cannabisnews.com: Smoke Up in A2





Smoke Up in A2
Posted by CN Staff on January 14, 2004 at 10:45:36 PT
Editorial
Source: Michigan Daily 
Ann Arbor is the only city in Michigan to decriminalize marijuana use, a move that dates back 32 years. But this notoriety carries a unique caveat for those who attempt to take advantage of the law. While the Ann Arbor Police Department enforces city law which including the ordinance decriminalizing marijuana, the University and the Department of Public Safety should enforce state law instead. Therefore, if a student or another individual is caught possessing or using marijuana on University property, the crime is treated as if it did not occur in Ann Arbor. 
The unnecessary penalties that can result from such a situation could potentially ruin the reputation of the user. Like the AAPD, the University and DPS should enforce the laws enacted by the city, and in turn, the University should provide a progressive statement on the senselessness of strongly penalizing a substance that carries few undesirable consequences if used responsibly.If a person is caught possessing or using marijuana by the AAPD, he receives a $50 fine. The AAPD can give someone unlimited tickets for marijuana possession and use, but no jail time can ever come from them. If, however, someone is caught possessing or using marijuana on University grounds, DPS cites the person for a misdemeanor and he must appear in court. State law, which the University follows, can give an individual up to 90 days in jail for using marijuana and up to a year in jail for possession.In addition to jail time, the misdemeanor is on the offender’s permanent record, a move that is especially devastating for students. Students face a lifelong punishment for a relatively benign crime, emphasizing the need for the state to change its policies toward marijuana. No one should go to jail for using a substance that harms nobody but themselves when used responsibly. Marijuana has no known health effects worse than those typically associated with tobacco and alcohol. Alcohol and tobacco are legal because an individual can choose what to put into his body as long as its use does not infringe upon the rights of others, and the same standards should apply to marijuana.Opponents of marijuana decriminalization and legalization believe that less strict drug laws will lead to an increase in the crimes usually associated with the drug trade But in fact, the illegal status of marijuana leads to these crimes. Lowering the punishment for marijuana use and possession would decrease the price of the drug, thereby causing a drop in the number of those willing to sell it. Marijuana is a drug widely demonized but in reality poses no threats suitable to justify its illegality. The University and DPS should follow suit, and permit the use and possession of marijuana on campus.Note: 'U' needs to follow city, not state laws.Source: Michigan Daily (MI Edu)Published: January 13, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Michigan DailyContact: daily.letters umich.eduWebsite: http://www.michigandaily.com/Related Article:Up in Smoke - Michigan Dailyhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18108.shtml
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on January 14, 2004 at 14:10:43 PT
ekim
That's a good point. 
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Comment #6 posted by gloovins on January 14, 2004 at 14:07:05 PT
just checking on The Michigan Daily's stance
Hi all ... just wrote a LTE that went a little something like this:Hello Michigan Daily
 
Just read your article entitled "Smoke up in A2" at cannabisnews.com and was surprised to find the absence of any mention of the signature drive currently underway to legalize cannabis/marijuana in Michigan. For more info, check it out at : www.apublicservice.com . The actual signature drive started Jan 8, 2004 but the promoters of the proposal will not start their drive until Jan 25, 2004 till July 5, 2004-- just fyi.
 
Tell me, after reading the proposed amendment, does your paper/staff endorse this? Remember, cannabis has no known overdose deaths reported and aspirin and bee stings alone kill more people than this plant. I am anxious to know, can we count on the Michigan Daily to support this? Or will you all stand on the sidelines and "wait n see". Why should Michigan farmers who want to grow a plant that can solve our energy & deforestation problems be felons!? I look foward to your response.I'll let you know if I get an email back. Hope everyone is having a prosperous New Year 2004...
 
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Comment #5 posted by ekim on January 14, 2004 at 14:00:36 PT
 what about the loss of a student loan
seems this would be high on the list
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Comment #4 posted by Max Flowers on January 14, 2004 at 13:51:11 PT
King of the metaphor strikes again
There you go again Virgil with a beautiful metaphor! The plumbing of American justice and democracy is clogged with the fecal matter of prohibition and plutocracy. We need a strong plumber who is unafraid of getting things a bit dirty in order to flush this mess down and clear the conduit so that true freedom can again flow unimpeded. Amen to that!!
