Cannabis Magna Carta

William Barr, President Trump's nominee to serve as the next U.S. attorney general, made headlines earlier this month when he pledged during his Senate confirmation hearing not to "go after" marijuana companies that comply with state laws.

Now, in response to written questions from senators, Barr is putting that pledge on paper, in black and white. He's also calling for the approval of more legal growers of marijuana for research, and is acknowledging that a recent bill legalizing hemp has broad implications for sale of cannabis products.

"As discussed at my hearing, I do not intend to go after parties who have complied with state law in reliance on the Cole Memorandum," he wrote, referring to Obama-era cannabis enforcement guidance that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded last year.

That said, Barr isn't committing to formally replacing the Cole Memo, which generally directed federal prosecutors not to interfere with state marijuana laws, with new guidance reiterating the approach.

"I have not closely considered or determined whether further administrative guidance would be appropriate following the Cole Memorandum and the January 2018 memorandum from Attorney General Sessions, or what such guidance might look like," he wrote in response to a question from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "If confirmed, I will give the matter careful consideration."

And Barr, who previously served as attorney general under President George H. W. Bush, says it would be even better if Congress got around to addressing the growing gap between state and federal marijuana laws.

"I still believe that the legislative process, rather than administrative guidance, is ultimately the right way to resolve whether and how to legalize marijuana," he wrote in a compilation of responses delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sunday.

But even as Barr reiterated that he wouldn't go after people and businesses that benefited from the Cole memo, he voiced criticism of policy directives like it and of the idea of legalization in general.

"An approach based solely on executive discretion fails to provide the certainty and predictability that regulated parties deserve and threatens to undermine the rule of law," Barr wrote in response to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). "If confirmed, I can commit to working with the Committee and the rest of Congress on these issues, including any specific legislative proposals. As I have said, however, I do not support the wholesale legalization of marijuana."

Nonetheless, legalization advocates were happy to see the nominee reiterating his non-enforcement pledge when it comes to state-legal businesses.

"It’s positive to see Barr make the same commitments on marijuana enforcement in writing as he did in the hearings," Michael Collins, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said. "My hope is that he sends this message to all federal prosecutors so that states are given space to reform their outdated, broken, racist marijuana laws, and the country can turn the page on prohibition."

Elsewhere in the 247-page document, Barr says that he supports expanding the number of institutions that are allowed to grow marijuana to be used in scientific research.

"I support the expansion of marijuana manufacturers for scientific research consistent with law," he wrote in response to a question from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA). "If confirmed, I will review the matter and take appropriate steps."

A single facility at the University of Mississippi has for half a century maintained a monopoly on the cultivation of cannabis for research, but due to concerns about the availability and quality of its products, the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2016 announced a process to license additional manufacturers. However, under Sessions, the Department of Justice has blocked the agency from acting on any of the several dozen applications it has received from would-be growers.

"I am not familiar with the details of these applications or the status of their review," Barr wrote. "If confirmed, I can commit to reviewing the matter."

Barr also acknowledged that, due to the passage of the Farm Bill and its hemp legalization provisions late last year, hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) and other components and products made from low-THC cannabis plants are legally distinct from those that come from marijuana.

"Products derived from hemp, including CBD, are therefore subject to different legal and regulatory restrictions than those derived from non-hemp marijuana plants under certain circumstances," he wrote.

He also pledged to "look into" pending medical and scientific evaluations of CBD, which could lead to its formal rescheduling under the Controlled Substances Act.

All told, the cannabis comments indicate that if Barr is confirmed by the Senate, the Justice Department would be poised to take a very different approach to marijuana issues than it did under Sessions, who has long been a vocal legalization opponent.

"After decades of failed drug war, it’s difficult to grasp the progress we’ve made in just the past couple of years. From a hawkish attorney general who sent a chill through the industry and threatened to escalate enforcement to a nominee who put his hands-off federalist approach to prohibition in writing," said Don Murphy, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project. "William Barr didn’t just wave the white flag, he signed a peace agreement."

NORML Political Director Justin Strekal said Barr is "incredibly wise to acknowledge that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to the marijuana reform movement."

"Now is the time for the Department of Justice to work in good faith with the Senate Judiciary Committee on legislative solutions that address the senseless waste of law enforcement's precious time and resources due to the failed federal policy of prohibition," he said.

