I was riding my bike today on the Interstate 205 Multi-Use Path here in Portland (we have world-class biking infrastructure here) when I came upon a circle of young people sitting on the left side of the path. I’m unable to discern their ages, but I’d be surprised if any of them were eligible to run for the US House of Representatives (minimum age: 25). They were all intently watching as one young man was heating up the titanium nail on a bong (a “dab rig”) and preparing to share his marijuana extracts with his friends.

The visual was a little jarring. Seven young people, odds-on that most weren’t even 21 years old, staring at one guy using a hand-held blow torch just two feet away from parched yellow dry grass in the middle of a public place while Portland chokes on the smoke from raging wildfires.

If that visual upset me, imagine how the soccer mom running on the trail will see it, and how she might vote on the next marijuana issue that makes the ballot.

I’m age 47, so I’m straddling what is the newest generation gap in America – the 420/710 Divide. Ahead of me are my 420 stoner friends in the Baby Boom generation who denigrate the dab culture as a gluttonous, wasteful, abusive, and dangerous way to consume cannabis. Behind me are my 710 stoner friends in the Millennial generation who denigrate the herb culture as an unhealthful, wasteful, tedious, and anachronistic way to consume cannabis.

I’m barely old enough to remember 1978. I was ten years old. That was the year that NORML’s Keith Stroup and others in the nascent marijuana law reform movement of the early 1970s predicted that marijuana would finally be legalized at the federal level. President Carter had campaigned promising to decriminalize up to an ounce of marijuana in 1975 and by 1977 was making that demand of Congress.

But 1978 was the year the parents’ backlash begun. Nebraska was the last of eleven states to decriminalize marijuana in the Seventies. The president’s drug advisor, Peter Bourne, was caught in a prescription drugs and cocaine scandal. Carter backed off of any demands for marijuana reforms. Emboldened, Sue Rusche formed National Families in Action, a group that still propagandizes against pot to this day.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected. HIGH TIMES’ December 1980 cover featured a sexy woman on a bed offering four lines of cocaine on a mirror, and many of their articles and centerfolds featured cocaine and other drugs. Then, comedian Richard Pryor caught fire freebasing cocaine and actor John Belushi and the NBA’s #2 draft pick Len Bias overdosed on cocaine (and heroin, in Belushi’s case).

As I was starting high school, Nancy Reagan was telling us all to “Just Say No”. I was fortunate enough to just miss the implementation of cops telling lies about drugs to scare kids into turning in their parents – D.A.R.E. classes. But I remember vividly the leader of the parents movement holding up a gas mask bong on TV, scaring the hell out of Middle America. Weed, you see, would lead your kids into using scary paraphernalia in search of the better high, which would eventually lead to the cocaine (or crack or heroin) that leads to addiction and death!

That parents’ backlash took the Gallup polls for marijuana legalization down from a high of 28 percent support in 1977 to a low of 23 percent support by the time I’m graduating high school in 1985. No states passed any marijuana law reforms from 1978 to 1996 and the Gallup poll didn’t top that 28 percent mark until 2000.

So, are marijuana dabs, rigs, and blowtorches the cocaine of the 2010s, potentially decreasing public support for marijuana legalization as they become more visible and popular? Could parents who have some familiarity with smoking a joint be scandalized by the sight of kids with dab rigs and blowtorches, and then led to oppose or severely restrict legalization? Certainly, the occasional nightly news story of motel rooms and apartments blown up from faulty cannabis extraction techniques isn’t winning any voters to our side.

We have seven thousand years of experience in human history of people using cannabis with very little ill effect to the consumer or society. We have experience with hashish dating back to the 15^th century. But the modern hydrocarbon methods of extracting very pure cannabis oil are new and we haven’t had generations of people chronically using dabs for an extended period of time. What if science shows there are permanent deleterious effects from such extreme use; will that ignite the next parents’ backlash?

While South Africa’s parliament continues to struggle with whether to legalize dagga (marijuana) or just allow medical marijuana use, the rest of the African continent continues to produce and use cannabis at rates that rival North America.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime (UNODC) in its 2009 report, Cannabis in Africa, the “highest levels of cannabis production in the world take place on the African continent.” Granted, the report is based on cultivation data from 2005, before marijuana production became commercially legal in some of the United States, but at the time, Africa made up “roughly 25 per cent of global production of cannabis herb.” (I could not find newer global production data from UNODC by press time.)

More cannabis is seized by police in North America, but Africa is a very close second place. Behind the United States and Mexico, South Africa is the country with the third-greatest amount of cannabis seized, making up over 40 percent of all African cannabis seized.

In the UNODC’s World Drug Report 2015, Africa’s estimated rate of annual cannabis usage by people aged 15-64 is 7.5 percent, almost double the global average of 3.9 percent. Africa’s continental rate is third behind Oceania at 10.7 percent and North America at 11.6 percent. However, the West- and Central-Africans are using at rate of 12.4 percent of their population per year.

Cannabis is not native to Africa. Historians estimate its arrival on the continent took place in the 14^th century as Arab trade came to Ethiopia. By 1881, German explorers Hermann Wissman and Dr. Paul Pogge explored areas in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and found a tribe called the Bashilenge that smoked cannabis as often as possible, attributing to it magical powers. They called themselves Bena-Riamba, or “the sons of hemp” and their greeting moio meant both “life” and “hemp”.

Now cannabis is becoming an economic engine in parts of Africa. UNODC’s Cannabis in Africa notes that Lesotho, the independent nation surrounded by South Africa, produces 70 percent of the cannabis that enters South Africa. Cannabis farming in Lesotho ranks as the third-largest source of income in a country where over one in four are unemployed.

In Swaziland, surrounded by eastern South Africa on the north, west, and south, and Mozambique on the east, unemployment hovers at around 40 percent. There, the New York Times in 2012 profiled grandmothers who are cultivating the powerful marijuana strain “Swazi Gold” for sale in South Africa. The country, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, also boasts the world’s highest HIV infection rate, leaving these grandmothers to raise the orphans of their own sons and daughters.

“Without weed, we would be starving,” said one peasant farmer to the Times. Even so, a typical family cannabis farm in Swaziland is producing 25 pounds of marijuana that sells for just 400 American dollars. In case any North American growers reading this are complaining about only getting $1,600 per pound of harvested marijuana, imagine having to compete globally with Africans willing to produce for one percent of that price.

That time may be coming sooner than we think. While no country in Africa has yet officially legalized cannabis, Mozambique, on Africa’s southeast coast, has a strong marijuana culture and family cannabis plantations are largely tolerated by authorities. In 2011, there was a 900 percent increase in cannabis seized from Mozambique compared to the year prior.

