTSD to the list, said that pretty much predetermined the outcome.
"I knew there certainly wasn't data that rose to the level of scientific rigor that he's looking for,'' she said. "He set an unattainable standard because there will not be any randomized trials that look at the efficacy of marijuana.''
That, she said, is because of the ability of NIDA to block research on marijuana, which the federal government classifies as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning there is no medical uses for it.
Sisley said she is proof of that. She said the Food and Drug Administration gave its approval in April 2011 for a study she wants to do but that, without NIDA action, "it's sitting in limbo.''
Humble has acknowledged the lack of those kinds of studies.
But he also pointed out that more than a dozen other states have medical marijuana laws. And he said that health professionals there may be able to do some kinds of studies with marijuana made available through those state laws, getting around the federal restrictions.
Despite his decision, Humble said there may be a loophole of sorts.
He pointed out that the 2010 voter-approved measure has a list of conditions for which marijuana is presumed to be medically effective. Humble said those who suffer from migraines may already qualify under the "chronic pain'' provision in that law.
If the cops can't get a conviction without testing the person for drugs I suspect the evidence that caused the police to originally stop the person is rather flimsy and won't hold up in court.
Under Arizona law if you have any minute, microscopic but measurable trace of an illegal drug in your body you are considered guilty of DUI, even the drug isn't impairing your driving. And of course that almost assures a conviction in a trial.
Without the drug test the cops would need to show the persons driving was impaired, making getting a conviction much harder.
Of course that is not true for people who have marijuana prescriptions or recommendations as the law calls it. Prop 203 says the cops can't use a drug test against licensed pot smokers and the cops must prove the person was impaired by other means.
I suspect this is also a grab for money, but DUI busts are big revenue for the government. Most DUI busts start with a minimum fine of at least $1,000 and I think that has gone up to to $1,500.
Mesa to speed up growing number of drug DUI prosecutions
Posted: Monday, July 23, 2012 6:57 am | Updated: 6:56 pm, Fri Jul 20, 2012.
By Garin Groff, Tribune
Mesa prosecutors plan to ramp up the city’s crime lab processing to handle the skyrocketing numbers of drug DUI arrests, which have doubled since 2009.
The additional arrests have strained police resources, especially because drug cases take longer than alcohol tests for police and lab technicians to process. The city wants to ensure it can obtain results within the 1-year statute of limitations and to ensure suspects get a right to a speedy trail, City Prosecutor Jon Eliason said.
Prosecutors have dismissed some cases while evidence was waiting to be tested, only to reopen the case when results came back. The city wants to improve that, he said.
“Getting the drugs tested is the main hurdle,” Eliason said. “You get that done, and we can file the case in no time.”
Mesa had 1,358 drug DUI cases in 2011, and the numbers have grown 35 percent to 40 percent per year recently.
In response, Mesa will add 20 additional testing hours per month for the next six months with a $17,000 grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.
Drug-impaired driving is a national problem involving illegal substances and prescription medications, Eliason said. He pointed to the role prescription drugs played in the deaths of singer Whitney Houston and actor Keith Ledger as examples of how common drug abuse has become.
“People know you shouldn’t drink and drive — that message is out there,” Eliason said. “But maybe some people think it’s OK to take, say oxycodone, which can impair your ability to drive.”
Police have found more drivers impaired by marijuana after voters approved medical use of the substance in 2010. Patients who meet state qualifications for medical marijuana can grow it legally, and the substance will become more available when the first dispensaries open later this year.
“I think the marijuana is going to keep going up,” Eliason said. “I think the designer drugs and the bath salts, they’re really dangerous and I don’t think we’ve seen the tip of those yet.”
Eliason also attributed Mesa’s growing drug DUI arrests to the police department’s extensive training for drug impairment recognition. The agency’s officers are leaders nationally in making those kinds of arrests, he said.
While the grant for the crime lab is just for six months, Eliason said the city is considering ongoing efforts to improve processing times. Also, the grant will help prosecutors develop a multimedia presentation to explain the drug recognition exam process to jurors in court.
Contact writer: (480) 898-6548 or ggroff@evtrib.com
I suspect one of the big problems is politicians, like most criminals usually pick on people who can't defend themselves. And sadly people rarely stick up for the right of people to enjoy themselves using recreational drugs like alcohol, marijuana, opium and cocaine.
I am not arguing that people should get stoned all the time. Drug abuse always has been a problem. But wasting tax dollars locking up people who take recreational drugs is far worse of a problem then the use of recreational drugs.
Leaf for Drug Cocktail Adds to Thailand’s Woes
Agnes Dherbeys for The International Herald Tribune
Published: July 22, 2012
NARATHIWAT, Thailand — As the violence-plagued provinces of southern Thailand continue to struggle with a shadowy insurgency, the restive region is battling a new enemy: a drug cocktail made from a local leaf that is seducing the young.
The drug, kratom, is far less debilitating than the methamphetamines and heroin that are trafficked through the area. But its rampant use is enough of a problem that it has caught the attention of the Thai government, and led to increased attempts to stop the trafficking.
“It’s an epidemic,” said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in the southern city of Pattani. “Kratom use has spread all over the place.”
Kratom is a tree that grows in abundance in the tropical jungles here in the south. Chewing the red-veined leaves of the tree, which is in the same family as the coffee tree, was until recently a fading tradition among farmers and rubber tappers who sought an energy boost and stamina under the oppressive sun.
But the spreading popularity of the much stronger narcotic cocktail — typically made by boiling the leaves and adding cough syrup, Coca-Cola and ice — has created a sharp increase in demand for the leaf. Young people sneak into protected forests and smuggle out duffel bags stuffed with the feather-shaped leaves.
The demand also appears to be driven in part by the stigma against alcohol among the Muslims who are a majority in the region.
“Older people aren’t angry if you boil kratom leaves because it’s considered medicine,” said one 26-year-old user who wanted to be identified only by his nickname, Mung.
The problem, authorities say, is that the cocktail sends users into a sleepy torpor, and contributes to a greater sense among villagers that drugs are a scourge for an area already mired in poverty.
“Drug use and poverty are always at the top of the list of most serious problems,” Mr. Srisompob said. “The insurgency is third.”
His most recent survey on kratom use, one in a series done on behalf of Thailand’s Office of the Narcotics Control Board, was carried out this year among 1,000 teenagers in the three troubled provinces along the border with Malaysia, and found that 94 percent of the respondents used the drug.
The drug, which is mainly used in the three provinces, is accessible to teens here in part because it is cheap; 20 leaves, enough to create a kratom cocktail for several people, cost the equivalent of $3.
The forested hills and long sand beaches of Thailand’s southernmost provinces are among the most beautiful scenery in the country. But the charm of the limestone cliffs and rice fields are marred by the deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the Thai state — and the violence that is fueled by a complex clash of ethnicity, religion and historical resentment.
While Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist, most of the 1.9 million inhabitants of the three provinces are Malay Muslims who speak a dialect of Malay used across the border in the Malaysian state of Kelantan.
Some Thai officials draw links between drug trafficking, including kratom, and the insurgency. The Thai-Malaysian border is along a major trafficking route for methamphetamines and heroin that originate in Myanmar.
The links between drugs and the insurgency that has killed more than 5,000 people since 2004, however, are disputed by many experts and law enforcement officials.
Maj. Gen. Choti Chavalviwat, the police commander in Narathiwat Province, said if there is a link between drugs and the insurgency, it is weak. “Religion, history and ethnicity drive the insurgency,” he said.
The ultimate goals of the insurgency are unclear. And unlike many terrorist acts elsewhere in the world, the nearly daily attacks in the three provinces, many targeting symbols of the Thai state, occur without groups or individuals taking responsibility.
Several years ago, Thai antinarcotics officials sought to quantify the link between drugs and the insurgency, Mr. Srisompob said. They compared a list of about 9,000 people who had gone through drug rehabilitation programs with 8,000 suspected of being involved in the insurgency.
“They came up with about 2 or 3 percent on the lists who overlapped,” Mr. Srisompob said.
Insurgents rarely recruit heavy drug users to their cause, he said, because their addiction makes them unreliable foot soldiers in the war against the Thai state.
But Mr. Srisompob sees other, more subtle interplays between the insurgency and the drugs, poverty and unemployment.
“It allows the leaders of the insurgency to say, ‘You see what Thai society is doing to us. They are trying to undermine Muslim society,’ ” he said.
So far, efforts to stop the flow of kratom have fallen short because, local authorities say, the fines for offenders are too lenient.
In recent months, the Thai police have also stepped up their campaign of cutting down trees across the country. But this has created tensions between law enforcement and those charged with protecting the environment.
The largest collection of kratom trees is in a protected forest in nearby Satun Province.
Hundreds of kratom trees thrive in a scenic valley surrounded by limestone cliffs, a spot accessible on foot by following a path that travels along a river and then passes through a large cave.
The authorities have ordered the trees felled, but the guardians of the forest are balking.
Narong Kaewsen, a park ranger at the Satun reserve, said destroying the trees, which are spread over about 30 acres, would require large amounts of herbicide. “At the very least it will harm the water, animals and plants,” Mr. Narong said. “They will also die.”
For now, Mr. Narong and other local officials are trying to stop kratom trafficking by intercepting the young people who prowl the forests, often at night, in search of the leaves.
Panya Tonoon, the headman of the local village, intercepts young traffickers several times a month. “They often just run into the jungles,” Mr. Panya said. “Sometimes we chase them.”
Despite the fact that medical marijuana is legal in Arizona Will Humble is doing is best to prevent people from legally using medical marijuana. Looks like the same is true for the members of the Los Angeles City Council.
L.A. City Council bans medical marijuana dispensaries
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
July 25, 2012
In what could be a turning point in the city's seemingly unending battle to regulate the distribution of medical marijuana, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ban all pot dispensaries, while also opening the door to possibly let some remain.
Under the ban, all of the 762 dispensaries registered in the city will be sent letters ordering them to shut down immediately. Those that don't comply may face legal action from the city.
Medical marijuana activists erupted in jeers after the decision, and police officers were called into the council chambers to quell them. Some activists threatened to sue. Others vowed to draft a ballot initiative to overturn the ban.
"We're not going to make this easy for the city of Los Angeles," said Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access.
The new ordinance will allow patients and their caregivers to grow and share marijuana in groups of three people or fewer. But activists complain that few patients have the time or skills for that, with one dispensary owner saying it costs at least $5,000 to grow the plant at home.
Councilman Jose Huizar said the ban, which received a last-minute show of support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and police Chief Charlie Beck, will help bring peace to neighborhoods that he says have been tormented by problem dispensaries.
"Relief is on its way," he said, noting that the ban would allow the city to close shops without having to prove that they are violating nuisance or land-use laws, as is the case now.
But the issue was clouded when the council also voted to instruct city staff to draw up a separate ordinance that would allow dozens of pot shops to remain open. Officials said that proposal, which would grant immunity to shops that existed before a 2007 moratorium on new dispensaries, could be back to the council for consideration in three months.
Huizar voted against that motion, which he said might give the public "false hope" that the ban would not be enforced.
But Councilman Dennis Zine, who voted for both the ban and the plan to allow some dispensaries to stay open, suggested that police might not enforce the ban against the city's original pot shops while the new ordinance is being drawn up.
"The officers will be given that information and we will concentrate on the other locations initially," Zine said.
However, Councilman Paul Koretz, who proposed the ordinance to allow some shops to stay open, called Tuesday's prohibition "a ban until otherwise noted."
How cities should regulate distribution of pot has been a gray area since California voters passed a 1996 initiative legalizing medical marijuana even though any sale of marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Officials are looking to an upcoming ruling by the state Supreme Court for clarity on whether cities can regulate and ban dispensaries, but that may not come for another year.
Council members said that in the meantime, something had to be done to reduce the number of dispensaries, which outnumber Starbucks coffee shops in Los Angeles two to one, according to Councilman Paul Krekorian.
Beck, who appeared before the council, said dispensaries can be hot spots for crime, citing burglaries, armed robberies and killings. In a letter to lawmakers, he said most pot shops are "for-profit businesses engaged in the sale of recreational marijuana to healthy young adults."
But those who support dispensaries say the ban will simply drive distribution of marijuana underground.
That's what Steven Lubell, an attorney who represents several of the city's original dispensaries, predicted. "Is it going to go away? No," said. "It's going to go to a darker side."
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Marijuana not approved to treat anxiety, depression
By Danielle Grobmeier July 22, 2012 at 4:10 pm
The Arizona Department of Health Services announced Thursday that it was denying patient petitions to add depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and migraines to the list of conditions eligible for medical marijuana treatment.
In compliance with the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, ADHS accepted patient petitions in January, held a public hearing in May and contacted the UA College of Public Health to review scientific studies and determine whether petitioned conditions would be effectively treated with medical marijuana.
ADHS will begin accepting new petitions to add conditions this week.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, or Proposition 203, was approved by voters in November 2010. The Act allows patients suffering from “chronic” or “debilitating” conditions such as cancer, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease or HIV to use medical marijuana as treatment.
The Act also implements a system of caregivers and dispensaries, regulated by ADHS, throughout the state to administer medical marijuana to medical marijuana card-holding patients. Gov. Jan Brewer challenged the Act in May 2011, two days before ADHS was to begin accepting dispensary applications. The lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton Jan. 4.
In May, ADHS accepted applications from 486 prospective dispensary owners. The state has 126 Community Health Analysis Areas, each of which will be allowed one ADHS-certified dispensary.
While 99 of the areas had at least one dispensary applicant, 27 had no applicants at all. Between Tempe’s two CHAAs, the city had 12-18 applications. ADHS will randomly select which applicant will be certified in each area on August 7, also called “Selection Tuesday.”
ADHS Office of Inspection and Compliance Chief Harmony Duport said Estrella and North Tempe were the most popular locations for dispensaries in Maricopa County.
Butch Williams, a board of directors member for the Phoenix chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, spoke at the public hearing for petitioned conditions in May.
Williams said the hearings involved extensive documentation of the benefits of medical marijuana on individuals with conditions such as PTSD, including studies done in Jerusalem.
He said Humble’s decision to reject the petitions was “disheartening,” but that he felt Humble had his hands tied with Arizona’s conservative nature.
“I’m hoping in the future that we’ll have more support from (Arizona) politicians and congressmen to allow a push for scientific studies to ensure what we have here is truly a medicine,” Williams said. “It’s a true medicine, and that is proven.”
Medical marijuana patient and Gilbert resident Mychal Zito, 23, was first advised by his physician to apply for a medical marijuana card to treat chronic pain resulting from stomach ulcers and digestive problems, both of which caused excessive weight loss.
Zito said he disliked taking the pain pills he was originally prescribed because they would make him sick.
In addition to diminishing the pain of his chronic digestive problems, he said medicating has also significantly decreased his previously high anxiety levels.
Because of this, Zito said he hopes Humble reconsiders his decision to reject the recent condition petitions, which included a petition for anxiety disorders.
Zito said he is excited for dispensaries to be certified in August, as the presence of dispensaries will make the Arizona medical marijuana program more accessible to patients such as himself.
He said he currently receives medical marijuana through one of the few home delivery services available throughout the state.
“Having a dispensary will … make me feel like I’m actually a patient,” Zito said. “It’ll be a lot easier for me to access my medication.”
Reach the reporter at dgrobmei@asu.edu
Letter: Many drugs hang around in system for long time
Posted: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:11 am
Letter to the Editor
Too bad the Tribune writer covering the growing drug DUI prosecutions made so little effort to be thorough.
What he fails to point out is that many drugs and medications including the ones mentioned in the article, marijuana and Oxycodone, remain in your body in an inactive state long beyond the time of use and long beyond any point of impairment.
It’s good for the prosecutor’s business to point a finger at drug abusers like Whitney Houston, but your neighbor who had a tooth pulled last week and took painkillers for a day or two is just as likely to be arrested in Mesa for DUI because the drug is still in his system. Our laws state that it is illegal to have certain drugs in your body and operate a vehicle, including marijuana which can remain for 30 days or more after use, long beyond any question of impairment.
So what the article really says is that the prosecutor knows this and the city is cashing in on lab tests to collect fines from people who are not impaired or a Whitney-like threat to our safety.
Perhaps what is needed is for the law to be changed, not more taxpayer-funded lab facilities.
To be fair and thorough, the writer might perhaps have interviewed a defense attorney to get the other side of the story.
Teri Cann
Mesa
Of course if the harmless drug marijuana was not illegal people wouldn't be using the potentially harmful alternatives to marijuana like spice and K2.
I am not up on the chemistry and physiology of bath salts but I guess the same argument could be made that the illegal drug LSD is much safer then the legal bath salts people are taking.
Businesses raided in nationwide crackdown on synthetic drugs
By Donna Leinwand Leger and Yasmeen Abutaleb
Police and federal agents raided dozens of businesses suspected of selling drugs such as "K2" and "Spice" in nearly 100 cities Wednesday as part of the first-ever nationwide crackdown on synthetic drugs.
The drugs, often marketed as herbal incense or bath salts, mimic highs from cocaine, marijuana and LSD and remain widely available in convenience stores, smoke shops and online despite a July 9 federal ban.
•In Columbus, Ohio, a drug task force raided three shops and a convenience store, seizing hundreds of packets of K2 and Spice, and arresting two people, Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott said. The packets of chemical-coated herbs sold for $35, Scott said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration raided a business in Worthington, Ohio, that agents believe supplied the stores, he said.
•In Duluth, Minn., federal agents executed search warrants at a shop called Last Place on Earth, which is suspected of selling the synthetic drugs, said Jeanne Cooney, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis.
Duluth Police called the store an "ever-evolving nuisance." Police said they have had a big increase in calls involving use of synthetic drugs around the shop.
"For the last 16 months, problems with synthetic drugs and the behaviors around the Last Place on Earth downtown has been a major concern for our citizens, business community and the police department," police said in a written statement.
Federal agents and local police also cracked down on businesses in Tampa, Upstate New York, and a dozen gas stations and convenience stores near Pittsburgh. In Texas, the DEA executed search warrants at 14 smoke shops in Rio Grande Valley cities, including Brownsville and South Padre Island.
Many states banned the substances after a surge in calls to poison control centers about people sickened by the drugs. The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported 6,138 calls about the drugs in 2011, up from 304 in 2010. Since then, calls to the centers have slowed. Poison control centers logged 1,717 in the first six months of 2012.
The National Association of Convenience Stores warned its more than 148,000 member stores to take the product off shelves once the federal ban took effect, spokesman Jeff Lenard said.
Storeowner Mustafa Jamal, who owns a Sunoco gas station with a convenience store in Richmond, Va., said he immediately removed synthetic drugs from the store.
"The day it was banned, the entire thing was thrown out of the building," Jamal said. He has received offers from manufacturers for other synthetic products they claim are legal, but he said he rejected them for fear of running afoul of the law.
Many stores, however, did not heed the warning. In Ohio, where the state outlawed the drugs before the federal ban, police in Columbus executed 16 search warrants at many of the stores in May, Scott said. "We let them know you need to quit it," he said.
A few weeks later, undercover officers visited the stores, Scott said.
"Sure enough, they were at it again. There's plenty of money to be made," Scott said. "This time, we're making arrests."
Things sure have changed. It pretty much always has been illegal for the police to steal your mail and read it or secretly tap your phone and listing to your calls.
But now days the police routinely listen in or read to any and all communications that use the internet, such as email, instant messaging and of course skype.
Skype makes chats and user data more available to police
By Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima, Published: July 25
Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes.
Surveillance of the audio and video feeds remains impractical — even when courts issue warrants, say industry officials with direct knowledge of the matter. But that barrier could eventually vanish as Skype becomes one of the world’s most popular forms of telecommunication.
The changes have drawn quiet applause in law enforcement circles but hostility from many activists and analysts.
The changes to online chats, which are written messages conveyed almost instantaneously between users, result in part from technical upgrades to Skype that were instituted to address outages and other stability issues since Microsoft bought the company last year. Officials of the United States and other countries have long pushed to expand their access to newer forms of communications to resolve an issue that the FBI calls the “going dark” problem.
