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The child’s teacher at Hanover Elementary School told investigators that she witnessed the child pulling out nine individually wrapped bags of marijuana out of his jacket pocket, then announce that he had snacks.  The bags reportedly had been prepared ready for sale.

The school’s superintendent, Mark Benigni, said that the children in the classroom did not get to see the drugs, because a teacher, who was in close proximity, was able to quickly take the bags away from the child.  Benigni told the Record-Journal:

Our concern is for the 4-year-old student who had no knowledge of what he was bringing to school, Benigni told reporters. The student is safe, and we will continue to ensure a safe learning environment to all of our students.

Law enforcement and DCF are investigating the case and there have been no arrests made thus far.  According to Benigni (pictured left), and the school’s principal Miguel Cardona (pictured right), it is crystal clear that the child is certainly not at fault.  Investigators have identified the child’s mother but no information has been released to the press.

News One spoke to renowned pediatrician Jennifer Shu, M.D., co-author of the book “Heading Home with Your Newborn” regarding the ingestion of the drug and its effects on children.  “If the children would have ingested any of the marijuana the effects can be similar to smoking it which include relaxation, sleepiness, sluggishness, red eyes and a dry mouth, even though with ingestion, the onset of effects is usually slower than with smoking. There may also be a fast heart rate, increase in blood pressure, and an increase in a child’s rate of breathing. If the marijuana is mixed with other drugs, there may be a chance of seizures, stroke and sudden death. Children are likely to be more sensitive than adults to the effects of marijuana and other drugs since they are smaller.”

While the incident is being investigated, the superintendent plans on sending out an alert about the incident to all parents so that they can dialogue with their children about safeguards while in school.   

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There has been no approval from the hip-hop power couple, but none of the dispensaries have received legal notice as of yet.

A day after the Jay-Z and Beyonce’s baby was born, Jay-Z released a song, titled “Glory,” for free download. The Brooklyn rapper touches on his love for his wife and newborn, and the baby girl’s cries can be heard in the background.

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The results, from one of the largest and longest studies on the health effects of marijuana, are hazier for heavy users — those who smoke two or more joints daily for several years. The data suggest that using marijuana that often might cause a decline in lung function, but there weren’t enough heavy users among the 5,000 young adults in the study to draw firm conclusions.

Still, the authors recommended “caution and moderation when marijuana use is considered.”

Marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law although some states allow its use for medical purposes.

The study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham was released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings echo results in some smaller studies that showed while marijuana contains some of the same toxic chemicals as tobacco, it does not carry the same risks for lung disease.

It’s not clear why that is so, but it’s possible that the main active ingredient in marijuana, a chemical known as THC, makes the difference. THC causes the “high” that users feel. It also helps fight inflammation and may counteract the effects of more irritating chemicals in the drug, said Dr. Donald Tashkin, a marijuana researcher and an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Tashkin was not involved in the new study.

Study co-author Dr. Stefan Kertesz said there are other aspects of marijuana that may help explain the results.

Unlike cigarette smokers, marijuana users tend to breathe in deeply when they inhale a joint, which some researchers think might strengthen lung tissue. But the common lung function tests used in the study require the same kind of deep breathing that marijuana smokers are used to, so their good test results might partly reflect lots of practice, said Kertesz, a drug abuse researcher and preventive medicine specialist at the Alabama university.

The study authors analyzed data from participants in a 20-year federally funded health study in young adults that began in 1985. Their analysis was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The study randomly enrolled 5,115 men and women aged 18 through 30 in four cities: Birmingham, Chicago, Oakland, Calif., and Minneapolis. Roughly equal numbers of blacks and whites took part, but no other minorities. Participants were periodically asked about recent marijuana or cigarette use and had several lung function tests during the study.

Overall, about 37 percent reported at least occasional marijuana use, and most users also reported having smoked cigarettes; 17 percent of participants said they’d smoked cigarettes but not marijuana. Those results are similar to national estimates.

On average, cigarette users smoked about 9 cigarettes daily, while average marijuana use was only a joint or two a few times a month — typical for U.S. marijuana users, Kertesz said.

The authors calculated the effects of tobacco and marijuana separately, both in people who used only one or the other, and in people who used both. They also considered other factors that could influence lung function, including air pollution in cities studied.

The analyses showed pot didn’t appear to harm lung function, but cigarettes did. Cigarette smokers’ test scores worsened steadily during the study. Smoking marijuana as often as one joint daily for seven years, or one joint weekly for 20 years was not linked with worse scores. Very few study participants smoked more often than that.

Like cigarette smokers, marijuana users can develop throat irritation and coughs, but the study didn’t focus on those. It also didn’t examine lung cancer, but other studies haven’t found any definitive link between marijuana use and cancer.

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The TSA found my weed and let me keep it. They just left me a note. “C’mon Son”. Lol

The TSA has been under scrutiny recently over overly aggressive and intrusive searches but in this case it seems they showed some tolerance and leniency.

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Police say they found $100,000 in his car and an additional 100 pounds of marijuana at his apartment.

TMZ reports:

Police say Hopkins told them he got involved in the drug deal to provide a nice Christmas for his family.

Hopkins is being held on $35,000 bond. If convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison.

Read More At TMZ

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The findings were based on a survey of 47,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders conducted by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

One of every 15 high school seniors reported smoking pot on a daily or near daily basis, the highest rate since 1981.

One of every nine high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana, sometimes called Spice or K2, within the previous 12 months.

