Cannabis Crusades: MMJ and The Recall Election
The California gubernatorial recall is the first election in which I will not be voting since I turned 18, 40 years ago. It's not my disgust with what I consider a "coup attempt" by the extreme right that keeps me from the polls. It's my three felony convictions related to cultivating medicinal marijuana.
Although I was spared prison time, the loss of my voting rights is cruel punishment for me, because I have always been politically and civically active.
It is remarkable that I ended up with the felonies, since I had been deputized by the city of Oakland and promised immunity from prosecution for providing medicine to qualified patients.
Still, I feel a certain satisfaction about the recall campaign. I watched one of my daydreams come true in the first debate. Medical marijuana was the only issue that all the candidates agreed upon: all pledged to uphold California's marijuana laws. State Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Northridge, the most conservative, was the most ardent -- stating that the federal government should stay out of the state's business.
When Dennis Peron opened San Francisco's first medical marijuana dispensary nearly 10 years ago, there was virtually unanimous agreement among politicians and the criminal justice community that marijuana wasn't a medicine. Furthermore, the risk was too great for the medicine to be permitted. What a difference a decade makes. In 1994, no reporter would have asked the question, but if they had, every candidate would have pledged to redouble efforts to eliminate "the assassin of youth."
All the candidates agreed that medical marijuana should be "legal," but there are definite differences in their attitudes toward what legal means and who should decide. This is significant, because some California state agencies are still at war against this popular medicine. The California attorney general's Medical Board is prosecuting doctors based on complaints. Neither patients, their caregivers, nor their loved ones are complaining. No, all the complaints are being filed by officers or prosecutors thwarted when they attempt to arrest or prosecute a patient. Police and prosecutors in some counties have declared war on medical patients, spending an inordinate amount of time and taxpayers' money to harass people whose only crime is that they are ill.
State probation and parole orders sometimes limit use of medical marijuana, even in life-threatening cases. Could you imagine the uproar if a judge denied a diabetic the use of insulin?
These actions are being fueled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the California Narcotic Officers' Association. The organization denies that marijuana has any medical use and encourages police and prosecutors to view all medical cases as bogus. Its lobbyists use obstructionist tactics and threaten legislators inclined to vote to implement provisions of Proposition 215, California's medical marijuana law. CNOA functions as a clique of verbal terrorists fighting against patient's rights.
The problem with the implementation of Proposition 215 is that it is based on the "stakeholders theory," where all the interested parties reach a compromise. This policy may work for water rights, but it is insane when patients' health is compromised.
The idea that the criminal justice system is a stakeholder in a health and medical issue is ridiculous on its face. The police have training only in identifying marijuana and arresting its owners. They have no cultivation expertise, know next to nothing about the herb's medical use and have no sociological knowledge to lend to the discussion. The police's only vested interest in marijuana is using tax dollars to arrest and incarcerate users of any type, recreational or medical. The police industry's influence in this medical and sociological debate is inappropriate, since their representatives mostly deny marijuana's medical benefits and view arrests as an employment issue.
That's why this recall campaign is such a watershed. All the candidates accept marijuana as medicine. How each one would implement the law is of prime importance to the 70,000 Californians holding medical marijuana recommendations. Will patients using this exceedingly safe herbal medicine continue to be held hostage to "stakeholders" whose interest is a high arrest count?
Ironically, though I am now barred from voting, the issues that were brought to the surface in my case are reverberating through this campaign. I am hopeful of winning my appeal and having my rights restored. I would like to vote again soon.
Learn more:
The Independent Institute is sponsoring a special forum on medical pot next week.
Topic: "The Truth about medical marijuana"
Speakers: Ed Rosenthal, Donald I. Abrams, Edwin Dobb and Robert J. MacCoun
When: Thursday, 8 p.m.