Microsoft has approached the issue with “tremendous sensitivity and a canny awareness of what the issues would be,” said an industry official familiar with Microsoft’s plans, who like several people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. The company has “a long track record of working successfully with law enforcement here and internationally,” he added.
The changes, which give the authorities access to addresses and credit card numbers, have drawn quiet applause in law enforcement circles but hostility from many activists and analysts.
Authorities had for years complained that Skype’s encryption and other features made tracking drug lords, pedophiles and terrorists more difficult. Jihadis recommended the service on online forums. Police listening to traditional wiretaps occasionally would hear wary suspects say to one another, “Hey, let’s talk on Skype.”
Hacker groups and privacy experts have been speculating for months that Skype had changed its architecture to make it easier for governments to monitor, and many blamed Microsoft, which has an elaborate operation for complying with legal government requests in countries around the world.
“The issue is, to what extent are our communications being purpose-built to make surveillance easy?” said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a digital privacy group. “When you make it easy to do, law enforcement is going to want to use it more and more. If you build it, they will come.’’
Skype was slow to clarify the situation, issuing a statement recently that said, “As was true before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype cooperates with law enforcement agencies as is legally required and technically feasible.”
But changes allowing police surveillance of online chats had been made since late last year, a knowledgeable industry official said Wednesday.
In the United States, such requests require a court order, though in other nations rules vary. Skype has more than 600 million users, with some in nearly every nation in the world. Political dissidents relied on it extensively during the Arab Spring to communicate with journalists, human rights workers and each other, in part because of its reputation for security.
Skype’s resistance to government monitoring, part of the company ethos when European engineers founded it in 2003, resulted from both uncommonly strong encryption and a key technical feature: Skype calls connected computers directly rather than routing data through central servers, as many other Internet-based communication systems do. That makes it more difficult for law enforcement to intercept the call. The authorities long have been able to wiretap Skype calls to traditional phones.
The company created a law-enforcement compliance team not long after eBay bought the company in 2005, putting it squarely under the auspices of U.S. law. The company was later sold to private investors before Microsoft bought it in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.
The new ownership had at least an indirect role in the security changes. Skype has endured periodic outages, including a disastrous one in December 2010. Company officials concluded that a more robust system was needed if the company was going to reach its potential.
Industry officials said the resulting push for the creation of so-called “supernodes,” which routed some data through centralized servers, made greater cooperation with law enforcement authorities possible.
The access to personal information and online chats, which are kept in Skype’s systems for 30 days, remains short of what some law enforcement officials have requested.
The FBI, whose officials have complained to Congress about the “going dark” problem, issued a statement Wednesday night saying it couldn’t comment on a particular company or service but that surveillance of conversations “requires review and approval by a court. It is used only in national security matters and to combat the most serious crimes.”
Hackers in recent years have demonstrated that it was possible to penetrate Skype, but it’s not clear how often this happened. Microsoft won a patent in June 2011 for “legal intercept” of Skype and similar Internet-based voice and video systems. It is also possible, experts say, to monitor Skype chats as well as voice and video by hacking into a user’s computer, doing an end run around encryptions.
“If someone wants to compromise a Skype communication, all they have to do is hack the endpoint — the person’s computer or tablet or mobile phone, which is very easy to do,” said Tom Kellermann, vice president of cybersecurity for Trend Micro, a cloud security company.
Some industry officials, however, say Skype loses some competitive edge in the increasingly crowded world of Internet-based communications systems if users no longer see it as more private than rival services.
“This is just making Skype like every other communication service, no better, no worse,” said one industry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Skype used to be very special because it really was locked up. Now it’s like Superman without his powers.”
This
article
doesn't say it, but other articles have said that
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's "war on drugs"
isn't an effort to stop drug, but rather an effort to give
the crooks in the Mexican government a bigger cut of
the profits earned from smuggling drugs into the USA.
I am sure a lot of Constitutional experts will say she is full of BS on her stance that Federal law trumps state law and that the 10th Amendment says the opposite in this case.
This is what the 10th Amendment says:
Medical-pot program far from 'model'
by Sheila Polk - Jul. 28, 2012 12:00 AM
My Turn
Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act was narrowly passed by voters in November 2010.
The director of the Arizona Department of Health Services states
that we have a "model" program and that the demographics of the card users show
"the vast majority are legitimately accessing the system" (Valley & State, July 20).
Do the facts really support these claims?
The ADHS has issued 30,550 medical-marijuana patient cards.
Only 1,275 of the cards are for cancer;
27,330 of the cards are for self-defined chronic pain.
[Sheila, Prop 203 says doctors are allowed to prescribe or recommend medical marijuana for chronic pain. I think your problem is that you don't like marijuana being legalized for medical uses! As a prosecutor you would prefer to throw medical marijuana users in jail, because it gives you job security]
Interestingly, 74 percent of the patient cards have been issued to males; 26 percent to females. Forty-seven percent of the cards have been issued to users between the ages of 18 and 40.
[Again Sheila you seem to be bitching and griping because you dislike medical marijuana, not for any valid reason. Prop 203 does require doctors to write 50 percent of the prescriptions to males and females]
The ADHS will soon license 126 dispensaries in Arizona.
Each dispensary can also grow marijuana at a second, off-site location.
Thirteen applications were received to operate dispensaries in north Tempe,
near the main Arizona State University campus.
There is no limit to the amount of marijuana a dispensary may grow or sell.
Dispensaries are also permitted to sell marijuana to other dispensaries and
prepare and sell food products infused with marijuana.
[I am not sure if this is true.
I know that medical marijuana patients or their care takers are legally allowed to grow marijuana. A patient or the patients caretaker can grow up to 12 marijuana plants]
While the ADHS moves full speed ahead to license the cultivation of marijuana,
the U.S. Department of Justice is moving just as fast to seize medical-marijuana
dispensaries in other states, asserting the supremacy of the federal Controlled Substances Act.
[Again Sheila your hate for marijuana users seems to be getting in your way of telling the truth. ADHS isn't moving full speed ahead to license the cultivation of marijuana. Prop 203 doesn't allow that. But Prop 203 does allow a medical marijuana patient or their caretaker to grow up to 12 marijuana plants, max.]
In California, the U.S. attorney recently seized the Oakland and San Jose locations of the Harborside Health Center, adding to the list of dispensaries already shut down by the federal government in that state.
It is only a matter of time before the same dispensaries licensed by Arizona officials will be shut down by our U.S. attorney.
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution provides that federal law "shall be the supreme Law of the Land."
[Look Sheila, you are a lawyer and you seem to be forgetting the 10th Amendment which says that is FALSE when the US Constitution doesn't give the Feds the power to do something.]
Under this principle, state laws that conflict with federal law are pre-empted. [Again Sheila see the 10th Amendment] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Gonzales vs. Raich, that state medical-marijuana laws are pre-empted by the federal act.
Although states may lawfully choose to exempt marijuana from state criminal liability, they cannot affirmatively authorize a use that federal law prohibits.
[Again Sheila, that is total BS! see the 10th Amendment]
Any use of marijuana remains a crime under federal law, as does the facilitation of those acts. There is no immunity in the CSA for Arizona officials for issuing medical-marijuana licenses.
[Again Sheila, that is total BS! see the 10th Amendment]
Is this really "medical" marijuana when 4 percent of the cards are for individuals with cancer and 88 percent are for chronic pain?
[Sheila Polk you sound like a sadistic government ruler who hates to see people take drugs to releive their pain?]
Does it make medical sense that 74 percent of the "patients" are male?
[Sorry that's not the question Sheila. The question should be are all 74 percent of the medical marijuana users who are male legitimated medical marijuana users? Their doctors seem to think so. ]
Is our law really a model when it allows the cultivation of marijuana by dispensaries in unlimited amounts?
[I am not sure if this is true.
Medical marijuana patients are only allowed to grow 12 plants.
A medical marijuana patient can give their cultivation right to a caretaker,
but the caretaker is only allowed to grow 12 plants per patient]
Is it a model program when state officials license the use of marijuana directly in conflict with federal law?
[Again Sheila, many legal experts says that all the Federal laws criminalizing drugs are unconstitutional per the 10th Amendment and per the 10 Amendment the states the the right to allow medical marijuana programs. You need to complain to the Feds to stop their insane and unconstitutional war on drugs]
Lastly, what kind of model program has one arm of the government licensing dispensaries while another arm of government is shutting them down?
Sheila Polk is the Yavapai County attorney and co-chairwoman of MATForce, the Yavapai County Substance Abuse Coalition.
Two smoke shops closed in crackdown
Posted: Saturday, July 28, 2012 6:22 am
By Mike Sakal, Tribune
In an ongoing multi-law enforcement agency crackdown of the synthetic drug bath salts, two East Valley smoke shops have been closed and at least one of its owners arrested following a national sweep that netted $36 million worth of materials used to manufacture the drug.
Among the 90 arrested in the national sweep was Michael Rocky Lane, administrator of the online business, www.wickedherbal.com, who offered various smoke and bath salt accessories he advertised as legal, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency office in Phoenix. Lane also owns Up in Smoke Shop in Park Plaza at 23 W. Baseline Road in Tempe that now is closed after DEA agents raided the shop on Wednesday, a DEA spokeswoman said.
Overall, there were 17 search warrants executed in Maricopa County in recent days, and more than $3 million in assets, 3,322 pounds of synthetic cannabinoids (spice), and 733 pounds of synthetic cathinones (bath salts) were seized along with 13 firearms and 12 vehicles in Arizona alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s office in Phoenix. Overall, there were seven arrests made throughout the Valley in connection to the sweep, according to the DEA.
The raids were conducted by the DEA and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and local and state agencies.
Lane, 51, who was sentenced to five years in prison on drug-related offenses in 2000, according to Arizona Department of Corrections records, was the third owner of the beleaguered Up in Smoke Shop in three years, according to John Alvaravo, owner of J and J’s Barbershop next door.
“They did it pretty quick,” Alvaravo said of agents raiding the smoke shop. “I saw them carrying evidence out of the shop.”
“I cut his (Lane’s) hair a couple of times,” Alvaravo added. “He’s a nice guy — and a good tipper. His shop didn’t seem too busy, and one of his workers said it was pretty slow in there.”
It’s All Good Smoke Shop at 933 E. University Drive in Tempe also was targeted and closed during the raid and a warehouse building that investigators say was being used as a manufacturing facility for the bath salts and distribution warehouse near South Perry Street in Tempe, also was raided, according to Ramona Sanchez, a DEA spokeswoman.
The crackdown comes on the heels of state legislative efforts and federal bans that have failed to stop the sale and use of the drugs and amid reports of dramatic increases in emergency-room admissions and poisoning cases. “Bath salts” manufacturers stay a step or two ahead of the law by revising their recipes in attempts to stay within the bounds of the law, said Doug Coleman, special agent for the DEA office in Phoenix.
“You can’t market your substance as something that’s going to get you high and think you’re going to get out of jail because you mark it as ‘not for human consumption,’” Coleman said.
These bath salts aren’t the kind you can buy from bath and body shops or that one may associate with the old commercial, “Calgon, take me away!” but a synthetic drug that is continually altered with chemicals in clandestine labs and that can send a person into a hypermetabolic state, causing erratic behavior, an overheating of core body temperature and possibly result in death within minutes.
“The criminal organizations behind the importation, distribution and selling of these synthetic drugs have scant regard for human life in their reckless pursuit of illicit profits,” said Acting Director of ICE’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations James Chaparro.
The bath salts are toxic synthetic-drug products that may contain stimulants including MPDV (methylendedioxpyrovalerone) and mephedrone (methylmethcathinone). These drugs are not controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration and are not approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.
Users have reported impaired perception, reduced motor control, disorientation, extreme paranoia, and violent episodes. The long-term physical and psychological effects of use are unknown but can result in death.
The national crackdown also comes days after Tempe law enforcement voiced concerns about arrests made in connection to the drug of two young men, one running through a Tempe neighborhood naked as he was overheating and another who crashed his car into the entrance of an apartment complex.
Police said that both men had used bath salts at the time of their arrests.
In 2010, poison centers nationwide responded to about 3,200 calls related to synthetic “Spice” and “bath salts.” In 2011, that number jumped to more than 13,000 calls. Sixty percent of the cases involved patients 25 and younger, according to the DEA.
As of Thursday, more than 4.8 million packets of synthetic cannabinoids and the materials to produce nearly 13.6 million more as well as 167,000 packets of synthetic cathinones (bath salts) and other materials to make hundreds of thousands of more packets were seized, according to the DEA.
Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com
Arizona parolees to pay drug test fees
Bid to cut state costs called unfair by some
by Alex Stuckey - Jul. 29, 2012 08:18 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona stands to save $500,000 a year under a new law that requires parolees to pay a portion of their drug-testing fees each month, but prisoner advocates fear the additional costs will strain personal budgets.
The law goes into effect Thursday, but Arizona Department of Corrections legislative liaison Jennifer Bowser said the state has yet to determine how much the parolee will pay and when the new requirement will actually be implemented.
"This change is an efficiency, cost-saving thing," Bowser said.
Prisoner advocates fear the additional cost to parolees -- who sometimes receive $50 upon release and can already be stretched thin by mounting fees for restitution, supervision and intensive parole -- will leave many scraping for cash, said Donna Leone Hamm, executive director of Middle Ground Prison Reform.
"It's difficult to find a job and housing, and now they want to tack on yet another cost," Leone Hamm said.
Cost-saving initiative
Parolees who were charged with a drug-related offense or have a history of drug use must comply with random drug testing as part of their parole.
The Treatment Assessment Screening Center assigns parolees a color and each week announces which color will be tested. The 12 Arizona centers conduct all drug tests for the Department of Corrections.
The tests -- nearly 230,000 in 2011 -- cost the state about $500,000 per year, Bowser said.
"Our primary focus is public safety, so we were looking for an efficient, affordable way to provide that," Bowser said.
The law requires some parolees to pay a portion of the drug-testing costs, which vary by county. Maricopa County's cost is $7.80, Bowser said. The portion parolees will pay cannot exceed the amount the test costs to issue, according to the law. Parolees will only be charged once a month, regardless of whether their color is called more than once or if they repeat a test.
Legislators have yet to determine the portion paid by each tested parolee, but Bowser said it would be the same price for all parolees across the state.
"It's important we be fair," she said.
Monetary concerns
Leone Hamm fears the new law won't be implemented fairly. She fears the price of drug tests for parolees will skyrocket, leaving them reaching into their pockets for nickels and dimes that are not there. It's not charging for tests that concerns Leone Hamm, but what she says is a lack of specificity in the law.
"It's OK to charge them ... we're also concerned about how they arrive at the cost per test," she said.
The New York-based Brennan Center for Justice is a public-policy organization that focuses on democracy and justice issues. Roopal Patel, an attorney at the center, said fees building up on released prisoners make it nearly impossible for them to get above water.
"(These fees) are a revenue source for courts facing budget crises, and they fill it on the backs of poor people going through the criminal-justice system," Patel said.
The Department of Corrections will determine a person's ability to pay the fees on a case-by-case basis and could waive fees for those who cannot pay, but Bowser said there are no set guidelines to determine that.
"If an offender can't pay the fee, the department will pay it ... this isn't a black-and-white issue," Bowser said. "Someone with four kids will have more difficulty paying the fee than someone without any kids."
But Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, who opposed the bill, said it would be just as easy to have the department pay for everyone.
"When they first get out of prison, they're trying to find jobs ... they have no money, no job, and the little money they have will go to pay for a drug test," Fillmore said. "Why doesn't the state just do it for them? It's an undue burden when they should be trying to rehabilitate these people."
Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, who sponsored the bill, did not return calls seeking comment.
South America Sees Drug Path to Legalization
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: July 29, 2012
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — The agricultural output of this country includes rice, soybeans and wheat. Soon, though, the government may get its hands dirty with a far more complicated crop — marijuana — as part of a rising movement in this region to create alternatives to the United States-led war on drugs.
Uruguay’s famously rebellious president first called for “regulated and controlled legalization of marijuana” in a security plan unveiled last month. And now all anyone here can talk about are the potential impacts of a formal market for what Ronald Reagan once described as “probably the most dangerous drug in America.”
“It’s a profound change in approach,” said Sebastián Sabini, one of the lawmakers working on the contentious proposal unveiled by President José Mujica on June 20. “We want to separate the market: users from traffickers, marijuana from other drugs like heroin.”
Across Latin America, leaders appalled by the spread of drug-related violence are mulling policies that would have once been inconceivable.
Decriminalizing everything from heroin and cocaine to marijuana? The Brazilian and Argentine legislatures think that could be the best way to allow the police to focus on traffickers instead of addicts.
Legalizing and regulating not just drug use, but also drug transport — perhaps with large customs fees for bulk shipments? President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala, a no-nonsense former army general, has called for discussion of such an approach, even as leaders in Colombia, Mexico, Belize and other countries also demand a broader debate on relaxing punitive drug laws.
Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
Doing so would make Uruguay the world’s first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal, which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to marijuana is simply outdated.
“In 1961, television was just black and white,” said Julio Calzada, secretary general of Uruguay’s National Committee on Drugs. “Now we have the Internet.”
But kicking the prohibitionist habit, it turns out, is no easy task. Even here in a small, progressive country of 3.3 million people, the president’s proposal has hit a gust of opposition. Doctors, political rivals, marijuana users and security officials have all expressed concern about how marijuana would be managed and whether legalization, or something close to it, would accelerate Uruguay’s worsening problem of addiction and crime.
Mr. Mujica, 78, a bohemian former guerrilla who drives a 1981 Volkswagen Beetle, seems to be surprised by the response. He said this month that if most Uruguayans did not understand legalization’s value, he would suspend his plan while hammering out the details and building public support. But this is a defiant leader who spent more than a decade in jail as a political prisoner, so even as he discussed postponement, he signaled that he might not be willing to give up, emphasizing that drug users “are enslaved by an illegal market.”
“They follow the path to crime because they don’t have the money,” he said, “and they become dealers because they have no other financial means to satisfy their vice.”
His government, which has a slim majority in Parliament, is moving forward. One of the president’s advisers said this month that draft legislation would be submitted within a few weeks, and Mr. Calzada, among many others, has been hard at work. His desk is covered with handwritten notes on local drug markets. A career technocrat with the long, wispy hair of an aging rocker, he said he had been busy calculating how much marijuana Uruguay must grow to put illegal dealers out of business. He has concluded that with about 70,000 monthly users, the haul must be at least 5,000 pounds a month.
“We have to guarantee that all of our users are going to be able to get a quality product,” he said.
He added that security would be another challenge. Drug cartels protect their product by hiding it and with the ever-present threat of violence. Uruguayan officials, including Mr. Sabini — one of several lawmakers who openly admits to having smoked marijuana — favor a more neighborly approach. They imagine allowing individuals to cultivate marijuana for their own noncommercial use while professional farmers provide the rest by growing it on small plots of land that could be easily protected.
The government would also require users to sign up for registration cards to keep foreigners away — an idea influenced by a new policy in the Netherlands, which restricts marijuana sales to residents — and to track and limit Uruguayans’ purchases (to perhaps 40 joints a month, officials say). Finally, there would be systems set up to regulate the levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and levy taxes on producers, relying for enforcement on the agencies regulating tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals.
Officials acknowledge that by trying to beat kingpins like the Mexican Joaquín Guzmán, known as Chapo, at their own game, Uruguay would need to co-opt old foes and join forces with the same drug aficionados it has been sending to jail for years.
That means cozying up to people like Juan Vaz. A thin, dark-haired computer programmer and father of three who is perhaps Uruguay’s most famous marijuana activist, Mr. Vaz spent 11 months in prison in a few years ago after being caught with five flowering marijuana plants and 37 seedlings. In an interview, he compared marijuana to wine, and expressed both interest and alarm at the government’s plans. He said he was pleased to see the Mujica administration tackle the issue, but like many others, he said he feared government control.
