OAKLAND, Calif. -- A marijuana street fair being held in downtown Oakland turned out to be a popular destination this weekend, with people waiting in long lines to attend the event.
The two-day International Cannabis and Hemp Expo was being held Saturday and Sunday over several blocks in the city's downtown, directly outside Oakland City Hall.
Besides vendors, speakers, music and other offerings, organizers say the event also includes a designated area in front of City Hall where those with a valid medical cannabis card will be able to smoke marijuana, organizers said.
It's basically a flower-power party downtown. If folks are so sick, you'd think they'd be home nursing their illnesses and taking their "medications." But of course, it's not really about "medical" marijuana. It's all about legalization, period.
Flores had run off the road and killed a jogger, Carrie Jean Holliman, a 56-year-old Chico elementary school teacher. California Highway Patrol officers thought he might be impaired and conducted a sobriety examination. Flores' tongue had a green coat typical of heavy marijuana users and a later test showed he had pot, as well as other drugs, in his blood.
After pleading guilty to manslaughter, Flores, a medical marijuana user, was sentenced in February to 10 years and 8 months in prison.
Holliman's death and others like it across the nation hint at what experts say is an unrecognized crisis: stoned drivers.
The most recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana.
In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.
"Marijuana is a significant and important contributing factor in a growing number of fatal accidents," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy in the White House and former Seattle police chief. "There is no question, not only from the data but from what I have heard in my career as a law enforcement officer."
As the medical marijuana movement has gained speed — one-third of the states now allow such sales — federal officials are pursuing scientific research into the impairing effects of the drug.
In contrast to their upbeat public assessments, U.S. officials expressed frustration with a "risk averse" Mexican army and rivalries among security agencies that have hampered the Mexican government's war against drug cartels, according to secret U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed Thursday.
The cables quoted Mexican officials expressing fear that the government was losing control of parts of its national territory and that time was "running out" to rein in drug violence.
The cables gave a much starker view of the pitfalls and obstacles facing Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a departure from the public statements of unwavering support that have come out of Washington for most of the 4-year-old war, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
Two cables from U.S. Embassy officials in Mexico, one dated January of this year and the other October 2009, praise Calderon for persisting in his campaign to tackle "head on" the powerful cartels that traffic most of the cocaine, heroin and marijuana that reaches the U.S.
But the Mexican president's struggles with "an unwieldy and uncoordinated interagency" law enforcement effort have created the perception that he is failing, the cable dated Jan. 29 said. His inability to halt the violence or contain the rising death toll has become a principal political liability as his public ratings have declined, it said.
The U.S. assessment said Calderon's tools are limited: "Mexican security institutions are often locked in a zero-sum competition in which one agency's success is viewed as another's failure, information is closely guarded, and joint operations are all but unheard of," said the January cable, which is signed by the No. 2 official in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, John D. Feeley, a veteran diplomat with extensive experience in Latin America.
"Official corruption is widespread, leading to a compartmentalized siege mentality among 'clean' law enforcement leaders and their lieutenants," he said. "Prosecution rates for organized crime-related offenses are dismal; 2% of those detained are brought" to trial.
I don't know. Maybe some folks are so stupid they actually need these warnings. Besides, what would folks like egghead JBW do without some Nanny Statism to gripe about? Get rid of warning labels and marijuana laws in one fell swoop!! Then everyone would have equal opportunity to death!
I know this won't be much solace to everyone who worked on Prop 19, but.....this isn't so bad, really. Given the automatic headwind of getting people to vote Yes on anything, the additional headwind of a big Republican turnout, plus the general nervousness that middle class people have about drugs, a loss this small is actually sort of encouraging. All we need to turn this around in a few years is for 4% of voters to change their minds.
This is the same argument we heard about Prop 8. And how's that working out? Folks said forget the electoral process and went to court, and gay marriage in California will eventually be decided by the Supremes. Meanwhile, the judges in Iowa who approved gay marriage are out on their asses, and lefties are freakin': "Iowa's Total Recall." Fact is, the public consistently repudiates Democrat-Socialist policies at the ballot box. And when there's a popular pushback against judicial activism we hear the outcry against "entrenched special interests." That's rich. See, "Rejection of Iowa judges over gay marriage raises fears of political influence."
Anyway, more on Prop. 19: Leftist Josh Marshallis getting some pushback from the usual suspects on the radical left, most notably hare-brained E.D. Kain, the infamous workplace intimidator.
Brooke and Tiffany are addicted to heroin and prescription drugs. They live together with their children, two 4-year-olds and a 4-month-old, and often go on drug-finding field trips as a family. A few weeks ago, Tiffany overdosed while the children were in the next room. Dr. Phil meets with the twins’ parents and siblings and is shocked by what he learns.
