Stupid Trick: Guy stuffs meth into kid's trick-or-treat bag.

Stupid Stoners: Pot deal turns to shooting.

Fat Chance: Weight-loss medication dropped.

Roped In: Hemp store told to stop selling legal hemp products.

Biden: The leading drug warrior of the last 30 years is heading to the White House.

The ad warns, “Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren't many jobs out there for potheads.” Oh, snap. You see, if you smoke pot, you could end up like these pot-smoking layabouts: Barack Obama, Carl Sagan, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Rick Steves, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Martin, Stephen King, Montel Williams, Peter Lewis, and almost every musician and actor on earth.

You gotta love that the anchors in the news room laugh. We've won the culture war to legalize pot.

This could have an impact in Washington very soon. For years, the funders and nonprofits that supported this sort of thing were reluctant to run a decriminalization measure here. They feared that high-credibility opponents—cops, prosecutors, and tough-on-crime Democrats—would use baseless fear mongering to crush the measure. That is, in fact, what they tried to do in Massachusetts:

The opponents, who include the governor, attorney general, and district attorneys around the state, argued that decriminalizing marijuana possession would promote drug use and benefit drug dealers at a time when they say marijuana has become more potent. They warned it would increase violence on the streets and safety hazards in the workplace, and cause the number of car crashes to rise as more youths drive under the influence.

So how did that tactic work? It apparently backfired. Polling two weeks ago showed Question two leading by 19 points, but--after the opposition ramped up its campaign--it passed by a 30-point margin. Police speaking out against pot-law reform doesn’t have traction with voters that we thought. We can't be sure why, exactly, but perhaps cops screaming about needing to bust stoners to protect public safety comes off as a self-serving ploy to retain power.

This could set off a chain-reaction of similar initiatives in other states. “I don’t think we can say that Washington voters should be thought of as the same as Massachusetts voters,” says Alison Holcomb, director of the ACLU of Washington’s drug policy project. “However, our conversations with Washington residents have shown us that they have given the same careful and considered thought to this issue.” She adds that there have been conversations about running an initiative here. “But it also possible that our elected officials may want to take the initiative in this area.”

Every time people start talking about loosening pot laws, opponents make the same claims: that it will increase pot smoking and send the wrong message to kids. (Some states decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s, but most of them still punish people with huge fines and some still require court appearances. Those states, however, aren't "sending a message" because there's been no public hubbub over the issue.) Well, to gauge the impact of the loud and clear message in Massachussetts, let’s watch what heppens there in the next year. If there's no increase in pot smoking, violence in the streets, and kids don’t get “the wrong message,” those arguments from the drug czar and law enforcement are refuted. The U.S. will have a domestic model to prove that pot can be decriminalized without any ramifications. That's the hard evidence that will make it easier to pass a similar elsewhere. So I predict that by 2010, funders and nonprofits will run decrim in another state. Rumor has it that Washington is next on the list.

Under the national radar, three initiatives on state ballots are at the vanguard of changing drug laws:

The most revolutionary initiative is in Massachusetts. Question 2 would reduce the penalty for an ounce of marijuana from a toss-your-lily-white-ass-in-jail misdemeanor to a $100 fine. No state has ever, by public vote, decriminalized marijuana. And the states that have “decriminalized” pot still carry expensive penalties for people who are busted.

“It takes a whack over the head from the voters to pull the politicians out of their default tough-on-drugs mode,” says Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a backer of the initiative. “And it appears the voters could be ready to give them one.”

A poll two weeks ago found Question 2 was leading by 19 points, 51 to 32 percent.

But politicians are firing on the revolutionaries. A fleet of public safety officials, district attorneys, police, and even John “Lieberman” Kerry are lining up to oppose the measure.

In a squawking Massachusetts accent, Bill Breault, a public safety official, warns in a radio ad that "our state is under attack..." He says the initiative would “put marijuana, a dangerous and addictive drug, into the hands of our children.” He adds it would “legalize marijuana.”

Of course, the measure doesn’t legalize marijuana. But Breault tells the Sentinel and Enterprise, "If legalize helps us to get the public's attention, we will use it." Who cares if it’s not true?