Personal marijuana use is already decriminalized in Uruguay, so Mr. Vaz, 45, said the idea of a registry for producers and users amounted to an Orwellian step backward. “We’re concerned about the violation of privacy,” he said.
Other growers and smokers, who spoke on the condition that they were not fully identified, appeared more eager to take part. Martín, 26, a bearded programmer whose closet full of marijuana plants added a unique aroma to his apartment complex, said his friends had been talking about starting a small marijuana farm.
Gabriel, 35, a dealer and user who lives downtown, said that he welcomed a legal market and hoped it would hamper the darker side of the drug business. He said that he had been selling marijuana on and off for 15 years — moving a little more than two pounds a month — and that the people he bought from had often pressured him to take on more dangerous drugs like cocaine paste, a cracklike substance that has spread wildly through the region since 2001.
“Pasta base,” as it is called here, is generally blamed for Uruguay’s recent rise in drug addiction and violent crime, and Mr. Mujica has said that legalizing marijuana would break the cycle of addiction and delinquency that begins when users become dealers.
Many in the drug treatment community have their doubts. “You’re never going to get rid of the black market,” said Pablo Rossi, director of Fundación Manantiales, which runs several residential treatment centers in Montevideo.
But Gabriel said that big dealers would inevitably adapt. The question is: for good or ill? Maybe they would start selling cocaine cheaper, he said, causing more problems. Or maybe they would be pushed out of the drug business entirely. For now, at least, they mostly seem to be afraid of change: he said a kilogram of marijuana (2.2 pounds) now costs about $470 in Uruguay, up from around $375 before the legalization proposal was announced.
“They are trying to make as much money as they can,” Gabriel said. “They think legalization is imminent.”
Emily Schmall contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, and Lis Horta Moriconi from Rio de Janeiro.
The issue of marijuana on campuses stems from voter approval in 2010 of a measure which allows those with a doctor’s recommendation to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of the drug every two weeks. The law does ban its possession on public school campuses and smoking in public places.
That gap alarmed some university officials who said federal regulations require they forbid students from having illegal controlled substances. Schools that fail to comply lose federal funding and financial assistance for students.
Lawmakers agreed to go along. But that may not be the last word.
The Arizona Constitution says that lawmakers may not alter voter-approved laws except to “further the purpose.” That paves the way for a legal challenge if some student with a medical marijuana card is busted with pot in a dorm room.
Booster seats, bibles in schools among new Arizona laws
Posted: Monday, July 30, 2012 6:57 am
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Got a children or grandchildren who are at least 5 years old but not yet 8?
Ever drive them anywhere?
You’d better be prepared to give them a boost — literally.
Beginning Thursday, Arizona law spells out that youngsters in that age group who are smaller than 4-feet 9-inches tall can be transported only in specially designed booster seats. Failing to do so could result in a $50 fine.
The booster seat measure is just one of dozens of laws approved earlier this year which are set to take effect Thursday. That day you also will be able to:
• Have your eyebrows plucked by unlicensed “threaders.”
• Show proof of auto insurance on your cell phone.
• Study the Bible in public schools for literary purposes.
• Hunt with weapons without regard to how many bullets they hold — and with a silencer on the muzzle.
But there also will be some new restrictions coming that day amid the 363 bills that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law this year.
Lawmakers agreed to limit the requirement of some manufacturers to have to pay punitive damages in some lawsuits where users are claiming the products were defective.
Arizonans who have state-issued cards allowing them to possess and use marijuana will find themselves in legal trouble if they bring their drugs onto college and university campuses.
And Arizona will no longer allow “wrongful birth” lawsuits against doctors who failed to diagnose a fetal problem that might have otherwise caused the parents to seek an abortion.
There is, though, one bit of relief for Arizona homeowners. They won’t be at risk of having to pay a couple of hundred dollars extra a year just because they didn’t check the mail.
That last change is actually a bit of whiplash.
Arizona offers a special rebate on school taxes to homeowners, up to $600 a year.
Two years ago, in an effort to cut down on ineligible people getting the break, lawmakers voted to require county assessors to send out postcards to all who list their property as occupied by the owner or a relative. Those who failed to return the card would have their homes reclassified as rentals and lose the rebate.
Amid an outcry from the Arizona Association of Realtors and others, legislators did an about-face this year and rescinded the across-the-board requirement. But lawmakers are still requiring assessors to send out a card — and demand a response — if the mailing address of the owner is different from the home, or for any mailing address listed for multiple homes.
As to those booster seats, the change is designed to address a gap in the statutes.
Existing law already requires anyone younger than 16 to be buckled up. And those through age 4 have to be in specially designed seats.
But regular seat belts are designed for adults. The result, according to doctors who testified, is that a small child in a standard seat belt actually could be injured more in an accident.
The move did not come without a fight from some lawmakers who said this is another example of “nanny state” legislation designed to tell parents what is best for their children.
Another change could be good news for anyone who has ever been pulled over and asked for license, registration and proof of insurance. Rather than scrounging through the glove box for the last of these, this new law says an image of the insurance company’s ID card on a cell phone or similar device will suffice.
Lawmakers did add a provision to say that handing a cell phone to a police officer is not an excuse for the officer to look at anything else there.
The Bible study measure will allow school districts to offer an elective at the high school level about the influence of the Old and New Testaments on Western literature, law and civilization. Schools can create their own courses following state guidelines or adopt something used elsewhere.
Schools must maintain “religious neutrality” and also most accommodate “the diverse religious or nonreligious views, traditions and perspectives of pupils.” But the coursework is limited strictly to the Old and New Testaments, with lawmakers declining to include the texts of other religions.
On a more distinctly religious front, another new law allows “religiously affiliated employers” to refuse to include contraceptive coverage in insurance policies for their workers.
State law has required such coverage since 2002, with the only exception to this point being for churches and certain church-run charities and services if they mainly employ and hire from within the faith. The expanded language is designed to cover operations like St. Vincent de Paul.
That gap alarmed some university officials who said federal regulations require they forbid students from having illegal controlled substances. Schools that fail to comply lose federal funding and financial assistance for students.
Lawmakers agreed to go along. But that may not be the last word.
The Arizona Constitution says that lawmakers may not alter voter-approved laws except to “further the purpose.” That paves the way for a legal challenge if some student with a medical marijuana card is busted with pot in a dorm room.
There was less controversy over another law which will now prohibit minors from owning hookas, or water pipes.
One of the new laws that takes effect Thursday is touted as promoting better compliance with environmental laws. But there are some potential drawbacks.
Under the terms of the measure, companies that conduct their own environment “audits” will not have to share what they find with outsiders. Backers of the law say that will encourage firms which are unsure if they are breaking the law to do a self-assessment without fear of the documents being used against them.
But that law also means that individuals who believe they have been damaged by pollution will not be able to subpoena the documents to prove that a company knew it was breaking the law.
Lawmakers did try to make some major changes in gun laws. But some, like a plan to let people have weapons on college campuses, died during debate. And one that did get approved to allow guns into public buildings was axed by the governor with her veto stamp.
But the Legislature did agree to let hunters put silencers on their weapons. Backers said this will mean less disturbance for neighbors, with the additional argument that the silencers mean less recoil and therefore more accuracy.
None of that, however, means Arizonans will be able to just go to the store and buy a silencer. Federal law requires buyers to go through a more-intensive screening than what is required simply to purchase a weapon, with an application and fingerprints, as well as approval of the head of the local law enforcement agency.
Separately, lawmakers voted to override existing regulations of the state Game and Fish Commission which prohibits hunting with shotguns capable of holding more than five shells or semiautomatic rifle with a magazine capacity of more than five cartridges. That led one lawmaker during debate to suggest that anyone who needs more than five shots to hit a target should not be out hunting.
The issue with “threaders” stems from an effort by the state Board of Cosmetology to demand that anyone who plucks eyebrows for a living must be licensed. That brought protests — and a lawsuit — because getting a license requires 1,600 hours of schooling.
This new law carves out an exception for those who use thread to wrap around hairs to yank them out. They can’t use chemical hair removers or wax but will be allowed to use some over-the-counter products to soothe hair follicles.
Other new measures set to take effect include:
• Prohibiting prisons from putting a pregnant inmate into restraints during labor, delivery or recovery unless requested by the medical staff or there is an “extraordinary circumstance.”
• Granting the same property tax breaks available to farmers and ranchers to those who raise algae on at least five acres.
• Allowing property owners to remove political signs in front of their homes even if those signs are in the public right of way.
• Exempting dogs used in ranching from the normal animal cruelty laws.
• Imposing new requirements on public libraries to keep minors from accessing obscene materials on computers.
• Establishing an official state “poet laureate.”
Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk also seems to be selectively picking and choosing which parts of the US Constitution she wants to enforce.
I suspect she will argue that the 10th Amendment forbids the Feds from stopping Arizona's enforcement our racist SB 1070 law while while at the same time forgetting that the same 10th Amendment forbids the Feds from interfering with Arizona's medical marijuana law which is Prop 203.
This is a full list of the drug war tyrants who are asking
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to illegally and unconstitutionally
stop Arizona's medical medical program which is Prop 203:
Those other drug war tyrants are:
Brewer urged to halt medical-marijuana program
County attorneys say licensing will defy law
by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Jul. 30, 2012 10:59 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The lawyers signed onto a three-page July 24 letter authored by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, who requests that the governor prevent the state's issuance of licenses for medical-marijuana dispensaries because the state program is pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act.
The latest round of correspondence over the controversial program comes as the state Department of Health Services prepares for an Aug. 7 lottery to select 99 out of 486 applicants to run medical-marijuana dispensaries throughout the state.
Under Arizona's law, there is no limit to the amount of marijuana a dispensary can grow. Patients can obtain up to 21/2 ounces of medical pot every two weeks.
About 29,500 people have permission to smoke, eat or otherwise ingest medical marijuana to ease their ailments.
The overwhelming majority of medical-marijuana users reported chronic pain as their medical condition; other ailments include muscle spasms, hepatitis C, cancer and seizures.
State health officials declined to comment on Polk's letter, which underscores their longtime concerns about the program.
In the past, state health officials have expressed concern they could be federally prosecuted for implementing the law.
In her letter, Polk pointed out that the federal government is seizing and closing medical-marijuana dispensaries in other states under the Controlled Substances Act.
Earlier this month, for example, Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, moved to shut down two locations of a dispensary with more than 100,000 medical-marijuana patients.
Polk wrote that she has been told Arizona's newly appointed U.S. Attorney John Leonardo "fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations" of the federal act.
"We believe it is bad public policy for one arm of the government to facilitate marijuana cultivation and use while another arm of the government is moving to close it down," wrote Polk. She added it is bad policy for the state to take steps to license a dispensary and require individuals to pay thousands for fees and obtain permits from local governments, "knowing full well that these business ventures will result in significant financial repercussions when the U.S. attorney shuts them down."
U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bill Solomon told The Arizona Republic late Monday that Polk's representation of the U.S. attorney's position on medical marijuana is inaccurate.
He said the agency's position has not changed since February, when then-Acting U.S. Attorney Ann Scheel told Brewer the agency would follow Department of Justice policy on the issue and would focus efforts on significant drug traffickers, not people who use marijuana as treatment.
"Specifically, the Department of Justice is focusing its limited resources on significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals and their caregivers who are in compliance with applicable state medical-marijuana statutes," Solomon wrote in a statement.
Brewer responded to the county attorneys Thursday, saying she understands -- and shares -- their concerns. While she remains "deeply concerned about potential abuses of the law," the conflicts between federal and state laws, and the risk of federal prosecution of state employees, she is bound to implement the program because voters approved it.
Brewer also maintains that while the Department of Justice has prosecuted a number of medical-marijuana operations in California and elsewhere, "the federal government's position remains unclear" regarding Arizona's program and state workers' participation in the law.
Brewer wrote that a federal court dismissed a state lawsuit on procedural grounds seeking to clarify the conflict between the state program and federal law.
She pointed out that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama in January, meanwhile, ordered the state to implement the lawful provisions of the medical-marijuana program.
Polk told The Republic she appreciated Brewer's "thoughtful response." However, she said, she disagrees with her regarding the interpretation of the Gama ruling.
Polk pointed out that the legal quandary put before Gama was not the issue of pre-emption, but whether state health officials exceeded the scope of their authority in expanding rules regarding dispensaries.
Halting the dispensary process would force a lawsuit that would require a court to consider the pre-emption argument, Polk said, and whether state employees are subject to criminal prosecution for facilitating violations of the federal law by implementing the medical-marijuana program.
She said all 17 states that have medical-marijuana laws are grappling with how to reconcile state and federal laws: "Every single program has had complications and glitches, and in two or three states the governors have refused to go forward because of the issues I'm raising."
Greenlee County Attorney Derek Rapier told The Republic he signed onto Polk's letter based on the pre-emption argument.
"Everyone agrees the feds' primary target will be the dispensaries themselves, but I cannot, in good conscience, tell my clients, which in this case are county employees, to violate laws," he said, referring to zoning officials who may be asked to permit dispensaries. "I just can't do it."
Brewer says no to pleas for state to stop issuing medical marijuana cards
Posted: Monday, July 30, 2012 9:49 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Gov. Jan Brewer is rejecting a plea from county attorneys that she order the state health department to stop issuing cards for people to legally obtain marijuana for medical reasons and not to license dispensaries to sell the drug.
Yet Polk said the state health department continues to issue marijuana user cards -- nearly 30,000 by this point -- and is proceeding with plans to license 126 dispensaries.
"We believe it is bad public policy for one arm of the government to facilitate marijuana cultivation and use while another arm of the government is moving to close it down,'' she wrote. And Polk said that the state is encouraging would-be dispensary owners to get the capital, obtain necessary permits, sign leases and pay a $5,000 application fee "knowing full well that these business ventures will result in significant financial repercussions when the U.S. Attorneys shuts them down.''
But Brewer said she does not intend to stop anything -- at least not without a court order. In fact, the governor tried to get just such an order, but without success as a federal judge refused last year to rule on Brewer's request to clarify whether the state's medical marijuana program can proceed in spite of federal law.
Brewer also noted that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama, in a separate ruling, said Brewer had no right to ignore the 2010 voter-approved law setting up the state's medical marijuana program. And that, the governor said, ends the discussion.
"I am duty-bound to implement the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, and my agency will do so unless and until I am instructed otherwise,'' Brewer wrote.
Polk's concern about state officials being prosecuted has not been shared by state health chief Will Humble.
From the moment the law was implemented, his agency was issuing the cards that allow those with a doctor's recommendation to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. Humble said he was not concerned because his employees were simply processing paperwork and neither handling nor testing the drug.
Humble did delay implementing rules for licensing dispensaries after Brewer sought that federal court ruling about having the state license businesses to grow and sell marijuana. But he relented after the federal judge refused to say there is a conflict between state and federal laws.
The first dispensaries are expected to be licensed within weeks.
The two prosecutors who did not sign the letter to Brewer were from Coconino and La Paz counties. Efforts to reach both late Monday were unsuccessful to find out if they did not agree with their counterparts or simply did not have the opportunity to sign the letter.
Giving your money go a Republican for a Democrat running for office is a waste of time. They are the people that started the drug war to begin with. They are the people who are constantly trying to find ways to prevent people from using medical marijuana.
If you really want to end the insane and unconstitutional drug war vote for Libertarians.
The Libertarian Party is the only party I know of that demands ALL drugs be legalized.
Pot advocates rally support for allies on L.A. City Council
By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2012
Medical marijuana advocates suffered a bruising political setback last week, watching helplessly as the Los Angeles City Council moved to shut down hundreds of pot shops.
But pot dispensaries have quietly made headway on another City Hall front: mobilizing campaign cash for their key allies. Over the past year, dispensaries and their supporters have given more than $16,000 to the re-election campaigns of two Westside councilmen who opposed the pot shop ban, according to a Times review.
Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who faces re-election in March, accepted nearly $8,900 from medical marijuana advocates last year, more than one-tenth of the money collected by his campaign in 2011. A longtime proponent of legalizing pot nationwide, he told The Times that he has had his own medical marijuana prescription for a decade, relying on the drug to cope with neuropathy, a nerve disorder that can make his feet "red hot with pain."
That makes the councilman, whose district stretches from Westchester to Pacific Palisades, the first politician at City Hall to acknowledge being a consumer of medical marijuana. Rosendahl would not divulge where he obtains his marijuana but said he does so legally.
Pot dispensaries, said Rosendahl, are no different than any other group seeking to weigh in at City Hall. "They wanted to do something for me, and it's been clear for 20 to 30 years where I stand on this issue. I think the war on drugs is destroying this great nation."
Councilman Paul Koretz, who also faces re-election, saw 9% of his campaign contributions in the past year, or more than $7,300, come from dispensaries and their advocates. "I'm an unabashed supporter of medical marijuana. I think it's a matter of life and death, literally. So they know keeping me in office would be a positive thing for them," he said.
Backers of medical marijuana demonstrated political savvy earlier this year, with dozens of dispensaries allowing their employees to organize through the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, a longtime player in city politics. Now, cannabis groups are joining real estate developers, billboard companies and other special interests that coordinate fundraising for specific candidates.
"We want to have our voices heard in the political arena," said Bill Leahy, who is active with the Greater Los Angeles Collectives Alliance, an advocacy group for one set of local dispensaries.
Leahy staged fundraisers for Koretz and Rosendahl, attracting contributions from dispensaries in Eagle Rock, Sun Valley, Woodland Hills, Torrance and elsewhere. He said marijuana collectives are contemplating a fundraiser in coming months for Council President Herb Wesson and will back a candidate in the current mayor's race.
That increasingly organized political activity unsettles Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Boulevard Homeowners Assn., a group that pushed for last week's dispensary ban. Broide said she voted to legalize medical marijuana in California but now believes the number of outlets is "out of control," with nine operating in her neighborhood alone.
"These are successful business people, and successful business people learn how to play politics very quickly," she said. "They've got a lot of money, and unfortunately, candidates tend to give access to those who provide political support."
Koretz and Rosendahl said they share constituent concerns about the explosion of pot shops but disagree with the council's latest strategy, which prohibits businesses from selling marijuana while allowing seriously ill patients and their caregivers to cultivate it for personal use. (Koretz said he ultimately cast a vote in favor of last week's ban only as a procedural courtesy to his colleagues.)
Rosendahl and Koretz want scores of dispensaries to continue operating. Both say their views were shaped by the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, when many friends and loved ones turned to medical marijuana to manage the pain caused by the disease.
Rosendahl, the council's only gay member, said his first partner, bakery owner Christopher Lee Blauman, relied on the drug until his death of complications from AIDS in 1995. Medical marijuana, Rosendahl said, "kept him alive."
david.zahniser@latimes.com
I sincerely doubt that the vial the the cops found in this woman's purse looked like a weapon. So they probably are looking for drugs just as much as they are looking for weapons.
Records: Woman caught with cocaine in Mesa court building
by Jim Walsh - Jul. 31, 2012 02:39 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A woman visiting Mesa Municipal Court was arrested Monday after security officers discovered a vial in her purse that contained what was later identified as cocaine, according to a court record.
Dawn Klene, 44, who was identified as a transient, was arrested by Mesa police on suspicion of possession of a narcotic.
The report said a security officer told police he had found a small vial containing white powder in Klene's purse during an X-ray. Anyone entering the courthouse is required to pass through a security inspection.
Klene told officers "she must have accidentally picked the vial up earlier and inadvertently put it in her purse,'' the report said. Klene said the substance wasn't hers, but she admitted it looked like cocaine.
A field test later identified the substance as cocaine, the report said.
Will Humble has created a clever Catch 22 which he can use as an excuse not to allow any new uses for medical marijuana.
He says he will allow new uses for medical marijuana only after their are documented cases of medical research that show medical marijuana is an effective cure for the new illness.
On paper that sounds reasonable, but since for all practical purposes the DEA will not let anyone perform medical research on marijuana there never will be any research done that proves marijuana helps anything.
Yes, the DEA will let some people do research on pot, but it only seems that the DEA will let you do research that proves what the head in the sand folks at the DEA say, which is marijuana has absolutely no medical uses whatsoever.
