Bud Life. Quick Hits, Growin' Our Own and Pipeline. Page 5.

Quick Hits (page 5)

Can they do that

By: Bud Life

Lawyers recently argued in San Francisco over whether a federal judge can or should bar U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson from treating medical marijuana patients as criminals.

Patients sued the government officials in October, claiming their civil rights are being violated by federal crackdowns on medical marijuana.

The federal government still deems all marijuana growth, possession or use illegal, even though California voters OK'd medical marijuana in 1996. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington have similar laws.

Federal district judge Jenkins peppered the patients' attorneys -- Robert Raich of Oakland, David Michael of San Francisco and Boston University Law Professor Randy Barnett -- and Justice Department trial lawyer Mark Quinlivan with questions Tuesday.

Some questions concerned whether Jenkins even has the authority under 9th Circuit case law to issue an injunction in a case such as this.

Quinlivan argued he doesn't, while the patients' attorneys said he does.

The lawyers also sparred on whether the federal Controlled Substances Act, which Ashcroft and Hutchinson use as authority to go after medical marijuana patients, should be applied to medical marijuana. Barnett argued Congress' constitutional authority extends only to interstate commerce, while medical marijuana in California is an issue contained wholly within the state's own borders, involving no money changing hands.

Quinlivan noted case law has found marijuana use for any purpose can't be considered wholly intrastate and noneconomic.

Raich argued for the 9th Amendment right of plaintiff Angel McClary Raich, his wife, to be free from pain and prolong her life by using marijuana.

"Angel would die were it not for cannabis," he said. "It cannot be the law of the United States that a person must face death because of a law Congress passed for other purposes entirely."

Quinlivan argued Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act knowing it would apply to everyone, and marijuana remains on the act's most restricted list, signifying it has no recognized medicinal value. Case law says people have a constitutional right to treatment in general, but not to specific, unproven medicines and methods.

Some of this case's constitutional arguments mirror those made to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative's pending case. The OCBC raised those issues after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 struck down its medical necessity argument for resuming distribution to patients.

But in his concurrence with that opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote individual patients -- rather than clubs like the OCBC -- might have better legal standing to seek such an exception. The patients' lawsuit was a response to that ruling.

Growin' Our Own (page 5)

DEA is not the problem, congress is the problem

Who is to blame? Bud Life forecasts for 2003

By: Thinking Straight

The subject of marijuana prohibition is the responsibility of Congress, who has made it illegal. The agency responsible for enforcing the U.S. Congress' prohibition is the DEA. Let's put this all in a proper perspective. As much as we may want to blame the cops, we have to realize that they are only acting as pit bulls for Congress. The DEA is only doing their job (and they do it well) as it is dictated by Congress. Who is to blame when the DEA harasses medical marijuana users and growers? It's not the DEA, its Congress who made the law, and won't change the law. Don't you agree that its time for Congress to separate the soft drug marijuana from hard drugs, and try out The Dutch Experience?

Our congressmen have failed to take any action to remedy the outdated laws against marijuana and therefore their DEA enforcers must enforce the law. You watched the election and saw all the 'Vote for Me' congressmens' ads dressed in their New York Banker suits, or in farm clothes. Well they all looked their best for us didn't they? But there is a perpetual problem with all these well paid politicians. The problem is that our teflon congressman never get their hands dirty and distance themselves from US, the voters. No matter what happens to us, nothing gets changed for the better. We only get higher taxes, smiles and lip service from our politicians as they cover their asses, live like kings, and ignore us. If we become too much of a problem we get an audit from the IRS, or a visit from the swat team while we sleep. When the economy goes sour, like now, we always get a war. We are entering the era of another Great Depression and now we'll get less services and higher and more novel taxes. The next few years will probably see the return of the military draft system where millions will be forced into military service to fight a global war. The draft would help the unemployment figures. BUSH doesn't want to be a 1 term President like his dad, and he will become more and more desperate as he tries to pull us out of the depression.