As marijuana prohibition falls in several of the United States, justification for international treaties forbidding national marijuana legalization becomes harder to maintain. African countries feeling the brunt of global economic downturn will eventually warm up to the billions in revenues and skyrocketing growth of the marijuana market. Someday, the “Durban Poison” strain you’re smoking may have been imported legally from near Durban, South Africa.

The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the odor from marijuana smoke is not a “physically offensive” smell, like the smell of “rotten eggs or raw sewage”, tossing the convictions of a Philomath man found guilty of three counts of misdemeanor second-degree criminal mischief.

The case centered on Jared William Lang, age 34. In November of 2012, before marijuana was legalized in Oregon, at least four neighbors near Lang’s apartment complained of the smell of marijuana. One of the neighbors told police “the smell was especially difficult for him because he was currently attending rehabilitation for drug abuse and the smell of marijuana was a ‘trigger’ for him,” according to court records.

An officer dispatched to Lang’s apartment could smell marijuana and asked a judge for a warrant to search Lang’s apartment. Lang was not a medical marijuana patient and his address was not registered as a medical grow site; however, marijuana was decriminalized in Oregon in 1973, so the basis of the warrant was that Lang could be producing a “physically offensive” smell, an act of second-degree disorderly conduct under Oregon law.

The judge granted the warrant and upon the subsequent search the officer found evidence of stencils and spray paint used to vandalize properties in the Philomath area. Lang was convicted on the graffiti charges, fined $440, and sentenced to several months in jail.

Lang appealed the convictions and the Court of Appeals found that the basis for the officer’s search of Lang’s apartment was unfounded. The Court wrote (emphasis mine):

In the state’s view, an unpleasant odor is physically offensive because it is “offensive to the sensory organs of the body—the nose.” According to the state, the odor of burned marijuana is unpleasant to those who smell it. Indeed, the state asserts, “the ‘odor of marijuana’ is synonymous with the dictionary example of what is ‘offensive’ (the ‘odor of garbage.’)”

Although some odors are objectively unpleasant—rotten eggs and raw sewage come to mind—others are more subjective in nature. … Physical offensiveness is not established by the fact that the odor may be associated with substance abuse or criminal activity.

We are not prepared to declare, as the state would have us, that the odor of marijuana smoke is equivalent to the odor of garbage. Indeed, some people undoubtedly find the scent pleasing. Nor can we say, however, that the odor is inoffensive as a matter of law.

While this Appeals Court ruling is positive in declaring that detecting marijuana smoke alone is not objectively a “physically offensive” smell that can lead to police intrusion, they are also leaving the door open that “as the intensity, duration, or frequency of the odor increases”, a reasonable judge with those facts before him could someday decide that marijuana smell has become objectively offensive.

Following up on my recent articles about calls for unity within the cannabis community, I’d like to talk about the term “recreational marijuana”.

It’s a strange term. Nobody refers to themselves as a “recreational (cigarette) smoker”. There are no “recreational smokers” because all use of cigarettes is the same; what other kind of smoker is there?

Likewise, there are no “recreational drinkers”, although sometimes people will refer to themselves as “social drinkers”. What’s the difference? Well, “social drinker” stands in contrast to “alcoholic”. “Social drinker” is a badge one wears to signify he’s not a “problem drinker”. Yet, still, “recreational drinker” doesn’t work, because whether one drinks socially or to excess, drinking is always presumably done for the same reason – fun.

But “recreational marijuana consumer” is, by definition, a term of division. It is a badge used to signify those people who are not “medical marijuana consumers” or “sacramental marijuana consumers” (or, for that matter, “industrial hemp consumers”, but that’s a different subset based on a different plant, so we’ll table that part of the discussion.)

It wasn’t always thus. Prior to marijuana prohibition, you were just a “cannabis consumer”, and it was coming in the form of patent medicines. Yes, there were some who smoked marijuana, like, say, Louis Armstrong, but their cannabis use made them a “marijuana smoker” (or a “viper”, in the parlance of the times). Nevertheless, pot smokers were all the same and why they were using it did not matter.

But as medical marijuana re-emerged in the 1970s, there now became a need to distinguish the “patient” from the “pothead”, because we decided, through the Supreme Court in Robert Randall’s case leading up to the California Compassionate Use Act and the rest of the state medical marijuana laws, that some of the people using marijuana had a legitimate-enough excuse that they shouldn’t be put in a cage.

That division was amplified in the rhetoric of those fighting to make the “medical marijuana” distinction. “We’re Patients, Not Criminals” was a popular tagline for bumper stickers, t-shirts, and campaign speeches, and medical marijuana supporters ignored the tacit implication that if you’re not a patient, then you must be a criminal. It wasn’t just that we’re all pot smokers, but the sick and dying should be cared for first. The framing of medical marijuana ensured that so-called recreational marijuana consumers still deserved to be caged.

“Medical marijuana” and “sacramental marijuana”, meanwhile, implicitly support the frame that one must have a legitimate excuse to use marijuana, otherwise one belongs in a cage. In addition to separating the so-called recreational consumer from those worthy of protection from arrest, those terms also separate the people within those groups on the basis of where they fall on some outside observer’s spectrum of respectability. Elderly cancer patient, sure, you’re a medical consumer, but teenager with anxiety, maybe not. Black Rastafarian with knee-length dreadlocks, sure, you’re a sacramental consumer, but white guy who joined “The Church of Cannabis” formed a few years ago, maybe not.

“Recreational” also sets up a frame to dismiss the civil rights issue we’re discussing and place it instead in the realm of a discretionary thrill. “Recreational” is four-wheeling or scuba diving or hiking – things you do, not rights you own. “Recreational marijuana consumers” are just hedonists looking for a thrill, fighting for the right to get high, who have no medical or spiritual justification for doing so.

So hereon, let’s start rebuilding the unity by clearing our frames from those that separate us. There aren’t “medical consumers”, “sacramental consumers”, and “recreational consumers”. There are just “adult marijuana consumers” who enjoy marijuana for “personal use”. “Adult” and “personal” are frames that invoke rights and privacy, rather than suggesting we need approval for our use of marijuana.

Fighting for “adult marijuana consumers’ personal use” frees us from the inherent division of the other terms. Your personal use may be medical, spiritual, or just for fun; the reason why is irrelevant. No authority has the jurisdiction over what you put in your body and do with your mind, period.

Last year, a member of the South African Parliament named Mario Oriani-Ambrosini proposed the Medical Innovation Bill. This law would legalize the commercial, industrial, and medical applications of dagga, the local term for cannabis. Mr. Oriani-Ambrosini died of cancer, but his bill lives on in the Parliament’s Health Committee, where members of the INKATHA Freedom Party are asking that the commercial and industrial regulations be deleted so the bill focuses only on medical marijuana.

