TheBongPlace: The Marijuana Blog

When ZUG recently asked me to be a student intern for the summer, I asked all the usual questions. Was it a paid internship? (No.) Would I get course credit? (No.) Could I list it on a resume? (Probably not.)

But when they told me they needed a “Student Stoner Intern” to review the high-tech smoking device called the Volcano Vaporizer, I jumped at the chance. If you haven’t heard of the Volcano, this is a state-of-the-art, precision-engineered German smoking machine. It normally costs $539, which is about $519 more than I paid for my last bong. In exchange for a few articles, I’d get to try it for free.

But there was a catch: since this is a comedy site, I would have to smoke weird foreign substances through the Volcano. No problem. Like everyone, I tried smoking catnip in high school. I also smoked a page from a Victoria’s Secret catalog, on a bet. Once, when I ran out of rolling papers, I even smoked burning toilet paper. I have more foreign substances in my lungs than a traffic cop in downtown Bangalore.

As an English major at Harvard, this assignment gave me the chance to combine the two things I like doing most: writing, and getting mind-numbingly high.

The Volcano Vaporizer arrived at my Cambridge apartment, packed discreetly in this cardboard box. The vaporizer itself is legal to own, so I wasn’t worried about holding it at my place. Besides, when I opened it, I was blown away (so to speak) by the sheer beauty of the device. German-engineered by Storz & Bickel, who I think also were Hitler’s law firm, this is a high-tech appliance that would be at home between your Sub-Zero fridge and Viking range. You could leave it in the kitchen and tell everyone it was a blender. Which, in a sense, it is.

I needed someone to help take pictures, so I enlisted the help of a relative we’ll just call “Creepy Uncle Rick.” Rick is, let’s say, an arborist. He brought over some rare specimens of his work, as well as a 5-pound box of Cheez-Its.

Opening the Volcano box, we found that some assembly was required. There are over a dozen pieces that need to be put together, so this part is best done sober. It was a little like putting together a bong from Ikea.

After a few minutes, our Volcano Vaporizer was ready to go. “This thing looks like Sputnik,” Creepy Uncle Rick observed.

“Get ready to go to outer space,” I said, plugging it in.

How to use the Volcano Vaporizer:

* Plug in the device. A red light turns on, indicating the heating coil is warming up.

* Grind your plant material using the high-quality German herb grinder that is included. (The grinder alone is worth the purchase price.)

* Fill the chamber with a small scoop of material and place on base unit.

* Fit the large plastic bag onto the chamber, which clicks in place.

* The Volcano heats the material to a temperature just shy of burning. This vaporizes the active ingredients out of the material, like cooking onions on a stove.

* Now press the green button, and a small fan blows the vapors into the bag, which inflates like a balloon, or possibly a giant inflatable penis.

* When the bag is full, remove it and snap on the mouthpiece.

* Push the mouthpiece to your lips to unlock the sweet, heavenly vapors.

We found that a little material went a long way: one “scoop” was enough for several balloonfuls. Though, to be honest, we kind of lost count after the third.

What amazed me, besides the fantastically detailed ridges on the side of my Cheez-It, which I ended up writing a poem about, was the way the mouthpiece was engineered. Vapors stay in the bag until you press it to your lips. You’ve got to experience this to appreciate how amazing it is. You’d think the vapors would dissipate after a few minutes, but those crafty Germans have figured out how to store it.

he instructions say you should use the vapors within five minutes, but we found that the vapors stayed active for, well, I don’t know how long. It could have been an hour, or it could have been five years. I had a watch, but it went all Salvador Dali whenever I looked at it.

I looked over and saw he was laughing at a Robot Chicken clip on YouTube, not my brilliant wordplay. Undaunted, I continued taking notes.

