Americans Get Pot From US Government

By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press
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EUGENE, Ore. -- Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.

She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.

The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and her physician, the troopers handed her back the card - and her pot.

For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.

Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs - maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.

Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.

At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.

The government has only continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said.
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.

They "won't acknowledge the fact that I do not have even one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."

Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.

Marijuana was legal for much of U.S. history and was recognized as a medicine in 1850. Opposition to it began to gather and, by 1936, 48 states had passed laws regulating pot, fearing it could lead to addiction.
Anti-marijuana literature and films, like the infamous "Reefer Madness," helped fan those fears. Eventually, pot was classified among the most harmful of drugs, meaning it had no usefulness and a high potential for addiction.

In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C. with marijuana because of his glaucoma - no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.

Eventually, the government created its program as part of a compromise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were a series of petitions from people like Musikka to join the program.

President George H.W. Bush's administration, getting tough on crime and drugs, stopped accepting new patients in 1992. Many of the patients who had qualified had AIDS, and they were dying.

The AP asked the agency that administers the program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for documents showing how much marijuana has been sent to patients since the first patient in 1976.

The agency supplied full data for 2005-2011, which showed that during that period the federal government distributed more than 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana to patients.

Agency officials said records related to the program before 2005 had been destroyed, but were able to provide scattered records for a couple of years in the early 2000s.

The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.

All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the operation, said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S. Among the studies are the pharmaceutical uses for synthetic mimics of pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC.

ElSohly said the four patients are getting pot with about 3 percent THC. He said 3 percent is about the range patients have preferred in blind tests.

The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints.

With Musikka living in Oregon, she is entitled to more legal pot than anyone in the nation because she's also enrolled in the state's medical marijuana program. Neither Iowa nor Florida has approved marijuana as a medicine, so the federal pot is the only legal access to the drug for the other three patients.

The three other people in the program range in ages and doses of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.

All four have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement. They're rock stars at pro-marijuana conferences, sought-after speakers and recognizable celebrities in the movement.

Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.

Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn't believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn't find it, Rosenfeld said.

So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: "It's working."

Globe Toking: Pot Around the World (Photos)

newsweek.com — A slideshow of how other countries in the world handle marijuana use. The list comprises countries that allow people to use the drug without facing jail time, mandatory drug treatment, or other penalties. 1 day 15 hr ago

Tony Avelar / The Christian Science Monitor-Getty Images

The most marijuana-friendly nations

By Ryan Tracy

Would Proposition 19, the proposal to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana use in California, have really generated the benefits that its proponents claimed? We may never know. But in theory, the answer is hazy for one main reason: Prop 19 would have gone further than any marijuana law on the books anywhere. The policy would have been revolutionary in the U.S., where marijuana is legal only for medical purposes—and that in just 13 states. But not even the world's pot meccas have legalized and taxed the drug from production to consumption, as Prop 19 would have allowed cities in California to do. Drug-policy experts, though, disagree on whether Prop 19 took the right approach. Do other parts of the world have a more sensible system? We've put together a slideshow of how some other countries in the world handle marijuana use.

Ed Oudenaarden / AFP-Getty Images

Netherlands

Not even Amsterdam, home of the Cannabis Cup, has laws like the ones Prop 19 proposes. Cannabis is illegal in the Netherlands, but the Dutch have decided to fight other types of crime and leave pot smokers, like this one smoking a pipe in Amsterdam, alone. Cops also don't bother "coffee shops" that sell marijuana as long as they follow certain rules, like not selling to minors and not selling "hard" drugs such as cocaine (the Dutch consider marijuana a "soft" drug). Prop 19 would make marijuana legal to use for people over the age of 21, though they could not smoke around minors, in public, or on school grounds. The Netherlands' system for regulating cannabis is similar to what Prop 19 proposes: individual municipalities decide how many marijuana retailers they will tolerate by issuing licenses. Licensed "coffee shops," in turn, have to pay taxes. Prop 19 would allow both those things in the state of California, but it would also permit and tax the commercial production of marijuana, sanctioning an industry that could create a huge supply of legal weed. Commercial marijuana production for recreational use is not legal anywhere on the planet.

Nacho Doce / Reuters-Landov

Portugal

Portugal decriminalized all drug use and possession in 2001, meaning that while using or possessing drugs is not legal, authorities don't punish users as they would a criminal offense, like robbery. When drug users are caught, they must appear before a three-person "dissuasion commission," which might mandate treatment if the person is a repeat offender. Drug dealers can still be prosecuted as criminals. A 2009 report by the libertarian Cato Institute found that drug use did not increase in Portugal after decriminalization, but deaths and disease related to drug use have decreased, perhaps because the government now offers better treatment programs for addicts. For some, decriminalization isn't enough, though: above, a pro-legalization March in Lisbon in 2008.