Of course if I had my say I would re-legalize ALL drugs for all uses including recreational uses. The government doesn't have any business telling people what they can and can't put in their bodies.
Medical-marijuana OK for sleeping disorders, skin conditions sought
by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Jul. 31, 2012 09:40 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Arizona Department of Health Services has received petitions to expand the state's medical-marijuana program to include treatment of sleeping disorders and skin conditions.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, approved by voters in 2010, requires the state health department to periodically accept and evaluate petitions to see whether to allow new medical conditions into the program.
Humble has said he will expand the program only if there is scientific evidence to support permanently adding conditions to the list.
He is expected to decide about the sleeping disorders and skin conditions within the next few months.
The good news is this wasteful program sounds like a dismal failure. Only 80 marijuana plants have been stolen from their owners.
Drought having an effect on pot, too
by Janice Morse - Jul. 31, 2012 05:54 PM
Cincinnati Enquirer
CINCINNATI-- This year, even the pot plants are puny.
That's what an Ohio sheriff said Tuesday after his agency's annual marijuana sweep found pot plants "considerably smaller than in years past."
Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones thinks this summer's drier-than-normal conditions affected the year's crop of marijuana.
"I guess the current drought we are experiencing is not just hurting our legitimate, hard-working farmers," he said in a news release.
In a program the Ohio Attorney General's Office supports, trained spotters aboard the sheriff's helicopter looked for marijuana plants and directed officers on the ground to fields where pot was growing, the sheriff's office said.
Officials found the contraband crop growing in seven different locations, yielding more than 80 marijuana plants. Officers cut them down and confiscated them.
Investigations were continuing to gather evidence that could lead to charges against whomever was "farming" the pot plants, police said. Often, property owners are unaware that their land is being used to support this type of cash crop, the sheriff's office said.
This summer's drought has been the most widespread across the U.S. since 1956, federal agencies said in mid-July. The hot, dry conditions have devastated corn crops to the point where dozens of counties in Indiana and Kentucky were declared natural disaster areas. Recent rainfall has brought only limited relief from the drought, the National Weather Service says.
On the other hand I suspect that many of the bureaucrats that run the
Scottsdale Schools and other government schools think that the school
system isn't to educate the kids, but to rather give the bureaucrats,
high paying, cushy life times jobs.
Scottsdale schools to require all K-12 students to wear IDs
by Mary Beth Faller - Jul. 31, 2012 11:11 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Scottsdale Unified School District will require all K-12 students to wear ID badges this year as a way to increase security.
High-school students have already been required to carry ID badges, which they must show to buy lunch and check out books.
But starting Aug. 8, the first day of school, the high-schoolers must wear the badges on a lanyard around their necks or clipped to their clothing.
"Nothing is going to be different because they have always had to have an ID, it's just the culture of now having to remember to put it on," said James Dorer, chief security officer for the district.
Middle-schoolers will be required to wear badges within the first few weeks of school, depending on when their photographs are taken and when the badges are made.
The move will expand to elementary-school students later in the fall, Dorer said.
Also in the fall, the district's buses will be equipped with scanners, and students will scan their ID cards as they enter and exit the bus.
"This will be a great thing for us because many times during the school year we have students get on the wrong bus or get off at the wrong stop," Dorer said. "Then the parents call and say their student never made it home.
"Now we can pull it up on the computer and say, 'Yes, he got on at this time and off at this time.' It will help us find that student."
Badges for the elementary-school students will be a work in progress, Dorer said.
"It's hard for us to say right now how a kindergartner will carry a badge and how often they might lose an ID," he said. "The whole process with elementary is being developed and worked on through the fall."
The elementary students will be issued their badges on "breakaway" lanyards, to prevent mishaps on the playground, Dorer said.
Also, students in science labs or classes that use machinery won't have to wear them.
The ID-badge requirement is not unusual at high schools, but is uncommon at elementary schools.
Nationwide, fewer than 3 percent of elementary schools required their students to wear ID badges during the school day in 2009, according to the "Indicators of School Crime and Safety" report issued in February by the U.S. Department of Education.
Dorer said compliance details are still being worked out.
"If they forget or choose not to wear it, it will slow them down throughout the school day," he said. "They'll have to get a temporary ID for the day and that takes time.
"After a certain amount of temporary IDs, then it starts to be an issue of defiance and we'll handle that through referral and the disciplinary process like any other referral."
It will cost $5 to replace lost ID badges.
Students can provide their own lanyards, but they must comply with the Student Code of Conduct, Dorer said.
"They can't wear marijuana shirts to school and they won't be able to wear marijuana lanyards," he said.
Dorer said the district has no plans to install scanners in the high-school classrooms, but he said it's a possibility in the future, although it would be expensive.
"We did a lot of research on (ID badges) and the theme that continually has come up was that other districts are doing this throughout the country," he said. "The concerns about it being 'big brother' were much more so when they were doing it to track student movement throughout the school day, with scanning in and out of classrooms."
Dorer said he has received positive feedback from parents on the plan. He met with students this past spring, and they also were accepting when they understood why it's being done, he said.
Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, said that reaching out to students is important when making a change like this.
"Technology has advanced to the point where it can do so much, and the question is, 'How do we preserve a welcoming school climate without being overly intrusive?'
"It's all about striking the right kind of balance, and it's very important that students understand not only what is going to happen, but why."
Is the sky falling over pot law?
Until this week there were three Chicken Littles in Arizona spreading the-sky-is-falling fear about our medical marijuana law.
In political pecking order (I’ll try to keep the poultry puns to a minimum) they are Gov. Jan Brewer, Attorney General Tom Horne and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
This week, a dozen more clucking birds joined the flock. (Seriously, I’ll try.)
Thirteen county attorneys (including Montgomery) recently sent a three-page letter to Gov. Brewer urging her to prevent the state from issuing licenses for medical-marijuana dispensaries.
It seems that Arizona’s political hen house needs a whole new … wing.
(Ok, that’s it.)
The argument used by the prosecutors (which is the same one used by Brewer and Horne) is that the state program is pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act.
That’s true.
The county attorneys, like the three original Chicken Littles, say they are concerned that government bureaucrats could get busted by the feds for doing the paperwork involved in the permit process.
It doesn’t matter that such a thing has not happened.
Other people involved in the medical marijuana business have been arrested and charged with crimes, but not government workers.
And the U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bill Solomon said it wouldn’t happen here, telling The Arizona Republic, “Specifically, the Department of Justice is focusing its limited resources on significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals and their caregivers who are in compliance with applicable state medical-marijuana statutes.”
That doesn’t convince a group of politicians who didn’t want voters to approve the initiative in the first place.
But we did.
And while Brewer tried to get the law tossed and continues to express concerns about it, she said that she'll let it take effect.
I’ve spoken to Montgomery about this in the past. He told me, “If a court says that we can do this I'm fine with this. If a court says that government employees involved in this have a degree of immunity I'm fine with that. But at the same time if a court says you can't do this then you can't do it. It doesn't matter if it was a voter approved initiative.”
He added that a state “doesn't have a right to pass a law that violates the (federal) supremacy clause.”
That’s a far cry from the tough talk Brewer and others had for the federal government when it came to SB1070. My favorite quote was when the governor said of the administration’s challenge of SB1070: "Never during our nearly 100 years of statehood has federal interference in … Arizona affairs … been more blatant ..."
We know there are going to be problems when the state’s medical marijuana program is implemented. Some shady people will get involved and, hopefully, will be prosecuted. But there also will be a number of good people who are out only to make a buck and to help people in need.
A while back when I playfully used marijuana slang to criticize tough-talking politicians like Brewer, Horne and Montgomery for trying to prevent a citizen-approved law from going into effect, the county attorney responded. He (or his public relations guy) revved up the metaphor machine and fired off a letter to the editor of the Republic that read in part:
“Accusing elected officials of trying to subvert the will of the voters may play well with the stoner crowd. But when subjected to the reality of both law and politics, Montini's argument goes up in smoke… In accusing the governor, state attorney general and me of ‘kowtowing to veiled threats that they have no reason to believe will be carried out,’ E.J. Montini demonstrates the perils of attempting legal analysis while under the influence of half-baked conclusions.”
Half-baked? That’s an upgrade. Most angry readers describe my conclusions as raw. At best.
However, now that I’ve barbequed (or fried, or filleted) our expanded group of Chicken Littles for their sky-is-falling proclamations critics like Montgomery might consider shifting their literary focus from marijuana references to poultry products.
For instance, they could say I have egg on my face owing to my scrambled logic. Or that my cracked point of view fails to hatch a decent argument.
Not that I necessarily expect the entire gaggle of them to gang up on me but, you know, birds of a feather…
If the government had not made recreational drugs like relatively safe LSD and harmless marijuana illegal, people would not be using these dangerous, but legal drugs like spice and bath salts to get high.
Legalize drugs and this problem will go away over night.
Sadly this editorial says the folks that run the Arizona Republic still support the insane and unconstitutional war on drugs.
Many years ago I remember articles in the Arizona Republic advocating the death penalty for drug sellers. Things have gotten better since then, but not by much.
Synthetic drugs an elusive target
Aug. 2, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The first challenge is to know the enemy. Novelty powders -- bath salts, glass cleaner, incense, potpourri -- may be legal. But they are not safe.
It's important to educate people about the dangerous reality of these so-called legal highs.
Some of these designer drugs have been outlawed as a threat to life and sanity. But they continue to be readily -- and legally -- available. This creates a false sense of security.
Using them can cause extreme agitation, hallucinations, violent behavior, paranoia, organ damage, psychosis, fever, blindness, death. Emergency-room doctors don't know that they are dealing with when freaked-out users are brought to them. The chemists who make this stuff change formulas regularly.
That's the second challenge: These poisons are shape-shifters. As soon as laws are passed against "spice" or "bath salts," suppliers tweak the formula and the high they are selling is legal again. Laws passed against today's novelty powders won't cover tomorrow's.
Earlier this year, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law to ban designer drugs known as "bath salts." That was a start. Unfortunately, lawmakers rejected an effort to create a rapid-response system to allow the Board of Pharmacy to ban new versions of these poisons as they emerge. That was a mistake.
In the war on drugs, these concoctions are the terrorists. Hard to define. Hard to pin down. You have to be nimble. Arizona isn't.
Another challenge is using existing federal laws against these substances.
An online search for "novelty powders" reveals an eye-popping array of "party pills" and promises of a product that "delivers where the competitors fall short." Ordering is easy. Also available in many smoke shops or other stores, these substances come with the disclaimer "Not for human consumption." That's the dodge.
Federal law prohibits sale or possession of substances that mimic illegal drugs, but only if prosecutors can show they were meant to be ingested. A recent federal sting in Arizona seized 2,500 packets of "Eight Ballz Ultra-Premium Glass Cleaner." It is part of a nationwide effort to crack down on synthetic drugs.
Will it work? That may depend on what happens with the "human consumption" loophole when the cases get to court.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in Arizona are looking for ways to keep people safe from these dangerous substances. Next session, lawmakers ought to work with them to come up with adequate tools to go after a real threat to human health. That includes a rapid-response system so Arizona can be as nimble.
These novelty powders represent a major challenge that cannot be ignored.
I should add that the "drug war" is really a jobs program for
cops, prosecutors, judges, probation officers and pays them big bucks to make
easy arrests of people for the victimless crime of smoking or
selling marijuana.
In the current issue of the 13 county attorneys, it seems like
they are angry because they can no longer be paid big bucks
to arrest, jail and imprison people for the victimless crime of
smoking or selling marijuana.
Leaders thwart public's medical-pot choice
Aug. 2, 2012 12:00 AM
Arizonans have voted on legal uses of marijuana multiple times. In each instance, politicians elected to represent us have found ways to obfuscate the issue and not move the will of the electorate forward.
The letter to Gov. Jan Brewer from the 13 county attorneys is just another excuse to thwart voters' wishes, especially since a significant number of other states have moved forward with implementing laws for marijuana use ("Brewer urged to halt pot program," Republic, Monday).
Is it possible the real issue may be the financial impact on the drug cartels and the number of dealers, DEA agents, and others whose livelihood depends on the current status quo? Cumulatively, both sides of the illegal drug industry are a powerful lobby at all levels of government.
-- Matt Bornyasz, Scottsdale
Douglas Coleman - Stick your head in the sand and proceed full speed ahead with the drug war.
Douglas Coleman - Stick your head in the sand and proceed full speed ahead with the drug war.
The special agent in charge of the Phoenix DEA office talks about the war on drugs, Mexican cartels and legalization.
6 more years of "drug wars" in Mexico????
6 more years of "drug wars" in Mexico????
MEXICO CITY - The president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, said in an interview Thursday that he wants to expand his country's drug-war partnership with the United States but that he would not support the presence of armed American agents in Mexico.
Did PRI buy Presidential election
Source
Tempe Police Win War on Drugs???
From the talk of these proud pigs about the bust they made it sure sounds like they their police work will stop the drug war tomorrow.
Politicians find foul words now fair game
I could care less when politicians curse.
If they would just stop stealing my money and micro-managing my life I would be happy.
Mexico discovers drug tunnel under Arizona border
Let's face it, the "war on drugs" is not winnable.
As long as Americans want drugs, businessmen will
find ways to make big bucks supplying Americans with
drugs.
DEA agents murder pilot of plane in Honduras
Source
Efforts target underage drinking in Valley
Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down??? You know real criminals that hurt people, like robbers, rapists and muggers. Not teenagers who commit the victimless crime of underage drinking.
Surveillance requests to cellphone carriers surge
Cops want to know who you call, where you are and what you texted.
Cops want to know who you call, where you are and what you texted.
Police requesting Americans' cellphone data at staggering rate
This story from the LA Times has a few things that
the previous story from the Arizona Republic didn't say.
Iran has the death penalty for drinking liquor!!!!
The death penalty for drinking??? Yes, in Iran.
Stop-and-Frisk May Soon Hit Judicial Roadblocks
For all practical purposes the Bill of Rights has been flushed down the toilet.
Opana abuse in USA overtakes OxyContin
The "drug war" is like a silly game of Whac-A-Mole that never ends. The only winners are the cops, prosecutors and judges that get paid big bucks to chase the elusive Whac-A-Mole.
Cops hide evidence that would exonerate people???
Cops hide evidence that would allow people to prove their innocence?
Justice Dept review use of forensic evidence in thousands of cases
If thousands of people were framed by the police
and govenrment lab technicians who lied or falsified
information the only right and just thing to do is release
the people NOW.
California medical marijuana operation targeted by feds
Source
Feds tell Visa & MasterCard to stop accepting marijuana sales???
Feds pressure MasterCard & Visa to stop accepting medical marijuana purchases.
2 sophisticated border drug tunnels found in San Diego & Yuma
Source
'Extraordinary' U.S.-Mexico drug tunnel may be Sinaloa cartel's
Source
Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson admits the "drug war" is a dismal failure
Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson admits the "drug war" is a dismal failure and the recent bust by Tempe cops will do absolutely nothing to stop the flow of drugs to the USA.
Pot not effective in treating PTSD, anxiety, migraines, depression
I am very skeptical on this research. After all Governor Jan Brewer is against Prop 203 even though it was passed by the people Arizona. I suspect Governor Jan Brewer will do anything to stack the deck against medical marijuana, including telling the government employees that work for her to prove marijuana is bad, or be fired.
Evidence pot aids PTSD is slim
Again I suspect these studies were done for pro drug war warrior
Governor Jan Brewer and Will Humble with the intent of preventing new uses
of medical marijuana.
Vote for pot clubs in Palo Alto???
Source
FDA illegally spies on whistle blowers???
Source
Medical marijuana: Arizona mulls adding qualifying conditions
I am almost certain that drug war tyrant Will Humble will
not add any new conditions that will allow the people of
Arizona to get medical marijuana.
A secret Federal database of alleged criminals???
"SAVE" for "Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements"
A secret Federal database of alleged criminals???
Research is lacking to expand medical marijuana program
I wonder, did Jan Brewer order this research done so she can justify refusing to allow any new illnesses to be treated with medical marijuana???
Will Humble has the right idea.
More drug war propaganda on the dangers of marijuana.
More drug war propaganda on the dangers of marijuana.
"Legalization is unprecedented – not even the Netherlands has done it".
But that is total BS.
No medical pot for PTSD, White House says
Emperor Obama is a drug war tyrant!!!
WASHINGTON -- An effort to persuade the Obama administration to legalize marijuana for sufferers of post-traumatic stress has met with a sound rejection from the White House.
A letter to Congressman David Schweikert
Here is a
letter
from Mr. Steven Lee Boring to Arizona Congressman David Schweikert
asking Congressman David Schweikert to stop throwing people in
jail for the victimless crime of smoking marijuana.
Will Humble refuses to allow medical marijuana to treat any new illnesses.
Will Humble refuses to allow marijuana to treat any new illnesses.
State Health Director Will Humble refused Thursday to expand the conditions for which marijuana can be legally recommended.
As director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, Will Humble is the man working behind the scenes to run Arizona's fledgling medical-marijuana program.
U of A study on medical marijuana rigged????
Was the U of A study on medical marijuana rigged??? I suspect it was.
Will Humble has said all along that he would not allow any new uses for medical marijuana unless the uses were documented by double blind scientific medical research showing that marijuana works as a treatment.
State Health Director Will Humble refused Thursday to expand the conditions for which marijuana can be legally recommended.
Mesa cops making lots of bogus arrests for "drug DUI"???
I suspect this means the Mesa police are arresting a lot of people for "drug DUI" when they don't have any evidence the persons driving is impaired.
Kratom - a new drug from Thailand
If it makes you feel good it should be illegal???
Sadly that is the mantra of many of these moron politicians who keep passing new laws that allow the government to put people in prison for the victimless crime of taking drugs that make them feel good.
L.A. City Council bans medical marijuana dispensaries
The drug war tyrants on the LA City Council have a lot in common with Arizona's Will Humble.
Marijuana not approved to treat anxiety, depression
Source
After almost seven months of deliberation, ADHS Director Will Humble said in a blog post that his “guiding principle” in choosing to reject the petitions was based in scientific evidence.
It ain't about safety, it's about raising revenue with DUI arrests
Source
Businesses raided in nationwide crackdown on synthetic drugs
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down??? You know criminals that commit crimes that hurt people like robbers, muggers and rapists? Not people that commit the victimless crime of using or selling illegal drugs.
Microsoft helps the police monitor your skype communications!!!
Microsoft helps the police monitor your skype communications!!!
Mexicans Pay in Blood for America's War on Drugs
Here is a scary
article
in the Phoenix New Times about Mexican President Felipe Calderon's
"war on drugs" which is mostly financed by the American government and
has caused 30,000 to 100,000 murders in Mexico depending on who's
statistics you use.
Sheila Polk demonizes the Arizona medical marijuana program
Yavapai County attorney Sheila Polk demonizes Arizona medical marijuana program
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
There is not a word in the US Constitution giving the Federal government the power
to regulate marijuana or any other drug and thus that power is reserved to the States.
DEA thugs shut down two Tempe smoke shops
Source
Arizona parolees to pay drug test fees
Source
South America Sees Drug Path to Legalization
Source
New and probably unconstitutional anti-marijuana laws go into effect Thursday
A new and probably unconstitutional anti-marijuana and anti-prop 203 goes into effect Thursday, , Aug 2, 2012.
Arizonans who have state-issued cards allowing them to possess and use marijuana will find themselves in legal trouble if they bring their drugs onto college and university campuses.
Source
Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk asks Brewer to halt medical-marijuana program
I am sure the reason the Founders created the Second Amendment is they knew there would always be government tyrants like Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk.
Graham County Attorney
Navajo County Attorney
Gila County Attorney
Pima County Attorney
Maricopa County Attorney
Greenlee County Attorney
Yavapai County Attorney
Cochise County Attorney
Santa Cruz County Attorney
Yuma County Attorney
Mohave County Attorney
Pinal County Attorney
Apache County Attorney
Thirteen Arizona county attorneys are urging Gov. Jan Brewer to halt the state's medical-marijuana program, saying state employees will be facilitating federal crimes when they issue licenses to pot dispensaries.
