Followups set to talk.politics.drugs.

Two full articles for the newsgroups this month as Canadian
crackdown is planned and Ed Rosenthal pushes thru the latest
conviction.

===========================================
Drug War Chronicle, Issue #488 -- 6/1/07
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488

A Publication of Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

Appeal and Book Offer: "Beat the Heat" Know Your Rights and
Legal System Guidebook:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/beat_the_heat_know_your_rights_book_offe...

Table of Contents:

1. FEATURE: BATTLE ROYAL LOOMS AS CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SET TO
UNVEIL TOUGH ANTI-DRUG STRATEGY
The Harper government in Canada is about to unveil its new
national drug strategy -- it's bad -- and opponents are
gathering forces.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/canada_government_wants_tough_new_drug_p...

2. FEATURE: ED ROSENTHAL CONVICTED AGAIN IN PYRRHIC VICTORY FOR
FEDS
Federal prosecutors managed to win another conviction against Ed
Rosenthal after he was prevented from mounting a medical
marijuana defense, but he won't do another day in jail, and his
continuing persecution has sparked a novel form of civil
disobedience in the courtroom.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/rosenthal_convicted_again_medical_mariju...

3. APPEAL AND BOOK OFFER: "BEAT THE HEAT" KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AND
LEGAL SYSTEM GUIDEBOOK
"Beat the Heat: How to Handle Encounters with Law Enforcement"
is the best legal self defense book we've seen in some time.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/beat_the_heat_know_your_rights_book_offe...

4. WEEKLY: BLOGGING @ THE SPEAKEASY
In addition to the weekly reporting you see here in the
Chronicle, DRCNet also features daily content in the way of
blogging, news links, redistributed press releases and
announcements from our allies and more.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/blogging_at_the_speakeasy_every_day

5. DRCNET MEMBER OFFER: THE TREBACH TRILOGY
Two re-released classics and one new volume by drug reform
pioneer Arnold Trebach make up DRCNet's latest premium offer for
our members.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/trebach_trilogy_new_book_offer_from_drcn...

6. DRCNET MEMBER OFFER: STAND UP FOR FREEDOM WITH 4TH AMENDMENT
T-SHIRTS FROM FLEX YOUR RIGHTS
Educate and motivate your friends to respectfully assert their
rights during police encounters, with these fourth amendment
t-shirts from our friends at Flex Your Rights!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drcnet_member_offer_flex_your_rights_4th...

7. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
Marijuana gone missing from the evidence room, a sheriff pleads
guilty, a cop gets arrested for leaking an investigation, and a
trooper gets oral sex, but loses his job. Just another week of
prohibition-related police misbehavior.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/police_drug_corruption

8. SEARCH AND SEIZURE: MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT OKAYS DRUG DOG
SNIFF OUTSIDE APARTMENT DOOR
The Minnesota Supreme Court has upheld the use of drug dogs to
sniff the exterior of residences based on the "articulable
suspicion" -- not the higher level of proof required by probable
cause.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/minnesota_supreme_court_upholds_drug_dog...

9. SEARCH AND SEIZURE: CALIFORNIA FEDERAL COURT THROWS OUT
WARRANTLESS CELL PHONE SEARCHES
Police need a search warrant to peruse the contents of a cell
phone, even if its owner has been arrested or is being booked, a
federal court in San Francisco held.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/california_federal_court_rules_cell_phon...

10. LAW ENFORCEMENT: US SENATE PASSES BILL TO RESTORE DRUG TASK
FORCE GRANTS
Even the Bush administration wanted to get rid of the federal
grant program that funds multi-agency drug task forces at the
state and local level. But spurred by powerful law enforcement
interests, the Senate has voted to restore funding.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/senate_votes_restore_drug_task_force_byr...

11. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: RHODE ISLAND BILL PASSES WITH VETO-PROOF
MAJORITIES
A bill making Rhode Island's medical marijuana law permanent has
passed both houses of the legislature with veto-proof
majorities. Although Gov. Donald Carcieri is threatening a veto,
it doesn't appear he will be able to stop it.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/rhode_island_medical_marijuana_bill_pass...