Marijuana use rose among 10th- and 12th-graders, the study said. None of the changes was large enough to be statistically significant, “but they all continue the pattern of a gradual rise,” the study said. There was a “non-significant decrease” in the percentage of eighth-graders who reported using pot within the past year.

The percentage of teens saying they see “great risk” in using marijuana generally has dropped in recent years.

“One thing we’ve learned over the years is that when young people come to see a drug as dangerous, they’re less likely to use it,” Lloyd Johnston, the study’s principal investigator, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “That helps to explain why marijuana right now is rising, because the proportion of kids who see it as dangerous has been declining.”

The study said marijuana use among teens rose in 2011 for the fourth straight year after considerable decline in the preceding decade.

The survey found 36.4 percent of 12th-graders reported using marijuana in the past year, compared to 31.7 percent in the 2007 survey. Usage was at 28.8 percent for 10th-graders and 12.5 percent for eighth-graders within the previous 12 months, according to the 2011 survey.

The synthetic drug survey question was asked for the first time this year. Fake marijuana, sometimes sold in drug paraphernalia shops and on the Internet as incense, contains organic leaves coated with chemicals that provide a marijuana-like high when smoked.

A Drug Enforcement Administration emergency order banning the sale of five chemicals used in herbal blends to make synthetic marijuana took effect March 1. The synthetics are among the many that would be banned under a bill passed in the U.S. House earlier this month. Many states also have their own laws banning the sale of synthetic marijuana.

Researchers say next year’s survey will reveal more about the effectiveness of the control measures, since much of this year’s survey covered a response period before the federal action took effect.

White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske called on parents to get involved to help stop the use of synthetic marijuana.

“It’s not in the vocabulary of parents, and they need to be aware of it so that when they have that conversation about substance abuse that they are knowledgeable and they talk about this,” he told the AP.

Alcohol use continued a trend of decline dating to the 1980s and hit a historic low for the survey, which began in the 1970s for 12th-graders. Forty percent of 12th-graders reported drinking in the previous 30 days during the 2011 survey, compared to 54 percent in 1991. Drinking also declined significantly at lower grade levels.

Other drugs showing some evidence of decline in use this year include cocaine, crack cocaine and inhalants.

The Monitoring the Future survey also shows that a decline in teen cigarette smoking resumed this year. The number of those who reported smoking in the previous 30 days for the three grades combined was 11.7 percent, compared to 12.8 percent in 2010.

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The secret passage linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana – equipped with a hydraulic lift, electric rail carts and a wooden staircase – highlights an emerging seasonal trend. For three years, authorities have found sophisticated tunnels on the U.S.-Mexico border shortly before the winter holidays in what officials speculate is an attempt by drug smugglers to take advantage of Mexico’s fall marijuana harvest.

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Two weeks ago, authorities seized 17 tons of marijuana in connection with a tunnel linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana. Authorities began investigating that passage in June, according to court filings.

Tuesday’s find netted more than 32 tons of marijuana – nearly 17 tons at a warehouse in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area, about 11 tons inside a truck in the Los Angeles area and 4 tons in Mexico. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, it ranks as the second-largest pot bust in U.S. history if the drugs found on the Mexican side of the tunnel are counted and the third-largest without the Mexican stash.

As U.S. authorities heighten enforcement on land, tunnels have become an increasingly common way to smuggle enormous loads of marijuana. More than 70 passages have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years

Raids last November on two tunnels linking San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 52 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border. In early December 2009, authorities found an incomplete tunnel that stretched nearly 900 feet into San Diego from Tijuana, equipped with an elevator at the Mexican entrance.

Authorities say central Mexico’s marijuana harvest in early October presents drug cartels with a familiar challenge for any farmer: how to quickly get products to consumers.

“It’s a significant amount of inventory that the cartels need to move and they need to move it in the most expeditious and efficient way,” said Derek Benner, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. “It’s like any other business. You’ve got a pile of inventory that you need to get moving and generate profits.”

William Sherman, the DEA’s acting special agent in charge in San Diego, said drug traffickers also may go on a pre-Christmas smuggling push to give themselves a “little bit of hiatus” over the holidays to visit family in Mexico. DEA wiretaps tend to go quiet during the holidays, he said.

It’s unclear whether cartels are building the tunnels in time for the winter holidays or if that’s when authorities just happen to find them.

Some U.S. authorities are inclined to think the cartels are timing construction for the fall harvest, based on their belief that this year’s two major finds in San Diego and one last year in San Diego were discovered shortly after they were completed. Heightened activity around building and operating the tunnels drew suspicion and exposed smugglers to getting caught.

It takes roughly six months to a year to build a tunnel, authorities say. Workers use shovels and pickaxes to slowly dig through the soil, sleeping in the warehouse until the job is done. Sometimes they use pneumatic tools.

The tunnel discovered Tuesday was about 40 feet deep, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high. It featured a wooden staircase at the U.S. entrance, located inside a large, white building with a long line of trucking docks.

The Mexican warehouse was on the same block as a federal police office and sits next to a runway at Tijuana’s main airport. It featured a hydraulic lift at the tunnel entrance that dropped about 30 feet. Its carpeted floors were found littered with garbage and dirty linen. The kitchen was stocked with tortillas and oranges, with a window painted black.

Six men were charged in federal courts in Southern California with conspiracy to distribute marijuana. No arrests were made in Mexico.

U.S. authorities linked last November’s find to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, that country’s most-wanted drug lord. U.S. and Mexican authorities declined to link Tuesday’s discovery to a specific cartel.

