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By: Michael Whitney Last night the United States Senate voted to double the penalties for the nation’s newest existential threat: brownies made with marijuana! The Senate unanimously passed Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)’s “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009″ (S. 258) that targets pot brownies and other marijuana edibles preferred by some medical marijuana patients. The bill next moves to the House; if it passes that chamber, anyone making pot brownies or similar products could be subject to double the fines and jail time for regular marijuana. This bill’s passage marks a step backwards for Congress, which this week also passed the Fair Sentencing Act that reduced the sentencing disparities between cocaine and crack from 100:1 to 18:1. Now we have a new disparity: pot brownies and other marijuana edibles are now treated as something twice as bad as just distributing marijuana. “Candy Flavored Meth” Marijuana prohibitionists often hide behind vague threats to children, and DiFi’s bill is no different. Her “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act” is framed to make politicians afraid to oppose. “How dare you voted against saving kids from dangerous drugs?” But DiFi doubled down on the “Reefer Madness”-style hysteria. In championing this bill, Feinstein raised the spectre of “candy flavored meth” as the target of her bill. Something tells me that once, sometime, somewhere, someone claimed to have found candy-flavored meth, probably cut with pixie stix. DiFi ran with this to cover for her true target: marijuana edibles. Really? Pot Brownies? Yep. While DiFi’s public line was all “candy flavored meth,” the bill is written broadly enough that pot brownies and other marijuana edibles can be grouped into the law. She mentioned marijuana products in her support of the legislation, of course, but she sought to distract. Here’s the relevant text of the bill: (1) UNLAWFUL ACTS- Except as authorized under this title, including paragraph (3), it shall be unlawful for any person at least 18 years of age to knowingly or intentionally manufacture or create, with intent to manufacture, create, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II that is– ‘(A) combined with a candy product; (B) marketed or packaged to appear similar to a candy product; and ‘(C) modified by flavoring or coloring the controlled substance with the intent to distribute, dispense, or sell the controlled substance to a person under 18 years of age. ‘(2) PENALTIES- Except as provided in section 418, 419, or 420, any person who violates paragraph (1) of this subsection shall be subject to– (A) 2 times the maximum punishment and at least 2 times any term of supervised release The text singles out “candy products,” which is a broad grouping; it also specifies products “modified by flavoring or coloring,” which expands the scope of the law. While the bill is ostensibly aimed at distributing drugs to people under the age of 18, it’s broad enough to pose serious problems for both medical marijuana patients and for dispensaries selling these products to patients. What’s DiFi got against pot brownies? Prop 19. Feinstein’s was one of the first bills introduced in the Senate in 2009, and sat idle after it was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That is, until California’s Prop 19 to legalize marijuana started gaining momentum in the spring. Dianne Feinstein is one of the most vocal opponents to Prop 19. Thought she’s not up for reelection, like other Democratic opponents of legalization in California, Feinstein not only opposes Prop 19, but is actively supporting the campaign to defeat the initiative. In order to help the cause of marijuana prohibitionists, she started to move her anti-pot brownie bill. How did the bill pass? A member of the Judiciary Committee, DiFi started to push Chairman Pat Leahy to move the bill through the committee. While the bill didn’t go anywhere for 16 months, DiFi had the Judiciary Committee consider the bill on May 27, which passed it on June 17. Then, with the August recess approaching, At first, the bill wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. But within the last 36 hours, the picture shifted. Firedoglake was ready with an organizing alert to mobilize opposition to the bill. (Though the excellent Students for Sensible Drug Policy were out early with an action to the Senate.) Then, late yesterday, the Senate passed the bill through unanimous consent. Not only did no sane Democratic Senator step up to put a hold on the bill, no Senators even voted against it. Do do we really need to put more people in jail for marijuana? Absolutely not. More people are arrested for marijuana possession than any violent crime combined. Blacks and Latinos are unfairly targeted with marijuana arrests; while whites make up a third of marijuana users, relatively few are in prison. Moreover, since 1984, the country’s prison population has quadrupled. Half of our prisoners are in for drug offenses. We now have 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of its prisoners. This week Congress voted to reduce sentencing disparities and to reduce prison populations. At a time when the country is taking significant steps to tackle this important issue, Dianne Feinstein and the Senate voted to increase those numbers for… marijuana brownies. What’s next? This is one of the many subversive attacks on marijuana legalization by prohibitionists opposing Prop 19. DiFi is only happy to oblige. Countering the prohibitionists will require a massive movement of organized action to give Prop 19 the support it deserves in California. But it goes beyond this election: much needs to be done to sustain activism and organizing in every state that will be voting on marijuana legalization and reform in 2010, 2012, and beyond. From FireDogLake  By The question isn’t whether Shirley Sherrod will get her job back at the Agriculture Department–or whether she should take it if offered, for that matter. The question is when are we going to stop paying attention to Andrew Breitbart? Better yet, at what point do the news outlets that gleefully report on the fake controversies he generates–thereby creating the stories they claim to be simply following–become equally responsible for his lies? If there is anything positive to say about the whole sorry Sherrod episode, it’s that perhaps we’re finally to that point. David Gergen articulated it well on CNN’s “AC 360″ (of all places): “An ideologue injects poison into the internet, other people rush to judgment on camera, and an administration gets stampeded and commits this travesty of justice.” That about sums it up, but it’s hardly the first time this has happened. See under: ACORN, pimps and hos. If you’ve somehow missed it, the story’s not complicated: Breitbart, who successfully promoted his network of websites through the fake gotcha sting on ACORN, posted on Monday a heavily edited video of Sherrod speaking at a Georgia NAACP event. Breitbart chopped the 40 minute speech down to a segment in which Sherrod admitted complicated emotions about helping white farmers. He deliberately omitted the bulk of the story, in which Sherrod discusses moving past those emotions and uses the incident to talk about healing old racial wounds. Fox News picked it up. The NAACP–frothed up in the heat of a silly debate about the Tea Party’s racism–freaked out and denounced Sherrod. The Agriculture Department freaked out and fired her. And we were off and running on the latest controversial race story. Of course, after a bit of actual reporting, the Breitbart hit job has been unveiled as just that. The NAACP belatedly posted the entire video last night, and the Obama administration is now figuring out how to handle the PR debacle. No word yet on timing for the beer summit. The incident certainly betrays, again, the White House’s remarkable timidity in the face of any rightwing attack, no matter how ludicrous. It also reveals, again, how eager everybody from political operatives to corporate news producers are to have simple-minded conversations about race. But, hey, since everybody is primed for talking about racism, let’s do that. Here are three race stories from the past three days that we could have obsessed over instead of Breitbart’s latest publicity stunt: Race shapes the recession. It’s remarkable how little we hear about how much more intense of a recession black and Latino communities are enduring, even as Republican lawmakers have droned on for four months about unemployment insurance making people lazy. Perhaps that’ll lead Good Morning America tomorrow? Prolly not. Poverty literally kills people–especially black people. The CDC reported on Monday that high-poverty neighborhoods in 23 U.S. cities have AIDS epidemics of similar intensity as those in developing world countries. Not coincidentally, black people are way overrepresented both in those poor neighborhoods and in the ranks of Americans getting infected with HIV. What coverage the CDC study got went out of its way to get the story wrong. One headline: New U.S. HIV Study Finds Poverty More Of A Factor In Infections Than Race. Obama betrays women on reproductive health. The health care overhaul’s ban on rejecting patients for pre-existing conditions won’t kick in until 2014. So the feds are creating temporary high-risk pools to bridge the gap. But the Obama administration has decided to embrace Stupak-like language in the rules governing those pools. Guess who’s most likely to lose out? Women of color. You’ll search long and hard for mainstream news coverage of it. Good luck turning on the TV and not hearing about Sherrod’s personal ordeal. Related articles by Zemanta
 By Convicted felon Byron Williams loaded up his mother’s Toyota Tundra with guns, strapped on his body armor and headed to San Francisco late Saturday night with one thing in mind: to kill workers at the American Civil Liberties Union and an environmental foundation, prosecutors say. Williams, an anti-government zealot on parole for bank robbery, had hoped to “start a revolution” with the bloodshed at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation in San Francisco, authorities said. But before he made it to the city, Williams was stopped at early Sunday by California Highway Patrol officers for speeding and driving erratically on westbound Interstate 580 west of Grand Avenue in Oakland. Police say he then initiated a chaotic, 12-minute gunbattle with officers, firing a 9mm handgun, a .308-caliber rifle and a shotgun. He reloaded his weapons when he ran out of ammunition and stopped only after officers shot him in areas of his body not covered by his bullet-resistant vest, authorities said. Continue reading ” Alleged gunman says he wanted ‘a revolution’” By PALO ALTO, Calif. – As you might expect at a conference on the health dangers of sitting, most of the seats were empty. It was well attended, but the scientists and health experts who did gather yesterday at Stanford University were encouraged to get up from their chairs, stretch their legs, pace the room, even stand during discussions ranging from the risks of inactivity to technological solutions for reducing time on one’s behind. “Certainly the irony of having everyone sit through a conference on the perils of sitting was not lost on us,” said Anne Friedlander, a consulting professor of human biology at Stanford and an organizer of the two-day conference entitled The Science of Sedentary Behavior. Friedlander opened the event by telling participants that they could monitor their sit-time on a timer displayed on a big screen behind the lectern. Alternative seating, including exercise balls, was also available. A campus walking tour would end the day. Continue reading ” At symposium, scientists take a stand on not sitting down” How does one promote a new law that allows guns in church with the Prince of Peace? By Welton Gaddy Years ago a mother told me a story about her young son who liked to play cowboys and church, his very own role-playing game. One day she overheard him reenacting Jesus summoning Lazarus from the tomb; the little boy, toy gun in each hand, shouted, “Lazarus, come out with your hands up.” Continue reading ” Bobby Jindal Squares Packing Heat with Jesus” By  Peggy Small and Gail Small Patterson By Sunday afternoon, after days of being unable to reach her mother by telephone, Jill Patterson was worried. Gail Patterson, 51, had moved from North Carolina to Lancaster a few weeks ago to help her sister, Peggy Small, through a rough stretch. Continue reading ” Sisters found dead on couch were ’saved the Sunday before’” |
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