cannabisnews.com: Douglas Lifts Order Over Windsor Pot Cases










  Douglas Lifts Order Over Windsor Pot Cases

Posted by CN Staff on December 12, 2007 at 08:25:45 PT
By Terri Hallenbeck, Free Press Staff Writer 
Source: Burlington Free Press  

Vermont -- Gov. Jim Douglas on Tuesday lifted the order he gave last month for state law enforcement agencies to refer significant first-time marijuana cases away from Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand. Douglas announced that he's satisfied Sand will not treat all such cases by sending them to court diversion, as he did with a recent felony marijuana case. The truce came after an e-mail exchange Tuesday between Sand and Susanne Young, the governor's legal counsel, in which Sand clarified that he doesn't have a blanket policy for handling cases.
"I hope to make clear that my office does not have a policy and certainly not a blanket policy about diversion in marijuana cases, and I intend to apologize if anything I have said has contributed to that perception and misperception," Sand wrote in the e-mail. Asked whether the whole thing was a misunderstanding, Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said, "It may have been."Sand said he's never had blanket policies for any kinds of cases, and that the notion that he did "morphed" out of a television news report that does not include direct audio from Sand. While Sand was busy preparing for a murder trial, the notion gathered steam, he said. Sand said he attempted to meet with Douglas to explain that but was turned down. Sand said this week that he pulled 20 first-time marijuana cases from his files that did not go to court diversion. Douglas issued an order Nov. 7 that all state law enforcement agencies refer significant first-time marijuana cases to the state Attorney General's Office or the U.S. Attorney's Office for review. The move came after Sand had referred a felony marijuana case against lawyer and part-time Family Court Judge Martha Davis to court diversion. Sand has publicly advocated for decriminalizing marijuana. Gibbs said Douglas believes Sand had a blanket policy of diverting marijuana cases, citing the news report as evidence.Douglas has been criticized for not having the same reaction to a recent Orange County case that was referred to court diversion. Gibbs said Douglas views that case differently because he did not believe the prosecutor had a blanket policy, was not a vocal advocate for legalizing marijuana and the defendant was not a judge. In a statement, Douglas said by sending Davis through court diversion, Sand "sends a message that those entrusted to uphold laws only get a slap on the wrist when they violate them." In the time since Douglas issued the order, no cases apparently surfaced that would have been referred away from Sand. Sand said only a couple of cases a year would likely have qualified. Sand said he plans to continue advocating for a discussion of the state's drug laws. He said he provided Douglas with a list of five goals for more discussion of drug policy: Drug courts in every Vermont county.A "tiered response" to marijuana from a ticket to a felony.Strengthening driving-while-intoxicated laws to target drugged drivers. A resolution calling on Congress to give states broader latitude in shaping drug policy.A bipartisan commission to look at how resources are used to combat drug use. "I feel like we've been doing business the same way for 30 years, and I'm not sure we're making the progress we should be or could be making," Sand said. "I don't think we're making headway in reducing drug use and drug crime. If we're not getting ahead on those issues, we owe it to everybody ... to see whether there might be a better way to do business." Douglas, in his statement, said he supports a discussion about how to improve the state's drug laws. "Our focus needs to be on preventing substance abuse before it begins," Douglas said.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Source: Burlington Free Press (VT)Author: Terri Hallenbeck, Free Press Staff WriterPublished: Wednesday, December 12, 2007Copyright: 2007 Burlington Free PressContact: letters bfp.burlingtonfreepress.comWebsite: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/ Related Articles: Governor Reverses Policy on Pot Caseshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread23547.shtmlDouglas: No Politics in Pot Contradictionhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread23542.shtmlProsecutor Says Drug War Isn't Workinghttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22638.shtml 