The INKATHA Freedom Party is a minor party that collected just 2.4 percent of the vote in the 2014 elections, holding just ten of the 400 seats in a Parliament governed by the African National Congress with 249 seats.

The next leading party, the Democratic Alliance with 89 seats, has also called for a medical-only bill. Its health minister, Wilmot James, has called the current bill “over-reaching”. Though Mr. Oriani-Ambrosini said he lived longer than predicted thanks to cannabis treatments he received and was a close friend, Mr. James counseled members of parliament to “leave emotion aside and consider the bill rationally,” according to South Africa Business Daily.

Mr. David Bayever, Deputy Chairperson for the South African Central Drug Authority, testified to the Health Committee that dagga use is unhealthy and leads to respiratory, cardiovascular, mental, and cognitive disorders. He concluded that more research on cannabis was necessary before moving forward.

The South African Medical Research Council has also weighed in on the bill back in May, saying that “the issue of medical cannabis should be separated from legalization of cannabis.”

The bill itself is very short. Unlike American medical marijuana laws (except California’s), it allows for the use of dagga for the treatments of “a medical condition which, if not cured, may cause the patient’s death or severe impairment to his or her medical condition or quality of life”. The medical aspect calls for the establishment of one of more health service providers to provide cannabis treatments.

However, the bill goes beyond simply authorizing cannabis as a medical treatment. In fact, it calls for “Innovation in absence of evidence-based treatment” in a section that allows health care providers to embark on treatments for which “there is no research or other evidence” or “evidence is insufficient or uncertain”.

The bill also states that “no one shall be liable or guilty of any offense for growing, processing, distributing, using, prescribing, advertising or otherwise dealing with or promoting cannabinoids for purposes of [medical] treatment”. But the next clause adds “and commercial or industrial uses or products”, which the opponents wish to strip from the bill.

At Seattle Hempfest this year, there was a panel called “Medicinal, Recreational and Spiritual Use – Can they co-exist?” Notably, the panel included NORML Founder Keith Stroup and Americans for Safe Access Washington’s Kari Boiter – who faced off against each other at 2012’s Hempfest on a panel about the Great I-502 Debate.

Everyone was civil and professional, but there was at least one heated moment when Boiter discussed the failings of I-502 with respect to how medical marijuana has changed in Washington for the worse. Stroup hammered home the results of I-502 with respect to the drastic reduction in marijuana arrests for all consumers, finding the idea that there was more negative than positive resulting from I-502 to be incredulous.

One theme throughout the panel, and throughout Hempfest, was a call for unity. A plaintive wail of “can’t we all just get a bong?” for the medical marijuana patients, the religious ganja adherents, and the adult recreational users, with the implication that it is legalization and the healthy hedonistic weed smokers who fan the flames of division.

An implication not rooted in history or reality.

In the beginning of the legalization movement in the late 1960s, there were no “patients” and “believers” and “stoners”. There were just people having their lives upended and their freedom surrendered because they belonged to a certain class. Whether they were hippies, draft-dodgers, jazz musicians, or Mexican laborers, it didn’t matter. What mattered is that they were potheads and that they belonged in a cage.

Keith Stroup founded NORML in 1970 and the fight then was to end the persecution of all marijuana consumers, no matter why they consume. In the early 1970s, what mattered was keeping potheads out of a cage. And indeed, NORML fought and passed laws in eleven states to decriminalize personal possession of marijuana, the first of many steps toward true cannabis freedom.

But then in the mid-1970s, the first divisions among potheads came about. Robert Randall sued the federal government in 1976, claiming he had no choice but to smoke pot or go blind from glaucoma. This medical necessity was recognized and thus began the medical marijuana movement in America. For the first time, certain potheads were exempted from the cage based on their belonging to a certain class.

As the Seventies ran down, the next division among potheads came about. Brother Louv, a sincere devotee to a faith that uses cannabis as sacrament, made headlines calling for First Amendment recognition of his freedom of religion. Forbidding people of his faith from using ganja, he argued, was as unconstitutional as banning Catholics from communion wine.

Now, despite the facts that medical use and religious use only counted for a small sliver of the potheads that were being caged for marijuana, NORML and other people fighting for legalization for all potheads supported all these battles, realizing that any step forward in recognizing cannabis rights was a positive step.

Then, the Eighties happened.

Some people will point to Stroup’s incident outing President Carter’s drug advisor as a cocaine user as the downfall of the 20^th century legalization movement and looking from the top of the government down, this may be true. But from the bottom of society up, there was emerging a national parents’ movement that was partially catalyzed by shocking video on the 60 Minutes news program featuring the children of Brother Louv’s congregation as young as seven puffing away on huge marijuana joints.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. NORML is in disarray, having succeeded at no marijuana reforms for almost two decades. Disgruntled NORML staffers broke away to form Marijuana Policy Project and the medical marijuana movement is gaining steam in the Bay Area of California, partially due to marijuana’s efficacy in helping AIDS patients. It was then that the forces of legalization abandoned the fight for laws to protect all potheads and instead focused on the more politically-viable option of fighting only for the sick and disabled who’d tug on the heartstrings of the electorate.

Despite being cast aside by the movement for being the healthy potheads we were, the recreational marijuana consumers wholeheartedly jumped into the fray and supported the medical marijuana laws as they sprung up in California and the West. The understanding was that in the War on Drugs, the first priority was to “get the sick and dying off the battlefield”. Law after law was passed, even though those medical marijuana laws got stricter and stricter, saving fewer and fewer potheads from the cage, but recreational potheads voted for every one of them.

Religious adherents also gained ground in the 1990s as Supreme Court cases that did not recognize the First Amendment religious rights of certain Native People to use powerful hallucinogens led Congress to pass and Bill Clinton to sign the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That law opened up the possibility for religious users of ganja to also gain their exception from being potheads worthy of a cage, though that line of legal reasoning has yet to come to fruition. Even so, recreational potheads supported their fight, knowing as always that any step forward against prohibition is progress.

In the 2000s, we finally got back to the mission started in 1970 – ending the arrests of all people who use marijuana no matter why they use it. Marijuana Policy Project tried in vain to legalize in Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska. Then a medical marijuana entrepreneur, Richard Lee, sunk $1.5 million of his own money to legalize in California in 2010, and it held promise as the first realistic chance of winning legalization, and in the nation’s largest population state, no less!

Imagine our dismay when we saw our own people fighting to defeat Proposition 19 to legalize in California. People mostly associated with medical marijuana, the people who recreational potheads supported since 1976, trying to sabotage our chance at evading arrest like they had been evading since 1996. Don’t vote for this legalization, they said, because better legalization was coming in 2012. They helped Dianne Feinstein and the cops and prison guards keep prohibition on the books so they could keep busting healthy potheads.