12. SOUTHEAST ASIA: MORE DEATH SENTENCES FOR DRUG OFFENSES
The Southeast Asian version of the drug war keeps producing more
death sentences, with nine handed out Tuesday in Indonesia and
seven more the same day in Vietnam.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_offender_death_sentence_vietnam_ind...

13. EUROPE: NEW RESTRICTIONS ON SOME DUTCH CANNABIS COFFEE SHOPS
The screws are tightening on Holland's famous cannabis coffee
shops. Rotterdam is cutting their number by nearly half, while
Maastricht coffee shop owners are instituting a fingerprinting
and ID scan scheme to try to avoid the heat.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/new_restrictions_dutch_cannabis_coffee_s...

14. WEB SCAN: PEOPLE WE KNOW
Multimedia by two major newspapers of two good friends of the
organization.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_policy_links

15. WEEKLY: THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of
years past.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_war_history

16. ANNOUNCEMENT: DRCNET CONTENT SYNDICATION FEEDS NOW AVAILABLE
FOR YOUR WEB SITE!
Support the cause by featuring automatically-updating Drug War
Chronicle and other DRCNet content links on your web site!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_policy_content_syndication_feeds_no...

17. ANNOUNCEMENT: DRCNET RSS FEEDS NOW AVAILABLE
A new way for you to receive DRCNet articles -- Drug War
Chronicle and more -- is now available.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_policy_RSS_feeds_now_available

18. ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW FORMAT FOR THE REFORMER'S CALENDAR
Visit our new web site each day to see a running countdown to
the events coming up the soonest, and more.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/drug_reform_calendar

(Not subscribed? Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org to sign up
today!)

================

1. Feature: Battle Royal Looms as Canadian Government Set to
Unveil Tough Anti-Drug Strategy
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/canada_government_wants_tough_new_drug_p...

The Conservative government of Canadian Prime Minister Steven
Harper is set to reveal what is expected to be a US-style
approach to drug policy any day now. While action in parliament
is unlikely until after the looming summer recess, battle lines
are already being drawn in what promises to be a bitter fight.

Although the government has yet to reveal particulars, it is
widely assumed that the new drug strategy will take a "tough on
crime" approach to drugs, cracking down on grow-ops and drug
sellers with harsher penalties, providing more money for law
enforcement, and moving away from harm reduction approaches such
as Vancouver's Insite (http://www.vch.ca/sis) safe injection
site.

"There will be a heavier emphasis on enforcement, with some
additional money for treatment," said Eugene Oscapella, head of
the Canadian Drug Policy Foundation (http://www.cfdp.ca). "The
other thing is they want mandatory minimum sentences for some
drug offenses, especially serious trafficking offenses," he told
Drug War Chronicle.

An early hint of the Harper government's drug policy came in
March, when Conservatives allocated an extra $70 million over
two years for enforcement, treatment, and prevention, but no
mention was made of harm reduction programs. In Canada, these
also include needle exchanges and the distribution of sterile
crack pipes.

Of the additional funding, treatment programs will get nearly
half, law enforcement about a third, and the rest will go into
"just say no" style youth prevention program. The new drug
strategy is also expected to endorse the use of drug courts,
where drug offenders can be ordered into treatment programs
instead of jail or prison.

The Canadian federal government currently spends about $350
million a year on anti-drug efforts, the vast majority of which
goes to law enforcement, with lesser amounts for treatment and
prevention, and a pittance for harm reduction. Canadian drug
policy is guided by a 20-year-old national drug strategy that
has been widely criticized for lacking clear direction, targets,
and measurable results.

What the Harper government is proposing is not the answer, says
a growing chorus of critics. The Liberal Party was quick off the
mark to attack the yet-to-be-seen Conservative drug strategy.

"Stephen Harper's government is expected to announce next week
new measures that will retreat from harm reduction measures that
help Canadians, such as the safe injection site in Vancouver,"
said Liberal Health critic Bonnie Brown in a press release last
week. "They are trying to do this under the guise of cracking
down on illicit drug trafficking and prevention -- even though
all the research suggests that an ideologically-motivated war on
drugs is ineffective, while programs such as the safe injection
site are producing positive results."

A series of reports -- including the Canadian Medical
Association Journal and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
-- have concluded that the site has had a positive effect on
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and has not increased crime or
addiction rates, or threatened public health and safety.