Brewer says no to pleas for state to stop issuing medical marijuana cards
Yea, but she would stop issuing them instantly if she could.
Jan Brewer is a drug war tyrants who hates Arizona's medical marijuana
program and wants to stop it.
"The federal government is vigorously enforcing the Controlled Substances Act by seizing and closing medical marijuana dispensaries in other states,'' wrote Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk on behalf of 13 of the state's 15 county attorneys. And Polk said she has been told -- she does not say by whom -- that John Leonardo, the new U.S. Attorney for Arizona "fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations of the Controlled Substances Act.''
Pot advocates rally support for allies on L.A. City Council
If you really want to elect somebody that will legalize drugs vote for a Libertarian candidate.
Court searches are for drugs and weapons
I suspect these searches when you enter government buildings are looking for illegal drugs just as much as they are looking for weapons.
Medical-marijuana OK for sleeping disorders, skin conditions sought
I am certain government drug war tyrant Will Humble will not allow any new uses for medical marijuana. I suspect his boss and drug war tyrant Jan Brewer will fire him if he does.
In July, state health Director Will Humble refused to expand the program to include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and migraines. He and a panel of medical experts, working from a University of Arizona study, determined there is insufficient scientific evidence to show the risks or benefits of using marijuana with those conditions.
Drought having an effect on pot, too
What a huge waste of money. In Ohio they have a state program that pays cops to fly around in helicopters searching for marijuana fields.
No marijuana lanyards or t-shirts allowed in the Scottsdale Schools
"They can't wear marijuana shirts to school and they won't be able to wear marijuana lanyards," he said.
Jesus with all the time and money the government bureaucrats that run
the Scottsdale School District spend turning turning their school system
into a prison like environment that would make Hitler, Stalin and Mao proud,
I wonder if they have any money left over to educate the children with.
Is the sky falling over pot law?
Source
Government is the cause of the "drug war" problem
As usual the government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.
Leaders thwart public's medical-pot choice
Matt Bornyasz of Scottsdale 100 percent right on this issue.
I'm sure the American government feels the same way about Roger Pion. But the rest of us know he is a freedom fighter against the government's insane, illogical and unconstitutional war on drugs.
According to this article Roger Pion was unhappy about being arrested for the victimless crime of marijuana possession, so he got even with the cops by using his tractor to crush 7 of their police vehicles.
Remember, just because something is legal doesn't make it morally right. And just because something is illegal doesn't make it morally wrong.
August 3, 2012 8:37 AM
Roger Pion, Vt. man accused of crushing cop cars with farm tractor, due in court
(CBS/AP) NEWPORT, Vt. - Roger Pion, a Vermont man who authorities say was angry over an arrest and used his tractor to drive over seven police vehicles on Thursday, is expected in court today.
According to police, Pion, 34, was on a big farm tractor, angry about his arrest for resisting arrest and marijuana possession last month, when he was rolling across their vehicles - five marked cruisers, one unmarked car and a transport van.
Orleans County sheriff's deputies working inside their building on Thursday didn't know what was happening until a neighbor called 911. They didn't hear the ruckus outside because their air conditioners were humming.
When police ran outside, the tractor was already down the driveway and out onto the road. Police said they couldn't pursue the man because their cars were crushed.
"We had nothing to pursue him with," said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.
Newport city police caught up with Pion a short distance away on Thursday afternoon.
Pion now faces numerous charges including several counts of felony unlawful mischief and one count of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. He is being held at the Northern State Correctional Center in Newport on $15,000 bail and is expected to appear in court Friday.
Sheriff Kirk Martin estimated damage to the vehicles at more than $300,000; state police put it at more than $250,000. But no one suffered injuries.
"Nobody was hurt. That's the thing everybody's got to cherish," said Martin.
Police: Farmer unhappy about arrest drives tractor over 7 sheriff's vehicles
8:43 PM, Aug 2, 2012
Written by Mike Donoghue Free Press Staff Writer
A farmer who was arrested last month expressed his displeasure Thursday afternoon in Newport by driving a heavy tractor over seven police vehicles owned by the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department, authorities said.
Roger Pion, 34, was jailed for lack of $15,000 bail at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport to await arraignment Friday morning on 11 charges.
Pion is facing seven counts of felony unlawful mischief and one misdemeanor count of unlawful mischief on suspicion of damaging the cars, State Police Detective Trooper Lyle Decker said.
Decker said Pion also is facing charges of leaving the scene of an accident, grossly negligent operation and aggravated assault on Newport City police on allegations of trying to back the tractor into a city cruiser after fleeing the original scene.
“It’s more than half our fleet. We have 11 cars,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Phil Brooks told the Burlington Free Press. He said the cruisers were in three rows.
He said all the vehicles were insured. Brooks estimated that the cruisers averaged about $40,000 fully equipped. He said at least one cruiser had a laptop in it. Other equipment, such as radar, were in the vehicles when the tractor ran them over.
“It’s pretty much the biggest tractor you can get,” Newport City Police Chief Seth DiSanto said.
“It was a massive tractor. It has four 6-foot tandem wheels on the back. It was red. It must be at least a 15-ton tractor,” Newport Express Publisher Ken Wells said shortly after the incident. The tractor had slightly smaller tandem tires on the front.
The tractor was owned by the suspect’s parents, Armand and Linda Pion of Newport, police said.
Brooks said five of the damaged vehicles were fully marked red, white and black cruisers, and two were unmarked, including a transport van. He said an eighth car, belonging to the department bookkeeper, was pushed out of the way by the tractor in an effort to get at the cruisers. It had minor damage.
The incident happened at about 12:40 p.m. on U.S. 5, also known as the Derby Road, near the new office for the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department. The department had moved from downtown into the former Passumpsic Savings Bank last year.
It was unclear why Pion might have taken out his wrath on the Sheriff’s Department when he was arrested by a neighboring agency. Newport police arrested Pion on July 3 on charges of resisting arrest and possession of marijuana, said DiSanto, a former Shelburne police officer in his first week as Newport chief.
Pion was issued a citation in those cases ordering him to appear in Superior Court next Tuesday, DiSanto said. Pion also was jailed that night at the request of the Vermont Probation and Parole Office.
Brooks said he and a couple deputies were inside their office Thursday when a 911 call came in — and a car horn started going off in one of the crushed cruisers.
Brooks said he ran to a nearby service station where another cruiser was being worked on and jumped in to pursue the tractor, but soon learned that Newport City police had stopped the tractor about two miles away.
Brooks said Pion was turned over to the Vermont State Police, which began conducting an independent investigation.
Brooks said a fencing company was hired Thursday to encircle the damaged cruisers, which were impounded as part of the investigation. He said a deputy would be guarding them overnight until an insurance adjuster could arrive.
Brooks said Thursday evening that the Lamoille, Chittenden and Windsor County sheriffs’ departments had loaned or were sending cruisers to help the Orleans department through the crisis. Other departments had made offers, and Brooks said the daily work loads were being studied Thursday night.
He said he expects his department, which normally transports prisoners to and from court, is likely to defer to state police Friday for this case.
A new ice cream flavor???
Hey, isn't Ben & Jerry's Ice cream located in Vermont???This could lead to a new flavor of ice cream by those guys!
How about:
- Crushed Pork
- Flattened Cruiser
- Crushed Squad Car
- Cerdo Picado
- Cerdo Aplanado
- Carnitas Picadas
- Carnitas Aplanadas
Former Mexico PRI governor pleads guilty in drug-trafficking case
August 3, 2012 | 4:50 am
MEXICO CITY -- In one of the most high-profile drug prosecutions of a Mexican politician, a former state governor has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to charges that he helped launder millions of dollars for cocaine traffickers.
The plea was entered Thursday by Mario Villanueva, former governor of Quintana Roo state, home to the posh resort town of Cancun.
Villanueva was extradited to the United States in 2010 and could face a sentence of up to 20 years.
Before a judge in U.S. federal court, he said he had participated in a conspiracy from 1993 to 2001 to conceal the origin of illicit drug money.
The original indictment said Villanueva "was paid between $400,000 and $500,000 in cash for each load of cocaine that [the Juarez cartel] brought into and shipped out of Quintana Roo," which added up to millions of dollars in the 1990s. "In return, [he] provided state and federal police and other resources to offload, transport, store and protect the cocaine shipments."
Villanueva's case involved the laundering of profits through money transfers administered by Consuelo Marquez, a Lehman Bros. investment representative who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2005, the Reuters news agency reported.
As part of the plea agreement, other drug-trafficking charges were dropped. Villanueva served six years in a Mexican prison for money laundering before his extradition to the U.S.
Villanueva was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that held authoritarian control oo Mexico for seven decades, until it was ousted in 2000, and was often accused of working with drug traffickers. This year, the PRI will return to power with the election of Enrique Pena Nieto as president. He has said he will not make deals with traffickers.
Still, the Villanueva case reawakens the old ghosts of the PRI's past. In a statement, however, the PRI in Quintana Roo said Villanueva's confession was "regrettable" but that it would not have an effect on the party today because the case was so old. Villanueva served as governor from 1993 to 1999.
Former Mexico PRI governor pleads guilty in drug-trafficking case
Lets face it when you have a governor of a Mexican state involved in smuggling drugs, it's time to admit the drug war is not winnable and legalize drugs.
How Latin America is reinventing the war on drugs
Here is an interesting
article
from of all places the
Christian Science Monitor
on how many Latin American countries are thinking about dumping
the insane "War on Drugs", which was brought to them by the
American government.
When when it comes to the draconian laws that jail people for the victimless crime of using medical marijuana we did that and got Prop 203 passed, which legalized medical marijuana.
Of course the police and prosecutors don't like Prop 203 because it cuts into the "drug war" which is really a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops and prosecutors.
Of course the cops and prosecutors are hypocrites who are not following the same advice they give us. Instead of attempting to repeal Prop 203 thru the system so they can continue arresting people for the victimless crime of marijuana use they simply asked Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to declare Prop 203 null and void.
I am sure Jan Brewer would comply with their illegal request, but
she already had her hand slapped after filing a frivolous lawsuit
trying to stop Prop 203 in Federal court.
Here is a copy of the letter the sheriffs sent to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
Sheriffs and County Attorneys are hypocrites on Prop 203
When we complain to the cops and prosecutors that the laws are unfair, unjust and unconstitutional and demand that they stop enforcing them. They always give us the line that "the law is the law", and that we must obey it. That if we don't like the law we should use the system to change it.
www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/arizona-sheriffs-letter-brewer.pdf
It was signed by:
Source
Yavapai County
Apache County
Yuma County
Graham County
La Paz County
Mohave County
Pima County
Cochise County
Gila County
Greenelee County
Maricopa County
Maricopa County
Navajo County
Pinal County
Arizona sheriffs ask Brewer to halt Ariz. medical-pot program
Mary K. Reinhart - Aug. 3, 2012 09:58 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Following in the footsteps of their top prosecutors, most of Arizona's county sheriffs are asking Gov. Jan Brewer to halt the state's medical-marijuana program.
Thirteen of the state's 15 sheriffs sent a letter to Brewer this week that's identical to the letter she received from 13 Arizona county attorneys days earlier.
Like the lawyers, the sheriffs argue that federal drug laws pre-empt Arizona's voter-approved medical-marijuana law and that state, county and local employees could risk prosecution if they implement it. Those signing the letter from Yavapai County Sheriff Scott Mascher, who is president of the Arizona Sheriffs Association, include Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
The letters come as the state Department of Health Services prepares for Tuesday's lottery to select 99 out of 486 applicants to run marijuana dispensaries throughout the state. The department will stream the lottery live online at www.livestream.com/azdhs.
The letter also claims Arizona's newly appointed U.S. attorney John Leonardo "fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations of the (Controlled Substances Act)."
The same claim was made by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk in her July 24 letter to Brewer. A spokesman for Leonardo said the assertion by the county attorneys was inaccurate and that the U.S. Attorney's Office would -- as Department of Justice policy says -- focus on "significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals and their caregivers who are in compliance with applicable state medical-marijuana statutes."
Brewer's office could not be reached for comment on the letter from the sheriffs. But in response to the similar letter from the county attorneys, the governor said that while she shares their concerns, she is required to implement the voter-approved law.
"Arizona voters ... cast ballots in sufficient numbers to enshrine this measure into Arizona law," Brewer wrote. "As such, I am duty-bound to implement (the act), and my agency will do so unless and until I am instructed otherwise by the courts or notified that state employees face imminent risk of prosecution due to their duties in administering this law."
Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.
If these DEA thugs yanked one pot plant out of the ground every 30 seconds, the 6.7 million marijuana plants they seized in 2011 would provide 19 years of work for the DEA thugs.
In reality it would provide jobs for a lot more DEA thugs, because the insane "drug war" is a lot more more then just yanking pot plants out of the ground.
Number of pot plants eradicated drops nationwide
More marijuana is seized, but authorities are struggling to nip growing in the bud
by Manuel Valdes - Aug. 3, 2012 10:58 PM
Associated Press
SEATTLE - Federal data shows the number of live marijuana plants eradicated in outdoor and indoor grow operations has dropped in most states over the past three years, while the amount of bulk processed marijuana seized has doubled in that time.
And authorities can't pinpoint exact reasons.
One thing is known: California, which provides the lion's share of the millions of plants eradicated every year in the United States, saw a 46.5 percent drop in plants eradicated between 2010 and 2011, bringing down the nation's overall numbers.
Shifts in tactics from growers, weather patterns and budget cuts to local and state enforcement agencies have played roles in the significant decrease in eradication, DEA and local officials said.
In 2010, authorities seized 10.32 million marijuana plants from outdoor and indoor growing operations, according to DEA data. By 2011, that number had dropped to 6.7 million plants -- a 35 percent decrease.
Those numbers are amplified by California, where 7.3 million plants were eradicated in 2010. The number dropped to 3.9 million in 2011, a 46 percent decline.
In that same time span, 37 states saw their eradication results drop. Data for 2012 is not yet available.
One of the most dramatic shifts came from Idaho, which saw its eradication results shrink by more than 98 percent between 2009 and 2011 -- from 77,748 plants to just 786. However, the Caribou County sheriff's office reported raiding a farm in southeast Idaho with 40,000 plants this week.
Hard to identify source
But while the number of plants eradicated has dropped, the number of pounds of bulk processed marijuana confiscated has increased from 53,843 pounds in 2009 to 113,167 pounds in 2011, the data collected by the DEA shows.
Some of this was seized along with eradications at growing locations. But DEA officials said the data also includes marijuana seized during traffic stops and other operations, and it's hard to pinpoint where marijuana comes from.
"You can't necessarily measure what's out there," said Casey Rettig, spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco.
In California, Rettig said, growers are switching from large-scale forest farms with many plants to smaller, less visible plots where they can grow fewer, but bigger and higher-yielding plants.
There has been a change in where these plots are, too, with many operations moving to the agricultural region of the Central Valley, Rettig added.
"Most of the smart people moved down ... and a lot of them decentralized their gardens where it's less likely to be seen and eradicated," said Dale Gieringer of the California chapter of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates for legalization of marijuana.
Gieringer said street prices for marijuana have dipped recently, which suggests that there is plenty of it to go around, despite the DEA's efforts.
Dispensaries in Gilbert are allowed only in permanent buildings and cannot sell other merchandise, according to town code.
The dispensaries are also prohibited from making home deliveries or offering a drive-through window.
Cultivation and storage can occur only in a closed, locked building, and each business must submit security-plan details to the town.
6 medical-marijuana applicants in Gilbert await lottery
Gilbert has almost 900 approved patients
by Parker Leavitt - Aug. 4, 2012 07:34 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
With the drop of two ping-pong balls just before noon Tuesday, six potential medical-marijuana dispensaries in Gilbert will learn if they were selected in a lottery for licenses to grow and sell pot to nearly 30,000 qualified patients in Arizona.
There are nearly 900 patients approved for marijuana use in Gilbert, and the town's eastern half has one of the highest concentrations of users in the state, according to a report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Arizona's voter-initiated medical-marijuana program has been in effect for more than a year, but the state has long withheld approval of the dispensaries over legal concerns.
The state finally released operating rules for dispensaries in April and began accepting applications in May. Next week's lottery is the next step in implementing the program.
Last week, 13 Arizona county attorneys signed a letter urging Gov. Jan Brewer to halt the program, saying state employees will be facilitating federal crimes if they issue licenses to dispensaries.
Brewer said she shares the county attorneys' concerns but is bound to implement the program because voters approved it.
[At least that is what she said here. She got slapped in Federal court for filing a frivolous lawsuit in an attempt to shut down Arizona's medical marijuana law which is Prop 203]
If the state proceeds as planned with the lottery, Gilbert would have at most two dispensaries operating within town limits. Officials have divided the state into 126 districts and will issue one license in each district.
Gilbert is divided in two districts, with the town's western and eastern halves roughly split by Lindsay Road. The state has received four dispensary applications for the western half and two for the eastern half, according to a DHS report.
Several public officials in Gilbert have expressed opposition to the medical-marijuana program, and the town has placed limits on how and where the dispensaries can operate.
"Despite my personal preference, it appears that dispensaries may be a part of Arizona's future," Councilman Ben Cooper said Thursday. "We will ensure that those that come to Gilbert are in appropriate areas of town and that they have adequate safety measures in place before they open."
[Translation - government tyrant Ben Cooper wants to make life as difficult as possible for medical marijuana patients that come to Gilbert]
Dispensaries and cultivation sites in Gilbert will be allowed only within industrial zoning districts, and the businesses must be 1,320 feet apart from each other, 1,000 feet from parks, churches and schools, and 500 feet away from residential areas.
The facilities' hours of operation cannot be earlier than 8 a.m. nor later than 6 p.m.
[I wonder if they have any plans to make it illegal for Walgreens, CVS and other drug stores to be open before 8 am or after 6 pm??? Probably not, they only hate marijuana smokers]
Dispensaries in Gilbert are allowed only in permanent buildings and cannot sell other merchandise, according to town code.
The dispensaries are also prohibited from making home deliveries or offering a drive-through window.
[I guess the tyrants on the Gilbert City Council want to make it as difficult as possible for sick people to get their medicine. Wonder if the tyrants on the Gilbert City Council are going to make other stores like Walgreens and CVS obey these silly laws. Probably not, the tyrants on the Gilbert City Council only hate marijuana users]
Cultivation and storage can occur only in a closed, locked building, and each business must submit security-plan details to the town.
Since the medical-marijuana program was approved by voters in November 2010, the Gilbert Planning Commission and Town Council have reviewed at least three permits for potential dispensaries.
One application, for a D.R.H. Enterprises dispensary near Elliot and McQueen roads, has been approved for a permit, while council denied two others because of residents' concerns over nearby parks.
Statewide, nearly 30,000 patients are qualified to use medical marijuana, with men outnumbering women nearly three to one, according to a DHS report.
Patients can cite a variety of medical conditions when applying for permission to use marijuana, and about nine in 10 reported "chronic pain" among their conditions, according to DHS. About 13 percent reported having muscle spasms, and 4 percent said they have cancer, the report said.
While the public is not invited to attend Tuesday's lottery, a live stream will be available at azdhs.gov/medical marijuana.
The state will use a certified public accountant and three machines to randomly select pingpong balls assigned to each dispensary applicant.
Ahwatukee has single applicant for medical-marijuana dispensary
by Gary Nelson - Aug. 5, 2012 07:32 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Ahwatukee will learn next week whether its only applicant for a medical-marijuana dispensary license will be authorized to set up shop.
For most of Arizona's 126 so-called community health analysis areas, multiple applicants are seeking state permission to sell marijuana for treatment of medical conditions.
The Arizona Department of Health Services will conduct a lottery for those zones on Tuesday.
Ahwatukee, which is among several zones in Phoenix, had only one dispensary application.
But the portion of Phoenix south of South Mountain has 327 people with physicians' approval to use medical marijuana, and an unspecified number -- fewer than 20 -- who are authorized caregivers.
