Despite the amount of illegal firearms and genuinely harmful drugs that America seems to be knee-deep in, police in Oregon are concerned that card-holding medicinal marijuana users might be legally carrying guns.

Under the U. S. Gun Control Act of 1968, guns may not be sold to drug addicts. Most people would agree that this is a good idea, as the mental image of a ‘drug addict’ is almost always negative: shaking, dirty, paranoid, and incapable of rational thought. Nobody wants to arm that person.

An elderly medicinal marijuana user in Oregon (image courtesy of NORML)

Concealed Handgun Permits are refused

The sheriffs of Oregon, however, are classing medicinal cannabis users as drug addicts and refusing to issue concealed handgun permits to them. The sheriff’s office, by state law, should not refuse to grant such a license provided a list of conditions is met. These conditions usually  include U.S. citizenship, completing  a gun safety course, no criminal record, no mental illness or substance abuse problems. Again, these are all reasonable requirements, but the medicinal cannabis patients who fulfill them are still being refused the permit.

Use of prescribed marijuana should not limit a person’s rights

Retired school bus driver Cynthia Willis is one such patient, and along with three co-plaintiffs she is part of a potentially landmark case currently under consideration by the Oregon Supreme Court. Cynthia likes to carry a Walther P-22 automatic pistol, which she says she’s never had to draw, for self-defense. She also uses cannabis to control muscle spasms and pain from her arthritis, but says she never uses it when she plans to carry her gun (or drive). So far she’s won two court cases on the argument that prescribed drug use does not disqualify a person from holding a concealed gun permit, and medicinal cannabis is a prescribed drug like any other.

More at stake than the right to carry a concealed firearm

What is at stake here is not just the right of medicinal cannabis users to carry (concealed) firearms: by Oregon law, if someone doesn’t have a concealed gun permit but does have a gun license, they can simply carry the gun openly, as Cynthia plans to do if she loses her case. Given the tragic events in Alphen aan den Rijn on Saturday as the latest in a long line of horrific shootings by licensed gun owners throughout the world,  it can be argued that gun licenses should be revoked altogether.

How do you abuse your own medicinal cannabis crop?

The underlying issue of concern in Oregon is the classification of medical marijuana patients as ‘drug addicts’, with all the negative connotations of this epithet. Although cannabis seeds have never been illegal in Oregon, and it was the first state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of bud back in 1973, courts recently decided that employers had the right to fire medicinal cannabis users. The sheriffs of this county openly argue that the majority of medicinal card holders are abusing the right to use ganja as a medicine, despite the fact that buying, selling, and dispensaries are still prohibited so patients must grow their own (or have someone grow it for them without profit) in order to do so.

Defending the rights of medical marijuana users

Executive Director of NORML Allen St. Pierre is focused on defending the right of every medicinal marijuana card holder to be treated like any other citizen: “A person who uses medical cannabis should not have to give up their fundamental rights as enumerated by the Constitution,”‘ St. Pierre said.

An article published on the website of Le Figaro last week (23rd March 2011)  aroused our curiosity as, in addition to vague threats about cyberpolice, it mentioned the well-known cannabis seed company Sensi Seeds on several occasions.

Picture used to illustrate what you can buy online, according to the paper

Fact or propaganda? An extract from the beginning of the article states:

“ [Based] In the Netherlands, the Sensi Seed website unapologetically advertises their ‘cannabis seedbank’ in all languages. They sell complete culture tents, similar in size  to wardrobes, ‘bloom boosters’ and even teach how to ‘grow with the Moon,’ to optimize growth according to the lunar calendar. From “Shiva Shanti” at 20 euros for ten seeds to the “Marley’s Collie”, 120 euros, “a strain of ganja celebrated by the great Bob Marley”, the bank offers hundreds of varieties. And even accessories: caps, t-shirts, playing cards. Everything is available worldwide, sent in express parcels.”

• Firstly, which companies would not promote their products on their website?

What seems to offend the newspaper is the casualness with which a company can advertise cannabis and hemp, but in Holland, freedom of expression is not limited by legislation as it is in France (where portraying any illegal substance in a good or positive way is strictly forbidden by law). Furthermore Bedrocan, the only company to legally grow cannabis in the Netherlands for pharmaceutical supply, uses Sensi Seeds varieties. What company would not display pride in such an achievement and credit to their product?

