Articles Tagged ‘Drug Policy Reform’

Things are just starting to get ridiculous.

Many of you no doubt read about the Region III Narcotics Task Force heroic raid on the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, NM where officers in bullet-proof vests without visible insignia demanded to inspect their green house, expecting to find a marijuana grow operation. They didn’t find Marijuana. What they did find…was organic tomatoes.

Although I’ll be the first to admit that home-grown tomatoes taste so good they ought be a crime, I find it downright disturbing that our local Narcotics Task Force is operating with such sloppiness that they subjected grade-school children to the high-drama of a narcotics raid, complete with National Guard helicopter.

From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower,” she [Patricia Pantano, education director] said. “Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating.”

After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school’s driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.

Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school’s greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.

“As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story,” she said.

Read the full story

Law enforcement throughout the state has become increasingly aggressive in their search for illegal marijuana grow operations lately. The ACLU has received complaints from people in Madrid who say helicopters have been buzzing their homes incessantly, low and loud, looking to bust the various small-time grow operations that dot rural NM.

These sorts of tactics should raise the hackles of any privacy or civil liberties-minded person. If a Montessori school is subject to narcotics raids, who isn’t? Should gardeners everywhere resign themselves to periodic investigations of their backyard gardens by the National Guard and narcotics officers? Perhaps one could make an argument that this is the price we pay for having a safe, drug-free society…if that’s indeed what we had. In fact, the Drug Policy Alliance says it’s had the opposite effect:

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition’s distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

Few public policies have compromised public health and undermined our fundamental civil liberties for so long and to such a degree as the war on drugs. The United States is now the world’s largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million people for drug offenses alone. That’s more people than Western Europe, with a bigger population, incarcerates for all offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug law violations – 40% of them just for marijuana possession. People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other debilitating illnesses are regularly denied access to their medicine or even arrested and prosecuted for using medical marijuana.

With deep budget cuts already in place and state employees on furlough, how can New Mexico afford to continue funding this drug war–a war that is disastrous for our civil liberties and the health of our communities?

We’ve tried prohibition, once with alcohol and then again with drugs. It’s been an utter failure by any standard. It’s time to try something else.

- Micah McCoy, Communications Specialist

For more information on the ACLU’s work to change U.S. drug policy, visit the National ACLU’s Drug Law Reform page.

By Micah McCoy, Communications Specialist

Are you chronically ill? Has your Doctor prescribed medical marijuana to treat your condition? Then you may not be welcome in federally subsidized apartment complexes here in New Mexico.

You may have been following this issue recently in the news. The Albuquerque Journal recently reported that Monarch Properties Inc., a private corporation that operates 14,500 multifamily units in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas—some of which are federally subsidized through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—sent out letter to all the of the properties it owns or manages in the New Mexico, asking residents to sign lease attachments saying that they will not use or grow medical marijuana in their homes.

The Albuquerque Journal reported that this pronouncement would affect residents of the 86 rental apartment complexes in 27 cities throughout the state that Monarch owns or operates.

So where did this come from? Did the good people at Monarch Properties just wake up one morning and decide that chronically ill people in government assisted housing didn’t have enough on their plate already? Here’s what Monarch’s attorney said:

“Marijuana is a controlled substance, and therefore possession, use or cultivation of the same is illegal pursuant to the Federal Controlled Substances law. Monarch manages a number of properties that are involved in federal housing programs that receive either federal subsidies, financing or other support,” Tucker wrote. “Participation in those programs mandates compliance with federal law as well as other federal housing regulations and guidelines.”

The federal agencies involved “have sent memoranda concerning medical marijuana, and the pre-emption of state medical marijuana laws by the Federal Controlled Substances Act and other Federal law,” Tucker wrote. “Monarch has adopted a policy and developed a lease addendum based upon those memoranda that specifically deals with medical marijuana.”

Unfortunately, Monarch interpreted the HUD memo to mean that they are required to evict medical marijuana patients who medicate or grow in govt. subsidized housing. This interpretation is false.

