After dragging ass for years, by way of the U.S. Supreme Court, secret stings and raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, San Diego has finally complied to California’s medical marijuana law and began issuing medical marijuana ID cards to the medical marijuana patients.

Jordan Jarvis, a medical marijuana patient and operator of Top Quality Collective, said:

This kind of medicine has given me the ability to get up and do things and be part of a society again. [...] We can now get ID cards that are and should be respected among law enforcement without harassment. [...] It’s groundbreaking.

San Diego breaking down and issuing medical marijuana ID cards is a big step in California’s medical marijuana movement, yet after so many attempts to circumvent prop 215, something tells me it’s not the end of their fight politically.

The Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, is saying goodbye to Canada by way of a “fairwell tour”, scheduled to make its mark in 32 cities, before he is extradited to the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds to U.S. customers.

On Sunday, Emery began the tour in Calgary saying:

I’m being taken to a U.S. prison for something I did in Canada as innocuous as selling seeds, which don’t even have any drug quality, and yet I have to face a five year term for that. [...] It’s difficult to say what will happen in a U.S. federal penitentiary. It’s never very pleasant. American jails aren’t run nearly as well as Canadian jails. [...] I’m going away for a long time so I expect everybody to do their best and pick up the slack for me.

Emery is referring to the fight coming up in form of bill C-15, a federal bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana in Canada. The bill has already passed the House of Commons and it is now in the hands of the Senate. Emery advises activists to back the NDP, the Bloc, and the Green Party — all pro-cannabis political parties.

Emery’s fairwell tour continues in Saskatoon on Wednesday and Edmonton on Thursday.

A factory converted into a cocaine laboratory in Bolivia, that could produce up to 100kg (220 lbs) of cocaine per day, was raided by Drug Enforcement officers of the Bolivian government. According to senior Bolivian anti-narcotics officer, Oscar Nina, five Colombians were arrested.

The factory was the 4th largest raided since early 2009. Bolivian Interior Minister Alfredo Rada blames U.S. anti-narcotics officials for not locating the factory, that they estimate has been running for a year.

Previously in 2008, Bolivia booted the DEA from it’s borders and accused Washington with conspiring against the left wing government of President Evo Morales.

As a reward for doing and finding what the DEA could not, the U.S. announced last week that they were cutting trade benefits for Bolivia and reimposing duties on some imported Bolivian goods.

On Monday, a City Council committee of Los Angeles advised to deny the moratorium exemptions to 28 medical marijuana dispensaries within the city. Lawyers for the dispensaries complained:

• Notices for the committee meeting came over the weekend or some didn’t even receive a notice.
• Speakers had merely minutes to plead their case.
• Council members seemed to have their minds already made up, in agreement with shutting the dispensaries down.

Graham Berry, a lawyer representing ten dispensaries, said:

I thought the hearings were a farce and a sham.

Planning Committee chairman, Ed Reyes commented:

What you see here today is the conclusion of a long process. [...] The assertion that this is a sham is false.

Councilmen Ed Reyes and Jose Huizar explained the process, pointing out that:

• It was a hearing, not a debate.
• Under state law 72 hours’ notice is needed to place topics on a schedule.
• Hardship exemptions were “carefully reviewed”.

According to Reyes he had to constantly ask speakers to keep within their given time.

Oregon is close to becoming the 6th U.S. state to legalize hemp. Last week the Oregon Senate voted 27-2 on Senate Bill 676, in favor of legalizing the plant cousin to cannabis. On Monday, the Oregon House of Representatives voted 46-11 on the bill.

Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra said:

Hemp is a versatile, environmentally-friendly crop that has not been grown in the U.S. for over fifty years because of a misguided and politicized interpretation of the nation’s drug laws by the Drug Enforcement Administration. [...] While a new bill in Congress, HR 1866, is a welcome step, the hemp industry is hopeful that President Obama’s administration will recognize hemp’s myriad benefits to farmers, businesses and the environment.

