Archive for November 9th, 2009

Mox News

Allen St. Pierre
NORML

Pro MMA fighter and NORML supporter Toby ‘Tigerheart’ Grear has challenged the California State Athletic Commission on their prohibition of medical cannabis use by sanctioned competitors.

Toby spoke at this year’s national conference on a panel that examined cannabis use among professional athletes.

Every year dozens of professional athletes are arrested or negatively impacted by drug testing rules. This week’s example is from Washington where recent National League Cy Young winner, pitcher Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants,  became one of America’s approximately 750,000 annual cannabis possession arrest cases. Little known is that in Washington there is an automatic one day in jail penalty for getting caught with any amount of cannabis.

Next time a prohibitionist from law enforcement, an anti-drug bureaucracy or media pundit claims that ‘no one goes to jail for using or possessing cannabis’ you can rightly let them know that they’re misinformed, as the state of Washington, along with numerous other state and county governments, routinely incarcerate cannabis consumers caught on little more than personal possession charges. President Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, claimed that no gets arrested or goes to jail for cannabis. That such is as rare as unicorns.

However, Mr. Lincecum apparently has already copped a plea that will allow him to skip the one day incarceration. Lucky him!

Will a cannabis consumer and accomplished professional athlete like Tim Lincecum step up like Toby, Mark and Rob have? The reform of cannabis laws is certainly made easier when accomplished, professional athletes step to the fore with their self-interested advocacy.

WTF?

Found on Cryptogon

Via: Telegraph:

Police uncovered the scheme after one of the women learned her baby was alive and had been sold to another woman for 15,000 pesos, said Luis Genaro, the capital’s deputy attorney general.

The woman gave birth to a girl through cesarean section at the Central West Hospital in a working-class district in October 2008, Mr Genaro said at a news conference.

He said she told authorities she heard her baby cry but when she asked to see the child, doctors told her she had to wait until the effects of the anesthetics wore off. Later, doctors told her the baby had been taken to another hospital. A day later, the woman was told her baby died and had been cremated, he said.

The woman learned the truth from an-email sent to her by a man believed to be the son of the hospital director, Mr Genaro said.
The woman accused of buying the newborn has been arrested. Three doctors, a nurse and a receptionist from the hospital are also in custody.

Mr Genaro said police believe the group sold several newborn babies but have not yet determined how many. They face charges of trafficking in minors, organised crime and falsifying documents.

He said a married couple has also been arrested for allegedly paying the hospital to falsify a birth certificate for a baby that the pair had been given.

In a report this year, the US State Department described Mexico as “a large source, transit and destination country” for human trafficking.

The majority of victims are undocumented migrants and women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation, according to the 2009 Trafficking in Persons report, which studied the problem worldwide.

The report said that although Mexico was stepping up efforts to crack down, convictions against human traffickers remain rare. The report said no trafficking offenders were convicted in Mexico in 2008.

Paul Armentano
NORML

Say what you will about prohibitionists —and I say plenty — but, if nothing else, they are consistent. Regardless of the circumstances, they stick to their talking points — no matter how instantly refutable their claims may be.

Case in point. CBS News online today ran part one of an ongoing debate between recently retired Orange County, California Judge Jim Gray (who many of you recently watched testify before the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety here) and prohibitionist profiteer David Evans (who was last heard lying about medical marijuana law reform in New Jersey in a debate with NORML’s Chris Goldstein, which may be heard here).

Predictably, early in the CBS News debate Evans cites the Netherlands’ pot policies — which allow for the regulated sale of small amounts of cannabis to citizens age 18 an older — as an argument in favor ofmaintaining U.S.-style marijuana prohibition. According to Evans, Dutch marijuana use “more than doubled” after liberalization, leading the government to “formally announce its mistake” in 2004.

Hmmm, I guess Mr. Evans must have purposely avoided reading the newspaper last week or else he would have seen this widely disseminated report from Reuters Wire Service, published on Friday.

Dutch among lowest cannabis users in Europe — report
via Reuters

The Dutch are among the lowest users of marijuana or cannabis in Europe despite the Netherlands’ well-known tolerance of the drug, according to a regional study published on Thursday. Among adults in the Netherlands, 5.4 percent used cannabis, compared with the European average of 6.8 percent, according to an annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, using latest available figures.

… The policy on soft drugs in the Netherlands, one of the most liberal in Europe, allows for the sale of marijuana at “coffee shops”, which the Dutch have allowed to operate for decades, and possession of less than 5 grams (0.18 oz).

Not surprisingly, Evans also failed to cite a World Health Organization report, published last year, which reported:

US leads the world in illegal drug use
via CBS News

Despite tough anti-drug laws, a new survey shows the U.S. has the highest level of illegal drug use in the world.

The World Health Organization’s survey of legal and illegal drug use in 17 countries, including the Netherlands and other countries with less stringent drug laws, shows Americans report the highest level of cocaine and marijuana use.

For example, Americans were four times more likely to report using cocaine in their lifetime than the next closest country, New Zealand (16% vs. 4%). Marijuana use was more widely reported worldwide, and the U.S. also had the highest rate of use at 42.4% compared with 41.9% of New Zealanders.

In contrast, in the Netherlands, which has more liberal drug policies than the U.S., only 1.9% of people reported cocaine use and 19.8% reported marijuana use.

The WHO report went on to conclude: “The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in national rates of illegal drug use.”

But Mr. Evans isn’t content to just simply lie about the Dutch. Elsewhere in the debate he falsely implies that the U.K. also experienced a spike in marijuana use after the British government temporarily downgraded its cannabis classification in 2004. (Parliament ended its experiment with decriminalization in 2008, a move that Evans argues was because of “the more lethal quality of the cannabis now available.”) The truth, however, was just the opposite.

Fewer young people using cannabis after reclassification
via The Guardian

Cannabis use among young people has fallen significantly since its controversial reclassification in 2004, according to the latest British Crime Survey figures published today.

The Home Office figures showed the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who had used cannabis in the past year fell from 25% when the change in the law was introduced to 21% in 2006/07.

As for anyone who thinks they can stomach reading Mr. Evans lies in part two of the debate, be sure to log on here tomorrow.