Here’s what Daniel Korobkin and Michael Steinberg—attorneys at the ACLU of Michigan—wrote in response to a similar issue in their state:

“It is a common misperception among landlords of federally assisted housing that they are required to evict tenants who violate federal drug laws. In fact, termination of a lease due to drug use is entirely discretionary under federal law…federal law gives landlords complete discretion over drug-related evictions. In other words, a landlord or property manager who exercises her discretion not to evict a medical marijuana patient will face no fine, loss of funding, or any other penalty.”

Thankfully, the great deal of negative press attention Monarch received on this issue prompted them to use their discretion as permitted under federal law. Last week Monarch released a statement rescinding the notice to non-federally assisted tenants and stated that they would consider federally assisted tenants with medical marijuana prescriptions on a case-by-case basis.

While we welcome this small victory of reason and compassion, it still begs the question: why did this have to be an issue in the first place? Why does the federal government feel the need to implement policies that force chronically ill people to choose between treatment for their disease and a roof over their heads?

It appears that federal bureaucrats at HUD feel that they are better qualified to decide this issue than the New Mexico’s elected representatives who passed the NM Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, the licensed doctors who prescribe medical marijuana to their patients, and the patients suffering from debilitating diseases who use medical marijuana to help alleviate chronic pain, nausea, neuromuscular disease symptoms and dangerous weight loss caused by cancer and HIV/AIDS.

This is why a patchwork of medical marijuana laws that vary state-by-state is not a sustainable solution when the federal government continues to perpetuate the lie that marijuana has “a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use…and lack of accepted safety for use.” This claim—a relic of the anti-drug hysteria of the late 20^th century—has been so thoroughly debunked by leading medical associations and vast amounts of scientific evidence that it is rendered preposterous.

The federal government must stop pretending that the tens of thousands of medical marijuana patients in the 15 states where it is legal don’t exist. Here in New Mexico we legalized medical marijuana for a very good reason: because it helps sick people to feel better. Low income, chronically ill New Mexicans who can’t find relief in any other medications don’t deserve to be singled out, harassed and perhaps even evicted from the only housing they can afford just because the federal government doesn’t have the courage to do what we here have already done—take a sensible, compassionate approach to marijuana as medicine.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 15, 2008
CONTACT: Whitney Potter (505) 266 5915 ext. 1003 or Dan Berger, ACLU DLRP (917) 602-2445

CARLSBAD – According to a sworn affidavit filed yesterday by an Eddy County law enforcement official, the seizure of medical marijuana from a local paraplegic man, “was done at the direction of and under the guidance and control of the [Drug Enforcement Administration] DEA.”  The affidavit, submitted by David Edmondson, Commander of the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force, which conducted the seizure on September 4, 2007, makes clear that the federal government directed local law enforcement to seize the medical marijuana of a patient fully authorized to use the medicine under state law.

“This is yet another glaring example of the federal government’s improper obstruction of states’ ability to implement compassionate and sensible medical marijuana policies,” said Adam Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Drug Law Reform Project.  “For the DEA to co-opt local law enforcement in its misguided assault on medical marijuana patients is both callous and unconstitutional.”

On September 4, 2007, at least four Eddy County deputies, acting as members of the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force, arrived at the home of Leonard French in Malaga, New Mexico.  French, a paraplegic who experiences intense pain and severe muscle spasms stemming from 1987 motorcycle accident, holds a license issued by the state of New Mexico identifying him as a medical marijuana patient under the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act.

Assuming that the deputies had arrived to check his compliance with the state compassionate use law, French presented the deputies with his identification card and showed them his hydroponic equipment, including two small marijuana plants and three dead sprouts.  Acting under the guidance of the DEA, according to yesterday’s affidavit, the deputies seized the equipment and plants and later turned them over to the federal agency.

The ACLU, which represents French in a pending legal challenge, says the seizure violated not only New Mexico’s Compassionate Use Act, but also state forfeiture laws and a constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.  French has not been charged with any violations of federal or state drug laws.

Yesterday’s affidavit is available online at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/34141lgl20080214.html

The ACLU’s legal filing is available online at:
www.aclu-nm.org/PDF/French_1_17_08.pdf

###

Related Documents:

14-Feb-2008 Affidavit

17-Jan-2008 Press Release

French Complaint

.

ACLU Drug Law Reform Project