The story of Tracy Ingle.

Two kids were suspended from school in Lodi, California this week for making the letter “T” in their prom picture. The worry? It could possibly be confused with slang for “thizzin” which refers to – gasp – using MDMA.

Dr. Albert Hoffman has died. Hoffman was the discoverer of LSD.

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This is an issue that affects all of us. We spend billions of dollars enforcing marijuana laws, and distract good cops from enforcing real crimes. Almost a million people are arrested for marijuana possession each year. Many of them end up with permanent criminal records and are barred forever from receiving federal student aid. People don’t just have their lives ruined; some have even died as a result of marijuana law enforcement (e.g. shot to death in paramilitary style raids – yes, it happens.)

The criminalization of marijuana was pure foolishness driven by racism, hysteria and corporate special interests.

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You’ll remember my post about jury nullification in the drug war. The TIME article sparked some fascinating conversation among some lawyers, prosecutors and others over at Mark Bennett’s blog.

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Years ago, I read Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head, and found it to be a good and interesting book, even if somewhat inconclusive.

Somehow I missed Rolling Stone‘s profile of him over a year ago. It’s a really interesting story – his influences and where they took him. I saw Pinchbeck on the Colbert Report a few months ago talking about his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and I was quite confused.

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The lead writers for HBO’s show The Wire wrote a great piece in TIME this week railing against the War on Drugs. Their suggested approach: jury nullification. They say,

“If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

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Great commercial from Sweden…

[h/t David]

Good IHT piece on the stupidity regarding crack cocaine sentences (which, thankfully, are slowly beginning to change);

“There’s no scientific justification to support the current laws,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Article in LA Daily News about David and Jean Fleming and the War on Some Drugs.  While I hate the sycophantic tone about what a “big shot” he is – clearly Brent Hopkins felt he wasn’t worthy – it’s obvious that Fleming has had a great deal of time to reflect on the issue.