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Comment #16 posted by OverwhelmSam on December 13, 2007 at 06:48:05 PT
Kill Their Careers
Since Governor Douglas likes to put cannabis consumers in jail, let's see if we can find some reasons to impeach him, or better yet, reasons to put him in jail. If government officials like to enforce marijuana laws, I am sure there are laws we can enforce against them.
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Comment #15 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 20:12:46 PT
LaGuardia
They don't know how much to say a property is worth if people have lived there a long time around here so actually our house is taxed on a low amount. Once a house is sold then they use what it was sold for to get more taxes. Most people in our county stay for most of their lives. 
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Comment #14 posted by LaGuardia on December 12, 2007 at 20:04:42 PT
FoM
The way that your county works sounds much fairer than Vermont's current system. One of the things about Vermont, is that there really are "rich towns" -- ones that are full of beautiful, expensive houses -- and "poor towns" that mostly have factories, tanneries, etc. Although the town that I am from benefits from Act 60, I am ideologically opposed to the law because it creates an incentive for productive, high earning people to leave, and that is bad for the state's economy and its overall tax revenue. Also, the government in Vermont regularly reassesses the value of property so it does not make a difference whether or not one stays in the same house for a long time. Anyway, enough voters benefit from Act 60 that I do not think that it will be repealed any time soon, but resentment to that law gets the people who don't like it to vote for politicians like Douglas. I would never vote for him though because I hate marijuana prohibition way more than I hate Act 60.
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Comment #13 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 19:43:46 PT
LaGuardia
Our taxes are based on our county not any area. We have wealthy and poor and they average the worth of the homes and do it that way I think. If a person stays in their home many years the taxes are lower then if they buy a home in our area now. That seems fair to me. 
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Comment #12 posted by LaGuardia on December 12, 2007 at 19:23:41 PT
Act 60
This is how Act 60 works:Before Act 60, each town set its own property tax rate. Some towns had a lot of expensive houses and not very many school children -- so they had a low percentage tax rate -- while others did not have a lot of valuable houses but a lot of school children and therefore needed to have a higher percentage tax rate relative to the so-called "rich towns." After Act 60, the state standardized the property tax rate for all towns at about 3%; that raised property taxes in some towns as much as six-fold. The state decides how much of their own property taxes a town "needs" and then places the "excess" into a fund called the "shark pool," and the towns that are designated "poor towns" vie to get that "shark pool" money based on their purported needs.I was from one of the "poor towns" and, when I was a kid, the voters would reject any proposed property tax increase even though more money was necessary to properly fund the schools. So, eventually, with the voters in "poor towns" outnumbering the number of voters in the "rich towns," the legislature decided to tax the rich and give to the poor.If it sounds strange, it is; frankly it is unamerican. The property tax is based on the value of the land, but the state requires the "rich towns" to have a much higher property tax rate than is necessary so that the "rich town" taxes can fund the "shark pool." In essence, it something out of an Ayn Rand novel and it has worked out about as well as one might expect: Vermonters who can afford to buy an expensive house buy one in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or New York.Those people, who typically are high earners who formerly paid Vermont income tax before they moved out of state, then pay their income taxes to another state. All this because people in towns like the one I am from did not want to pay taxes sufficient to fund their own schools. Yet another story of unintended consequences stemming from socialist policies. I will probably never move back; I love visiting but there is no way I want to participate in a wealth redistribution program like Act 60.
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 19:02:59 PT
 LaGuardia 
The tax you mentioned about the rich and poor sounds strange to me. We in our county pay tax on what our area is worth. I thought that if a school was in a poor area that if it needs help that it would get Federal help not from a wealthier community. I can imagine how high the taxes on a home could be in some areas up in the north east. Our taxes aren't that bad but they are still a few thousand dollars a year. Land tax is really low as long as it doesn't have a home on it. 
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Comment #10 posted by LaGuardia on December 12, 2007 at 18:38:11 PT
Vermont Politics
I am quite familiar with Vermont politics and a lot of Douglas's support stems from backlash against Vermont's civil union law and, to a lesser extent, a law called Act 60 that increased property taxes in many towns in the state. Sad but true. Both of those laws came from the Howard Dean era but were prompted by Vermont Supreme Court rulings (the Court instructed the legislature to rectify the problem of equal rights for same sex couples and the problem of underfunded schools, but did not say how to do so). Personally, I support the civil unions law but Act 60 is just awful (called the "Robin Hood Law" by many, it requires "rich towns" to tender their "excess" property taxes to "poor towns"). A lot of high earners moved out of state after Act 60 was passed, so state tax revenues did not really increase, and there are now a lot of expensive houses that no one wants to buy because of the high property tax burden. If only the people in "poor towns" had voted in favor of raising their own property taxes to fund their own schools, rather than making their neighboring towns pay for their needs. There are two parts of Vermont, the part that is politically like Massachusetts and the part that is politically like North Carolina.The North Carolina part voted for Douglas, although, by rights, he should not have been elected in the first place back in 2002: If no Vermont gubernatorial candidate gets more than 50% of the popular vote, the Vermont House is supposed to choose the Governor; Douglas got a plurality of the popular vote in his first election over Democrat Doug Racine, 45% to 42%, but did not get the 50% to avoid getting the election thrown to the Vermont House.Since the House was controlled by Democrats, Douglas should have lost in that election. Unfortunately for freedom loving people, his overly-ethical Democratic opponent Racine conceded the election (since Douglas had gotten a higher proportion of the popular vote, Racine felt that he had a moral obligation not to let the Vermont House make him governor) rather than follow the state constitution's procedures that would have elected the Democrat. If Racine had won that election, like Trent Lott once said about a very different politician, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over [all] these years . . . ." ;-)Fortunately, Vermont has gubernatorial elections every two years, so Vermonters could fix this problem in 2008. Unfortunately, Douglas did win handily in 2004 and 2006, so its probably just more of the same next time around.
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 16:55:01 PT
Sam
That is very interesting. I just did something I never did on a post on Obama's blog. They brought up the drug charges coming out of the woodwork and I made the first comment. I maybe should have thought before I commented but I didn't.
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Comment #8 posted by Sam Adams on December 12, 2007 at 16:49:25 PT
taxes too
FOM I think another reason is state legislatures that are overwhelmingly Democrat make people think they need a Republican governor to keep them from raising taxes. Whether or not it works that way remains to be seen.Yes, Massachusetts not only has a black Democrat for governor, but his father was Pat Patrick, a professional jazz musician, he was the sax player for Sun Ra Arkestra back in the 70s - very big and influential jazz band.Republican politicians never have jazz musician fathers, that's for damn sure!
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 16:33:17 PT

