The Drug War

Are there programmes in the state to help those who have become addicted to marijuana and if yes, what are they like? If no or if they're inadequate, that might be a good way to spend some of that extra revenue.
 
Life in Prison for Selling $20 of Weed


You need to read the full story to understand how messed up this is, but I will give you a summary. Young guy breaks the law, gets arrested and goes to jail. Same guy does almost the same thing again and gets convicted again. Same guy is homeless and looking to make a few bucks to eat and agrees to get a bit of marijuana for an undercover cop and they throw the book at him because of the stupid "3 Strikes law". This is the extreme version of how the drug laws are used.
 
calvinhobbes said:
When were those introduced anyway? They've always struck me as particularly... differently intelligent.
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Can't remember the actual year but basically right after crack exploded, someone somehow convinced state gov't that crack was like way worse than any other drug so ridiculously tough laws were enacted for sale/possession/use of crack and at the same time 3 strike laws were introduced to address the problem of repeat offenders. As you can see didn't really work that great..
 
According to Wiki, the first law was in New York in the early 20th century, but they allowed some latitude to the judge to decide. Then Texas in the mid 70s, then the bulk in the 90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
 
He would have ran off for snacks.
 
It is still profitable for them to seize possessions from it's victims.
 
House Oversight Committee Expresses No Confidence In DEA Administrator Leonhart

WASHINGTON? Today, after listening to testimony during yesterday?s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on ?DOJ IG: Handling of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Allegations,? Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) joined with fellow committee Members in expressing no confidence in DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart.

?After over a decade of serving in top leadership positions at DEA, Administrator Leonhart has been woefully unable to change or positively influence the pervasive ?good old boy? culture that exists throughout the agency. From her testimony, it is clear that she lacks the authority and will to make the tough decisions required to hold those accountable who compromise national security and bring disgrace to their position . Ms. Leonhart has lost the confidence of this Committee to initiate the necessary reforms to restore the reputation of a vital agency.?
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This is her, and it took a sex scandal to get this no confidence vote, two years after this.

 
State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after he defends medical marijuana during a school presentation

By Radley Balko April 17 ?


From the website run by investigative journalist Ben Swann:


On March 24, cannabis oil activist Shona Banda?s life was flipped upside-down after her son was taken from her by the State of Kansas. The ordeal started when police and counselors at her 11-year-old son?s school conducted a drug education class. Her son, who had previously lived in Colorado for a period of time, disagreed with some of the anti-pot points that were being made by school officials. ?My son says different things like my ?Mom calls it cannabis and not marijuana.? He let them know how educated he was on the facts,? said Banda in an exclusive interview with BenSwann.com. Banda successfully treated her own Crohn?s disease with cannabis oil.

After her son spoke out about medical marijuana, police detained him and launched a raid on Shona Banda?s home. ?Well, they had that drug education class at school that was just conducted by the counselors? They pulled my son out of school at about 1:40 in the afternoon and interrogated him. Police showed up at my house at 3? I let them know that they weren?t allowed in my home without a warrant? I didn?t believe you could get a warrant off of something a child says in school.? Banda continued, ?We waited from 3 o?clock until 6 o?clock. They got a warrant at 6 o?clock at night and executed a warrant into my home. My husband and I are separated, and neither parent was contacted by authorities before [our son] was taken and questioned.?
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The police apparently found 2 ounces of cannabis oil in her home. She fears that the state will now attempt to take her son away. She has a custody hearing on Monday.

I contacted the Garden City Police Department to verify some of the details that have been reported online. A spokesman confirmed that officers had searched Banda?s home, though he denied it was a raid. He also said the initial anti-drug program was put on entirely by the school ? the police had no involvement. At that event Banda?s son apparently contradicted some of the claims made about marijuana. The school then contacted the child protection agency, which then contacted the police. Officers from the department showed up at Banda?s at home and asked her permission to conduct a search. She refused. They then obtained a warrant and searched her home. The spokesman wouldn?t comment on exactly what was found, except to say that there was ?evidence? of drug activity. Banda was then arrested and her son was seized from the home. Currently, there are no criminal charges against her. The spokesman wouldn?t comment on whether charges may be forthcoming. He added that possession of marijuana is illegal in Kansas, without exception.

