YEARS OF POT, DRUG ADDICTION AND HOMELESSNESS
MAY 15, 2019 EDITOR By H. Swan, co-author, A Night in Jail
Part 1 of a 3 Part Series. This article first appeared on MomsStrong.org
K started getting high at a young age. He smoked just a little bit, almost every day, through junior high, high school, college and graduate school. To him, it seemed like harmless fun. But within a few years after completing his higher education, he became a homeless drug addict and dealer with schizophrenia. He went to jail eighteen times. Relative to so many others, K’s story ends well. He is alive, out of jail, off the streets, and is sober. He is receiving psychiatric care. He lives in a group home where his meals and transportation are provided, and his psychiatric medications are dispensed. He is alive to tell his harrowing story. To warn teenagers that what seems like harmless fun can actually ruin their lives, K and I wrote a book which is inspired by his experiences.
K is 4 yrs older than me. Growing up, he was a vivacious, bright kid who laughed a lot. He got good grades and had friends and girlfriends. A lot of kids in the Pacific Northwest were smoking pot. I was twelve when I started. One time when I was getting high, I had an experience where I didn’t know where I was (in our family’s laundry room). I also couldn’t figure out who the “stranger” was that was getting high with me (my best friend). And this was when the THC content was several times lower than it is today.
Pot was not my favorite thing to do. But it was my brother’s favorite thing. K got through high school, graduated from college with decent grades, not great, but good enough to get into a good graduate school. However, once there, he didn’t perform well in his classes or on his exams. Once he was finished with school, K found he had no job prospects in his field.
Instead, K could only get low-wage, unskilled work. It was impossible to meet his monthly expenses, which included a student loan he took out in graduate school. Then, a woman K knew felt sorry for him and let him live in the attic of her home. This was the 80’s and coke was on the scene. After a decade-plus of devotion to marijuana, K tossed his bong to the curb for the status and thrill of cocaine. He snorted it, he mainlined it, and then smoked it. In short order, he was broker than ever, defaulted on his student loan, and settled in with the love of his life, crack cocaine. Our family knew little of what was going on. We knew drugs were taking over his life, but we didn’t understand the full picture.
(Only now, years later, am I able to flesh this out because of extensive conversations I’ve had with K).
For complete Story go to Drug Use & Broken Lives
Where’s the pot? California tracking system unlikely to know
By MICHAEL R. BLOODMay 9, 2019
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LOS ANGELES (AP) – When California voters broadly legalized marijuana, they were promised that a vast computer platform would closely monitor products moving through the new market. But 16 months after sales kicked in, the system known as track-and-trace isn’t doing much of either.
As of last month, just nine retail outlets were entering data into the network established under an estimated $60 million state contract, even though 627 shops are licensed to sell pot in California.
The rate of participation is similarly slim for other sectors in the emerging industry.
Only 93 of more than 1,000 licensed manufacturing companies producing extracts, oils and other products were documenting their activities in the network in April. And of the nearly 4,000 licensed growers, only about 7 percent, or 254, are using the high-tech system, according to a review of state data.
How are state officials watching over the nation’s largest legal pot market ? For now, it’s essentially a paper trail.
Most California companies are required to document their business on paper sales invoices and shipping manifests. But experts say that can be a doorway for criminal traffic.
With paper records, regulators are relying on an honor system, said Patrick Vo, CEO of BioTrackTHC, which provides seed-to-sale cannabis tracking in eight states, including New York and Illinois.
Without a digital crumb trail in place, “there are so many areas where things can go wrong,” Vo said. “Things can be intentionally altered.”
Track-and-trace sometimes is referred to as seed-to-sale to reflect the goal of tracking marijuana plants every step, from the time they are planted until products are purchased by consumers. The goal is to keep illegal cannabis from store shelves while making sure legally produced products don’t drift into the underground market.
According to state law, the tracking system is required to provide “data points for the different stages of commercial activity, including, but not limited to, cultivation, harvest, processing, distribution, inventory and sale.” It’s also intended to help the state keep track of taxes.
But for now, California’s electronic monitoring system is seeing just fragments of the legal market – not the rigorous seed-to-sale oversight envisioned when voters approved Proposition 64, the law that opened the way for broad legal sales.
Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, said the agency was unaware of any enforcement cases triggered by fraudulent or altered paper records. To date, it has received more than 50,000 manifests.
According to the state, the California tracking network created by Florida-based Franwell Inc. has been functional since Jan. 2, 2018, the day after broad legal sales began.
So why are so few licensees using it? In short, time and bureaucracy.
It goes back to state regulators’ decision to first issue only temporary cannabis licenses, as California faced a tight legal deadline to begin sales on Jan. 1, 2018.
It wasn’t possible to train thousands of temporary license holders to use the tracking system “without causing significant disruption” to the new, regulated marijuana market, said Rebecca Foree, spokeswoman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
Instead, the state decided only annual license-holders would use the track-and-trace system. But the first annual license wasn’t issued until November, and only a relatively small number have been issued since.
Meanwhile, scores of temporary licenses have expired, leaving companies in a kind of legal limbo, technically unable to do business in the state market.
For complete Account of the Stoner Stuff UP!
INJECTION ROOMS ARE NOT PERMITTED UNDER UN DRUG CONVENTIONS –
Injection rooms planned for Dublin defeated. Front page Irish Mail on Sunday.
Under instruction from Irish Drugs Ministerm Catherine Byrne, the government agency, HSE (Health Service Executive) were the chief protagonists for this UN banned and ill conceived \’HR\’ measure.
Merchants Quay is the main HR Centre here working closely with the International Harm Reduction Agency. It has been a long drawn out battle. In the end best practice won out and they had no choice.
One Irish Drug Policy commentator said … \”It\’s a pity this Administration does not put the same effort and money into providing detox facilities and treatment to families affected by our drug culture. This Drugs Minister has failed in her duty of care to such families.\”
Read the \”Planning Objections\” they are very informative. Great journalism on the part of the Irish Mail newspaper group.
Australia is the best market in the world for cocaine and meth and is being targeted by El Chapo\’s Mexican cartel, warn American police
- Australia is being targeted by Mexican cartels as the best market for drugs
- The country\’s ties to cartels were exposed after 1.7 tonnes of ice were seized
- Record-breaking drug haul were concealed in loudspeakers from United States
- Detectives found links to the cartels and Australian bikie gangs after the bust
\’If you were to ask any significant trafficker what is the best market for meth and coke in the world, they would say Australia and New Zealand,\’ DEA Pacific attache Kevin Merkel told NZME.
\’The same people that are pumping drugs out to the United States are the same ones pumping out drugs here.
\’If they see potential to make more money, they\’re going to do it.\’
Australia\’s ties to Mexican cartels were exposed after 1.7 tonnes of ice with a street value of $1.3 billion were bound to the country from the US in February.
The record-breaking drug haul was concealed in metal boxes labelled as loudspeakers – and six people were arrested after it was found.
The tsunami of ice was initially seized at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex in mid-January, along with 55.9 pounds of cocaine and 11.5 pounds of heroin.
Australian Federal Police (AFP), the US Department of Homeland Security and the DEA found links between Mexican cartels and Australian bikie gangs.
For complete story https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7017627/Australia-best-market-world-drugs-targeted-El-Chapos-Mexican-cartel.html
(Defacto Decriminalisation – Drug use normalisation mantras and hijacking of Harm Reduction mechanisms to sustain and even promote drug use, all add to the demand! It’s what happens when drug users dictate drug policy interpretation!)
Pot smuggling arrests at LAX have surged 166% since marijuana legalization
Los Angeles Times May 2019
Waiting to board his Philadelphia-bound flight with his dog Odie, Vechell had sparked concern when he sidled up to another passenger and asked if she wanted to join his “drug smuggling ring,” authorities say.
Although Vechell told LAX police it was just a misunderstanding, officers demanded to see his checked baggage. Inside, they found nearly 70 pounds of vacuum-sealed marijuana bundled into packages labeled “T-shirts,” “cold weather” and “sexy pants.”
More than a year after California legalized the recreational use of cannabis, trafficking arrests like Vechell’s have surged 166% at LAX, according to arrest records obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Emboldened by legalization and facing only light punishment if captured, more and more smugglers are taking to the friendly skies in an effort to escape California’s glutted cannabis market, according to authorities, marijuana industry experts and a lawyer who represents accused smugglers. As a result, the world’s fourth-busiest airport is now an expanding hub in the illegal export of marijuana, they say.
The sudden increase in airport smuggling is largely the result of legalization and a saturated market. California grows far more marijuana than its residents consume – up to five times more by some accounts – and cannabis users in other states will pay a much higher price.
“Since pot’s been legalized in California, there’s no money to be made because everyone got involved in it,” Kroger said. “They’ve got these big 50,000-square-foot [grow] houses, and they’re flooding the market. The money is outside of California.”
… the number of traffickers using commercial airlines appears to be growing.
Kroger said the consequences for getting stopped at a California airport with two checked bags of marijuana were relatively minor: a misdemeanor charge for someone without a history of drug or violent offenses.
In the eyes of the federal government, the surge in smuggling is a clear case of “I told you so.”
“I don’t think we’re surprised by the numbers. These are things we foresaw and we’ve warned folks about,” said Kyle Mori of the DEA’s Los Angeles office. “When states legalize it, you give folks a false sense of security that they can come through TSA checkpoints…. They believe what they’re doing is legal.”
Last year at LAX, there were 503 reports of marijuana discovered in bags, and only one-fifth of them involved trafficking suspects. In comparison, there were 400 reports of marijuana in 2017 and 282 reports in 2016.
Hundreds of passengers now regularly pack personal amounts of marijuana, cannabis oil or edibles in their carry-on or checked baggage assuming it’s legal to fly with, forgetting that the federal government has dominion over the skies.
Among those stopped was a UCLA student-athlete on scholarship who was carrying 34 grams of marijuana – nearly 6 grams more than the state permits one person to carry – and a pipe in her purse. The woman “spontaneously said that the marijuana was hers and she was sorry for having it.” Officers let her off with a warning, and she continued on her flight without the marijuana.
Traffickers, however, will put more effort into concealing large amounts of cannabis and its derivatives, either by wrapping the contraband in things like wax paper, tinfoil or gift wrapping or disguising their products as candy or other foods.
Such was the case Nov. 14 when TSA employees scanning checked luggage opened five suitcases that had failed to produce a scanned image on their monitors.
The luggage belonged to two men on a Newark-bound flight and contained more than 100 pounds of cannabis products, according to arrest reports.
In December, police arrested a man carrying 3 pounds of edibles and cannabis oil in his luggage. The suspect said he was struck by how low the prices were at the Inglewood dispensary he was visiting compared with prices he found at home in Hagerstown, Md.
In numerous arrest reports reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, trafficking suspects told police they flew to California to purchase better and cheaper cannabis products to sell for a profit back home.
When some states legalize marijuana but others do not, suppliers will move in to fill that void even if it’s through black market channels, said California Cannabis Industry Assn. spokesman Josh Drayton. A pound of marijuana flower that costs $600 to $800 in California can be resold for $4,000 in the Midwest, he said.
Despite the increase in commercial aviation trafficking incidents, marijuana remains a low enforcement priority, police say. The DEA’s stance is that the drug has no medical benefit and that legalizing it increases DUI-related arrests, crashes and helps fund Mexican cartels. But beyond that, their immediate focus is elsewhere.
“Heroin trafficking,” Mori said, “and the diversion of chemicals and pharmaceuticals into the hands of gang members and violent criminals – those are certainly our priority.”
For complete article go to Cannabis Chaos
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You may not have heard about this, but the City of Denver narrowly voted yesterday to become the first city in history to decriminalize the use of \”magic mushrooms.\”
In 2012, when opponents of marijuana legalization said that lax attitudes towards marijuana would lead to lax attitudes towards other drugs, we were laughed at.
The marijuana industry has invested heavily into changing public perception on marijuana to give it more leeway in its pursuit of massive profits – even as more and more data comes to light showing how harmful its widespread use is becoming.
Click here to donate and help us better educate the public on the overreach of the pot industry and help prevent the commercialization of magic mushrooms or the next drug they will try to include on their menus next.
The goals of the groups pushing to legalize marijuana do not stop with pot and this serves as further proof of that. These deep pocketed groups will not rest until every drug is legalized and commercialized.
Thank you for all you do,
I long ago got used to how young the police have become. To me, archbishops of Canterbury, High Court judges and Cabinet ministers look young too. It is an old joke, and a good one. As we grow older, we think the problem is not with us but with other people.
But in the case of QCs, I think, my recent discovery of their rather dismal quality is an objective fact, not a subjective consequence of my advancing age.
Please listen to this Spectator podcast in which I attempt to contest the views of a QC who believes in drug decriminalisation, while also claiming that we currently have “prohibition”.