• As to advertising in ‘all’ languages, it is becoming quite normal, indeed essential, for a renowned international company to communicate in several languages. The Sensi Seeds website is available in nine languages, which for some journalists (at least those of Figaro), apparently covers every tongue.

• Factual error #1: No cultivation materials  are available on the site, neither tents nor crop fertilizer.

The company has indeed sold such equipment in the past, but in 2007 ceased to retail all types of grow and cultivation supplies both on the website and in the stores, located in  Amsterdam. As to the lunar calendar, though there are none on the site, they are easily accessible on the net and not only for cannabis growers. Farmers and gardeners have relied on such almanacs for thousands of years to successfully cultivate all types of crops; they are hardly a radical or subversive tool.

• Lost In Translation: “Marley’s Collie… a strain of ganja celebrated by the great Bob Marley”.

On the site sensiseeds.com the exact phrase is: “a strain of ganja to celebrate the great Bob Marley.”
Some confusion here: Le Figaro has a person who died 30 years ago celebrating a variety that did not exist during his lifetime! If anyone could celebrate cannabis from beyond the grave it might well be the unofficial Jamaican patron saint of smoking herb, but this would be a stupid claim for anyone to make, let alone a company that made a point of honoring him.

• Factual error #2: it is stated that Sensi Seeds sends everything they sell- including the cultivation materials mentioned earlier-worldwide, by express post no less.

The site has a page dedicated to the availability by country; the reader cannot fail to see  that most countries are not shipped to for legal reasons. The only countries available are European countries. This is not ‘worldwide’ in any way! Perhaps Le Figaro defines ‘the world’ as Europe, which would also account for the world only having nine languages. Perhaps the shock value of the article would be lessened by the truth: Sensi Seeds is in fact operating in accordance with French and European law. They were even wrong about the express delivery, although insured post is featured as a shipping option.

Illustration from the French police describing the main 5 evidences to catch growers

So this is the propaganda launched by a newspaper that is widely known for  very close links with the Elys?e (the Presidential Palace, French equivalent of the White House or 10, Downing Street).

The rest of the article is of the same ilk, describing the techniques used by French cyberpolice to track down criminals, using new technology.
It can be speculated that the article is a response to a program recently aired on TV channel France 2, which  openly discussed the legalization of cannabis in countries where freedom of expression is not restricted as it is in France. Did Le Figaro decide the French public needed a reminder  that essentially they live in a police state?

But what power does the French police have over a site hosted in another country? Technically they can discover who visits which website by spying on citizens and their Internet usage (not only in connection with cannabis), but it stops there. They cannot tell who actually bought a product on a (foreign) site, and who just visited. Dutch law is strict on the protection of personal data and in no way can France challenge the Dutch authority over the site.

Le Figaro are attempting to scare people who have chosen to self-produce a substance which is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. However the illegal cultivation of cannabis puts them in greater danger than if they turn to the black market to obtain it. In more and more cases people are growing for personal medicinal use, prepared to take the legal risk to obtain a safe an effective medicine denied them by their own government.

The first paragraph of the article describes the Netherlands as contradictory. This must make France, which has never ceased the production of hemp but has the most repressive laws in Europe regarding the use of cannabis, flat out hypocritical.

The only details that are correct in the article are the prices of seeds (apparently they cannot lie when it comes to money) and the conclusion, which grudgingly admits that the police, cyber or otherwise, must overcome one handicap: having cannabis seeds shipped to France is not a criminal offence.

We thank them however for realizing that Sensi Seeds is the quintessential place to buy cannabis seeds!

Obviously the Justice Minister of the Czech Republic sees in this idea an opportunity to lower costs for his ministry not to dismiss it, but the expert quoted in the original article is right about the quality of the cannabis grown in illegal operations. It’s just not grown for such purpose.

Rather than seizing it, why not grow it?

The junior government Czech Public Affairs (VV) party supports the idea of marijuana being legalised for for medical purposes. But while first thinking about importing  cannabis from Holland, they now appear to be tempted by the cut in costs such initiative would create, not seeing any troubles in using weed from the black market to provide for patients’ treatment .

Maybe this is the opportunity to think about the legislation in a different way for medical marijuana since more and more Czech state institutions and politicians support the use of hemp for medical purposes.

Well even if the idea is not a safe one for patients, at least it opens the debate on medical cannabis. Let’s just hope this will lead to a new law legalising the medical use of cannabis in yet an other European country. And if police wants to help, they could provide with the grow equipment from previous seizure rather than the weed itself.

