Orders U.S., State Flags Flown at Half Staff Until Interment

HARRISBURG, Pa., Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Governor Edward G. Rendell, along with his wife Midge, today expressed sadness at the passing of former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer, saying the commonwealth had lost a dedicated public servant.

Excerpt: After leaving office, Shafer continued to serve the public good. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon appointed him chair of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. From 1974 to 1977, he served as counselor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

By refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ensured that 27-year-old Weldon Angelos will spend just about the rest of his life behind bars for selling three eight-ounce bags of marijuana to an undercover informant. As his attorneys noted, the sentence he will serve is harsher than the sentence for raping a child — or the sentence for detonating a bomb aboard an aircraft.

Even the federal judge who was required to issue the mandatory minimum sentence called it “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.” Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court let the sentence stand without comment. You can read more about this abrogation of justice here.

If this outrages you like it does me, do something about it. Please help the Marijuana Policy Project continue lobbying Congress to change these cruel and unjust laws by making a financial contribution to our work. We cannot keep up the fight without funding from people like you.

If you haven't yet decided whether to support MPP financially, here are 10 reasons you should donate $10 or more to MPP by the end of the year.

1. Mitchell Lawrence: This 17-year-old high school student with no prior record received a two-year prison sentence for selling $20 worth of marijuana to a Massachusetts undercover police officer. 2. Unnamed Florida college student: The 19-year-old was raped by his cellmate — a violent sexual offender — as he served the first of four weekend sentences for delivering marijuana, a felony offense. 3. Ryan Wilson: The 22-year-old died after being shot with a Taser stun gun by Colorado police, who were investigating whether Wilson was cultivating marijuana plants. 4. Anthony Diotaiuto: The 23-year-old was shot 10 times in the head, chest, and limbs by a Florida SWAT team that later found a little over an ounce of marijuana in his home. 5. Clayton Helriggle: The 23-year-old died in the arms of his roommate after being shot in a “no knock” raid by Ohio police, who later found a small amount of marijuana in his house. 6. Jonathan Magbie: The 27-year-old quadriplegic died in a Washington, D.C., jail while serving a 10-day sentence for marijuana possession because the facility could not provide the medical care he needed. 7. Tyrone Brown: The 33-year-old received a life sentence from a Texas judge for testing positive for marijuana while on probation for a $2 stickup committed when he was 17. 8. Lester Siler: The 44-year-old was brutalized by five rogue Tennessee police officers who suspected him of selling drugs. Siler was beaten and held at gunpoint, had his head held underwater in a toilet, and was threatened with shooting and electrocution. 9. Accelyne Williams: The 75-year-old retired minister died from a heart attack that was induced by the stress of a Massachusetts SWAT team entering his apartment during a “no knock” raid. No drugs were found. 10. Kathryn Johnston: The 88-year-old was shot and killed in a “no knock” raid by Georgia police, who allegedly later attempted to pay an informant to lie about the circumstances of the drug raid.

And these individuals are not rare examples. Rather, they are simply 11 examples of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are detained, beaten, harassed, tortured, arrested, prosecuted, jailed, imprisoned, and/or killed each year by the government in the name of marijuana prohibition.

Would you please stand with me in MPP’s fight to end the government’s war on (actual and imagined) marijuana users?

December 12, 2006

HAYWARD — The Local Patients Cooperative marijuana dispensary was raided by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency this morning as part of a yearlong investigation that also involved Hayward police.

"The distribution of marijuana is a federal offense, and this place was making millions of dollars," said DEA Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Chapman.

Along with the Foothill Boulevard marijuana club, three additional residences in Hayward were raided and searched, authorities said. Northbound traffic on Foothill, between B and C streets, was halted during the police activity.

The arrest complaint, which will be unsealed later in the day, will provide more details as to why the club drew the attention of federal authorities, said DEA spokeswoman Casey McHenry.

"I'm not sure how the DEA became involved," said Hayward Police Capt. Phil Ribera. "At some point during their investigation, they contacted us and requested our help. We provided information from several observations we made concerning cultivation at the site and amounts of marijuana."

The dispensary, one of two in Hayward located on the same block on Foothill Boulevard, was to be closed by local authorities at the end of the month for breaking its three-year agreement for operating within the city. City officials said the cooperative had more than 3 pounds of marijuana on the premises at one time.

Hayward police inspected the club in September and said they observed 30 pounds of marijuana, 10 times more than the city allows. Officers returned in November and said they observed 200 pounds.

Sticking to the 3-pound rule was impossible because of the volume of patients the club served, an employee of the dispensary said in a previous interview earlier in the week.

Alejandro Alfonso can be reached at (510) 293-2469 or aalfonso@dailyreviewonline.com

Copyright: 2006 ANG Newspapers

***

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Finland has for the first time granted a sick person a prescription for a marijuana-based painkiller.

The Finnish pharmaceuticals agency stressed however that the decision did not signify any relaxation in Finland's strict ban on the use of the soft drug, and would in the future consider each medical request on a case by case basis.

The prescription for the drug Bedrocan, from the Netherlands, was authorized for a man suffering from chronic pain. The nature of his illness was not disclosed in line with medical secrecy laws.

Marijuana is already prescribed in Canada, Britain and the Netherlands among others for sufferers of illnesses such as multiple sclerosis.

"This is the first request and the first authorization of its kind in Finland," Erkki Palva of the Finnish pharmaceuticals agency told AFP Tuesday.

"But we do not intend to make this a permanent policy. We will continue to examine cases individually," he added.

Finland has one of the strictest drug policies in the European Union and one of the lowest rates of marijuana abuse. Marijuana users risk a sentence of up to two years behind bars. — AFP

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/160331.asp

"I've been working for thirty and forty years, and this is what we've got?"

"Now, the US gov is sending my kid to a war that is the stupidest war ever conceived by mortal men, and I have to put up with their complete stupidity!"

"What a disgusting joke!"

"I'm gonna get me some drugs and forget about it all. It's all I can really do."

Merry Christmas, even if it's a war on Christmas, I can still say it.

***

For Aging Drug Users, It's Hard to Kick the Habit

By Warren Wolfe, McClatchy Newspapers

December 12, 2006

MINNEAPOLIS - It's the generation that came of age in the permissive 1960s and '70s, part of the counterculture revolution that embraced the mantra "turn on, tune in, drop out." Now they are graying - but some are still having a hard time breaking away from or resisting marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs.

A national drug survey by the federal government, for example, has found that between 2002 and 2005, use of illegal drugs fell 15 percent among teenagers, but increased 63 percent among people in their 50s.

"The good news is that they may seek us out - heck, they're already beginning to," said Dr. Marvin Seppala, medical director at the Hazelden Foundation, a treatment center in Minnesota. "The bad news is I'm not sure we're ready for them."

For older people, the roads to drug abuse vary: It's a longtime habit they can't shake. Or a step they take to ease the loneliness, boredom or physical pain old age that can bring.

Hmmmm. Funny, isn't it, how their interests are usually looked after first under such an arrangement? And to Perdition with everybody else?