The segment starts almost 12 minutes into the clip:
https://audioboom.com/posts/7249932-the-spectator-podcast-rise-of-the-brexit-party
Once upon a time, a Queen’s Counsel was something to be, and to hear and to see. They were hired, in their silk gowns and well-aged horsehair wigs, to give a Rolls-Royce smoothness to any prosecution or defence. They were witty. They were profoundly experienced. They knew their law or had the sense to look it up when they didn”t. They were dangerous in cross-examination.
But a few weeks ago I was publicly (and quite without personal provocation) attacked by a QC [Jessica Simor] who used the crudest abuse against me, suggesting that my opinions on the Jo Cox murder case betokened some sort of sympathy or excuse-making for the Nazi leadership. When I challenged her, she made no elegant defence, but swiftly hid behind the claim that I was in some way harassing her, as if a QC was in verbal danger from a mere columnist. This obviously was not a worthy opponent, so I let the matter be.
Then, this week, I was invited, by the Spectator magazine, to discuss drug legalization with another QC [Chris Daw], for a podcast. I accepted immediately. I am, I must admit, a little jaded by having had so many such discussions. My opponents, with very rare exceptions, are clueless regurgitators of propaganda talking points, who have not troubled to study my position and are astonished to find that a contrary view even exists, whereas I am wearily familiar with everything they say.
Foolishly, I thought when a QC was mentioned, that I would be encountering someone of sharp wit and carefully-assembled arguments. In the event, it was like an argument with a wiseacre in the pub. All it lacked was him jabbing his forefinger into my chest and saying at frequent intervals that “it stands to reason”.
He produced so many straw men (absurd caricatures of my position which enabled him to avoid addressing what I actually say) that the Spectator later had to hire peasants with pitchforks to remove all the resulting straw form the editor’s office. He changed the subject whenever he was in trouble, which was a lot, a particularly tedious style of debate. And while I may have been guilty of interrupting him a few times, I did give him a clear run for his opening statement (which he did not give to me) and he was virtually incapable of allowing me to finish a sentence.
By the way, in a brief preliminary skirmish on Twitter, several hours before our encounter, I had taken the trouble to send him links to my most concise statement of my position and also (since he had raised it) the details of my argument about the supposed condition of “addiction”. I, by contrast, had not had any advance sight of his Spectator article urging decriminalisation of drugs.
My opponent asked for figures which I did not have on the smuggling of tobacco and the illicit alcohol problem into this country, which he dismissed as minor. I had no figures because I have never before known anyone challenge the extent of this undoubted problem. Here is evidence recently submitted to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/home-affairs/Tobacco-written-evidence.pdf
The alert reader will notice that it says: “In 2010/11 650 million cigarettes were seized at the border.”
This seems to me to be a substantial quantity.
This HMRC document https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510235/HMRC_Alcohol_Strategy.pdf likewise notes that: “the illicit alcohol market still costs the taxpayer approximately £1.2 billion a year. The criminality involved, including the use of the proceeds to fund other crimes, has a devastating effect on people and businesses across the UK”
It notes that 50 million litres of untaxed alcohol have been seized since 2010. Again, this hardly suggests that the matter is trivial.
In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, strengths of THC are not restricted. Here a CNBC report from March 2015 https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/23/colorado-marijuana-study-finds-legal-weed-contains-potent-thc-levels.html states that “Colorado marijuana is nearly twice as potent as illegal pot of past decades, and some modern cannabis packs triple the punch of vintage ganja, lab tests reveal for the first time.
“In old-school dope, levels of THC – the psychoactive chemical that makes people high – were typically well below 10 percent. But in Colorado’s legal bud, the average THC level is 18.7 percent, and some retail pot contains 30 percent THC or more, according to research released Monday.”
There is a simple reason why. Any such restriction would simply lead to more business for the continuing illegal, untaxed market. See this CBC report https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/colorado-marijuana-black-market-1.4647198 which states that black market production of marijuana has boomed in Colorado since legalisation.
My opponent (at about 28 minutes into the discussion) also appears to think that either that the illegality of drugs began in 1971 with the Misuse of Drugs Act, or alternatively that the Victorian era ended in 1971. This did come close to reducing me to silence, but not the silence of admiration. Shall I say only that neither of these beliefs is correct?
This Wikipedia entry provides a reasonably accurate history of UK legislation concerning drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_United_Kingdom
It is genuinely astonishing to find such ignorance at such a level in the professions.
For complete article The Mail on Sunday (UK) blog, May 3, 2019.
URL: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/05/-a-debate-with-a-qc-about-drug-legalisation-turns-out-to-be-more-like-an-argument-with-a-wiseacre-in.html
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