“What the opposition has tried to do it make it confusing enough that if you are not sure, then vote no,” says Mirken. “Stay with the devil you know rather than the devil you don’t know.” Mirken points out, however, that places that have decriminalized marijuana haven’t shown more pot smoking. Supporters are hitting back with their own phalanx of former cops in favor of decriminalizing pot. You can see their television ads over here.

The next proposal is in Michigan. Before you fall asleep, let me say this: medical marijuana seems boring until you watch someone writhing in agony who needs pot to eat and stay alive. But no states in the Midwest have passed medical marijuana laws; Michigan is ready to be the first.

Proposition 1 would allow people with certain diseases—cancer, AIDS, MS, etc.—to use medical marijuana with their physician's permission. It would also create an identification system, managed by the state, which provides patients instant proof to police officers that they are complying with the law.

The thrust of an opposition campaign against the measure warns that it would create a climate like California, where “hundreds of pot smoking clubs opened in strip malls over the state… just blocks from schools.” In this ad, shot in C.O.P.S. cam, shady, stoned characters emerge form a pot club to whack a middle-aged woman walking down the sidewalk.

There’s one problem with this ad—and the entire campaign that rests on this attack. The initiative doesn’t allow pot clubs. But voters don't seem to be falling for the sham.

A poll shows the initiative leading 21-point lead—57 percent to 36 percent.

“After Tuesday it is very likely that one in four Americans is going to live in a medical marijuana state,” says Mirken. “It may be that some years from now, when we look back, this will be distinct turning point when we went from an uphill struggle to an emerging national consensus that we need to do something different, at least about medical marijuana.”

California's attempt to dismember the prison industrial complex after the jump.

Rewarding people for meeting their civic responsibilities with a dose of stimulants is, frankly, a little strange. Following the election is addictive enough. But if it gets people to vote--even as a shameless marketing ploy--that's fine with me.

Having "the talk" about drugs with your teenager can be pretty darn stressful—particularly for parents who used to do drugs themselves. So take a Xanax a half an hour or so before the talk. But check with your doctor first to make sure that Xanax doesn't have any negative interactions with the Zoloft you're taking for your depression. And wait until after lunch, so that you're head is clear of the lingering aftereffects of the Ambien you took to get to sleep last night. And if you still have an erection—one that's lasted four hours or more—from the Viagra you took this morning before the kids got up, postpone the talk for now and go to an emergency room right away. You can have that talk with your kids about how you used to drugs some other time.

But make sure your kids take their Ritalin before you leave for the ER.

On Friday, the American Legacy Foundation and Susan G. Komen for the Cure called plans by Philip Morris to roll out new pink "Purse Packs" for selected Virginia Slims brands a "serious public health threat" and an "insult" - especially since the news arrived during October when the color pink has come to be associated with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Knives for Potheads: Teen faces seven years for stealing an ounce of medical marijuana at knifepoint.

Bummer for Brewers: Grad student pleas no contest to heroin-possession charges after putting a handful of poppies in home-brew beer.

Prison for Grandfathers: Seventy-one year old sentenced to prison for buying and selling cocaine. His wife got probation.

Take Heart: FDA warns Bayer over claims that aspirin cut with other drugs will reduce heart disease.

Back to Black: Couple admits they sold cocaine to Amy Winehouse.

Whining: Drug Czar--the one who claims he looooooves treatment--he's campaigning against treatment in California.

Supersizing: This guy has a new anti-obesity drug.

Searching: Service rents out drug-sniffing dogs to find pot in your kid's bedroom.

Saving: Meth head saves fellow inmates life.

Harshing: Man sentenced to three and a half years in prison for smuggling cigarettes into the UK.

Grounded: Drunk pilot arrested at Heathrow.

While he's certainly been guilty of stupid fucking credulous hackery when covering grow-op busts in the past—filing pieces about grow-op busts that quoted only supporters of the war on pot, i.e. DEA agents, prosecutors, and cops—Shukovsky recently redeemed himself by including a quote from a board member from NORML in what was, when it was originally posted to the PI's website, just another standard-issue, SFCH piece about a pot bust. And in his piece today about grow-op busts in Kent, Federal Way, Seattle and Des Moines—all run by a large and enterprising family of Vietnamese immigrants—Shukovsky once again includes a quote from that NORML board member:

Jeff Steinborn, who represents one of the defendants in the second case, questions the use of scarce federal investigative resources to go after marijuana growers.