SS: How would you rate the smoothness of the Volcano, on a scale of 1 to 10?
CUR: Are you kidding? It couldn’t be smoother, or it would be like inhaling milk.
SS: Right? It would be like sitting in a sauna, with someone ladling half and half on the hot coals.
CUR: Smoother.
SS: [cracking up] Smoother still?
CUR: Yes. It is not smoke, it is pure heavy cream.

Needless to say, our first 14 impressions of the Volcano Vaporizer were extremely favorable. This was an ultramodern appliance featuring cutting-edge toke-nology. If these guys made a food processor, or coffeemaker, I’d buy it. I actually suggested to ZUG they sell a combo called the “Coffee-Pot”:

Unfortunately, we were about to ruin our smoking experience by testing out the Volcano on a variety of awful substances. Stay tuned for the results.

Sir Smokealot, the ZUG student stoner intern, is a second-year English major at Harvard University.

I bought cocaine, heroin, crack, weed, and ecstasy and had them forensically analyzed by a chemist at MIT because I thought they would all turn out to be poison. Guess what? Drug dealers don’t cut drugs with cement and ground glass. They barely even cut drugs at all, because they don’t need to. Relax, I’ll explain later.

The samples were analyzed by a PhD chemist at MIT (we can’t say his name or he’ll get fired) using acid/base extraction, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, and thin-layer chromatography. Acid-base extraction is the method used to isolate the chemicals. Once they’re isolated, the nuclear magnetic resonance machine is what you use to analyze and identify stuff. Basically, the kind of NMR done here tells you about the hydrogen atoms in the molecules in the drugs. So it’s like, the spectrum of heroin has 20 lines in it, all at different positions and heights, and you basically look for that particular set of lines. If you see another set of lines, you go, “Oops, there’s something else besides heroin in here.” Finally, thin-layer chromatography is a quick method that tells you how many components there are in a mixture. MIT guy says it’s “like that experiment you did when you were a kid (if you were a geek) where you put ink on a paper towel and, when the water diffused up the paper towel, all the colors separated.” It tells you how many components are in a mixture but not what they are. That’s what the NMR is for. Still confused? Show this to a smart guy and have him explain it more.

COCAINE
The cocaine was the first sample to come back from the lab. It was 98 percent pure. When everyone was done high-fiving, we started to wonder what was going on. According to the movies and NYPD Blue, you can only get cocaine like that from pharmacies. Street cocaine is basically poison, right? It’s all strychnine and gasoline and nail polish remover or something.

I was not going to go buy 50 more samples of coke, because that would be a waste of money and drugs, but there’s this guy named Peter Cohen who did his thesis on just that. Actually, his work is even better than that, because he not only analyzed 50 samples of cocaine, he also interviewed the 50 cokeheads who had bought the samples. So he got the perception and the reality, see. He asked the cokeheads whether they thought their coke was pure, and 80 percent of them said no. Of those, 75 percent thought their stuff was adulterated with speed. They also commonly figured their drugs were diluted with ground glass, Drano, laxatives, and dirt. Cohen took samples from these cokeheads to the lab. The average purity was 65.1 percent. Second of all, the coke samples Cohen had were cut with speed, Daro, vitamin C, caffeine, sugar, nicotinamide, lidocaine, mannitol, and sodium bicarbonate. Daro is an anti-headache powder. Nicotinamide is vitamin B. Lidocaine is a topical anaesthetic. Mannitol is the sugar they put in diabetic candy. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. These are all innocuous things that bulk the drug out— most evidence of dangerous cutting agents is anecdotal. There’s no glass in your coke, you fucking psycho.

I guess that doesn’t mean that drugs are never cut with poison. The Drug Prevention Network of the Americas reports on a gang in Dublin that cuts coke with Phenacetin, a carcinogen that causes cancerous tumors in urinary tracts and nasal passages. Of male rats. There are a hundred million stories like that, and they get picked up eagerly by anti-drug sites, druggies, and editors who want sensational copy because that is the world we live in.

Findings: Most coke is way over 60 percent pure, and our coke is especially good. Thank you, Rico.

