Miami Valley NORML (Cincinnati-Dayton)

Colorado Marijuana Commerce Bills Approved

The Colorado legislature Wednesday approved a pair of bills that will establish a regulated marijuana market for adults. The legislature was charged with doing so when voters approved the marijuana legalization Amendment 64 last November.

On the down side, the legislature earlier approved another bill, House Bill 1325, which would set a level of THC in the blood above which drivers would be presumed to be impaired. Drivers with 5 milligrams or more of THC per milliliter of blood would be considered to be impaired, but could challenge that presumption in court.

The marijuana regulation bills are House Bill 1317 and House Bill 1318. The former creates the framework for regulations governing marijuana retail sales, cultivation, and product manufacturing, while the latter enacts a 10% special sales tax (above and beyond standard sales taxes) and a 15% excise tax on wholesale sales.

Under Colorado law, the tax bill will have to be approved by voters in November. But three-quarters of Colorado voters support such pot taxation, according a Public Policy Polling survey.

"The adoption of these bills is a truly historic milestone and brings Colorado one step closer to establishing the world's first legal, regulated, and taxed marijuana market for adults," said Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, who served as an official proponent and campaign co-director for the ballot measure approved by Colorado voters in November. "Facilitating the shift from the failed policy of prohibition to a more sensible system of regulation has been a huge undertaking, and we applaud the many task force members, legislators, and others who have helped effect this change," Tvert said. "We are confident that this legislation will allow state and local officials to implement a comprehensive, robust, and sufficiently funded regulatory system that will effectively control marijuana in Colorado."

Drug warriors working to roll back Mariuana policy

The marijuana legalization initiatives that triumphed in Washington and Colorado this past fall faced surprisingly little organized opposition. Money tells the story: Washington's pro-legalization initiative I-502 raised more than $6 million dollars from supporters, while the campaign against it pulled less than $16,000.  In Colorado, meanwhile, proponents of Amendment 64 raised more than $2 million dollars, outdoing opponents, who raised about half a million. The anti-drug lobbyist groups that came out en masse against California's legalization initiative Proposition 19 in 2010 were hardly visible in either state, partly because the prison-industrial complex wields less political power there.

So what happens now? The biggest immediate threat to legalization in Washington and Colorado is the federal government, but even the feds might be hard-pressed to stomp out reform. "While there are actions the federal government and its U.S. Attorneys could theoretically take to – in the short term – impede the full implementation of a legal retail cannabis market in Colorado, Washington, and potentially elsewhere, the reality is that federal officials ultimately lack the manpower, public support, and as a consequence, the political will to – in the long term – turn back cannabis legalization," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "The genie is already out of the bottle, and it cannot be put back in."

But before marijuana legalization spreads from Washington and Colorado to other states, it will have to get past a group of hardened drug warriors, many of whom have developed a personal interest in maintaining prohibition. While most of these ideologues lack the authority to actually change laws, their larger purpose is to maintain the marijuana propaganda machine and push back against pro-legalization rhetoric. Here are the top five people threatening to halt the state-by-state legalization domino effect that many pot activists hope is coming soon:

1.  Kevin Sabet
2. Mel and Betty Sembler
3. Michele Leonhart
4. Gil Kerlikowske
5. David Frum

Read Kristen Gwynne's full article on Rolling Stone

Supreme Court trust dogs on drugs

On February 18th the US Supreme Court upheld the use of police dog's sniff of a truck, finding that training and testing records were sufficient indicators of the dog's reliability and gave police probable cause for the search. The high court in 2005 upheld the legality of highway drug dog searches; in this case, the court focused on the reliability of drug dog searches.

In deciding the case, the high court reversed a decision from the Florida Supreme Court. The Florida court had held that a wide array of evidence was necessary to establish probable cause for the search, including field performance records that would indicate how many times the dog had falsely alerted. Without such records, the Florida court held, police could not establish probable cause.

Tuesday's ruling came in Florida v. Harris, in which Clayton Harris had been pulled over by a police officer in Liberty County in 2006. The drug dog, Aldo, alerted to the truck's door handle, the officer searched the truck, and methamphetamine precursor chemicals were found. Clayton was arrested on meth-related charges.

Harris was again pulled over by the same officer while out on bail, and Aldo again alerted on his vehicle. This time the vehicle search came up empty. Harris's attorneys challenged Aldo's reliability in part because of this second alert that turned up nothing. The Florida Supreme Court agreed with their argument that the dog's performance in the field needed to be assessed in order to determine probable cause for the search.

But not the US Supreme Court. It unanimously reversed the decision.

A drug dog's "satisfactory performance" in a certification or training program provided sufficient probable cause to trust its alert, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority. "The question -- similar to every inquiry into probable cause -- is whether all the facts surrounding a dog's alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime," Kagan wrote. "A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test."

The case is one of two Florida drug dog cases before the Supreme Court this session. In the other, the high court takes up the question of whether a drug dog can sniff the front doorstep of a home without a search warrant. The Supreme Court has upheld drug dog searches of vehicles on the highway and packages at delivery service warehouses, but in other cases has shown greater deference to Fourth Amendment requirements at residences.

Federal judge says: Marijuana Laws are Absurd

During a September 6th speech at Elmhurst College, Federal Judge Richard Posner lambasted the war on cannabis. “I don’t think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have,” proclaimed Posner to loud applause, “I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana.”

Judge Richard Posner serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.  He is one of the most cited judges in the country by other judges and lawyers.
 
Posner went on to state that our drug laws are “a waste of a lot of high quality legal minds, and it’s also a waste of people’s lives who could be as least moderately productive with having to spend year after year in prison. That is a serious problem.”
 
We here at NORML couldn’t agree more and applaud Judge Posner for having the courage to speak the truth from his high ranking position and for setting a bold example for his colleagues.

His exact statements are “I don’t think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have. I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana,” he said. “I can’t see any difference between that and cigarettes.” The audience gave him a round of applause.

You can view the entirety of his speech below (see 41:38  54:00 for his statements on marijuana and the drug laws) :

For more news stories on this important statement see

1) Respected Federal Judge Calls for Legalizing Marijuana

2) Legendary Federal Judge Richard Posner Endorses Marijuana Legalization

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