COPs on the Hill -Stories from the week of February 12, 2010

COPs on the Hill

Stories from the week of February 12, 2010

 Moving forward:    The meeting I organized 3 weeks ago has born fruit.   I received word this week that the major players on the Hill are now united in what direction to take regarding marijuana; namely push for a bill to repeal federal prohibition.   COPs, MPP, DPA and NORML have all agreed on this strategy.   MPP’s Aaron Houston produced an excellent one page sheet of FAQs. (provided below).**  We believe this bill will also help the ballot initiative in California to legalize adult use and sale.   As soon as we have a bill number,  I will pass it on. Shot of Crown that night.   Small steps. 

With help from my friends:   One requisite* for my job is having a bit of an ego.  To sit down with a Member of Congress or their aide, to educate  & urge them to change policy for a nation of 310 million is not for the faint-of-heart.*  On the other hand, one must recognize that others are able to contribute and be ready to accept new ideas, new strategies, whatever is needed to move the issue forward. 

 Two House staffers last week asked for my paper on what would happen, if drug use and abuse doubled.  This week and beyond, thanks to my friend Bernie Ellis of Tennessee,  staffers will find this additional paragraph in that essay I shared with you last week.  Thanks Bernie

 “What if we doubled the number of sick and dying people in this country who could access medical marijuana? For some, it would mean reducing or completely eliminating their use of stronger and more hazardous opiates to treat intractable pain. For others, it would mean being able to better tolerate chemotherapy — to be more likely to survive the harsh treatments for their cancer or hepatitis C.  For even more, it would mean being able to eat and sleep, to visit with their family and friends, to laugh — instead of barely existing in a prescription drug-induced stupor.   For all of them, it would mean a better quality of life for as long as they have left to live”

 Can I borrow your toboggan?:*   My 10 meetings this week were also canceled, due to the snowzilla* storm of the century.    Capitol Hill was best used as sled and toboggan hill.   As I shoveled off the 27 inches (67cm) of snow off our garage roof in order to prepare for the Wednesday storm of 10 inches (25cm) , I slid off, feet first, landing in 27 inches of powder to break my fall.  Uninjured, I climbed back up the ladder remembering the phrases Carpé Diem & Tomorrow is Promised to No One.

 Free Beer:  COPs t-shirts (as featured at the very bottom) are now for sale.  The price is 20 dollars which includes postage and handling.  The first one shipped to Alaska last week.  Just email me and I will have it made and shipped.  NOTE:  in wearing such a shirt the past 11 years, I have received about 500 dollars in free beer, food and coffee.

*requisite = Erfordernis

* faint-of-heart = zaghaft

*toboggan = Schlitten

*snowzilla = unheimlich viel Schnee

 Consider being a member of COPs at $30.00 or more per year.  It is tax-deductible.  Add your voice to those who agree that Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

 Thank you, 

 Howard

 ** Regulating marijuana like alcohol

 Would a federal marijuana-regulation law be similar to the 21st Amendment that deals with alcohol?

 Yes, it would be a nearly identical model of regulation (the “three-tiered”

system), with few exceptions. The new federal marijuana law would allow — not require — any

state or territory to change its current laws that strictly prohibit marijuana, which would

include the possibility of a state creating a legal and regulated market for marijuana. As with

alcohol regulation, federal law would still prohibit the “transportation or importation into any

State … in violation of the laws thereof.” Of course, in the case of alcohol, the 21st

Amendment lays out only the broadest concepts about the structure of the law. The Federal

Alcohol Administration Act, subsequently passed by Congress, addresses details of the

regulatory system, such as permitting, consumer protection, labeling, and policing of the

industry.

Would a federal marijuana-regulation law force the states to make marijuana legal? No,

the federal law would not force states to change any existing laws or regulations, including

those that outright prohibit marijuana possession and sales. Rather, the new federal law

would simply free the states to decide as they so choose. Most Americans may not realize it

today, but decades after the passage of the 21st Amendment (which repealed the 18th

Amendment that codified alcohol prohibition) alcohol sales remained illegal in many areas of

the nation. Mississippi did not lift its prohibition on alcohol sales until 1966, and in Kansas,

on-premises sale of liquor remained illegal until 1987.

Which federal agencies would be affected by a new regulatory system? The DEA and ATF

would be the primary agencies impacted within the Department of Justice. The law would

add new provisions to Title 27 of the U.S. Code, which would be changed from “Intoxicating

liquors” to “Intoxicating substances” and be accompanied by conforming regulations similar to

the Federal Alcohol Administration Act. Notably, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms

and Explosives (ATF) would become the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana, Firearms and

Explosives (ATMF). The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau within the U.S. Treasury

Department would become the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana Tax and Trade Bureau, which

would be responsible for administering the new law.

What differences would there be between alcohol and marijuana regulations? While the

repeal of alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment, repeal of marijuana

prohibition merely requires an act of Congress. Alcohol transportation and sales were made

legal by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1933, at the start of FDR’s first

term. In the following years, the power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce in all

manner of activities grew enormously, with the U.S. Supreme Court specifically affirming

Congress’ authority to prohibit or not prohibit marijuana. One notable difference between

federal alcohol laws and the proposed federal marijuana law is that the importation and

exportation of marijuana would remain banned (which is not the case with alcohol).

