Mexican Congress Passes Drug Decriminalization
June 26th, 2009 by Russ
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 Ready for Medical Marijuana?
June 25th, 2009 by Rick
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.”
Hempfest Prepares for Final Festival
June 25th, 2009 by RickOrganizer Rob Waddell says this year’s annual Hempfest (aptly named Hempfest: The End of an Era) in Ontario, Canada from August 27-30, is scheduled to be the last. A celebration centered around enjoying marijuana medicinally and recreation-ally, the four day event has had a lot of buzzkills to contend with over the years in the form of:
- Unwarranted police presence.
- Police vehicle checks that focus on “interrogation”.
- Police hindering access.
- Police not weeding out actual impaired drivers.
Waddell frustratingly notes:
It’s the harassment of people traveling to and from the festival. The constitution and Charter of Rights guarantee us the right to gather peacefully and demonstrate against unjust laws, which we’re doing. [...] The police keep interfering with our people and the right to gather.
Waddell even claims that the Ontario Provincial Police have U.S. law enforcement with them when Hempfest is happening:
They’re targeting the sick. We’re not a bunch of crazies out in the bush, getting stoned and running around, it’s (mostly) people that are 35-60 years old that are out there and (having) just a great weekend of educating each other and talking about friends and talking about the benefits and the situations that are arising about the medical use of cannabis in Canada. [...] While others may decide in future to pick up the Hempfest torch, this year’s event will be the last to be held in Poplar Dale, a community of less than 100 people who will be able to ‘get back to their peaceful way of life out there in the country.’
Oddly enough Waddell plans to turns Hempfest into a music festival where he hopes it will become “a real good rocking time for four days.”
Atmosphere in Amsterdam Tonight!
June 25th, 2009 by Erin
Amsterdam peoples, Twin Cities’ very own Atmosphere is rocking a show tonight in your town! Catch the duo, Slug and Ant, as part of their When God Gives You Ugly Tour rolls forward.
Atmosphere – When God Gives You Ugly Tour
Melkweg
Lijnbaansgracht 234 A
1017 PH Amsterdam
Netherlands
Tele: (+31) 20 531 8181
Click here for more details on the show. Word.
Drug Czar Conforms to the War on Drugs
June 25th, 2009 by Rick
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.
Electric Daisy Carnival 2009 [Los Angeles]
June 25th, 2009 by Erin
Electric Daisy Carnival
Friday, June 26th (4pm-2am)
Saturday, June 27th (4pm-4am)
@ LA Memorial Coliseum & Exposition Park
3939 S. Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90037
This year’s event includes 5 stages of music! Check here for the full line up or click through to view it.
You can reserve an Ultimate VIP Cabana package and do it up right. EDC has teamed up with LA’s Giant to offer either the Giant Peristyle (21+), VIP Cabanas (21+) or Ultimate VIP Cabanas (21+), and additional sound is being installed to enhance the overall experience in the VIP areas. Click here to purchase tickets.
For more general information on this year’s EDC, check the official website here. And of course, this is a massive so you can be sure to expect long lines, pricey items, and random person shoulder sweat on you. Have fun and be safe!
Homeland Security Kiboshes Domestic Spying Initiative
June 25th, 2009 by Russ
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.
Funeral Home Director Busted for Growing
June 24th, 2009 by Rick
After receiving information about a marijuana grow operation, Missouri River Drug Task Force served a search warrant Monday on Helena Funeral Chapel in Helena, MT and discovered 70 marijuana plants in the attic. Jason Blaine Thornock was arrested and jailed with charges of “criminal production” or “manufacture of dangerous drugs.”
Thornock, who posted $50,000 bail on Tuesday, is a licensed medical marijuana card holder. Under the Montana medical marijuana law he is allowed six marijuana plants and one light, which was exactly what the police left after their raid. Sixty-four plants were entered as evidence as the investigation continues.