Hemp has had a variety of uses, dating back 10,000 years ago. Such as:

• Building material
• Food
• Nutrition
• Dietary supplement
• Medicine
• Fiber
• Water and soil purification
• Weed control
• Fuel

The states Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont all passed legislation this year for the farming of hemp. The United States currently continues to import hemp, while other countries cultivate the plant and export it. Obviously with so many uses for this plant, it threatens more industries now than what were around back in the days when Hearst and DuPont began their campaign to try to put the hemp plant on the endangered species list.

Blowback from the activities of a hacker that infiltrated the computers connected to VA state prescription database is now being felt as pain-stricken people do not have access to their medication. Over 35 million prescription records were compromised.

Pharmacists only have limited access to the database and apparently will not prescribe medication without history and information. A House panel in the Virginia Legislature learned Monday, that patients were not receiving the following drugs:

• Oxycontin
• Valium
• Vicodin
• Ritalin

Two Virginia legislative panels looked into the Northrop Grumman Corporation, a technology company that ran the program that has a $2b, 10-year contract with Virginia. Oddly enough, Northrop Grumman Corporation is also the 4th largest defense contractor in the world. What this has to do with pill prescriptions leaves one’s mind to wonder.

A few weeks ago we reported a story that had reached the national papers about a meth “superlab” discovered on a rental property owned by Bell, California mayor, Oscar Hernandez. Los Angeles Fire Department and Hazardous Materials spokespeople are now amending that story.

So, let’s revisit some of the salient details of the original story and see what’s left:

Investigators found a methamphetamine “super lab” during a raid Saturday on a property owned by the mayor of a Los Angeles suburb.

Well, as it turns out, no lab was found. No traces of chemicals that would be produced by such a lab were found. No one nearby smelled or had otherwise heard of any such lab.

The original story also claimed:

Police also found two children on the premises who were put in the custody of welfare officials.

According to LA Child Protective Services, no children were taken from the home. And finally, according to the LA sheriff’s department:

Investigators said the lab would be able to produce as much as 20 pounds of methamphetamine at once.

The Sheriff’s Department now confirms that they seized not 20 pounds, not one pound, but one ounce of meth from the site. And the two superlab masterminds initially arrested? They have now been released without charge.

Wow. Seemingly, someone has laid an incredible whopper on the national press. This entire story has a very ‘Roswell’ feel to it. It makes one wonder what that drug task-force actually did find in that apartment: Jimmy Hoffa? The safehouse where Michael Jackson faked his own death? Dr. Venture’s super-secret child cloning facility?

Only one thing is certain. The LA Sheriff’s Department is at the center of this. The truth is out there.

The U.S. has changed it’s policy when it comes to eradicating poppy fields in Afghanistan, that’s done nothing but put Afghani farmers out of work.

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan said at the G8 conference in Trieste, Italy on Saturday:

The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work. [...] We are not going to support crop eradication. We’re going to phase it out.

The new plan, being all about bringing the fight to the drug lords and drug suppliers, seems more like an old plan, seeing how the drug lords in these regions are also the Taliban. The U.S. has been in that region fighting the Taliban since the invasion in 2001, yet according to the U.N., Afghanistan’s opium production has risen 40-fold.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said the effort has been a “sad” joke and:

Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers … have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume.

The U.S. plans on reducing the budget it allocates for crop eradication in Afghanistan and spending several hundred million dollars on supporting legal crops.

The blogosphere is all atwitter after a first perusal of the UN’s World Drug Report 2009 (warning: PDF). Usually playing the role of a global cheerleader for interdiction and incarceration efforts, this year’s report strongly indicts lazy low-level incarceration policies that have done nothing but increase the world’s relative prison population.

Released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the report presents a highly wonky, statistics-driven approach to tracking drug production around the world, as well as assessing some of the more popular drug policies around the international sphere. One major conclusion of the report was that enforcement policies of blindly increasing arrests, incarcerations, and seizures is a dead end:

Resources that could have been focused on these individuals are often wasted on the opportunistic arrest and incarceration of large volumes of petty offenders. In the case of casual users, the sanction of imprisonment is excessive.