California’s still waiting on that legalization for 2012.

Then we saw that story line repeat in 2012 when people mostly associated with medical marijuana were the loudest opponents to a marijuana legalization law in Washington that even the local cops were supporting. People who’d been evading arrest since 1998 were trying to ensure that the rest of us still face the chance of being caged.

So when I’m asked if medical, spiritual, and recreational use can all coexist, I wonder why you’re asking me? As a recreational consumer, I have supported every medical and spiritual marijuana movement that’s ever existed, only to be paid back with those movements stifling or extinguishing the chances that I no longer face a cage.

Medical and spiritual use movements are by definition divisive and classify cannabis consumers as worthy of a cage or worthy of freedom on the basis of health status and religious belief. Recreational use is a misnomer that exists only to differentiate unworthy from the worthy. There is no recreational use; there is personal use of marijuana, two subsets of which are the personal reasons why someone chooses to use marijuana, medical and spiritual reasons.

If medical and spiritual wish to coexist with recreational, it’s time all users of cannabis recognize that why someone uses marijuana is irrelevant to determining their rights – no user of cannabis deserves a cage, period.

In yesterday’s Part 2: It Will Set the Stage for Bad Legalization, I showed how the anti-legalization campaign “No on I-502” warned that Washington’s no home grow and per se DUID would spread to other future legalization states (they didn’t). In Wednesday’s Part 1: Feds Will Never Allow $600 Ounces, I recalled how “No on I-502” predicted $600 ounces and no legal place to buy them.

Today, as I prepare for my first of three speeches at Seattle Hempfest, I conclude our look back at the scaremongering our fellow pot smokers used to fight against ending our criminality.

I-502 DIDN’T REALLY LEGALIZE HEMP

This was the first of many arguments that complained that since all marijuana would not be legalized, some people would still be busted, so we should vote to keep everybody subject to being busted. This was used to demean the value of the hemp legalization contained in I-502.

“If [a hemp farmers’ crop] passes 0.3% THC, they would face state-level prosecution.” – Anthony Martinelli (October 17, 2012, Sensible Washington)

RESULT: Most states and the federal Farm Bill define hemp at 0.3% THC. Only West Virginia allows for 1% THC hemp. No hemp farmers in the United States have faced state-level prosecution.

I-502 IS A TRICK THAT WILL LEAD TO MORE ARRESTS!

The big scare, however, is that anything short of you buying marijuana at a state store and smoking it all by yourself would lead to drastic consequences!

“If you pass a joint to a friend, you’re guilty of delivery of a controlled substance, a Class C felony.” – Anthony Martinelli (March 4, 2012, Sensible Washington)

“Unless you bought that ounce at a state-licensed store, you’d still get busted.” – Steve Elliott (August 13, 2012, Toke of the Town)

“Under I-502, possession north of 40 grams becomes a felony.” No on I-502 Campaign Head Steve Sarich (June 24, 2012, Northwest Leaf)

RESULT: Forget for the moment that I-502 didn’t make 40-gram possession a felony; that was the law already. The Drug Policy Alliance Report for Washington found that misdemeanor marijuana arrests are DOWN 98% from 2012 to 2014; ALL marijuana court filings are DOWN 63%; and ALL marijuana court convictions are DOWN 81%… and nobody was busted for possession of a non-store ounce.

I-502 WILL MEAN MORE MARIJUANA DUID CHARGES!

If you didn’t buy into those scares, then the final scare was that what used to be a risk of a small-time possession charge will turn into the risk of an unimpaired marijuana DUI charge.

“[Cops will] sit there waiting to shoot hippie fish in a barrel as they leave Hempfest, just pulling ‘em over as they leave, and ordering blood tests.” – Steve Elliott (August 13, 2012, Toke of the Town)

“We’ve made the case that per se DUI standards are an extension of cannabis prohibition… if I-502 passes, prejudiced cops will see it as open season on minority youth.” – Anthony Martinelli (March 19, 2012, Sensible Washington)

“The 10,000 possession arrests per year can easily be converted into 10,000 (or more) DUI arrests.” – Douglas Hiatt (October 7, 2012, The Olympian)

“Possession cases will be replaced by DUI cases.” – Jeffrey Steinborn (March 7, 2012, The Stranger)

RESULT: In 2012, there were 1,621 drug DUIs. In 2013, it dropped to 1,357. From 2013-2014, positive THC tests rose 29%. But >5ng results declined from 720 to 703, dropping from 53% to 40% of all positive tests.

No matter how you look at it, most of the sky-is-falling scenarios predicted by the No on I-502 crowd either failed to materialize or proved to be the opposite of what they predicted. Keep that in mind, Ohio, as you prepare to vote on legalization this fall and pot smokers tell you we’d all be better off remaining criminals until something better comes along.

In Part 1: Feds Will Never Allow $600 Ounces, I showed how three years ago at Seattle Hempfest, leaders of the “No on I-502” campaign were making claims that pot shops would never exist and we’d never make any tax money in Washington State, but if we did, an ounce would cost $600 and never affect the Mexican cartels.

Today, let’s remember how three years ago, we were told that we had to wait for legalization in Washington State, or else every other state would copy Washington’s bad law, which will never be improved by the legislature.

I-502’s BAD PROVISIONS WILL BECOME PRECEDENT!

To be fair, I-502 was saddled with two awful provisions: no home growing and a per se (automatically guilty) stoned driving level of 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood. But the “No on I-502” campaign frightened voters by saying these provisions would become the standard for marijuana legalization nationwide.

“We can’t allow this initiative to set national standards for other legalization initiatives in other states” – Safe Access Alliance’s Ezra Eickmeyer (August 10, 2012, Toke of the Town)

“I-502 sets a horrible precedent. If its execrable DUI provisions and ban on home growing become law here, future states will model their legislation upon it!” – Steve Elliott (August 13, 2012, Toke of the Town)

“This initiative could set a negative precedent across the country.” – Sensible Washington’s Anthony Martinelli (October 20, 2012, The Spokesman-Review)

RESULT: Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC allow for home grow and have no per se DUIDs. Ohio and Nevada have legalization initiatives on their ballots that allow for home grow and have no per se DUIDs. Initiatives proposed in California, Arizona, Michigan, Maine, and Massachusetts in 2016 all allow for home grow and have no per se DUIDs.

I-502 MEANS MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS WILL LOSE THEIR GROW RIGHTS!

One major scare tactic of “No on I-502” was to frighten medical marijuana patients that legalization would end medical marijuana. There have been major changes, but those have come about from regulating a system that was never regulated in the first place.

“I-502 … would take away the rights of individuals to cultivate their own medicine.” – No on I-502 Campaign Head Steve Sarich (June 24, 2012, Northwest Leaf)

RESULT: Patients may still cultivate their own medicine in Washington, 6 plants at home (and up to the original 15 plants limit if a doctor recommends) or up to 60 plants in a four-person collective. That’s more than all but five medical marijuana states allow.

I-502 WILL NEVER BE FIXED BY THE LEGISLATURE

Another bit of fear mongering was to claim that once enacted, Washington’s marijuana laws would be set in stone, leaving the terrible provisions to remain for eternity.

“If I-502 passes, complacency could dissuade voters and elected officials from supporting legal alterations, or meaningful reform, for years.” – Anthony Martinelli (October 20, 2012, The Spokesman-Review)

RESULT: On April 2, 2014, Gov. Jay Inslee signed HB 2304 which legalized concentrates, the production, processing, and sales of which were forbidden by I-502.

Join us here on Friday when we conclude with Part 3: It’s a Trick to Make More Marijuana Arrests. Then check me out, @RadicalRuss on Periscope.TV for live streaming highlights from this weekend’s Seattle Hempfest.

As I prepare to speak at my tenth Seattle Hempfest, I think back to the Hempfest three years ago. No state had yet legalized marijuana, but Washington State had I-502 on the ballot. How exciting it would be to be surrounded by fellow legalizers on the cusp of legalization!

Then I got there to find booths plastered in red “No on I-502” promotion. Red T-shirt-wearing “No on I-502” volunteers were spreading anti-legalization propaganda. Numerous speakers onstage warned of the peril about to befall Washington if the dreaded I-502 were to pass into law. Hempfest itself was divided over the initiative.

With the benefit of three years’ hindsight, let’s examine some of the quotes and claims the “No on I-502” campaign against the reality that transpired after I-502 passed.

I-502 WILL NEVER SURVIVE THE FEDS!

One reason given to oppose legalization in 2012 was that the federal government would never allow it, so all the promises of tax revenue and pot shops were false.

“The Feds have made it clear they will intervene if states enact legalization measures,” – No on I-502 Campaign Head Steve Sarich (June 24, 2012, Northwest Leaf)

“[Courts will leave I-502 with] one ounce decriminalized, [but] nowhere legal to buy it.” – Attorney Douglas Hiatt (October 7, 2012, The Olympian)

“Distribution will be easily rendered invalid in federal court. This will result in no tax revenue being raised.” – Sensible Washington Head Anthony Martinelli (October 20, 2012, The Spokesman-Review)

“I truly believe that when this law passes, a legal challenge by the Feds will pretty much void all of it, leaving us nothing but a really bad DUI law.” – Attorney Jeffrey Steinborn (March 7, 2012, The Stranger)

RESULT: There are currently 155 active retail marijuana licensees in Washington, with 15 storefronts operating in Seattle alone. Washington State has raised $70 million in tax revenue.

I-502 WILL INCREASE PRICE OF WEED TO $600/OUNCE!

But at the same time “No on I-502” was claiming there would never be any pot shops, they were also claiming those pot shops would be charging insane prices for marijuana.

“…prices for medicinal AND recreational cannabis would go up by around 50% – 75%” – Safe Access Alliance’s Ezra Eickmeyer (August 10, 2012, Toke of the Town)

“Lawyer and legalization activist Jeffrey Steinborn predicts that prices of pot will jump by 150%.” – Chris Robertson (October 15, 2012, Bellevue College Watchdog)

“If you’re happy to pay $600-$700 an ounce for ‘legal’ state schwag to help fund ‘social services’, like more law enforcement to enforce this new law, just come right out and admit it.” – Steve Sarich (March 2, 2012, commenting in The Daily Chronic)

RESULT: While there was an initial price spike due to mismanaged supply, prices lately are down over 40%. I recently purchased an ounce of highly-taxed Washington weed for $225. The website PriceofWeed.com on October 25, 2012 listed high-quality marijuana at $251.62 per ounce average. PriceofWeed.com today is listing high-quality marijuana at $232.04 per ounce average.

I-502 WON’T AFFECT THE MEXICAN CARTELS!

One of the stranger arguments against legalization was that it wouldn’t eliminate the black market for marijuana. So, what, we shouldn’t reduce it any?

“I-502 will have absolutely no effect on criminal organizations in Mexico or anywhere else.” – Douglas Hiatt (October 7, 2012, The Olympian)

RESULT: Mexican cartel drug farmers are giving up cannabis planting in favor of opium because legalization in 2012 has so depressed the price and demand for Mexican weed.

Join me Thursday for Part 2: It Will Set the Stage for Bad Legalization and Friday for Part 3: It’s a Trick to Make More Marijuana Arrests. With marijuana legalization coming to your state soon, it would be wise to learn the scare tactics fellow pot smokers might use to make you vote to remain a criminal.

My friend sent me the link, asking if I could believe this shocking story: “Cops Forcibly Search Woman’s Vagina After Smelling Weed in Her Car”. Of course I believe it, I replied to my friend, I reported on it three years ago.

No, not the “Texas state troopers caught on camera probing women’s privates aren’t isolated incidents” story from 2012, where Ashley and Angel Dobbs were probed in the anus and the vagina by Trooper Kelley Hellenson, who never changed gloves between the searches and never bothered to search the ladies’ socks and shoes.

No, not the “Texas Women Subjected to Full Body Cavity Search on Highway” story from 2012, where Alexandria Randle and Brandy Hamilton were probed in the anus and vagina by Officer Jennie Bui on the side of the road in full view of minor relatives in their car. Bui also did not bother to change gloves between searches.

No, not the “Texas woman sues state trooper over invasive roadside body cavity-search” story from 2013, where Texas Corrections Officer Jennifer Stelly was probed in the anus and vagina by (can you believe it?) Trooper Kelley Hellenson. Ashley and Angel Dobbs sued over that 2012 case and it was settled for $185,000. Hellenson “was reprimanded, put on six months leave, and was retrained,” said attorney Allie Booker, who won the Dobbs case and is now representing Stelly. Apparently that retraining didn’t include “don’t sexually assault women on the side of the road on dash cam”.

No, this latest case from June of this year involves Charnesia Corley. She was pulled over for running a stop sign. The cop claimed he could smell weed, so he cuffed Corley, put her in his car, and began searching her car. He found no weed, came back to his car, and claimed he could still smell weed. The cop then calls a female deputy for a search. Corley complains that she’s cuffed and wearing no underwear. The cops stand her up, bend her over, and forcibly remove her pants. Corley begins to resist, so they throw her to the ground. Two cops then hold each one of her legs apart while the female cop probes Corley’s anus and vagina.