"Somewhere along the line in the federal criminal justice system, our priorities got capsized," said Steinborn, who is a member of the board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Look at all the crime out there that needs to be investigated."

Shukovsky's piece still gives way more space to DEA talking point than we might (ahem), but at least it offers some balance, at least it lets PI readers know that there are people out there who think that what we're doing now—raiding grow-ops, arresting dealers, busting pot smokers—is a waste of time and money. And that's what we were after when we started calling out daily reporters by name on their stupid fucking credulous hackery. We weren't after anti-drug war screeds—we can run those—just the kind of objectivity and balance that daily paper editors and writers are always praising themselves for providing. From an earlier SFCH post:

The dailies do an awful lot of reporting on the War on Drugs. But they don’t cover it like they cover every other story—they refuse to. On this issue, and this issue alone, daily papers act as if there aren’t two sides to the story, as if there aren’t activists and organizations and politicians on the other side of this issue. There are activists and organizations and politicians out there who think what that we’re doing now—tearing up pot plants, arresting pot smokers—is futile and ridiculous and unjust and waste of money and lives. But they are never quoted in these pieces, they are never asked for comment, their existence isn’t even hinted at.

Paul Shukovsky is more than hinting at the existence of those people now—he's getting quotes from them—well, he's getting quotes from one of them. It's a start, and Shukovsky and his editors deserve some credit for making the effort.

The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.

"The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you're going to hurt your brain," said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. "This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that." ...

[T]he more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished. This relationship was somewhat more pronounced in women, although women tended to be lighter drinkers.

Jesus, That’s a Lot of Pot Smokers: October marks 20 millionth pot arrest since it was prohibited in 1937.

Too Bad: We don’t have much to show for it.

Rockefeller Horror: The push to overturn New York’s incomprehensibly fucked up Rockefeller drug laws.

Blow Away: Man freed after substance turns out to not be cocaine.

Not That Anyone Should Vote Based on This: Voters guide to drug reform.

Don't Vote Based on This, Either: Judge flips out over Michigan’s medical marijuana initiative.

The Tokenator: Vetoes employment bill for pot patients. He "always knew how to enjoy" pot, he says, and here’s a video of him enjoying it. But Arnold doesn’t want you employing people like him, okay?

On Tuesday, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg wrote a memo to all county law-enforcement agencies, including city police and county sheriff’s deputies, which says the prosecutor’s office “will decline to prosecute legitimate patients who qualify under the law if they reasonably adhere to the dictates of the statute.” Patients with serious illnesses may possess a "24 ounces of usable marijuana and 15 plants."

The Department of Health set those plant and dried-weight amounts last week, as required by the legislature in 2007. But those amounts are technically only "presumptive quantity," meaning law enforcement officers may continue to arrest patients for any amount of marijuana and require the patients to make a defense in court.

Satterberg’s memo represents a generous interpretation of the law. By stating that he will not charge any person with a physician's authorization to possess marijuana, the medical marijuana law essentially carries protection from arrest.

But tacit arrest protection in one county is not enough for State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles. “I am really looking to what I might offer and introduce as legislation,” she says. She is considering a bill for the 2009 session that would offer total protection from arrest statewide and allow patients to grow in cooperatives. "We have some defense in the law now, but I think we could use more," she says.

Satterberg’s memo goes on to say that he will “look with a very lenient eye” toward patients who would qualify for medical marijuana but lack proper paperwork. It also says his prosecutors “do not wish to prosecute” co-operative gardens involving more than one patient.

Although 24 ounces and 15 plants may seem like an excessive quantity of pot, especially to people like me—for whom a bong hit causes a minor out-of-body experience—patients disagree. That amount covers the maximum quantity patients would possess at any time in the cultivation cycle, such as right after harvesting. Twenty-four ounces may have to last for five or six months of daily use, while a new crop of plants mature.