"Rather than focusing its efforts where they are needed most --
such as funding the safe injection site and other programs vital
to a larger harm reduction strategy in Canada -- this government
is putting its right-wing agenda ahead of scientific evidence,
and at a tremendous cost to those affected by addiction," said
Brown.

Brown's charge resonates with a number of Canadian researchers.
"The science is there. What we're seeing here is political
interference," said Dr. Thomas Kerr with the BC Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS, who has led several research studies on
Insite. "I think it's a sad day for drug policy in Canada given
that the Conservative government is now advocating a US-style
approach to drug policy that's been shown to fail," he told
reporters in Vancouver
(http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/2007/05/24/4203772-sun.html)
last week.

Kerr isn't the only one complaining. Several prominent
researchers from across Canada have written an open letter to
Health Canada criticizing it for calling for new research on
Insite despite years of research showing positive incomes. The
call for proposals from Health Canada ensures that the research
will be superficial and inadequately funded, they said. They
also took issue with a condition that researchers not be allowed
to talk about their findings for six months after reports are
submitted.

"Clearly what that does is to muffle people who might have
something to say until after the curtain has dropped on this
piece of political theatre," Benedikt Fischer, a director of the
BC Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria,
said in an interview last Friday
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070525.BCSTUDY25/TPStory/TPNa...).
"Overall, we get the feeling that what this is about is there's
an attempt to instrumentalize science in a fairly cheap way for
politics."

"The Conservatives don't like InSite," said Oscapella. "This is
not an issue of science, but of ideology and playing to the
peanut gallery. They have tried to misstate its purpose, what it
has achieved, and the position of other countries. This is a
propaganda exercise by the government to further its electoral
objectives," he said.

"But the Liberals are no angels, either," he pointed out. "They
had three opportunities to reform the cannabis laws and they
didn't do that. I give them some credit for the medical
marijuana regulations, but at the same time, the process is now
incredibly cumbersome. They backed away from decriminalization.
In effect, they backed a tough drug war, but with softer
rhetoric."

"The Liberals are known to oppose from the left and govern from
the right," said Dana Larsen, a New Democratic Party (NDP)
candidate for a West Vancouver riding and head of the party's
anti-prohibitionist wing, eNDProhibition
(http://www.endprohibition.ca). "Now they're in opposition, and
they will say that Harper's drug war is wrong. But they passed
our current drug law in 1996 despite testimony from nearly
everyone it was bad law, and marijuana arrests went up every
year the Liberals were in power."

But while the national NDP supports harm reduction and
legalizing marijuana as part of its platform, its national
leadership has not embraced the issue, Larsen said. "The party
is good on policy, and the party spokesperson on drug issues,
Libby Davies, is great, but we haven't succeeded yet in getting
the party to make ending the drug war a priority."

Davies was traveling on personal business outside the country
and unavailable for comment this week.

Canada will have all summer to brood over the coming battles
over drugs and crime, but with the Harper government a minority
government, it will have to reach out to the Liberals, the NDP,
or the Bloc Quebecois to pass anything. None of the opposition
parties seems likely to support a "tough on drugs" package like
that now envisioned by the Conservatives.

"They don't have the votes to pass this by themselves," said
Oscapella. "The fear is what happens if they get reelected with
a majority. Then they could walk all over everybody."

================

2. Feature: Ed Rosenthal Convicted Again in Pyrrhic Victory for
Feds
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/488/rosenthal_convicted_again_medical_mariju...

A federal jury Wednesday found "Guru of Ganja" Ed Rosenthal
guilty for a second time of growing hundreds of marijuana plants
in what is no more than a symbolic victory for federal
prosecutors. Because Rosenthal has already served a lenient
one-day sentence after he was first convicted of the same
charges in 2003, US District Court Judge Charles Breyer, the
presiding judge in the case, has already ruled that he cannot be
resentenced.

Rosenthal's original conviction was overturned on appeal.
Vengeful federal prosecutors angered by his public criticism of
their methods retried him knowing they could not further punish
him. They even filed additional charges that Judge Breyer threw
out as vindictive.

The trial itself was noteworthy for the mass refusal of medical
marijuana movement people subpoenaed to testify for the
government to do so. Equally noteworthy was their escaping
without contempt citations -- at least so far.