Where: Hotel Nikko, Mason and O'Farrell streets, San Francisco
Tickets: $22, available through City Box Office, (415) 392-4400, or online at: www.independent.org
Ed Rosenthal, activist and co-author of "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal," is a medical marijuana pioneer. He was convicted in a landmark case early this year, following which the jury rebelled against the judge's refusal to allow the presentation of relevant facts of the case.
Cannabis Crusades: MMJ and The Recall Election
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Ed Rosenthal
Published: Friday, September 26, 2003
Contact letters@sfchronicle.com * Discussion Thread * Website
Related Articles & Web Sites
Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles
['Guru of Ganja' Sees Cracks Developing in Laws/url]
Reefer Madness: Our Current Prohib
Cannabis Crusades: Anti-Pot Ads Have Backfired
Sometimes the most well-meaning plans backfire. The federal government's attempt to curb teenage drug use with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign dramatizing the perils of marijuana has backfired spectacularly. It is now obvious that these ads are doing more harm than good, and Congress should pull the plug immediately.
Unless you've been living in a cave the last two years, you've probably seen the commercials sponsored by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Sensationalized and scary, these ads suggest that teens who smoke marijuana are likely to commit date rape, run over little girls on bicycles and even shoot their friends.
As a psychologist who studies drug abuse, I worried about these ads from the beginning. The "facts" in them are exaggerated and out of context. Their single-minded emphasis on marijuana, rather than far more addictive and lethal substances such as cocaine and methamphetamine, makes little sense.
Now, scientific data -- from the very surveys that Congress set up as yardsticks to measure the success of the drug control policy office -- tell us that these ads have boomeranged.
Back in 1998, Congress chose to evaluate the office's performance via two well-known surveys of adolescent drug use: the federally funded "Monitoring the Future" study and the privately run Parent's Resource Institute for Drug Education survey. Both are considered reliable indexes of teen drug use. The goal was to reduce the percentage of teens using illegal drugs within the last month to 3 percent of the adolescent population over a period of five years, starting in 1999.
It hasn't happened. The numbers from the 2002-2003 PRIDE survey, released Sept. 3, are devastating.
Not only is teenage use of illicit drugs running at more than five times the goal set by Congress, it went up last year, not down. And the biggest increases were seen among the youngest kids.
Last year, for example, 7.2 percent of eighth-graders smoked marijuana within the last 30 days. This year, it was 10.2 percent -- a third more. Among sixth-graders -- we're talking about 11-year-olds here -- past-month use of marijuana doubled, from 1.7 percent to 3.4 percent.
Kids aren't just tuning out the government's messages about marijuana. They are also ignoring warnings about drugs that are far more dangerous. Past-month use of cocaine was up in every age group this year, often by alarming percentages, while use of heroin in the last month was up 50 percent overall and 60 percent among junior high school students.
While the newest "Monitoring the Future" results won't appear until later in the year, the latest data from another government-sponsored survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, also show teen drug use rising. While the government claims that changes in this survey's methodology make comparisons with prior years impossible, I have found nothing in these changes to account for the sharp spike in drug use -- except that more people, including teens, are using drugs.
None of this is a surprise. An independent evaluation of the ad campaign, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, reported in January, "There is no evidence yet consistent with a desirable effect of the (ad) campaign on youth. " Worse, the researchers found indications that the ads may actually be making some youths more likely to approve of drug use, not less.
All of this jibes disturbingly with what I hear informally from undergraduates.
I'd do almost anything to stop teens from developing problems with drugs. But I do not want to throw good money after bad. The millions that the administration wants for its anti-drug ads for next year could be justified if the program was working. It's not. All the evidence suggests the government's ad campaign is making things worse, not better. For the sake of our kids, Congress should put a stop to it. This money would be better spent on effective interventions such as Project Towards No Drug Abuse or organized after-school activities. Research supports that these programs can decrease drug use in teens. Silly commercials obviously can't.