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California Votes Down Marijuana Legalization Measure Prop 19

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The Huffington Post reports:

“As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem,” wrote Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in a statement released late on Friday. “We also recognize that legalizing marijuana would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.” “It’s maddening that the administration wants to continue failed prohibition polices that do nothing to reduce drug use and succeed only in funneling billions of dollars into the pockets of the cartels and gangs that control the illegal market,” said Franklin, who serves as executive director of advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, in a statement released Saturday.

Read More At The Huffington Post

“We’re already dealing with a high amount of drug abuse and drug activity and trying to raise children so they don’t think using illegal substances is acceptable,” said City Councilmember Darius Pridgen. “So to have a licensed store sell candy to kids that depicts an illegal substance is just ignorant and irresponsible.”

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The “Pothead Ring Pots,” ”Pothead Lollipops” and bagged candy are distributed to retail stores by the novelty supply company Kalan LP of the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdowne. It also wholesales online for $1 for a lollipop and $1.50 for a package of three rings.

Company president Andrew Kalan said the candy, on the market six to nine months and in 1,000 stores around the country, promotes the legalization of marijuana.

“It does pretty well,” he said.

“This is the first complaint I’ve heard,” Kalan said, “and people are usually not shy. I’m actually surprised this is the first.”

An irate parent brought the candy to Pridgen’s attention, hoping the city could apply pressure and get it out of stores.

Pridgen and Councilmember Demone Smith displayed the candy, along with fake marijuana known as “K2″ that’s also sold in some stores at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, where Pridgen said he’d refuse to grant licenses to stores in his district that planned to sell the merchandise and would seek to embarrass stores that carry it. The synthetic marijuana is sold as incense but is smoked.

Synthetic marijuana typically involves dried plant material sprayed with one of several chemical compounds. The products contain organic leaves coated with chemicals that provide a marijuana-like high when smoked. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently used its emergency powers to outlaw five chemicals found in synthetic marijuana.

It appeared Pridgen’s message had gotten out by Thursday. A check of about a half-dozen stores in Buffalo, often in impoverished neighborhoods where real drugs are a festering problem, turned up none of the controversial candy.

The bags of “Pothead Sour Gummy Candy,” and lollipops shaped like marijuana leaves appear to be a recent addition to the inventory of some corner stores. The sour apple-flavored candy contains nothing illegal, but with its marijuana leaf, the word “Legalize” and a joint-smoking, peace sign-waving user on the packaging, critics say it’s not only in poor taste but an invitation to try the real thing.

“It’s the whole idea that it promotes drugs and the idea that, here, you’ll look cool if you use this — which is what gets these kids in trouble in the very first place,” said Jodie Altman, program supervisor at Renaissance House, a treatment center for drug- and alcohol-addicted youth.

Charmaine Rosendary, 36, of Buffalo shook her head when she saw a picture of the package.

“That’s not right. It’s just promoting marijuana,” she said while buying produce Friday at a Buffalo market. She said she wouldn’t allow her five teenagers, ages 15-19, to have it.

“I would not buy it or give them money to buy it,” she said. “It looks like weed.”

It’s not the first legal product to come under fire.

In 2008, the Hershey Co. stopped making Ice Breakers Pacs in response to criticism that the mints looked too much like illegal street drugs. Police in Philadelphia complained that the packets, nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside, closely resembled tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell powdered street drugs.

Candy cigarettes and fruity or energy drink-infused alcoholic beverages have been criticized for targeting young people. And in 1997, the Federal Trade Commission said the iconic Joe Camel cigarette ads and packaging violated federal law because they appealed to kids under 18. The tobacco company, R.J. Reynolds, eventually shelved the caricature.

A spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy said advocates for legalization who claim marijuana is benign are not supported by science.

“Trivializing drug use is a threat to public health because it erodes perceptions of harm among young people,” said Rafael Lemaitre.

Kalan said his company carries several products with the marijuana leaf and “legalize” message to accommodate growing demand in the movement to legalize marijuana.

“We don’t advocate for a political position. We just look at what the marketplace wants and respond to it,” the wholesaler said. “It’s just candy… It’s sour apple flavor, it doesn’t claim to be pot in disguise or anything like that.”

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BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Mississippi Department of Transportation law enforcement officers say a tractor-trailer they stopped this week was hauling about $7 million worth of marijuana.

The Sun Herald reports  the MDOT announced Thursday they stopped the 2005 Peterbuilt tractor and van trailer Tuesday morning at the Interstate 10 inspection station in southern Mississippi for a routine weight, safety and paperwork check. Officers found 126 plastic wrapped, 55-pound bundles of marijuana that together weighed about 7,000 pounds.

MDOT officials say they, along with officers of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, are investigating where the marijuana came from and where it was going.

Charges against the driver were pending.

Despite the fact that these parents face little or no criminal charges, New York’s child welfare agency is pursuing these incidents and in some cases taking children from their homes.

In one particular case a father lost custody of his 1-year-old daughter over a $5 bag of marijuana.

“Drug use itself is not child abuse or neglect, but it can put children in danger of neglect or abuse,” Michael Fagan, a spokesman for the Administration for Children’s Services said. “We think the argument that use of cocaine, heroin or marijuana by a parent of young children should not be looked into or should simply be ignored is just plain wrong.”

Read more at the New York Times.

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Williams instituted the Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program in June 2010, which allows offenders with less than 30 grams of marijuana topay $200 for a 3-hour class on drug abuse.

Prior to the SAM program, offenders faced 30 days’ probation or jail time and a $500 fine.

“We were spending thousands of dollars for when someone possessed $10 or $15 worth of weed,” Williams said of the way marijuana cases were prosecuted when he was elected. “It just didn’t make any sense.”