HEROIN
Our sample was 60 percent heroin, 20 percent acetaminophen, 10 percent caffeine, and 10 percent unidentifiable chemicals. Even though that sounds like a lot of additives, it’s about right. New York heroin is 63.3 percent pure on average. Oh, forget the whole idea about heroin being cut with Drano. Heroin is most often cut with acetaminophen, caffeine, malitol, diazepam, methaqualone, or phenobarbital. Diazepam is a sedative hypnotic. Methaqualone is Quaaludes. Phenobarbital is a sedative used to stop seizures and treat insomnia. See, they just cut it with stuff that makes you sleepy but doesn’t cost as much or cause as much hassle to get as dope. That’s all. If you want some better shit, move to that shithole London. Ross Coomber of the University of Greenwich, London, analyzed 228 samples of heroin and found that 44 percent of them weren’t cut with anything at all. The rest were cut with the same stuff as above. Coomber did another study where he gathered information from 17 heroin dealers at varying points in the chain of distribution. He asked them if they adulterated (that is the word for adding other drugs to) or diluted (that is the word for adding inert substances to) the drugs they sold. Eleven said that they never adulterated/diluted at all, four adulterated/diluted only sometimes, and only one (dealing four to five ounces a month) said he always diluted the heroin (with glucose, by around 10 to 20 percent). Asshole.

Findings: Heroin is a little more cut than coke, but ours is average. And dealers don’t want to poison their customers. It’s bad business, and if you’re dead you can’t buy any more smack from them. The most important finding to us in this section was this great new dealer who got us a bundle of smack, delivered to our door in 20 minutes in the middle of the workday. Too bad we’re in recovery.

CRACK
Our crack, purchased from some human garbage in Bushwick, was about 95 percent pure, and the impurities were likely by-products of the synthesis, not contaminants. That means they weren’t added after the crack became crack. Rather, they were a part of how the crack came to be. Crack is actually one of the purest drugs you can buy, usually about 85 to 95 percent, because it gets washed with solvent before or after heating. Just because of the way it’s made (by “freebasing” it—or removing the active chemicals from cocaine from their base), you can get high-purity crack from only moderately pure coke.

Findings: Crack is a good bet. If you think your coke guy is stomping on your shit at all, cook it up and you’ll take out all the dirt.

WEED
So according to an article published in the New York Times in April 2004, “Law enforcement officials said they are also seeing more examples of marijuana laced with other drugs, like cocaine, a narcotic; LSD, a hallucinogen; and PCP, a hallucinogen also known as angel dust.” Our sample didn’t have coke or heroin or PCP or anything in it. It was just normal. Sucks.

Now read that New York Times quote again. “Law enforcement officials”? I like cops and I trust them to protect me from getting raped. Journalists are liars though. Why would police give quotes about drugs and not give their names? Is this a top-secret thing that the “law enforcement officials” are afraid to go on record about? Seriously, there are a million alarmist accounts of PCP-dipped weed being sold as regular weed (just google it), but not one systematic analysis to back up the claim. Just look at the slang terms for weed laced with other drugs and the whole thing starts to seem like a priest dreamed it up: “Boat, Loveboat, Chips, Donk, Lovelies, Love Leaf, Woolies, Zoom, Boat, Caviar, Champagne, Cocoa Puff, Gremmies.” What? Reporters are pussies that barely know what drugs are so if they talk about the pervasiveness of embalming-fluid-dipped pot you’re not going to ever find any evidence of them actually finding some. Hence quotes like, “Finding embalming fluid to buy on the street is not easy because most street drug dealers make more money selling individual joints soaked with embalming fluid for about $10 to $20. However, if found on the street to purchase, a two-ounce sample of embalming fluid costs about $50.” Oh really?

Findings: PCP-soaked marijuana that is sold as PCP-soaked marijuana doesn’t actually have PCP in it most of the time. There is no evidence at all I can find that marijuana sold as marijuana is soaked in PCP. However, if you want to deck your weed out, sprinkle some coke on it. It’s called a snowcap and it gets you laced.