Andina Agency-Reuters-Landov

Peru

While Peru doesn't allow the sale of marijuana, it has gone further than other nations down the path to legalization. It's legal to possess about a third of an ounce (eight grams) of marijuana for personal use, with no fines, treatment programs, or other consequences. Debate about further legalization continues, though President Alan García has come out against the proposals. And the Peruvians are still making drug busts like the one cops are showing off above, in which they seized marijuana hidden in vuvuzelas at a school in Lima.

Enrique Marcarian / Reuters-Landov

Argentina

Argentina only recently entered the ranks of countries with relatively liberal cannabis policies. Last year a Supreme Court ruling declared that the country's constitution gave "each adult" the right to "make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state," paving the way for citizens like this man to grow cannabis plants on a small scale or use drugs. The court overturned convictions of people who had served jail terms for carrying marijuana. The ruling opened the door for the country's government to decriminalize other drugs as well.

Pablo La Rosa / Reuters-Landov

Uruguay

If Argentina is the newest member of the decriminalization club, Uruguay may be the oldest. The nation has never criminalized marijuana for personal use. Its laws have, since 1974, left it up to judges to determine what amount constitutes "personal use" on a case-by-case basis. Still some Uruguayans want more freedom. Above, a man smokes a joint a pro-legalization rally in Montevideo in 2007.

Luis Acosta / AFP-Getty Images

Mexico

In August 2009 Mexico decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana and other drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Individuals can possess less than a quarter of an ounce (five grams) of marijuana for personal use, though the law states that if a person is caught with small amounts of drugs on three occasions, he will face mandatory drug treatment. On the first and second occasions, treatment is optional. The decision to focus on treatment and leave drug users unprosecuted came in the midst of a bloody war between drug cartels, but young Mexicans are still organizing pro-legalization rallies, like the one above in September 2010.

www.encod.org

Belgium

Though Belgium has decriminalized marijuana, meaning that possession of up to five grams, or less than a quarter of an ounce, will not lead to a criminal penalty, possession will still net you a fine. The fine of €75 (about $104) is relatively low, however—Luxembourg mandates a fine of €250 for a possessing a small amount of marijuana, and in Spain the fine is €300. Still, pro-legalization rallies, like this one in Antwerp, still attract a crowd. Belgium has made it illegal to smoke in the presence of minors or in public—as California would should Prop 19 pass—but will tolerate personal consumption in private. Belgium treats the cultivation of any more than one plant as a criminal offense.

More...

Mexico Decriminalizes Small-scale Drug Possession

Source: google.com

MEXICO CITY — Mexico enacted a controversial law Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency.

The law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect Friday.

Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although the law does not specify penalties for noncompliance.

Mexican authorities said the change just recognized the long-standing practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs that they could reasonably claim were for personal use, while setting rules and limits.

Under previous law, possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts. In practice, nobody was prosecuted and sentenced to jail for small-time possession, said Bernardo Espino del Castillo, the coordinator of state offices for the attorney general's office.

"We couldn't charge somebody who was in possession of a dose of a drug, there was no way ... because the person would claim they were an addict," he added.

"This person obviously couldn't be charged, not yesterday, not the day before, not a year ago, but the bad thing was that it was left up to the discretion of the detective, and it could open the door to corruption or extortion."

In the past, police sometimes hauled suspects to police stations and demanded bribes, threatening long jail sentences if people did not pay.

"This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty ... for a practice that was already in place," Espino del Castillo said.

In 2006, the U.S. government publicly criticized a similar bill. Then President Vicente Fox sent that law — which did not have a mandatory treatment provision — back to Congress for reconsideration.

The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for "personal use" under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 "lines." For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.

The law was approved by Congress before it recessed in late April, and President Felipe Calderon, who is leading a major offensive against drug cartels, waited most of the summer before enacting it.

Calderon's original proposal would have required first-time detainees to complete treatment or face jail time. But the lower house of Congress, where Calderon's party was short of a majority, weakened the bill.

Mexico has emphasized the need to differentiate drug addicts and casual users from the violent traffickers whose turf battles have contributed to the deaths of more than 11,000 people during Calderon's term. In the face of growing domestic drug use, Mexico has increased its focus on prevention and drug treatment.

Sen. Pablo Gomez of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party praised the legislation: "This law achieves the decriminalization of drugs, and in exchange offers government recovery treatment for addicts."

Previously, possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, with some leeway for those considered addicts and caught with smaller amounts. But in practice, relatively few people were prosecuted and sentenced to jail for small-time possession.

While the United States openly expressed concern about the 2006 law, this time around it has been more circumspect.

Asked about the new law in July, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said he would adopt a "wait-and-see attitude."

