cannabisnews.com: Pass The Pot





Pass The Pot
Posted by CN Staff on November 18, 2004 at 07:27:07 PT
By Katy Williams, Opinion Editor
Source: Shorthorn
The benefits of marijuana usage should be enough for legalization.Last week, five speakers met in the Lone Star Auditorium to discuss the benefits of legalizing marijuana. It is our opinion that the costs of the war on marijuana far outweigh the results, and marijuana can provide medical benefits that are not available otherwise. Whether or not students agree with our stance on the issue, they should be aware of how all drug policies can affect them.
Speaker Clayton Jones said there are numerous proven benefits, and studies have not revealed negative effects. Bryon Adinoff argued that there are potentially damaging effects and that the drug can be dangerous but also possibly useful in moderation. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences, “Although few marijuana users develop dependence, some do. But they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be less severe than dependence on other drugs.” Studies have shown that the medical use of marijuana can help chemotherapy patients with vomiting and nausea.The Institute of Medicine’s report Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base states that “for patients such as those with AIDS or ... who suffer simultaneously from severe pain, nausea and appetite loss, cannabinoid drugs might offer broad-spectrum relief not found in any other single medication.”James Quinn spoke on how the costs of prosecuting users are much too high and that arguments that marijuana use leads to violence are untrue and propagated for political reason. The Marijuana Policy Project is an organization that believes criminal penalties for marijuana use should be abolished. Its Web site states that 734,498 people were arrested in 2002 for marijuana-related offenses. Of those, about 88 percent of marijuana arrests are for possession — not the manufacture or distribution. Many people, including young people who have never committed any violent crime, are put in prisons with violent offenders. The organization estimates that the war on marijuana costs taxpayers $12 billion annually. By making the drug legal, it could be regulated and taxed, making it much more profitable for the government and society and safer for users. Whatever your views on the issue, make sure you know how marijuana laws affect you, and write your representative with any questions or concerns. The issue: Guest speakers have provided several advantages to legalizing marijuana.We suggest: Students should consider all reasons to legalize marijuana and write to their representatives. Source: Shorthorn, The (TX Edu Arlington)Author: Katy Williams, Opinion EditorPublished: November 17, 2004Copyright: 2004 The ShorthornWebsite: http://www.theshorthorn.com/Contact: online-editor.shorthorn uta.eduRelated Articles & Web Sites:Marijuana Policy Projecthttp://www.mpp.org/Texans For Medical Marijuanahttp://www.texansformedicalmarijuana.org/Organization Hosts Marijuana Speecheshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19797.shtmlReefer Madness - Houston Presshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19567.shtmlNew Group Backs Medical Marijuana in Texashttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18431.shtml 
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on November 18, 2004 at 13:29:42 PT
Press Release From The Drug Policy Alliance
Judges Publicly Question Ridiculous Drug SentencesNovember 18, 2004If treatment does a better job of helping people with drug problems, why does Congress insist on imposing ever-stiffer prison sentences on them? This is a question the Drug Policy Alliance and other reform groups have been asking for years, but the senior justice for the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals also asked it today in a New York Times opinion piece.http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/opinion/18lay.html&OQ=orefQ3DloginIn the op/ed, Justice Donald Lay also takes Congress to task for overstuffing the federal prison system:Mandatory minimum sentences, enacted by Congress, have contributed to the rising costs of imprisonment and crowding in federal prisons. In federal drug cases, defendants could face a minimum of 5 to 10 years in prison, while a similar offense in some state courts would allow a court, depending on the circumstances, to place the defendant on probation.Justice Anthony Kennedy and several other scholars, judges, professors and law reviews have openly criticized the use of mandatory minimum sentences in federal criminal cases. To make matters worse, a bill has been proposed in the Senate that would set a mandatory sentence of 10 years for a first drug conviction and mandatory life imprisonment for a second.Another judge publicly criticized mandatory minimum sentences, this time on Tuesday when he sentenced a 25-year-old to 55 years in prison for a first time offense.Weldon H. Angelos was arrested two years ago for selling marijuana. Even though he did not use it, he had a gun during at least two of the drug transactions. He was convicted of three counts of possession of a firearm while engaged in drug trafficking. The first count carried a mandatory five-year sentence, with each subsequent count calling for 25 years.Judge Paul Cassell of the United States District Court said his hands were tied by a mandatory minimum law, and encouraged the record producer and father of two to appeal and ask President Bush for clemency once his appeals are exhausted.The judge noted the irony of being required to lock up Angelos until he's 70 when hours earlier, he was able to sentence another defendant to 22 years on a second-degree murder charge, for beating an elderly woman to death with a log.In an era when more and more states seem to recognize the wisdom of treatment instead of incarceration because it saves lives and money, federal lawmakers seem to be thinking the opposite. The Drug Policy Alliance opposed the expansion of mandatory minimums in Congress this year and will continue to do so next year. 
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/11_18_04judgesquestion.cfm
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on November 18, 2004 at 08:56:14 PT
Press Release from Marijuana Policy Project
First-Ever U.S. Senate Bill to Protect Medical Marijuana Patients Introduced  
WASHINGTON -- November 18 -- U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), joined by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jim Jeffords (I-VT), have introduced the first-ever Senate bill to ensure that federal juries hear the full story when medical marijuana patients and providers, operating legally under state law, are tried on federal marijuana charges.S. 2989 is similar to H.R. 1717, the "Truth in Trials Act," introduced by a bipartisan House coalition last year and inspired in part by the case of Ed Rosenthal. In January 2003, Rosenthal was found guilty of felony marijuana cultivation charges by a jury that was not allowed to consider that the marijuana was for medical use by seriously ill patients and was grown with the authorization of the city of Oakland, California.When they learned the truth, jurors who convicted Rosenthal publicly repudiated their own verdict and apologized to him, feeling they had been duped into convicting an innocent man. "I helped send a man to prison who does not belong there," juror Marney Craig wrote in a column for the San Jose Mercury News. Newspaper editorial boards nationwide, including The New York Times and Baltimore's The Sun, condemned the verdict, using terms like "mean-spirited" and "cruel."In his statement introducing the legislation, Durbin noted, "This is a narrowly-tailored bill ... Under this legislation, defendants in the ten states with medicinal marijuana laws could be found not guilty of violating federal law if their actions are done in compliance with state law."Because federal law does not recognize any medical use of marijuana, defendants have been barred from raising the issue in their defense. "As it stands today, federal law denies medical marijuana defendants a basic right that every other defendant has, the right to explain what they did to the jury," said Robert Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., "If you shoot someone, you are allowed to explain why you did it, but if you're a disabled patient growing marijuana to relieve your pain and suffering, you can't. Jurors who could imprison someone for decades have a right to hear the whole truth, not a censored version that is 
stripped of facts the federal government doesn't like."On Nov. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Ashcroft v. Raich, which could limit federal authority to enforce federal marijuana laws against intrastate, noncommercial medical marijuana activities.With more than 17,000 members and 150,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP works to minimize the harm associated with marijuana -- both the consumption of marijuana and the laws that are intended to prohibit such use. MPP believes that the greatest harm associated with marijuana is imprisonment. For more information, please visit: http://www.MarijuanaPolicy.org/ NOVEMBER 18, 2004
 CONTACT: MarijuanaPolicy.org 
Bruce Mirken, 202-543-7972 
or 415-668-6403 http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-09.htm
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