Source

7th annual NCIA lobby days draw in citizen lobbyists to cannabis cause

More than a dozen pending congressional bills sit, waiting for committee hearings and the support of additional sponsors. But while 2017’s federal legislation season sees little hope for a vote in either chamber, that didn’t stop more than 240 citizen lobbyists from storming the offices of friendly and opposed congressional offices, May 15-17, for the 7th annual version of the NCIA Lobby Days.

As they have done for years, constituent business owners shared stories of hardship from onerous, IRS section 280-E rules (creating high business taxes averaging 60 to 70%), experiences of pricey or non-existent access to banking and credit unions, and a continuing push-back against the “anti-science bias” brought by attorney general Jeff Sessions, vilifying the positive patient reports from medical marijuana options. In years past, the “hands-off” attitude of the former Obama administration gave Lobby Day visitors some level of comfort, but the daily whirlwind, Trump administration mini-scandals gave cannabis supporters some break with staffers.

Building on a positive, but fairly powerless, base in both the House and Senate democratic leaders who had been the only cannabis supporters 3 and 4 years back. Co-signers and top cannabis supportive legislators have grown, and most supportive states (counted by NORML’s annual “most supportive” list) include California (9 members), Oregon, Illinois, New York and Colorado.

In March, freshman Congressman Thomas Garrett (R-VA) introduced the same bill brought last year by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which would remove all marijuana classification from the Controlled Substances Act. Movement in Virginia to add medical, and other Democratic member support by Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) and Garrett’s co-sponsor Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-VA) has helped push Virginia into a pro-cannabis leadership role, right in the important DC bedroom communities.

“This step allows states to determine appropriate medicinal use and allows for industrial hemp growth, something that will provide a major economic boost to agricultural development in Southside Virginia.” Thomas Garrett

Some NCIA group lobbyists also came back to Senators who’s state’s have — or in 2018 — will have adult-use legal options in their states. Important in any continuing search for support are those Republicans like Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rep. Carlos Curbelo and Rep. Matt Gaetz (both south Florida Republicans), Rep. Darren Soto (D-Orlando) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who have all signaled their independence from the “war on drugs” mantra being re-issued by AG Sessions. Perhaps the greatest Democratic disappointment continues to be the adamant hatred of liberalized marijuana policies from California’s Sen. Diane Feinstein, a critical member of the Senate Judiciary committee.

Other states rising to the defense of moving sane cannabis liberalization are Florida (two new bills from members introduced), New Jersey (where local legislators promised to push for a legislation bill as soon as Gov. Chris Christies‘ regime ends in one year), strong support from Hawaii and popular Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), and even support from moderate Republications in Pennsylvania.

In the race to fill Jeff Session’s senate seat in the special election set for later in 2017, many supporters threw their encouragement to current Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who has called for treating marijuana policy as a states’ rights issue. “It’s important to re-visit and re-engage our key supporters, even as we expand the growing number of smart legislators who see the wisdom of backing MJ reforms now,” said a long-time Denver retailer.

At the tail end of Lobby Days, Colorado Senators Corey Gardner (R) and Michael Bennet (D) introduced a new bill to protect any banking interests that open account for cannabis firms. All pending, these are the captions to the federal bills addressing various areas of MJ concern:

Small Business Tax Equity Act (bicameral)
Marijuana Revenue and Regulation Act (bicameral)
The Veterans Equal Access Act
Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act
Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017
Respect State Marijuana Laws Act of 2017
LUMMA (Legitimate Use of Medicinal Marijuana Act)
Compassionate Access Act
States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Act

Source

A lot of petitions to the above mentioned bills can be found here.

How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs

Steven H. Cook
When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and the Koch brothers praised Obama for his efforts, saying he was making the criminal justice system more humane.

But there was one person who watched these developments with some horror. Steven H. Cook, a former street cop who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked — not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population. And he went everywhere — Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, congressional hearings, public panels — to spread a different gospel.

“The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, it’s working exactly as designed,” Cook said at a criminal justice panel at The Washington Post last year.

The Obama administration largely ignored Cook, who was then president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. But he won’t be overlooked anymore.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought Cook into his inner circle at the Justice Department, appointing him to be one of his top lieutenants to help undo the criminal justice policies of Obama and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. As Sessions has traveled to different cities to preach his tough-on-crime philosophy, Cook has been at his side.

Sessions has yet to announce specific policy changes, but Cook’s new perch speaks volumes about where the Justice Department is headed.

Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration.

Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response.

“Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs is bad,” Sessions said to law enforcement officials in a speech in Richmond last month. “It will destroy your life.”

