The war on (some) drugs rages on…
Tag: the war on (some) drugs
Privilege and hypocrisy…
Mississippi Supreme Court overturns medical marijuana Initiative 65
The Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday issued a much-anticipated ruling that strikes down the Medical marijuana program enshrined in the state constitution by voters in November.
The ruling also voids — for now — the state’s ballot initiative process that allows voters to take matters in hand and pass constitutional amendments. The court ruled that the state’s ballot initiative process is “unworkable and inoperative” until lawmakers and voters fix state law and the constitution.
With six of the nine state justices agreeing, the court wrote, “We grant the petition, reverse the Secretary of State’s certification of initiative 65 and hold that any subsequent proceedings on it are void.”
Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler filed a Supreme Court challenge to Initiative 65 just days before voters approved it on Nov. 3. Butler argued that Mississippi’s ballot initiative process is constitutionally flawed and Initiative 65 was not legally before voters. She said a provision requiring an equal number of signatures from Mississippi’s five congressional districts could not be met, because Mississippi has only had four districts for two decades.
Besides derailing the medical marijuana program, the ruling also jeopardizes six pending ballot initiatives, including one to expand Medicaid and others to reinstate the state’s 1890 state flag, allow early voting and to approve recreational marijuana use. The ruling also could open to challenge two constitutional amendments that voters have passed since they were allowed to do so in 1992, one limiting eminent domain powers over government to take private land and one requiring a government-issued ID to vote.
This 38-Year-Old Man Will Spend Life in Prison Over 1.5 Ounces of Marijuana
Reminder: People are still sentenced to life in prison for marijuana possession. With so many states choosing to legalize marijuana, it’s easy to forget how draconian the penalties for possession can still be. Case in point: The Mississippi Court of Appeals just upheld a life sentence for 38-year-old Allen Russell for being in possession of about one and a half ounces of the drug.
Russell was sentenced in 2019, after being convicted for having 1.55 ounces (or about 44 grams) of marijuana. On appeal, Russell’s lawyers argued that his life sentence amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment and is grossly disproportionate.”
In general, “possession of between 30 and 250 grams is a felony punishable by a maximum of 3 years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of $3,000” in Mississippi, according to the drug policy group National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
But this sentence can increase drastically if a person has previous felony convictions.
The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop
Don’t blame Karma. The police dog simply followed his training when he helped local agencies impound vehicles that sometimes belonged to innocent motorists in Republic, Washington, an old mining town near the Canadian border.
As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an “alert” indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.
Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.
Similar patterns abound nationwide, suggesting that Karma’s career was not unusual. Lex, a drug detection dog in Illinois, alerted for narcotics 93 percent of the time during roadside sniffs, but was wrong in more than 40 percent of cases. Sella, a drug detection dog in Florida, gave false alerts 53 percent of the time. Bono, a drug detection dog in Virginia, incorrectly indicated the presence of drugs 74 percent of the time.
Cops Claim Ashes of Dad’s Murdered Daughter is Meth, Dump Them on the Ground
Body camera video released this week shows the extent in which police will go to justify their existence in the war on drugs — up to and including desecrating the the remains of a little girl.
In 2019, Dartavius Barnes, the father of Ta’Naja Barnes, experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when he found his daughter unresponsive in her home. She would later be pronounced dead in a Decatur hospital and an autopsy would reveal she was murdered.
Ta’Naja’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend would later be arrested on murder charges over her death.
Ta’Naja was later cremated and Barnes remembered his daughter by carrying around her ashes with him in a micro urn. Because the state is a soulless machine which knows no limit to destruction and terror when carrying out the arbitrary war on drugs, Barnes’ daughter’s remains would be desecrated by police.
According to a recent lawsuit filed by Barnes against the City of Springfield, he was unlawfully detained on April 6, 2020 and during this unlawful detainment, he was searched.
According to the lawsuit, officers placed him in handcuffs while they searched his vehicle without consent, valid warrant, or probable cause. During this search without consent, police removed the sealed micro-urn from Barnes’ vehicle that contained the ashes of his murdered daughter, unsealed it, opened it, and spilled his daughter out on the ground.
In the newly released body camera footage, we see that Barnes was pulled over for allegedly speeding when he was handcuffed and his vehicle searched.
“You got anything in your car?” an officer asks.
Barnes responded “Not really,” before telling the officer he had marijuana. In the state of Illinois, it is not illegal to have marijuana on your person as they voted to legalize it recreationally in 2019.
Nevertheless, the officer used this as a reason to search.
When officers discovered the urn, they began running field drug test kits on it.
“I checked for cocaine, but it looks like it’s probably molly,” the officer said.
“X pills,” the other added.
At this time, Barnes didn’t know what was happening but he would soon find out that police had dumped his daughter’s ashes out looking for non-existent drugs.
How a Psychedelic 12-Step Program Is Saving Lives
In 2002, Dimitri M. was ready to die. He’d been addicted to heroin for over 20 years, and his once-promising artistic life had collapsed into a series of banal pit stops: from the methadone clinic, to the valet parking gig, to the coke dealer, to the dope dealer, to the bed, and over and over again. Eventually, his longtime partner succumbed to intravenous drug use, and, though they were married by common law, he was barred from attending her funeral.
Dimitri was ready to finally let the drugs carry him away, like an undertow. He planned to take a trip to Greece as a last goodbye to his ancestral homeland, but while researching his farewell voyage, he was reminded of a conversation with an old friend about a hallucinogenic plant with the purported power to heal opioid addiction. He embarked on his trip as planned, but scheduled a brief detour in the Netherlands to be treated with this so-called miracle drug: Ibogaine. Though the alkaloid extract of the Tabernanthe iboga plant with psychoactive effects is illegal in the United States, Ibogaine has been used for decades by the Bwiti people of Gabon as a sacrament in a coming-of-age ritual, akin to a Bar Mitzvah.
The war on (some) drugs…
Cops Claim Not Being Able to Arrest People for Weed Smell Causes Spike in Gun Violence
Over the past several years, the city of New York has been loosening their grip on the war on cannabis. In 2014, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch famously grabbed a bad of oregano and gave a fear mongering speech about what was going to happen after New York stopped arresting people for possessing less than 25 grams of pot.
“We do not want police officers left holding the bag if crime rises because of poor policy,” Lynch said. “Writing a summons to someone who does not respect the law can result in a volatile situation. Police officers always have to be on guard for violent reaction and resistance which can put them in danger of physical harm and potential disciplinary charges.”
REPORT: U.S. Special Forces Train Drug Cartel Enforcers Linked to Rape, Torture, Decapitation
Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) has become one of the most feared paramilitaries in Mexico over the last decade. Images of the group have become the standard depiction of the Mexican cartel writ large. Their propaganda videos often feature groups of masked men bristling with enough small arms to make them formidable against even conventional armies.
In an interview aired on Mexico’s Telemundo network in May 2019, a former CJNG soldier described his experience at a training camp and claimed that the cartel employed U.S. special operations forces (SOF) to train their recruits. According to the former sicario assassin: there were Marines, there were Navy from the United States, there were Delta Force, there was everything there.”
The cartel dropout’s account is consistent with years of reports which show that U.S. special forces training is diffusing into the service of paramilitaries in Mexico.
The Special Forces training has been funded under the Plan Mérida, which has resulted in the U.S. providing more than $1.6 billion for fighting the War on Drugs, most of it in military aid.
Hellbound and Down 
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