... the enemy just ran out of white flags.
Pot Legalization Gains Momentum in California
Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get at least three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.
Situation NORML 2009
C.W. Nevius of the Chronicle belittled the initiative's chances of winning. "I doubt voters in conservative Orange County will be thrilled to vote for the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010," Nevius opined. He was covering sports in 1996 and might not know that Proposition 215 carried Orange County with 52% of the vote, overcoming opposition by Attorney General Dan Lungren, Governor Gray Davis, former Presidents Ford, Carter and Bush, Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, 57 of 58 district attorneys ( Terence Hallinan being the lone supporter ), the sheriffs' lobby, the police chiefs', the police officers', and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Some of Rich Lee's former allies are not supporting Tax Cannabis 2010 because it would penalize smoking in the presence of children and stiffen the punishment for providing cannabis to those under 21. Dennis Peron is among the detractors.
10 Years Of Dealing Pot
The centre makes a point of telling its clients that although their membership allows them to administer their medication wherever they please, it does not give them immunity from authorities.
For The Cartels, An Economic Battle
By Steve Fainaru and William Booth
CN Source: Washington Post October 06, 2009 Arcata, Calif.
Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico. Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
PATRIOT Ax Targeted Drug Offenders
Improbable Research: How to Check the Marijuana in Your Muffins
The Cost of the War on Drugs
Australian governments spend about $4.7 billion a year on the war on drugs. This figure was arrived at using information from the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and other sources and is an estimate of how much the Government would save and get in tax revenue if illicit drug sales were regulated and taxed the way tobacco is.
LAPD Officers Charged With Lying Under Oath
HUMAN-RIGHTS OFFICIAL
MEXICAN SOLDIERS PART OF DRUG VIOLENCE
Tories Take Wrong Road On Crime
The Harper government claims to be "tough on crime," but their discredited U.S.-style policies on crime and punishment are making Canadians less safe. Their ineffective and costly plan, entitled A Roadmap to Public Safety, should more accurately be entitled A Roadmap to Public Disaster.
Prohibition Has Failed
Then, late in 1970, he received a surprise call from the King. Not a phone call. Elvis Presley turned up, uninvited, at the White House asking to see the president.
"And I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good . . . the drug culture, the hippie elements, Black Panthers, etc, do not consider me as their enemy, or as they call it The Establishment. I call it America and I love it, sir."
He asked to be made a Federal Agent at Large. Nixon presented him with the badge. Elvis presented Nixon with a World War II-era Colt 45, the pair nicely ticking off America's twin evils.
What a dream ticket: Presley, the biggest rock star of all time, would be dead in just over six years, having consumed 19,000 doses of sedatives, stimulants and narcotics in his last 30 months; the gin-soaked Nixon, sometimes too drunk to take calls from other world leaders, liked to pop a mood-altering prescription drug called Dilantin, illegally supplied to him in 1000-capsule bottles.
The US war on drugs is estimated to have cost more than $1 trillion - -- more than enough money to put Osama bin Laden on the moon. It puts a million Americans in jail each year.
The Murky World Of Informants
"There's something happening here."
What it is ain't exactly clear.