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US CA: OPED: Making a Difference: The War on Drugs

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:00:03 +0000

MAKING A DIFFERENCE: THE WAR ON DRUGS

Recently, the publisher of The Union newspaper, Jeff Ackerman, wrote a column regarding our efforts in combating illegal drug activity in our county. Although I like Jeff and believe he is sincere in his beliefs, I sincerely believe he is wrong.

He wrote a number of things I could easily rebut, but let me focus on this one in particular in reference to a recent marijuana raid performed by our Narcotics Task Force.

In this case, Mexican Nationals, illegally in our country, were illegally growing marijuana, illegally trespassing on government property, illegally using the water we as taxpayers support, polluting our forests lands, posing a threat to hikers and recreational enthusiasts, supplying an illegal drug that is proven to act as a depressant and contain harmful compounds, and fully knowing what they are doing is illegal.

Okay, so here is Jeff's quote: "It made great headlines, but if you read between the lines, it won't make a difference. Especially not to the so-called Mexican cartel leader who probably sent a handful of poor laborers up here to plant and grow pot."

Speaking about reading between the lines, do you catch my disappointment at this type of reasoning? Poor laborers who shoot at law enforcement and the general public do not have my sympathy.

This brings to mind the story of the wise man that walked along the beach and saw a young man reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects and throwing them into the ocean. He asked the young man what he was doing, to which the young man replied, "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

The wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

Truly, the so-called "wise" man had something to learn from this young man.

We are going to continue picking up starfish and throwing them in the ocean, because it does make a difference. Every illegal drug we take off the street, every criminal we put in jail, every defendant that is sentenced to time in custody helps to make our community better. Drugs off the street will not be consumed by your friend, your neighbor, your family member. Every criminal we retain in custody will not be able to burglarize your home, steal your car, assault your brother, or infringe upon your quality of life.

Proposition 215 has been a nightmare. The great majority of marijuana is not being used and grown medicinally as was intended. Our office receives calls daily from neighbors at their wits end regarding marijuana gardens next door and the frequency of suspicious traffic coming and going.

People are fearful in their own homes. They have concerns about their children being subject to offensive situations. Not to mention the rank odor and the realization that your property value has now declined.

Proposition 19 is just another nightmare waiting to happen. I hope the good people of Nevada County and the state of California educate themselves and don't allow themselves to be fooled by the false hope of increased taxes and lowered crime level.

Proponents often refer to the Amsterdam, Holland, model. It's not working there either! Holland is working toward eliminating its lax drugs laws.

We in the Sheriff's Office will continue to use the resources we have to protect the safe community in which we live and work. It is the right thing to do. Illegal drug use contributes nothing to the community. We will continue to make a difference, one undertaking at a time.

Keith Royal is the Nevada County sheriff.

MAP posted-by: Richard Lake

US DC: OPED: California's Prop 19, on Legalizing Marijuana, Could End Mexico's D

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:00:03 +0000

CALIFORNIA'S PROP 19, ON LEGALIZING MARIJUANA, COULD END MEXICO'S DRUG WAR

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 Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly war on drugs.

The costs of that war have long since reached intolerable levels: more than 28,000 of our fellow citizens dead since late 2006; expenditures well above $10 billion; terrible damage to Mexico's image abroad; human rights violations by government security forces; and ever more crime. In a recent poll by the Mexico City daily Reforma, 67 percent of Mexicans said these costs are unacceptable, while 59 percent said the drug cartels are winning the war.

We have believed for some time that Mexico should legalize marijuana and perhaps other drugs. But until now, most discussion of this possibility has foundered because our country's drug problem and the U.S. drug problem are so inextricably linked: What our country produces, Americans consume. As a result, the debate over legalization has inevitably gotten hung up over whether Mexico should wait until the United States is willing and able to do the same.

Proposition 19 changes this calculation. For Mexico, California is almost the whole enchilada: Our overall trade with the largest state of the union is huge, an immense number of Californians are of Mexican origin, and an enormous proportion of American visitors to Mexico come from California. Passage of Prop 19 would therefore flip the terms of the debate about drug policy: If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?

The prospect of California legalizing marijuana coincides with an increasingly animated debate about legalization in Mexico. This summer, our magazine, Nexos, asked the six leading presidential candidates whether, if California legalizes marijuana, Mexico should follow suit. Four of them said it should, albeit with qualifications. And last month, at a public forum presided over by President Felipe Calderon, one of us asked whether the time had come for such discussion to be taken seriously. Calderon's reply was startlingly open-minded and encouraging: "It's a fundamental debate," he said. ". . . You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons and the key arguments on both sides." The remarks attracted so much attention that, later in the day, Calderon backtracked, insisting that he was vehemently opposed to any form of legalization. Still, his comments helped stimulate the national conversation.