Prepared by: Aaron Houston of MPP (Marijuana Policy Project)

Distributed by: Howard Wooldridge of COPs (Citizens Opposing Prohibition)

 Detective/Officer Howard  Wooldridge (retired)

Drug Policy Specialist, COP – www.CitizensOpposingProhibition.org

Washington, DC

817-975-1110 Cell

howard@citizensopposingprohibition.org

Citizens Opposing Prohibition – Become a Member

PO Box 772

Buckeystown, MD  21717-0772

Modern Prohibition/The War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional &  immoral  domestic policy since slavery  & Jim Crow.

COPs on the Hill – Stories from the Week of February 5, 2009

COPs on the Hill

 Stories from the Week of February 5, 2009

 Transition: This week marked the transition from the Senate back to the House.  Since mid-November,  I have  met with staffers from 85 offices in the Senate.  I will continue to politely pester* the remaining 15 for 10 minutes of their time.

 Gut feelings* confirmed:   One of my first House meetings this week was with the aide to a very influential Republican office.   During our congenial* 30 minute chat ( our third) we discussed the events and changes since Obama took office.   I told him how so many R staffers had declared themselves Ron Paul type Republicans and that federal prohibition of marijuana should end now.   He nodded and from his informal chats the past year,  agreed that the vast majority of young R staffers were ready to legalize marijuana. 

 Then I asked him the question I will ask all aides this year, “Would you be willing to bring a Repeal Marijuana Prohibition’ bill to your boss and urge the Member to  support it?”   His answer was guarded (as one might expect) and took several minutes.   He ended by saying he might.  The fish is halfway in the boat.  Small steps.

 I wish every office had this:  In the entry area of  (R-GA) Congressman and Doctor Broun’s office is a plaque that reads:   I am committed to protecting the constitutional rights and pocketbooks of every American. I will apply the following four-way test to every piece of legislation that comes before the House for a vote:

• 1) Is it Right/Moral?
• 2) Is it Constitutional?
• 3) Is it Necessary?
• 4) Is it Affordable?  

Based on this test, he voted YES for States’ Rights for Medical Marijuana two years ago.  

Could this be the event which changes Mexico?

Massacre Of 16 Juarez Students Is Latest Shock In Numbed City

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturdays massacre in Juárez, Mexico, of 16 high school and college students created a shock wave that continues to rumble across a city numbed by years of brutal and unstoppable violence, reports the El Paso Times. Twelve other victims are still hospitalized with gunshot wounds, four in critical condition.  

El Paso Times 

T-shirts for sale: The shirts seen at the bottom are now for sale.  The cost is 20 dollars which includes shipping and handling.  Just send me an email with size, type and USPS mailing address.   Spring is almost here and it is time to cause trouble!

 Blog oped: The consequences of drug use and abuse doubling, if we legalized & regulated all drugs:   1000 word essay below, if you are interested.

 *gut feelings = etwas wie ‘rein gefühlsmaßige Reaktion’

* pester = plagen, höflich stören

*congenial  = ansprechend

 Consider being a member of COPs at $30.00 or more per year.  It is tax-deductible.  Add your voice to those who agree that Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

 Thank you, 

 Howard

 This interview just hit 50 websites and more.

 Legalize all Drugs=Use & Abuse Double: The Consequences

 By Frosty Wooldridge

 http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~726630.aspx?IsDraft=False

 Denver Post, Your Hub, February 4, 2010

 After the first 19 interviews with my brother Police Officer and Detective Howard Wooldridge of Lansing, Michigan (retired) concerning the “War on Drugs”, thousands of readers responded.  U.S. taxpayers do not understand the incredible deception perpetrated on them by the Drug War.  You might even term it a “racket” by those who stand in the power corridors of Washington, DC.

“Legalize drugs and all hell and ruin will plague the USA as drug use/abuse doubles!” said Officer Howard Wooldridge. “The sky will fall in.  The Chicken Little’s aka The Prohibition Crowd have used this mantra to great effect the past 15 years.   Though competent addiction experts and a 2008 Zogby poll state that use and abuse of hard drugs will remain fairly constant, what if the experts are wrong and the prohibition crowd is correct?   What if millions of us become so stupid that we use heroin, meth and crack when they become legal?   What would be the total change in the USA, if we legalized, regulated and taxed currently prohibited drugs and this caused use and abuse to double? 

“Let’s start with marijuana.  Currently about 20 million enjoy cannabis as a recreational alternative to alcohol.   Let’s take as a given that few teetotalers will start using marijuana.  Thus when 20 million citizens switch from drinking alcohol to smoking pot, this would be a net benefit for themselves, their family and their community.  How so?  Ask any cop or writer of country/western songs.   Alcohol use provokes in almost all of us a bit of reckless to very reckless behavior (saying something one should not have, to picking a fight with someone twice your size).  For a significant minority alcohol use provokes aggressive, even violent behavior.  In this fashion a doubling of marijuana use will reduce homicide, suicide, rape, child/spouse abuse and assault.  

