An act of terror in Billings, Montana

by: Jay Stevens

Mon May 10, 2010 at 08:13:23 AM MST

Billings fire officials say a firebomb was thrown into a medical marijuana business and "NOT IN OUR TOWN" was spray painted on the storefront.

Thoughts:

Wow.

Really? I have to say, with all the currents of anger swirling across the country, I would not have expected a marijuana clinic to be firebombed. A government building, yes. A political office, yes. A marijuana clinic? No.

I'm guessing the Pakistani Taliban wasn't behind this. I'm guessing a home-grown Billings Montanan threw the bomb. I'm guessing it won't get much national coverage, it won't cause conservatives to demand any suspects' Miranda rights be denied, and no one will be calling for the torture of those that did it.

Question: why not?

Naked abuse of power: another reason to legalize pot

by: Jay Stevens

Thu May 06, 2010 at 08:10:57 AM MST

Now there's video, which you can watch below. It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years-cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime.

It's a video of a raid on a Missouri home in which a SWAT team in full military regalia bursts into a home in the middle of the night and shoots a dog in front of a seven-year-old boy. The police were looking for a "a large amount of marijuana," but instead found a small bag of pot.

Of course, I'd say even if there was a "a large amount of marijuana," I'd argue the force and methods and results in the bust were excessive.

In the police action, Tim Lynch of Cato finds distaste for all regulation, which essentially all have raw power behind them:

In America today, lawmaking is discussed much too casually. The consequences are not seriously considered. We allow agencies to issue regulations without having a formal vote in the legislature. "Too cumbersome." Compliance is automatically assumed. Few want to consider whether the use of brute force can be justified against someone who resists, or the danger that might be created for the innocent who get swept up in investigations. We now have thousands of rules and regulations on the books.

A bit simplistic, of course. Bernie Madoff and Goldman Sachs' execs were hardly hustled off in the middle of the night by black-clad stormtroopers. Nor were the dogs of WR Grace executives gunned down, even though they knowingly sentenced their workers and their families to excruciating deaths. That is, this kind of brute force is ginned up by yellow journalism and vote-hungry politicos and targets the poor, exclusively. It's hardly fair to say all regulations should be considered with paramilitary police raids in mind. Lynch, after all, cites Prohibition as an example of regulation resulting in violence. But alcohol is still regulated, and pretty successfully, too, if success is measured as a lack of violent enforcement of that regulation. Maybe the lesson we should take home with us is that regulation should be aligned with the community, and properly proportional to the problem at hand. If you consistently need violence to enforce your laws, then there's something wrong.

Still, Lynch's post is a reasonable reminder of the limitations of regulatory tactics in any endeavor, whether it's drugs, banking, or the environment.

But, most importantly and more specifically, the Missouri bust is a reminder of how crazy our drug laws are, and how insane our enforcement of those laws has become. The War on Drugs is a complete failure.

Often, when advocates talk about the legalization of pot, they use a couple of common arguments. First, that pot isn't a drug with as serious effects as, say, cocaine or heroin, so its categorization with other illicit drugs is overblown. Second, that legalization would bring a lot of tax revenue. But this video shows there's also a strong moral argument for legalizing marijuana.

Perspective

by: Matt Singer

Fri Feb 20, 2009 at 14:23:48 PM MST

Medical Marijuana FUNdraiser in Helena -- You're Invited!

by: Daubert

Tue Jan 06, 2009 at 12:48:07 PM MST

TWO MISSOULA BLUES-ROCK BANDS TO PERFORM AT EVENT THAT BEGINS AT 4 PM

Livingston resident and international film star Margot "Lois Lane" Kidder will be among scores of "items" featured in live and silent auctions that will occur during an historic medical marijuana-related fundraiser to be held at Miller's Crossing in Helena on Saturday, January 17.

The opportunity to have dinner with Ms. Kidder (at a time of mutual convenience) will be auctioned, as will art objects, a tanning bed, a complete tattooing kit and scores of other desirables donated by Helena-area businesses, artists and others from around Montana.  Besides dinner with Margot Kidder, the other artistic highlights of the auction will include jewelry, original oil paintings and a rare antique hand-knotted afghan wool prayer rug.

The "historic FUNdraiser" will benefit PATIENTS & FAMILIES UNITED, a public education and support group for Montana's medical marijuana patients, regardless of their condition, and pain patients, whether they use marijuana or not.

The silent auctions will begin at 4 pm and will conclude at 9 pm, and the event is open to the general public at no mandatory charge until 9 pm, after which there will be a $5 cover charge.

The first live-auction segment will begin at 8:30 pm.  Live music and entertainment will start at 9 pm, featuring two original "alternative blues-rock" bands from Missoula - Viscosity Breakdown and Mighty Crevasse.

Patients and supporters of PATIENTS & FAMILIES UNITED are expected to come to Helena from all over Montana, said Tom Daubert, the group's founder and director.

"This is the first major fundraiser ever held in Montana in support of medical marijuana and pain patients, and we're deeply gratified by the support we've been receiving from artists, individuals and businesses all over the state," Daubert said.

The event also will feature information and displays concerning medical marijuana, which Montana voters legalized in 2004 with 62% support, the largest margin of support in America until last November, when Michigan voters approved a similar measure with 63% support.

