NO ONE HAS EVER DIED FROM SMOKING MARIJUANA, BUT....

My friend and correspondent, Marc Emery, sent me this article written by Tony Newman from DPA (the Drug Policy Alliance). Marc is a Canadian businessman and political activist who owned and operated Cannabis Culture Magazine, Pot-TV, the BC Marijuana Party, and Marc Emery's Cannabis Culture Headquarters (previously the BCMP Bookstore, and HEMP BC before that.)

He was also the world's most famous marijuana seed retailer and the biggest financial supporter of the marijuana movement world-wide until the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Canadian law enforcement arrested him in Canada and shut down Marc Emery Direct Seeds in July 2005. Marc is currently imprisoned in Yazoo City medium-security prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi after being extradited on May 20th, 2010 by the Canadian government. He was sentenced on September 10th in Seattle federal court to 5 years in prison for "distribution of marijuana" seeds, though the US Drug Enforcement Administration admitted it was actually for his political activism and financing the marijuana movement.

I became acquainted with Marc about a year or so ago, although I'd followed his story in the news the two or three years prior to his arrest and extradiction to the US. Being a Canadian Citizen, and having a son convicted of selling marijuana who is currenlty serving a lengthy prison sentence here in California, I suppose it was fitting Marc and I would ultimately come to know each other. After he had been designated and sent to D Ray James prison in Georgia I wrote him, asking how he was doing. I understand how important receiving mail and correspondence is to prisoners and I believed Marc was more a political prisoner than anything. The US DEA wanted to make an example of Marc. Our friendship started at that letter and we correspond regularly.

I am fully aware of the types of shenanigans our DEA is involved in, and the countless victims who have suffered under the US's failed War on Drugs, but this article he sent me today, published in The Huffington Post, was one I wanted to share:

No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.

This week, Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old woman from Detroit, was killed after working as a police informant. On October 20, Hilliard was arrested for a small amount of marijuana. The police offered her a way out: She could set up a drug deal. She called a drug dealer and said she had someone who wanted to buy $335 of cocaine and marijuana. When the dealer showed up he was arrested. The dealer was released, and three days later Hilliard was found dead in the streets. The dealer has been charged with murder.

Hilliard tragic death brings back memories of Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old, Florida State graduate from Tallahassee who also worked as an informant after she was busted with a small amount of marijuana and Ecstasy. Hoffman was sent alone on a "buy and bust" and was given $13,000 to buy Ecstasy, cocaine and a gun. The men shot Hoffman five times, stole her car and credit card, and dumped her body into a ditch. This week Tallahassee approved a $2.6 million settlement with Rachel's parents.

These two women should still be with us on this earth, but were instead pawns in an unwinnable drug war that led to their violent deaths.

There are so many sick aspects of the failed drug war, but law enforcement's forcing people with a drug arrest to choose between draconian prison sentences or becoming an informant is one of the most nauseating. My friend and colleague, Anthony Papa, was sentenced to 15-years-to-life after a bowling buddy convinced him to drop off an envelope of cocaine in exchange for $500. The bowling buddy had been busted for drugs and the police said he was facing a long mandatory minimum drug sentence unless he could help them bust more people. The more people he helped them set up, the less prison time he would get. So he ruined his friend Papa's life (and many others) by setting him up in a drug sting.

There are more than 1.6 million drug arrests in the U.S. every year - the vast majority for mere possession. So many deaths and so many people are behind bars because police use people who get caught with small amounts of drugs to set up family, friends and strangers.

Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org)

In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus