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Gunmen kill 17 people at a drug rehab in Mexico (Sept. 3, 2009)
"Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico's most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone. Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence, which has taken a heavy toll across Mexico. Earlier the same day, gunmen ambushed and killed a senior security official in the home state of President Felipe Calderon."

Burma's Opium Production Back on Rise (Sept. 2, 2009)
"A Feb. 2 report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime found that the price of opium in Burma, also known as Myanmar, increased by 15% last year. As a result, Burmese land dedicated to poppy cultivation actually expanded in 2008, despite promises by the country's ruling junta to combat its reputation as one of the world's most notorious narco-states."

Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium? And If So, Why? (Sept. 2, 2009)
"If international drug- and law-enforcement officials are right, the Taliban might be hiding up to $3.2 billion worth of opium inside Afghanistan, potentially causing huge complications for NATO's decision this month to attack Afghanistan's opium laboratories and smuggling networks. If it exists, the drug stockpile would also have a major bearing on Afghan officials' tentative peace talks with the Taliban, which are favored by U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus and both U.S. presidential candidates."

Report: Afghanistan's Opium Boom May Be Over (Sept. 2, 2009)
"But there is a twist. Afghan poppy crops are now high-yield, say U.N. officials, thanks to better irrigation methods and especially good rains over the past year. While acreage devoted to the flowers fell, production of opium itself dropped only 10% in Afghanistan last year, to about 6,900 tons. Each hectare of poppies yielded about 123 lb. (56 kg) of opium — 15% more than last year."

Mexico is safer than in the past, minister says (August 25, 2009)
"Mexico decriminalized the use of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin [Friday, August 21, 2009]. The move will help focus on major traffickers, officials said."

AP Source: Michael Jackson's death ruled homicide (August 25, 2009)
"While the finding does not necessarily mean a crime was committed, it means more likely that criminal charges will be filed against Dr. Conrad Murray, the Las Vegas cardiologist who was caring for Jackson when he died June 25 in a rented Los Angeles mansion."

Marines assault Taliban town in Afghanistan (August 12, 2009)
"Marines said they killed between seven and 10 militants in Wednesday's push and seized about 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of opium, which the militants use to finance their insurgency. Troops hope to restore control of the town so that residents can vote in the election."

U.S. Military Base Plan Puts Colombia in Hot Water (August 12, 2009)
"As one of the few surviving pro-U.S. conservative heads of state in a continent that has swung left, Colombia's President, Alvaro Uribe, is used to being at odds with his neighbors. But accustomed though he may be to swimming against Latin America's political tide, Uribe is scrambling to explain his less-than-transparent decision to allow the U.S. military to use air bases on Colombian soil to track drug traffickers and even rebels."s

Phony Stats on Cocaine Prices Hide Truth About War on Drugs (July 22, 2009)
"John Walters had some data he wanted to make public, but he also had a credibility problem. Just two years earlier, in 2005, Walters, the country’s drug czar, had cited a hike in the price of cocaine as a battlefield victory in the war on drugs—only to see the price fall just as he was touting the increase. He was ridiculed in some quarters of the press; others decided to stop listening to him. This time around, in the summer of 2007, Walters went looking for the most receptive audience he could find. So he zipped down New York Avenue to the headquarters of The Washington Times, the conservative daily based in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Walters, according to a staffer present at the briefing, came with a small staff and a stack of glossy pages making the case that the United States had turned a corner in the war on drugs. Prices for cocaine, he said, were rising fast. And that, he explained, can only mean a decline in supply. The Times wouldn’t bite. The data were suspiciously thin."

Foreign Policy Magazine Exposes Folly of Marijuana Ban (July 22, 2009)
"The reason why the editor of Foreign Policy magazine Moises Naim's recent column is significant is because for far too long the foreign policy community has been a willing conduit for exporting America's wrongheaded and failed cannabis prohibition around the globe. But, the American dominance of the drug policy debate has started to wane over the last 8-10 years in quarters like the United Nations, and columns like Mr. Naim's underscore the myriad reasons why America's elected policymakers need to adopt a reform mindset--notably under an Obama administration--not status quo retrenchment into an unyielding, prohibition-centric cannabis policy."

Drug czar: Feds won't support legalized pot (July 22, 2009)
"The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno. The nation's drug czar, who viewed a foothill marijuana farm on U.S. Forest Service land with state and local officials earlier Wednesday, said the federal government will not support legalizing marijuana. 'Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,' he said. Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said. 'Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,' Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS -- Save Our Sierra -- a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County."

Who Are the Drug Lords? (July 21, 2009)
"Who are the drug lords? They are every politician who lives and breathes war, drugs, terror or otherwise. They are the corrupt corporate heads, malicious media barons, venomous judges and cretinous cops, who, knowing full well the truth, choose to follow their nose to riches, to embrace a lie, to feed their evil cornucopia with the lives of their fellow man."

Something Is Happening Down There (July 21, 2009)
"The battle against the drug gangs is a complicated one. A lot of money is involved, and the drug lords are pretty smart. They now keep a lot of their processing (opium into morphine or heroin) labs mobile. The vehicles travel with armed guards, but force is a last resort. The security detachment is also armed with a lot of cash, and the first weapon to be deployed is a bribe. That usually works. But the U.S. intelligence troops are after the drug gangs now, and this makes concealment more difficult. The U.S. military isn't releasing any play-by-play of these operations, lest they provide useful information to the enemy. It won't be until the end of August that an initial assessment is possible, and not until the end of the year until one can check the trends in wholesale and retail prices for heroin. As Afghanistan heroin production grew since the 1990s, the world supply has doubled, and prices have come down by about 50 percent. More people are using, and dying from, heroin. And now we can add many of the victims of the fighting in southern Afghanistan to that toll."

Worldwide production of heroin and cocaine falling, says UN drug chief (July 20, 2009)
"Drug use should be treated more as an illness than a crime, the head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime said today as the body's annual report announced a worldwide decline in the production of cocaine and heroin. The report for 2009 called for traffickers to be targeted rather than users and announced that there was a worldwide growth in synthetic drugs.""

Chavez Attacks US Report Naming Venezuela a ‘Narcotics State’ (July 20, 2009)
This is a great way of making one's unliked leftist darker-skinned President of a South American country look bad to the US public while simutaneously helping justify the spending of US tax money to maybe, just maybe, do things like, say, destabilize Venezuala, the country Chavez currnetly heads? Chavez has long been a very irritating thorn in the Us' side. How long he will remain as President, well, let's all wish him the best.

Revolutionary Latin America and Today's Nexus of Terror (July 20, 2009)
"The irony of the narcotics scourge alone is how the massive accrued wealth of the narco-terrorist’s hierarchy is at the expense of the citizenry and the victims, as a nation must struggle with the overwhelming massive resources needed to defend their homeland. It has been reported that Mexican drug syndicates “generate more revenue than at least 40% of Fortune 500 companies.” And let’s face it – Mexico remains under siege.

Marijuana Legalization: CBS News Poll Has Support at 41% Nationwide (July 19, 2009)
"A CBS News poll conducted over the weekend has found that 41% of Americans support marijuana legalization, while 52% oppose, and 7% are undecided. The figure matches that of a January CBS News poll. Support dropped to 31% in an April CBS News poll before rebounding this month."

Most ‘Trusted Man In America’, Also Supported Marijuana Law Reform (July 19, 2009)
"RIP Walter Cronkite! In the summer 1992, I was told by an assistant that I had a phone call, and that 'unless the person on the phone was kidding, that it was someone claiming to be Walter Cronkite.'..."Drug war is a war on families By Walter Cronkite Article Published: Sunday, August 08, 2004"
" In the midst of the soaring rhetoric of the recent Democratic National Convention, more than one speaker quoted Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, invoking 'the better angels of our nature.' Well, there is an especially appropriate task awaiting those heavenly creatures - a long-overdue reform of our disastrous war on drugs. We should begin by recognizing its costly and inhumane dimensions."

State helps ease drug offenders’ release (July 19, 2009)
"NEW YORK STATE — In the fall, low-level drug offenders will begin trickling out of state prisons and into treatment programs under the landmark state drug law reforms passed earlier this year. Legislation dismantling most of the state’s strict Rockefeller drug laws was signed into law in April by Gov. David Paterson. The bill repealed many of the state’s mandatory minimum prison sentences for lower-level drug offenders."

World drugs in graphics (July 19, 2009)
"A UN agency has published a comprehensive report on the worldwide illicit drugs market, the World Drug Report 2009. The graphs and maps below show the extent of the problem and measures to tackle it."

DEA boosts its war in Afghanistan (July 19, 2009)
"The move is seen as a recognition that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won with military force alone. Until near the end of its eight years in office, the Bush administration failed to link the drug traffickers in Afghanistan with the rising insurgency, basing its anti-drug campaign primarily on an effort to destroy the vast fields of poppy that produce more than 90 percent of the world's heroin....After Sept. 11, the Bush administration's focus on counterterrorism and, later, the war in Iraq, extensively depleted U.S. global counternarcotics efforts, especially in South Asia, they say. The DEA also suffered from hiring freezes, budget cuts and a lack of political support despite its intelligence showing ever-closer links between drug traffickers and terrorist groups."

La Familia cartel kills 12 federal agents in Mexico drug war attack (Jully 19, 2009)
"A powerful Mexican drug cartel has unleashed a killing spree against the authorities in a challenge to the leadership of the President in his home state....The perception that the war against drugs is being lost is pervasive. A poll published in Milenio said that only 28 per cent of Mexicans believed that the Government was winning, and more than half thought that it was losing."

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (July 17, 2009)
"It's a corrupt cops twofer for New Jersey, another twofer for Indiana, a two-for-one special on Texas deputies, and a lone prison guard in Florida. Let's get to it...."

Heroin is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade (May 10, 2007)
"The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions."

U.S., allies seen as losing drug war (May 7, 2007)
"The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck."

101-year-old Zambian man nabbed over cannabis cultivation, trafficking (May 3, 2007)
"DEC spokesperson Rosten Chulu confirmed the arrest of Timothy Chilekwa, a peasant farmer of Namembo village in Southern province who was born in 1906. Chulu said the old man was nabbed for alleged unlawful cultivation of cannabis weighing 1.2 tons. He was also found trafficking two sacks of cannabis weighing 6. 95 kg, Chulu said. The spokesperson said the 101-year-old would appear in court soon."

Was Timothy Leary Right? (May 3, 2007)
"Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time? The answer to both questions is yes."

The Farce of the War on Drugs (May 1, 2007)
"My brother Howard Wooldridge served as a decorated police officer and detective in Lansing, Michigan for 18 years. During that time, he collared killers, drunk drivers, child molesters, rapists, wife beaters and drug dealers. What he learned launched him on a crusade to stop the federal government’s useless 35 year 'War on Drugs.'"

Coca Growers Shake the Andes Once Again (April 27, 2007)
"During the last few days, coca growers, especially in Peru and Colombia, have been in the news again, as their actions have given the media something to talk about."

LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US (April 27, 2007)
"BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work."

No Jail for Willie Nelson on Drug Charge (April 25, 2007)
While the editor of DrugWar.com applauds this decision by the judge, I can't help but wonder how hard the judge would have thrown the book at me for the exact same offense.

The War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up (April 14, 2007)
"Middlebury, Vermont, this week declared a public health emergency to prevent a local business from selling it. It's already illegal in five states -- Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Delaware -- and a number of towns and cities across the country, and now politicians in at least seven other states have filed bills to make it illegal there. For the DEA, it is a 'drug of concern.'"

Book Offer: Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics (April 14, 2007)
"Normally when we publish a book review in our Drug War Chronicle newsletter, it gets readers but is not among the top stories visited on the site. Recently we saw a big exception to that rule when more than 2,700 of you read our review of the new book Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy."

Plant growers served search warrant (April 11, 2007)
"Three WSU students were surprised when a plant they were growing in their closet was mistaken for marijuana."

California in bid to impose 7.25% sales tax on cannabis (April 10, 2007)
"For decades, smoking marijuana has been an illicit affair, a key anti-establishment ritual for America's counter-culture underground. But the legalisation of the drug for medicinal purposes in California has presented its advocates with a dilemma: to remain firmly on the wrong side of the law or accept a demand to pay taxes on its sale."

The Other War: Democratic Candidates are Deafeningly Silent on the Drug War (April 9, 2007)
"There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House. While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color."

Ex-officer likens drug war to Prohibition (April 8, 2007)
"Retired police officer Peter Christ on Tuesday compared the contemporary war on drugs to National Prohibition of the 1920s."

Minnesota drug laws: Are they too harsh? (April 8, 2007)
Momentum gathers for review of sentencing rules

Drug Czar Blasted for Lack of Leadership (April 8, 2007)
"During the course of research for this series, it became apparent that many prominent players in the war on drugs don't have many compliments for the current drug czar, John Walters."

Is the Drug War Nearing an End? (April 8, 2007)
"Little by little by little there is some hope that the "war" on drugs is becoming a political issue - the first step in undoing a set of policies that make little sense no matter how you look at them."

Law Enforcement Group Visits Maine To Advocate For Legalization Of Drugs (April 8, 2007)
"LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, says it has 5,000 members, made up mostly of retired and active law enforcement professionals. The group tours the country speaking to various civic groups about what they call a $60 billion failed war on drugs."

Afghans pin hopes on a new economy (April 8, 2007)
"As a competitive economy awakens in one of the world's poorest countries, the residents of Kabul are jockeying to get ahead in a city flush with cash from US soldiers, foreign aid workers, new investors, parliamentarians, and drug traffickers."

Salvadoran Murders in Guatemala (April 8, 2007)
"If the trip to Guatemala was a fiasco, Colombia was no better, Bush's arrival in Bogotá couldn't have happened at a worse time as every moment ticked off another scandal, some of them leading in the direction ofo President Uribe's office, and nothing that Bush or Uribe president could say concealed the fact that the Colombia phase of the U.S. anti-drug war was more dead than alive, which was even more certain when it came to extraditing Colombian suspected felons to the U.S."

Analysis: U.S. anti-drug war in Afghanistan (April 8, 2007)
"In a bluntly worded letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the lawmakers said inter-agency rivalry and U.S. policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos."

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (April 7, 2007)
"A Georgia fire captain gets caught peddling coke, a pair of New Haven narcs lose their jobs, a former Mississippi police chief cops a plea, and a former Ohio cop goes back to prison. Let's get to it...."

Methamphetamine: Feds Make First Cold Medicine Bust Under Combat Meth Act (April 7, 2007)
"An Ontario, New York, man last Friday won the dubious distinction of being the first person arrested under the 2005 Combat Meth Epidemic Act. According to a DEA press release, William Fousse was arrested for purchasing cold tablets containing more than nine grams of pseudoephedrine within a one month period."

Harm Reduction: New Mexico Governor Signs Overdose Death Reduction Measure (April 7, 2007)
"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Wednesday signed innovative legislation that would protect friends or family members who seek medical attention for drug overdose victims. The law is the first of its kind in the country."

Pot-Growing Takes Root in the Suburbs (April 1, 2007)
"In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other's privacy - ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs."

Bob Barr Flip-Flops on Pot (March 28, 2007)
"Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project."

What the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care? (March 28, 2007)
"Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people."

Mexican Envoy Highly Critical of U.S. Role in Anti-Drug Effort (March 23, 2007)
"The United States has contributed 'zilch' to Mexico's efforts to combat the nations' joint problem with criminal narcotics gangs, Mexico's new ambassador to Washington said yesterday."

Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind (March 14, 2007- Free NYTimes registration required)
"The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about 'friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,' in 1972, he was not referring to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question, lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling you get after a nice hike, perhaps."

U.S. faults friends, foes in drug war (March 5, 2007)
"The United States said top anti-terror allies Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia had fallen short in the war on drugs despite enhanced counter-narcotics efforts and it criticized perennial foes Iran, North Korea and Venezuela for not cooperating."

Cuba’s War on Drugs (March 5, 2007)
"A review of the main results of the Cuban efforts against illegal drug trafficking as well as prevention during 2006, shows a marked reduction in the presence of drugs on the island, with 1.7 tons of narcotics seized, the lowest figure of the past 11 years and almost four times less than the amount detected in 2003."

Drug War Corrupting Cops In Hawaii and Elsewhere (March 5, 2007)
"Claiming to be the 'world’s leading drug policy newsletter,' the Drug War Chronicle publishes a regular online feature called, 'This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories.' The typical Hawaii newspaper reader probably comes across these cops-gone-bad stories pretty rarely. But, when hundreds of reports compiled over the past year from around the nation are read at one sitting, they add up to a hidden cost of America’s ill-fated drug war -- widespread corruption inside local police departments, prisons and jails."

Drug war rips apart Mexico (March 5, 2007)
"More than 250 people were executed last year in Acapulco as the sweltering Pacific resort became the latest battleground between rival cartels battling for supremacy of the multibillion-dollar drug trade."

In Guatemala, officers' killings echo dirty war (March 5, 2007)
"The two sets of brazen killings set off a vicious diplomatic conflict between Guatemala and El Salvador — heightened by news reports suggesting that the congressmen were indeed drug dealers — and ignited a political scandal here. It shed light on how corrupt the National Police has become, and raised questions about links between drug dealers and high-level police officials, as well as whether the government can contain drug trafficking without international help."

Collision Course: Bolivia's "Coca, Si; Cocaine, No" Policy Runs Afoul of the International Drug Control Board and, Probably, the United States (March 1, 2007)
"A confrontation is brewing over Bolivian President Evo Morales' effort to rationalize coca production in his country and expand markets for coca-based products....Now, the Morales government is also pushing for expanded legal markets for coca products and, in a joint venture with the Venezuelan government, is preparing to begin coca product exports to that country."

Ga. Reconsiders No - Knock Warrant Rules (March 1, 2007)
"A group of lawmakers wants to make it harder for police to use ''no-knock'' warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes officers stormed her home unannounced in a search for drugs."

Here we go again (Feb. 22, 2007)
"We're happy we could help with that, Mr. Vice President, but Colombian cocaine is still readily available in U.S. cities, so we have a difficult time thinking we got a good deal for our $4 billion. In fact, we don't believe Americans are getting their money's worth for any of the cash the government has thrown into the bottomless pit of the drug war. Court dockets are packed and prisons are overcrowded, yet illicit drugs are still readily available to anyone who wants them."

Latin America: Mexico Moves to Decriminalize Drug Possession -- So It Can Concentrate on Drug Traffickers (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Legislators from Mexican President Felipe's Calderon's National Action Party (PAN -- Partido de Accion Nacional) have introduced a bill in the Mexican Senate that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs for 'addicts.'"

DPS officials were told of lax lab security (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Texas Department of Public Safety officials were aware of security breaches in the handling of their drug evidence as recently as 2006 and as far back as at least 2003 — problems such as failure to log evidence out of storage, containers of marijuana left open and the lack of a monitoring system for a high-security drug vault — according to the agency's internal audits."

'Safest city' now has drug war (Feb. 22, 2007)
"From the shopping malls and the fashionable clothes of its residents, this could be any affluent U.S. suburb. Residents pride themselves on their prosperity. But in recent weeks, drug-related violence has shattered the tranquillity."

Mexican president gives soldiers pay hike as drug war intensifies (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Soldiers waging a nationwide offensive against drug traffickers will get a pay hike of nearly 50 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced Monday."

New Federal Study Shows Methamphetamine Use Decreased Between 2002 and 2005 (Jan. 31, 2007)
"A new analysis of data from The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that past-year use of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant, declined between 2002 and 2005 among persons age 12 or older....The study also shows that the number of persons who used methamphetamine for the first time in the 12 months before the survey remained stable between 2002 and 2004 but decreased between 2004 and 2005."

Tell Governor Spitzer to Support Rockefeller Drug Law Reform (Jan. 31, 2007)
"The Rockefeller Drug Laws require extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Most of the people incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses, and many of them have no prior criminal records. Today 14,139 people are locked up for drug offenses in NY State prisons, comprising nearly 38% of the prison population. This costs New Yorkers over half a billion dollars a year. Send a message to Governor Spitzer now, urging him to support real reform."

Mexico eyes Colombian experience in drug battle (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Mexico's top prosecutor on Thursday looked to Colombia's experience in counter-narcotics and conflict for lessons to help his government battle drug cartels whose violence has engulfed parts of the country."

Rio gang kills seven as drug war spreads (Jan. 27, 2007)
"The mutilated bodies of seven youths, some with their heads and legs chopped off, have been found in an abandoned car in a notorious Rio de Janeiro slum. They appeared to be the latest victims of a long-running drug war that has made Rio, which depends heavily on tourism, one of the most violent cities in the world."

Drug Policy Reform Group to Partner with State of New Mexico in Federally-Funded Meth Prevention Education Program (Jan. 27, 2007)
"In a first for drug reform organizations, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) New Mexico office has been designated to create a statewide methamphetamine education and prevention program directed at high school students, thanks to a $500,000 grant obtained by US Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) as part of a Justice Department appropriations bill. The grant is the result of years of close collaboration between DPA and New Mexico state and local officials dating back to the administration of former Gov. Gary Johnson (R), a prominent voice for drug law reform."

Spot in brain may control smoking urge (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Damage to a silver dollar-sized spot deep in the brain seems to wipe out the urge to smoke, a surprising discovery that may shed important new light on addiction. The research was inspired by a stroke survivor who claimed he simply forgot his two-pack-a-day addiction - no cravings, no nicotine patches, not even a conscious desire to quit."

Case highlights medical-pot dilemma (Jan. 23, 2007)
"'If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to come back and arrest me for 50,' said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare, says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state. Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver, Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost."

Alleged cartel members extradited to Texas (Jan. 23, 2007)
"A suspected Mexican drug lord whose cartel allegedly smuggled more than 4 tons of cocaine a month over the U.S. border will stand trial in Texas. Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged kingpin of the Gulf Cartel, and three other alleged drug lords appeared in a Houston court Monday. Mexican authorities delivered Cardenas-Guillen and 14 other alleged Mexican drug dealers and criminals to Houston late Friday and early Saturday, the Drug Enforcement Administration said."

Burdened U.S. military cuts role in drug war (Jan. 22, 2007)
"Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts."

S.F. area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says (Jan. 21, 2007)
"The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA, a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found."

Executive Order 13420 -- Dismantling the DEA (Jan. 21, 2007)
"This is the order I will sign after delivering my inaugural address," says Steve Kubby, who is again running for office this time seeking the nomination from the Libertarian Party as their Presidential candidate.

Cocaine found on 99.9% of UK banknotes (Jan. 21, 2007)
"Pretty well every banknote in the UK shows traces of cocaine, forensic scientists have claimed. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, 99.9 per cent of the two billion notes currently in circulation have come into contact with Bolivian marching powder."

A Legacy of Torture: From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act (Jan. 21, 2007)
"In today's world, the US government's use of torture and complicity in its clients' use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis. Yet very few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical shocks could be -- and have been -- used on US citizens." But the fact that torture is used profusely in US jails and prisons is unsurprising to those who've been inside the US "justice" system.

Reefer Madness (Jan. 21, 2007)
"I was never an activist until I got busted [noted Tommy Chong]. But it ’s not so much my efforts as the substance itself. Pot lives and dies on its own reputation....Years ago, people would do booze jokes. Then they start dying of cirrhosis of the liver and all these alcohol-related car accidents. Alcohol started out as a fun thing and ended up as this evil thing that kills people. Pot is the opposite...."

In the Costly War on Drugs, Who's To Say What Is Right? (Jan. 21, 2007)
"It seems like you lack a certain enthusiasm for the war on drugs, I said. I do lack enthusiasm for the war on drugs, he said. I asked about legalization. He shrugged. 'Monday, Wednesday and Friday I think they should be legalized. Tuesdays and Thursdays I think they should be illegal. I don't like drugs. I strongly disapprove of them. The costs are great. But it's expensive to incarcerate somebody. The costs are enormous either way. I don't know what's right.'"

Democracy and Plan Colombia (Jan. 21, 2007)
Just what effects are the massive spraying in anti-cocaine and poppy efforts that are one of the main tenents of Plan Colombia, not to mention all the arms and training given to the Colombian military and governments to combat Colombian peasents...errr, I mean, dastardly narco-terrorists? No major advancement of democracy it appears.

Drug mafia, CIA blamed for sacking of Afghan governor (Jan. 21, 2007)
"As The Washington Post has plainly summarized, 'corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, [have] undercut the [counter-narcotics] effort.'"

PAST NEWS ARCHIVE

"It’s real easy. I was born, went to ‘Nam, lived in a bottle for 20 years, then found God and ganja."
- Charles Edward "Eddy" Lepp

Charges? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Charges!

DEA Medical Marijuana Raids

by Preston Peet- for DrugWar.com

all marijuana photos by Linda Senti


Lepp and Senti's favorite bud

October 24, 2002

Charles Edward "Eddy" Lepp and his wife Linda Senti own a farm in Upper Lake, California, with a sign out front that reads, "Eddy's Medicinal Gardens and Chapel." Nestled up against the Mendecino National Forest at the lower edge of the Emerald Triangle, they're very open about growing high-grade medical marijuana on their farm. On August 27, 2002, DEA agents and members of the Lake County Narcotics Task Force raided the farm while Lepp and his wife were away in San Francisco. Although the DEA claims its agents confiscated 266 nearly mature marijuana plants, "There are no pending federal charges against this gentleman or his wife," US Attorney in San Francisco spokesperson Debbie Young told this writer. Lepp, an ordained minister and Vietnam veteran, is the first person to have been arrested, tried and acquitted under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, better known as Proposition 215, for growing medical marijuana in California.


Eddy Lepp

It is a mystery to many how the feds can justify their recent spat of raids on medical marijuana growers as they are not pressing charges in most cases even after finding large quantities of pot. It would appear that if a warrant were issued for a search and illegal contraband was recovered, arrests would be forthcoming, but in many recent cases in California this has not happened.

For other unfortunate victims of capricious federal anti-drug warriors, it's worse, in that some are facing raids and charges for ridiculously small amounts of pot that the locals not only know about, but condone. Steve McWilliams, who gave out free medical marijuana to patients from the city hall steps in San Diego on September 17, in protest of yet another chargeless raid- this one against the Wo/man's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz on September 5- was given a warning letter by DEA agents, then had DEA troopers show up to destroy his 25 plant garden within a week. "This guy is violating the law and he's flaunting it. He brought this whole thing on himself," DEA spokesperson Donald Thornhill, Jr. told the San Diego Tribune.

"If you voice your opinion and assert your rights, then you become a target for the DEA? That’s unfortunate," said Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation. "The idea is that he’s ‘flaunting it’ by simply asserting his rights under state law and under the 1st Amendment. If that’s the kind of criteria, then judges and eventually appeals court panels should hear these cases on the basis that it sound like selective prosecutorial misconduct." McWilliams is now facing a 5-year mandatory minimum prison sentence if convicted as a result of this raid, combined with charges just now levied by the feds for another raid back in 1999 on the Shelter from the Storm Cannabis Collective, which McWilliams helped organize.

These DEA actions are disturbing to many people, patients and public officials alike. San Jose, California Police Chief William Lansdowne recently pulled his officers off their assignments to the DEA's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, a cooperative narcotics law enforcement effort between local, state, and federal officers, saying his officers have more important things to concentrate on, like methamphetamines. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who supports and even voted for the Compassionate Use Act, sent a letter [Download free Adobe Reader here] to DEA head Asa Hutchinson and US Attorney General John Ashcroft, saying, "I must also question the ethical basis for the DEA's policy when these raids are being executed without apparent regard to the likelihood of successful prosecution," after the DEA raid on the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana.


CA Attorney General Bill Lockyer

That was just one of Lockyer's "concerns, that the feds were making more political statements without really intending to carry the case through," said Hallye Jordan, spokesperson for Attorney General Lockyer. "That was sparked by the Santa Cruz raid. That was the one he was most concerned about because local law enforcement was totally unaware of it, not involved and uninformed. At this point, because there are no state-wide standards, the Attorney General has encouraged communities to get together, the law enforcement, the health professionals, the medical marijuana advocates, city and county officials, and put together a plan, whether it’s how many plants would be covered as for medical purposes, or what sort of identification card would be appropriate, to just come up with their own way to meet their community standards. You know, some guidelines for implementing Proposition 215. And in fact, that’s what the case was in Santa Cruz. The clinic there was sanctioned by local law enforcement and city officials. They were all working together. It was all working out just the way we’d hoped it would be lacking the state-wide standards." DEA chief Hutchinson's reply [Download free Adobe Reader here] to Lockyer's letter addressed at length the Supreme Court ruling that Congress has decreed marijuana to have no currently accepted medical benefits, but did not address the vindictive raiding by federal enforcers without subsequent charges.

DrugWar.com is happy to have had the opportunity to speak with Lepp and his wife over the course of a couple days this week, about the raid at his place, what he plans to do about it, and a number of other topics too, in an interview which we now post here. Short discussions with representatives of California Attorney General Lockyer's office and NORML follow this interview.

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pre-raid

Eddy Lepp- I first started using marijuana over in Vietnam. I won’t go into details, but they had some amazing shit over there. Smoking allowed me to keep myself well. Later on, I would kind of smoke it socially but I was drinking heavily for years. Then in about 1987 or 1988, something like that, my Dad got cancer. He underwent 14 major operations in about 14 months. After getting out of the hospital, he lived about another year before he died. During that year, he was living on Ensure, the protein drinks. The only way I could get him to drink the stuff was to roll up a big ol’ fatty and shove it in his tracheotomy tube. One of my fondest memories of my father is him walking around with a big fatty I rolled stuck in his trach tube choking down his Ensures. That’s when I first got involved with it in a medical aspect. My daughter was a caretaker for a young gentleman who got AIDS back in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic when it was truly a terrible thing and they had no control over it at all. Through him, I was introduced to Dennis Peron. A while later Dennis came up with this wild, hair brained idea which ended up being Proposition 215, [The Compassionate Use Act of 1996.] When they started gathering signatures, I got involved and helped gather signatures. My wife Linda and I gathered almost 500 signatures ourselves to help get it on the ballot. Dennis and I wound up being pretty good friends because we’re both Vietnam vets. After Prop. 215 passed, it wasn’t 3 or 4 more months before I got arrested.

Preston Peet- For growing?

EL- Yeah, I was the first person arrested, tried, and acquitted for felony cultivation and felony cultivation for sales in the state of California under Proposition 215.

P- Was it state prosecution?

EL- It was a state prosecution. I was the first person acquitted under our medical marijuana law, in 1998, in the Lake Port Superior Court, California.

P- Where are you located?

EL- We’re in a little town called Upper Lake, which is the bottom corner of the Emerald Triangle, right at the bottom of the Mendecino National forest, about 15 miles from Lakeport. I was arrested for growing at the other end of the county in a community called Hidden Valley.


pre-raid

P- How long did the legal fight take in that case?

EL- I was arrested in April or May of 1996, like I said, only 3 or 4 months after Prop. 215 passed. It took a total of about 2 years to wind through the courts.

P- Now, this last incident that happened, when did that take place? And please describe briefly what happened.

EL- August 27 was the date of the DEA raid.

P- What exactly happened? You were off in San Francisco, weren’t you?

EL- Actually, my wife and I had gone to Monteray because I had a doctor’s appointment at 9 in the morning there. We then went to San Francisco. We were meeting with some folks from the Patient Resource Center, which are some of the people who worked with Dennis for many years when Dennis had his clubs. When Dennis went out of business, and got out of the club scene, these are the people who worked in his office, the head of security, his truly trusted core. They went ahead and started this group, the most respected dispensary in the state of California. They have the full support of Terrance Hallinan, and virtually every official in the city. They are very well respected. They were covered under the Catholic Diocese, and I believe still are, as far as protecting them.

P- So you’re down there meeting with them…

EL- There’s this city supervisor, Mark Leno, who proposed that San Francisco grow their own marijuana for their own patients. What I was doing was asking the board of directors from the Resource Center to be intermediaries between me and Leno, as I don’t know him, and they know him very well. I was offering to grow up to 5 acres in my lower piece of property, for free, for the state, and the city of San Francisco. I also told the board of directors I would soon be having up to 3 or 4 hundred pounds that I would be giving them free. Then we left there, and went to the VA hospital where I had a 2 o’clock appointment. While we were waiting there in the parking lot my daughter called and told us the DEA were raiding us. Within 10 minutes of finding out we were being raided, we notified the prosecutors at the federal building that I was in town and if they had an arrest warrant out for me I would be at the federal building within another 10 minutes. They said there was no arrest warrant.