Sources: Cannabis Culture

What Can Today’s Crusaders Against Prohibition Learn From Their Predecessors Who Ended the Alcohol Ban?

Of the 27 amendments to the U.S.  Constitution, the 18th is the only one explicitly aimed at restricting people’s freedom.  It is also the only one that has ever been repealed.  Maybe that’s encouraging, especially for those of us who recognize the parallels between that amendment, which ushered in the nationwide prohibition of alcohol, and current bans on other drugs.

But given the manifest failure and unpleasant side effects of Prohibition, its elimination after 14 years is not terribly surprising, despite the arduous process required to undo a constitutional amendment.  The real puzzle, as the journalist Daniel Okrent argues in his masterful new history of the period, is how a nation that never had a teetotaling majority, let alone one committed to forcibly imposing its lifestyle on others, embarked upon such a doomed experiment to begin with.  How did a country consisting mostly of drinkers agree to forbid drinking?

The short answer is that it didn’t.  As a reveler accurately protests during a Treasury Department raid on a private banquet in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, neither the 18th Amendment nor the Volstead Act, which implemented it, prohibited mere possession or consumption of alcohol.  The amendment took effect a full year after ratification, and those who could afford it were free in the meantime to stock up on wine and liquor, which they were permitted to consume until the supplies ran out.  The law also included exceptions that were important for those without well-stocked wine cellars or the means to buy the entire inventory of a liquor store ( as the actress Mary Pickford did ).  Home production of cider, beer, and wine was permitted, as was commercial production of alcohol for religious, medicinal, and industrial use ( three loopholes that were widely abused ).  In these respects Prohibition was much less onerous than our current drug laws.  Indeed, the legal situation was akin to what today would be called “decriminalization” or even a form of “legalization.”

After Prohibition took effect, Okrent shows, attempts to punish bootleggers with anything more than a slap on the wrist provoked public outrage and invited jury nullification.  One can imagine what would have happened if the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had demanded a legal regime in which possessing, say, five milliliters of whiskey triggered a mandatory five-year prison sentence ( as possessing five grams of crack cocaine did until recently ).  The lack of penalties for consumption helped reassure drinkers who voted for Prohibition as legislators and supported it ( or did not vigorously resist it ) as citizens.  Some of these “dry wets” sincerely believed that the barriers to drinking erected by Prohibition, while unnecessary for moderate imbibers like themselves, would save working-class saloon patrons from their own excesses.  Pauline Morton Sabin, the well-heeled, martini-drinking Republican activist who went from supporting the 18th Amendment to heading the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, one of the most influential pro-repeal groups, apparently had such an attitude.

In addition to paternalism, the longstanding American ambivalence toward pleasure in general and alcohol-fueled pleasure in particular helped pave the way to Prohibition.  The Puritans were not dour teetotalers, but they were anxious about excess, and a similar discomfort may have discouraged drinkers from actively resisting dry demands.  But by far the most important factor, Okrent persuasively argues, was the political maneuvering of the Anti-Saloon League ( ASL ) and its master strategist, Wayne Wheeler, who turned a minority position into the supreme law of the land by mobilizing a highly motivated bloc of swing voters.

Defining itself as “the Church in Action Against the Saloon,” the clergy-led ASL reached dry sympathizers through churches ( mostly Methodist and Baptist ) across the country.  Okrent says the group typically could deliver something like 10 percent of voters to whichever candidate sounded driest ( regardless of his private behavior ).  This power was enough to change the outcome of elections, putting the fear of the ASL, which Okrent calls “the mightiest pressure group in the nation’s history,” into the state and federal legislators who would vote to approve the 18th Amendment.  That doesn’t mean none of the legislators who voted dry were sincere; many of them-including Richmond Hobson of Alabama and Morris Sheppard of Texas, the 18th Amendment’s chief sponsors in the House and Senate, respectively-were deadly serious about reforming their fellow citizens by regulating their liquid diets.  But even the most ardent drys depended on ASL-energized supporters for their political survival.

The ASL strategy worked because wet voters did not have the same passion and unity, while the affected business interests feuded among themselves until the day their industry was abolished.  Americans who objected to Prohibition generally did not feel strongly enough to make that issue decisive in their choice of candidates, although they did make themselves heard when the issue itself was put to a vote.  Californians, for example, defeated four successive ballot measures that would have established statewide prohibition before their legislature approved the 18th Amendment in 1919.