“Wait. What about 20 million more people becoming lazy, losing their jobs, going on welfare, and robbing banks to live?   Everyone reading this essay has either used marijuana or knows many in the family or friends who have.   Do some become permanently lazy?  Yes, the same as becoming an alcoholic often means a life without meaningful work.   However, the overwhelming majority of marijuana users are like you and me; hard-working and hard-playing, tax-paying successful doctors, lawyers and such.  From the past three US Presidents to half of Congress and captains of industry, many have used pot and gone on to become successful.   Tell Michael Phelps, Willie Nelson or five time all NFL pro center for the Dallas Cowboys Mark Stepnoski about being too spaced out on cannabis to achieve greatness.

“A couple of hundred million times this year mostly young people are going to use an hallucinogen like X or LSD.    There are almost no accounts of users stealing, robbing or becoming prostitutes to pay for their drug of choice.  Yes, a couple of dozen die from X use (too much or too little water is a common reason) and that is a tragedy.   Of course many more will die this year while riding their bicycle (about 2.5 per day, oops, they failed to wear a helmet).   More Americans will die while riding a horse than die from X.    In order to protect citizens from harm, should the government prohibit the riding of bicycles and horses?   Tell your politicians.  Now, double the use and abuse of X and LSD.  Two times roughly zero is how much?

“The feds tell us that perhaps a million of us use meth-amphetamine and a couple of hundred die every year because of abuse issues and overdose.  What happens when that number goes to two million?  From what I know, the majority of users are either trying to stay awake on a 12 hour shift or want to lose weight.   This crowd would have access to the same 5 mg amphetamine pills we give Air Force pilots to go on long missions.  With standard doses users would gain control over their intake & improve their odds of not becoming addicted, same as our military pilots.   Of course some will become addicted (talk to Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson after you die) but overall, death and abuse rates should fall for this group.

“What about those who love the sexual kick that meth provides?  This crowd may switch to the sexual kick that cocaine does provide.   If they stay with the meth, they will suffer long term health consequences.   If their number doubles, they will also suffer.  On the flip side, there will be no meth labs in America and no children eating Cheerios where mom and dad made meth last night.   No houses will blow up and no expensive clean ups when meth houses are discovered.    Since children are, IMO, much more important than adults harming themselves, even a doubling of amphetamine users would be a net plus.

“Let’s take the last and ‘big ones’, cocaine and heroin, together.   Currently we believe about five million use coke and about half million use heroin.  The use of these drugs does cause significant theft crimes for some/many of the users to support their habits.  This year about 9,000 will die from overdose and an unknown number (certainly in thousands) will die from health complications associated with dirty, shared needles, etc. 

“Even as use/abuse double the USA will experience a huge drop in felony crime, as the price for a day’s supply of these drugs falls to about $3.00.   “That money can easily be made panhandling/begging for change.  Thus hundreds of thousands of homeowners will not become victims.   The number of banks and convenience stores robbed will drop by half, saving the terror and death that those employees deal with. 

“Certainly overdose deaths would fall dramatically, when users buy a product of known strength and contains no rat poison, etc.  This would save a lot of money now spent by EMS ambulances and hospital emergency rooms.   Oh, and of course the addicts live to have a chance to climb out of their addiction one day.

“Federal studies and experts state that the abuse rate for cocaine is 5-6 per cent.  Thus even a doubling of users would only increase those who abuse cocaine by about 300,000.  The abuse rate for heroin is about 70 per cent of users.  We would see about 350,000 new abusers of heroin.  Each new abuse case will be a personal and family tragedy.   On the flip side, almost no one will die of an overdose and with a robust treatment option (paid for by the taxes on other drugs & savings by cutting our prisons in half), a good many will live thru their addiction time to become clean and sober.

“The best news of all is that the 900,000 young teens currently selling these drugs off sidewalks and being shot in the process will become unemployed.    They will be forced into making chump change flipping burgers or being unemployed. What is the value of one child saved?  You tell me.  The general savings of money will amount to some 80 billion currently wasted by law enforcement to look for, arrest and incarcerate drug users and sellers.    The 120 billion we spend now on illegal drugs will go back into the taxed economy, as users have more money to buy cars, a steak in town or go to vacation in Florida.   Farmers will plant hemp and supply a growing US market for that commodity vs. the importation currently coming from Canada.   As gangs shrink and  inner cities become much quieter (far fewer 9 mm going pop, pop, pop) property values will increase and so probably investment and their jobs.  We would no longer fund our mortal enemies.  Al Qaeda and the Taliban would have to find a new source of money.  The police could concentrate on the deadly DUI and reckless drivers, saving thousands from dying on our roads.  Detectives could arrest a lot more child predators.

“The majority of Americas have admitted in polls and at the Rotary Club that Modern Prohibition is an ineffective failure.   Many see the policy as the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery and Jim Crow..   Even if we doubled the number of drug users in this country, the pluses far outweigh the minuses.”  

“Today, my brother Howard Wooldridge heads up a task force in Washington, DC to educate and enlighten congressmen at the highest levels.  He works for a better future for all Americans.  He can be reached at:  Education Specialist, www.citizensopposingprohibition.org , Washington, DC.  He speaks at colleges, political clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions Clubs across America.  He engages citizens around the country to bring an end to the Drug War.  Check out the web site and join.  Book Wooldridge in your state! Wooldridge also presents at political conferences in Washington. Howard@citizensopposingprohibition.org

“The mission of COP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition. 

