After Passage Of Legalization Initiative, 220 Marijuana Cases Dismissed In Washington

FreshAir · Nov 11, 2012

"After Passage Of Legalization Initiative, 220 Marijuana Cases Dismissed In Washington State"

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...ases-dismissed-in-washington-state/?mobile=nc

both Colorado and Washington are tossing out cases looks like, the law in CO doesn't go into effect until dec 6th, but they say no use charging people if gonna be legal next month

waltky · Nov 16, 2012

Granny says, "As if we don't have enough drunks on the road already...

With pot legal, police worry about road safety
November 15, 2012 — It's settled. Pot, at least certain amounts of it, will soon be legal under state laws in Washington and Colorado. Now, officials in both states are trying to figure out how to keep stoned drivers off the road.

Colorado's measure doesn't make any changes to the state's driving-under-the-influence laws, leaving lawmakers and police to worry about its effect on road safety. "We're going to have more impaired drivers," warned John Jackson, police chief in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

Washington's law does change DUI provisions by setting a new blood-test limit for marijuana — a limit police are training to enforce, and which some lawyers are already gearing up to challenge. "We've had decades of studies and experience with alcohol," said Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan Coon. "Marijuana is new, so it's going to take some time to figure out how the courts and prosecutors are going to handle it. But the key is impairment: We will arrest drivers who drive impaired, whether it be drugs or alcohol."

Drugged driving is illegal, and nothing in the measures that Washington and Colorado voters passed this month to tax and regulate the sale of pot for recreational use by adults over 21 changes that. But law enforcement officials wonder about whether the ability to buy or possess marijuana legally will bring about an increase of marijuana users on the roads. Statistics gathered for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 2009, a third of fatally injured drivers with known drug test results were positive for drugs other than alcohol. Among randomly stopped weekend nighttime drivers in 2007, more than 16 percent were positive for drugs.

Marijuana can cause dizziness and slowed reaction time, and drivers are more likely to drift and swerve while they're high. Marijuana legalization activists agree people shouldn't smoke and drive. But setting a standard comparable to blood-alcohol limits has sparked intense disagreement, said Betty Aldworth, outreach director for Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. Most convictions for drugged driving currently are based on police observations, followed later by a blood test. "There is not yet a consensus about the standard rate for THC impairment," Aldworth said, referring to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. Unlike portable breath tests for alcohol, there's no easily available way to determine whether someone is impaired from recent pot use.

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Seattle police produce a user's guide to pot
November 15, 2012 — When Washington state voters overwhelmingly legalized the recreational use of marijuana on Nov. 6, Seattle police knew they'd be getting a lot of questions.

And while many details surrounding the state's Dec. 6 decriminalization of pot remain, the department didn't shy away from answering what questions it could about Initiative 502, posting a funny, question-and-answer blog that has become a big web hit — having been viewed more than 120,000 times and shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook since it was posted Friday. The result was "Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle," by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a former journalist who wrote for The Stranger, a weekly alternative newspaper. He was hired by the police department earlier this year.

Here, he and Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, a police spokesman, explain the thinking behind the blog, which included some of these memorable passages:

Q: SPD seized a bunch of my marijuana before I-502 passed. Can I have it back? A: No.

"I just try to write posts I'd want to read," Spangenthal-Lee said, via email. "I knew we were probably going to be inundated with questions about 502, so I figured I'd try to get answers to the kinds of questions Seattle residents (and reporters) might ask, and put them out there."

Q: What happens if I get pulled over and I'm sober, but an officer or his K9 buddy smells the ounce of Super Skunk I've got in my trunk? A: Under state law, officers have to develop probable cause to search a closed or locked container. Each case stands on its own, but the smell of pot alone will not be reason to search a vehicle.

Whitcomb noted that pot cases have not been a priority in Seattle for some time. "This is a city where marijuana possession has been the lowest (enforcement) priority. There's a built-in expectation that Seattle is going to have something to say about it," said Whitcomb, referring to the fact that voters in this liberal city directed police nearly a decade ago to treat adult pot use as its lowest enforcement priority.

More http://cnsnews.com/news/article/seattle-police-produce-users-guide-pot
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waltky · Nov 20, 2012

Granny says there'll be a switch to cocaine...

US marijuana legalisation fuels Mexico drugs war debate
20 November 2012 - Will Mexico's drug cartels see a drop in profits as a result of changes in the US?

Earlier this month, two US states voted to legalise, regulate and tax marijuana. The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City looks at what this shift in stance could mean for Mexico and its fight against the drug gangs. Every year, pro-marijuana campaigners in Seattle hold their annual Hempfest, a two-day festival along the city's shoreline. Thick pungent clouds of pot smoke waft over the crowd who are sitting out with a joint in their hand, listening to the live music, or pottering among the dozens of stalls selling bongs, pipes and other smoking paraphernalia. The police are on hand to ensure there is no open buying or selling of the drug. But at the next 'Hempfest', they may not even need to do that.

On the day voters in Washington state chose to re-elect President Barack Obama, they also chose to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. Over the Rockies in Colorado, it was a similar story. "What happened in Colorado and Washington was truly revolutionary," says Beau Kilmer, the co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Centre in California. "No modern country has ever removed the prohibition on the production and distribution of marijuana for non-medical purposes." When the measure comes into effect in Colorado in early December, it will be legal to possess 1oz (28g) of marijuana if you are over 21; it will be legal to grow up to six marijuana plants in your house; and it will be legal to give away up to 1oz.

There are still complex questions about creating a regulatory framework for the production and distribution of the drug, which may take at least another year. Needless to say, such a move puts the two states on a legal collision course with the federal government and its drug enforcement policies. But Dr Kilmer believes it is a mistake to view the Obama administration as a single entity in this regard. "At this point no-one knows how the federal government is going to respond to these two states. But it's important that we don't think of it as a homogenous actor." The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US Attorney-General's office and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) all have a degree of jurisdiction, and discretion, over these issues, Dr Kilmer points out.

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Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, in a "smoke shop" in Mexico City, the news of Colorado and Washington's decision has been warmly welcomed. Surrounded by glass cabinets full of expensive-looking vaporiser, the proprietor tells me that many of his customers are hoping for a similar law in Mexico. "People don't want to contribute to the drug cartels' profits any more and I've sold a lot of copies of this recently," he says, holding up a book called The Ecological Cultivation of Cannabis. The man in Mexico currently leading the charge to change the law is left-wing politician Fernando Belauzaran. He has introduced a bill in Congress along similar lines to the one in Colorado, which would bring marijuana under the same regulation as alcohol.

More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20397335
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After Passage Of Legalization Initiative, 220 Marijuana Cases Dismissed In Washington

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