As Prohibition wore on, its unintended consequences provided the fire that wets had lacked before it was enacted.  They were appalled by rampant corruption, black market violence, newly empowered criminals, invasions of privacy, and deaths linked to alcohol poisoned under government order to discourage diversion ( a policy that Sen.  Edward Edwards of New Jersey denounced as “legalized murder” ).  These burdens seemed all the more intolerable because Prohibition was so conspicuously ineffective.  As a common saying of the time put it, the drys had their law and the wets had their liquor, thanks to myriad quasi-legal and illicit businesses that Okrent colorfully describes.

Entrepreneurs taking advantage of legal loopholes included operators of “booze cruises” to international waters, travel agents selling trips to Cuba ( which became a popular tourist destination on the strength of its proximity and wetness ), “medicinal” alcohol distributors whose brochures ( “for physician permittees only” ) resembled bar menus, priests and rabbis who obtained allegedly sacramental wine for their congregations ( which grew dramatically after Prohibition was enacted ), breweries that turned to selling “malt syrup” for home beer production, vintners who delivered fermentable juice directly into San Francisco cellars through chutes connected to grape-crushing trucks, and the marketers of the Vino-Sano Grape Brick, which “came in a printed wrapper instructing the purchaser to add water to make grape juice, but to be sure not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long before drinking it because ‘it might ferment and become wine.’ ” The outright lawbreakers included speakeasy proprietors such as the Stork Club’s Sherman Billings-ley, gangsters such as Al Capone, rum runners such as Bill McCoy, and big-time bootleggers such as Sam Bronfman, the Canadian distiller who made a fortune shipping illicit liquor to thirsty Americans under the cover of false paperwork.  Their stories, as related by Okrent, are illuminating as well as engaging, vividly showing how prohibition warps everything it touches, transforming ordinary business transactions into tales of intrigue.

The plain fact that the government could not stop the flow of booze, but merely divert it into new channels at great cost, led disillusioned drys to join angry wets in a coalition that achieved an unprecedented and never-repeated feat.  As late as 1930, just three years before repeal, Morris Sheppard confidently asserted, “There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”

That hummingbird was lifted partly by a rising tide of wet immigrants and urbanites.  During the first few decades of the 20th century, the country became steadily less rural and less WASPy, a trend that ultimately made Prohibition democratically unsustainable.  Understanding this demographic reality, dry members of Congress desperately delayed the constitutionally required reapportionment of legislative districts for nearly a decade after the 1920 census.  “The dry refusal to allow Congress to recalculate state-by-state representation in the House during the 1920s is one of those political maneuvers in American history so audacious it’s hard to believe it happened,” Okrent writes.  “The episode is all the more remarkable for never having established itself in the national consciousness.”

Other Prohibition-driven assaults on the Constitution are likewise little remembered today.  In 1922 the Court reinforced a dangerous exception to the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause by declaring that the “dual sovereignty” doctrine allowed prosecution of Prohibition violators in both state and federal courts for the same offense.  In 1927 the Court ruled that requiring a bootlegger to declare his illegal earnings for tax purposes did not violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against compelled self-incrimination.  And “in twenty separate cases between 1920 and 1933,” Okrent notes, the Court carried out “a broad-strokes rewriting” of the case law concerning the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Among other things, the Court declared that a warrant was not needed to search a car suspected of carrying contraband liquor or to eavesdrop on telephone conversations between bootleggers ( a precedent that was not overturned until 1967 ).  Because of Prohibition’s demands, Okrent writes, “long-honored restraints on police authority soon gave way.”

That tendency has a familiar ring to anyone who follows Supreme Court cases growing out of the war on drugs, which have steadily whittled away at the Fourth Amendment during the last few decades.  But unlike today, the incursions required to enforce Prohibition elicited widespread dismay.  Here is how The New York Times summarized the Anti-Saloon League’s response to the wiretap decision: “It is feared by the dry forces that Prohibition will fall into ‘disrepute’ and suffer ‘irreparable harm’ if the American public concludes that ‘universal snooping’ is favored for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment.”

The fear of a popular backlash was well-founded.  From the beginning, Prohibition was resisted in the wetter provinces of America, where the authorities often declined to enforce it.  Maryland never passed its own version of the Volstead Act, while New York repealed its alcohol prohibition law in 1923.  Eleven other states eliminated their statutes by referendum in November 1932, months before Congress presented the 21st Amendment ( which repealed the 18th ) and more than a year before it was ratified.