“Envision a country which employs the principles of personal responsibility, personal freedom and limited/effective government toward marijuana,” Officer Wooldridge said. “I see a growing respect for the police, as they stop intruding into the decisions of adults, made in the privacy of their castles.  Teens find it as hard to buy pot as beer.  Fewer teens use it because it lost its glamour.   Imagine a land where the deadly DUI and reckless drivers kill far fewer, as officers focus on them, not the next pot bust.  Envision detectives arresting more child predators as they abandon the time spent arresting someone selling pot to an adult.  All this becomes possible, when America becomes wiser and abandons the prohibition approach to marijuana.”

Howard

Detective/Officer Howard  Wooldridge (retired)

Drug Policy Specialist, COP – www.CitizensOpposingProhibition.org

Washington, DC

817-975-1110 Cell

howard@citizensopposingprohibition.org

Citizens Opposing Prohibition – Become a Member

PO Box 772

Buckeystown, MD  21717-0772

Modern Prohibition/The War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional &  immoral  domestic policy since slavery  & Jim Crow.

A proposed medical marijuana bill considers both suffering patients and a sick economy

Nashville Scene: www.nashvillescene.com/2010-01-28/news/let-s-roll/·

Note:  Howard’s comments appear about halfway thru this 3700 word article.

By Jim Ridley

Published on January 28, 2010 at 7:39am

Tucked away near a winding road in rural Maury County, the Santa Fe Diner is the picture of homespun Americana. It’s the kind of place where people get up to hold the front door for an elderly patron’s walker, where lifelong neighbors need only greet each other with a friendly nod. It’s Friday — fish day, as the flyer says under the wall-mounted photo of Santa Fe High School, class of ’56. On the front porch, an American flag flutters in a cold breeze while owner Carolyn Oakley prepares for the lunch rush.

The Santa Fe Diner and its proprietor are hubs of the community, as is clear from the cars filling the gravel lot, the photos on the walls and the warm greetings exchanged inside. But in the eyes of the state of Tennessee, and 36 other states, Carolyn Oakley is something else: an outlaw.

There has to be a good reason why an upstanding citizen would risk prison time and the loss of her belongings, including her business. Oakley’s reason slept next to her for 24 years. In the prime of life, her husband, Arthur Oakley, was stricken with a disease that shut down both his kidneys. He was immediately hospitalized, given shunts in his chest and placed on dialysis.

For two years, as he waited for a kidney transplant, Arthur suffered while his wife watched helplessly. He’d always been a hearty eater, but the powerful medicines he was taking killed his appetite. His weight dwindled. His blood pressure skyrocketed, which meant even more medicine. He became miserable, depressed. Eventually he refused to eat.

“It took away his want to live,” Oakley remembers.

After two years, Arthur was dangerously frail. In desperation, he and his wife talked to Bernie Ellis, a regular at the Santa Fe. It was known to some that Ellis, who had a 35-year career as a public-health epidemiologist, grew his own marijuana to relieve a painful spine and hip condition. It was also known he shared his stash free of charge with AIDS and cancer patients. Ellis volunteered to provide Arthur with free pot if his doctors agreed.

Their assent was hardly a sure thing. Medical marijuana remains a topic of intense, polarizing controversy in the medical field. Its status as a Schedule I drug — the harshest classification given to a narcotic, higher than cocaine or crystal meth — means that any doctor who prescribes it in a state without a licensed program runs the risk of prosecution. Indeed, when Arthur raised the issue early on with his first doctor, the reply was swift and strict: either no pot, or no kidney transplant.

His new doctors at Centennial Medical Center, however, saw that if he didn’t start eating again or reducing his dangerously high blood pressure, the kidney transplant would be a moot issue. According to Carolyn Oakley, they said that unless his health improved, he wouldn’t survive the surgery. They told the Oakleys, she says, to do whatever they needed to get Arthur eating again. Arthur went to see Bernie Ellis.

Once Arthur started smoking marijuana, Carolyn Oakley says, the change in his health was dramatic. Not only did his appetite return, she recalls, his nausea went away. His blood pressure subsided. In a particularly gladdening turn, so did his depression. Ellis hired Arthur to work outdoors on his farm and drive a tractor, something he hadn’t felt up to doing in years. “It made him feel like a man again,” Oakley says. Even above the clatter of plates in the back, the pride in her voice carries.

Arthur Oakley lived two more years, good years. In the end, he got his transplant, but a rare blood disorder caused his body to reject the kidney. In November 2003, he died of a heart attack. The service was held at a funeral home in Columbia, and the Oakleys’ neighbors and the Santa Fe Diner’s regulars crowded into the chapel.

Among them was Bernie Ellis, whose own fortunes had undergone a drastic turn in the intervening years. In 2002, drug agents on ATVs and in helicopters stormed his farm in the nearby community of Fly. According to a tactical field report, agents found some 537 marijuana plants, a number that was amended for unknown reasons a month later to 300. Ellis puts the actual number of mature, full-size plants closer to a couple dozen, but no matter — even that was enough to raise the prospect of hard time and losing his farm.

