Funny Bruce should mention White House drug czar John Walters' taxpayer-funded boondoggle to Michigan to throw his political weight against the state's medical marijuana voter initiative yesterday.

It just so happens the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its report on White House abuses of the Hatch Act, which governs executive branch employees' participation in partisan political events, the very same day.

The report singles Walters' office out for its audacity, saying, "Even offices with statutory provisions prohibiting political activity, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, were enlisted in the election effort" supporting candidates identified by the White House.

In addition to his extraordinary willingness to flout the law, the committee also noted the drug czar's enthusiasm for doing so. Indeed, White House political affairs official Doug Simon called Walters one of their "superstars ... going above and beyond" to abuse his authority for political purposes in some of America's most "god awful places." That's right, America, Mr. Walters loves his party so much he was even willing to come to your lousy town – on your dime – to push its partisan agenda.

By the way, we're not sure how Walters could have inadvertently run so far afoul of the law – we've been trying to warn him for years.

Once again, the White House drug czar is on the road spreading disinformation at taxpayers' expense -- this time campaigning against Proposal 1, the Michigan medical marijuana initiative.

In a series of appearances in Lansing and the suburbs of Detroit, John Walters condemned the measure, as described by the Detroit Free Press:

LANSING -- A team of top national antidrug officials joined the late-starting campaign to defeat Michigan's medical marijuana initiative Tuesday, telling reporters Proposal 1 is a dangerous drug legalization scheme that will lead to more addiction and despair.

John Walters, a Michigan native who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said marijuana has no legitimate medical use. Medical marijuana laws simply "make it easier for addicts to stay addicted," he said.

Walters brought with him -- really, I am not making this up -- a medical marijuana vending machine seized from a dispensary in Los Angeles earlier this year. It took three military guys to cart the thing around. And of course, Walters simply ignored the fact that Proposal 1 does not permit dispensaries, much less vending machines. Just how much did this exercise in irrelevance cost taxpayers?

Walters also ignored the emphatic statements from major medical organizations demolishing his claim that marijuana has no legitimate medical use. For example, in a detailed position paper issued earlier this year, the American College of Physicians, a 124,000-member organization consisting of oncologists, neurologists, and other internal medicine specialists, stated, "Evidence not only supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions but also suggests numerous indications for cannabinoids."

Finally, a word needs to be said about the claim that medical marijuana laws lead to "more addiction." In fact, no state with a medical marijuana law has seen an increase in teen marijuana use, and in most cases use has gone down markedly.

And medical marijuana actually allows patients to reduce the use of much more addictive opioid painkillers. Television host Montel Williams described this eloquently in a 2005 newspaper column. And research with animals has shown that cannabinoids in combination with drugs like codeine and morphine can produce equal or greater relief with lower doses of the narcotics while avoiding the development of tolerance, which can lead to addiction. Such combination therapy can even restore pain relief after the narcotics by themselves have lost efficacy due to tolerance.

The lies are coming thick and fast, so this is the time to get involved in the campaign.

Reading this Atlanta Journal Constitution story revealing that more than half of the city's police academy graduates used marijuana, and a third of them have criminal records, two thoughts occur to me.

First is the hypocrisy of a situation in which some people use marijuana and get arrested while others use marijuana but go on to lead productive lives – as police officers for heavens sake. Who decides which fate befalls a particular marijuana user? If marijuana use isn't terrible enough to disqualify a person from the responsibilities of law enforcement, including the responsibility to arrest marijuana users, then how much sense does it make to arrest marijuana users in the first place?

The second is that these candidates are apparently making the cut because the city, desperate to increase the size of its force, has lowered its standards – at least in the minds of city officials. But what if the responsible, adult use of marijuana weren't a crime? What if its manufacture and sale were regulated like alcohol rather than controlled by often-violent criminals? Atlanta's need for law enforcement would almost certainly decrease, and they could recruit fewer, higher-quality officers to pursue violent crimes.

Actually, that reminds me of a third, terrible thought: Does lowered standards mean more bad cops on the street? The job is too important, and the consequences of making mistakes are too dire. Atlantans ought to recall the shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston two years ago next month by narcotics officers who mistakenly raided her house and then planted marijuana on her to try to cover their tracks.

We don't need more bad cops, and we don't need to waste good cops' time chasing marijuana users – especially if they're marijuana users themselves.

Once again the mass media are wringing their hands over damage to national forests and parks caused by clandestine marijuana farms, particularly in California. And yes, there are problems -- damage caused by pesticides and rat poison used to keep animals away, not to mention the fact that the untaxed proceeds often go to some pretty unsavory characters.

But -- and we've said this before, but it's worth saying again -- these problems have nothing to do with marijuana and everything to do with foolish laws that consign this very large industry to the criminal underground, guaranteeing that it is completely unregulated and untaxed. California, after all, is a leading producer of two psychoactive drugs, marijuana and wine. The legally regulated wine industry is a boon to the state, producing tax revenues, tourism, and prestige. The state is, in effect, running a controlled experiment comparing prohibition to regulation, and it's not hard to see which system works better.

Robin Prosser was a former concert pianist and systems analyst who suffered from an autoimmune disease similar to lupus for over 20 years. The disease left her in constant pain and made her allergic to most pharmaceutical painkillers. Only medical marijuana brought her relief, but the DEA seized her medicine. Unable to cope with the chronic pain any longer, she committed suicide on October 18th, 2007.

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In preparation for a parliamentary hearing scheduled for October 15, a coalition of German health organizations, including the German AIDS Support Society, the German Society for Pain Therapy, and the German Epilepsy Association, have issued a statement calling on the government to facilitate access to medical cannabis for patients without threat of prosecution. The Berlin Declaration, as it's called, is in German, but the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine has provided the following translation:

"In 1998 a coalition of medical societies, self-help groups and notabilities from politics, science and culture postulated in the 'Frankfurt Resolution' that the medical use of cannabis should be permitted.

"Ten years on, research into the medical potential of cannabis and select cannabinoids has made great progress and the medical benefits of cannabis for the treatment of several illnesses are no longer in doubt. Patients may now receive from their doctor a prescription for the cannabis ingredient dronabinol, but most health insurance programs do not reimburse the cost of treatment. Those patients who cannot afford a prescription and instead self-medicate with cannabis are still subject to prosecution. Several of them have been sentenced to prison terms, some were acquitted in court. Unfortunately, the option to obtain a waiver for the medical use of cannabis from the Federal Institute for Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products (BfArM) has not significantly improved this unacceptable situation.

"The signatories recognize that for many people who are seriously ill cannabis may be a very helpful medicine but that they cannot benefit from its use for socio-economic reasons (high cost of dronabinol) or because of bureaucratic hurdles (obtaining an exemption from the BfArM). Thus, the signatories encourage the federal government and parliament to take action as follows:

"1. To ensure that the cost of treatment with dronabinol is covered by health insurance if a doctor prescribes it for an indication where the benefits of dronabinol have been scientifically proven.

"2. To protect those patients who use cannabis therapeutically based on a doctor's recommendation from prosecution.

"3. To promote research on the therapeutic potential of cannabis products."

Signatories:

- ADHS Deutschland (ADHD Germany)

- Akzept (Association for Accepting Drug Policy)

- Arbeitsgemeinschaft Cannabis als Medizin (Association for Cannabis as Medicine)

- Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (German Aids Support Society)

- Deutsche Epilepsievereinigung (German Epilepsy Association)

- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Suchtmedizin (German Society for Addiction Medicine)

- Deutschen Gesellschaft für Schmerztherapie (German Society for Pain Therapy)

- Deutscher Patienten Schutzbund (German Society for the Protection of Patients)

- Initiative Selbsthilfe Multiple Sklerose Kranker (Self-help Initiative for MS Patients)

- Interessenverband Tic & Tourette Syndrom (Association Tic and Tourette Syndrome)

- Polio Allianz (Alliance of Poliomyelitis Patients)

- Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (Society of Republican Attorneys)

- Selbsthilfenetzwerk Cannabis Medizin (Self-help Network Medical Cannabis)

- Tourette-Gesellschaft Deutschland (Tourette Society Germany)

Join MPP's Sara Cannon as she takes a look at outright lies made by the Drug Free America Foundation.

Every 36 seconds, someone is arrested for marijuana in the U.S. Coincidentally, it only takes about 36 seconds to sign up to receive MPP’s free e-mail alerts and start finding out what you can do to help end the war on marijuana users.

A follow up to yesterday's post:

An astute reader in Texas sent an interesting link today: a court docket from Amarillo, Texas in which eight people were sentenced to jail for simple possession of marijuana (listed below).  Texas law has a specific provision for repeat marijuana offenders that makes jail time a likely sentence, so these might not be the first offender unicorns John Walters was after, but these cases reveal two things.

First, people go to jail for having small amounts of marijuana all the time. Not a surprise to anyone reading this blog.

So why do I point this out? I mention it because you can help us continue to highlight these injustices. Take a few minutes and go over to your county's official web site and look up today's court docket.  If you find a case where someone went to jail for marijuana possession, send a link to MPP or post it in the comments below.

Second, jail sentences are frequently imposed on repeat offenders.  These are not the drug dealers and violent criminals who Walters claims are the only people going to jail for marijuana offenses, just regular citizens who have run afoul of a law that causes more harm than the drug they consumed.