The report rightly notes that the addicts themselves are not the enemy in the War on Drugs, and that police and prison systems are ill-equipped to deal with them. It continues:

In the end, the criminal justice system is a very blunt instrument for dealing with drug markets. As necessary as the deterrent threat remains, the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of individuals is an extremely slow, expensive, and labour intensive process.

Any shift in the UN’s position is surprising, given that World Drug Czar, Antonio Maria Costa, an old-world drug warrior, has been in office since 2002. This also explains why the report at no point attempts to make any real distinctions between the different types of drugs, and their relative levels of harm. Not a single thought is given to actually developing different policies based on what type of substance a country is dealing with. This is because, in the eyes of Costa, drugs are a scourge, and the question is never whether to control them, but simply how to control them most effectively. From such a myopic perspective, it’s very surprising to see any innovative suggestions at all.

The fun in all of this is watching the War on Drugs’ right wingers as they are violently dragged back towards the center by the ever-mounting evidence of a reality that doesn’t meet with their ancient world views.

The Modesto Bee told a heart-wrenching story last weekend of a young Tijuana meth dealer named Hector Rodriguez Estrada, who was killed in cold blood along with his pregnant girlfriend, by a rival gang attempting to seize his drug turf. The story gives a face to the deteriorating social system in many parts of Mexico, in which cities are morphing into nothing more than shooting galleries between rival cartels.

In impoverished areas where factory workers make $60 a week, selling meth on a corner can be a very attractive economic option. According to Rodriguez’s older brother, Samuel:

When you live by the sea, you look for fish.

In other words, for many people in the poorest nations of the world, drug production or distribution is not a moral or ethical issue. It’s a matter of survival. These people exist within a black market that provides massive financial incentives to participate. Without any regulation or government-imposed morality, there is also a huge incentive to kill off competitors. This is a completely free market economy. There are no longer any rules or norms.

Perhaps once cartels saw benefit in respecting rival turf and developing in areas without conflict. But an aggressive campaign by President Calderon, coupled with an influx of US military weapons and aid has created a virtual anarchy to replace a tenuous balance. Tijuana drug rivalries fueled 443 murders in the last three months of 2008. Gang members were left in dumpsters by the dozens with severed heads, limbs, and fingers.

Until this economic system is supplanted with another, the cycle of violence will continue. There will be many more Hector Rodriguez Estradas. And there will be just as many rivals willing to punch his ticket for a new drug corner to run. Madness begets madness.

Early this week, a major blow was struck against the modern War on Drugs. Faced with a unprecedented drug crisis threatening to spill over its already porous borders, the Mexican legislature decriminalized the possession of drugs intended for personal use.

Done relatively quietly because of a worsening Swine Flu outbreak, the Mexican lower house approved a measure that had already passed the Senate to allow Mexicans to carry up to five grams of pot, half a gram of cocaine, .04 grams of meth, and .05 grams of heroin. The bill also acts to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug dealers.

The bill now awaits the signature of President Felipe Calderón, which is expected to happen shortly. Though Calderón had gained a reputation as a staunch enemy of local drug cartels, he offered up the decriminalization legislature as an emergency measure to loosen the burden on Mexico’s prisons and overtaxed law enforcement.

According to Rafael Ruiz Mena, head of Mexico’s National Institute of Penal Sciences:

The important thing is… that consumers are not treated as criminals. It is a public health problem, not a penal problem.

The referred to public health problem has become a serious drain on Mexico’s resources. As we reported last month, the addiction rate in Mexico has increased by 50% since the violence between the government and cartels began to escalate. A fragmenting of the traditional cartel structure has flooded the Mexican market with cheaper, purer substances that have moved street level dealing and use out of any semblance of control.