To avoid the worst-case scenario, Ellis pleaded guilty in late 2003 to manufacturing cannabis plants. He later tried to withdraw the plea, but with no success. When he walked into the funeral home, then, everyone in the close-knit community had to know he had admitted publicly to a felony.

What trumped that, though, was that they knew what he had done for Arthur Oakley. Carolyn Oakley recalls that even Enoch George, the Maury County sheriff, stopped to shake Ellis’ hand as mourners filed from the chapel. To this day, over the corner table in the Santa Fe Diner where Oakley sits with a reporter, a framed Scene cover calling Ellis the “Marijuana Martyr” occupies a place of pride. If there’s any stigma attached to medical marijuana, Oakley hasn’t seen it.

“I haven’t lost the first customer because of it,” she says, her voice firm.

It’s because of stories like Carolyn Oakley’s, proponents of medical marijuana say, that a sea change in attitudes toward the issue is under way. Two decades ago, it was easy to dismiss medical-marijuana advocates as a fringe element — stoners trying to sneak legalization past the nation’s drug-enforcement gatekeepers. Got a hangnail that’s bothering you? Whatever you say, Cheech. Coming right up.

Today, though, millions of people are only a degree of separation from someone whose all-too-real suffering has been eased by cannabis. So what if medical marijuana were a business — an above-ground, state-sanctioned business that could funnel millions of dollars into Tennessee’s economy, under the oversight of local law enforcement and the state agriculture and health departments?

That’s the remarkable proposal coming up for review in the Tennessee legislature this session. A bill introduced Jan. 13 by Sen. Beverly Marrero in the state Senate and Rep. Jeanne Richardson in the House — SB 2511/HB 2562, aka the Safe Access to Medical Cannabis Act — provides a blueprint for implementing a statewide medical marijuana program from seed to flower.

The Memphis Democrats’ bill proposes nothing less than licensing local farmers, cultivating cannabis at strongly restricted compounds, and selling prescribed doses of high-grade marijuana through pharmacies — at a low price specifically designed to benefit the sick and undermine illicit dealers. If enacted, it would be on arrival the most tightly controlled of the 14 state-run medical-marijuana programs either under way or in development in the U.S. It would also be the most patient-friendly.

In a stroke of irony, the proposal’s architect is none other than Bernie Ellis, who has a distinguished track record assisting states such as Wyoming and New Mexico devise and manage substance-abuse programs. This is not a substance-abuse issue, Ellis says. This is about restoring marijuana to its rightful place in the arsenal of modern medicine.

“It’s the safest therapeutic substance known to man,” Ellis says.

To pass, the bill will have to clear hurdles that would make an Olympian shudder, which only start with the partisan rancor and hard conservative shift of Tennessee’s legislature. Tougher still, there’s the matter of marijuana’s Schedule I classification — which maintains, despite the evidence of the nation’s eyes and ears, that pot is more dangerous and has less medical benefit than crack cocaine. Changing that classification will require the federal equivalent of plate tectonics.

“From our standpoint, law enforcement should be happy because we’re [proposing to take] the demand for medical marijuana off the street, take money and power away from illegal dealers and put them in the hands of the people,” says Rose Cox, a lobbyist and 13-year political operative with a background in health care lobbying, who has been hired by NORML to push the medical-marijuana effort in the Tennessee legislature. Still, she concedes there’s “a healthy amount of skepticism on both sides” and major concerns about federal law.

Yet Howard Wooldridge, a Washington drug policy specialist who co-founded the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and now directs Citizens Opposing Prohibition (COP), believes the timing has never been better for a serious consideration of medical marijuana. The tipping point came late last year, he says, when the Department of Justice issued a directive instructing federal prosecutors not to go after participants in state-sanctioned medical-marijuana programs, ostensibly to conserve government resources. Independently, the powerful American Medical Association reversed its long-standing support of the Schedule I classification, indicating that cannabis held promise for medical research.

Why the shift? Wooldridge, who served for 18 years as a Michigan law-enforcement officer, believes that the current generation in power (many of whom came of age in the 1960s and early ’70s) is rediscovering marijuana as a medicine after years of post-college abstention. They know from their own experiences that one puff of weed does not an addict make. Furthermore, the anecdotal evidence of marijuana’s medicinal properties — not to mention the many polls showing wide margins of support for doctor-patient medical-marijuana treatment — is by now too overwhelming to ignore.

“The current economic crisis combined with the generational shift will move drug prohibition into the history books in five years,” Wooldridge predicts.

The anecdotal evidence today isn’t just coming from the expected quarters. It’s coming from die-hard conservatives with anything but love for the Obama administration. It’s coming from physicians who have seen gravely ill patients respond to a substance they can’t legally study, let alone prescribe. It’s coming from the families of lawmakers, some of whom maintain a public stance against the issue.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s starting to come from ordinary voters who never had a stake in the issue before, but have experienced firsthand an improvement in a loved one’s quality of life — or their own.

Dozens of people sent testimonials along those lines to U.S. District Judge William Haynes when he was weighing Bernie Ellis’ sentence in 2005. Mrs. Ellen Humphrey, a woman who’d been Ellis’ neighbor for 34 years, watched her husband Junior wither from lung cancer; the nurses at his Columbia care facility suggested he get some marijuana post-haste. “The marijuana Bernie Ellis provided … made it possible for Junior to rest and to sleep,” she wrote, “and it helped him keep his appetite up.” G.A. Webber, then a 35-year-old man living with AIDS, wrote that he used marijuana to alleviate nausea from his anti-HIV medicines and pain from a dual hip replacement.