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Cops said customers who wanted their subs with a side of green would say the password while ordering and then drop $10 into Hunt’s tip jar.

“The ‘extra meat’ was a baggie of marijuana that Hunt slipped into the sandwich bag,” Sheriff Ken Mascara told Central Florida’s News 13.

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Voting 8-1, the justices reversed a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that threw out the evidence gathered when officers entered Hollis King’s apartment.

The court said there was no violation of King’s constitutional rights because the police acted reasonably. Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

She said:

May police, who could pause to gain the approval of a neutral magistrate, dispense with the need to get a warrant by themselves creating exigent circumstances? I would answer no, as did the Kentucky Supreme Court. The urgency must exist, I would rule, when the police come on the scene, not subsequent to their arrival, prompted by their own conduct.

How “secure” do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?

Officers knocked on King’s door in Lexington and thought they heard noises that indicated whoever was inside was trying to get rid of incriminating evidence.

Justice Samuel Alito said in his opinion for the court that people have no obligation to respond to the knock or, if they do open the door, allow the police to come in. In those cases, officers who wanted to gain entry would have to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant.

But Alito said, “Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame.”

In her dissent, Ginsburg said her colleagues were giving police an easy way to routinely avoid getting warrants in drug cases.

“Police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant,” she said.

The case concerned exceptions to the Fourth Amendment requirement that police need a warrant to enter a home.

The issue was whether warrantless entry was justified after the officers’ knock on the door triggered a reaction inside that sounded like the destruction of evidence.

An odd set of facts led to Monday’s ruling.

Police were only at King’s apartment building because they were chasing a man who sold cocaine to a police informant. The man entered King’s building and ducked into an apartment. The officers heard a door slam in a hallway, but by the time they were able to look down it, they saw only two closed doors.

They didn’t know which one the suspect had gone through, but, smelling burnt pot, chose the apartment on the left.

In fact, the suspect had gone into the apartment on the right. Police eventually arrested him, too, but prosecutors later dropped charges against him for reasons that were not explained in court papers.

In other action Monday, the court refused to revive a lawsuit challenging a controversial post-Sept. 11 CIA program that flew terrorism suspects to secret prisons. The appeal asked the court to examine two much-disputed aspects of the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, “the extraordinary rendition” program that sent the suspects to secret prisons and the “state secrets privilege.”

The high court has refused several other appeals based on the government’s invocation of state secrets to derail lawsuits.

The case involved five terrorism suspects who were arrested shortly after 9/11 and said they were flown by a Boeing Co. subsidiary to prisons around the world where they were tortured. A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco cited national security risks in dismissing the men’s case last year.

The justices also turned aside a challenge from atheist Michael Newdow to the use of the words “so help me God” in the presidential oath of office.

In a case involving the federal whistleblower law, the justices voted 5-3 in ruling that information acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request cannot be used to trigger a False Claims Act lawsuit.

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Reporters at Bin Laden’s million-dollar hideout discovered small plots of marijuana growing in the deserted lots on the compound’s perimeter.

The dope plants were planted on three sides of the compound, alongside some less sexy crops such as cabbage and potatoes, CNN reported Tuesday.

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WNYC has a report on how the NYPD gets away with illegally arresting people for marijuana and gets away with it.

Rucker (Photo left) said her office throws out 10 to 15 misdemeanor marijuana cases everyday because the police paperwork states the marijuana was actually not in public view. These cases she chalks up to honest mistakes. But if a cop lies in his report – and fails to mention that the marijuana was actually found in someone’s clothing – Rucker said there’s no way for her office to know that without a further investigation.

That creates a substantial problem for defendants who were wrongfully arrested. Rucker said in most cases, prosecutors don’t even interview arresting officers until after a defendant is arraigned – but she said too many defendants plead guilty right at their first court appearances. Therefore, Rucker said defendants who think they’ve been illegally searched or otherwise improperly arrested have to stand up for themselves right at the beginning of a case.

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Robert Watson, a Republican from East Greenwich, was stopped at a police checkpoint Friday and charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and driving under the influence, East Haven police said.

Watson drew fire in February when he gave a speech to the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce in which he said facetiously that lawmakers had their priorities right “if you are a Guatemalan gay man who likes to gamble and smokes marijuana.”

He later said he was using humor to express concern that some issues were dominating the legislative agenda at the expense of economic issues.

A police report on Friday’s traffic stop said Watson smelled of alcohol and marijuana and performed poorly on sobriety tests. An officer found a bag of suspected marijuana and a wooden pipe in Watson’s pocket. An alcohol breath test performed at the police station determined that Watson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.05 percent, below the state’s 0.08 limit.

Watson was released on $500 bond. He faces a May 11 court date.

Watson issued a statement in which he denied he was driving under the influence. He said he was in Connecticut to help a friend move and was driving home from dinner when he was stopped.

“Trace evidence of marijuana was discovered and I was charged with operating under the influence, a charge I vehemently deny,” Watson said in the statement.

After his February speech, Guatemalan community leaders called on Watson to apologize, but Watson said an apology wasn’t warranted.

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WOBURN, MA – Chanequa N. Campbell, the Harvard student who was implicated in the 2009 murder of Justin Cosby on Harvard campus has testified against Jabrai Copney, the boyfriend of her friend, Brittany Smith, who is accused of killing Cosby in a drug deal gone bad, has admitted to selling cocaine and marijuana while at Harvard.

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The Harvard Crimson reports:

On cross-examination, Campbell acknowledged that she sold marijuana and cocaine during her time at Harvard……..