Advocates of criminal justice reform argue that Sessions and Cook are going in the wrong direction — back to a strategy that tore apart families and sent low-level drug offenders, disproportionately minority citizens, to prison for long sentences.

“They are throwing decades of improved techniques and technologies out the window in favor of a failed approach,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM).

But Cook, whose views are supported by other federal prosecutors, sees himself as a dedicated assistant U.S. attorney who for years has tried to protect neighborhoods ravaged by crime. He has called FAMM and organizations like it “anti-law enforcement groups.”

The records of Cook and Sessions show that while others have grown eager in recent years to rework the criminal justice system, they have repeatedly fought to keep its toughest edges, including winning a battle in Congress last year to defeat a reform bill.

“If hard-line means that my focus is on protecting communities from violent felons and drug traffickers, then I’m guilty,” Cook said in a recent interview with The Post. “I don’t think that’s hard-line. I think that’s exactly what the American people expect of their Department of Justice.”

When asked for a case that he was proud to work on during his three-decade career as a prosecutor, Cook points to when his office went after a crack ring operating in Chattanooga housing projects between 1989 and 1991.

This was during the height of the crack epidemic and the drug war. After the cocaine overdose of black basketball star Len Bias in 1986, Congress began passing “tough on crime” laws, including mandatory minimum sentences on certain drug and gun offenses. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed one of the toughest-ever crime bills, which included a “three strikes” provision that gave mandatory life sentences for repeat offenders.

Federal prosecutors such as Cook applauded their “new tools” to get criminals off the street.

Cook said last year: “What we did, beginning in 1985, is put these laws to work. We started filling federal prisons with the worst of the worst. And what happened next is exactly what Congress said they wanted to happen — and that is violent crime began in 1991 to turn around. By 2014, we had cut it in half.”

To bring down the Chattanooga drug ring’s leader, Victor Novene, undercover federal agents purchased crack from Novene’s underlings. Prosecutors then threatened them with long prison sentences to “flip” them to give up information about their superiors.

Cook said in March: “We made buys from individuals who were lower in the organization. We used the mandatory minimums to pressure them to cooperate.”

Cook’s office also added gun charges to make sentences even longer, another popular tool among prosecutors seeking the longest possible punishments.

With the mandatory minimum sentences and firearms “enhancements,” Novene received six life sentences. Many of his lieutenants were sentenced to between 16 and 33 years in federal prison.

But sentencing reform advocates say the tough crime policies went too far. The nation began incarcerating people at a higher rate than any other country — jailing 25 percent of the world’s prisoners at a cost of $80 billion a year. The nation’s prison and jail population more than quadrupled from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.2 million in 2015, filled with mostly black men strapped with lengthy prison sentences — 10 or 20 years, sometimes life without parole for a first drug offense.

Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, launched an ambitious clemency initiative to release certain drug offenders from prison early. And Holder told his prosecutors, in an effort to make punishments more fairly fit the crime, to stop charging low-level nonviolent drug offenders with offenses that imposed severe mandatory sentences. He called his strategy, outlined in an August 2013 report, “Smart on Crime.”

Cook has called it “Soft on Crime” and said the Chattanooga case would have been much more difficult to make, “if possible at all,” in recent years.

“We were discouraged from using mandatory minimums,” Cook said about Holder’s 2013 charging and sentencing memo to prosecutors. “The charging memo handcuffed prosecutors. And it limited when enhancements can be used to increase penalties, an important leverage when you’re dealing with a career offender in getting them to cooperate.”

Cook has also dismissed the idea that there is such a thing as a nonviolent drug offender.

“Drug trafficking is inherently violent. Drug traffickers are dealing in a heavy cash business,” he said on the “O’Reilly Factor” last year. “They can’t resolve disputes in court. They resolve the disputes on the street, and they resolve them through violence.”

Winning on the Hill

Cook and Sessions have also fought the winds of change on Capitol Hill, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers recently tried but failed to pass the first significant bill on criminal justice reform in decades.

The legislation, which had 37 sponsors in the Senate, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and 79 members of the House, would have reduced some of the long mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug crimes. It also would have given judges more flexibility in drug sentencing and made retroactive the law that reduced the large disparity between sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

The bill, introduced in 2015, had support from outside groups as diverse as the Koch brothers and the NAACP. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) supported it, as well.

But then people such as Sessions and Cook spoke up. The longtime Republican senator from Alabama became a leading opponent, citing the spike in crime in several cities.