The Phoenix City Council immediately began wrestling with where to allow dispensaries after Arizona voters in 2010 gave razor-thin approval to Proposition 203, which allows the sale of medical-grade marijuana to people who have a doctor's permission to use it for certain conditions.
The council ruled in December 2010 that dispensaries must receive special-use permits and that they be allowed only in commercial shopping centers.
Phoenix also limits growing facilities to industrial/warehouse districts and agricultural land. Distances are specified from churches, homes, parks and schools.
The medical-marijuana law survived a court battle launched when Gov. Jan Brewer filed a lawsuit seeking clarification of its provisions. A county judge dismissed the suit in January and Brewer did not appeal.
That does not mean, however, that there is clear sailing ahead.
Arizona, the 16 other states with medical-marijuana laws and the District of Columbia are bucking federal law that prohibits the substance. The U.S. Department of Justice in March reiterated a warning that state employees are subject to federal prosecution for implementing Prop. 203.
Other states have seen federal raids on marijuana facilities that were ostensibly legal under state law.
In Mesa, police officials said, when the council was debating the issue, that marijuana shops in other states have attracted criminals preying on the patients and the shops.
In addition, legal complications could arise from a county judge's ruling this year that because growing marijuana is illegal under federal law, contracts between marijuana facilities and other people are not legally enforceable.
The Arizona Department of Health Services, which is administering the program, has volumes of information on its website about the legalities and procedures of implementing the law.
The department also lists, by district, the numbers of dispensary applications, qualified patients and caregivers. Names of dispensary applicants are not disclosed.
At this point, qualified patients and caregivers are the only ones who can legally cultivate marijuana.
Each patient may cultivate as many as 12 plants. Each caregiver may have no more than five patients, and could cultivate as many as 60 plants.
When the dispensaries are opened, cultivation centers also will be legally allowed under state law.
Once a dispensary opens within 25 miles of a patient's home, the patient is no longer allowed to grow or obtain product from a caregiver. Given that criterion, very few people in the Phoenix metro area will be allowed to grow their own.
On the Gila River Indian Reservation, however, no one has applied for a dispensary license, but the state says there are as many as 19 approved patients.
Those patients conceivably could legally grow their own supply.
Statewide, nearly 30,000 patients have qualified to take marijuana for a wide variety of ailments, including cancer and glaucoma.
By far the largest group sought approval to take marijuana for "chronic pain."
State health director Will Humble on July 20, however, rejected adding four conditions for which marijuana may be used: migraines, generalized anxiety disorder, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Humble said "there is insufficient valid, scientific evidence" to justify including those conditions.
According to these
article
Kyrsten Sinema wants to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
According to these
article
Kyrstin Sinema wants to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
The "Drug War" is just a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops
The DEA seized 6.7 million marijuana plants in 2011
This article seems to confirm my statement that the "drug war" is just a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops.
Gilbert City Council micro-manages marijuana clinics
When it comes to micro-managing medical marijuana clinics the royal government rulers in Gilbert are experts at it.
Dispensaries and cultivation sites in Gilbert will be allowed only within industrial zoning districts, and the businesses must be 1,320 feet apart from each other, 1,000 feet from parks, churches and schools, and 500 feet away from residential areas. The facilities' hours of operation cannot be earlier than 8 a.m. nor later than 6 p.m.
Source
Ahwatukee has single applicant for medical-marijuana dispensary
Source
Kyrsten Sinema wants to slap a 300% tax on medical marijuana
If you are against the drug war, you should vote against Kyrsten Sinema.
Kyrstin Sinema wants to slap a 300% tax on medical marijuana
If you are against the drug war, you should vote against Kyrstin Sinema.
Kyrsten Sinema's 300 percent tax on medical marijuana
This
web page
lists a whole bunch of
articles
about Kyrsten Sinema's outrageous 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Kyrstin Sinema's 300 percent tax on medical marijuana
This web page lists a whole bunch of articles about Kyrstin Sinema's outrageous 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Voters back medical marijuana
Source
Voters back medical marijuana
Aug. 4, 2012 07:19 PM
Why does The Arizona Republic refer to a medical program enacted by a vote of the people as a "pot program"?
The foundation of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution rest upon the people's entitlement to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
The Bill of Rights incorporated John Locke's idea that individuals' economic and personal rights should be protected from the government and are free and equal in the state of nature.
According to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the first Law of Nature is that every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it. If a federal government agency wishes to go against the vote, the hope, the will, the happiness, the health and the peace of the people, then they better re-read the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights and understand that "powers" not delegated to the Constitution nor prohibited by the states are reserved to the people.
Oh, yeah, and they better Google the second part of the first law of nature, too.
-- Peter Allen Jones, Apache Junction
Tuesday lottery to give licenses to sell medical marijuana
Source
Tuesday lottery to decide who gets Arizona's first licenses to sell medical marijuana
Posted: Monday, August 6, 2012 6:15 am | Updated: 8:22 am, Mon Aug 6, 2012.
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
State officials will award the first-ever licenses to legally sell marijuana this coming week under what one prosecutor said is a cloud of having them shut down the moment they open their doors.
The big day comes Tuesday when state health officials will pull out a device resembling the machine used to pick lottery numbers.
In fact, that's really what it is: a lottery to determine which of the 486 applicants are going to walk away with a certificate that awards them permission -- pending final inspection -- to be one of the 126 sites where marijuana can be sold. In areas where there are multiple applicants for the same neighborhood, the business whose pre-numbered ping pong ball that the machine spits out is the winner.
And the competition is even tighter than that.
State Health Director Will Humble said no one applied for a license to sell marijuana in 27 of the state's 126 "community health analysis areas.'' Most of those are Indian reservations, though there was no interest in setting up shop to sell marijuana in Green Valley or San Luis.
And 24 areas had only one applicant, meaning that organization already is a winner.
So that leaves 462 applicants vying for the 75 remaining areas.
Humble figures that the first dispensaries could be operating in two weeks. But he said these are likely to be by applicants in areas where there was no competition, giving them a head start on their paperwork and planning their security and inventory control systems that the state has to approve before they can open their doors.
But the big question is how long those doors will remain open, and whether the winners will ever be able to recoup their investment, ranging from the start-up costs and lease payments on buildings to the $5,000 non-refundable application fee.
"I have been told that the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, John Leonardo, fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations of the (federal) Controlled Substances Act,'' claimed Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk in a letter to Gov. Jan Brewer.
She pointed out that, Arizona's 2010 voter-approved medical marijuana law notwithstanding, the drug remains illegal here for all under federal law. And a dispensary license not only grants the right to sell but also to grow the drug.
Polk, writing on behalf of 13 of the state's 15 county attorneys, chided Brewer's health department for licensing both cardholders and dispensaries in spite of that conflict.
"We believe it is bad public policy for one arm of the government to facilitate marijuana cultivation and use while another arm of the government is moving to close it down,'' she wrote.
The letter drew a sharp retort from Bill Solomon of the U.S. Attorney's Office, calling her representation on his agency's position on medical marijuana dispensaries "inaccurate.''
"The Department of Justice is focusing its limited resources on significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals and their caregivers who are in compliance with applicable state medical marijuana statutes,'' Solomon said.
Polk, however, told Capitol Media Services she's not convinced.
She said that Ann Scheel, who was acting U.S. Attorney before Leonardo's appointment, sent a letter to Brewer saying that her office intends to "vigorously enforce the Controlled Substances Act'' and that compliance with state medical marijuana laws is not a defense.
Solomon, however, said that does not mean users are in danger.
"We don't intend to focus our resources on cancer patients or other seriously ill individuals,'' he said.
Polk, however, said that's not her only source.
"I had spoken to a former DEA agent who tells me that the U.S. Attorney's Office does intend to seize and close down the dispensaries,'' she said. And she said federal prosecutors in California have gone after several retail sellers there.
Pressed specifically on what it might mean if prosecutors go after dispensaries which are selling the drugs, Solomon said he could not provide a definitive answer. "What I can tell you is we will continue to focus on large-scale drug traffickers,'' he said.
Whether raids are coming or not, Polk said state employees should not administer the program in the face of contrary federal law.
"It makes no sense for one arm of the government to be licensing dispensaries and another arm of the government to be shutting them down,'' she said.
Humble, however, continues down the road to Tuesday's drawing undeterred. Nor is he concerned that his agency might be taking application money from and licensing dispensaries that could be immediately shuttered by federal agents.
"This is a free-market society,'' he said. "People make decisions about what businesses they're going to jump into based on their own analysis of their own risks and benefits.''
Humble said no one has kept the conflict between state and federal law a secret.
But all the talk of shutting down dispensaries also depends on the feds finding them first.
The 2010 voter-approved law specifically exempts from public records laws not only the names of those who will get a license but the addresses where they are located. Humble said he is obligated, though, to provide a list to anyone with a medical marijuana card.
"Now, cardholders can take that email and give it on their own Facebook account,'' he continued, as they are not subject to the confidentiality requirements. And Humble said he expects at least some dispensary operators to come forward publicly, if for no other reason than to advertise for customers.
And if federal agents want the list? Humble said they probably ought to have a court order to get him to surrender it. [Probably??? Will Humble is a drug war tyrant and he will probably give the list to the Feds without a court order. I suspect that drug war tyrant Governor Jan Brewer will order Will Humble to give the lists to the Feds]
In the meantime, Humble is preparing for Tuesday's drawing. But that does not mean anyone will be opening up shop on Wednesday.
"It's really just an allocation,'' he said of the process. Winners then have to complete paperwork to be certified as a marijuana dealer.
"That still doesn't allow them to sell,'' Humble explained. He said health officials have to do a final inspection of everything from the business plans to the security of the facility.
There also needs to be an inventory control system in place to keep some of the product from going out the back door for illegal sales.
Sure maybe the guy should be booted if he shot some amphetamines before a judo match because that would improve his performance, but it is insane to say that traces of marijuana in his body would have improved his performance.
In reality if he smoked a joint before a judo match I suspect it would lower his performance.
U.S. athlete out of Olympics, blames baked goods
From staff reports
LONDON – U.S. judo athlete Nicholas Delpopolo was expelled from the Olympic Games Monday by the International Olympic Committee after testing positive for marijuana a week after finishing competition here, U.S. officials said.
U.S. judo competitor Nicholas Delpopolo was 0-4.
Delpopolo, 23, of Westfield, N.J., said he inadvertently ate baked goods that contained marijuana before he departed for the Olympics last month. U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Patrick Sandusky said the athlete was sent back to the USA on Monday shortly after being notified of the test result.
His disqualification marks the first in-games doping violation announced by the IOC. Four previous offenses involving Olympic athletes resulted from tests conducted prior to the start of Olympic competition.
"I apologize to the U.S. Olympic Committee, to my teammates and to my fans, and I am embarrassed by this mistake," Delpopolo said in a written statement. "I look forward to representing my country in the future, and will rededicate myself to being the best judo athlete that I can be."
Sandusky said the U.S. committee "absolutely" supports the disqualification.
"The (USOC) is absolutely committed to clean competition and stringent anti-doping penalties," he said. "Any positive test, for any banned substance, comes with the appropriate consequences. … We look forward to witnessing the continued success of our athletes and commend their dedication to clean sport."
Delpopolo finished competing July 30, losing in the repechage round of the 73-kilogram weight class by yuko to Nyam-Ochir Sainjargal of Mongolia. Delpopolo finished seventh.
While Delpopolo represented the first doping offense resulting from in-games testing, wrestler Stephany Lee was kept off the team before the Olympics after testing positive for tetrahydrocannabinol acid — a marijuana metabolite — in a sample collected April 21 at the Olympic trials in Iowa City.
About half of the 10,500 athletes in London are expected to be tested as part of the largest anti-doping effort in the history of the Olympics, IOC officials said. As of Monday, 3,486 tests had been conducted, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.
In a major shift from a largely random test strategy, IOC officials said testing in London would be driven by intelligence gathered from various sources, inside and outside of Olympic competition.
It was immediately unclear whether Delpopolo's testing was specifically sought based on information provided to Olympic authorities.
Doug Banfelder seems to have the same ignorance and
biases about heroin that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer,
Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble
and Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk have about
marijuana.
But we are talking about medical marijuana here so I won't
get into a discussion on why heroin is a harmless drug
that should be legal just like marijuana should be legal.
Medical-pot patients have right to choose
by Doug Banfelder - Aug. 6, 2012 12:00 AM
My Turn
It is very odd to hear Arizona elected officials promoting the primacy of federal mandate over a law passed by the state's voters, as Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk and other county attorneys recently have
("Brewer urged to halt pot program," Republic, Tuesday).
It appears that Polk and 12 other county attorneys are all of one mind when it comes to marijuana: Any production and distribution is criminal, and any use of the drug constitutes abuse. They seem to have concluded that the electorate must have been confused when voting for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA), and so now they are simply trying to save us from ourselves.
A career prosecutor and co-chair of a county substance-abuse group, Polk, who is generally noted for impartiality, seems incapable of accepting that marijuana has legitimate medicinal benefit, and that patients choosing it over synthetic pharmaceuticals are exercising their right to make an alternative, natural health-care choice.
Such patients are everyday Arizonans. Among cardholders are accountants, hair stylists, auto mechanics, entrepreneurs, plumbers, chefs, management professionals, retirees, community volunteers, neighbors, parents and grandparents. The fact is there is no stereotypical medical-marijuana patient.
Ms. Polk is dismissive of patients who obtain cards for severe and chronic pain; she recently mischaracterized the condition as "self-defined." This is incorrect. To qualify for a card, a doctor must perform an extensive review of a prospective patient's medical records, clearly making any finding of pain as a qualifying condition doctor-defined.
And given that pain management is a $60 billion industry, with nearly 100 million Americans suffering from chronic pain, why is it surprising that so many seek a patient card in order to obtain relief? Put into proper context, it is easy to understand why "severe and chronic pain" is the largest category of debilitating conditions under the AMMA.
As for men comprising the majority of cardholders, many of them relatively young, consider the following: Who usually performs the most labor-intensive work? Who is most attracted to extreme sports? Who is most at risk for spinal-cord injury? Men 18 to 24. And as many of us know only too well, the cumulative effects of those activities don't always present themselves until later in life.
The American public is well ahead of the political class on marijuana policy.
Many of those in power remain tone-deaf to public opinion, ignore mounting evidence of marijuana as medicine and continue favoring (and funding) enforcement-only approaches that have demonstrably failed over the course of many decades.
Rather than attacking the Arizona Department of Health Services for creating a responsible program in line with what voters approved, Ms. Polk and company should instead focus on the heroin plague raging in our schools and the abuse of prescription painkillers, which has now reached epidemic levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The White House Office on National Drug Control Policy calls abuse of prescription painkillers "the nation's fastest-growing drug problem."
[Sorry I disagree with author Doug Banfelder 100 percent on this.
Heroin has been demonized by the government as an evil, evil drug is the cause of the worlds problems.
In reality heroin is a harmless drug that should be legalized just like marijuana should be legalized.
About the only two bad things about heroin are that you can overdose on it and it is an addictive drug like caffeine in coffee or nicotine in cigarettes. The webmaster is a caffeine addict himself and has to get his 6 cans of Mountain Dew everyday. The webmaster is a former nicotine addict who smoked 3 and 1/2 packs of cigarettes a day]
Leave the AMMA, its patients and businesspeople be. Threatening peaceable, productive everyday Arizona citizens with legal sanctions is contradictory to a pillar of Americanism -- freedom of choice.
Voters in an increasing number of states are expressing their desire for more finely attenuated policies that permit marijuana for medicinal use and manage it by way of stringent state regulation. This can be and is being done elsewhere.
Arizona medical-marijuana cardholders would welcome productive dialogue with our county attorneys and other community leaders in developing new, more-effective policies for drug education and program management.
Doug Banfelder is a non-cultivating caregiver under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and a member of Americans for Safe Access.
Medical-marijuana growers await outcome of Arizona lottery for dispensaries
by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Aug. 6, 2012 11:16 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
You can't really tell what's going on in the nondescript, tan stucco home in a booming Maricopa neighborhood until you walk inside, down the carpeted hallway, to the room with the warm yellow light glowing under the door.
"You don't really smell it until the door is opened," said Scott, 30, unlocking the door with a set of keys he always keeps with him. "And then, it hits you."
The bedroom shelters a full-scale legal medical-marijuana farm, with 5-foot-tall plants sprouting crystallized buds, and other plants at varying degrees of growth. A custom ventilation system cools the room. A humidifier keeps it moist; a hydroponic system pumps nutrients into plant roots; and professionally wired high-powered grow lamps are rigged to a timer.
Scott is one of more than 25,000 patients and caregivers who were allowed to grow medical marijuana beginning in 2010 while state officials fought the law and then figured out how to implement a plan for statewide dispensaries.
Today, however, will be the beginning of the end for many as the state Department of Health Services grants permission for 99 medical-marijuana dispensaries to open around the state.
Authors of the state's medical-marijuana law intended to limit urban growing by forcing people to buy at dispensaries, so after today, legal growers within 25 miles of a dispensary must begin shutting down their operations except under limited circumstances.
The state will allow current cardholders to grow marijuana until they apply for their annual renewal. Over time, the law is expected to virtually eliminate all growers in the state's urban areas who are not associated with dispensaries.
Growers such as Scott and his girlfriend, Jody, 44, who declined to give their last names for safety reasons, believe the rule unfairly -- and illegally -- forces them to buy medical marijuana at a limited number of dispensaries.
"It will really be devastating to the community, to patients and caregivers," Scott said.
And, Scott believes, it will be financially devastating for him and Jody, who smoke marijuana throughout the day to ease chronic pain caused by vehicle and other accidents. He and Jody socked away his earnings as an iron worker, a Christmas bonus and tax returns to build their own grow room at a cost of about $5,000. Even though the room has doubled their utility bill to about $450 a month, they say it's still cheaper than buying marijuana at a dispensary.
They also worry that dispensary-grown marijuana could contain pesticides that could harm them.
"It's like groceries -- it's in the same genre," Jody said. "If you're able to grow your own tomatoes ... and green beans, do it. With this 25-mile rule, they're basically saying don't grow your tomatoes, you have to go to the store. In this economy, it's going to make it impossible for many people to get their medication."
Law's requirements
Voters in 2010 passed the measure to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions, including chronic pain, cancer and muscle spasms, to use medical marijuana.
They must register with the state, which issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers. Caregivers can grow 12 plants for up to five patients.
Some caregivers can continue growing once the 25-mile rule takes effect, but only if their designated patients live 25 miles or more from a dispensary.
The state has given about 29,500 people permission to use medical marijuana; it has given about 85 percent of those patients permission to grow their own until the 25-mile rule takes effect.
Under the law, state health officials can license up to 126 dispensaries throughout designated areas statewide. Health officials received 486 dispensary applications from individuals or businesses that want to set up shop in 99 of the 126 areas.
The state will select the winning applicants today by lottery.
There is no limit to how much marijuana a dispensary can grow. Patients can obtain up to 21/2 ounces of medical marijuana every two weeks.
ADHS Director Will Humble expects some dispensaries could be operating as early as September.
Medical-marijuana advocates are criticizing Humble's decision to interpret the 25-mile rule "as the crow flies" rather than measuring mileage on a grid.
Lisa Hauser, an attorney who helped draft the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, and Andrew Meyers, campaign manager for the organization that got the program on the ballot, said Humble is accurately interpreting the intent of the 25-mile rule.
Hauser and Meyers said the law was designed to limit urban marijuana cultivation as a way to address law enforcement's concerns of home invasions and fire risks caused by dangerous wiring for lamps and other growing equipment.
Both expected the dispensaries to be operating shortly after the voters passed the law. Instead, the dispensaries were delayed after Gov. Jan Brewer in May 2011 asked a federal judge to determine whether the state law conflicted with federal drug statutes.
Eight months later, a judge dismissed the state's lawsuit.
The decision cleared the way for state health officials to begin the process of licensing medical-marijuana dispensaries.