It’s a shame that the situation had to deteriorate to this point before the Mexican government agreed to take steps toward adopting a more rational drug policy. Perhaps transitioning to a system that seeks to help non-violent addicts (instead of demonizing them) will restore the people’s faith in Mexican government, and stem the breakdown of Mexican civil society.

New Hampshire is trying to become the 14th medical marijuana state as their state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that would allow chronically ill patients to seek treatment using medical marijuana. The bill is now on it’s way to the Governor.

Governor John Lynch isn’t like those other drones that blindly follow the drumbeat of the neo-cons and drug warriors. He actually wants to study the bill before he signs it into a law.

One of the smart things that the legislature had done was ensure that patients nor caregivers could grow the marijuana, instead “compassion centers” or non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries will be organized.

Will New Hampshire learn from California’s mistakes? They already seemingly have, by limiting those that can “game the system.”

The UN 2009 World Drug Report was released and our very own Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, endorsed it within his own statement. Although decriminalizing the publicly supported recreational drugs is exactly what was done in certain cities in Europe, the U.S. Drug Czar failed to mention the word “decriminalization,” yet seemed to be in support of the ideas that led to the successful statistics of Portugal and Switzerland.

Basically, Kerlikowske wants to stop blindly throwing people in jail without really seeking to help them with their addiction. More money is planned to be spent on programs for juveniles and family courts. On top of this the U.S. vows to pump more money into bringing down the most hardcore drug traffickers throughout the world, ironically starting in countries that we’ve already had a heavy presence in, for decades.

The U.S. plans to reduce the amount of weapons the cartels obtain, put a dent in the drug profit and slow the flow of the chemicals needed to make some of these drugs. Over a billion dollars will be put into more research and studies that won’t be published unless it aids the negative antiquated psychobabble rhetoric accustomed with the war on drugs.

It seems that Kerlikowske had more of a free reign while in Seattle as Chief of Police, but now he seems to be doing the bidding of the Obama Administration which is business as usual, when it comes to the drug war.

In the 1998 campy terror-thriller, Enemy of the State, Will Smith is constantly admonished by Gene Hackman to avoid looking up for fear of having his face recognized by a CIA domestic spy satellite.

Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Not only was a 2007 domestic surveillance program designed right out of the paranoid mind’s eye of the film, it had been in the works for nearly three years before sane officials shut it down.

Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano announced Wednesday that she is putting an end to a little known and highly reviled program designed to use spy-satelites to track the activities of American citizens. Innocuously called the National Applications Office, the program allowed local and federal law enforcement to access spy-satellite images in surveillance efforts that were both warrantless and without probable cause.

Brazenly proposed by Bush Administration toadies in 2007, the program has raised the ire of privacy-advocates and public servants-alike. In fact, in October of that year, Congress filed an injunction to prevent its funding or operation. Its charter wasn’t officially signed until February 2008.

Since then, Napolitano said her department had conducted a five-month review of the program, and had already gotten bored of peeping on naked citizens through open skylights.

In the words of Will Smith’s Gene Hackman’s character, Brill:

The government’s been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the forties. They’ve infected everything. They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls… Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you. It’s a brave new world out there. At least it’d better be.

And so, the National Applications Office is relegated to the dustbin of history, while mass wiretapping, drone aircraft surveillance programs, and library card tracking aggregators continue to invade the privacy of US citizens.

On Monday, President Obama, signed the country’s toughest anti-smoking law, in another attempt to keep the children “safe” from a designated adult product and habit.

The bill would give free reign for the Food and Drug Administration to:

• Regulate what goes into tobacco products (candy and fruit flavored blunt wraps?)
• Publicize the ingredients (all 3000+ of them)
• Prohibit marketing campaigns receptive toward children

Obama spoke from experience about the risk of teens smoking:

I know. I was one of these teenagers. [...] And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time.

So many studies have come out that should have caused this drug to be banned a long time ago. The tobacco industry however has become such a big business that the federal government seemed to ignore as it danced to it’s corporate fiddle.