Problems for 2003 and beyond

The reality here in the U.S. is,innocent people get killed by our militarized police. Police don't pay for this - it all comes out of our taxes. They make mistakes, kill innocent people and we pay. They don't get charged with murder and they stand under immunity with nothing to lose. Where are our protections? Recently a family on vacation was arrested when the father's wallet blew off the roof of their car. They were wrongfully reported to Crime Stoppers as robbers and arrested at gun point. The family dog was killed at the scene. Finally it was determined that the father actually owned the wallet and they were released. So Crime Stoppers and other rewards have turned us into a nation of busy bodies and snitches. What happens when cops kill an innocent person? There is usually an amount of self insurance for cities that is not covered by outside insurance companies. Taxes have to be raised to cover for most of these government agencies. In one case, a small Cali town had a $12 million judgment against its police for killing an innocent man in his bedroom. The federal judge, of course, cut this in half. There was no way the local politicians could immediately raise the city taxes to cover this fatal mistake. So the politicians made the locals suffer with budget cuts and then raised rates for water, garbage, etc. We will go to a side bar and then back to the DEA. We, the People Pay for the Public Servant's Mistakes While They Have Immunity.

Why should the local people be punished with higher fees for this cop's mistake? This is just how it works in America. Now with the bad economy, (you'll soon see news that we are IN the 2nd Great Depression) local politicians everywhere are trying to raise taxes under the guise of fire and police protection. Who wants to be protected by police who may break down your door and kill you? What more fees and taxes (to support cops and fire) do is free up budget money to be squandered elsewhere. People are already used to having taxes raised and consider this normal for essential services. They are in favor of supporting the cops and fire department, which in some cities is 70% of the general fund, and a poll showed that these sheeple will probably go for the politicians' eternal scheme and want to pay more taxes and higher fees. We all want the system to work right, don't we? When you have a fire and you call the fire department, you want them to come don't you? If we're being shot at by a burglar (and due to gun control, we don't have a gun to defend ourselves) we want the cops to come over and kill him, right? If we have a gun at home we might take a chance on being prosecuted for murder and kill the burglar ourself. But how high can taxes continue to be raised for mistakes and pork barrel projects before people revolt?

As long as taxes are raised a little bit at a time, people don't seem to care, but when you're unemployed and your neighbor is unemployed, the little bit does matter. An alternative to raising taxes is stepping up law enforcement to get more fines from us. Politicians need to make more laws for the cops to enforce to get us into the court collection system. You have seen this and will be seeing more of this down the road. Step on a crack and you pay a fine to the court.

Let's take a look at this old political scheme. They need more money to run the empire. Instead of making a balanced budget, they budget less money to police and fire services. Then politicians cry to the people that they don't have enough money in the budget for fire and police. The people believe the politicians' budget and agree to be taxed more for less services. Then the politicians don't have to cut their pork barrel budget elsewhere. The sheep are sheared and they are happy about it as they believe they are supporting necessary services. The politicians are amazed that they are able to again and again - convince the sheep to be taxed more, scrape through another crisis. Hang 'em high.

Ask yourself, how much wool can a sheep give? At some point the sheep (taxpayer) must realize that it has no more wool to give and will freeze when winter comes. We are reaching this point in America. The sheep are waking up and checking their wool. Taxpayers should not be responsible for government (servant) mistakes and waste.

