Monday, January 19, 2004

Tales of a Fetid, Putrescent Government Agency, or Could This Story Get Any More Moronic? Here's the deal: GRAMNET - the Grand, Routt and Moffat Narcotics Enforcement Team (which included a DEA agent) raided a Hayden, Colorado home in mid-October. They seize two ounces of marijuana and some pipes. It turns out Don Nord is a medical marijuana user and that was his medicine (legal in Colorado). Charges are dropped, and the judge orders the marijuana returned The officers had given the marijuana to the DEA, and the DEA refused to return it. The judge cited the officers for contempt and directed them to appear in court at 1:30 pm February 2 "to show why they should not be punished for defying the court order." So now... The U.S. Attorney's office will use taxpayer money and send lawyers to defend the DEA agent against the contempt citation. So a federal officer goes into a man's home in Colorado, in violation of state law, and probably in violation of the U.S. constitution, steals 2 ounces of a man's medicine, keeps it, refuses to return it when ordered by a judge, and then gets us to provide a federal attorney to defend him. (Story via Cannabis News. Earlier coverage available at Walter in Denver.) Is there nobody with a sense of decency or democracy overseeing these morons? Certainly not the DEA Director, or the DEA Deputy Administrator, or the Drug Czar, or the Attorney General, or the President. It's time to throw them all out and try some new idiots. 11:15:49 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

And this idiot used to run the New York Times? Friday in the New York Daily News, hack A.M. Rosenthal gives us I Kicked the Habit. I was only a youngster at the time, but I still remember, to the precise moment, the day many decades ago when some rich kids who lived near a lush New York public garden offered some friends and me a fistful of smokes. Their cigarettes turned out to be marijuana - strong enough to twist a life. Or ruin it. ... I turned out to be a short-time pot addict. I cannot testify now how much I smoked or for how long or what those few days of smoking pot did to me. All I remember is that I smoked until I vomited. ... From the beginning of the foreign assignments, I saw the brown marijuana stubs of my sons and their friends, particularly in New Delhi, the capital of India. I, of course, had long ago quit using marijuana and spent a considerable amount of time shouting at my sons when I thought they were still puffing away. It is a good technique. ... Why am I writing this column? I keep asking myself. Probing myself even just a little, I understand that it is because I never hear my friends or the people at dinner tables talk about drugs, except sometimes as if it were funsy entertainment. I hope that they will talk with each other more often and more deeply, beginning right away. Drugs must be faced. Let's face them with the law. And most important of all, let's face them with love for our children. This article comes via Hit and Run, and the commments there are entertaining. Most are trying to decide whether A.M. just fabricated the whole story or actually smoked oregano that made him throw up. Others were less generous. Just reading his editorial makes you realize how around the bend he is, but if you want to know more, check out my earlier article: A.M. Rosenthal, Drug War Stooge. 10:22:21 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Civil Rights Whatever career you may choose for yourself--doctor, lawyer, teacher--let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man . Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. , 18th April, 1959 Although almost five times as many whites use illegal drugs as African Americans, nearly twice the number of black men and women are being put behind bars for drug offenses. At current rates, a black man has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, compared to 1 in 17 for white males. 11:18:09 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []