Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin (D) signed into law yesterday a bill authorizing up to four dispensaries to sell medical marijuana to patients.

While medical marijuana is now legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia, only 8 also authorize dispensaries to provide marijuana to patients. The other 7 states are Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island.

Marijuana Policy Project has been instrumental in getting 5 of these state laws passed during the past two years.

MPP is having its major fundraising event of the year July 7. It's the Liberty Belle Ball at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. Ticket prices go up June 16, so get yours now. They aren't cheap, but either is the good work the organization does year after year. If you can't attend in person, I'm sure they'd appreciate donations.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy has just released a report finding the War on Drugs is a failure. The report is available here.

The report says some drugs should be legalized and calls for the decriminalization of drug use. Who's on the commission? Among others: Former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the former President of Colombia Cesar Gaviria, the current Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

The BBC reports:

Their report argues that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths...."Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won," the report said.

[More...]

Today is the day the U.S. Sentencing Commission is holding its hearing on whether the recent reduction of penalties for crack cocaine as compared to powder cocaine, from 100:1 to 18:1, should apply to those convicted of crack offenses before August, 2010, when the change went into effect. The meeting agenda with links to written testimony is here.

Attorney General Eric Holder says the Obama Administration supports retroactivity for some, but not all, crack defendants. [More...]

Still one of my favorite music videos of all time. And as true today as it was in 1984.

You see it in the headlines, you hear it every day
They say they're gonna stop it, but it doesn't go away
They move it through Miami and sell it in LA
They hide it up in Telluride, I mean it's here to stay
It's propping up the governments in Columbia and Peru
You ask any D.A., man, they'll say there's nothing we can do
From the office of the president right down to me and you
...It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband, it's the smugglers' blues

Time for a new approach? Hardly, according to testimony this week at a Senate Caucus hearing by DEA Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations Thomas M. Harrigan, on the DEA's five year plan for combating the cartels and drugs in Central America and Mexico. [More...]

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer filed a federal declaratory action suit today against the Department of Justice, Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and some medical marijuana groups, asking the court to rule whether Arizona's medical marijuana law is valid when federal law prohibits it. The complaint is here and the exhibits with the letters from U.S. Attorneys and DOJ memos are here.

Despite the Governor's claimed and transparently false concern that Arizona's law puts state workers at risk of federal prosecution, medical marijuana advocates say the lawsuit is designed to thwart the state law. Yesterday, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke said that despite the threat of the lawsuit, which now has been filed, medical marijuana in AZ is not at risk and Gov. Brewer is distorting the facts. [More....]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a working lunch with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa today in Washington, the third such meeting of the Merida High-Level Consultative Group on Bilateral Cooperation Against Transnational Organized Crime. (More on Meridia here and here.) Also in attendance:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Director of National Drug Policy of the United States Gil Kerlikowske, USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, Acting Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence of the Treasury David Cohen, and Ambassador of the United States to Mexico Carlos Pascual.

The two governments issued this press release on the meeting and outlined the joint activities for the coming year. Congress has authorized $1.5 billion for Meridia since 2008, most of it for training the Mexican military and law enforcement. (As of December, 2010, $400 million had been provided. Today, the U.S. promised another $500 would be provided in 2011.) [More...]

The DEA raided four medical marijuana dispensaries in Spokane, WA today. A map of those raided is here, courtesy of Radical Russ of NORML.

Here is the position of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, contained in an April 14 letter to the Washington legislature concerning on a proposed bill to establish a licensing scheme for marijuana growers and dispensaries: [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder addressed Justice Department employees yesterday on planned priorities. The full text is here.

Going forward, the department's priorities will be: terrorism, violent crime (which includes enforcement against so-called drug organizations) and financial fraud. He emphasized the increased use of "intelligence", particularly in sharing information between federal, state and local agencies. My translation: We can expect more surveillance. And more of the current trend of labeling garden-variety drug conspiracies as major "drug trafficking organizations" with links to some gang or cartel.

On terrorism: [More...]

The DEA will be continuing its Most Excellent African Adventures plan in 2011 and beyond.

Next up: It will open an office in Nairobi, Kenya. Why? Because, like with Liberia and Ghana, it wants to stop drugs from going from South America to Africa and then Europe. From the State Departments 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report:

The principal U.S. counternarcotics objective in Kenya is to interdict the flow of narcotics to the United States. A related objective is to limit the corrosive effects of narcotics-related corruption in law enforcement, the judiciary, and political institutions. ....In support of this effort, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is in the process of opening a country office in Nairobi. Personnel from the DEA Pretoria Country Office offered support to the Government of Kenya in counter-narcotics over the course of FY 2010.

For information about all our drug enforcement efforts around the world, the full report is here. How much is this costing us? The State Department's 2011 international drug control budget runs 221 pages and is available here. Total: $2,136 million. [More...]

Arizona, which approved medical marijuana in November, began accepting applications from patients last week. The application process is done online. At the end of week 1, 579 of 718 applications were approved. Those rejected can re-apply. By the numbers:

About 78 percent of them were men, and the largest age group, at 37 percent, was people 51 and older. The next largest age group, at 22 percent, was people between 41 and 50 years old. Diseases reported included cancer, Hepatitis C, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and Crohn's disease,

Via McClatchy:

Washington has spent billions of dollars to help push drug cartels out of Colombia, and to confront them in Mexico. Now they've muscled their way into Central America, opening a new chapter in the drug war that almost certainly will exact further cost on U.S. taxpayers as American authorities confront drug gangs on a new frontier.

The Zetas are teaming up with Guatamela's Kaibiles to train the gang members, military style. And the U.S. military, including the Navy and Green Berets, is training the Guatamalan military. Background here. This is hardly new. The reports on the Kaibiles teaming up with the Zetas have been around since at least 2005. [More...]

The Oklahoma Senate yesterday passed a bill increasing the maximum penalty for converting marijuana to hashish to life in prison. A spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs said "the goal of the bill is to "send a message" that illegal drugs won't be tolerated in Oklahoma." The bill previously passed the OK House, then went to the Senate where a non-pertinent amendment was made. It now goes back to the House for enrollment.

Conviction of a first offense of cooking hashish would result in a prison sentence from two years to life in prison. Sentences would be doubled under a second offense, and those convicted would not be eligible for a suspended sentence or probation.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 44 to 2. The earlier version, substantially identical, passed the House by a vote of 75 to 18.