In Colorado and Nevada, voters gave patients permission to use pot upon a doctor's recommendation, and registries are to be created to protect users from prosecution. This brings to nine the number of states that have approved medical marijuana -- including Maine, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Hawaii and California -- despite opposition from the federal drug czar's office.

Law enforcement took another blow in Oregon and Utah, where initiatives to restrict police from keeping seized property passed by large margins. In virtually every state, police departments -- and anti-drug task forces in particular -- earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year by confiscating property from suspected users or dealers, selling it and retaining the proceeds, even if no one is convicted of a crime.

Harry Detwiler, a retired special-education teacher in Ashland, Oregon, put a face on the otherwise imprenetrable topic of asset forfeiture by telling his story on radio talk shows and commericals. Ditweiler sold some rural property to a man who then grew marijuana on the land; Detwiler's name remained on the land title. During a police raid on Detwiler's house, officers found $35,000 in cash, his life savings, stored in a safe (he didn't want to keep it in a bank). The seized the money, and despite the fact that Detwiler was never convicted or even accused of being involved with marijuana, he never got it back. "I'm one of tens of thousands of innocent victims out here who have no place to turn," he says.

The logic behind civil asset forfiture, says David Smigelski, spokesman for the Oregon compaign, "was to use drug-dealer money to pay the salaries of drug investigators. In the early days, in the Eighties, it was supposed to be limited to huge forfeitures, but as it filetered down into municipal police departments, it just became a big money grab." In fiscal 1998, federal agencies reported recieving $697 million in forfeited assets.

An initiative in Massachusetts would have redirected the money that results from seized property in drug cases into addiction-treatment programs. It failed, organizers say, because those who might recieve treatment as an alternative to jail included some street dealers, if they could prove they were selling drugs to pay for their own habits. Opponents of the initiative, which included all eleven district attorneys in the state and almost every police chief, ran radio ads warning that the initiative would benefit drug dealers. "It appears," says Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New Drug Policies, "that the sympathy people have for drug users does not extend even to the lowest level of drug dealers."

Six of the seven anti-drug war initiatives were funded, in part, by three billionaires who oppose legalizing hard drugs but take pride in using their money to help compel a debate on the drug war. George Soros, a New York financier and one of the top philanthropists in the world; Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Insurance Company; and John Sperling, a former businessman and chairman of the University of Phoenix, each gave $2 million for the six initiatives. Of the $6 million, about $3 million was directed to Proposition 36 in California, the boldest of the proposed reforms. Proposition 36 mandates that when someone is convicted of simple possession, or other personal drug-use violations, treatment must be offered as an alternative to jail. If the offender does not complete the treatment program, or otherwise violates probation, he can be incarcerated for one to three years.

The landslip passae of Proposition 36 - sixty-one to thirty-nine percent - might be interpreted simply as a sign of taxpayer fatigue. With the largest prison system in the U.S., at 162,000 inmates, California is feeling the cost, at roughly $20,000 per prisoner per year. California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office had estimated that Prop. 36 will divert about 36,000 people per year from the state's prisons and jails into treatment programs. Many of these users are non-violent parolees who would have been sent back to prison by failing a drug test. Since to cost of treating people is about $4,000 per year, the LAO estimated that the measure would save state and local governments $290 million per year and would allow legislators to cancel the planned construction of a new prison, a one-time savings of half a billion dollars.

But saving money was not the only factor in the success of Prop. 36. Traumatized parents of drug addicts played a key role in persuading voters that treatment, with the threat of prison, was a rational option for drug users with no prior offenses. Pushing users into prison doesn't work, says one such mother, Gretchen Burns Berman of San Diego, whose heroin-addicted son was sent to jail for relapses three times, worsening his problems. "When they're in the midst of their disease, homeless, dying, any kind of threats usually don't make much difference to them, even prison," she says. Before the initiative was drafted, Bergman had formed a group of parent activists; after becoming the Prop. 36 chairwoman, she put her network behind it. "San Diego was the most active region for us," says Dave Fratello, who helped draft the initiative. He notes that libertarian activists were chagrined that Prop 36 made treatment compulsory.

One failure at the ballot box, the initiative in Alaska to legalize marijuana, was not supported by the two best funded drug-reform groups, Campaign for New Drug Policies and Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation. "At this point, legalization of recreational drug use will not be approved by a marjority of voters in any state," says Zimmerman. "For that reason, we're not going to waste our time trying to pass laws that can't succeed on Election Day." At the local level, however, voters approved reducing pot possession to a civil violation, like a traffic ticket, in three voting districts in Massachusetts, and in Mendocino County, California.

Focusing on recreational pot use can seem like a luxury to those who seek to help hard-core drug addicts in prison. "Law Enforcement thinks they're dealing with a behavioral problem and can use tough love," says Dr. Gary Jaeger, president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine. "Tough love is not a way to treat a primary disease of the brain."

