Tomorrow the votes will be counted on a California ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana:

The 10-page California initiative would allow anyone 21 or older to possess, share and transport up to an ounce for personal use and to grow up to 25 square feet per residence or parcel. It would allow local governments, but not the state, to authorize the cultivation, transportation and sale of marijuana and to impose taxes to raise revenues.

To make the ballot, the measure needs 433,971 valid signatures. By Tuesday, it was just 15,000 short. Los Angeles County, where supporters collected 142,246 signatures, is expected to put it over the top.

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The Wall St. Journal may seem like an unlikely place to read about culture clash that has arisen among Colorado's medical marijuana community between the "stoners" and the "wellness" folks, but there it is. One point of contention: the names for the strains of pot. The wellness folks don't like names like "trainwreck" or "ak-47s." Another: slogans. The wellness crowd objects to those like "If you've got the pain, we've got the strain." [More...]

The next step in the war on drugs: Embedding U.S. drug and intelligence agents agents in Mexico.

The increasingly close partnership between the two countries, born of frustration over the exploding death toll in Ciudad Juarez, would place U.S. agents and analysts in a Mexican command center in this border city to share drug intelligence gathered from informants and intercepted communications.

...Until recently, U.S. law enforcement agencies have been reluctant to share sensitive intelligence with their Mexican counterparts for fear they were either corrupt or incompetent. And U.S. agents have been wary of operating inside Mexican command centers for fear they would be targeted for execution

The cost: In addition to the $1.4 billion aid package to Mexico, President Obama is asking for an additional $310 million for drug war aid to Mexico.

Tomorrow and Friday, the Department of Justice is holding a symposium on indigent defense, Looking Back, Looking Forward, 2000-2010. Here is the agenda. (pdf). It really is well-rounded, and includes participants from the defense and judiciary as well as prosecution.

Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials from the Department of Justice will convene a symposium about Indigent Defense on Thursday, February 18, 2010, and Friday, February 19, 2010, with representatives from the adult and juvenile indigent defense community, including defenders, key policymakers, and practitioners from across the country.

Attorney General Eric Holder will give the keynote address. It's taking place at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. and media passes are available.

Just two months ago I complained about the excesses in Congress $447 billion 2010 appropriations bill that passed the Senate.

Now we have the 2011 budget and billions in increases just keep flowing to the Department of Justice, DEA, FBI and many other crime-related programs.

At what point does someone stop and say, Whoa? Do we need this? Is it redundant of the money we've already given or of that being requested by other agencies? [More...]

Backers of an initiative to legalize and tax marijuana have delivered petitions with 700,000 signatures -- more than the required 433,000-- to the state to get on the November ballot.

The new initiative would allow California residents to cultivate up to 25 square feet of pot and possess or transport up to 1 ounce. It would include fines and criminal sanctions for providing marijuana to minors.

The initiative would allow cities to tax pot sales and regulate how much pot can be sold legally. It would permit individual cities to ban local sales but let citizens possess and consume marijuana.

The group behind the effort says legalization would bring in more than $1 billion in tax revenue. [More...]

I saw a headline yesterday that said ICE agents arrested 457 people in 83 cities last week in coordinated raids that were part of the largest anti-drug operation the agency has ever conducted. Of the 457 people arrested, 151 were U.S. Citizens.

I checked ICE's website and here's the press release. The headline is "476 gang members, associates and other criminals were put on ICE during Project Big Freeze." Gang members? That's a headline grabber. The key word is "associates" and "other criminals." If you run a car repair shop and your phone number is dialed from a gang member's phone, you can be called "an associate." It's a term that means nothing. If you have a DUI or a theft record, you are an "other criminal."

They throw around the favored phrase de jour: "Transnational criminal street gangs."

"Project Big Freeze is the largest nationwide ICE-led enforcement operation targeting transnational gangs with ties to drug trafficking organizations."

So who'd they get? A cartel leader? A narco-terrorist? Not quite. According to the press release, the three big catches were:[More...]

Seattle's new city attorney, Pete Holmes, says his office will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, and is going to dismiss those that are pending.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed. In addition, his new criminal division chief, Craig Sims, said he is reviewing about 50 more cases. Unless there are "out of the ordinary circumstances," Sims said, the office doesn't intend to file charges for marijuana possession.

"We're not going to prosecute marijuana-possession cases anymore," Holmes said Thursday during a public interview as part of Town Hall's Nightcap series. "I meant it when I said it" during the campaign.

Seattle has an ordinance making pot possession the lowest priority for police. Last week, a ballot initiative was filed to legalize adult marijuana possession, manufacturing and sales in the state. The Legislature is already considering bills to decriminalize and regulate marijuana, or to make it legal in the state.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds morphine and other opioids are effective in treating PTSD, particularly right after the traumatic event.

In a large study of combat casualties in Iraq, Navy researchers reported Wednesday that prompt treatment with morphine cut in half the chances that troops would develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress later on. Other opiates are likely to have similar effects, experts said.

In previous work, researchers had found that larger doses of morphine given to children with severe burns also reduced post-traumatic symptoms, like flashbacks, depression and jumpiness. These symptoms have become lasting in about one in eight service members returning from Iraq.

The results of the study could have wider-ranging impacts -- such as with victims of rape and muggings. The study is here. It concludes: [More...]

A recent scientific study in Israel has found marijuana may help alleviate PTSD and reverse the effects of stress on memory processes.

The study was conducted by members of the psychology department at Israel's University of Haifa. It was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Together, our findings may support a wide therapeutic application for cannabinoids in the treatment of conditions associated with the inappropriate retention of aversive memories and stress-related disorders.

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If this press release wasn't on the DEA's website, I'd think it was a hoax. Incredibly, it celebrates the killing of a suspect.

Justice is done when a suspect is brought before a court and tried, not when he's murdered before his guilt has been determined. Yet, DEA Director Michelle M. Leonhart writes:

“President Calderon of Mexico scored a major victory against the Arturo Beltran-Leyva drug cartel. Last August when DEA, along with our U.S. law enforcement partners, announced the indictment of Mexican drug kingpin Arturo Beltran-Leyva, we were confident that our Mexican counterparts would work with us to pursue him and hold him accountable for his horrific crimes. And last night they did.”

Some background: Alleged Mexican cartel leader Arturo Beltran-Leyva was shot and killed by the Mexican military last Wednesday. He was under indictment in the U.S. (available here), As Leonhart writes:

...[W]hen the Mexican Navy closed in on Beltran-Leyva’s apartment complex, a sustained firefight ensued and Arturo Beltran-Leyva was killed, along with several of his bodyguards.”

As for the future, it looks like we can expect more of the same: Forget the trial, just shoot the perp on sight. Leonhart continues: [More...]

A new report shows that federal prosecution of crimes is at an all-time high. The increase is due to the number of immigration-related crimes. The breakdown by agency:

[T]he FBI — which at one time was the premier investigative agency with the largest share of investigations resulting in prosecutions — has now slid to fourth place, accounting for only 8.7 percent of the FY 2009 filings. Leading the pack last year was Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol, with 46.5 percent of all prosecutions. Coming second was Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with 12 percent, also in Homeland Security. In third place was the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) which accounted for 9.5 percent of all prosecutions.

So the FBI and DEA together now account for only 18.2% of federal proseuctions. [More...]