ECSTASY
Our sample was pure MDMA. Once again, that’s because we have good dealers. We all know that E is often cut with dope, because we’ve all seen those little brown freckles in pills that we’ve taken. That’s heroin, stupid. So while E can be dirty, it is not as dirty as a 1993 Time Out magazine article, “Bitter Pills,” made it out to be. In that article, it was reported that E dealers spike tablets and capsules with heroin, LSD, rat poison, and crushed glass. That story was repeated all over. Stephen Beard of the Newham Drugs Advice Project was the source for all this, and he said he got his info from a single dealer. This single supposed dealer said he made fake ecstasy by crushing light bulbs. The word for that is “hearsay.” There was no supporting evidence such as lab tests or reports from doctors who had treated users. Oh, but again, it does happen that there is poison. In London, in 2000, there was an unmarked, half-scored, yellow-flecked tablet that was 8 mg of strychnine. The lethal dose of strychnine is 10 mg.

The verdict: It’s not hard to get good shit. Drug dealers figure, I can sit here trying to figure out how to dilute this shit or I can get it on the street and paid for as soon as possible. If my shit is too pure—great. All that means is I’ll have a reputation as Bobby PurePants and more people will want to buy from me.

ANN HIGGINS

With a lung capacity that helped him set seven world records in the 2008 Olympics, Michael Phelps had to have been higher than anyone at that party.

Phelps probably sucked the whole bowl down in one hit and held it in for a full minute. Maybe that’s why someone felt compelled to sell the photo: When a multimillionaire burns through half your stash in one bong-load, maybe you feel a bit taken advantage of.

The difference is that Phelps sobered up afterward. But his fellow party-goer must have still been high when he or she sold the photo of the 16 medal winning Olympic champion to The News of the World for what’s rumored to have been $5,000 without demanding syndication rights.

To be fair, he or she may not have known that the story would become the sensation that it has. How could smoking pot be such a big deal? In the United States, our last three presidents have admitted to drug use. Time estimates that 42% of Americans have smoked pot. I don’t know who the other 58% are.

It’s no wonder with sites like Celebrity Skin, a site that sells the fecal matter of the stars, reports that the owner of the bong tried to sell it on e-Bay for $100,000. Maybe this is the same person who sold the photo, realizing their folly and trying to make a final effort at fortune.

Now, eight people (the bong owner among them) have been arrested. The talking heads are going nuts, stumbling over each other to seem more scandalized with every bit of “news” they manufacture and release.

Only in America could this happen. Here are six reasons why:

It started in England.

The Brits know a scandal when they see one. The News of the World publishes a couple of paragraphs about Michael Phelps smoking weed and we just run with it.

Banners run on the bottom of the screen on CNN and MSNBC, saying things like, “Sheriff investigates whether Michael Phelps smoked pot,” and “8 people arrested in connection with SC party Michael Phelps attended.”

No wonder no one takes Americans seriously.

Our news outlets cover an incident of marijuana smoking with nearly the same fervor that they do mass murders on college campuses. Don’t believe me? Check out this “Breaking News.”

Those Brits sure know how to sell us back to ourselves. It may be a sort of revenge for overtaking their colonies, but they know us. Now listen as the slot machine pays out heavy to The News of the World for those photo rights.

We prefer fake to real.

Boobs, lips, flavoring, wood paneling, flowers, Viagra, Astroturf, top 40 music, bleach blondes, Christmas trees, fingernails, Velveeta, fur: fake, fake, fake. Better than the real thing– just like our news.

Sure, there’s the issue of the economy. Sure, wildfires are raging out of control in Australia. Sure, bombs are killing people in Baghdad and cholera is affecting thousands in Zimbabwe.

But MICHAEL PHELPS SMOKED WEED! AND SOMEONE TRIED TO SELL THE BONG!