Robert Goerlitz, president of the Harris County Sheriff Deputies Organization, says that sexually assaulting women on the roadside isn’t common protocol. Instead, officers are supposed to arrest the suspect, take them to a substation, and submit them to a microwave scanner that requires no bodily penetration.

Perhaps the Texas police were just getting their last few jollies in before September 1. On that day, House Bill 324 goes into effect. It requires that prior to any body cavity search incidental to a traffic stop, a cop has to get a warrant. (What, you thought the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution applies in Texas? Apparently not, since they had to write a law against this form of unreasonable search and seizure.)

The amount of marijuana you have to possess in Texas before you can be charged with a felony is a quarter-pound. Just how much do you think a lady can store up there, anyway? (Whoa. I should not have Googled that.) Sexual assault in Texas is at least a second-degree felony. What sense does it make to commit a felony to find a misdemeanor amount of weed?

Local officials across the United States are attributing a rise in violent crime and emergency room admissions to a spike in synthetic marijuana, the profits from which are funneled to the Middle East.

CNN reports that according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, 3,682 people reported feeling ill effects from the products known as K2, Spice, or Scoopy Snax. This year, these mixtures of unknown herbs sprayed with research-grade synthetic cannabinoids have already led to over 4,377 reports to poison control centers.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton demonized the substances as “weaponized marijuana” in a press conference Tuesday, leading the NY Post to declare, “‘Weaponized weed’ triggering nude, psychotic rampages in NYC“.

“A number of individuals, when under the influence of this drug, are relatively impervious to pain and also have significant enhancement of their physical strength,” Bratton said. The department then released two videos to back up his point, except that one was a video from an episode of “Cops” from Iowa in 2003 where a man was suffering from the effects of PCP, not synthetic cannabinoids.

In Washington DC, police arrested a man on July 4 for the robbery and fatal stabbing of another man on the Metro train, attributing his psychosis to synthetic cannabinoids. “In some cities, synthetic cannabinoids is a huge issue, in other cities it’s just beginning to grow,” said Washington DC’s Police Chief Cathy Lanier on Monday. “Its connection to violence, that’s a gap that can be fixed.”

Lanier is meeting with other police chiefs in Washington DC this week. They are calling for new tests to help them identify users of synthetic cannabinoids in the field. And they will fail to get those tests and fail to reduce the use of synthetic cannabinoids until they recognize why people are choosing to use them.

Because synthetic cannabinoids are commercially available, legal to possess, and don’t show up on urine screen drug testing.

Spice, K2, and all the rest are often sold in bodegas and sometimes sold secretly, with customers using code words to access the product, since cities have been cracking down on their sale. Thus, it is easier and cheaper for someone seeking a marijuana high to find a five-dollar packet of Spice in a store than to risk finding a forty-dollar bag of weed from an illegal dealer.

Selling the synthetic cannabinoids is illegal, but possessing them is not. Thus, it is far less risky to get that Spice packet from a bodega clerk than taking the chance the illegal dealer is a narc or getting caught with illegal weed by the cops sometime later.

Even identifying the product as a controlled substance is difficult for law enforcement. As soon as officials define one particular synthetic cannabinoid as illegal, Chinese chemists just tweak the molecular structure until it no longer matches the illegal definition, but still gets the user high. Thus, any test the cops in DC might get to detect today’s Spice won’t detect next month’s version, just as the drug tests administered by employers, probation officers, and homeless shelters won’t work on most synthetic cannabinoids.

Only marijuana prohibition could lead people seeking a natural high to use an untested, impure, dangerous alternative like Spice, just as only alcohol prohibition could’ve led people seeking a buzz to drink denatured methanol. If we really want to end the synthetic marijuana epidemic, we must legalize the sale of natural marijuana and stop penalizing people for using it.

Last night was the first of the Republican Presidential candidates’ debates, presented by FOX News and Facebook, and in four hours there was not one mention of the War on Drugs. As fellow Marijuana Politics blogger Romain Bonilla noted, the debate would have been a great opportunity to discuss marijuana policy, but there wasn’t any mention of federal cannabis policy or the greater Drug War.

First there was a two-hour debate among the 11^th – 17^th highest-polling candidates, jokingly referred to as the “Kid’s Table Debate”, which by most accounts was won by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

Then in prime time, there was a two-hour debate among the top ten candidates, with billionaire Donald Trump continuing his unexpected dominance of the GOP field. Right from the start, FOX News moderators cast Trump as a wild-card candidate who has supported Democrats and liberal ideals, suggesting the rumors that he’d run as an independent would doom the eventual Republican nominee and lead to “another President Clinton”.

On and on the candidates regurgitated their talking points as the moderators presented them questions on immigration, gay marriage, abortion, ISIS, Iran, the economy, God, Obamacare, global warming, Medicaid, and Common Core.

But in all those four hours, there was nothing mentioned about the marijuana legalization that has now spread to four states and will be a feature of the 2016 Election in Nevada for certain and likely in California, Arizona, Michigan, and Massachusetts as well. Not even a broader question about the War on Drugs in general, or even a generalized question about mass incarceration.

It’s as if leading the world and all recorded history as the planet’s number one jailer doesn’t even register with the Republican Party.

The closest any question came to the issue was when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was asked about the #BlackLivesMatter movement. “It’s about training,” Walker said, adding that it’s vital to ensure “law enforcement professionals — not only on the way in but all the way through their time — have the proper training, particularly when it comes to use of force.” His dodge of the racial aspect of recent killings-by-cop is highlighted by the fact his state has the highest rate of African-American incarceration at over one-in-eight (13 percent).

Then FOX went to commercial, an ad for the NWA bio-pic “Straight Outta Compton”, that provided more insight into police brutality and race relations in 30 seconds than the debate did in four hours.

The only black person on the stage, Dr. Ben Carson, also deflected the question of race in America, explaining that as a neurosurgeon, he actually works on the part of us that makes us who we are and that the “hair doesn’t matter, skin doesn’t matter.” If that’s the case, Dr. Carson must be making the case that our jails and courts are disproportionately packed with black folks because they’re just bad people.

At the Kid’s Table Debate, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, said that immigrants should “learn English, adopt our values, roll up your sleeves and get to work,” because “immigration without assimilation is an invasion.” One of Jindal’s current political ads explains that he is “tired of hyphenated Americans. We’re not Indian-Americans or African-Americans or Asian-Americans, we’re all Americans.” If that’s the case, Gov. Jindal ought to explain why all the Americans in prison tend to have darker skin than the free Americans.