Meyers pointed out that the campaign urged people to work through caregivers rather than investing thousands of dollars on outfitting grow spaces in spare bedrooms and garages that would have to be shut down when the dispensaries opened.
"Having individuals grow their own or set up their own little unsecured farming operations is a tad risky," Hauser said. "But also, it was not to be the default method of obtaining medicine -- it was to be grow-your-own only in these limited circumstances."
A spokesman for Phoenix Police Department said it will investigate and enforce the law if home growers illegally grow marijuana once dispensaries are running.
Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, who has urged Brewer to halt licensing of dispensaries because marijuana is illegal under federal law, also said her agency will prosecute those who don't comply with the 25-mile rule.
"They would be committing a felony," she said. "And it will be treated like any other drug investigation."
Polk and 12 of the state's 15 county attorneys are fighting the marijuana law and sought a legal opinion from Attorney General Tom Horne as to whether the state law is pre-empted by federal law.
Horne on Monday issued an opinion that the law's provisions "authorizing any cultivating, selling and dispensing of marijuana" are pre-empted but that issuing registry cards to patients and caregivers is not. He advised the ADHS that it could go forward with the lottery, saying that a dispensary-registration certificate does not give authorization and that applicants still must go through additional processes.
But he suggested dispensary-lottery winners consider delaying work or investment in a dispensary until the courts weigh in.
Requirement impacts
Caterer Ellen Bridgewater, 52, began growing marijuana at Compassion First Caregivers Circle Inc., a warehouse-size cultivation center in north Phoenix.
The Scottsdale resident and her husband grow for five patients who have cancer, arthritis and Crohn's disease.
Bridgewater obtained patient and grow cards several months ago to help treat Crohn's disease, a form of inflammatory bowl disease. She tends to the plants, plays jazz to help them grow and regularly meets with patients to give them their medicine.
Bridgewater applied to run a dispensary, saying she wants to continue to provide medical marijuana at a low cost.
"I'm very apprehensive about the rule," she said. "You want people to have easy access to their medicine, and 25 miles is a long way for some people to go."
In anticipation of dispensaries opening, businesses that cater to medical- marijuana growers like weGrow in west Phoenix are shifting their business models away from home growers to focus on dispensaries.
The hydroponics superstore targeted much of its outreach to individuals, store owner Sunny Singh said.
The store sells lamps, nutrients, growing advice and other marijuana-related products.
Singh said many of his customers are asking questions about the 25-mile rule and are concerned dispensary-grown marijuana will be too expensive.
"They don't want to spend top money for medicine if they don't know what the quality is," he said. "If they're growing at home, they don't have a quality issue."
It is interesting that they argue that the 10th Amendment gives Arizona the right to have the racist SB 1070 law. Even though I am against SB 1070 I think that to some degree they are probably right on that.
But when it comes to medical marijuana they want to pretend the 10 Amendment doesn't exist and let Federal law supersede Arizona's Prop 203.
Arizona Attorney General to seek court ruling making medical marijuana dispensaries illegal
Posted: Monday, August 6, 2012 4:53 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Attorney General Tom Horne said Monday that prosecutors are going to ask a state court to declare that the planned medical marijuana dispensaries are illegal and cannot be opened.
Horne told Capitol Media Services that federal law prohibits anyone from selling marijuana. Yet the state is planning to issue licenses that authorize dispensary operators to do just that.
"A state law cannot authorize a violation of federal law,'' he said.
Horne said despite his conclusion that dispensaries cannot legally operate, he is not prohibiting state Health Director Will Humble from proceeding with today's planned lottery which will decide who gets the limited number of licenses that are available under the 2010 voter-approved Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.
But Horne, in a formal legal opinion, pointed out that the certificates that will be issued today simply give winners of the lottery permission to proceed with setting up a dispensary.
The health department still must give final approval. Humble said that requires final review of the operation, including security and inventory control.
Horne said that, given the legal ruling he is seeking, any of the lottery winners should hold off making further investments until the legal issues are resolved or risk finding their operations declared illegal.
The attorney general said his legal opinion -- and desire for a court ruling on the legality of dispensaries -- does not affect the nearly 30,000 Arizonans who have cards from the state entitling them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana without facing the possibility of being prosecuted under state law.
He said all those cards do is identify legal medical marijuana users to state and local police. Horne said they do not purport to "authorize'' anyone to possess the drug in violation of federal law.
Ryan Hurley, an attorney who represents nearly two dozen organizations that want to operate dispensaries, said Horne is legally off base.
Hurley acknowledged there are some court rulings from other states which say that federal law trumps the ability to license marijuana dispensaries. But Hurley said there are other cases to the contrary. [Like the 10th Amendment]
For example, he said a judge rejected a bid to shut down licensing of marijuana dispensaries in San Diego based on the same question of federal preemption. Hurley said the court ruled that the state was not usurping federal authority, as nothing in the California medical marijuana program precludes federal agents from charging dispensary operators with violating federal laws.
Gov. Jan Brewer does not intend to intercede, at least not at this point.
Press aide Matthew Benson said his boss has always been concerned about the conflict between state and federal law.
But he also pointed out that a federal judge threw out her request to declare the state law preempted. And a state judge ruled that Brewer is legally required to enact the law as approved by voters.
"Short of a new court order or some indication from the federal government that they intend to prosecute state employees (for issuing licenses), the state's going to proceed with the implementation,'' Benson said.
Horne said it will probably not be necessary for him to file a new lawsuit to get the ruling he wants.
In June White Mountain Health Center sued Maricopa County after county officials would not act on its request for a registration certificate to operate a medical marijuana dispensary in the unincorporated area of Sun City.
Without such a certificate, state health officials will not issue a dispensary license. But county supervisors, acting under advice from County Attorney Bill Montgomery, refused to let their employees take any action on any permit that would involve violation of federal laws.
Horne said the fastest way to get the issue resolved would be to work with Montgomery to expedite that case, getting the judge to rule on whether Maricopa County -- and, by extension, the state -- can legally refuse to comply with the requirement of the voter-approved law to process dispensary applications.
Jeffrey Kaufman, the attorney representing the health center, said Horne's maneuver is not surprising.
"It's just all politics,'' he said. Kaufman said it is no secret that Horne, along with most politicians in the state, never liked the voter approved law.
But Kaufman said he doubts that any judge is going to give Horne the ruling he wants.
Horne acknowledged those two prior rulings against the state when it balked at licensing marijuana dispensaries.
Both came last year after Brewer, acting on Horne's advice, directed Humble not to process any applications for marijuana dispensaries.
The governor said her main concern was that state employees could end up being prosecuted under the federal Controlled Substances Act because they were "facilitating'' others into being able to sell marijuana. So she asked U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton for a ruling.
In January, Bolton threw the case out of court.
The judge said the only way she might be able to intervene is if some Arizona employee actually were charged with violating federal law. She said that hasn't occurred here or in any other state with similar laws.
Just days later, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama ordered Brewer to fully implement the 2010 voter-approved law, ruling she had acted illegally in holding it up.
Gama rejected the governor's argument that she has the discretion to delay enactment of parts of the law while she was asking Bolton to decide the liability of state workers under federal drug laws.
"Defendants cite no authority for this proposition, and the court has found none," Gama wrote in his ruling.
"The voters intended the Arizona Medical Marijuana be implemented within 120 days," he continued. "This has not been done."
The case before Gama, however, did not address the issue of federal preemption that Horne now hopes to raise in court.
No date has been set for a trial in the White Mountain case. But the judge in that case did direct that state health officials process the health center's dispensary application while the case is being heard even though the operators were unable to get the required Maricopa County certification.
Sadly this is how cops attempt to make themselves look like heroes. They illegally stop and search 100 people and 1 or 2 of them are bound to have an illegal drug or some other contraband which they are arrested for. And then the cops brag they are making the streets safer by illegally searching and illegally arresting people for victimless drug war crimes.
If you ask me the cops first of all should obey the law and stop illegally searching people. Second the cops should be looking for real criminals like robbers, burglars and rapists, not people who commit victimless drug war crimes.
For Women in Street Stops, Deeper Humiliation
By WENDY RUDERMAN
Published: August 6, 2012
Shari Archibald’s black handbag sat at her feet on the sidewalk in front of her Bronx home on a recent summer night. The two male officers crouched over her leather bag and rooted around inside, elbow-deep. One officer fished out a tampon and then a sanitary napkin, crinkling the waxy orange wrapper between his fingers in search of drugs. Next he pulled out a tray of foil-covered pills, Ms. Archibald recalled.
“What’s this?” the officer said, examining the pill packaging stamped “drospirenone/ethinylestradiol.”
“Birth control,” Ms. Archibald remembered saying.
She took a breath and exhaled deeply, hoping the whoosh of air would cool her temper and contain her humiliation as the officers proceeded to pat her down.
The laws governing street stops are blind to gender. Male officers are permitted to frisk a woman if they reasonably suspect that she may be armed with a dangerous weapon that could be used to harm them. A frisk can escalate into a field search if officers feel a suspicious bulge while patting down the woman’s outer layer of clothing or the outline of her purse.
Last year, New York City police officers stopped 46,784 women, frisking nearly 16,000. Guns were found in 59 cases, according to an analysis of police statistics by The New York Times.
While the number of women stopped by officers in 2011 represented 6.9 percent of all police stops, the rate of guns found on both men and women was equally low, 0.12 percent and 0.13 percent, respectively. Civil rights leaders have argued that the low gun-recovery rates are a strong indication that the bulk of stop-and-frisk encounters are legally unjustified. (The number of police stops has dropped by more than 34 percent in recent months.)
When officers conduct stops upon shaky or baseless legal foundations, people of both sexes often say they felt violated. Yet stops of women by male officers can often involve an additional element of embarrassment and perhaps sexual intimidation, according to women who provided their accounts of being stopped by the police. And many incorrectly believe that the police, like Transportation Security Administration officers, are required to have female officers frisk women.
When conducting a frisk, police officers in New York are trained in the Patrol Guide to slide their hands over the external clothing, focusing on “the waistband, armpit, collar and groin areas.” Officers are taught that perpetrators have been known to tape knives or guns to the base of their necks or place weapons inside their underwear.
The training does not draw a distinction between male and female suspects, Police Inspector Kim Y. Royster said.
“Yes, it’s intrusive, but wherever a weapon can be concealed is where the officer is going to search,” Inspector Royster said. That search is not random; it is based on information provided to an officer, like a detailed description of an armed suspect, or actions that raise an officer’s reasonable suspicion that the woman may be armed, she added.
And although the police stops of women yielded very few guns, they did produce 3,993 arrests last year.
“Safety has no gender,” Inspector Royster said. “When you are talking about the safety of an officer, the first thing he or she is going to do is mitigate that threat.”
A search can extend to a woman’s purse, the inspector added, because it is considered a “lungeable area,” or a place where a person can easily conceal a weapon that can quickly be grabbed.
Ashanti Galloway, 24, a security guard and day care worker, said she recoiled when an officer recently fumbled through her bag and pulled out a pair of pink Victoria’s Secret underwear and her bra.
“He had my clothes in his hand; it was my panties and my bra,” Ms. Galloway said. “I was upset. I felt violated. Powerless.”
Ms. Galloway, who provided her full name and address but asked The Times to use Ashanti, her middle name, for this article, said she was not frisked on that occasion, though once, last summer, a male officer patted her down.
“A male officer should not have a right to touch me in any sort of manner, even if it’s on the outside of my clothing,” Ms. Galloway said. “We’re girls. They are men. And they are cops. It feels like a way for them to exert power over you.”
Crystal Pope, 22, said she and two female friends were frisked by male officers last year in Harlem Heights. The officers said they were looking for a rapist. It was an early spring evening at about 6:30 p.m. The three women sat talking on a bench near Ms. Pope’s home on 143rd Street when the officers pulled up and asked for identification, she said.
“They tapped around the waistline of my jeans,” Ms. Pope said. “They tapped the back pockets of my jeans, around my buttock. It was kind of disrespectful and degrading. It was uncalled-for. It made no sense. How are you going to stop three females when you are supposedly looking for a male rapist?”
Besides, Ms. Pope said, she thought male officers were required to summon a female colleague when conducting a frisk.
That belief, though incorrect, is shared by many women, said Andrea Ritchie, a civil rights lawyer and co-coordinator of Streetwise and Safe, a nonprofit organization that focuses on police practices that affect young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who are also members of ethnic minorities.
Each year, the organization conducts between 20 and 30 “know-your-rights” workshops at community centers around New York City. Inevitably, questions about gender and policing arise, Ms. Ritchie said.
“Every training we go to, we hear complaints about stop-and-frisk, and we hear women talk about sexual harassment,” Ms. Ritchie said. “They say, ‘Isn’t it right that a male officer can’t frisk you?’ ”
Ms. Ritchie said she believed the confusion spoke to the type of police stops unfolding daily on the streets, especially in cases where officers might have violated constitutional boundaries.
If a woman believes there is no legal basis for the frisk, Ms. Ritchie said, then she may feel that she is being groped simply for the officer’s sexual gratification. “That’s how women have described it to me,” Mrs. Ritchie added.
According to T.S.A. protocol, male security officers are not permitted to frisk passengers of the opposite sex during the airport-screening process. “Males pat down males, and females pat down females: that’s the policy,” said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the agency.
The agency offers options for passengers who express discomfort with the pat-down process. It allows them to undergo a pat-down in a private room, with a traveling companion as a witness. “You should neither be asked to — nor agree to — lift, remove or raise any articles of clothing to reveal a sensitive area of the body, such as the buttocks, groin or breasts,” T.S.A. policy says. “Bare or exposed skin should not be touched by the security officer.”
But in New York, Inspector Royster said, it is not only unsafe for male officers to wait for a female officer to arrive, but it is also often impractical. As of the end of 2011, more than 80 percent of officers on patrol were men. Of the more than 22,200 ranked officers, roughly 4,200 were women, according to the Police Department.
During training, officers take a course, “The Nobility of Policing,” which teaches them to be sensitive to issues surrounding gender, race and ethnicity, but that training does not specifically address stop-and-frisk for a weapon. It is only after a woman is arrested and brought to a police precinct that a female officer is summoned to conduct a “thorough search,” according to the Patrol Guide.
Ms. Archibald’s interaction with the police occurred shortly after she had left work. The two uniformed officers drove up in a squad car and stopped her as she fished inside her purse for keys to her house on Walton Avenue in Morris Heights, she said.
Ms. Archibald, a 21-year-old hairdresser, said the encounter was made worse by the number of people out on the street that night. “There were a lot of guys from the neighborhood outside,” she said, “and here is this officer squeezing one of my sanitary pads in front of everyone.”
One officer, she recalled, lifted up her long tank top and lightly brushed his hand over the elastic waist of her spandex leggings. They instructed her to pinch the shirt fabric between her breasts and yank at her bra.
“They asked me to snap my bra, to pull and shake it a bit, to see if anything fell out,” Ms. Archibald said.
Nothing did, she said. And they let her go.
Ray Rivera and Tom Torok contributed reporting.
OK, I suspect it is only illegal to sell medical marijuana within in 1,320 feet of a hospital.
I suspect the following rule was written by the tyrants on the Chandler city council who are war with anyone who uses medical marijuana:
No medical-marijuana dispensaries in line for Chandler
City denied lone request, no others pending
by Luci Scott - Aug. 6, 2012 10:20 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Chandler has approved no applications for medical-marijuana dispensaries, and no applications are pending.
So the city will see no direct impact from the state lottery Tuesday that will determine which applicants are authorized to open shop.
A total of 486 applications statewide have been turned in, and most of the winners will be chosen in a drawing to be streamed live on the department's website starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Approval to operate a dispensary is not complete until the department is notified that the dispensary is ready to be inspected.
In April 2011, the Chandler City Council unanimously denied a request from an applicant to open a dispensary at Dobson and Frye roads.
The dispensary would have been a 1,500-square-foot site across from Chandler Regional Medical Center. The council said the location was too close to homes, and the council feared setting a precedent by approving what City Attorney Mary Wade described as "minor deviations" from the city ordinance.
The ordinance requires that a dispensary be at least a quarter-mile, or 1,320 feet, from day-care centers, parks, schools, libraries, churches and hospitals.
The site would have been 521 feet from the hospital and 191 feet from the closest single-family home north across Frye Road. It would have been 210 feet from a multifamily complex to the west.
"We still have two neighborhoods within 500 feet, and another concern is precedent. ... If we deviate from our standards ... before you know it, we have no standards," City Council member Matt Orlando said at the time.
The applicant was McNatt LLC, owned by business partners Darrell and Vicki Tannatt and Jay and Anita McClintock.
People authorized to use medical marijuana who live more than 25 miles from a dispensary can grow the plant.
Neighboring cities with dispensaries within 25 miles of Chandler residents would stop self-supply in Chandler.
The Arizona Department of Health Services divided the state into 126 Community Health Analysis Areas, or CHAAs. There were no applications in 27 of them, said department spokeswoman Laura Oxley.
Only one dispensary will be permitted in any one CHAA. Seventy-five areas are competitive, meaning there is more than one application for them.
Republic reporter Gary Nelson contributed to the article.
In this question and answer session with Jeff Flake and Wil Cardon they both appear to be drug war tyrants who are against medical marijuana.
Here is the one question on medical marijuana and both Flake and Cardon gave the wrong answer. In this election if you want somebody that isn't a drug war tyrant you will have to vote for the Libertarian guy.
Flake: I’m not a fan, myself.
Cardon: I oppose the legalization of marijuana. Those needs can be provided through different delivery systems. The FDA and government is the problem to many of the woes of drug approvals.
Q&A: Flake, Cardon answer reader questions
Senate Republican candidates Jeff Flake and Wil Cardon recently participated in a live chat with readers on azcentral.com. Here are some highlights. Read more questions and answers.
Question from Tomi St. Mars: With 20 percent of the GDP being spent on health care, what can be done to improve quality and cost?
Jeff Flake: First, give individuals the same benefits corporations currently enjoy, to be able to purchase health care with pre-tax dollars. Second, force insurance companies to compete across state lines. Third, make it easier to create Health Savings Accounts. That’s a good start.
Wil Cardon: Our health-care system is broken. We need to start with tort reform and by inserting market reforms into the health-care system. Allow doctors to practice the most effective medicine, not have the requirements of government dictate care. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.
Q from MisterX: What are your positions on the future of both the unmanned and manned space programs?
Flake: I think that government needs to partner with the private sector more than it has done in the past regarding space programs. This will make these programs more affordable and effective.
[I guess Jeff Flake isn't the Libertarian he claims to be]
Cardon: We have grave problems right now with the economy, a lack of jobs, an unsecure border and many others. I believe the space program is important but is not the focus we need to take right now. Otherwise, there may not be a space program in the future.
Q from Minority_Whip: What’s your stance on medical marijuana?
Flake: I’m not a fan, myself.
Cardon: I oppose the legalization of marijuana. Those needs can be provided through different delivery systems. The FDA and government is the problem to many of the woes of drug approvals.
Q from Paul5988: What would each of you say is the biggest difference in your political views with Jon Kyl?
Flake: I’m a big fan of Senator Kyl. But one difference is that I believe that Americans should be allowed to trade and travel with Cuba, he doesn’t.
Cardon: I disagree with his choice for the U.S. Senate in this race. I believe that the old guard and career politicians are not the solutions going forward. I am not running for the endorsements of John McCain or Jon Kyl. We need to enter a new era where statesmean and problem-solvers represent us, not people who have been in government the longest. As Reagan said, “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”
Q from Brice Corder: Why do you both feel it’s necessary to attack each other rather than spending the time talking about issues?
Flake: I’d certainly rather talk about issues, but this is a campaign and you have to draw a contrast between yourself and your opponent.
Cardon: If you look at each of my ads they have discussed immigration, conflicts of interest with lobbyists and spending taxpayer dollars and higher energy taxes. I have told Jeff that I will remove all ads and political material using his name if he will do the same and ask the Washington special-interest groups spending millions to act accordingly. I am hopeful he will agree. I certainly want to change the discussion to issues and not name-calling.