We love to tear down the hero.

Nothing’s better than someone we admire screwing up and getting their ass handed to them: Eliot Spitzer, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Tonya Harding, Bill Clinton, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Larry Craig, Britney Spears again.

Not everyone admired any of these people, but significantly fewer did after the “news” about them broke.

In the United States, there’s nothing better than seeing someone successful screw up. It’s gratifying to people to see that rich, successful people do stupid things. Bring that celeb down to life size and you’re guaranteed to sell advertising time on your network.

We don’t really care about the corporate stranglehold on our culture.

Visa and Kellogg and Speedo and Mazda all get press. Kellogg gets the most because they are willing to condemn Phelps’ dastardly marijuana smoking ways.

Phelps loses one million dollars and Kellogg gets its name on the news several times a day. Free advertising for them and a small loss for Phelps (all things considered).

Now people can debate whether Kellogg is wrong or right and another news item is born. There’s a movement afoot to boycott Kellogg over its unethical treatment of our American treasure.

Meanwhile, Kellogg gets to come out smelling “gr-e-a-at!”.

We pretend to care about drugs being illegal.

If Phelps had been using TGH or some other designer steroid that could make the viewing public feel ripped off for believing in him, perhaps there would be some actual scandal to this “scandal.”

By all accounts, pot is a performance decreasing drug rather than the reverse. Despite Time’s claim that 48% of Americans have tried pot, it’s really more surprising to meet someone who has never smoked pot.

Why do we pretend to care?

Maybe the only thing stopping every marijuana advocate and midnight toker out there from using this “incident” to claim pot is more beneficial than as a nausea cure is that Phelps could not have been using any drugs at all during his victory sweep. He was regularly tested for all drugs throughout any competitive season.

We like to pretend that we care about illegal drug use.

We don’t really… or we would not have elected our last three presidents.

Profit, baby.

They’re selling it and we’re buying it.

People have the luxury of being morally outraged regardless of what side they’re on in this non-issue. Phelps is just a young guy and deserves to have a little fun. He’s setting a poor example. Whoever sold that picture deserves to be tortured.

We’re celebrity obsessed and when headlines that would once have been relegated to The Enquirer are running on cable news networks, we watch and they profit. For the CNNs of this world, this is great. No foreign correspondent has to be flown to far off lands and risk life and limb to cover real news.

These networks now know they can participate in lazy tabloid style coverage and sell more advertising than they would if they were covering real news that required research or reporting.

Pure profit.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What do you think about the Phelps “scandal”? Is it uniquely American? Why? Why not? Share your opinions below!

Article via Matador Pulse

Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.

It took more than 35 firefighters, 1,000 gallons of water and five gallons of chemical suppressant to extinguish the warehouse blaze on Wednesday, Fire Chief Shawn Snider said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were investigating the origin of the drugs. The Hidalgo County fire marshal was investigating whether arson was the cause.

Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.

These are my personal favorites and there are many many more that just haven’t come to mind yet. Readers, please leave me a message should you have your own quotes to add to the list.

“They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you’re high, you can do everything you normally do, just as well. You just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.” Bill Hicks

“Don’t do drugs because if you do drugs you’ll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.” John Hardwick

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself, and where they are they should be changed.” Jimmy Carter

“It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics dope and all of that stuff. It is a thousand times better than whiskey. It is an assistant and a friend.” Louis Armstrong

“The biggest killer on the planet is stress and I still think the best medicine is and always has been cannabis.” Willie Nelson

“Marijuana is self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?” P.J. O’Rourke

“When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.” Bob Marley

“If you ain’t got a good job and you ain’t smokin’ weed, then I don’t know what the fuck you are doin’ wit your life.” Kat Williams

“Just hit the blunt one time and see if it don’t change your perception on whats important in your life.” Kat Williams