The issues of police, race, and drugs are burning up Facebook and Twitter. It’s hard to believe that as FOX News is soliciting questions from Facebook for the candidates, not one question about marijuana legalization came up. Perhaps FOX knows that any answer the Republicans give (except, perhaps, Sen. Rand Paul) on the Drug War isn’t going to help their candidate defeat the Democrats in 2016.

One of my stock lines on the speaking circuit is that if marijuana had been legal in 2000, Al Gore would have been our 43rd president.

If 9/11/2001 had blocked your mind from recalling the events of just ten months prior, let’s refresh the memory. Al Gore had won the popular vote in the 2000 election against George W. Bush; however, presidential elections aren’t decided by a democratic vote, but rather by the colonial-era vestige of an Electoral College, which gives disproportionate power to less-populated states and effectively makes presidential electtions into contests of just a few “swing” states rich with electoral votes.

In the 2000 election, the presidency all came down to the state of Florida, where George’s brother (and current 2016 presidential candidate) Jeb was the governor and the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida was Secretary of State. First the networks called Florida for Gore. Then it was too close to call. Then it was called for Bush. Then it was so close a mandatory re-count was triggered. Then we saw the “Brooks Brothers riot” of GOP operatives harassing recount officials and we learned more than we ever wanted to know about hanging and pregnant chads. In the end, the Supreme Court decided to stop any further recounting. Bush was declared the winner of Florida by 537 votes.

Much was made over Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s purge of the voter rolls prior to the 2000 Election, with many commentators pointing out the racially disproportionate nature of the purge (African-Americans, of course, are usually a reliable voting bloc for Democrats). But few aside from me noted that the system had already been rigged against Democrats through the racially disproportionate nature of the War on Drugs.

One of the consequences of a felony conviction, outside the states of Vermont and Maine, is losing your right to vote. In most states, however, you regain your right to vote after serving your prison time, or sometimes after serving the subsequent parole and/or probation time. But Florida is one of three states (Iowa, Kentucky) where your felony conviction means lifetime loss of your right to vote.

According to the Sentencing Project, today 10.4% of all voting-age adults in Florida cannot vote. But that rate skyrockets to 23.3% of voting-age African-Americans, or over a half-million black people who cannot vote in Florida for life. Those figures are 2.5% of all adults and 7.7% for African-Americans on a national basis, so Florida is over four times worse overall and over three times worse for African-Americans in felony disenfranchisement.

Now, consider that Florida has the lowest enumerated weight at which one will receive a felony charge for marijuana possession, just 21 grams, or about three-quarters of an ounce. (Arizona can charge a felony for any amount at prosecutor’s discretion, while Florida’s over-20-grams will always be a felony charge.) Data on Florida marijuana arrests are sketchy; for many years they did not contribute to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. But I did find almost 26,000 marijuana arrests in 1995 and almost 58,000 in 2010.

Not all those arrests are going to be felonies; 92% of the 2010 arrests were for possession. Those 8% that were for sales or cultivation were certainly felonies, though, and 8% of 26,000 comes up to over 2,000 people who can’t vote. The ACLU found in 2010 that blacks made up over 46% of all marijuana arrests.

Of the over 2,000 of the non-possession felonies from 1995, 46% of that is an estimate 955 black people who lost their right to vote for life for planting or selling pot. In the 2000 Election, 90% of African-Americans voted for Al Gore, so that represents 860 votes that would’ve gone to Al Gore.

There are plenty of problems with this theory. Who says all the convicted black felons would have even voted? Maybe white convicted felons would have out-voted them. But consider; that figure of 860 disenfrachised Al Gore votes is just the number for 1995 non-possession marijuana felony convictions. There would have also been some significant percentage of the 26,000 1995 marijuana arrests that were possession felonies for over 21 grams, which are also racially disproportionate and would’ve boosted the disenfranchised Al Gore votes total.

Then remember; these figures don’t reset, they accumulate. The 860 who lost their vote in 1995 are joined by another set who lost the right to vote in 1996, and in all the years leading up to the 2000 election. It would take much more time to research and quantify accurate estimations, but I feel it is reasonable to posit that if Florida had neighboring Georgia’s marijuana laws that don’t felonize possession until one full ounce or more, even the sliver of felons convicted for 21 to 28 grams leading up to the year 2000 would have been enough to give Al Gore a sizeable enough vote advantage that the recounts would never have happened. And, of course, if marijuana was legal and nobody was getting felonies for it, Al Gore would have won in a landslide (as pot smokers skew young, Democratic, and liberal).

Thus, marijuana prohibition cost America a President Al Gore.

According to a new study, “Chronic Adolescent Marijuana Use as a Risk Factor for Physical and Mental Health Problems in Young Adult Men”, marijuana-using teen boys were not found to have more physical and mental health issues later in life compared to non-using teen boys.

The research, conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Rutgers University, was published by the American Psychological Association in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. According to the paper, previous studies of marijuana use “have focused primarily on respiratory, cardiac, and metabolic problems, as well as mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis.”

The researchers decided to test the hypothesis that early and chronic use of marijuana by teens would increase the likelihood of development of those disorders. Their study group consisted of 408 teenage boys who were tracked into their mid-thirties. The subjects were identified as “low or non-users” (46 percent); “early chronic users” who started young and use heavily (22 percent); “adolescence-limited users” who quit using at adulthood (11 percent); and “late-increasing users” who started using later in life and continue to use (21 percent).

“What we found was a little surprising,” said lead researcher Jordan Bechtold, PhD, a psychology research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence.”

Researchers controlled for alcohol, tobacco, and hard drug use, socioeconomic status, health insurance coverage, and health prior to marijuana use. They found that early chronic marijuana users were no more likely than late increasing users, adolescence-limited users, or low/nonusers to experience the predicted health problems in their mid-30s.

Even when researchers ran the data without accounting for alcohol and drug use and other factors, there were no significant differences between the groups, even though teens in the early chronic group were using marijuana (on average) once per week by late adolescence and continued using marijuana approximately 3– 4 times a week in their early twenties.

“Given prior research in the area,” wrote the authors, “it was somewhat surprising that marijuana groups did not differ in the likelihood of having a psychotic disorder. Overall, data from this sample provide little to no evidence to suggest that patterns of marijuana use from adolescence to young adulthood, for the Black and White young men in the present study, were negatively related to the indicators of physical or mental health studied here.”

Breaking: Sandra Bland’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit. “She never should have been inside of the jail.”

Previous update: Sandra Bland had 18 nanograms of active marijuana in her blood, raising even more questions in this tragic case. 