And "Yes We Can!" And how's that working out for ya? Might need to smoke a couple o' fat ones tomorrow. Republicans are going to crush these brain-addled druggie-socialists, and none too soon either.
James B. Webb hasn't been commenting over here lately. I thought he'd fried his brain on coke so hard in Las Vegas that he just couldn't get it up mentally. But apparently the problem's not just the cocaine, but the messed-up Obama opium buzz itself. Old JBW's got the downer-shakes from the bad-shit Obama junk freak-out. That pinch musta been cut with some rat poison, or something. Cuz man, that buzz for "The One" is gone, really gone: "Brain Fatigue And Rage Deficiency."
My favorite thing about you Don, is your totally legitimate tea party roots: your belief that adult Americans should be free to do whatever they wish, regardless of the harm to themselves, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.
Keep practicing what you preach and shine on, you crazy diamond!
This is interesting, and kinda sad too. The THC's left JBW, that old frisky sparring partner, intellectually impotent --- and I hope that's all!!
I've been to dozens of tea party events, and I've yet to see anyone campaigning for marijuana legalization. It's just not on the agenda. Sure, tea partiers have their libertarian contingents. But the stoners must be hanging out in the parking lot getting loaded. They haven't been protesting to "legalize it."
Can't say that for the "Rally for Sanity" fanatics, however. And these folks musta been tokin' large while drawing up these signs. "Legalize Pot." "2 Protect Children" and "Restore Sanity"?
“Good luck trying to get through that crowd to the stage.”
Those were the first words I heard within 15 minutes of joining the large crowd that flocked to the National Mall Saturday for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear hosted by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
To say that you couldn’t see the stage, or even hear it, wouldn’t be an exaggeration— many had to climb a tree (literally) to even catch a glimpse of the one jumbo TV screen.
“We did the march-of-the-penguins walk in the crowd for about an hour,” Georgetown University student Anam Raheem told me. “But it was too crowded; we had to turn back.”
Thousands of rally goers brought signs and costumes in support of politically hot-button issues.
“I came to meet some people,” said Mark Feeney, a resident of Buffalo, New York who sported a green outfit with a sign that displayed the benefits of marijuana. “But we have to be smart, not stupid. If we legalize pot, we’ll create more revenue and jobs.”
Although Proposition 19, which would legalize recreational marijuana in California, was one of the more common issues seen on signs, other topics were equally supported, such as abortion, equality for gays, space travel, and most vehemently, backlash against the Tea Party movement.
“I came to have fun,” Pennsylvania resident Eric Hafner said, “But we need to also show people that extremism is really overblown.”
Next Tuesday, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, which would legalize the use of marijuana. Until recently, this legislation was leading in most polls—a fact that boggled my mind. Why increase the availability of a drug that has already destroyed the lives of countless teens and their families?
According to the latest LA Times poll, Prop 19 is now “trailing badly,” and it appears that many people have seen the light. Still, 39% of voters are in favor of legalization, a not insignificant figure. And this just doesn’t make sense.
Those of us at Phoenix House who have been working with kids for more than 40 years are troubled by this measure. Not only have we have served more young people than any other treatment provider in California, but the experience of our regions throughout the country have established us as a national authority. And we’ve seen firsthand the devastation marijuana can cause. This drug is a problem for almost all of the kids we treat; about 76% of our teen admissions nationally list marijuana as their primary drug of choice. We serve some of the most vulnerable teens in the state of California and across the country—kids whose drug use is more likely to lead to addiction. These young people are with us because marijuana has seriously impacted their lives—making it impossible for them to succeed in school, ruining their relationships with their families, and often, leading them to try even more harmful drugs when they seek an even greater high.
Our experience at Phoenix House mirrors national trends. According to SAMHSA’s Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), almost 80% of adolescent treatment admissions, aged 12 to 17, had marijuana as their primary or secondary drug of choice. Studies have shown that young people are particularly susceptible to marijuana’s side effects—which include social anxiety and cognitive impairment. Research has linked early onset marijuana use to lower GPA, early school dropout, and lower income at age 29. The drug’s street potency has also increased substantially over the past two decades, and a single joint contains four times as much cancer-causing tar as a filtered cigarette.
When we legalize a drug—thereby increasing access and removing the stigma—it follows that more people will use it. The idea that we won’t see a rise in teen marijuana use as a result is absurd. And more usage will mean more adolescents addicted, more drugged driving, and other negative consequences.
“But I smoked pot when I was young and I turned out fine,” many legalization advocates tell me. “Even our President used it.”