Q from Mike K: How do you feel about Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
Flake: I’m running for the Senate, and I’ve got enough on my plate without getting involved in other races.
Cardon: I believe our local law-enforcement officials are doing the best they can with difficult issues unfairly burdened on them by the federal government not doing its job. I applaud Sheriff Joe and anyone else, including our border patrol, who fight the establishment in enforcing and helping keep “the rule of law” in our country.
[If Cardon supports Sheriff Joe, that is another reason to vote against him]
Q from Betweenarock$hardplace: What is your stand on denial by health-insurance policies to those with pre-existing conditions?
Flake: If individuals are allowed to access health-care services only when they are sick or injured, there is no reason for anyone to have insurance. If insurance companies are required to accept all pre-existing conditions, insurance is no longer insurance.
Cardon: We need to open up insurance markets for companies to compete across state lines. We need more market reforms. I believe with these changes and with tort reform the free market will provide answers rather than government for problems like pre-existing conditions. I believe we should not require people to purchase a private product as a cost of citizenship. I would like to see those who represent us do the same. By the way, I also believe that those in the Senate and House should live under the same laws we do. If they pass Obamacare, they should live under Obamacare.
Q from Neal4az: Which team would you cheer for: Wildcats or Sun Devils?
Flake: First half, ASU, second half, UofA, reverse order during the next game.
Cardon: This is a brutal one. Both of my parents were born in Tucson and my family has had four generations at the UofA. My mother bleeds red and blue and her license plate is 31-27 (I’ll let you look that one up). I attended classes at ASU and have three siblings that went there. I attended Stanford and played football for Bill Walsh. I’m rooting for either team unless they are playing Stanford.
But from this editorial it seems like the folks at the Arizona
Republic realize medical marijuana is here to stay even
if they hate it.
Medical pot is here to stay, like it or not
Aug. 7, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Medical marijuana? What's to like?
The concept starts by elevating a street drug to the level of therapeutic pharmaceutical.
There's the canard about how pot is just another "natural" choice for patients, like herbal tea.
But despite our misgivings, and those of the state's prosecutors and sheriffs, medical marijuana is the law. Arizona voters approved it, in 2010, and their votes should mean something.
Gov. Jan Brewer has little choice but to reject law enforcement's calls to stop the program.
The state Department of Health Services has worked hard to set up a system that will limit use to those who say marijuana relieves their symptoms.
Today, a state lottery will determine who gets the first licenses granted in Arizona to sell marijuana. It is the culmination of a long and diligent process to keep this program from becoming a complete sham.
Yes, there are people whose medical symptoms are helped by marijuana. The same could be said of a hot toddy. Marijuana is not a recognized medicine with standard doses and controlled, uniform potency.
Only the naive could fail to recognize the ultimate goal of medical-marijuana laws is legalization of the drug. That should be debated openly on its merits, not by pretending pot is medicine.
Prosecutors and sheriffs say they expect federal officials to snuff dispensaries as soon as they open. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman says that's inaccurate. But when pressed for a definitive answer about jeopardy for state employees, the Justice Department shilly-shallied. Disgraceful.
The program could become a stoner's dream. The state could wind up in federal court. These are among possible unpleasant side effects of a lousy law.
There's plenty to dislike here. But Arizona has done its best to implement the voters' will. Only a court can stop it now.
Again I am sure that this is one of the reasons the Founders gave us the Second Amendment.
If the courts say that the government doesn't have to honor the 4th and 5th Amendments, do you really think the courts will say the government has to honor the 2nd Amendment?
Appeals court overturns ruling, says government wiretapping was OK
August 7, 2012 | 12:46 pm
A federal appeals court Tuesday threw out a lawsuit by lawyers for an Islamic group that charged the federal government had illegally wiretapped them.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the government had legal immunity from the lawsuit filed by lawyers for Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now-defunct charity that federal agents said was a terrorist group.
The ruling overturns a 2010 decision by a San Francisco federal judge against the wiretapping program. That ruling awarded the group’s lawyers who had been wiretapped a total of $40,800 and required the government to pay Al-Haramain’s $2.5 million legal fees.
“This case effectively brings to an end the plaintiffs’ ongoing attempts to hold the executive branch responsible for intercepting telephone conversations without judicial authorization,” the 9th Circuit said.
The panel also affirmed a lower-court decision that FBI Director Robert Mueller could not be personally sued as a result of the surveillance.
In 2001, President George W. Bush authorized the government to monitor, without warrants, telephone calls and e-mails between Americans and possible foreign terrorists. Al-Haramain and its two lawyers sued, arguing that they had been wiretapped illegally.
Jon Eisenberg, who represented Al-Haramain’s lawyers, said the decision prevents citizens who have been wiretapped without a warrant from suing the government.
“There is no accountability,” Eisenberg said. “That is what is so distressful about this decision. It means that President Bush got away with it, and it means that President Obama will be able to get away with it and every president after him.”
The extent of government wiretapping “is a government secret, and the courts aren’t going to have anything to do with revealing those secrets,” Eisenberg said.
-- Maura Dolan in San Francisco
It's the laws making marijuana illegal that caused this murder.
Those laws cause marijuana to be sold at outrageous black market prices
from any where to $50 to $300+ an ounce.
Legalize pot and you will be able to buy a kilo of weed for what a head of lettuce costs now, and insane murders like this will stop.
Sadly this murder is being used by the Surprise police and the Arizona Republic to "demonize" marijuana and medical marijuana and blame it for the problems that were caused by the politicians that started the insane and unconstitutional "War on Drugs"
Marijuana and other illegal drugs do NOT cause crime.
The laws making marijuana and other drugs illegal cause
these drugs to be sold at super high black market prices
and those high black market prices cause crime.
If these drugs were legal and the prices were based on the
laws of supply and demand in a free market, instead of in
a black market anybody working at minimum wage could
afford these drugs and they would not be stealing to support
their drug habit.
Authorities: 2 face murder charges in fight over marijuana in Surprise
by D.S. Woodfill and Jane Lednovich - Aug. 7, 2012 08:15 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
A home invasion that turned deadly over marijuana in Surprise could be a sign of things to come under the state's medical-marijuana law, police fear.
A man and a woman were arrested Monday on suspicion of murder after trying to use a fake prescription card to buy marijuana at a home near Greenway Road and Grand Avenue, resulting in a shooting and knife fight that killed a suspect and injured the homeowner, Maricopa County Superior Court documents show.
Records indicate, but do not specify, that the homeowner was a legal marijuana grower.
Surprise Police Chief Mike Frazier and police officials across the Valley said similar crimes could be committed at the state's now-legal dispensaries and grow houses.
"The concern of law enforcement all along has been that this had the potential to attract crime," Frazier said. "I can't speak to how common it will be. But this is probably not the last one."
Arizona health officials selected medical-marijuana dispensary applicants by lottery Tuesday. Under the law, 99 dispensaries around the state will get permission by the Department of Health Services to open for business.
More than 25,000 people were allowed to grow marijuana starting in 2010 as state officials fought the law and then figured out how to implement a plan for statewide dispensaries.
Now, those people living within a 25-mile radius must start winding down their operations. However, they will be allowed to continue to grow marijuana for medical use until their user IDs come up for renewal.
Jesse Gillen, 28, and Stephanie Conley, 29, were arrested about 1:30 a.m., Monday shortly after they were seen fleeing a house where a shooting and knife fight had been reported, according to court documents. A third suspect escaped when the pair were stopped.
Court records said Gillen, Conley and two unidentified men drove to the home of Martin Ridgeway sometime around 1 a.m. to buy marijuana from him.
Conley waited in the driver's seat of their car while Gillen and the two men went up to the house, police said. Ridgeway told police the men showed him one fake and one expired marijuana card. After refusing to sell marijuana to them, one of the men shot Ridgeway in the abdomen, authorities said. Ridgeway and the man then pulled out knives after the attacker's handgun jammed and stabbed each other multiple times, records said.
Ridgeway was airlifted to a hospital for emergency surgery and was listed in "stable" condition Tuesday afternoon, police said. The unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene, they said. He was identified by Conley only as "Mike," records show.
Patrol officers located and arrested Gillen and Conley, but another man in the car escaped. Gillen and Conley were arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, first-degree burglary and armed robbery. Bail for each was set at $500,000.
Police across the Valley said if criminals know where medical marijuana is grown or dispensed, that home or facility will be a big target.
[I wonder why the cops don't say the same thing about banks? Bad guys know where the banks are and frequently rob them. As famous bank robber Willy Sutton said "That's where the money is at". Will the cops demand that banks be made illegal to stop bank robberies???]
"You're setting yourself up," Frazier said. "You put it out there that you essentially have drugs ... there are people in society that will try to take advantage of that."
Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman, predicted that his city will see similar crimes and said that those who grow or provide medical marijuana under the new law are well-advised to keep a low profile.
"The more you tell people, the more likely you are to be victimized," he said.
Mesa police Detective Steve Berry said police are not planning to step up security around areas providing medical marijuana.
In fact, Montgomery told Capitol Media Services on Tuesday he hopes to get a court ruling that makes the entire 2010 voter-approved medical marijuana program disappear. That would mean marijuana cardholders would either have to give up the drug or face the risk of arrest.
Arizona begins selecting medical-marijuana dispensaries
by Mary K. Reinhart - Aug. 7, 2012 09:45 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona stepped deeper into the national legal quandary surrounding medical marijuana Tuesday with the selection of nearly 100 dispensaries throughout the state, some of which could begin selling the drug in a matter of weeks.
The tedious, four-hour bingo-style drawing in a state Department of Health Services auditorium came a day after Attorney General Tom Horne declared that the dispensaries violate federal drug laws and as Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery vowed to prosecute any that opened.
Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble said the voter-approved medical-marijuana law has been fraught with legal issues since before it became law in 2010. All he can do, he said, is implement the rules accurately and fairly.
"No one disputes that there's a conflict between state and federal law when it comes to dispensaries, or the entire program for that matter," Humble said. "But we're going to do the very best job we can to put together as responsible a medical ... marijuana program as we can."
The state issued special identification cards to nearly 30,000 Arizonans since last summer, permitting them to use medical marijuana to treat certain debilitating conditions. More than four out of five users also have permission to grow the drug. That permission will be gradually withdrawn as dispensaries open.
Gov. Jan Brewer and Horne stalled implementation of the dispensary process last year with a federal lawsuit, then dropped their challenge in January after the judge threw out their lawsuit and a lower-court judge ordered the process to go forward.
On Tuesday, the state Health Department issued 97 dispensary registration certificates from among 433 applicants, giving them the opportunity to sell marijuana and operate cultivation sites to grow it. The law does not limit how much marijuana dispensary operators can grow. Users are limited to 21/2 ounces every two weeks.
Successful applicants first had to show they had a viable non-profit business plan, $150,000 in capital and met zoning requirements, among other things. Those who won Tuesday's drawing now have less than a year to prepare for and pass a state inspection before they can open their doors.
Officials divided the state into 126 areas, nearly 30 in Maricopa County. Two of those regions, in Sun City and Glendale, are the subject of legal challenges by would-be dispensary owners so the state did not draw winners there. In 27 areas, there were no applicants.
One of those lawsuits, brought in June by White Mountain Health Center, charges that Maricopa County illegally rejected its registration certificate, which is among the state requirements to become a dispensary applicant.
The facility is in an unincorporated area and requires county zoning approval. Montgomery had advised county officials not to participate in the medical-marijuana program because he believes employees could risk prosecution under federal drug laws.
Montgomery said Tuesday he will ask the judge in that case for a quick ruling on whether the state's medical-marijuana program is legal under the federal Controlled Substance Act, which makes possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime. Judges who issued the earlier court rulings weren't asked and didn't answer that question, he said.
In the meantime, he said, Horne's legal opinion gives him the authority to prosecute dispensary operators. State Health Department employees also are at risk under federal law, he said.
"Any action that was taken by a state employee, if in fact any dispensaries open, was a federal crime," he said. "If they wind up not opening, no harm, no foul."
Horne issued the non-binding opinion late Monday, saying federal drug laws trump the state's voter-approved medical-marijuana law when it comes to "cultivating, selling and dispensing" marijuana. He cautioned potential dispensary owners against moving forward with their operations until the issue had been settled in court.
Both attorneys mentioned recent court rulings and crackdowns by federal prosecutors to bolster their arguments.
But attorney Ryan Hurley, who represented about 20 dispensary applicants -- four of whom won drawings Tuesday -- said other courts have ruled that state medical-marijuana laws don't prevent federal officials from enforcing their own laws. Arizona is one of 17 states to allow medical marijuana.
And, Hurley said, federal prosecutors, including Arizona's U.S. attorney, have sent a consistent, if vague, message that they intend to focus on large-scale drug traffickers, not those complying with state laws.
Other lawsuits are likely from applicants who weren't selected and have concerns about those who were, he said. Humble agreed, saying he set up Tuesday's drawing -- complete with white gloves, auditors and sealed plastic bags -- in part to defend against legal action.
"I recognize that there are people who disagree with some of the decisions that we've made," Humble said.
At least one local entrepreneur claimed two coveted Maricopa County locations.
Gerald Gaines of Compassion First AZ, whose affiliates filed 24 applications in eight regions, earned permission to launch dispensaries in Fountain Hills and west Phoenix.
Gaines, who already uses the Phoenix location for caregivers to grow and provide marijuana, said he could open a dispensary within weeks, depending on how quickly the state can move to inspect it.
But he said the biggest obstacle may be the governor's office and Horne, whom he accused of using "scare tactics" to intimidate patients, caregivers and dispensary operators.
Bingo! Lottery machine determines Arizona's first medical marijuana licenses
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2012 4:59 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
State health officials issued the first 97 allocations Tuesday to operate medical marijuana dispensaries amid threats of litigation on multiple fronts.
The random selection process culled 404 applicants who were in competitive bids to get licensed in 68 of the state’s “community health analysis areas.” Slots for another 29 areas drew only one applicant each.
Two areas remain under legal dispute and the balance, mainly tribal lands, had no applicants at all.
By law, the state cannot identify the successful applicants or even the locations where they plan to operate.
The only people who will get a list are the nearly 30,000 Arizonans who have state-issued cards allowing them to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks to treat specified medical conditions.
Health Director Will Humble said he believes the first shops could have their doors open by the end of the month. He said some applicants, though, will face delays in getting leases and setting up security and inventory systems and may not be open until the spring.
But if Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery gets his way, there won’t be any dispensaries by that point.
In fact, Montgomery told Capitol Media Services on Tuesday he hopes to get a court ruling that makes the entire 2010 voter-approved medical marijuana program disappear. That would mean marijuana cardholders would either have to give up the drug or face the risk of arrest.
Montgomery said the first step will be to get a trial judge to rule that the state law is preempted by the Controlled Substances Act which makes it a federal crime to possess, sell or transport marijuana.
Most immediately, he said that would allow county officials to refuse to process the local zoning permits necessary to open a dispensary.
That, however, is just the beginning.
“Once I get that ruling, what I’m going to then do is I’m going to turn around and issue guidance to law enforcement agencies within Maricopa County that medical marijuana cards are no longer a defense to the personal possession, and that we will move forward and prosecute those cases,” Montgomery said.
Ultimately, Montgomery figures the case will wind up at the Arizona Supreme Court. And if the justices side with him, that will mean marijuana sale and possession by anyone in the state is once again a felony.
On the other side of the equation, a Flagstaff lawyer is threatening his own lawsuit against the state because his clients were not awarded allocations.
Lee Phillips said the process was tainted because the random selection for some areas included organizations that were not legally qualified to be in the process. He said that illegally diluted the chances of his clients to get a shot at operating a dispensary.
Humble said he expects similar complaints from elsewhere. But he defended the procedures used and said they will withstand a legal challenge.
“Our whole team did their very, very best to make sure that everybody who made it to today’s lottery was qualified to get into the lottery according to the regulations that we put forward,’’ he said Tuesday. And Humble said staffers were checking as recently as Monday to keep the list fresh.
Still, he acknowledged that some of the successful applicants may end up being unable to ultimately comply with all of the requirements to actually open their doors. That includes everything from having a lease for the space where the dispensary was promised to proving to health inspectors they have an adequate inventory control system.
It is that situation that concerns Phillips. He said if someone who got an allocation Tuesday does not quality, “that leaves people up here without a dispensary for another year.’’
Humble acknowledged that one or more of the community health areas could end up with no dispensary despite Tuesday’s lottery, at least for the time being. But he pointed out that the law allows marijuana cardholders to shop at any dispensary anywhere in Arizona.
The opening of the dispensaries — if that occurs — will mean another big change in how the law operates in Arizona.
The initiative spelled out that those who live at least 25 miles from a dispensary are entitled to grow their own marijuana. Backers of the measure said they inserted that to prevent hardships for those living in rural areas.
But the state began issuing user cards last year even as Gov. Jan Brewer directed Humble not to process dispensary applications while she sought a court order overturning that part of the law. Humble said the result has been that the state granted more than 25,000 of the card users permission to cultivate the drug.
Those permits, Humble said, will remain legal until the annual review of each user’s card. He said if the person is then within 25 miles of an open dispensary, the permission will be revoked; otherwise it will be renewed.
Humble was an opponent of the 2010 initiative, at least in part because of the same concerns being raised by Montgomery and state Attorney General Tom Horne about the conflicts with federal law.
But Humble said Tuesday that once it was approved by voters, he went about putting together the program in the best way he could to keep it from becoming just an excuse for recreational use. And he said he has no intention of allowing the threat of litigation to bring the program to a halt unless forced to do so.
“If at some point in the future this whole program, or the dispensary part of it, ends up in a court of law, and a judge orders us to stop because of conflict, then obviously we’ll stop,’’ he said. Humble also said he would pull the plug if there were any indication that his staff was in danger of being prosecuted for facilitating the ability of marijuana vendors and users to violate federal drug laws.
Previous
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
More
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
Pot smoker booted from Olympics
Sadly the insane and unconstitutional American "War on Drugs" has creeped into every segment of society.
Medical-pot patients have right to choose
While I pretty much agree with Doug Banfelder position on
medical marijuana I disagree with his position on heroin.
The marijuana dispensaries are coming
Source
Attorney General Tom Horne - F*** the people, I want to shut down medical marijuana
They love to tell us the are "public servants", but in reality they are our royal masters who want to micromanage our lives.
F*ck the 4th Amendment, it's been null and void for years.
F*ck the 4th Amendment, it's been null and void for years. Well at least that's how the cops behave!
Pot Legalization Is Coming
According to this
article
the folks at Rolling Stone Magazine thing pot will be
eventually legalized in America.
It's illegal to sell medical drugs withing 1,320 feet of a hospital in Chandler????
That law doesn't make any sense! After all hospitals are the places that sick people in need of drugs go to most.
"The ordinance requires that a [medical marijuana] dispensary be at least a quarter-mile, or 1,320 feet, from day-care centers, parks, schools, libraries, churches and hospitals."
Source
Both Jeff Flake and Wil Cardon are drug war tyrants???
Both Jeff Flake and Wil Cardon appear to be against medical marijuana.
Q from Minority_Whip: What’s your stance on medical marijuana?
Source
Arizona Republic hates medical marijuana???
The folks that run the Arizona Republic seem to hate medical marijuana,
like most of the government tyrants that run the state of Arizona.
Government not liable for illegally tapping your phone???
Appeals court says government not liable for damages when it illegally taps your phone.
Don't blame marijuana for this murder.
If pot was legal an ounce of weed wouldn't cost any more then a 99 cent hamburger at McDonald.
Arizona begins selecting medical-marijuana dispensaries
Sadly drug war tyrant Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is trying to
shut down these medical marijuana dispensaries even before they are started.
Graham County Attorney
Navajo County Attorney
Gila County Attorney
Pima County Attorney
Maricopa County Attorney
Greenlee County Attorney
Yavapai County Attorney
Cochise County Attorney
Santa Cruz County Attorney
Yuma County Attorney
Mohave County Attorney
Pinal County Attorney
Apache County Attorney