“Violent crime and murders have increased across the country at almost alarming rates in some areas. Drug use and overdoses are occurring and dramatically increasing,” said Sessions, one of five members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who voted against the legislation. “It is against this backdrop that we are considering a bill . . . to cut prison sentences for drug traffickers and even other violent criminals, including those currently in federal prison.”


Cook testified that it was the “wrong time to weaken the last tools available to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents.”

After GOP lawmakers became nervous about passing legislation that might seem soft on crime, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

“Sessions was the main reason that bill didn’t pass,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, the director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “He came in at the last minute and really torpedoed the bipartisan effort.”

Now that he is attorney general, Sessions has signaled a new direction. As his first step, Sessions told his prosecutors in a memo last month to begin using “every tool we have” — language that evoked the strategy from the drug war of loading up charges to lengthen sentences.

And he quickly appointed Cook to be a senior official on the attorney general’s task force on crime reduction and public safety, which was created following a Trump executive order to address what the president has called “American carnage.”

“If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cook’s appointment was a fire hose,” said Ring, of FAMM. “There simply aren’t enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cook’s vision for America.”

Sessions is also expected to take a harder line on the punishment for using and distributing marijuana, a drug he has long abhorred. His crime task force will review existing marijuana policy, according to a memo he wrote prosecutors last week. Using or distributing marijuana is illegal under federal law, which classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug, the same category as heroin, and considered more dangerous than cocaine and methamphetamine.

In his effort to resurrect the practices of the drug war, it is still unclear what Sessions will do about the wave of states that have legalized marijuana in recent years. Eight states and the District of Columbia now permit the recreational use of marijuana, and 28 states and the District have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

But his rhetoric against weed seems to get stronger with each speech. In Richmond, he cast doubt on the use of medical marijuana and said it “has been hyped, maybe too much.”

Sessions directs federal prosecutors to target the nation’s most violent offenders]

Sessions’s aides stress that the attorney general does not want to completely upend every aspect of criminal justice policy.

“We are not just sweeping away everything that has come before us.” said Robyn Thiemann, the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, who is working with Cook and has been at the Justice Department for nearly 20 years. “The attorney general recognizes that there is good work out there.”

Still, Sessions’s remarks on the road reveal his continued fascination with an earlier era of crime fighting.

In the speech in Richmond, he said, “Psychologically, politically, morally, we need to say — as Nancy Reagan said — ‘Just say no.’ ”

Source

Last chance to stop Sessions

From The Drug Policy Alliance:

As soon as tomorrow, the U.S. Senate will cast a final vote on the nomination of drug war extremist Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.

Email your Senators right away urging them to oppose his nomination.

Then, follow-up with a quick phone call to your Senators at 877-959-6082. Tell the person your name, where you live and say:

I am calling to urge my Senator to reject Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. He is unfit to head the Justice Department and will likely escalate the failed war on drugs and undermine state marijuana laws. Please oppose his nomination and the giant step backwards for criminal justice that he represents. Thank you.

Jeff Sessions would be a nightmare as Attorney General and is a threat to the historic progress you’ve helped us achieve.

He has an appalling record on drug policy, civil and human rights, and criminal justice reform.

Advocates like you have been flooding the Senate with thousands of emails and calls. The response has been overwhelming.

But now it’s our last chance to keep the pressure up before the Senate casts a final vote this week.

Make your voice heard: stand against Sessions for Attorney General.

To sign the petition

Senator Jeff Sessions' asinine quote

The following is the most ignorant statement I have ever read from a member of Congress. Here is the entire quote:

You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.

It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.

Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.

-Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Now here's me tearing it a new one:

You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process.

True leadership comes from We The People. We grant certain powers upon our elected representatives through elections. Those in Congress are our servants. The People do want to discuss marijuana reform. The recent elections have proven that. The reaction of the People toward the Drug Enforcement Agency when they raided lawful marijuana dispensaries was one of disdain and rightfully so.

It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.

What is Sessions asking? Does a little use of marijuana lead to a big use in marijuana or does marijuana lead to harder drugs such as crystal meth,heroin and cocaine? States that have medical marijuana report the decline in the use (and abuse) of opioid drugs because of it. DUI's (DWI's) declined while revenue skyrocketed. It got so bad that the State of Colorado had to give the excess money back to the taxpayers as per Colorado law. Oh the horror.

It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline.