It’s true that not every kid who tries marijuana will become addicted. Research tells us that about 10 percent of those who try it will get hooked. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the drug puts young people at risk. And as responsible adults, our job is to reduce the likelihood that our children will engage in risky behavior—not to increase it.
Yes, if Prop 19 were to pass, we’d try to keep the drug out of kids’ hands. But with rampant underage drinking and cigarette smoking, I highly doubt we could do a better job with marijuana. The last thing our young people need is another legal intoxicant.
These are challenging times for California and Prop 19 supporters argue that legalization of marijuana would improve the state’s plight. But the bottom line is that the harm this legislation could cause outweighs its potential benefits. To support Prop 19 without considering what it would mean for the younger generation is both irresponsible and dangerous.
California voters have turned against controversial initiatives to legalize marijuana and to suspend the state's global warming law, a poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found.
Voters now oppose Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization measure, 49% to 44%, and the measure to halt a law that aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions, 48% to 37%.
The poll indicated that opposition has surged since September, when 52% of likely voters backed Proposition 19, which would allow Californians to grow and possess pot, and they split evenly over Proposition 23.
The earlier poll's Proposition 19 result had encouraged supporters and attracted some high-dollar donations. The measure would allow Californians who are 21 and older to grow and possess marijuana, while cities and counties could authorize commercial cultivation, sales and taxation.
The latest poll found support had eroded significantly across all demographic groups, but most steeply among Latino voters. In September, 63% backed it. Now, 51% oppose it.
Mark Baldassare, the organization's pollster, said the drop may have come because of a barely visible campaign. He noted that the proponents have to persuade voters that people like them support the initiative. "The burden of proof is always on the yes side," he said.
He also said that opponents seemed more passionate about the issue. Among likely voters who said the legalization issue was very important to them, 33% planned to vote for it and 63% against it.
Baldassare also said the poll found no indication that young people were more enthused about marijuana legalization than older voters. Democrats have started to talk about using the issue as a way to motivate young voters in 2012.
Much of the reversal appears to be driven by evaporating support in Southern California. In September, 56% of likely voters in Los Angeles County and 52% in other Southern California counties supported the measure. This month, those percentages slipped to 41% and 42%.
"As expected, California voters are taking a closer look at Prop. 19 and are just saying 'No,' " said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the opposition. "While the measure claims to regulate, control and tax marijuana, voters don't need eyedrops to clearly see it does none of those things."
And no joke on the "cash crop crackup," especially if Prop 19 passes. A new pro-pot documentary, "Cash Crop," is now playing in theaters. The review at LAT isn't particularly enthusiastic (focusing on growers, the film avoids the second and third stage marijuana markets, where the real complications and casualties of decriminalization will be found). And no doubt the reviews of the state's pot initiative won't be all that enthusiastic either, should the measure pass next month (which is looking less likely, thank goodness: "New poll shows California tilting against legalized marijuana").
Democratic strategists are studying a California marijuana-legalization initiative to see if similar ballot measures could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election.
Some pollsters and party officials say Democratic candidates in California are benefiting from a surge in enthusiasm among young voters eager to back Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in certain quantities and permit local governments to regulate and tax it.
Party strategists and marijuana-legalization advocates are discussing whether to push for similar ballot questions in 2012 in Colorado and Nevada—both expected to be crucial to President Barack Obama's re-election—and Washington state, which will have races for governor and seats in both houses of Congress.
Already, a coalition of Democratic-leaning groups has conducted a poll in Colorado and Washington to test the power of marijuana measures to drive voter turnout.
Ballot measures typically don't increase turnout on a mass scale. Still, strategists in both parties argue certain ballot measures can help activate targeted groups of voters and campaign volunteers in numbers that can be significant in close elections.
It’s hard to recall the precise moment when I realized I’d been hoodwinked by my US Airways pilot. Instead of taking me to Detroit, as my ticket promised, it seemed he had deposited me on the set of Weeds, the Showtime program about a workaday upper-middle class mother who decides to become a pot dealer.
That moment might have come after leaving the airport in my rental car, when I saw a clinic sign beckoning motorists to get an exam for their state-certified medical marijuana card. Or it might have come when I saw the multiple billboards for hydroponic gardening equipment (no, they’re not growing hothouse tomatoes here). Or maybe it was seeing the oversized highway sign heralding the season premiere of Weeds itself, the show that plunges you into California cannabis culture, from clandestine grow-rooms to “dispensaries”—the quasi-legal pot shops that one character on the show described as making Los Angeles like Amsterdam, except “you don’t have to visit the Anne Frank house and pretend to be all sad and s—.”