Take California for example. Our Governor Gray Davis came into office with a $12 billion budget surplus. Now, after the loyal sheep elected him to a second 4 year term, he comes up $35 billion short on the annual $100 billion budget. Figure it out. Cali has 35 million people, and Davis needs to figure out how to grind $35 billion out of the 35 million of us people to balance his deficit budget. We are his target sheep and his only solution for fiscal irresponsibility. The governor has to devise a scheme to charge every man woman and baby in this state $1,000. He and his legislative buddies are working on a $.50 obesity tax on every soda. That's right. Every time we buy a Coke or Pepsi, we would have to pay an extra $.50 because it may make us fat. The sales pitch is that a sugar tax is for our own health and will make us spend less money on sodas and make us healthy. Right. This is a B.S. (big sugar) tax. This sugar tax, if passed, is one that should be declared unconstitutional on its face. If I was a sugar farmer I would file suit immediately. Another tax is the car registration tax, which might include some rebate. We had an out of state car tax which was declared unconstitutional and they had to rebate over $300 million. Those politicians who passed that unconstitutional car tax should have been fired and made to give up all their perks and retirement. Balance the mistakes on the backs of the ones who made them. Why should We, the People pay and let the state use our money tax free until they pay us back with some rebate? Probably next will be making cell phones illegal to use in cars. This will give the cops more excuses to pull us over and fine us, all under the guise of our safety. Water is a necessity and can't be taxed. The Politicians didn't like this and came up with a back door way to get around this. They put a recycling fee on every water bottle. Think about it: a cop is an armed revenue officer, the judge is his collector, and the court the collection agency. This is all put in motion by the politicians who make the dumb rules we are supposed to live under. Fire the bastards who make the mistakes and come up with these unconstitutional schemes. Take away their perks. Maybe we'll get some politicians who will listen to us.

Our public servants - the politicians, judges, and cops - should be responsible for their mistakes. These people are privileged to serve us and have the cushy jobs that they have. When they violate our constitutional rights, they should lose their pensions, free cars, and health insurance, etc. If a judge is overruled, he should be fined from his personal checking account. Put somebody in there who will look out for our rights. Don't you see how this change in attitude can change America and put it back in our hands? Tell your friends and don't take it anymore. Raise a stink!

There is no penalty against police, who are trying their best to enforce all the laws that politicians can create to bring in more money to feed the Beast that our government has become. Let's face it, it's teamwork. Our politicians, hungry for taxes, pass B.S. laws to get more tax income. The cops are their armed revenue enforcement officers. The judges are their official referees, who with conflicts (consider where their paychecks come from) stand by the establishment and mete out the fines. Politicians, judges and cops all have immunity from criminal prosecution, and they have their own committees to judge their conduct. For the cops it's Internal Affairs. When was the last time IA didn't clear a cop for his conduct? I can't recall one incident, as the IA is there to justify the cop's conduct. However we can't really blame the cops for doing their jobs or getting out of hand. It's their handlers and the men who give them assignments to enforce idiot laws that are to blame. You got it, it's the polyester suited politicians who come up with these schemes, ideas, traps and laws for the cops to enforce. What, are we going to have a soda enforcement agency to make sure the $.50 sugar tax will be paid? Be assured that somebody will enforce this new tax. We agree that we need detectives to solve murders and certain other crimes, but soda tax detectives will be too much. Apply this to the marijuana laws and you'll get the idea why Congress does nothing to change the marijuana prohibition and why nothing changes. It's another way to tax our behavior, and an old scheme to bring new sheep into the court's collection system. Let's wake up and put the blame where it lies. We should blame ourselves for not complaining about this system of old broken schemes. Complain, complain, and wake up your friends. Jam the revolving door by questioning the system and standing on your rights.

The DEA and Congress - Who is to blame

Back to the DEA. The DEA works for the federal government and enforces federal drug laws which Congress created with the claim that there is no medical use for marijuana. The DEA didn't outlaw marijuana, it was their handlers, our Congressmen, who did this 30 years ago. We see the DEA doing their job and busting people everywhere (like the Corrals in Santa Cruz) for medical marijuana. How can we fault the DEA when this is the job our congressmen hired them to do? Should we expect them to ignore Congress and the federal marijuana laws? It won't happen. They are efficient like secret spies and are doing what their handlers expect them to do. They keep the courts, AUSA, and judges all busy with these cases, and collect money too. Congress is the silent culprit. Silent, as they have failed to call off their DEA dogs. Remember the bootlegger Al Capone? The constitution was amended to outlaw booze and we had law enforcement busting up the bootleg booze. Again booze prohibition was merely a law enforcement duty which bred corruption. The cops of those days should not have been faulted for doing their job. Until we put pressure on the handlers of law enforcement to change our laws we deserve what we get. It's time for the sheep to tell Congress: "No more wool." No more busts and loss of our assets. No more jail for a joint. Have an amnesty, let our people out of jail and restore their rights. Leave us alone. Are you ready to place the marijuana blame at the feet of our congressmen where it should lie? We at Bud Life are, as this is all about our freedom and right to chose.