You mean as in those early dawn drug raids? The kind that tore a new asshole in the 4th Amendment and ruined a lot of people's day? Those ones? You know the kind that should have never existed the United States Of America,the land of the free,in the first place? Yeah,those. Amazing we were wagging our fingers at the Russians while we murdered our own Constitution. It lead to a slight decline in supply but not demand.

The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.

Your hysteria Senator Sessions is quite comical. Marijuana is the one of the safest substances on earth. It has no death rate. The only problem with marijuana are legal ones and you are someone in the way of reform. A reform that is long overdue. That message is quite clear as well. Good people do smoke marijuana.

Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.

Nice try. Lady Gaga's problem is not America's problem.

Florida real estate mogul tortures troubled youth

To friends and political allies, Mel Sembler is a real estate developer with integrity.

A former ambassador and shopping center magnate, he remains a giant of Tampa Bay politics. His influence stretches from his $3.4 million St. Petersburg penthouse to a network of insiders cultivated from the last three Republican presidencies.

To others, Sembler is known as the founder of Straight Inc., a controversial drug treatment program that operated from 1976 to 1993. He and his wife Betty started the residential program to help troubled teens. Yet after opening in about a dozen states, it was shut down amid allegations of abuse and excessive force. Some subjected to the program’s get-tough therapy now say years were stolen from their lives.

Now 86, Sembler is using his clout as one of the most powerful figures in Florida politics and the anti-drug movement to defeat a constitutional amendment aimed at expanding medical marijuana in Florida. If passed by 60 percent of voters, Amendment 2 would let doctors recommend marijuana to patients with conditions like cancer, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS.

Sembler has so far donated $1 million to defeat the constitutional amendment. A former national Republican finance chairman, he’s tapped his cadre of wealthy donors, too. He says he’ll raise $10 million for Drug Free Florida, the political committee opposing the ballot measure.

But as Sembler leads the fight, the controversy surrounding Straight continues to haunt his anti-drug legacy.

“This was the first and only controversy I’ve ever known having to do with Mel Sembler, and it’s regrettable,” said Pat Neal, a Sarasota homebuilder and former state senator, who gave $10,000 to the effort. “He only wanted to do the right thing.”
Nothing to say

For a man with such an outsized role in shaping a public policy like medical marijuana, Sembler doesn’t reveal much.
He declined a Herald/Times interview and does not publicly talk about why he got involved in the anti-drug movement.

News reports from 20 years ago say his interest started in the 1970s, when he and Betty, parents of three sons, learned that one them was smoking marijuana.

The couple started Straight, which was modeled after a previous anti-drug program called The Seed. Its ambitious goal: end teenage drug use.
“I knew young people who really got straightened out at Straight,” Neal said. “It was very controversial but it was also very effective.”
The idea caught fire, gaining traction in the upper reaches of President Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Sembler was one of the people who suggested that First Lady Nancy Reagan lead the anti-drug movement, said Maia Szalavitz, author of a 2006 book on the troubled-teen industry, “Help at Any Cost.”

The White House entrée led to the Bush family. George H.W. Bush later named Sembler ambassador to Australia and Nauru.

“He is someone that local elected officials go to for advice, but he is approachable by heads of state as well,” said state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, the first state senator to endorse Amendment 2. “He’s a legendary figure.”

One offender’s story

Marcus Chatfield never met Mel Sembler.

But he was forever changed by him.

As a teen, Chatfield had shoplifted, run away from home and smoked pot a few times. He was never addicted to drugs, he says.

But he told people he was addicted in hopes of avoiding juvenile detention. Instead, Chatfield was sent to Straight’s Springfield, Virginia, facility, where he spent more than a year, most of it on a judge’s order.

He spent hours of every day in what Straight called “raps” — group meetings where other teens were expected and sometimes bullied into confessing harrowing stories about drugs and alcohol use. Chatfield said they were encouraged to yell at and shame one other.
Many participants had only a few stories to share, but they were under constant pressure, Chatfield said. So he started to lie.

“And after some time, I started to believe it,” he told the Herald/Times.

He said some of the worst abuses were at the hands of other students. After Chatfield had been in the program for several months, he was allowed to start going to school and was placed in charge of other children. He said he followed orders and deprived children of sleep. Sometimes, he said, he and others were told to pin someone on the ground for an entire rap session for acting out.

“That stuff haunts me,” he said. “That stuff will always haunt me.”