Then I opened Detroit’s alternative weekly Metro Times, which instead of being chock-full of ads for used futons and anonymous sex, as is the custom with such papers, was lousy with medical marijuana ads: for marijuana gardening academies; for pot doctors from places with names like Green Medicine (“No medical records? No problem.”); for the Medical Marijuana Extravaganja, a two-day jamboree of stand-up comics and horseshoe tournaments and centerfold contests which feature women like the one in the ad, who is holding a snake in one hand and an apple in the other, her ample gifts blossoming from a green bud bikini. You know, to pull in the chemo sufferers.
But the final dawning that I’d landed in the autumnal mists of a land called Honah Lee—as the poets Peter, Paul and Mary used to put it—probably came the day I went back to college. Not journalism school, mind you. What would be the point? Journalism—like making cars—is a dying industry around these parts. But there is a growth industry emerging in Michigan, the first one for decades: state-sanctioned pot dealing. And here in colorless, odorless Southfield, a white-bread suburb of Detroit, is one of the best places to learn how to do it, Med Grow Cannabis College.
Modeled partly on Oaksterdam University in Oakland, which became a weed-education hub after California legalized the medical use of marijuana in 1996, Med Grow is the brainchild of 24-year-old Nick Tennant. As Tennant’s auto-detailing business tanked in the Great Recession, Michigan followed California’s lead and became one of 14 states to legalize medical marijuana, with 63 percent of the vote in 2008. Technically, it’s still against federal law. Marijuana—even when it’s called medical—remains classified by the Feds as a forbidden Schedule 1 substance, meaning surly DEA agents can make trouble for its users. But the Obama Justice Department issued a 2009 memo directing U.S. attorneys not to target those “in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws” that permit the use of medical marijuana.
The state of Michigan now approves medical marijuana, but doesn’t provide it. So somebody needs to grow all this medicinal herb. The act allows a certified patient to grow up to 12 plants for himself, or to choose a certified caregiver who can grow for up to five patients (for a total of 60 plants, or 72, if the caregiver is also his own patient, as is often the case). And that’s why Med Grow is here—to teach people the ins and outs of the weed business, from growing it, to writing it off on their taxes. As they say in their mission statement—and you know weed has become serious business when a pot school has a mission statement—Med Grow is “dedicated to your success in the Medical Marijuana Industry, and your reputation is reliant upon it.”
About 9% of adults who use marijuana develop an addiction to it. Among people who begin smoking before the age of 18, this number is as high as 17%. Although addiction to marijuana does not cause dramatic physical dependence, it can lead to substantial problems in education, work and relationships. In fact, addiction to marijuana is defined by the inability to stop using despite recognition of harmful consequences. Without harmful consequences, there is no diagnosis of addiction.
The short-term effects of marijuana intoxication are well established. As part of the high produced by marijuana, intoxication impairs memory and learning. Marijuana use also impairs driving, causing a twofold to threefold increase in accidents. Though not as dramatic as the fifteenfold increase in accidents caused by alcohol intoxication, marijuana's impact on traffic safety does have significance.
The long-term effects of marijuana are not often recognized because they are subtle, but they can have a cumulative impact over time. In people with preexisting vulnerabilities, marijuana use can unmask psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia. Many people with anxiety and depression use marijuana to soothe their symptoms; however, there is evidence that over time it may actually make these problems worse.
Smoked marijuana irritates the linings of the respiratory passages and can lead to inflammation and bronchitis. Although marijuana has not been definitively shown to cause cancer, smoked marijuana has been linked to precancerous changes in the lungs.
These long-term effects of marijuana are not as dramatic as those seen in other, "harder" drugs of abuse, but they do take a toll, and that toll appears to be greatest among people who begin smoking marijuana during adolescence, before the brain and body are finished maturing.
Leave it to those wacky meth heads to provide zaniness and hijinks where ever they go. 22-year-old Amanda Colmenero was busted in Coos Bay, Oregon this week on drug charges. When she entered the jail, she was given the standard strip and cavity searches...
But being a forgetful meth head, Amanda decided to store her chemical intoxicants deep in her vagina, lest she get too high and lose them. And because she stored them so deep, deputies missed them during her cavity search ...
Our hero was placed in a holding cell. But when jailers checked on her the next morning, they found her unconscious and nearly dead. While Amanda had taken special care to not misplace her meth, that same care hadn't been given to the bags she used to hold her dope. One of them broke, which caused the meth to seep into her vaginal apparatus, which in turn caused her to be in deep shit.
She was rushed to a hospital where doctors discovered her secret storage compartment and removed the offending items. She's now in critical condition. Detectives believe this will teach her to use name-brand bags from Hefty in the future, instead of relying on discount products not recommended for vaginal drug storage.
Another poster girl for drug decriminalization. Just JBW's kind of woman.