“Being high is one of the most pleasant sensations available to mankind. Every day is Saturday. It is to be like a child; to perceive events with clarity; to look into the gates of paradise; to completely enjoy whatever you might be doing; to smile so hard that your jaw muscles get tired. Being high is to laugh at the silliest things; to understand things that have seemed absurd before; to have the aloofness of a cat; to afford a kinship with god. To be intoxicated with marijuana makes every superlative seem within your grasp. Being high makes life seem terribly good. Being high is simply grand.” John Rosevear

“When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point.”? Obama

“Forty million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn’t like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.” Jay Leno

“I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early midafternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk.” Steve Martin

“How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured…No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer…” Harry J Anslinger

“Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere.” George Washington

“Marijuana is not a drug!!! I used to suck dick for coke! You ever suck DICK for marijuana?” Bob Saget

“If you substitute marijuana for tobacco and alcohol, you’ll add eight to 24 years to your life.” Jack Herer

“Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana.” Melissa Etheridge

“Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.” William F. Buckley, Jr.

“Whenever the people are for gay marriage or medical marijuana or assisted suicide, suddenly the “will of the people” goes out the window.” Bill Maher

“I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?” Willie Nelson

“Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.” Richard Neville

“Marijuana saved my life. I have no doubts about it and you don’t need to show me any data.” Greg Scott

“If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.” Kerry Thornley

Please leave a comment if you have a good one!

Former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia said the U.S.-led war on drugs has failed and urged President Barack Obama to consider new policies, including decriminalizing marijuana, and to treat drug use as a public health problem.

The recommendations by former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, along with Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, were made in a report today by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.

Among the group’s proposals ahead of a special United Nations ministerial meeting in Vienna to evaluate global drug policy is a call to decriminalize the possession of cannabis for personal use.

“We need to break the taboo that’s blocking an honest debate,” Cardoso said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro to present the report. “Numerous scientific studies show that the damage caused by marijuana is similar to that of alcohol or tobacco.”

Gaviria, who as president of Colombia from 1990-1994 worked with U.S. anti-narcotics agents to hunt down and kill cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, said he hoped Obama invests in harm reduction and prevention efforts that would relieve Latin America of the burden of fighting drug traffickers.

Recognize the Failure

“It makes no sense to continue a policy on moral grounds without getting the desired results,” said Gaviria, citing an October report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office showing drug reduction goals in Colombia have not been met. “Obama, being a pragmatist, should recognize these failures.”

The group was created last year to focus the global drug debate on harm reduction and prevention efforts and away from policies based on the eradication of production and the criminalization of consumption.

Latin America is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis and a major supplier of opium and heroin. It’s also been the main focus of U.S.-led drug eradication and interdiction efforts ever since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared “war on drugs” in 1971.

The GAO report, made at the request of then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, now vice president, Joseph Biden found that production of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, increased by 15 percent in Colombia since 2000. The U.S. has provided Colombia with $4.9 billion in anti-narcotics aid since 1999 with the goal of reducing coca production by half.

Gaviria said Mexican President Felipe Calderon should demand Obama do more to reduce drug consumption. The U.S. pledged $400 million and increased cooperation with Mexico last year as part of an anti-drug plan known as the Merida Initiative.

More than 5,300 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico last year, and Mexican lawmakers have said the U.S. holds some responsibility for the bloodshed because demand for narcotics has made the cartels powerful.

By: Joshua Goodman

As California faces a $1 billion budget shortfall, the marijuana industry offers a commonsense solution to the state’s fiscal problems:

August 6 — A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis. The group, calling itself Let Us Pay Taxes makes the offer through its web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. The offer comes at a time when the California legislature is deadlocked on a new budget and California has stopped issuing checks for vitally needed social services. Legislators are currently arguing over which programs will be cut in order to balance the budget. [link]

This effort is the brainchild of drug policy expert/activist Cliff Shaffer, who has hit the nail square on its head. The failure of prohibitionists to grasp the inherent economic lunacy of the drug war has always been particularly startling to me. I grudgingly accept that drug war supporters feel no sympathy for the victims of harsh laws, and even that they clumsily attribute the harmful effects of prohibition to the drugs themselves. Yet, tragic and irrational as these beliefs may be, they do not explain the willingness of government to cast aside billions in taxable commerce.