"If the sanction becomes completely nonexistent I think that would be a concern, but I actually didn't read quite that level of de facto (decriminalization) in the law," said Kerlikowske, who heads the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

More on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal

Last Friday at the Cato Institute, I presented my study on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal. I wrote about how and why I worked on this report here, and the report itself is available to read or download here. At Friday's event, I presented the report's findings in a 30-minute presentation; a long-time skeptic of drug decriminalization -- University of Maryland Criminology Professor Peter Reuter of the School of Public Policy -- commented on the report; I then responded to his commentary, and that was followed by a question-and-answer session. The video of the full event is now online here.

Whatever else is true, the empirical evidence leaves no doubt that Portuguese decriminalization has been a resounding success, so much so that even Professor Reuter conceded that decriminalization achieved its policy goals and produced none of the bad results which decriminalization opponents warned about. Scientific America's Brian Vastag attended the Cato event and then wrote this article:

Peter Reuter, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says he's skeptical decriminalization was the sole reason drug use slid in Portugal, noting that another factor, especially among teens, was a global decline in marijuana use. By the same token, he notes that critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.

"Drug decriminalization did reach its primary goal in Portugal," of reducing the health consequences of drug use, he says, "and did not lead to Lisbon becoming a drug tourist destination."

Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal "appears to be working." He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, "because it smacks of legalization.". . . .

A spokesperson for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office's new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.

There are also articles on the report from Raw Story's Rachel Oswald (here); CAP's Campus Progress' Jesse Singal (here); Marijuana Policy Project's Dan Bernath (here); and Stop the Drug War's Scott Morgan (here). Other large publications -- including Time -- assigned a reporter to cover this event and it's likely there will be additional articles.

As the above-excerpted passage from Scientific American demonstrates, there are few debates driven by as much rank irrationality as those over drug policy. Thus, we have emphatic acknowledgments that decriminalization has been a resounding success -- it has enabled the Portuguese to manage what had been their out-of-control drug crises of the 1990s far better than virtually every other country that continues to criminalize drug usage -- combined with ongoing opposition to that successful policy (along with the U.S. Government's steadfast refusal even to comment on the success of decriminalization in Portugal). That is the very definition of irrationality.

Just consider these three tables from the study, the first of which compares absolute drug usage rates for the 16-18 age group in Portugal between 2001 (the last year of criminalization) and 2006 (five years after decriminalization began) (click on images to enlarge):

For every drug that was in use since 2001 -- every one -- absolute drug usage rates declined in the five years following decriminalization, and that occurred as drug usage rates in most other EU member-states was increasing, often severely.

These two charts show how Portugal -- after it decriminalized -- compares to other EU nations (all of which still criminalize and many of which criminalize harshly) for general population usage rates for cocaine and cannabis respectively (based on data compiled by the central EU drug data monitoring agency):

Prior to decriminalization -- throughout the 1990s -- Portugal had among the worst drug crises in the EU, if not the worst. The more they criminalized, the worse the problems became. After decriminalization, Portugal has among the best drug usage rates both within the EU and outside of the EU (especially when compared to the harshest criminalized countries, such as the U.S. and Great Britain). Those are just facts.

The central myth which shields our failed drug laws from challenge and scrutiny is that decriminalization or legalization will cause an explosion of increased drug use. That is patently false. A much stronger argument can be made that the exact opposite is true: that by eliminating the barriers of fear which criminalization imposes between the government and the citizenry, and by freeing up the vast resources which criminalization squanders on arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment and instead devoting those resources to treatment, harm-reduction and education programs, few things are more effective in reducing drug-related problems than decriminalization, and nothing exacerbates those problems more than criminalization. Once that proposition is widely understood -- and the evidence for it is close to irrefutable -- the central propaganda pillar on which the drug war rests will be gutted.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Portugal's drug decriminalization 'bizarrely underappreciated': Greenwald

Rachel Oswald Published: Monday April 6, 2009

Champions of harsh drug criminalization laws as the best solution to curbing drug use will be chagrined to find that Portugal’s eight year history of decriminalization has led to lower drug usage rates.

According to a new report entitled, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies,” while drug use across the European Union has risen steadily since 2000, Portugal, which has the most liberal drug laws of any country, has actually seen its prevalence rates decrease in various age groups since it decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Prevalence rates measure how many people have consumed drugs over the course of their lifetime.

“I think it’s bizarrely underappreciated what’s been done in Portugal,” said Salon writer Glenn Greenwald, who authored the report. Greenwald, who speaks fluent Portuguese, traveled to Portugal in 2008 to study the affects of drug decriminalization in the country.

Because drugs were not legalized outright in Portugal, violations of laws prohibiting drug possession for personal usage are now merely treated as administrative offenses and carry with them no criminal charges. Drug trafficking, however, continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense in the country.