P- That’s really odd, considering they were raiding your property.

EL- Yes, we thought that was odd too. We called the Lake County sheriffs, and they said they had no warrants for my arrest or Linda’s arrest.


pre raid

P- Did they have warrants for anybody’s arrest on the property?

EL- They arrested 4 guys who live here.

P- Did DEA have warrants for them?

EL- No. They were here when the DEA came in with their search warrant. On all of those people, the 4 guys that live here, 3 of them were never arraigned, they were just released with no charges filed. The fourth guy we bailed out, and he has to go back to court in order for the judge to dismiss the charges. The bail bondsman has already assured us that is exactly what the judge is going to do, dismiss all the charges.

P- Why is that?

EL- Because they’ve dismissed them on everyone else. The DEA has no legal right. All of these men have completely legitimate, legal recommendations, and none of the plants per the DEA belonged to any of those men. The DEA was charging me for all of the plants. Or was going to if they were able to furnish enough evidence to the prosecutor to have me arrested, which they couldn’t do.

P- Now where did you hear they were planning on arresting you? Is that the assumption going here?

EL- That’s the assumption, but why the hell else would they serve a search warrant if they weren’t planning ultimately on arresting me? Actually some of the cops on the raid told several of the boys here that they were here to fuck with me. They are sick and tired of me.

P- There are the federal cops?

EL- Federal and local both mentioned this. It was mentioned to 3 or 4 different people. I have a wide variety of witnesses.

P- Both federal and local cops were at your place?

EL- Yes, the local cops participated with the DEA in the raid. Which is kind of strange as I’m suing the fuck out of them for what they did the first time around. I’m kind of wondering how they figured, you know, there wasn’t some kind of conflict of interest there. I’m suing them while they’re over here chopping down my crop.

P- Yeah, that does seem like a bit of a conflict, doesn’t it.

EL- It sure does to me, but I’m not a highly educated legal professional like these idiots. I am the guy though who has figured out how to keep them off his property, now and forever. I’ve already served notice and talked to a George Bevan, the federal prosecutor. [US Attorney] I don’t know where this thing is going to go, but I do know if we do not stand up for our rights and do something about this, we are all screwed.

P- You’ve told me the cops left a lot of stuff behind, right?

EL- Yeah, they left half an ounce of hash, 3 or 4 joints in a rolling tray, a one pound plant hanging in the closet drying. They also left 4 rounds of .227 ammo in the driveway, which was turned over to Congressman [Mike] Thompson (D-CA).

P- Did you take pictures of the bullets before you turned them over?

EL- Oh yeah. We turned it over to Congressman Thompson’s office because I really didn’t want to have DEA ammunition in my house.

P- They didn’t press any charges. Have you filed a lawsuit?

EL- No, what we’re going to do is on Wednesday, when I go down to the DEA, I’m, going to the federal courthouse and find out exactly what I have to do to request a hearing. Then I’m going to go to the hearing and demand they explain exactly where under the federal constitution they claim the authority to enforce federal drug laws inside the sovereign state of California. I’m going to do that based on 40-USCS-255.

P- Which says?

ED- Interpretive note number 14 of 40 USCS 255 explicitly reiterates the only method by which the federal government may acquire legislative jurisdiction over a geographic area within the outer limits of the state of the union, which is by the state’s cessation in writing. Legal jurisdiction is obviously required to enforce any law. Also, a copy of the 1956 federal report titled Jurisdiction over Federal Areas and the Committee for the Study of the Jurisdiction Over Federal Areas Within the States. In 1954, the Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, and President Eisenhower had an interdepartmental committee commissioned and what they did is look into 40 USCS 255 and the jurisdiction report over federal areas within the states and the recorded documents. The finding of the committee charged with the duty of studying the reporting were that the United States didn’t have the authority to make someone subject to its jurisdiction. If it won’t bore you, I’ll read you three little paragraphs that explain this 400 page report.

P- Ok.

EL- It states clearly- the Constitution gives express recognition but to one means of federal acquisition of legislative jurisdiction. That is by state consent Article 1, Section A, clause 17. Justice McClane suggested that the Constitution provided the sole mode for the transfer of jurisdiction and if that mode is not pursued no transfer of jurisdiction can take place. (See report, page 41) It scarcely needs to be said that unless there’s been a transfer of jurisdiction pursuant to clause 17 by a federal acquisition of land within the state with their consent, or two, by cessation from the state to the federal government or unless the federal government or unless the federal government reserved jurisdiction upon admission of the state, and 200 years ago I don’t think they did, the federal government possesses no legislative jurisdiction over any area within the state. Such jurisdiction means exercised by the state subject to non-interference by the state in federal functions. (See report, page 45). Then this is the interesting one here. On the other hand, while the federal government has the power under various provisions of the Constitution to define and prohibit as criminal certain acts or admission occurring anywhere in the United States, it has no power to punish for various other crimes, i.e. growing pot, jurisdiction over which is retained by the state under our federal state system of government, unless such crimes occur on areas on which legislative jurisdiction has been vested in the federal government, i.e. if I were in a federal forest. Then I’d be fucked.

P- But the pot was growing on your own land, right?

EL- Right. There’s a couple other interesting things. One is US vs. Lopez, 1995. Lopez was convicted in Texas for violating a federal gun law. He took a gun to school. Local jurisdiction didn’t pick up on it, but the feds did. This guy used as his only means of defense 40 USCS 255, while he was in prison. The US Supreme Court reversed the trials court decision, explaining that if it allowed it that would amount to the elimination of the basic Constitutional requirement of the separation of power. It goes on to say, to reiterate, even regarding the clear element of safety issues such as guns, the federal government was denied police authority by the United States Supreme Court inside the state of Texas because they lacked legislative jurisdiction. DoJ’s claim for legislating guns in Texas was interstate commerce laws. That’s all they had to offer for jurisdiction on appeal. Lopez was released from jail.

P- How did you find out about this?