Marijuana is, after all, the #1 cash crop in the nation. This fact cleanly illustrates the failure of prohibition, while vividly depicting the massive windfall available to any state with the wisdom to pursue regulation. And all this is to say nothing of the incalculable value of discontinuing our current marijuana policy, which is as wasteful and ineffective as can be.

Gov. Schwarzenegger is unlikely to be impressed with this offer, unfortunately, having vetoed California’s hemp bill over concerns regarding conflict with federal law. Yet, as Shaffer points out, there is truly nothing the DEA can do to prevent state level regulation of marijuana. The vastly smaller medical marijuana industry has already overwhelmed the agency’s enforcement capacity. Ongoing DEA raids are merely a face-saving gesture, designed to confuse legislators in prospective medical marijuana states. The full-scale regulation of the marijuana economy in any state would reveal DEA’s genuine impotence, permanently burying the myth that conflict with federal law ensures some sort of brutal showdown.

Having failed to get the point across in so many ways, it’s about time to start offering people a billion dollars.

via stop the drug war

WASHINGTON — The White House won’t say it explicitly. Neither will the Drug Enforcement Administration. Yet there is a whiff in the air that U.S. policy is about to change when it comes to medical marijuana.

The message is clear, said UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, a former Justice Department official and an expert on crime and drug policy.

“It is no longer federal policy to beat up on hippies,” said Kleiman.

Tell that to the DEA.

In California this past week, agents raided four dispensaries in Los Angeles and seized 500 pounds of pot.

“It’s a little bit surprising, because I think current DEA management didn’t get the message,” said Kleiman. “The message is, this is no longer drug warrior time. We are not on a cultural crusade against pot-smoking.”

California law permits the sale of marijuana for medical purposes, though it is still against federal law.

Thirteen states have laws permitting medicinal use of marijuana. California is unique among them for the presence of dispensaries, businesses that sell marijuana and even advertise their services. Legal under California law, such dispensaries are still illegal under federal law.
“Anyone possessing, distributing or cultivating marijuana for any reason is in violation of federal law,” Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said Thursday.

That may be the law, but it contradicts the medical marijuana position of the new president.

“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,” said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro, repeating past statements.

So on Friday, DEA officials in Washington declined to comment at all on the subject.

As a presidential candidate, Obama repeatedly promised a change in federal drug policy in situations where state laws allow use of medical marijuana.

“I think the basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that’s entirely appropriate,” Obama told the Mail Tribune of Medford, Ore., in March.

A year earlier at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Obama said: “I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users.”

At age 47, Obama is part of a generation that had plenty of exposure to pot.

In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” he described time spent as a youth struggling with questions about his race and identity, and turning to drugs _ including marijuana and cocaine _ to “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”

The new president is unlikely to make any official change in policy before he has a new DEA chief and drug czar in place.

Yet experts believe it is already clear the Obama administration will change the strategy, if not the law, on medical marijuana.

Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who is now a Harvard professor, said it’s time for the agency to put more effort into fighting drugs more dangerous than marijuana.

“I do expect him to appoint an administrator who takes marijuana less seriously than is traditional for the DEA, as I think most Americans do,” said Heymann.

Heymann said he expects the Obama administration will eventually instruct the DEA to emphatically scale back raids on dispensaries, and conduct such raids only in instances where investigators believe a business is abusing the dispensary system as a cover for other criminal behavior.

So last week’s raids in California may be the last of their kind.

“The DEA’s not likely to want to confront a new president,” said Heymann. “It may simply be that they’re behaving as they have traditionally, and they haven’t anticipated the change Obama and his spokesman are signaling.”

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Associated Press writer Michael Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.