Today, more than 1,500 Montana patients in 38 of the state's counties are registered with the health department as legal users of medical marijuana, based on recommendations from more than 160 physicians.  The patients suffer from a wide variety of conditions, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, AIDS and chronic pain and muscle spasms, Daubert reported.

"Medical marijuana is literally saving lives in Montana," Daubert said, "yet the law doesn't protect suffering patients as fully as it should."  He said monies raised at the Miller's Crossing event will be used to assist his group's plans for lobbying the Legislature to make improvements in the law this winter.

Comment to Missoula authorities bust pot dealer

by: agoodhope

Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 13:51:58 PM MST

As the campaign manager for Missoula's lowest priority marijuana initiative (and a member of the county's oversight committee for it), I have to comment.
First, I agree completely that a felony burglary and assault are far more serious than growing marijuana, and it will be interesting indeed to compare the respective sentences this man receives. But history offers a safe bet on what will happen.
The crimes that actually threatened another person's life, and that violated the privacy of another person's home, are virtually certain to be treated much more lightly than the drug offense. This relates to one of the rationales for the marijuana initiative - that offenses against people's bodies and their property deserve far more attention than drug possession issues, particularly adult marijuana. The nonsensical drug war gets everything backwards.
The drug charge will likely destroy this man's life, involving a lot of prison time at great taxpayer expense. Even if it didn't, he already has lost all eligibility for any student loans, should he ever want one, and all eligibility for veteran benefits if he's a vet. These are consequences of any drug conviction, no matter how minor the offense (having a single joint, for example), and they never happen to anyone else, not even people who attack others violently, including murderers.
Meanwhile the police also have confiscated this man's property - down to his bike and music player! - and they'll auction it off as a fundraiser for their drug war budget. This, too, never happens to people arrested for anything other than drugs.
One point is that in this day and age it makes no sense to spend taxpayer dollars investigating and arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people merely for marijuana. People have used marijuana for more than 5,000 years, with no recorded deaths or overdoses in all that time. Meanwhile, a wealth of scientific research conducted over the last several decades confirms marijuana's extraordinary and diverse value as a powerful medicine. Research also has proven that marijuana isn't addictive and isn't a "gateway" to using other drugs. Pretty much everything we've heard from the government's prohibition campaign over several generations now is a lie. Nationally, we spend billions in the drug war, and most of it is focused on marijuana, one of the safest medicines on the planet. And none of that spending over the past 35 years has made a bit of difference in overall rates of drug use.
But it's made a huge and completely negative difference in the lives of millions of Americans and a great many Montanans, all of it at taxpayer expense.
Your post also invites some clarification of the facts about Missoula's lowest priority policy. First, the marijuana initiative is a recommendation, not a requirement. Second, as amended by county commissioners last year, even this recommendation now only applies to misdemeanor offenses, which are those involving less than two ounces. Growing plants in any quantity (even one) remains a felony offense, and even giving a single joint away remains a felony.
The main result - so far - of the lowest priority marijuana policy is that the county attorney no longer prosecutes misdemeanor offenses, and he has called on the county sheriff to stop making misdemeanor arrests. This is important, positive progress.
Those of us on the county's oversight committee hope that another accomplishment in the near future will be the adoption of a more complete and easy to use record-keeping system, so that both the county and its taxpayers can understand more completely where the money is going and what's being accomplished by law enforcement activities.
It's also important to keep in mind that the lowest priority policy doesn't apply to the city of Missoula. Not yet, anyway. Changing the situation, so that adult marijuana offenses are a lowest priority for the city as well, was one of the county oversight committee's most important recommendations a few months ago.
People can learn more at the oversight committee's website, http://www.co.missoula.mt.us/i... and at http://www.responsiblecrimepol...

Put This In Your Pipe

by: Matt Singer

Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 10:58:27 AM MST

Thanks, armchair quarterbacks.

Beyond the bloviating, there's been real news about marijuana this week, as the War on Drugs claimed another casualty -- of course, you have to turn to the Independent to find out about it:

Robin Prosser didn't look or sound much like a fighter, but she was. A mother and a musician, the Missoula woman also acted as Montana's most outspoken advocate for medical marijuana, the only remedy that could ease the ravaging pain of the lupus-like immunosuppressive disease she endured for 23 years. Prosser's fight ended Oct. 18 when she took her own life.

In recent months, Prosser, 50, would sit at the kitchen table in her small apartment, pain welling up in her eyes, and talk quietly about the victories and defeats the last several years had delivered. Allergic to nearly every pharmaceutical that could render her chronic pain bearable, she had learned that the political fate of medical marijuana also carried intensely personal implications.

[...]

[I]in March, federal Drug Enforcement Agency agents seized a small shipment of medical marijuana in transit from Prosser's state-approved caregiver. Though she was never criminally charged, Prosser was crushed. She said caregivers became afraid to supply her with the medicine she needed so badly.

In July, she penned an op-ed piece in the Billings Gazette, pleading with Montana's politicians and her fellow citizens to speak out against the DEA's actions and improve the lives of people like her.

"Give me liberty or give me death," she wrote. "Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?"

I'm sure then that she would have understood why it was so important for her to live with so much pain.