“Did he indicate what his intention was with regard to this marijuana?” Bennett asked.

“Yes, he was gonna rob him,” Campbell replied.

On the day of the shooting, Campbell said, “[Copney] told me that his boys were coming up from New York and that stuff was going down…. Bliz [Jiggetts] was coming up with a hammer.”

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Atlanta — Rapper Gucci Mane, real name Radrick Davis, was arrested at the home of rapper, Waka Flocka, real name, Juaquin James. TMZ is reporting that weapons and marijuana have been found on the premises and that prostitution may be involved. Waka Flocka’s mom, Debra Antney told TMZ that the police were looking for evidence of gangs and drugs. Wacka Flocka has not been arrested but sources say he is being sought by police.

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The spirited campaign over Proposition 19 pitted the state’s political and law enforcement establishment against determined activists seeking to end the prohibition of pot.

It was by far the highest-profile of the 160 ballot measures being decided in 37 states. Other topics included abortion, tax cuts and health care reform.

On a night of conservative advances in much of the country, Massachusetts voters spurned a chance to cut their taxes — rejecting a proposal to lower the state sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent. Critics said the cut would have forced the state to slash $2.5 billion in services, including local aid to cities and towns.

In Colorado, voters decisively defeated an anti-abortion “personhood” amendment — similar to one rejected in 2008 — that would have given unborn fetuses human rights in the state constitution.

California’s marijuana proposal would have allowed adults 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of pot, consume it in nonpublic places as long as no children were present, and grow it in small private plots. It would have authorized local governments to permit commercial pot cultivation, as well as the sale and use of marijuana at licensed establishments.

Proponents pitched it as a sensible, though unprecedented, experiment that would provide much-needed revenue for the cash-strapped state, dent the drug-related violence in Mexico by causing pot prices to plummet, and reduce marijuana arrests that they say disproportionately target minority youth.

However, every major newspaper, both political parties, the two candidates for governor and all but a handful of leading politicians came out against it.

“Today, Californians recognized that legalizing marijuana will not make our citizens healthier, solve California’s budget crisis, or reduce drug-related violence in Mexico,” said the White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske.

Instead, he said, legalization would lead to more addiction, driving accidents and emergency room admissions.

Federal officials also said they would have continued enforcing laws against marijuana possession and sales had the measure passed.

Prop 19 supporters blamed the outcome on the older, more conservative leanings of voters who participate in midterm elections and pledged to try again in two years.

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A Chester County judge offered 29-year-old Makeda Jahnesta Marley a choice: a shorter prison term or a long stint on probation. She opted for the latter and risks being jailed if she violates her probation terms.

Marley was arrested in 2008 after police say they found her removing plants from her basement when officers arrived on a domestic-dispute call. She pleaded guilty in September.

Marley’s probation calls for her to undergo random drug tests and stay away from drug users.

Her attorney, Thomas Schindler, tells the West Chester Daily Local News that won’t be a problem. He called growing marijuana an “aberration.”

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The 11-year-old student is in 5th grade at a an elementary school in Matthews. Police say he brought his parents’ marijuana cigarettes to school when he reported them.

Matthews Police say he reported his parents after a lesson about marijuana was delivered by a police officer who is part of the D.A.R.E. program, which teaches kids about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

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A rap mogul who helped launch Jay-Z’s career was busted Friday with 42 other people when the feds rolled up a drug ring that controlled the marijuana market in New York City.

Dubbed operation “Green Venom,” the feds rousted Kareem “Biggs” Burke, who co-founded of Roc-A-Fella Records with Shawn (Jay-Z) Carter and Damon Dash, from his home in North Bergen, N.J.

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Yesterday outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 1449 — which reduces adult marijuana possession charges from a criminal misdemeanor to a civil infraction.

Senate Bill 1449 amends the California Health and Safety Code so that the adult possession of up to 28.5 grams of marijuana is classified as an infraction, punishable by no more than a $100 fine — no court appearance, no court costs, and no criminal record.

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Rihanna and Drake get cozy at after-party [from Hellobeautiful.com]

CNET is reporting that cell phone provider, T-Mobile is being sued for censoring marijuana texts via a service called EZ Texting.

In a case with free speech and Net neutrality implications, T-Mobile has been sued by a text message marketing company for allegedly blocking access to the T-Mobile network because of a client that provided information on medical marijuana.

In its suit, Ez Texting says that last week, T-Mobile cut off access to its network after learning of an Ez client of which T-Mobile “did not approve”: legalmarijuanadispensary.com, aka WeedMaps, which describes itself as “a community where medical marijuana patients connect with other patients in their geographic region to freely discuss and review local cannabis co-operatives, dispensaries, medical doctors, and delivery services.”

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Jessica Gamble was indicted for corruption with drugs in Cincinatti, Ohio after footage of her 2-year-old daughter smoking marijuana surfaced on the internet. She was reported to the Ohio Department Of Job And Family Services after somebody saw the clip of her watching her daughter smoke marijuana, while giving her advice.

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Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative, picked up the support Thursday of a national organization that represents African American police officers, as the campaign for legalization continues to try to build support in the black community and among law enforcement officials.

The National Black Police Assn., which has about 15,000 members, is the second African American organization to back the measure. The California NAACP has also endorsed it, citing the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African Americans caught with marijuana.

Read more at LATimes

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WASHINGTON – There should be no such thing as too poor to buy pot if you live in D.C., at least if the marijuana is for a medical condition.