EL- I’ve been doing this for years, but about 2 weeks ago, I got a phone call. For example, the Lopez vs. USA? That’s posted proudly down under my “No Trespassing” sign. I was missing a couple pieces. Then my phone rings. A voice asks, “you that dope guy, that marijuana guy? We got nothing in common. But I might be able to help you." He says, "I don’t pay taxes. What he gave me was the USCS-255 and the 1956 report. Those were the only two pieces I’d missing. Let me give you an example of how important this stuff really is. Approximately 30 months ago, Mr. Walt Maken was arrested. He was arrested and charged with various federal misdemeanor and felony charges relating to file of federal income tax returns. At his arraignment, he was asked to plead guilty or innocent. Without a lawyer he refused to enter a plea, and instead submitted a motion formally challenging the jurisdiction of the US government to enforce federal tax laws in the State of Ohio. He cited 40 USCS 255 as his only argument. Thirty months later the US Department of Justice has failed to produce the legal documentation explicitly required per the statute to establish jurisdiction in his case. To this day, he has not stepped for in a federal court house again. His prosecution and trial have been stopped. His federal case number is CR300019. The judge who presided over that was judge Herbert Rice in Dayton, Ohio. You may contact Mr. Maken if you would like at waltmaken@hotmail.com. That's how strong this stuff is. I’m going to kick their asses. If I have to appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court, that’s what I’ll do. If this guy can keep these feds off his ass for not paying federal income taxes, you bet your ass I’m going to keep them from coming in and tearing up my property.


post raid

P- Have you heard back from any DEA agents at all?

EL- I have not heard back from the DEA. Mr. Bevens told me two weeks ago to make a formal request for the return of my property. He asked me to send it to him and explained that he would try to help if he could and would try to get DEA to return my property. So we sent him a formal letter requesting the return of all our personal items they took from the house. They took approximately 3500 pounds of high grade medicinal marijuana. Or as they put it in their exact words was “the very highest grade of medical marijuana.” They were blown away.

P- They’re gloating over it. I wonder if they’re pinching off any of it.

EL- Dude, I know they stole 16 plants because I had 5 guys count that garden the day before I went to the hospital. All 5 of them came up with a count of 282. I was so careful with the numbers, you’ve no idea. The DEA is claiming just 266. We had marked 16 of the plants to be cut. Now you add 266 and 16 you get 282. The ones that were ready, that were done, have mysteriously disappeared.


post raid

P- Now, they’re weighing the whole plant when the say 3500 pounds, right?

EL- Well, no, they’re not. They had to cut branches off the whole plant. They left all the stalks. They couldn’t cut them all down. I have a whole pile of them in the garden. See what happened was, when they showed up with all their equipment, they didn’t have anything that could cut down the plants. They tried using a few of my machetes, but still couldn’t cut them down, couldn’t hang with that much work maybe. So then they broke out two of my chain saws and cut them all down. All they did was cut the branches off the stalks. What they weighed was pretty much the true weight. There was some small amount of wood in there from the branches, but there were no roots, no dirt, just flat what they cut off the stalks.

P- How do you feel about this?

EL- Excited. Exhilarated.

P- Excited and exhilarated? Those aren‘t exactly the words I was expecting to hear.

EL- That’s the way it makes me feel.

P- Which is it that makes you that way, the raid, or the action your going to take?

EL- The action I’m going to take because they were stupid enough to come in here. See, I always figured they would.

P- So you are looking at the bright side of all this then.

EL- Oh yeah. It’s real simple. They crushed me. Fuck, I’m not going to say that what they did didn’t hurt me, it did. But at the same time, if they think I’m going to curl up in a fetal position so they can put some more dick in my ass, they got the wrong California boy. I’m a little further north of Frisco than they seem to think.


gifts from friends the day after raid

P- Now have you’ve heard they’re prosecuting that one guy in San Jose for 25 plants, McWilliams?

EL- Right.

P- Have you had any contact with him?

EL- I’ve tried to be in contact with everybody, and everybody knows who I am and where I’m at. My phone rings off the hook. One guy called me this morning about his brother, who was traveling through Oklahoma and they arrested him for possession and they won’t respect his doctor’s recommendation. I get shit like this all day every day. So I can’t swear to it. But I’ve made it very public to everyone what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. Hopefully the Corrals are getting on board too.

P- Yeah, they should be, right?

EL- Well, I took copies of this down to them when they had their rally in Santa Cruz. I gave it all to them.


the gifts get planted

P- So who told them about your farm?

EL- I’m sure the local cops turned me in. The local cops are a bunch of fucking gangsters, they really are. I’m making a motion tomorrow to force the Highway Patrol to give back my pot. This Highway Trooper pulled me over recently, and told me to get out my insurance papers and driver’s license. I drive a 4 by 4 pickup. She looked in the back and saw big ol’ jar of marijuana. She asked, “do you normally drive around with marijuana in your vehicle,” and I said, “hell yes, all the fucking time, every day. Here’s my doctor's recommendation.” She wrote me up, gave me a ticket for no insurance, which I proved I had but she ignored, and then she wrote me up a speeding ticket.

P- She wrote you up for not having insurance even with you holding your insurance papers?

EL- Yeah, because I didn’t have an insurance card. I have a letter. My insurance company doesn’t give cards. They sent me a letter. She wouldn’t honor it. She wrote me up. Before I went to court, I got a letter from the judge saying my trial date had been changed and the charges had been dropped. So I go into court and say, “Your honor, before we deal with the insurance and the ticket, what about my goddamned pot?” He told me I had to file a motion, so I’ve got a motion all typed up and when I go to court Monday, I will be submitting it to get my pot returned.

P- She confiscated your pot too?

EL- Yeah, she took nearly an ounce and now they’re going to have to give me that pot back. On top of me suing the local cops anyway, I mean, it’s just a joke. Every time they turn around I kick them in the nuts.

P- So do you know exactly what you have to do to file suit over the feds’ raid?

EL- No, not yet. I’m going to get all the exact information on how to do that when I go down to San Francisco.

P- Didn’t some of the people arrested at your place get letters when they were released saying there weren’t going to be any charges filed?

EL- All of the boys who were arrested here and taken to jail got pieces of paper stating that there was going to be no further action in this issue. The word no was hand written in on every one of them.

-----------

a couple days later...

------------

Linda Senti- He went to court yesterday, the judge said yes, they have to return your marijuana, and dropped all charges. But now the Highway Patrol is not accepting what the judge gave him. So we’re going to have to resubmit.

P- What do mean, like appeal?

LS- No, we have to formally write up the order and have the judge sign it then take it to the Highway Patrol.

P- They’re just going to make you jump through as many hoops as possible.

LS- The highway patrol is ignoring what the judge said because the judge didn’t say it on the piece of paper they want him to. This is the kind of garbage we’re going through here. The cops will do it, but we have to go through another formal motion. So we’ve won another victory, but we have to fight for it too.

P- At least that is good news partially. Eddy, what is your current civil suit against the local police over? The first bust back in 1996?

Eddy Lepp- We’re suing the locals for the return of that marijuana. What happened on is that they destroyed 655 pounds of high grade medical marijuana. They destroyed it. I’ve never argued whether or not they had the right to do so, but what they did was destroy it without notifying me. Believe it or not, even if it is heroin, they cannot destroy your property without notifying you, without telling you they are going to do it. There are procedures.