Mitch Earleywine is associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and author of "Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Cannabis Crusades: Anti-Pot Ads Have Backfired
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Mitch Earleywine
Published: Friday, September 26, 2003
Contact: letters@sfchronicle.com * Discussion Thread * Website
Related Articles
Marijuana, Gateways and Circuses
Text of Dr. Mitch Earleywine Interview on NPR
The Roots of Reefer Madness
SF Looking At How To Grow Marijuana For Patients
September 25, 2003
By The Associated Press
San Francisco -- There could soon be fewer places for patients to buy medical marijuana in Oakland, because City Council members are considering shutting down several cannabis clubs. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, supervisors are trying to figure out how the city can grow marijuana for local patients.
Read More... cannabisnews.com...17403.shtml
Judge Orders Leman To Reconsider MJ Initiative
September 25, 2003
By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer
Juneau, Alaska -- Proponents of an initiative to decriminalize marijuana will get another chance to put the measure on the 2004 ballot, a Superior Court judge ruled. Anchorage Superior Judge John Suddock ordered Lt. Gov. Loren Leman and the state Division of Elections to reconsider nearly 200 petition booklets that were rejected earlier.
Read More... cannabisnews...17402.shtml
Pot Prop May Go On '04 Ballot
Marijuana Initiative May Make Ballot
Pot Power
September 24, 2003
By Jeff Prince Fort Worth Weekly
For a guy who smokes 10 joints a day, George McMahon is surprisingly lucid, energetic, and productive. Hell, he's even written a book, something I've tried to do for years without success -- and I only smoke nine joints a day. Plus, I don't have an incurable disease, unless you count terminal laziness. McMahon, a crusty coot with a leathery face, oozes sincerity about his favorite cause, legalizing medical marijuana. He is one of seven people in the country who can legally smoke marijuana, and he has experienced the marijuana debate from the inside out and the topside down.
Read More... cannabisnews...17391.shtml
George McMahon's Home Page
Pot Smoking Changed Pain-Ridden Author's Life
Public Pot - Badger Herald
Just What The Doctor Ordered?
The California gubernatorial recall is the first election in which I will not be voting since I turned 18, 40 years ago. It's not my disgust with what I consider a "coup attempt" by the extreme right that keeps me from the polls. It's my three felony convictions related to cultivating medicinal marijuana.
Although I was spared prison time, the loss of my voting rights is cruel punishment for me, because I have always been politically and civically active.
It is remarkable that I ended up with the felonies, since I had been deputized by the city of Oakland and promised immunity from prosecution for providing medicine to qualified patients.
Still, I feel a certain satisfaction about the recall campaign. I watched one of my daydreams come true in the first debate. Medical marijuana was the only issue that all the candidates agreed upon: all pledged to uphold California's marijuana laws. State Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Northridge, the most conservative, was the most ardent -- stating that the federal government should stay out of the state's business.
When Dennis Peron opened San Francisco's first medical marijuana dispensary nearly 10 years ago, there was virtually unanimous agreement among politicians and the criminal justice community that marijuana wasn't a medicine. Furthermore, the risk was too great for the medicine to be permitted. What a difference a decade makes. In 1994, no reporter would have asked the question, but if they had, every candidate would have pledged to redouble efforts to eliminate "the assassin of youth."
All the candidates agreed that medical marijuana should be "legal," but there are definite differences in their attitudes toward what legal means and who should decide. This is significant, because some California state agencies are still at war against this popular medicine. The California attorney general's Medical Board is prosecuting doctors based on complaints. Neither patients, their caregivers, nor their loved ones are complaining. No, all the complaints are being filed by officers or prosecutors thwarted when they attempt to arrest or prosecute a patient. Police and prosecutors in some counties have declared war on medical patients, spending an inordinate amount of time and taxpayers' money to harass people whose only crime is that they are ill.
State probation and parole orders sometimes limit use of medical marijuana, even in life-threatening cases. Could you imagine the uproar if a judge denied a diabetic the use of insulin?