That’s part of the conclusion of a new law enacted in the nation’s capital earlier this year. The medical marijuana law allows people to legally obtain the drug for medical reasons. But the law also includes a provision different from the 14 other states with medical marijuana laws, requiring the drug to be provided at a discount to poor residents. Who will get the reduced-price marijuana and how much it will cost, however, is still being worked out.

City officials say they plan to publish their first draft of regulations implementing the law on Friday. Patients aren’t expected to be able to purchase medical marijuana in the city until 2011.

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CANTON, Ga. (AP) — A Cherokee County man found a hidden treasure in a painting he bought at an auction: four pounds of marijuana.

Gordon Clement, 80, discovered the pot stashed inside of the painting, which he bought at a post office auction about five years ago. He found the drugs last weekend when he tried to sell the artwork at another auction.

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Clement planned to ask $25 for the piece. Police said the marijuana was worth about $4,800.

Alarmed, he called his lawyer and turned the painting over to authorities.

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From Time.com:

Since the days of Reefer Madness, scientists have sought to understand the complex connection between marijuana and psychosis. Cannabis can cause short-term psychotic experiences, such as hallucinations and paranoia, even in healthy people, but researchers have also long noted a link between marijuana use and the chronic psychotic disorder, schizophrenia.

Repeatedly, studies have found that people with schizophrenia are about twice as likely to smoke pot as those who are unaffected. Conversely, data suggest that those who smoke cannabis are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as nonsmokers. One widely publicized 2007 review of the research even concluded that trying marijuana just once was associated with a 40% increase in risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

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From NYTimes.com:

The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.

No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.

Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.

In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.

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Oakland Legalizes Marijuana Farming

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From Reuters:

The city of Oakland, California on Tuesday legalized large-scale marijuana cultivation for medical use and will issue up to four permits for “industrial” cultivation starting next year.

The move by the San Francisco Bay Area city aims to bring medical marijuana cultivation into the open and allow the city to profit by taxing those who grow it.

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FROM NYTimes.com:

Ron Allen says he knows all too well the ravages of drug addiction.

“I was a pastor on crack cocaine, sir,” said Mr. Allen, who says he has been sober for 11 years and now identifies himself as the bishop of the International Faith Based Coalition here. “Drugs have no religious preference.”

And while crack cocaine laid him low, Mr. Allen says his first drug of choice was marijuana. So it is that Mr. Allen and a cadre of other black pastors, priests and other religious leaders have bonded together in recent weeks to fight what they see as a potentially devastating blow to their communities: Proposition 19, the California ballot measure that would tax and regulate marijuana.

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STUDY: Marijuana Prices Would Drop By 76 Percent If Legalized

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California’s medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the “Wal-Marting” of weed.

The Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four production plants where pot would be grown, packaged and processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.

The move, and fledgling efforts in other California cities to sanction cannabis cultivation for the first time, has some marijuana advocates worried that regulations intended to bring order to the outlaw industry and new revenues to cash-strapped local governments could drive small “mom and pop” growers out of business. They complain that industrial-scale gardens would harm the environment, reduce quality and leave consumers with fewer strains from which to choose.

“Nobody wants to see the McDonald’s-ization of cannabis,” Dan Scully, one of the 400 “patient-growers” who supply Oakland’s largest retail medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, grumbled after a City Council committee gave the blueprint preliminary approval last week. “I would compare it to how a small business feels about shutting down its business and going to work at Wal-Mart. Who would be attracted to that?”

The proposal’s supporters, including entrepreneurs more disposed to neckties than tie-dye, counter that unregulated growers working in covert warehouses or houses are tax scofflaws more likely to wreak environmental havoc, be motivated purely by profit and produce inferior products.

“The large-scale grow facilities that are being proposed with this ordinance will create hundreds of jobs for the city,” said Ryan Indigo Warman, who teaches pot-growing techniques at iGrow, a hydroponics store whose owners plan to apply for one of the four permits. “The ordinance is good for Oakland, and anyone who says otherwise is only protecting their own interests.”

Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid, who introduced the plan, have pitched it largely as a public safety measure.

The Oakland fire department blames a dramatic rise in the number of electrical fires between 2006 and 2009 in part to marijuana being grown indoors with improperly wired fans and lights. The police department says eight robberies, seven burglaries and two murders have been linked to marijuana grows in the last two years.

Reid and Kaplan also are open about their desire to have the city, which last week laid off 80 police officers to save money, cash in on the medical marijuana industry it has allowed to thrive.

Oakland’s four retail marijuana stores did $28 million in business last year, and if sales remain constant, the city would get $1.5 million this year from a dispensary business tax that voters adopted last summer. A similar tax on wholesale pot sales from the permitted grow sites to the dispensaries would bring in more than twice that amount, the city administrator’s office has estimated.

“Allowing medical cannabis and medical cannabis products to be produced in a responsible, aboveboard and legitimate way will be a benefit to the patients, to the workers and to the people of Oakland,” Kaplan said.

Adding to the anxiety of growers – and the impetus Oakland officials have to get the grow tax in place – is a November state ballot measure to legalize marijuana possession for adult recreational use and authorize local governments to license and tax non-medical pot sales.

If it passes, Proposition 19 is expected to feed the state’s hearty appetite for marijuana. Backers of creating the four big indoor gardens say the plan is not dependent on legalization, but would benefit from it.

“The reality is, this is an issue that is going to grow. I would like it to grow here. I would like it to be Oakland business and not the tobacco industry,” Councilwoman Jean Quan said.