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Comment #3 posted by Virgil on January 14, 2004 at 12:17:45 PT
Get drunk, kill 1 and coma another, get 30 days
This article talks about a person who was drunk driving and talking on a cell phone when she hit a couple head on. It killed the man and put the pregnant woman in a coma- http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/14/reckless.driver.ap/And look at all the penalties for growing a plant when running an illegal still in North Carolina is only a misdemeanor. The government of the people was infiltrated by the wealthy until they finally took over. We are all enslaved with cannabis users getting the whip. The only way CP is going to end is when the idea of a more perfect union is restored and those that rule us by treason are gone. The plutocracy has a beating coming to them for those that support the Logical Conclusion. It will take a populus that sees that we have been lied to our whole lives, that finally engages in correcting the mission of American government that will destroy the plutocracy. When they say what are you so upset about, can't you get marijuana. My answer is that we have been lied to our whole lives and that all things are upside down and must be righted. It is just easier to see with a cannabis perspective and they are the patriots fighting for freedom in America today. When that battle is won there will be a veteran force to fight on for freedom. Until you know what you are talking about why don't you just shut up and try to learn something.I spoke of my cousin that is manic depressive and one winter when I was in depression, I was holed up with him. The toilet got stuck and since he never does anything, I went through the motion of doing the plunger thing. I tried it several times with consideration to avoid splashing. But once my cousin that was quit in atlete in his younger days took up the cause, he put a real whooping on that toilet for about 15 seconds. The problem was gone. I say this because my internal programming defines "getting mean" with something as giving it a fierce effort. Of couse we here all know CP to be wrong and an injustice. The question we all want answered is what to do about it. We are about to see the era of let us have our freedom back change to get the traitors that took our freedom. It is time to get mean and say this shit is not flushing with me.
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Comment #2 posted by Max Flowers on January 14, 2004 at 11:36:41 PT
Michigan students and Top 10 drug stories of 2003
Hopefully the Michigan students will get even more active on this, and show the way for all students in America. This is a good start.We are all, from high school students in SC to college students in Michigan, to all walks of life, tired of getting kicked around by holier-than-thou idiots.By the way, here are the Top 10 Drug Stories of 2003, in case anyone had any doubts at all who the criminals really are (pay special attention to number 5!):TOP TEN DRUG WAR STORIES OF 2003With the American public's attention firmly directed toward the daily events of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror," the US-led and exported "War on Drugs" continues to exact crippling costs to taxpayers, minority groups, the environment, civil liberties and struggling democracies around the world.While terror alerts rise and fall and states struggle to fund their law enforcement budgets, the total number of marijuana arrests far exceed the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, 
manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.As the Drug War enters its 90th year, it continues to be characterized by contradictory laws, arbitrary enforcement, massive wealth and racial disparities, questionable covert operations and general media timidity.Here are 10 of the top stories from Drug War 2003:1) Afghanistan is now the world's leading supplier of opium for the heroin trade. Under the Taliban regime, which banned opium, annual production bottomed out at 77 tons in 2001, produced only in areas controlled by the 
Northern Alliance. American military, as part of its "War on Terror," allied with Northern Alliance warlords to overthrow the Taliban regime and keep Al Qaeda at bay. Afghan opium production has since skyrocketed to about 3,600 tons of opium this year, or 75 percent of global production.Early in December 2003, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Afghanistan and publicly embraced warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ustad Attas Mohammed, for calling off armed struggle with the fragile government 
in Kabul headed by Hamid Karzai. Abdul Rashid Dostum was rewarded by being named Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Karzai government.Dostum has been described as a "war criminal" by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, for killing thousands of civilians in the Afghan civil wars of the 1990s and for his merciless treatment of prisoners and, occasionally, his own soldiers.2) While the United States declared war on Iraq for supposedly harboring biological weapons, the US-funded War on Drugs in Colombia plans to use an untested pathogenic fungus fusarium oxysporum to wipe out coca. Critics say 
the plan proposes illegal acts of biological warfare, poses major ecological risks to Colombia one of the world's most bio-diverse countries and will increase suffering, by wreaking havoc with human health, water quality and food crops.3) On February 12, a federal jury in Philadelphia awarded $1.5 million in compensation to two narcotics agents John McLaughlin and Charles Micewski who claimed their boss the Pennsylvania attorney general retaliated against them because they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate.Pittsburgh's Tribune Review reports: McLaughlin and Micewski said they had uncovered a Dominican drug-trafficking ring operating in Philadelphia, New York and other Eastern cities that funneled drug profits to the Dominican Revolutionary Party, which they claimed was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department.4) Switzerland's Addiction Research Institute calls tobacco the number one killer addiction, responsible for 71 percent, or 4.9 million of the world's 7 million annual drug-related deaths. About 1.8 million deaths, or 26 