A growing number of distinguished Mexicans from all walks of life have recently come out in favor of some form of drug legalization. Former presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox, novelists Carlos Fuentes and Angeles Mastretta, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Mario Molina, and movie star Gael Garcia Bernal have all expressed support for this idea, and polls show that ordinary Mexicans are increasingly willing to contemplate the notion.

Indeed, as we have crisscrossed Mexico over the past six months on a book tour, visiting more than two dozen state capitals, holding town hall meetings with students, businesspeople, school teachers, local politicians and journalists, we have witnessed a striking shift in views on the matter. This is no longer your mother's Mexico -- conservative, Catholic, introverted. Whenever we asked whether drugs should be legalized, the response was almost always overwhelmingly in favor of decriminalizing at least marijuana.

The debate here is not framed in terms of personal drug use but rather whether legalization would do anything to abate Mexico's nightmarish violence and crime. There are reasons to think that it would: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has said that up to 60 percent of Mexican drug cartels' profits come from marijuana. While some say the real figure is lower, pot is without question a crucial part of their business. Legalization would make a significant chunk of that business vanish. As their immense profits shrank, the drug kingpins would be deprived of the almost unlimited money they now use to fund recruitment, arms purchases and bribes.

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans' real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico's current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country's crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime.

Today, almost anyone caught carrying any drug in Mexico is subject to arrest, prosecution and jail. Would changing that increase consumption in Mexico? Perhaps for a while. Then again, given the extremely low levels of drug use in our country, the threat of drug abuse seems a less-than-pressing problem: According to a national survey in 2008, only 6 percent of Mexicans have ever tried a drug, compared with 47 percent of Americans, as shown by a different survey that year.

Still, real questions remain. Should our country legalize all drugs, or just marijuana? Can we legalize by ourselves, or does such a move make sense only if conducted hand in hand with the United States? Theoretically, the arguments in favor of marijuana legalization apply to virtually all drugs. We believe that the benefits would also apply to powder cocaine ( not produced in Mexico, but shipped through our country en route from Latin America to the United States ), heroin ( produced in Mexico from poppies grown in the mountains of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango ) and methamphetamines ( made locally with pseudoephedrine imported from China ).

This is the real world, though, so we must think in terms of incremental change. It strikes us as easier and wiser to proceed step by step toward broad legalization, starting with marijuana, moving on to heroin ( a minor trade in Mexico, and a manageable one stateside ) and dealing only later, when Washington and others are ready, with cocaine and synthetic drugs.

For now we'll take California's ballot measure. If our neighbors to the north pass Proposition 19, our government will have two new options: to proceed unilaterally with legalization -- with California but without Washington -- or to hold off, while exploiting California's move to more actively lobby the U.S. government for wider changes in drug policy. Either way, the initiative's passage will enhance Calderon's moral authority in pressing President Obama.

Our president will be able to say to yours: "We have paid an enormous price for a war that a majority of the citizens of your most populous and trend-setting state reject. Why don't we work together, producer and consumer nations alike, to draw a road map leading us away from the equivalent of Prohibition, before we all regret our short-sightedness?"

MAP posted-by: Richard Lake

US CA: Marijuana Dispensary to Stay Open

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:00:03 +0000

MARIJUANA DISPENSARY TO STAY OPEN

A medical marijuana dispensary that Los Angeles was seeking to shut down under its three-month-old ordinance has won a court order allowing it to stay open, the first ruling from a local judge to favor one of the hundreds of stores affected by the new law.

On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mohr granted a temporary restraining order to allow DTPG to stay in business pending another hearing.

Alfred Garcia, who started the downtown collective, said DTPG opened before the city had medical marijuana laws and has complied with every requirement it has adopted.

The decision applies only to DTPG and is unlikely to change the situation for most of the hundreds of dispensaries the city has ordered to shut down.

MAP posted-by: Richard Lake

Lineagen, Inc. Selected To Present At The 2010 Genetic Risk Factors For Autism: Translating Discoveries Into Diagnostics Symposium In Toronto

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Lineagen, Inc., a developer of innovative genomic tests and services for the screening, evaluation and diagnosis of complex disorders and diseases including autism spectrum disorders, announced today that Dr. Michael S...

CIGNA Offers Free Nine-Month Autism Education Series Starting In September