The absurdity here of course is that a woman could lose her custody of her child for therapeutically using a drug that?s legal for recreational use an hour to the west. It seems safe to say that the amount of the drug she had in her home was an amount consistent with personal use. (If she had been distributing, she?d almost certainly have been charged by now.)

This boy was defending his mother?s use of a drug that helps her deal with an awful condition. Because he stuck up for his mother, the state arrested her and ripped him away from her. Even if he is eventually returned to his mother (as he ought to be), the school, the town, and the state of Kansas have already done a lot more damage to this kid than Banda?s use of pot to treat her Crohn?s disease ever could.
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GRtak said:
Why does it take sex to end a government career?
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Granted it wasn't her having sex. It was agents under her command who had, in the past and probably present, had sex with women on various cartels payroll. Or something else really absurd sounding like that. In any case, good riddens to her.

GRtak said:
State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after he defends medical marijuana during a school presentation
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What makes this whole thing even more ridiculous is that they live an hours drive from Colorado, were the tiny amount of cannabis oil and marijuana she had would've been perfectly safe and legal.
 
America?s Quality Pot Is Changing the Drug War

With weed now permitted in some form in 23 U.S. states, the flow of cannabis out of Mexico has slowed and, to a degree, reversed

The street lieutenant fidgeting in a Ciudad Ju?rez pizza parlor deals drugs for Barrio Azteca, a gang that emerged from Texas prisons in the 1980s to control a chunk of illegal shipments from Mexico into the U.S. Southwest. Think No Country for Old Men?secret nighttime drops, murders, and a lucrative sideline in human trafficking and prostitution. Meeting with a reporter while his heavyset boss circles the block, the Ju?rez dealer is preoccupied with his hottest new product: handcrafted American-made pot.

He marvels at one medical marijuana operation he visited in Arizona. ?There are tanks with a system that at a certain hour releases oxygen, water, and light like clockwork,? says the man, who asked that his name not be used for fear of arrest or reprisals from other gang members. Connoisseurs in Ju?rez are noticing, he says; they?re starting to demand Purple Haze or Kush from American dispensaries. Gang members bring the quality stuff back from the U.S. The prices are higher?about 200 pesos per gram, compared with 50 pesos for his usual product?but then so is the quality. ?There?s much more novelty, more variety,? he says.

With marijuana now permitted in some form in 23 U.S. states, the usual flow of pot from south to north has slowed and, to a growing degree, reversed. This was never imagined as a benefit of Nafta. Now, the expanding U.S. pot industry is transforming the drug distribution patterns of the notorious cartels?forcing them to deal more exclusively in heroin, for example?and leading to both cultural and economic change in Mexico?s own consumption of marijuana. Two opportunities may arise: a business boom for legal pot producers in the U.S. and the chance to concentrate the drug war on far more deadly substances.


The effects are being felt in Sinaloa, long the heart of Mexican pot production. Farmers there are ripping out marijuana planted on hillsides. ?In our town, it?s dropped because it?s no longer a profitable business,? says Mario Valenzuela, mayor of Badiraguato, the hometown of infamous drug lord Joaqu?n ?El Chapo? Guzm?n, who was arrested in 2014. Over the last two years, participation in a program that subsidizes farmers who plant crops like tomatoes or green beans instead of marijuana has increased 30 percent, Valenzuela says. He attributes the increase to the surge in U.S. production since legalization.

In the past, only a sixth of cannabis consumed in the U.S. was grown within the 50 states; today that?s up to at least one-third, according to the United Nations. Pot from Colorado and California has started to displace the low-grade stuff that?s long flowed in by truck, tunnel, human mule, and boat from Mexico. Marijuana seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at California border crossings totaled 132,075 pounds in fiscal 2014, half of the amount five years earlier.

Colorado weed carries such cachet in both the U.S. and Mexico that entrepreneurs like Shawn Lucas, founder of a Denver grow-equipment supplier called Dutch Hort, say it could one day be a global brand. The state?s burgeoning export prowess has already irked Nebraska and Oklahoma, where marijuana is still illegal. They claim a rise in crime related to pot from their neighbor and, in December, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to shut down Colorado?s pot production. In Mexico City, young men mingling at an outdoor market and hawking mota?or pot?namecheck brands popular north of the border. By 2020, if marijuana were fully legalized, American sales might reach $35 billion, says Matt Karnes, a former media analyst at First Union Securities who now runs New York-based cannabis researcher GreenWave Advisors. That?s not much less than the $38.5 billion Americans spent at pizza restaurants last year.

