Paul Armentano is the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and co-author of “Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?” His guest column appears on The Hill’s Congress Blog. ========= Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, along with five previous drug czars (including former ‘high roller’ William Bennett), recently penned an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times condemning California’s Proposition 19 , The Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Initiative of 2010. It is no surprise that America’s present and former drug czars oppose the passage of [...]
Sep 052010
Sep 052010
Héctor Aguilar Camín is a historian, a novelist and the publisher and editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. Jorge G. Castañeda was Mexico’s foreign minister from 2000 to 2003 and teaches at New York University. Their column endorsing Proposition 19 as a powerful tool to fight Mexican drug violence appears in the Washington Post. ============ MEXICO CITY — On Nov. 2, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, deciding whether to legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana. If the initiative passes, it won’t just be momentous for California; it may, at long last, offer [...]
Our view: An empty warehouse filled with marijuana? Sounds like a nightmare Chico shouldn’t encourage. At first it sounded like a joke, the Chico Enterprise-Record opines in this editorial. Somebody wants to take a huge vacant building near the Chico Municipal Airport and fill it with 600,000 square feet of marijuana plants, an indoor grow the size of five Chico Wal-Marts. Only it wasn’t a joke. The proposal came from a serious businessman, who is kicking tires in an attempt to expand his Los Angeles-based venture, Plant Properties Management, LLC. Jason Oh, 36, learned of [...]
Sep 022010
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca on Wednesday took aim at the medical marijuana industry, citing last week’s triple murder in West Hollywood as an example of how enterprising criminals have infiltrated some of the dispensaries. Baca said the dispensaries have strayed from their original mission — to aid the seriously ill — and are now the target of criminals who see an easy way to make money and get drugs, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The medicinal marijuana program that voters authorized years ago has been hijacked by underground drug-dealing criminals who are resorting [...]
Sep 012010
Norm Stamper is a 34-year veteran police officer who retired as Seattle’s chief of police in 2000. His column endorsing Proposition 19 appears in the Huffington Post. ============== Imagine it. Grownup Californians making a choice that should never have been denied them in the first place. Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 would allow adults in that state to possess up to an ounce of marijuana for personal consumption; to use marijuana in a non-public place; and to grow the weed at a private residence in an area not to [...]
Sep 012010
Can you have a weed vote without these guys? Actor-comedians Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong will kick off the fall campaign of their Get it Legal tour Sept. 24 at the Redding Convention Center, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.” (Bud’s note: There’s also a Reno appearance Sept. 25.) The event is a continuation of the comedy tour Cheech & Chong launched in January, partnering with the Marijuana Policy Project to target pot prohibition in numerous states by unleashing the stoner humor they made famous in the 1970s and ’80s. Separate from the tour, [...]
I hate to spoil the ending, but here it goes: “It should not go unnoticed, as you head to the polls in November, that the most strident opponents of California’s Prop. 19 are the drug lords and growers who stand to lose their tax-free fortunes.” Jeff Ackerman, editor/publisher of The Union in Grass Valley, achieves must-read status with today’s excellent column on Proposition 19. ================== I’ll bet a beer that most of you would have no problem finding a gin and tonic, if booze was illegal today. Guys like Al Capone would see to that. [...]
Aug 302010
Would our state be better off if more Californians were stoned? We don’t think so, writes the editorial board of the Palm Springs Desert Sun. (See Bud’s quickie rebuttal below.) Legalizing marijuana would lead to more people driving under the influence. Lanny Swerdlow argues on this page that it would free up police from pursuing drug abusers and generate $1.4 billion in new state tax revenue. Police officials tell us the impact would be minimal. Swerdlow cites the state Board of Equalization on the tax projections, but we’re not convinced. Marijuana is cheap and easy [...]
Aug 282010
Quirky social-news site Reddit always seemed an unusual acquisition for Manhattan media giant Conde Nast, and it’s never been more evident: Asked by Conde Nast overlords to stop running advertisements on behalf of advocates of California’s Proposition 19, which supports the legalization of marijuana, Reddit decided they’d do it anyway. Because Conde Nast said its main concern was obtaining revenue from those controversial advocacy groups, Reddit’s solution was that they would simply run the ads for free, Caroline McCarthy reports on CNET.com “This was a decision made at the highest levels of Conde Nast,” an [...]
Aug 272010
Bud’s note: London Independent columnist Johann Hari offers this stinging indictment of drug-war violence in the Huffington Post. To many people, the “war on drugs” sounds like a metaphor, like the “war on poverty.” It is not. It is being fought with tanks and submachine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican President alone. The death-toll in Tijuana — one of the front-lines of this war — is now higher than in Baghdad. Yesterday, another pile of seventy mutilated corpses was found [...]
Recent Comments