I have been riveted to the case of Sandra Bland. If you haven’t been following, Sandra Bland was a 28-year-old African-American woman, active in the #BlackLivesMatter movement against police brutality. She had just moved to Hempstead, Texas, where she had accepted a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. She was pulled over by Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia on July 10, a Friday, when she didn’t signal a lane change while she was moving aside to let the speeding cop pass her. Trooper Encinia asked Bland if she was irritated, she replied that, yes, she was irritated by the traffic stop.

Encinia then asked her to extinguish her cigarette. Bland did not, asking what right he had to have her extinguish a cigarette in her own car? Encinia then ordered her out of the vehicle, Bland asked why she was being arrested, then Encinia brandished his Taser and shouted “I will light you up“. The situation escalated to the point where Encinia is slamming her to the ground, hitting her head, and replying “good” when she tells him she hit her head and suffers from epilepsy. Fourteen times Bland asks why she is being arrested, Encinia never answers her. Bland is repeatedly exclaiming, “I can’t wait to take this case to court!” A female officer arrives to assist and a bystander begins shooting cell phone video. The cops unsuccessfully and illegally attempt to intimidate the witness into not filming the scene.

Bland is taken to the Waller County Jail. Saturday, she makes a call to a friend, expressing disbelief at the situation and trying to round up the $500 she needs to make a $5,000 bail. Three days later on Monday morning, according to police, cops check on her in the 7am hour, she says she’s fine. Around 8am, she calls on the intercom asking how to make a phone call, which she apparently never made. About 9am, a female officer discovers Bland’s dead body, where the six-foot-tall woman allegedly hanged herself by twisting an industrial-sized garbage bag into a ligature, hanging herself from a five-foot-tall partition.

Numerous questions cast doubt on the official version of her death. Upon intake, she had checked a box indicating she had attempted suicide in the past. This should have gotten her an immediate mental health evaluation and elevated the surveillance she would have been subjected to in jail. Instead, she was placed in a cell conveniently located out of sight of the jail cameras, even though there was an empty cell right in camera frame.

Many people are pointing to her mug shot. Her eyes look empty and unfocused. Her dredlocks seem to be hanging backward, instead of laying downwards. Her shoulders seem too far back and her head is tilted in such a way you can see under her chin and up her nose. The background of her shot has the smooth, gray look of the jail cell floor, not the tan, cinder-block look of the wall present in everyone else’s jail photo. Was she already dead and photographed from above laid out on the floor?

I’ve been reporting on too many instances of police abuse of citizens to believe their version of events. Why did Sandra Bland have access to an industrial sized garbage can and its liner in her cell? I’ve been to jail; they take from you any shoelaces or belts and there is nothing in a cell that isn’t bolted down. Besides, what sort of garbage are you going to produce in a jail cell that requires a 50-gallon trash bag?

If you believe the police, the agility and creativity of black people when it comes to killing themselves in police custody is remarkable. Just last year, I reported on Victor White’s death in Louisiana. He was handcuffed behind his back, in the back of a cop’s car, when he somehow pulled a handgun that police never found when patting him down for the arrest, and shot himself in the chest from the front. The year before, it was Jesus Huerta in North Carolina, killing himself in much the same way. The year before that, it was Chavis Carter in Arkansas, shooting himself in the head with an undiscovered gun while handcuffed. Six years prior, it was Oliver Neal III in Philadelphia.

I guess this fear is so palpable for black people that they feel they must fight cops for their guns. That’s what cops say Michael Brown did and what Walter Scott did. Cops are so afraid of losing their weapons to black people they resort to choking them until they suffocate like Eric Garner or slam them around in the police van until their spine breaks like Freddie Gray.

The other pattern I’ve noticed is that when black people die in police custody, marijuana always seems to be involved. Oliver Neal III was arrested when cops “found drugs in his pocket,” but somehow missed the gun he was carrying. Chavis Carter’s urine test “returned a positive result for marijuana.” Jesus Huerta had a juvenile record for “misdemeanor possession of cannabis.” Victor White had “marijuana in his pocket,” but again, cops never found his gun. Michael Brown was so allegedly high on pot he was “a demon.” Eric Garner was out on bail for marijuana possession. Freddie Gray was a seller of marijuana. (Apparently police were unable to find any connection between Walter Scott and marijuana.)

Bringing up the deceased’s positive toxicology test for or previous conviction for marijuana is a classic media move by the police to discredit the victims of their abuse, and it’s happening now with Sandra Bland. “Looking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail,” according to the Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis. Somehow she was booked, frisked, and searched, but cops never found this large quantity of marijuana on her person? Maybe she had formed it in the shape of a gun.

Discovering someone with marijuana on their person or in their system is not a reliable indicator of their criminal nature or suicidal state. According to the latest Gallup poll, 1 in 9 Americans over the age of 18 are current marijuana smokers. In Sandra Bland’s age group, the number is close to 1 in 5.

Some will blame the victim. Why didn’t she just put her cigarette out? Why didn’t she just get out of the car when told? Why wasn’t she just meek and subservient, let the officer violate her rights, and work it out in court later? Sometimes these victim-blamers are the same sort of people who vigorously defend their Second Amendment rights in case they need weapons to fight back against a tyrannical government, but cannot recognize that tyranny when it’s exercised against black citizens.

Maybe Sandra Bland didn’t want to exit her car because she was aware of the two separate incidents in Texas in 2013 where troopers finger-searched the anuses and vaginas of women for marijuana and drugs, finding none, and didn’t change latex gloves between the searches. But Texas made that illegal without a warrant (Fourth Amendment notwithstanding) in 2015 and, of course, no Texas cops would violate the law. (At least she wasn’t in neighboring New Mexico, where you get digital penetration, enemas, x-rays, and colonoscopies if cops suspect you’re hiding drugs in your person.)

I call it like I see it, and lately as I’ve seen black person after black person abused and killed by police over traffic stops and marijuana possession, I see Dylann Roof murder nine black folks in a church, then have cops get him some Burger King food; Jared Loughner gun down six, shoot a Congressperson in the head, and get arrested, unharmed; James Holmes kill twelve in a theater and get arrested, unharmed; One L. Goh shoot seven students in Oakland and get arrested, unharmed, at the supermarket; Scott Dekraai cold-bloodedly murder eight people and get arrested, unharmed. Hell, if you’re a white woman like Amy Bishop, you can shoot your brother with a shotgun in 1986, be investigated for a mail bomb plot in 1994, punch a woman at an IHOP in 2002, and shoot three colleagues dead in 2010, and you’ll be arrested, unharmed.

#BlackLivesMatter is the hashtag social media campaign that has become necessary because the war on drugs has decimated the black community, concentrated crime in their neighborhoods, and set police up in an “us against them” gangster mentality. Ending the war on drugs won’t immediately heal America’s original sin, but it is the first necessary step in halting the infection.