Mexican farmers are giving up on marijuana. Many switch to vegetables, but some opt for heroin poppies

Lucas, 37, is typical of pot?s shift to the mainstream. He started growing weed at 16 with seeds ordered from Canada. He opened shops selling nutrients, always taking care to speak in code with customers. At the time, only a few states allowed medical marijuana. ?If you even hinted at the word ?cannabis? or ?weed,? I had to kick you out,? Lucas says. ?I wasn?t going to go to jail for you.? He spent a few years in Shenzhen, China, developing contacts with manufacturers of the high-intensity-discharge lamps used by marijuana growers. Now, one of his Colorado clients has 6,000 lights, each retailing for $600. ?I never thought I?d see that,? Lucas says. ?This has been my entire adult career.?

Mexico has been wracked for years by the fallout of a bloody drug war, stoked by prohibitionist sentiment in the U.S. It began one Sunday in 1969, when President Richard Nixon ordered a surprise inspection of every vehicle crossing into the U.S. Now the border, made manifest by 650 miles of fencing, teems with Predator drones, ground sensors, and surveillance cameras. Turf battles made Ciudad Ju?rez one of the most violent cities in the world earlier in this decade, with 1,900 murders in 2011.

Mexico decriminalized possession of 5 grams or less of marijuana in 2009. A bill introduced last year would allow pot dispensaries like those in many U.S. states. ?Why should we be killing each other over marijuana?? asks Mexico City lawmaker Vidal Llerenas, a backer of legalization. ?We have a war here to prevent it from going to a country where it?s already legal.?

While the bill has languished so far, momentum will grow if California approves recreational pot sales in a measure likely to appear on ballots in November 2016. ?If California legalizes, you can?t politically sustain prohibition in Mexico,? says Jorge Javier Romero, president of a drug policy organization in Mexico City known as CUPIHD. Some 64 percent of Mexicans support allowing marijuana for medicinal use, according to an August 2013 survey by pollster Parametria?an eye-opener for a country that?s also one of the world?s most Catholic.

Some aren?t waiting for the state?s blessing. Carlos Zamudio, 37, helped open La Semilla Growshop in Mexico City in February, selling lamps and nutrients, often imported from the U.S. or Canada. One model on his floor, the XXXtreme 6 grow light, is made by Hydrofarm, a hydroponics supplier in Petaluma, Calif., near the state?s famed Emerald Triangle of pot farms. Zamudio says his grow shop is one of at least four in Mexico City. ?The market is opening,? he says.

Pepe Pall?n is trying to build a network of patients and doctors, even though medical marijuana isn?t officially allowed yet. A fan of the U.S. television series Weeds, about a drug-dealing single mom, Pall?n, 38, hopes to go to California to attend Oakland?s Oaksterdam University, which calls itself the first ?marijuana college.? Pall?n tries to connect clients in Mexico City with doctors who agree to supervise treatment. He gets the pot from a grower who uses organic methods and avoids the cartels. ?I?m not going into business with those guys,? he says.

Those guys are not going out of business, unfortunately. Mexico?s drug lords may have lost some profits because of U.S. legalization, but they?ve made adjustments. They?ve likely replaced volume lost from their pot trade with higher sales of heroin and methamphetamines, says Adam Isacson, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy group. Some of the farmers abandoning weed are turning to cultivating poppies for heroin, helping fuel a near tripling in U.S. overdose deaths from the drug since 2010. Half of the heroin in the U.S. now comes from Mexico, up from 14 percent in 2009, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says.

The drug war isn?t over. Yet there has been an historic change at the border. The fight can now focus on heroin and other deadly substances. The toll of the war on marijuana has been huge in terms of security and lives. Decades of prohibition never slowed the flow of pot from Mexico; legalization did. The choice is now who controls that flow: an unnamed dealer in Ju?rez or a legalized cross-border industry.
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Not many others will either. :lol:
 
Unless it impacts the prison or military industrial industries. Or woman having control over their bodies.
 
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