Compared to the low to moderate levels of drug use in Portugal since decriminalization went into effect, the majority of EU states have drug use rates that are double and triple that of Portugal today, according to the report.

Greenwald, who presented his findings at a Friday event at the Cato Institute, which sponsored the writing of the report, noted that the United Kingdom and Estonia, EU nations with some of the harshest criminalization laws, also have the highest cocaine usage rates in the EU.

“None of the fears promulgated by opponents of Portuguese decriminalization has come to fruition, whereas many of the benefits predicted by drug policymakers from instituting a decriminalization regime have been realized," writes Greenwald in the report. "While drug addiction, usage, and associated pathologies continue to skyrocket in many EU states, those problems—in virtually every relevant category—have been either contained or measurably improved within Portugal since 2001.”

Greenwald said the strongest evidence in Portugal that supports drug decriminalization is the declining usage of drugs in the crucial 15-19 age group.

In every single drug category, with the exception of the new drugs that have come into popular usage since 2001, like ketamine and GHB, teen drug use has declined. The biggest drug category declines were seen in marijuana, which saw teen drug use slip from just over 10 percent in 2001 to 6 percent in 2006.

“Drug policymakers are ecstatic about this,” Greenwald said.

Since decriminalization took effect in Portugal, deaths as a result of drug usage have declined significantly. Opiate-related deaths experienced the biggest drop, falling from about 275 deaths in 2000 to about 125 in 2006, according to information provided in the report from the Portugal National Institute of Legal Medicine.

The Portugal report, which also tracked drug usage rates outside of the European Union (the region of the world that has gone the farthest in decriminalizing drug usage), found that “by and large usage rates for each category of drugs continue to be lower in the EU than in non-EU states with a far more criminalized approach to drug usage.”

Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, said, “For a very long time all of the academics, who studied drug policy, had to acknowledge one reality -- that the drug policy of the United States is the drug policy of the world.”

That premise, however, is now changing.

As evidence of this, Lynch pointed to a number of news bulletins calling for drug reform in recent months: “Canadian government tries anew to decriminalize marijuana”, “Argentine president calls for decriminalization of drug use”, “Mass. voters OK decriminalization of marijuana”, ” Obama administration to stop raids on medical marijuana dispensers” and most recently, ” Webb, Specter introduce bill to overhaul America’s criminal justice system.”

Advocates of drug decriminalization in the United States, should focus not on ideological or moral arguments in making their case, but rather, empirical evidence that shows decriminalization reduces drug usage, said Greenwald.

Greenwald said supporters of decriminalization in the U.S. have an “ideal moment” to talk about it as the political mood regarding decriminalization is now shifting in favor of reform.

According to Greenwald, much of the discussion on why drugs should not be decriminalized (the primary argument being that it will lead to higher drug usage and higher assorted drug-related problems) has been speculative. He said it was up to drug reformers to refocus the drug debate away from moral and civil liberties arguments “so that it ends up being an entirely empirical and pragmatic issue.”

Because there has been little debate on empirical grounds, which are verifiable and provable, on why drugs should stay criminalized, the “extremely unexamined” assumption that decriminalization would result in a massive increase of drug usage has become widespread and generally accepted, Greenwald said.

But with the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal, drug reformers can now point to empirical evidence that demonstrates that decriminalization has positive affects.

As Greenwald writes in the report, “By freeing its citizens from the fear of prosecution and imprisonment for drug usage, Portugal has dramatically improved its ability to encourage drug addicts to avail themselves of treatment. The resources that were previously devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts are now available to provide treatment programs to addicts.”

“Those developments, along with Portugal’s shift to a harm-reduction approach, have dramatically improved drug-related social ills, including drug-caused mortalities and drug-related disease transmission,” the report continues. “Ideally, treatment programs would be strictly voluntary, but Portugal’s program is certainly preferable to criminalization.”

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland, who supports the continued criminalization of drugs, provided a skeptical critique of Greenwald’s report at Friday’s event, though he did admit that “I think it is fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal…has indeed achieved its central goals.”

While non-violent drug users are no longer dealt with as criminals in Portugal, Reuter speculated that because Portuguese police no longer have to put as much effort into making a criminal arrest against drug users, they are now more likely to issue many more administrative citations for drug use, which he said served to increase, rather than decrease, the intrusion of government into the lives of private citizens.

He added, that the higher rates of drug users seeking government treatment was more likely due to the aging of Western Europe’s heroin-using population. According to Reuter, the large bulk of the population of heroin dependents first began using in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s and so would be much older today and more likely to seek out medical help.

“Much of what is recorded here, I think, is consistent with what I see happening in many other Western countries,” said Reuter of the number of drug users in Portugal seeking treatment.