Potter Court At Law Docket

• John Dean Sherry Jr. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed 30 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Orzaindro Nigaul Cortez. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 45 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Timothy Dewayne Fellabaum. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 75 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Archie Brewer. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 30 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Jerry Stephen Harris. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 120 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Seanery Shawn Hall. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 30 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Bradley James Janssen. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 75 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Michael Onofre Apodaca. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 45 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.

(Source 1 and 2)

Two new reports by public policy expert Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at George Mason University, highlight the ineptitude of U.S. marijuana policy during the Bush Administration.

The reports – one analyzing marijuana use rate statistics and the other examining the explosion in court-ordered marijuana treatment admissions – directly contradict the White House drug czar's office's frequent claims of success in reducing marijuana use rates.

There's little question that this administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy has spent its tenure consumed with a singular obsession with marijuana and marijuana users, but the breadth of their failure to make any meaningful impact in this area is stunning.

The drug czar, John Walters, likes to claim that teen marijuana use rates have declined 25 percent under his watch – which, lo and behold, is exactly the benchmark his office set in 2002 – but it simply doesn't hold up, as Gettman's analysis shows.

If you look at overall marijuana use rates, you see that the number of monthly marijuana users barely even budged from 14.6 million users in 2002 to 14.5 million users in 2007. In other words, Walters created 127 separate anti-marijuana TV, radio and print ads, 34 marijuana-focused press releases, 50 reports detailing the dangers of marijuana – while marijuana arrests ratcheted from 697,000 in 2002 to 872,000 in 2007 – and all us taxpayers have to show for it is a tiny decline in frequent marijuana users.

Gettman's second report examines the startling rise in marijuana treatment admissions – a trend the drug czar frequently points to as evidence that contemporary marijuana is dramatically different and magnitudes more dangerous than the comparatively harmless stuff baby boomers enjoyed in their youths.

Again, Gettman's analysis proves what most of us suspected – the drug czar's claim is nonsense. There has been a marked jump in marijuana treatment admissions over the past 15 years or so, but it has been fueled almost entirely by referrals from the criminal justice system. In fact, only 45 percent of these admissions even met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria for marijuana dependence. Marijuana users, presented with a choice between jail or treatment, logically choose treatment, and then the drug czar turns around and uses that as evidence that marijuana is prohibitively dangerous. But these folks never had a problem with marijuana. They had a problem with getting arrested for marijuana.

For those who follow marijuana policy reform closely, Gettman's conclusions may not be so earth shattering – there's already a general consensus among experts that the Office of National Drug Control Policy operates in a realm divorced from reality. The significance of Gettman's contribution here is in quantifying the failures of this administration's marijuana policies. Thanks to a heated culture war and an inattentive press, this drug czar got away with a lot of this nonsense, but his replacement should take note: Americans are sick of this war on marijuana users, and they're sick of the tortured logic, manipulated statistics and bald-faced lies used to justify it.

The next drug czar will be held accountable for her actions; Gettman's work offers a blueprint for how we should judge her success.

White House Drug Czar John Walters told the press last month that “people don’t go to jail for the possession of marijuana” and challenged MPP to prove him wrong.  In his words, "if you find the unicorn ... I'll buy you a steak dinner."   Well Mr. Walters, it took nearly three minutes on Google, but I found your unicorn.  Seven of them, actually.

On August 13, 2008, the Clinton County Municipal Court near Jackson, Mississippi sentenced seven people, in unrelated cases, to jail for simple possession of marijuana.   That’s seven in one day – an eighth person was sentenced to jail for paraphernalia.  And guess what?  A quick spot check of the county’s court dockets revealed that this happens all the time.

Jonathan L. Brister - 45 days in jail, $749.50 fine
Michael A. Bryant - 45 days in jail, $769.50 fine
Dwayne B. Thompson - 50 days in jail, $834.51 fine
Alexander Mack Watson - 45 days in jail, $749.50 fine
William P. Lancaster - 45 days in jail, $749.50 fine
Jacob Falcon - 45 days in jail, $749.50 fine
James A. Dugas - 45 days in jail, $769.50 fine
Sharon A. Watson was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a $769.50 fine for possession of paraphernalia.
(Source)

These individuals were arrested with between 1 and 30 grams of marijuana and were not suspected of selling the drug – which is Mississippi's definition of simple possession.  They were sentenced based on an obscure law that calls for jail time when marijuana is found in a motor vehicle (§ 41-29-139(c)(2)(B)).  The law has nothing to do with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of the drug (DWI is a separate charge that these folks did not receive); it is just a straightforward example of people going to to jail for marijuana possession.

Mississippi is considered one of the 11 states with "decriminalized" marijuana laws.  In the other 39 states, the courts don't even need an obscure motor vehicle law to sentence someone to jail for possession.  However, Mr. Walters still claims that jail sentences are reserved for drug dealers.  It's not the case.

I found the unicorn(s) ... Now where's my steak dinner?