This history of noncooperation is instructive in considering an argument that was often made by opponents of Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative that California voters rejected in November.  The measure’s detractors claimed legalizing marijuana at the state level would run afoul of the Supremacy Clause, which says “this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme law of the land.” Yet even under a prohibition system that, unlike the current one, was explicitly authorized by the Constitution, states had no obligation to ban what Congress banned or punish what Congress punished.  In fact, state and local resistance to alcohol prohibition led the way to national repeal.

That precedent, while encouraging to antiprohibitionists who hope that federalism can help end the war on drugs, should be viewed with caution.  For one thing, federalism isn’t what it used to be.  Alcohol prohibition was enacted and repealed before the Supreme Court transformed the Commerce Clause into an all-purpose license to meddle, when it was taken for granted that the federal government could not ban an intoxicant unless the Constitution was amended to provide such a power.  While the feds may not have the resources to wage the war on drugs without state assistance, under existing precedents they clearly have the legal authority to try.

Another barrier to emulating the antiprohibitionists of the 1920s is that none of the currently banned drugs is ( or ever was ) as widely consumed in this country as alcohol.  That fact is crucial in understanding the contrast between the outrage that led to the repeal of alcohol prohibition and Americans’ general indifference to the damage done by the war on drugs today.  The illegal drug that comes closest to alcohol in popularity is marijuana, which survey data indicate most Americans born after World War II have at least tried.  That experience is reflected in rising public support for legalizing marijuana, which hit a record 46 percent in a nationwide Gallup poll conducted the week before Proposition 19 was defeated.

A third problem for today’s antiprohibitionists is the deep roots of the status quo.  Alcohol prohibition came and went in 14 years, which made it easy to distinguish between the bad effects of drinking and the bad effects of trying to stop it.  By contrast, the government has been waging war on cocaine and opiates since 1914 and on marijuana since 1937 ( initially under the guise of enforcing revenue measures ).  Few people living today have clear memories of a different legal regime.  That is one reason why histories like Okrent’s, which bring to life a period when booze was banned but pot was not, are so valuable.

Reflecting on the long-term impact of the vain attempt to get between Americans and their liquor, Okrent writes: “In 1920 could anyone have believed that the Eighteenth Amendment, ostensibly addressing the single subject of intoxicating beverages, would set off an avalanche of change in areas as diverse as international trade, speedboat design, tourism practices, soft-drink marketing, and the English language itself? Or that it would provoke the establishment of the first nationwide criminal syndicate, the idea of home dinner parties, the deep engagement of women in political issues other than suffrage, and the creation of Las Vegas?” Nearly a century after the war on other drugs was launched, Americans are only beginning to recognize its far-reaching consequences, most of which are considerably less fun than a dinner party or a trip to Vegas.

Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2011 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Jacob Sullum, Reason

From Amicus Journal (2010) Issue 21, p 21-28.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the international law ramifications of applying the death penalty for drug offences.  It reviews the the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold for the lawful application of capital punishment as established in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  It then explores the question of whether drug offences meet this threshold by examining the issue through the lenses of international human rights law, the domestic legislation in retentionist states, international narcotics control law, international refugee law and international criminal law.  The article  concludes that drug offences do not constitute ‘most serious crimes’, and that executions of people for drug offences violates international human rights law.

The Czech Republic is bringing in some very interesting legislation in 2010.

From January 1st, individuals in possession of 15 grams of cannabis or less will not be charged with a crime in the Czech Republic. The new laws, which decriminalize the possession of ‘small amounts’ of most currently illegal drugs, are based on a  Justice Ministry proposal which was approved by the Czech government earlier this month.

Previously, there were few clear definitions of what level of drug possession was treated as ‘small’, since standards were based on internal police directives and could change from region to region. The new legislation clearly defines how much of each substance is considered a ‘small amount’ under the law. Individuals in possession of this amount or less will not be charged with a crime.

Additionally, the new laws seem to make it possible for individuals to grow up to five cannabis plants. However, if current Dutch legislation is anything to go by, this may not necessarily include indoor growing with lamps, nor allow households with several adults to grow five plants each.
In any case, this new legislation is a big step in the right direction and we hope that other European countries will be inspired by the Czech move towards a sane drug policy.