These actions are being fueled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the California Narcotic Officers' Association. The organization denies that marijuana has any medical use and encourages police and prosecutors to view all medical cases as bogus. Its lobbyists use obstructionist tactics and threaten legislators inclined to vote to implement provisions of Proposition 215, California's medical marijuana law. CNOA functions as a clique of verbal terrorists fighting against patient's rights.
The problem with the implementation of Proposition 215 is that it is based on the "stakeholders theory," where all the interested parties reach a compromise. This policy may work for water rights, but it is insane when patients' health is compromised.
The idea that the criminal justice system is a stakeholder in a health and medical issue is ridiculous on its face. The police have training only in identifying marijuana and arresting its owners. They have no cultivation expertise, know next to nothing about the herb's medical use and have no sociological knowledge to lend to the discussion. The police's only vested interest in marijuana is using tax dollars to arrest and incarcerate users of any type, recreational or medical. The police industry's influence in this medical and sociological debate is inappropriate, since their representatives mostly deny marijuana's medical benefits and view arrests as an employment issue.
That's why this recall campaign is such a watershed. All the candidates accept marijuana as medicine. How each one would implement the law is of prime importance to the 70,000 Californians holding medical marijuana recommendations. Will patients using this exceedingly safe herbal medicine continue to be held hostage to "stakeholders" whose interest is a high arrest count?
Ironically, though I am now barred from voting, the issues that were brought to the surface in my case are reverberating through this campaign. I am hopeful of winning my appeal and having my rights restored. I would like to vote again soon.
Learn more:
The Independent Institute is sponsoring a special forum on medical pot next week.
Topic: "The Truth about medical marijuana"
Speakers: Ed Rosenthal, Donald I. Abrams, Edwin Dobb and Robert J. MacCoun
When: Thursday, 8 p.m.
Where: Hotel Nikko, Mason and O'Farrell streets, San Francisco
Tickets: $22, available through City Box Office, (415) 392-4400, or online at: www.independent.org
Ed Rosenthal, activist and co-author of "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal," is a medical marijuana pioneer. He was convicted in a landmark case early this year, following which the jury rebelled against the judge's refusal to allow the presentation of relevant facts of the case.
Cannabis Crusades: MMJ and The Recall Election
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Ed Rosenthal
Published: Friday, September 26, 2003
Contact letters@sfchronicle.com * Discussion Thread * Website
Related Articles & Web Sites
Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles
['Guru of Ganja' Sees Cracks Developing in Laws/url]
Reefer Madness: Our Current Prohib
Cannabis Crusades: Anti-Pot Ads Have Backfired
Sometimes the most well-meaning plans backfire. The federal government's attempt to curb teenage drug use with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign dramatizing the perils of marijuana has backfired spectacularly. It is now obvious that these ads are doing more harm than good, and Congress should pull the plug immediately.
Unless you've been living in a cave the last two years, you've probably seen the commercials sponsored by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Sensationalized and scary, these ads suggest that teens who smoke marijuana are likely to commit date rape, run over little girls on bicycles and even shoot their friends.
As a psychologist who studies drug abuse, I worried about these ads from the beginning. The "facts" in them are exaggerated and out of context. Their single-minded emphasis on marijuana, rather than far more addictive and lethal substances such as cocaine and methamphetamine, makes little sense.
Now, scientific data -- from the very surveys that Congress set up as yardsticks to measure the success of the drug control policy office -- tell us that these ads have boomeranged.
Back in 1998, Congress chose to evaluate the office's performance via two well-known surveys of adolescent drug use: the federally funded "Monitoring the Future" study and the privately run Parent's Resource Institute for Drug Education survey. Both are considered reliable indexes of teen drug use. The goal was to reduce the percentage of teens using illegal drugs within the last month to 3 percent of the adolescent population over a period of five years, starting in 1999.
It hasn't happened. The numbers from the 2002-2003 PRIDE survey, released Sept. 3, are devastating.