Pipeline (page 5)

Inmates go free to help states reduce deficits

By: Fox Butterfield (NY Time)

They began walking out of the Fayette County Jail in December, the first of 567 Kentucky state prison inmates that Gov. Paul E. Patton abruptly ordered released this week in a step to reduce a $500 million budget deficit.

Governor Patton said only nonviolent offenders were being given the early mass commutation. But those let out today included men convicted of burglary, theft, arson and drug possession, some of them chronic criminals.

"A percentage of them are going to recommit a crime, and some of them are going to be worse than the crimes they are in for," Mr. Patton acknowledged in announcing the emergency releases. But, he added, "I have to do what I have to do to live within the revenue that we have."

It is a quandary that confronts an increasing number of politicians across the nation in this time of deficits. After three decades of building ever more prisons and passing tougher sentencing laws, politicians now see themselves as being forced to choose between keeping a lid on spending or being tough on crime.

As a result, states are laying off prison guards, or giving prisoners emergency early releases like those in Kentucky. Some states have gone so far as to repeal mandatory minimum sentences or to send drug offenders to treatment rather than to prison in an effort to slow down the inflow of new inmates.

And in other locales, prosecutors or courts have placed a moratorium on misdemeanor cases like shoplifting, domestic violence and prostitution.

"What has happened is that as corrections has grown so enormously and consumed so many resources, it has finally become a target for budget cutters as the economy has turned down," said Chase Riveland, a former director of the corrections departments in Washington and Colorado and now a prison consultant.

The pressure to change stems from the math. Since the early 1970's, the number of state prisoners has risen 500 percent, making corrections the fastest growing item in most state budgets.

With more than two million inmates currently in state and federal prisons and local jails, the bill for corrections has reached $30 billion, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

To cope, Iowa has laid off prison guards. Ohio and Illinois have closed prisons.

Montana, Arkansas and Texas, along with Kentucky, have discovered loopholes that allow them to release convicted felons early, getting around the strict truth-in-sentencing laws and no parole policies passed in the 1990's that were supposed to prevent such releases.

In Oklahoma, Gov. Frank Keating, a conservative Republican who added 1,000 new inmates a year to the state's once small prison system, has asked the Pardon and Parole Board to find 1,000 nonviolent inmates to release early as a result of the state's budget crisis.

"Oklahoma has always prided itself on being a law-and-order state," said Cal Hobson, a Democrat who is president of the State Senate. "Now we've got more law and order than we can afford."

In Virginia Beach, Commonwealth Attorney Harvey L. Bryant III, the local prosecutor, has announced that because of state cutbacks to his office's budget, he will no longer prosecute the 2,200 misdemeanor domestic violence cases he gets a year.

"I deeply regret that the victims of domestic violence will no longer have a prosecutor on their side," said Mr. Bryant, a Republican. "But something had to go. I'm two assistant attorneys short."

All of these changes will save some money, but will not undo the fiscal imbalances caused by the prison boom of the 1980's and 1990's, said Nicholas Turner, director of national programs at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, a research organization.

To make larger savings, a number of states have begun to look at more fundamental changes in the very laws they passed over the past two decades.

Last week the legislature in Michigan, faced with a budget deficit and prison overcrowding, voted to repeal the state's strict mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug crimes which have led to even life sentences for possession of cocaine or heroin. John Engler, the departing Republican governor, is expected to sign the bill into law.