Regulating the supply side of the business would represent another turning point in California’s complicated, 14-year-old relationship with medical marijuana. Although Maine, New Mexico and Rhode Island license nonprofit groups to produce and distribute cannabis, California’s law is silent on cultivation other than for individual use.

Even as hundreds of storefront pot dispensaries, marijuana delivery services and THC-laced food products have flourished, the question of where they get their stashes remains murky: Inquiring is considered as impolite as asking someone’s income or age.

Industry insiders usually say they rely on a variety of sources, including farmers who grow outdoors in the far northern end of the state, contractors who run sophisticated indoor operations, and customers who grow their own and sell the surplus.

Officials in Berkeley and Long Beach also are moving take the mystery out of medical marijuana production.

The Berkeley City Council last week approved a measure for the November ballot that would authorize the city to license and tax six pot cultivation sites. Companies running the facilities must agree to give away some pot to low-income users, employ organic gardening methods to the extent possible and offset in some way the large amount of electricity needed to grow weed.

Long Beach officials want to reduce the amount of medical marijuana being sold in the city that isn’t grown there.

The city is in the process of trying to whittle its more than 90 dispensaries down to no more than 35 marijuana collectives through a lottery. License winners will be required to grow either at their retail sites or elsewhere in Long Beach and to open their books to prove they aren’t growing more than enough to supply their members, said Lori Ann Farrell, Long Beach’s director of financial management.

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From AssociatedPress:

New Jersey is getting closer to going into the medical marijuana business.

A key state senator says he now supports the idea of having the state’s supply of medical marijuana initially grown by Rutgers University.

Democrat Nicholas Scutari says he is now working with the administration of Gov. Chris Christie to modify a law to put the novel system in place.

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SAN FRANCISCO – A new study says legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in California could sharply drive down prices for the drug and possibly undercut the tax windfall that supporters have touted.

The study published Wednesday by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center says “considerable uncertainty” surrounds the state ballot initiative. It would allow adults, 21 and over, to possess an ounce of marijuana and cities and counties to license and tax commercial pot sales.

The authors predict that retail marijuana prices could drop from $375 an ounce under the state’s current medical marijuana law to as low as $38 per ounce.

According to the RAND analysis, consumers would pay more than that — about $91 an ounce — once taxes imposed by local governments are figured in. That is a 76% drop in price.

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From Capitol Weekly

On Monday, the California State Conference of the NAACP announced its “unconditional endorsement” of a November initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

On Tuesday, the NAACP said why. According to a just-released study by the Drug Policy Alliance, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites — even though statistically, blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites. The Alliance, a national advocacy group, favors treatment rather than arrest or imprisonment for people suffering from drug dependency.

Meanwhile, a prominent African-American opponent of the initiative accused the group’s leader, Alice Huffman, of selling out “to the highest bidder” with the endorsement.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A ban on an herbal mixture that gives a marijuana-like high when smoked but is sold as herbal incense won final legislative passage Monday and heads to the governor’s desk.

The bill by Rep. Ricky Templet, R-Gretna, would prohibit the manufacture, sale and possession of the product that goes by names like “K2,” ”Voodoo,” ”FIYA” and “Spice” and would levy penalties like those attached to the use and sale of marijuana.

The mixture of herbs and spices is sprayed with a synthetic compound chemically similar to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and it’s commonly sold in head shops and convenience stores. Police officers say people roll it up in joints or inhale it from pipes.

Packages bear the warning: “not for human consumption.” But supporters of Templet’s proposal said teenagers are getting high from the product, knowing its effects are similar to marijuana.

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The ban won final passage Monday with a 32-0 vote of the state Senate. Other states have passed similar bans.

Templet and other backers of a ban of the “synthetic cannabinoids” offered anecdotal complaints from police and parents, but no studies of the effects of the product.

Anyone convicted of manufacturing, distributing or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute the herb and synthetic mixture would face a jail sentence of up to five years.

Possession would carry a penalty of up to six months in jail on a first offense, up to five years on a second offense and up to 20 years on a third or subsequent offense. Possession of 60 pounds or more would bring a heftier penalty, with a minimum mandatory jail sentence.

Templet’s bill carries exceptions for any dosage of the banned herbs and spices that is legally obtainable as a homeopathic drug recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and for anyone growing the plants for landscaping or decorative purposes only.

Three proposals to ban synthetic marijuana have been moving through the Louisiana Legislature. Templet’s bill was the first to get final passage.

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From TheIndyChannel.com

INDIANAPOLIS — An NBA player and former Marion basketball standout has been implicated in an Indianapolis drug investigation.

According to a probable cause affidavit, a trusted police informant identified Memphis Grizzlie player Zach Randolph as a major marijuana supplier in Indianapolis, 6News’ Jack Rinehart reported.

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MEXICO CITY — After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked.

“In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. “Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.”

This week President Obama promised to “reduce drug use and the great damage it causes” with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.

“Nothing happens overnight,” he said. “We’ve never worked the drug problem holistically. We’ll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction.”

His predecessor, John P. Walters, takes issue with that.

Walters insists society would be far worse today if there had been no War on Drugs. Drug abuse peaked nationally in 1979 and, despite fluctuations, remains below those levels, he says. Judging the drug war is complicated: Records indicate marijuana and prescription drug abuse are climbing, while cocaine use is way down. Seizures are up, but so is availability.

“To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven’t made any difference is ridiculous,” Walters said. “It destroys everything we’ve done. It’s saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It’s saying all these people’s work is misguided.”

___

In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.

“This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people,” Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: “Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”

His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it’s $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon’s amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

- $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico – and the violence along with it.