Sam
I think one of the very big problems is religion. There were a lot of Catholics in the north east and people of Protestant Denominations and when the Republican Party lined up with the Christian Coalition that probably got Republicans in power since being Conservative in moral values is easy to make people get on board. The Democrats have faith but they don't use it to make laws against those that don't have faith. That's just a thought I had.
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 16:09:02 PT

 Sam 
I wondered why the liberal north has republican governors too. They must have pushed their way in like they do. They hit them when they were down type thinking after the Clinton years. Massachusetts now has a democrat for governor though. I don't know about Maine or some of the other states up in the north east.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patrick
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Comment #5 posted by Sam Adams on December 12, 2007 at 15:53:17 PT

new england governors
btw, what's up with this? it seems that all the New England states are liberal when it comes to president, but they all have real Republican jerks for governor.Just in the last year, we've seen Carceiri in RI veto medical MJ - twice - even though he knew it would still pass. Gov. Rell in CT vetoes medical MJ. And now Douglas in Vt. And we all know former Mass. Governor Romney now, don't we?Get it straight people. Sweep these guys out of there ASAP!
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Comment #4 posted by Sam Adams on December 12, 2007 at 15:50:16 PT

douglas
interesting that these republican tough guys want to the punish the heck out of everyone - except George Bush and Clarence Thomas.  It was OK for them to do drugs for years and get caught for DUI (Bush)And Rush Limbaugh of course. He can never be charged with a felony, regardless of how many hundreds of pills per day he was buying and selling.
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Comment #3 posted by observer on December 12, 2007 at 13:58:46 PT

It Is All About ... Jailing Pot smokers
Once again, we see that when you scratch the surface of "law enforcement" in the USA these days, it is all about jailing cannabis users. Any movement away from that, and police, prosecutor, judge and politician all sing in unison, "We exist to jail the pot smoker - prison for the cannabis toker!" 
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Comment #2 posted by dongenero on December 12, 2007 at 08:39:06 PT

Gov. Douglas....the punisher
Wants to punish , punish , punish.Over a plant. Just keep sending tax dollars. Can prohibitionists win if they just make a SURGE for another 70 years? Sure, they can win trillions in tax dollars for another 70 years and another how many million citizens' lives needlessly wrecked.Prohibitionists are part of the problem not part of the solution.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on December 12, 2007 at 08:31:42 PT

News Article from Oregon
King Bonghttp://wweek.com/editorial/3405/10114/
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