Crossposted at dKos
Well, it’s that time of year again. There are marijuana festivals being held from coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada. One of the biggest and the oldest is the Seattle Hempfest. Today and tomorrow an estimated 150,000 people will converge on Myrtle Edwards Park in Seattle. The theme this year is education, so I will take this opportunity to share some news and information to educate us all.
$1 Tax Stamp
First off, I have had a number of comments that the way I spell marihuana is wrong. Well, it’s not the most common spelling, but it is the spelling that is used in the legal definition of marihuana and hey, it got your attention, didn’t it. Add it to your spelling checker and get on with life.
So, onward through the fog…
Here is a humorous story, that had a not so great outcome.
Hibiscus cannabinus L.
The story is told in this two year old article “Was It Pot Or Not?.” The answer, of course, was it was not. It was kenaf purposely planted as deer food. But, because of the way that things work a federal judge ruled that Harrison County Sheriff George H. Payne Jr. had “qualified immunity” as is pointed out in this update from The Clarion Ledger: “Judge: Plants destroyed by mistake.” An honest mistake, but an expensive one, and not just in dollars spent, but at a great cost to us all.
A DEA Task Force agent spots some suspicious plants from the air and notifies the county sheriff. The sheriff and his deputies mobilize their eradication unit and bring in 4WD vehicles, some Stihl weedwhackers and bunch of inmates. They all enter the suspect property without a warrant, because those plants might be a flight risk. With proper supervision and oversight the inmates cut down all of the “marijuana” and load it into trucks to be hauled off. I wonder how hard they were laughing? Never mind the white flowers. Here is what the real stuff looks like. The female is front and center and the males are the scrawny ones that look a little past their prime. Simple enough, eh?
Next up is “Brewing a pot of hysteria” Nature Neuroscience 8, 971-971 (01 Aug 2005) Editorial. Luckily the full text of this editorial has been posted here. It is an excellent read and well worth your time. It does reference the excellent 1999 Institute of Medicine study “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base“. If you have not read it before you really should. Here is the same study in a slightly different HTML format without the pages available in PDF format.
Speaking of editorials about the drug war here is one from an unlikely source, The Washington Times. In the editorial Against the drug war A.G. Gancarsk reviews the book An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy by David Boyum and Peter Reuter of the American Enterprise Institute. The full text of this book is available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.
And finally we need to talk some more about Marc Emery. Connie Fogal has a very long piece titled “Marijuana and the Loss of Canadian Sovereignty US Interference in Canadian Criminal Law and Policy pertaining to Marijuana” at GlobalResearch.ca. What we need to remember about Marc is that he was the head of a registered political party in Canada who paid his taxes and tried to work the system from the inside. And you thought that his arrest wasn’t politically motivated.
As always, there is a lot to read and a lot to think about. Once you have please go out and do something positive. I’m Cannabis and that’s it for “This Week In Marihuana.”
Spelling it based on the government’s legal spelling seems to be missing the whole point of the experience, at least to this observer.
And I would have read the diary anyway even if you spelled it correctly: marijuana, the slang spanish maryjane of my youth.
I’ve had a number of people point it out in the past, so I had to clarify. Thanks for the recommend.
no problemo. its good reading. Especially with morning coffee and cigarette….
“This week in Cannabis” by Marihuana.
“The Marihuana Papers” by Job
“The Marihuana Monologues” by Bogart
He is accused of conspiring to send pot seeds into the U.S., that gives the U.S. jurisdiction. I don’t think anyone would be complaining about U.S. interference if we had Canadian authorities arrest someone to face U.S. charges for conspiring to send child prostitutes into the U.S.
Not that there is, in my mind, any moral equivalency beetween human trafficing and pot- but the law is the law and the devices to impliment the latter sound law are the same as the devices used to absurd effect in the case of Mr. Emery. The article makes it sound like he is being charged for political reasons when in fact he allegedly broke a well known U.S. criminal law.
Hopefully the Canadian courts will refuse to extradite him based on the disproportionate penalty he faces here in the U.S., something that has been done in the past, IIRC.
While the prosecuters in Seattle were careful to state that emery’s indictment was not motivated by his political activities, rhe DEA’s Administrator, Karen Tandy, coiuld not resist the temptation to grandstand, asserting the “bonus” that busting Emery would defund pro-legalization activities. Her carelessness greatly helps Marc’s prospects of beating extradition.
Another issue is the Death Sentence he faces in the US, thanks to Bill Clinton’s “60 new Death Penalties” of 1994. since Canada forbids extradition to a possible execution, the US Attorney general will have to certify in writing that the Justice Department will not seek the DP.
Disclaimer: When organizing a “public forum” stage outside the National Conference of Mayors annual conclave here in Madison in 2002, I received an unsolicited $1,000 donation from Emery, just in time to pay for the insurance.
I’ll be in Canada in a few days, maybe I’ll find time to fire off a letter to the editor of a local paper.
Hopefully Tandy’s statements will help. I do beleive it is noxious to strike at 1st Amemndment protected activities via selective prosecution. However, going after a prominant figure as a means of increasing the “deterrence by example” purpose of prosecution and incarceration is considered a legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion. For example, Martha Stewart. Not that I like that either.
But WTF was Mr. Emery doing even coming near anyone involved in such activities? He had to know about our slightly midaeval drug laws.
He’d been running his seed business openly for years, paying Canadian taxes. In the ’90s, he was raided several times by Canadian law enforcement, who never brought the cases to trial. It’s unclear whether selling seeds is illegal in Canada, they declined to press a test case.
His website and advertising were explicit that they would not ship to the US, that they were for use only in the “Free World.”
Apparently DEA agents went to his shop in Vancouver and made purchases, dropping hints that they’d take the seeds back to the US. They also claim to have growers busted in the US who’ll testify they got their seeds from Emery direct.
if Canadian anti-espionage laws would cover undercover foreign law enforcement agents acting w/o permission of the Canadian government. Or if the Canadian government would admit to allowing such foreign law enforcement actions on their soil.