- $33 billion in marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have “risen steadily” since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

- $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

- $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

- $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse – “an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction” – cost the United States $215 billion a year.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.

“Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use,” Miron said, “but it’s costing the public a fortune.”

___

From the beginning, lawmakers debated fiercely whether law enforcement – no matter how well funded and well trained – could ever defeat the drug problem.

Then-Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who had his doubts, has since watched his worst fears come to pass.

“Look what happened. It’s an ongoing tragedy that has cost us a trillion dollars. It has loaded our jails and it has destabilized countries like Mexico and Colombia,” he said.

In 1970, proponents said beefed-up law enforcement could effectively seal the southern U.S. border and stop drugs from coming in. Since then, the U.S. used patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft – and even put up more than 1,000 miles of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh stretching from California to Texas.

None of that has stopped the drugs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy says about 330 tons of cocaine, 20 tons of heroin and 110 tons of methamphetamine are sold in the United States every year – almost all of it brought in across the borders. Even more marijuana is sold, but it’s hard to know how much of that is grown domestically, including vast fields run by Mexican drug cartels in U.S. national parks.

The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the United States and elsewhere. U.S. prosecutors declined to file charges in 7,482 drug cases last year, most because they simply didn’t have the time. That’s about one out of every four drug cases.

The United States has in recent years rounded up thousands of suspected associates of Mexican drug gangs, then turned some of the cases over to local prosecutors who can’t make the charges stick for lack of evidence. The suspects are then sometimes released, deported or acquitted. The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t even keep track of what happens to all of them.

In Mexico, traffickers exploit a broken justice system. Investigators often fail to collect convincing evidence – and are sometimes assassinated when they do. Confessions are beaten out of suspects by frustrated, underpaid police. Judges who no longer turn a blind eye to such abuse release the suspects in exasperation.

In prison, in the U.S. or Mexico, traffickers continue to operate, ordering assassinations and arranging distribution of their product even from solitary confinement in Texas and California. In Mexico, prisoners can sometimes even buy their way out.

The violence spans Mexico. In Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of drug violence in Mexico, 2,600 people were killed last year in cartel-related violence, making the city of 1 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, one of the world’s deadliest. Not a single person was prosecuted for homicide related to organized crime.

And then there’s the money.

The $320 billion annual global drug industry now accounts for 1 percent of all commerce on the planet.

A full 10 percent of Mexico’s economy is built on drug proceeds – $25 billion smuggled in from the United States every year, of which 25 cents of each $100 smuggled is seized at the border. Thus there’s no incentive for the kind of financial reform that could tame the cartels.

“For every drug dealer you put in jail or kill, there’s a line up to replace him because the money is just so good,” says Walter McCay, who heads the nonprofit Center for Professional Police Certification in Mexico City.

McCay is one of the 13,000 members of Medford, Mass.-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens and others who want to legalize and regulate all drugs.

A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a word about legalization, but a consensus is growing across the country that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like tobacco and alcohol.

California voters decide in November whether to legalize marijuana, and South Dakota will vote this fall on whether to allow medical uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states. The Obama administration says it won’t target marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws.

___

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans’ unquenching thirst for illegal drugs.

Kerlikowske agrees, and Obama has committed to doing just that.

And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.

“President Obama’s newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush’s, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “This despite Obama’s statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue.”

Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users.

About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.

“For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate,” said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. “Yet … it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget.”

Carnevale said the administration continues to substantially over-allocate funds to areas that research shows are least effective – interdiction and source-country programs – while under-allocating funds for treatment and prevention.

Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a “war” on drugs, frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they’ve found, in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical examinations. That program would get a mere $7.2 million under Obama’s budget.

“People will say that’s not enough. They’ll say the drug budget hasn’t shifted as much as it should have, and granted I don’t disagree with that,” Kerlikowske said. “We would like to do more in that direction.”

Fifteen years ago, when the government began telling doctors to ask their patients about their drug use during routine medical exams, it described the program as one of the most proven ways to intervene early with would-be addicts.

“Nothing happens overnight,” Kerlikowske said.

___

Until 100 years ago, drugs were simply a commodity. Then Western cultural shifts made them immoral and deviant, according to London School of Economics professor Fernanda Mena.

Religious movements led the crusades against drugs: In 1904, an Episcopal bishop returning from a mission in the Far East argued for banning opium after observing “the natives’ moral degeneration.” In 1914, The New York Times reported that cocaine caused blacks to commit “violent crimes,” and that it made them resistant to police bullets. In the decades that followed, Mena said, drugs became synonymous with evil.

Nixon drew on those emotions when he pressed for his War on Drugs.

“Narcotics addiction is a problem which afflicts both the body and the soul of America,” he said in a special 1971 message to Congress. “It comes quietly into homes and destroys children, it moves into neighborhoods and breaks the fiber of community which makes neighbors. We must try to better understand the confusion and disillusion and despair that bring people, particularly young people, to the use of narcotics and dangerous drugs.”

Just a few years later, a young Barack Obama was one of those young users, a teenager smoking pot and trying “a little blow when you could afford it,” as he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” When asked during his campaign if he had inhaled the pot, he replied: “That was the point.”

So why persist with costly programs that don’t work?

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, sitting down with the AP at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, paused for a moment at the question.

“Look,” she says, starting slowly. “This is something that is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody’s life, a young child’s life, a teenager’s life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.

“If you think about it in those terms, that they are fighting for lives – and in Mexico they are literally fighting for lives as well from the violence standpoint – you realize the stakes are too high to let go.”

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