Mrs. Margie Aderhold, an ovarian-cancer survivor, put the matter bluntly to the presiding judge. “Before you pass judgment,” she wrote, “please consider how you would feel if your own parents or children (or you yourself) were dying from a disease and could be helped to live longer or in less pain by using marijuana.”

In the end, Ellis received a four-year probation sentence (later reduced to two years) and was forced to surrender 25 acres of farmland to the federal government, ending a seven-year ordeal. The same legal nightmare could easily have happened to Carolyn Oakley. But the plain-speaking woman with the straight brown hair and no-nonsense manner says the threat of losing her freedom and her diner never deterred her from helping her husband.

“If we lose the business,” she remembers telling their grown children, “we don’t need it no way.”

Now there is the chance for Tennessee to legally relieve the suffering of terminal patients and the severely ill, while shoring up rural communities, making real headway in the drug war and channeling new money into the state’s coffers. All it will take is reversing almost a century of demonization that has cast marijuana as Public Enemy No. 1, not a healing agent with untapped potential.

For such a volatile issue, medical marijuana is hardly new. According to a 2001 book called Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base produced by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM), it dates back at least to the Chinese emperor Chen Nung some 27 centuries before the birth of Christ. The book also reproduces labels that show the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was manufacturing and selling a marijuana tincture throughout the 1930s.

But by 1942, marijuana had been removed from the United States Pharmacopoeia, the standard-setting volume for medicines and dosages, on grounds that it was a dangerous drug. Thanks to its association with black jazz musicians on one hand and Mexican immigrants on the other — and exacerbated by the U.S. government’s frankly racist propaganda — cannabis became linked in the public mind with evils ranging from race-mixing to homicidal frenzy. The 1936 scare film Reefer Madness remains an unforgettable artifact of wacky-weed hysteria, with its squeaky-clean teens turned pinwheel-eyed dope fiends. A year later, the plant was effectively outlawed.

In 1970, as the Nixon administration shook its fist at the counterculture, the U.S. government created the landmark Controlled Substance Act. The act created five classifications for controlled substances, weighing their health benefits against their addictive power and potential for harm. Tobacco and alcohol do not appear on the lists, but covered substances range from cough syrup (Schedule V) to oxycodone (Schedule II). Among those that made it all the way to Schedule I, the most restrictive ranking, were heroin, LSD — and marijuana.

For four decades hence, that classification has dominated policy on marijuana. But some states in the 1970s and ’80s passed laws that either lowered marijuana’s ranking or paved the way for clinical testing. A bill signed into law in 1984 by then-Gov. Lamar Alexander even allowed for medical marijuana in Tennessee, although the law was repealed in 1992 when thousands of AIDS patients nationwide applied to their states’ programs and the federal government stopped supplying the medicine.

In the years since, however, 14 states and the District of Columbia have said yes to medical marijuana, the majority through popular ballot initiatives that won by wide margins. That has typically put the states at odds with the federal government, which has claimed precedence over local measures — one reason last fall’s Department of Justice directive was seen as a breakthrough.

TBI special agent in charge T.J. Jordan cautions that the DOJ directive is hardly set in stone. He’s part of the administrative side of the Governor’s Task Force on Marijuana Eradication, a task force composed of the TBI, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission and other agencies. Since 1983, it has become one of the top six outdoor-cultivation eradication programs in the U.S., destroying some 400,000 marijuana plants last year at an estimated street value of $320 million. If medical-marijuana advocates are pinning their hopes to the policy directive, the agent asks, what happens if the next elections don’t go their way?

“That’s today’s administration’s policy,” says Jordan, who expresses concerns about just what the law-enforcement oversight in the Safe Access bill entails. “What’s the next administration’s policy?”

If the medical-marijuana movement were just a ploy to get access to pot, chances are that it would have gained little traction. Howard Wooldridge says that when he addresses Rotary groups on the topic, as he has done more than 400 times, their overriding concern is, “Will drug use skyrocket?” (The short answer, according to available data, is no.) But the cause has been helped enormously in recent years by doctors, scientists and medical researchers, who would seem to have proved to even the most calcified skeptic that the plant has properties worth researching.

According to Sunil Aggarwal, a University of Washington M.D./Ph.D. candidate who has co-authored several papers summarizing the many medicinal uses of cannabis, some of the many complex chemical compounds found in marijuana (known as “cannabinoids”) have shown promising effects in treating neurological disorders. These include multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease (or ALS), Alzheimer’s disease and certain forms of brain tumors.

Still more scientific evidence suggests marijuana may work well in tandem with other treatments — reducing the gut-wrenching side effects of chemotherapy, for example, or the lack of appetite caused by some anti-HIV drugs. From glaucoma to rheumatoid arthritis, from hepatitis C to osteoporosis, enough evidence of marijuana’s potential for good exists that a growing number of doctors agree the plant deserves further study.