P- Even for heroin?

EL- For anything, any contraband, even illegal items.

P- I did not know that. I thought they would simply take it because it was illegal and do what they want with it.

EL- I know it is true, and you know why? Because I got busted coming into Las Angeles once, with about an eight ball of Nepal Temple Ball that I forgot to take out of the side pocket of my suitcase.

P- Why are you going to have to go to trial if they aren’t charging you with anything?

EL- Right, they aren’t charging me with anything, so. It’ll be about 2 more weeks before I turn in the paper work, but I’ve gone and found out now exactly how to do it. I have to go down to the court clerk and give her a piece of paper asking specifically for a court date to allow me to introduce motions.

P- So it’s not a trial, but more a hearing?

EL- Actually I don’t even know if you’d call it a hearing. All a judge is going to do is give me an opportunity to present my paper work. I’ve been telling all these other people out here filing lawsuits that they are asking the wrong questions, but nobody is listening. But Jeff Jones has finally, on his last appeal, gone back and readdressed the Constitutional issue of legislative jurisdiction. Several of these people filing lawsuits have gone after the feds on jurisdiction, but they’re also going after them on three or four other thing, like Constitutional violations under the 10th and 11th, and the 4th. This is where they’re going to get screwed just like the Oakland club did. I’m going to ask them one question and one question only: Exactly where in the US Constitution did you get the authority to assume legislative jurisdiction over a sovereign citizen inside the state boundaries of the sovereign state of California? Under 40-USSC-255, paragraph number 17, it states clearly that unless the property is owned by the federal government by cessation by the state, they have no authority.

P- On Wednesday, the judge ruled the highway patrol has to give back you pot. Have you filed that paper work yet?

EL- No, because Linda’s computer crashed, and the guy is coming to fix it tomorrow. As soon as it is fixed, she’ll type up my letter and the judge will sign it.


more gift planting the day after raid

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Other interviews and statements-

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Debbie Young, US Attorney’s office, San Francisco- “There are no pending federal charges against this gentleman or his wife.”

DEA special agent in San Francisco Richard Meyer says that it is the Prosecutors office that prosecutes these crimes, not the DEA.

Public Information Officer for US Attorney’s office in San Francisco Matt Jacobs-
I don’t think so. (On Lepp’s pot being returned.)

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Hallye Jordan, Spokesperson for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer- This is the California Attorney General’s office.

P- Hi, thanks for returning my call. I’m looking for a comment. I understand that Attorney General Bill Lockyer sent a letter to DEA head Asa Hutchinson calling the recent DEA raids on medical marijuana growers and users possibly unethical due to there being no charges filed in many of these cases.

HJ- Well, that was one of his concerns, that the feds were making more political statements without really intending to carry the case through. That was sparked by the Santa Cruz raid. That was the one he was most concerned about because local law enforcement was totally unaware of it, not involved and uninformed. The statement is on our web page. It was sent on Sept. 6, 2002. He called for a meeting with federal authorities about the unprecedented medical marijuana raids.

P- Have they actually contacted him and responded to his letter?

HJ- Asa Hutchinson did call him. This went out on Friday, then Asa did call on Monday, saying this is a courtesy call in regards to your letter. He did respond. [Download free Adobe Reader here] I can fax you his response.

P- I hate to say it but I’m not entirely sure of what Attorney General Lockyer’s position is on medical marijuana and the Compassionate Use Act.

HJ- He supports and voted for Proposition 215, but he does acknowledge it has significant holes as far as implementing it. When he took office in 1999, he immediately established a taskforce to implement 215 that had health officials, law enforcement officials, medical marijuana advocates, DAs, all on the panel. They came up with recommendations to implement it which were put into legislation that’s been pending in the legislature for several years now.

P- Is he going to be taking any more action on this?

HJ- There’s been correspondence between Governor Davis and the Attorney General, [Download free Adobe Reader here] because the Governor had publically said that he would work on implementing some sort of standards or some sort of statutory authority that would help implement 215. At this point, because there are no state-wide standards, the Attorney General has encouraged communities to get together, law enforcement, the health professionals, the medical marijuana advocates, city and county officials, and put together a plan, whether it’s how many plants would be covered as for medical purposes, what sort of identification card would be appropriate, to just come up with their own way to meet their community standards. You know, some guidelines for implementing Proposition 215. And in fact, that’s what the case was in Santa Cruz. The clinic there was sanctioned by law enforcement and city officials. They were all working together. It was all working out just the way we’d hoped it would be lacking the state-wide standards. That was what prompted the Attorney General’s letter of Asa Hutchinson and Ashcroft.

--------------

Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director NORML Foundation -
Yeah, in fact the only people who have been charged in these have been relatively few. Todd McCormick, Peter McWilliams, Rene Bojee, Bryan Epis, so what’s interesting is why the disparity? Why are these select few facing 5 to 10 year mandatory minimum sentences, or in the case of Todd, serving a mandatory sentence, whereas people like Scott Imler, Jeff Jones, Eddy Lepp, and Valerie Corral, why are they only have their medicine stolen by the government and not facing charges as you or I would be? One of the underpinings of law is that is cannot be subjective, so the federal government has put itself in a rather untenable position once again of having to explain why it is that they are so subjective in who they chose to prosecute.

P- They don’t even seem to have prosecution in mind in these latest cases.

ASP- Steve McWilliams too would be a perfect case in point. Here’s somebody who they knew who had only 20 plants, but they’re going back to this old indictment they’re using it against him from 2 or 3 years ago even though the state, county and local chose not to prosecute him though they could have. Here you have them saying “it’s because he’s so outspoken.” Oh, so that’s the criteria? So if you voice your opinion and assert your rights, then you become a target for the DEA? That’s unfortunate. If that’s the kind of criteria, then judges and then eventually the appeals court panels should hear those cases on the basis that it sound like selective prosecutorial misconduct. Well, it’s misconduct on the part of the prosecutors because they’re being selective in who they chose to prosecute.

P- Is that a quote?

ASP- Yes, in the San Diego Tribune, by a spokesperson for the DEA, Donald Thornhill Jr. HE said the following, and I quote: “The DEA is not singling these people out, we’re just enforcing the law.” Thornhill said, “This guy is violating the law, and he’s flaunting it. He brought the whole thing on himself.” So that’s a quote, from the October 12 San Diego Tribune. The idea is that he’s “flaunting it” by simply asserting his rights under state law and under the 1st Amendment. That’s flaunting it, so there you go.

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Yaje: El Nuevo Purgatorio by Jimmy Weiskopf

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