percent, were attributed to the use of alcohol, while illicit drugs caused about 223,000, or 3 percent, of all worldwide drug-related deaths.5) The FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report reveals that police arrested an estimated 697,082 persons for marijuana violations in 2002, or nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States. This amounts to one marijuana-related arrest every 45 seconds.The total number of marijuana arrests far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent were charged with possession only. The remaining 12 percent were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes cultivation for personal and medical use.6) With America incarcerating the highest percentage of its own citizens of any nation in history, Former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese suggests tapping prison labor as a way to slow the exodus of jobs overseas.September's issue of Fortune Magazine reports: Prominent conservatives have been encouraging prisons to put inmates to work for years. The benefits are difficult to ignore: Businesses get cheap, reliable workers; inmates 
receive valuable job training and earn more than they would in traditional prison jobs; and the government offsets the cost of incarceration and keeps jobs and tax dollars in the US.7) Two of America's leading conservative moralist pundits, William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, are chastened by the exposure of their secret habits. Former chain-smoking Drug "Czar" and puritanical author of The Book of 
Virtues, Bennett was exposed for gambling away millions of dollars of his family's fortune in Las Vegas casinos in the past decade.Limbaugh, America's Number One conservative radio talk show host, has rarely missed an opportunity to vilify drug addicts, even calling for an increase in the incarceration of white drug users to offset the nation's massive racial disparity in prison. He is currently under investigation for illegally obtaining up to 30,000 narcotic painkillers from his housekeeper and from doctor shopping. In his defense, (Ultra-Conservative) Limbaugh has retained the services of (Ultra-Liberal) defense attorney Roy Black.8) Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled in mid-October by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow 
to US anti-drug policy in the Andean region.Last year, Lozada asked President Bush for more money to ease the impact on displaced coca farmers. Otherwise, Lozada explained, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum."The coca problem is intimately tied to issues of poverty and disenfranchisement. In Bolivia the backlash has strengthened the hand of the political figure regarded by Washington as its main enemy: Evo Morales, head of the coca growers' federation, who finished second in the presidential election last year.9) Attorney General John Ashcroft limits judicial sentencing discretion and the freedom of prosecutors to strike plea bargains in criminal cases. He insists that US attorneys must seek the toughest punishment possible in 
nearly all cases, using plea bargains only in special situations.10) RAID! On May 16, New York City police tossed a stun grenade into the home of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill, city worker and church volunteer, who died from a heart attack during the mistaken drug raid. On May 23, NYC police accidentally raid the home of teacher Joe Celcis. Police smashed open the door, handcuffed several people, pointed a gun in the face of a 12-year old girl and ransacked the house for 90 minutes before realizing they had the wrong address. On Nov. 5, cops in a Charleston, SC, suburb 
burst into the mostly white Stratford High School at 6:45 a.m. with guns drawn and ordered mostly black students to get down on the floor while cops searched lockers and book bags for marijuana; students who didn't move fast enough were handcuffed. No drugs were found in the 45-minute raid. 
Seventeen of the students are suing the school district.------------------------------------------------------Links to news clippings in the MAP archives related to the above stories:1. http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Afghanistan2. http://www.mapinc.org/topics/fusarium+oxysporumhttp://www.mapinc.org/topics/Colombia3. http://www.mapinc.org/people/Charles+Micewski5. http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Uniform+Crime+Report6. http://www.mapinc.org/topics/prison+labor7. http://www.mapinc.org/people/William+Bennetthttp://www.mapinc.org/people/Rush+Limbaugh8. http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia9. http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm10. http://www.mapinc.org/people/Alberta+Spruillhttp://www.mapinc.org/topics/Goose+Creek
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Comment #1 posted by The GCW on January 14, 2004 at 11:25:10 PT
Kucinich to the rescue.
I hope Michigan heard: Democratic Presidential nominee, Dennis Kucinich, put in writing that as PRESIDENT He WILL: "DECRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA" -"in favor of a drug policy that sets reasonable boundaries for marijuana use by establishing guidelines similar to those already in place for alcohol." (POSTED ON His website!) http://www.kucinich.us/issues/marijuana_decrim.php 	
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17917.shtml Then, not only will Vice President Gore's son not be caged for being busted with cannabis, but every other average American will be treated the same.Not only will the Bush twins be busted with pot, and not be caged, but neither will ordinary Michigan citizens that don't have that ROYAL BLOOD.
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