Bump and Update: Here is the text of the DOJ memo.

The Department of Justice is sending out a three page memo to prosecutors in the 14 states that have legalized medical marijuana with new guidelines for prosecutions. According to unnamed officials,

... [the memo] emphasizes that prosecutors have wide discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, and says it is not a good use of federal manpower to prosecute those who are without a doubt in compliance with state law.

Without a doubt? Sounds like there's some wiggle room. [More...]

Signatures are being gathered in California for three 2010 ballot initiatives to legalize adult marijuana possession for personal use by adults.

If any of them pass, California would be the first state in the nation to legalize possession of marijuana. While it would still be illegal under federal law, it might not matter in practice:

Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.

....some legal scholars and policy analysts say the government will not be able to require California to help in enforcing the federal marijuana ban if the state legalizes the drug. Without assistance from the state's legions of narcotics officers, they say, federal agents could do little to curb marijuana in California.

[More...]

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, this article in Harvard's Journal of Legal Analysis rebuts the notion that plea bargains are good for defendants:

How can a prosecutor, who has only limited resources, credibly threaten so many defendants with costly and risky trials and extract plea bargains involving harsh sentences? Had defendants refused to settle, many of them would not have been charged or would have escaped with lenient sanctions. But such collective stonewalling requires coordination among defendants, which is difficult if not impossible to attain. Moreover, the prosecutor, by strategically timing and targeting her plea offers, can create conflicts of interest among defendants, frustrating any attempt at coordination.

[More...]

A new report by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), “America’s Problem-Solving Courts; Criminal Cost of Treatment,” available here, finds drug courts need serious re-working . Among the recommendations:

• A defendant should not be required to
  plead guilty before accessing treatment.

• Admission criteria must be objective and fair, and prosecutors must relinquish their role as gatekeeper

• the drug court framework must accommodate long-standing ethical rules.

[More...]

The FBI today released its report (available here) on arrests for 2008. Here's the table (jpg) for all drug arrests. Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has reviewed the report and writes:

Someone is arrested in the United States for a drug-law violation every 18 seconds, an FBI report released Monday shows. More than four-fifths of those arrests were for possession only and nearly half were for possession of marijuana. Of the 847,863 marijuana arrests -- one every 37 seconds -- 89 percent were for possession alone.

The Denver Post reports today on the sad cases of some disabled medical marijuana users, including one with MS, who are being evicted from federally subsidized housing due to regulations that prohibit illegal use of controlled substances. Under federal law, all marijuana use is illegal, even in states that allow it.

Even with the state's OK to use medical marijuana, people such as Hewitt can't live in federal housing or receive federal subsidies for rent under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The U.S. has been importing snitches from the Mexican cartels into the U.S., providing them with homes and new lives. Of course, some will be discovered. What happens next? Murder on the front lawn.

But in order to fight the drug traffickers, federal anti-narcotics agents have brought Mexican cartel members north of the border, to use them to gather intelligence and build cases.

ICE is arranging visas for them. And not playing nice with other law enforcement agencies, contributing to the violence: [More...]

It's time to resurrect those motions to suppress based on cocaine traces found on currency. A new study presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society found:

In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.

The study was conducted by Yuegang Zuo, Ph.D., a a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry & the School of Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in North Dartmouth, Mass.

Time Magazine reports on the study here. Time says in 2007, only 67% of U.S. currency had cocaine residue.( It doesn't mention that studies from the 90's showed a much higher percentage.) [More...]

Virginia must have a secret stash of money somewhere. The Republican candidate for Governor, Bob McDonnell, along with the Republican candidate for Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, are proposing new mandatory minimums for second time drug offenders and lifetime GPS monitoring for violent sex offenders.

Their goal: to make Virginia “one of the most hostile environments in America” for drug dealers.

They also want to speed up the process of terminating parental rights for abusive parents.

McConnell is the current Attorney General in Virginia and a former prosecutor. The Washington Post has more on his plan, including the Democrats' opposition because it doesn't have enough funding for police.

Via NORML, which is encouraging people to contact their legislators about marijuana reform, here's the e-mail that a constituent received back from GA Rep. Tommy Benton (31st House District). He says he favors caning for minor pot offenders and execution for those that sell marijuana:

Thanks for the email. We will have to agree to disagree on this and whether or not money is wasted. I am opposed to the legalization of marijuana. I think we should go to caning for people caught using and maybe execute dealers. That would solve the problem as well. That is what they do in Singapore and they don’t have a drug problem, but then they have less liberty than we do here.

Rep. Tommy Benton
tommy.benton@house.ga.gov

In a follow-up e-mail, Benton threatened: [More...]

Washington State is re-thinking its three-strikes laws, particularly for non-violent offenders. Gov. Chris Gregoire was the first Governor in the country to grant clemency to a three-striker earlier this year, and has since added two more to the list.

Fifteen years after voters and legislatures across the country began embracing the three-strikes concept, many states apply those laws more sparingly. Prosecutors and judges often use the discretion provided them to avoid charging a defendant whose past consists of minor robberies or assault convictions with a third-strike offense. Now Washington is taking the extra step of reviewing the cases of some nonviolent three-strikes prisoners and moving to release those, like Dozier, who probably would not face such a severe punishment today.

The Sentencing Project recently released a report on the growing number of inmates serving life sentences. 140,000, or 1 in 11 inmates, are serving life in federal and state prisons. The racial disparity is glaring:[More...]

Ryan Grim, in tomorrow's Washington Post, rebuts five myths about drug legalization and the war on drugs. The myths:

• 1. America's drug problem began in the late 1960s.
• 2. Nixon is to blame for the war on drugs.
• 3. Legalization will increase teen drug use.
• 4. In foreign countries, legalization has been disastrous.
• 5. Americans aren't ready for legalization.

Grim, who is also a Congressional correspondent for Huffington Post, is the author of This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America.