“A huge policy shift is happening,” says Aggarwal, who believes “an emerging consensus in the medical community” wants to see marijuana downgraded from Schedule I so earnest research can begin. That doesn’t sound like such a controversial position. Right?

Ask the American College of Physicians. A prominent physicians’ group second only in size to the AMA, the ACP issued a position paper last year that called simply for revisiting the Schedule I classification.

From the response, though, the august body might as well have recommended firing up a doob during open heart surgery. Dr. J. Fred Ralston, the Fayetteville physician who serves as the ACP’s president-elect, says some marijuana advocates and opponents alike misconstrued the paper to fit their agendas. In the ensuing shouting match, he says, they obscured its reasonable, thoroughly middle-of-the-road call for more research.

“I think you can make an argument both ways,” says Ralston with caution, explaining he has no position on the bill in the legislature. “This is a hot-button issue, and we had a very narrowly focused paper that said we are never against more investigation.”

At the same time, Aggarwal says, the significance of the AMA and ACP’s new positions should not be underestimated.

“When the two largest medical organizations in the U.S. independently arrive at the evidence-based conclusion that marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug should be seriously reconsidered,” he wrote in an opinion piece on the pain-management website Pain.com, “federal drug regulators should take note.”

On one point, though, many medical-marijuana advocates and opponents agree: They don’t want Tennessee to have a program like California’s. Voted in by ballot measure under Proposition 215 in 1996, California’s laissez-faire program has become an out-of-control system where almost anyone can be a patient, any patient can be a grower, and dispensaries range from sedate waiting rooms to jokey clubhouses with bud menus and T-shirts.

Critics say it’s essentially back-door legalization — which is exactly what many users love about it. A Nashville musician who has purchasing privileges in California says it was “laughably easy” to obtain his prescription, and easier still to buy the actual weed, available in strains of different potency. (Try the purple, he says.)

But Ellis, hardly a prude on the subject, disdains the California model for several reasons. One is what he calls a “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” flippancy that has made the program a punchline, damaging its credibility. Another is the uneven potency, which renders dosages unpredictable and hence less effective as medicine. Then there’s the price: sometimes as much as $80 per eighth of an ounce, comparable to street value. For people hit with catastrophic medical expenses, Ellis says, that price is “unconscionable.”

What Ellis favors, as proposed in the pending bill, is a fire-sale price of $60 per ounce — a staggering cost cut that’s cheap enough for hard-hit patients, yet costly enough to yield a significant return to the grower, the state and the pharmacy. (The bill envisions a split of $30 per ounce to the licensed farmer, $10 to the pharmacy and $20 to the state to cover the cost of implementation, with excess state revenues going to fund indigent health care and substance-abuse treatment.)

Tennessee’s program would be far more strict in many ways, from qualifying illnesses (a list of 12 life-threatening or severely painful conditions) to specifications for growing, processing and packaging the medicine and regular law-enforcement oversight. Nevertheless, if 150,000 people — an estimated 15 percent of Tennessee’s current cannabis users — were to sign up, such a program could be grossing $450 million a year in three years’ time.

Is safe access to state-regulated medical marijuana a pipe dream in Tennessee? Perhaps. “I doubt that Tennessee will be on the vanguard of any change,” Dr. J. Fred Ralston says. So far, no Republican has stepped up as co-sponsor, but Sen. Marrero sees no reason why one wouldn’t.

“Just look at all the fuss over health care,” says Marrero, whose son-in-law benefited from medical marijuana when he underwent chemo and radiation treatment for cancer years ago. “All you hear about is the fear that some bureaucrat will come between you and your doctor — well, this is a pretty clear case of that. Our bill specifies that the medicine would only be available with a doctor’s prescription and can only be purchased in a pharmacy, but for some reason some people think the government knows better than the doctors and pharmacists. Frankly, passing this bill is going to require legislators of both parties with the courage to do the right thing.”

“Politicians will eventually get hurt by not supporting it,” says Paul Kuhn, a veteran Nashville investment counselor who is both a longtime Republican and a longtime supporter of NORML. His belief in medical marijuana was cemented when Jeanne, his wife of 31 years, was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid-1990s. She was 4-feet-11½, and the chemotherapy poisons pumping through her took a heavy toll. Never a pot smoker herself, she found that marijuana was the only thing that helped her through grueling rounds of chemo. The marijuana gave her comfort until she succumbed to cancer in 1996.

“I just smell marijuana and it reminds me of chemo,” Jeanne once said wearily. But after trying yet another inefficient dose of conventional medicine, she would say, “Bring me the damn pot.”

In preparation for a particularly agonizing treatment, she once went so far as to show up at Saint Thomas Hospital with a one-hitter pipe. Nurses were flustered. Additional personnel were called. The Kuhns stood firm. Someone with ultimate authority had to be consulted. A call was placed upstairs, Kuhn says, to the hospital’s chief legal counsel.

The answer came back: It was in the patient’s best interest.

COPs on the Hill -Stories from the week of January 29, 2010

COPs on the Hill

Stories from the week of January 29, 2010

 Hey, that guy is pretty good:   I was sitting in the crime subcommittee chamber of the Virginia House listening to my mentor Eric Sterling speak to the Members, when the Army veteran who would soon address the Members on the issue of medical marijuana whispered about how good Eric was.  I smiled.  Read this analysis by the event’s organizer Michael Kravitz.