Now 47, Chatfield lives in Micanopy, where he’s a family, youth and community sciences graduate student at the University of Florida. He wants to conduct research into the lasting effects of Straight-style treatment programs.

Straight ultimately came under fire for holding people against their will. Court rulings led to policy changes, and ultimately Straight shut down.

Friends give little credence to claims of abuse and say the Semblers were not aware.

“I know Mel and Betty. I know where there heart was,” said Susan Latvala, a former Pinellas County commissioner. “I think it’s inappropriate to keep dragging that up.”

A 1993 Florida Inspector General audit suggested Sembler was aware. The report said that despite “a propensity for abuse or excessive force,” Straight kept getting licensed.

“It appears that pressure may have been generated by Ambassador Sembler and other state senators,” the report stated.
A year later, Straight had dissolved.

A long fight

To Mel Sembler, fighting medical marijuana is a continuation of his and Betty’s life’s work.
“We’re trying to save lives and people’s brains,” he told the Herald/Times in April. “It’s not a medicine.”

In 1995, Straight’s name was legally changed to Drug Free America Foundation, state documents show. The organization no longer provides treatment.

Its work continues in financing campaigns opposing marijuana, both recreational and medical use, which many opponents say could lead to full legalization. Latvala and Neal have served on its board of directors.

With marijuana on ballots across the country, the group is considering more public awareness campaigns, Latvala said.
Yet given Straight’s history, Szalavitz was dismayed that the Semblers were shaping public drug policy. After spending five years researching adolescent centers for her book, she confirmed numerous allegations of abuse at Straight.
“They should have no sway over drug policy in any way,” she said.

Source

The mad doctor

Ben Carson Wants to "Intensify" the War on Drugs
The Iowa frontrunner is spoiling for more drug war.

Katherine Mangu-Ward|Oct. 22, 2015 4:50 pm

Presidential contender Ben Carson told Glenn Beck that he wants to "intensify" the war on drugs.

Robby Soave blogged Carson's controversial remarks about using the federal Department of Education to eradicated political bias from the academy yesterday, but elsewhere in the same Blaze interview (starting at about 1:30) the brain surgeon/book writer/Iowa poll leader reiterated his intention to double down on drug prohibition:

Beck is conducting a lightning round of questions. He asks Carson:

Beck: Do you continue the war on drugs?

Carson: Absolutely

Beck: You do?

Carson: I would intensify it.

(Reason readers may recall that our own Jacob Sullum helped usher the talk show personality onto the anti-prohibition bandwagon earlier this year.)

Then, bless his besweatered heart, Beck drops a wee, snarky little pause on the candidate and then follows up:

Beck: Let me ask you a question...

Beck: How...

Beck: I mean, it doesn't seem to be working now.

Carson: Yeah well, go down to the border in Arizona like I was a few weeks ago. I mean, it's an open highway and the federal government isn't doing anything to stop it.

Beck then asks the candidate if he would legalize marijuana and Carson replies "I disagree with it." He has previously said that he considers pot a "gateway drug."

This concludes today's harshing of your buzz.

P.S. Tune into Kennedy on Fox Business tonight to hear me talk about this, Benghazi, the Kardashians, and much, much more.

Source

The political football called "marijuana legalization"

The topic of marijuana legalization is a very controversial one. There are political dinosaurs like Bill O'Reilly that seek to keep the status quo even though the drug war is a failed one. O'Reilly's status quo is going to keep sending money to drug kingpins by keeping marijuana illegal. Not only that the quality and purity of the marijuana is in question. If it is tainted with some adulterant then it may have an negative impact versus the purity that is found in medical and recreation marijuana where allowed by law. This is a big issue and politicians need to throw out the 80's war on drugs manual. There are a lot of Republicans that want to appear "tough on drugs" by opposing legalization. That is political suicide because a lot of Democrats favor legalization and that will help them in November. Obamacare is a fiasco and the Dems needs something that is going to make them appealing to voters again. Enter marijuana legalization. If it is not the soap to wash Obamacare off it is the paper correction fluid that could whiteout Obamacare. Not all Democrats favor legalization. Senator Diane Feinstein(D-CA) is against legalization and they may politically hurt those that oppose it down the road. There are also Republicans that favor legalization like Congressman Dana Rohrabacher(R-CA). The booming sales of recreational marijuana in Colorado and soon Washington State will show the rest of the nation that marijuana legalization is not only beneficial it is imperative if we are going to stop organized crime and the resulting chaos that goes along with it.