In Kansas, the Kansas Sentencing Commission will recommend to the Legislature next month a new policy under which people arrested for simple drug possession, with no record of prior arrests for violent crimes or drug trafficking, will be placed in mandatory treatment instead of sent to prison.

Since the sentencing commission is made up of a bipartisan group of legislators, as well as prosecutors and judges, the plan is expected to pass the Legislature.

Savings under the new policy will be sizeable, said Barbara Tombs, the executive director of the commission.

About 1,500 of Kansas' 9,000 inmates are projected to be eligible, with the cost for a year in drug treatment about $2,500 compared with $21,000 for a year in prison. And, because Kansas had earlier eliminated most drug treatment in its prisons, the commission forecasts that recidivism should be lower, saving the cost of locking drug addicts up over and over.

"I think this is critical for Kansas," Ms. Tombs said. "We are at capacity now in our prisons, and we are either going to have to build a new prison, which we cannot afford, or institute alternative sentencing policies for some offenders."

"We don't want to do what Kentucky is doing," Ms. Tombs said, "letting dangerous people out the back end."

Similarly, in Alabama, where a judge has fined the state for dumping inmates on county jails, a sentencing commission will make reform recommendations to the Legislature early next year to stem the inflow of prison inmates. These measures include restoring flexibility for judges in making sentencing decisions and placing more offenders on probation or in halfway houses rather than in

the state's prisons.

Georgia, Utah, Idaho and Nebraska are all considering some version of these sentencing overhauls to reduce the number of new state inmates.

Mr. Turner, noting that most of the states making fundamental changes are controlled by Republicans, said: "This seems like one of those Nixon goes to China things. After years of being tough on crime, only Republicans have the credentials to change prison policy."

Moreover, Mr. Turner said, the politicians making these reforms, and those ordering early release of inmates, have been helped by the decline in the crime rate over the past decade, reducing public anxiety about crime.

A few states have bucked the trend. New York, for example, which has one of the largest prison systems, has been able to avoid early releases or major changes in sentencing because the large drop in crime in New York City has meant fewer people going to prison.

In Lexington today, Vincent Thomas walked out of the Fayette County Jail a free man, without even the need to report to a parole officer or pass urine tests for drugs.

Mr. Thomas paused to shake hands with Glenn Brown, the county jailer, said thanks to Governor Patton for releasing the 567 inmates and promised he would stay clean and not come back.

Ray Larson, the Fayette commonwealth's attorney, expressed skepticism.

"By letting them out, we know they are sooner or later going to commit more crimes," said Mr. Larson, a Democrat who has been elected prosecutor here since 1982.

The seven men released from the Fayette County Jail today, Mr. Larson noted, had a total of 21 prior felony convictions and 130 convictions for misdemeanors. And they probably have even longer records, Mr. Larson said, because in Kentucky first-time offenders seldom get convicted except for the most serious crimes.

"It is a discouraging day to people in law enforcement," Mr. Larson said. "It will probably follow that the crime rate will rise, and judges will be reluctant to sentence these people to prison only to see them released."

Governor Patton, a Democrat, specified that those released were all convicted of Class D felonies, the lowest level under Kentucky law. They had an average of 80 days remaining on their sentences.

Most of those released today have been held in county jails around Kentucky, instead of in the state's prisons, because Kentucky's prison population - now more than 15,000 - has grown faster than the number of state prison beds.

Some politicians expressed support for the governor's action, saying they do not oppose the early release of nonviolent offenders but do oppose higher taxes.

"It's very expensive to warehouse someone who's not a threat to the community," said Dan Kelly, a Republican who is majority leader in the State Senate.

On the other hand, Kentucky's attorney general, Ben Chandler, a Democrat, said, "It is my opinion that the amount of time a criminal serves in prison should be based on the crime committed, not on the balance of the state treasury."

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