As the prices of heroin and cocaine continue to fall, new illegal narcotics enter the market and marijuana arrests skyrocket, ballot initatives will only become more crucial. Says Nadelmann, "we see Congress and the White House as the last place where we'll see sensible drug-policy being implemented."

--Erika Casriel, Rolling Stone Magazine

At the very least, the drug war gives American special forces real combat experience, by taking down fat Columbians. Like the SAS and the IRA. Lord knows, violence = bad PR when it comes to anything else.

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"...[They've] been so completely dumbed down by the media, by tabloid scumbags, by the Christian "right", by politicians in general, the school, parents who are dumber than their parents were, who are dumber than their parents were, and all of whom think that they can bring up a child just because they got down in bed and had a little sex...well, frankly, here is an audience that knows more and more about less and less as the years go by...We are talking about a constituency...that knows nothing. This is pandemic; terrifyingly, paralyzingly pandemic. They know absolutely nothing."
- Harlan Ellison, on the Media Consumer of today.

IMHO, of course.

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Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"

Very funny. And it sure beats my canned crack cocaine.

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20th century, go to sleep.
--
R.E.M.
****
Read chapters one and two of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! Show no patience, tolerance, or restraint.

..special forces real combat experience, by taking codeine cough syrup fat Columbians...Lord knows, violence = crack cocaine PR...

I'm all for the legalization of drug use. If you want to marijuana cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid, sometimes also laced with PCP your brain, that's your problem, and your legal right. Now making the actual importing illegal, that I'd amphetamines for. The government marijuana outlaw that legally.

These two passages made me wet myself. Good show.

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"...[They've] been so completely dumbed down by the media, by tabloid scumbags, by the Christian "right", by politicians in general, the school, parents who are dumber than their parents were, who are dumber than their parents were, and all of whom think that they can bring up a child just because they got down in bed and had a little sex...well, frankly, here is an audience that knows more and more about less and less as the years go by...We are talking about a constituency...that knows nothing. This is pandemic; terrifyingly, paralyzingly pandemic. They know absolutely nothing."
- Harlan Ellison, on the Media Consumer of today.

*looks at the post above* Anything drips down here, you die.

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Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"

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Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-Tleilaxu Epigram

We'd shoot down an enemy plane dropping bombs in our country, but do we take out planes flying coke into the country? No. That's no way to run a war.

Legalize? Fine. Kill yourself, it's no skin off my back. Hell, means more resources left over for me.

But what're you going to do about the folks, once it is legalized, who start working high, driving high, and freaking out on people when they have a bad trip?

We have enough of a problem with drunk drivers, angry drunks, and alcoholics at work already.

I am NOT going to be willing to pay for the 'special accomodations' for some idiot who got himself addicted, or fried his cerebral cortex. If you do it to yourself deliberately, it's not a disability.

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

$40 for the boots the detention officer has to wear while finding a suitable stick to bludgeon said offender to death with.

I like it.

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"...[They've] been so completely dumbed down by the media, by tabloid scumbags, by the Christian "right", by politicians in general, the school, parents who are dumber than their parents were, who are dumber than their parents were, and all of whom think that they can bring up a child just because they got down in bed and had a little sex...well, frankly, here is an audience that knows more and more about less and less as the years go by...We are talking about a constituency...that knows nothing. This is pandemic; terrifyingly, paralyzingly pandemic. They know absolutely nothing."
- Harlan Ellison, on the Media Consumer of today.

Rehab, from what I've seen, is just a little less efficient than lighting a match with a fusion bomb.

There's Robert Downey Junior, with what oughtta be the best and most support in the world, and he's been 'cleaned up' now HOW many times? 5? 6?

No, let's not jail them. Let's let 'em get REALLY high, then fly 'em by the planeload to some country we don't like, and drop 'em off.

"Dude, I am SO stoned... is this a Hardees?"
"Beggwa mo tyotimiba mookabla. Forta beb noguba shtlaikoy." ("No, this is the queen's bedchambers. We must behead you now.")

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

You know what? Even if we had to put 'em through Rehab a couple of times, I'm all for it. No one has yet to show me that locking people up does anything but put more dangerous criminals back on the streets. Besides:

Person in jail for one year: $20,000

Person in rehab (let's say...) three times: $16,000

Wow. Taxpayer savings. Hmmm. MAYBE, just MAYBE! we can cut people's taxes if we're not locking people up all the time when there's a cheaper solution. What a concept, I know, I know.

All I'm saying is this. Putting people in jail isn't working. Yet we keep doing it, like it's suddenly going to work. Let's try a new way. "Oh, but Robert Downey Jr. failed!!!!" Wow. But how many people kick the habit through rehab? How many through jail?

Gee, Omega, I'd like to know why all you can ever says is "where'd you get these numbers, duuuuude?" It's mentioned quite clearly in the article -- if you'd read it, which obviously you didn't -- that the numbers (in regards to the cost of rehab v. incarciration) come from the Legislative Analyst Office of California. Next time please read the article, thank you.

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000