Not only is teenage use of illicit drugs running at more than five times the goal set by Congress, it went up last year, not down. And the biggest increases were seen among the youngest kids.
Last year, for example, 7.2 percent of eighth-graders smoked marijuana within the last 30 days. This year, it was 10.2 percent -- a third more. Among sixth-graders -- we're talking about 11-year-olds here -- past-month use of marijuana doubled, from 1.7 percent to 3.4 percent.
Kids aren't just tuning out the government's messages about marijuana. They are also ignoring warnings about drugs that are far more dangerous. Past-month use of cocaine was up in every age group this year, often by alarming percentages, while use of heroin in the last month was up 50 percent overall and 60 percent among junior high school students.
While the newest "Monitoring the Future" results won't appear until later in the year, the latest data from another government-sponsored survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, also show teen drug use rising. While the government claims that changes in this survey's methodology make comparisons with prior years impossible, I have found nothing in these changes to account for the sharp spike in drug use -- except that more people, including teens, are using drugs.
None of this is a surprise. An independent evaluation of the ad campaign, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, reported in January, "There is no evidence yet consistent with a desirable effect of the (ad) campaign on youth. " Worse, the researchers found indications that the ads may actually be making some youths more likely to approve of drug use, not less.
All of this jibes disturbingly with what I hear informally from undergraduates.
I'd do almost anything to stop teens from developing problems with drugs. But I do not want to throw good money after bad. The millions that the administration wants for its anti-drug ads for next year could be justified if the program was working. It's not. All the evidence suggests the government's ad campaign is making things worse, not better. For the sake of our kids, Congress should put a stop to it. This money would be better spent on effective interventions such as Project Towards No Drug Abuse or organized after-school activities. Research supports that these programs can decrease drug use in teens. Silly commercials obviously can't.
Mitch Earleywine is associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and author of "Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Cannabis Crusades: Anti-Pot Ads Have Backfired
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Mitch Earleywine
Published: Friday, September 26, 2003
Contact: letters@sfchronicle.com * Discussion Thread * Website
Related Articles
Marijuana, Gateways and Circuses
Text of Dr. Mitch Earleywine Interview on NPR
The Roots of Reefer Madness
SF Looking At How To Grow Marijuana For Patients
September 25, 2003
By The Associated Press
San Francisco -- There could soon be fewer places for patients to buy medical marijuana in Oakland, because City Council members are considering shutting down several cannabis clubs. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, supervisors are trying to figure out how the city can grow marijuana for local patients.
Read More... cannabisnews.com...17403.shtml
Judge Orders Leman To Reconsider MJ Initiative
September 25, 2003
By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer
Juneau, Alaska -- Proponents of an initiative to decriminalize marijuana will get another chance to put the measure on the 2004 ballot, a Superior Court judge ruled. Anchorage Superior Judge John Suddock ordered Lt. Gov. Loren Leman and the state Division of Elections to reconsider nearly 200 petition booklets that were rejected earlier.
Read More... cannabisnews...17402.shtml
Pot Prop May Go On '04 Ballot
Marijuana Initiative May Make Ballot
Pot Power
September 24, 2003
By Jeff Prince Fort Worth Weekly
For a guy who smokes 10 joints a day, George McMahon is surprisingly lucid, energetic, and productive. Hell, he's even written a book, something I've tried to do for years without success -- and I only smoke nine joints a day. Plus, I don't have an incurable disease, unless you count terminal laziness. McMahon, a crusty coot with a leathery face, oozes sincerity about his favorite cause, legalizing medical marijuana. He is one of seven people in the country who can legally smoke marijuana, and he has experienced the marijuana debate from the inside out and the topside down.
Read More... cannabisnews...17391.shtml
George McMahon's Home Page
Pot Smoking Changed Pain-Ridden Author's Life
Public Pot - Badger Herald
Just What The Doctor Ordered?