Rosenthal grew the plants to produce medical marijuana for use
in California, where it is legal, but his defense was unable to
explain that to the jury because it was blocked from doing so by
Judge Breyer. Federal law and the federal courts do not
recognize "medical" marijuana. Neither was Breyer willing to let
defense attorneys go too far in urging the jury to vote its
conscience.

"There are places that we can't go... There are answers too
realistic, reasonable questions you may have that I can't give
you," defense attorney Robert Ampranan told the jurors during
final arguments. "I fear my government because it does not
always tell us the truth. The federal government has had almost
six years to complete this recipe... and yet their recipe,
ladies and gentlemen, contains tainted, soiled, spoiled
ingredients," he said. "If it smells like something that's going
to make you sick, you have the right to reject it."

Shortly later, as Amparan compared Rosenthal's prosecution to
past injustices done under color of law, such as slavery and the
internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Breyer
sent the jury from the courtroom and accused Amparan of trying
to lead the jury into questioning the federal law itself. When
Amparan replied that he wasn't, but that he intended to cite the
false pretenses for the war in Iraq and the disastrous response
to Hurricane Katrina as other examples of government mistakes,
the packed courtroom burst into cheers. Breyer warned that he
would clear the courtroom if any more outbursts occurred, then
ordered Amparan not to make that argument to the jury.

After deliberating for two days, the jury convicted Rosenthal of
growing more than 100 marijuana plants, conspiring to cultivate
the drug and maintaining a growing operation in a warehouse. He
was acquitted of a fourth charge, and Breyer sternly ordered
prosecutors to drop the fifth charge when the jury said it was
deadlocked.

"It's a shame that the federal government continues to put
California citizens in the position of having to set aside their
own votes at the ballot box and pretend they don't know anything
about the state law or medical science," said William Dolphin, a
spokesman for the Rosenthal defense fund Green Aid
(http://www.green-aid.com). "After 60%% of the jury pool just
refused to be involved in a case like this, we ended up with a
jury that felt like it had to follow the instructions of the
court."

"The government has shown it can in fact win a conviction in a
medical marijuana case in the most pot-sympathetic district in
the country," said Dale Gieringer, head of California NORML
(http://www.canorml.org). "Of course, when we have to play by
their rules and can't even mention the main element of the
defense, it's an open and shut case. Ed was clearly growing pot,
as was shown by the government."

If the verdict was somewhat anticlimactic, there was high drama
and civil disobedience in court last Friday. That's when six
medical marijuana movement witnesses subpoenaed by the
government to testify against Rosenthal simply refused. Five
others who were prepared to join them were dismissed on
technical grounds.

One by one, recalcitrant witnesses Debbie Goldsberry, James
Blair, Etienne Fontan, Evan Schwartz, Brian Lundeen, and Cory
Okie told the court they would not participate in an immoral
prosecution. (Visit http://www.green-aid.com/rosenthal052507.pdf
to read the transcript.) "I told them I could not participate
and go against the wishes of the community," said Goldsberry.

Judge Breyer praised the six for their dignified conduct and
asked them if being sent to jail for the weekend would make them
change their minds about testifying. When they replied in the
negative, he sent them home for the weekend. They reappeared on
Tuesday, reiterated their refusal to testify, and Breyer simply
excused them.

The successful act of civil disobedience merits attention, said
California NORML's Gieringer. "It's important that this gets
some attention because it is one of the few actions where people
have had the courage to risk going to jail for refusing to
testify for the government," said Gieringer. "The prosecutor can
file contempt charges if he wants, but I think the judge would
be pretty unhappy. Rosenthal isn't going to jail in any case, so
to have someone go to jail would be a real travesty."

"The community is getting fed up," said Green Aid's Dolphin.
"The jury pool was not happy, the judge was not happy, and a
dozen people subpoenaed to testify just said 'I'm not going to
do it, and you can't make me.'"

The federal government prevailed by winning several convictions
against Rosenthal, but the victory may be a pyrrhic one. The
Justice Department and local federal prosecutors have managed to
irritate just about everybody in Northern California, from the
presiding judge on down. And the continuing persecution of
Rosenthal and other medical marijuana providers has only
strengthened the community and emboldened it to try new,
provocative tactics.

================
===========================================

later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.