 “Eric Sterling www.cjpf.org/, www.LEAP.cc was the star witness in favor of Decriminalization HB1134. Eric rebuffed the straw men* that Delegate Bell threw in his way of 43 year olds selling to 3rd graders etc.  with righteous indignation and roundly scolded the Delegates for their grade school pranks* of putting a tray of brownies* in the Delegates lounge or disrupting Delegate Morgan’s House floor speech with Cheech and Chong jokes showing that he was paying close attention to local politics which hit pay dirt as Delegate Bell’s posse* had pulled those pranks. Eric said that such jokes and pranks showed they believed that marijuana use wasn’t a real problem and referred to real problems such as swine flu.”

 Eric was able to make the SubCommittee accept that there would have to at least be some savings from this measure and he effectively destroyed the straw men arguments* set up one and again by Delegate Bell.

 Where is a cop when you need one?:  Highly significant at the hearing, no police officer spoke against the bill. 

 Do we ever thank our spouses enough for their support?:   I left the house at 0720 to ride to Richmond, VA with Eric to testify.  Given the usual delays, we did not testify until 6PM.  Between my prepared remarks and answering questions, I ‘worked’ about 6 minutes today.   Karen greeted me at the door at 11:00PM.  I felt great! (see below why)  There is also a URL for a TV program where I am seen testifying.  (Do I need to buy a rug?)*…they made me take my hat off!!!

 Hey buddy, can you spare me a dime* or a speaker?  A month ago I asked my DEA Senate buddy, if he or another agent could take the prohibition side of a one hour marijuana debate.   He replied that the DEA no longer provides speakers but was nice enough to give me the contact info of the Drug Czar’s office (ONDC).   I made contact there but for a noon to 1PM debate, they had no one anywhere in the country who could make that time.   Right!!!

 Some reform collleagues gave me the names of several civilian organizations that might find someone.  Finally David Evans of the Drug Free America Foundation stepped up.   He put up about 30 straw dogs points (outright lies, half-truths, unpublished science, etc) which I spent my time knocking down.   It was almost fun.

 *COPs on tv: http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-pot-bills-die,0,7060451.story

 *pranks = Streich

*straw men  = Scheingegner

*brownies = kleiner Schokoladenkuchen (zum Streich & Witz mann fragt oft, ob darin Kannabis gäbe)

*posse = wie im Wildwesternfilm..Gehilfer des Sheriffs

*rug = Toupet = Haar

* Hey buddy, can you spare me a dime = was ein Bettler bittet um Geld (ganz früher..jetzt ein Dollar statt 10 Pfennig)

 Full analysis by Michael Krawitz, event organizer

 There were three main reasons why the day was historic, first because medical marijuana and decriminalization haven’t been subject to debate at the Virginia Legislature since the 1970’s when they looked into the marijuana laws and recommended decriminalization, see the commissions report just below.    And near that same time in the late nineteen seventies the current Virginia medical marijuana law was passed.

 Second, yesterday was historic because it was the first time that I have ever seen where Bills that would change marijuana penalties were debated and not one person stood up to oppose!! The union of prosecuting attorneys represented by a Commonwealth’s attorney from Abington, Virginia spoke to the decriminalization Bill only to recommend changes so that they would stand un-opposed. Of course the changes were dramatic but that is the first time I have ever had the Commonwealth’s Attorneys work with us on anything.

 The third thing that is worth mentioning is historic by it’s not happening, neither the Virginia State Police or any other police spoke against the Bills.    No one at all spoke against the medical marijuana Bill!!

 Activists and supporters numbering into the thousands have expressed their support and thanks to the great speakers who travelled, some a great distance, to testify. Some highlights below.  I think all the speakers will agree that it was one of the most difficult forums that they have ever spoke in.

 Jon Gettman, a Virginia researcher and assistant professor with a PH.D. spoke to the decrim Bill on the cost savings estimations and other facts of note to the committee. Delegate Bell led the group of Delegates Bell, Gilbert and Cline in assailing the numbers. Some of which were later supported by testimony from the Commonwealth’s Attorney who said that the savings in not issuing public defenders to the [to be] non criminal cases would be a significant savings alone.

 Retired police detective Howard Wooldridge www.citizensopposingprohibition.org/ spoke in favor of decriminalization from his years of experience as a cop. He was torn apart pretty hard by Delegate Bell’s posse but again his words were backed up by the CommonWealth’s Attorney who also said that there would be significant instant savings that wouldn’t need to go back through appropriations in that cops that had time freed up from marijuana work could instantly apply that time to other activities.

 Howard really shone on TV where the major local affiliate spotlighted his testimony about how decrim would enhance public safety and his testimony that marijuana was not a problem and that in all the thousands of calls he answered over the years, some even involving a death, where alcohol was the culprit marijuana had never been the cause for his dispatch. See link below:

 http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-pot-bills-die,0,7060451.story

 Consider being a member of COPs at $30.00 or more per year.  It is tax-deductible.  Add your voice to those who agree that Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

 Thank you, 

 Howard

US VA: Gloucester Delegate’s Marijuana Bills Voted Down

US VA: Gloucester Delegate’s Marijuana Bills Voted Down