Just what we need--a more intrusive alcohol test. But that's what's coming down the pike. A new test is being developed that will detect drinking over months:

Tests which can show how much someone has drunk in previous weeks and months and not just in the past few days are being developed, it was reported today. The new research is likely to benefit not only doctors but police investigating a crime and could attract the interest of employers and insurance companies.

The tests could let a GP know if someone is a light or heavy drinker and tell investigators if a driver or worker involved in an accident was drunk at the time, even if they were not tested until days later, reported the New Scientist magazine.

The New Scientist article is here. Among the uses it predicts for the new tests:

Doctors are likely to be the first to employ some or all of the new tests, to monitor patients with alcohol problems. But they are also likely to attract the interest of employers, insurance companies and forensic scientists. Airlines could, for instance, identify pilots who are heavy drinkers by testing their hair. A urine test might allow police to prove many hours or even days after an accident that someone had been drinking.

From a Press Release issued by Change the Climate, the ACLU, Marijuana Policy Project and other drug reform groups:

The nation’s major drug policy reform groups today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for censoring the speech of those critical of the government’s “War on Drugs.”

....The lawsuit responds to an amendment buried in the 2004 federal spending bill that cuts off more than $3 billion in federal funding from local transit authorities that accept advertisements critical of current marijuana laws and other drug laws. With at least $85 million at stake, the Washington Metro last week rejected an advertisement submitted by a coalition of drug policy reform groups that criticizes marijuana laws for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and imprisoning non-violent offenders.

The rejected advertisement sponsored by the ACLU, Change the Climate, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project shows a group of ordinary people standing behind prison bars under the headline, “Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up Non-Violent Americans.” The same groups that sought to run the advertisement filed today’s lawsuit.

A scientific panel has issued its report onthe FBI's methodology of bullet analysis :

A scientific panel is questioning a method used by the FBI to match bullets from crime scenes, a finding that could give defense lawyers a new route to attack prosecution evidence. In seeking to tie bullets from a crime scene to others found in a suspect's possession, the FBI analyzes the lead for traces of seven other metals, a system that the report from the National Research Council said was sound.

However, the study questioned a statistical analysis method known as chaining in which trace elements in a series of bullets in a box are compared. It noted that the bullets sold together in one package are not necessarily all from the same batch of melted lead.

News of major problems with the non-scientific identification technique began surfacing in November.

It seems that contrary to what FBI agents have testified to in court the past few decades, bullets that appear chemically identical can come from different batches of lead. FBI experts have testified repeatedly in court that each time lead is melted and cast, its composition changes just enough to create a unique chemical signature for each batch.....Recent scientific studies have concluded that this premise is wrong. Studying blocks of lead used in the manufacture of bullets, researchers have found the same chemical makeup in batches made at different times. They also have reported that the concentration of trace elements can vary significantly in the same casting of lead.

If the skeptics are right, the matches found by FBI lab technicians are meaningless.

Update: The Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), through President-Elect (and IP co-founder) Barry Scheck, have issued this press release, call for the reopening of cases in light of the National Academies report on FBI bullet lead analysis.

The National Academies report, Forensic Analysis: Weighing Bullet Lead Evidence is available here.A joint preliminary position paper by the Innocence Project and NACDL on improving the forensic sciences is here.

A new racial profiling study is out. Houston Police have the worst record in all of Texas:

Black motorists stopped by the Houston Police Department are 3.5 times more likely to be searched than Anglos, the worst disparity reported by any major Texas city, according to the first statewide compilation of statistics since law enforcement agencies have been required to report racial data on traffic stops. An analysis of the data from 2002 also found that Latino drivers stopped by HPD officers are 2.4 times more likely than Anglos to be searched.

The study of statistics from 413 law enforcement agencies released Tuesday was commissioned by the Texas State Conference of NAACP branches, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Criminal Justice Reform Coalition.

More report details are here. The full report is here. (pdf)

From a press release from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL):

A new study of Virginia's indigent defense system released Monday concludes that the state is still failing miserably in providing constitutionally-adequate representation in criminal cases to persons who cannot afford it. The report, "A Comprehensive Review of Indigent Defense in Virginia," was prepared by The Spangenberg Group and sponsored by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants, the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington & Burling, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"The Spangenberg Report documents what is painfully obvious - that Virginia fails to protect its innocent citizens from wrongful conviction," said Steve Benjamin, Richmond, president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "For decades, Virginia has refused to honor its constitutional duty to provide legal representation to citizens who are accused of a crime, but who cannot afford the high cost of their own private attorney. This failure means that innocent people go to prison, while guilty criminals remain free. Without adequate resources for public defenders and appointed counsel, Virginia can’t hope to ensure that our criminal justice system reliably determines the truth of a criminal accusation." Benjamin also serves on NACDL's Board of Directors and is a vice chair of the NACDL Indigent Defense Committee.

A summary of the report is here. The full report is here. (pdf)

Update: Here's a news article on the report.

"Too Hot of a Potato: A Citizen Soldier's Encounter With the Polygraph" is a personal account of the life-changing consequences of wrongly failing an FBI polygraph examination -- and of a soldier's exercising his First Amendment right to speak publicly on polygraph policy. George Maschke was a soldier with a security clearance in the interrogations program. He served in the first Gulf War, was an Arab translator at interrogations and then had an opportunity to work with federal prosecutors on the World Trade Center bombing case. He decided to apply to the FBI to become an agent. Then the nightmare began:

On Monday, 15 May 1995, FBI polygrapher Jack Trimarco met me for the first time in his life and within three hours concluded that I am a spy, drug dealer, and drug abuser.

The FBI rejected my application to become an FBI special agent and entered my polygraph examiner's false accusations of deception into my permanent FBI Headquarters file. The FBI's accusations have had life-changing consequences for me, and I am telling my story to help hasten the day that our government ends its misplaced reliance on the pseudoscience of polygraphy, a practice it has with good reason prohibited the private sector from employing.

In 2000, Mr. Maschke and Gino Scalabrini co-founded AntiPolygraph.org and published The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, a free e-book with chapters on polygraph validity, policy, procedure, and countermeasures.

We included information on countermeasures not to help liars beat the system, but to provide the truthful with a means of protecting themselves against the random error associated with an invalid test.

by TChris

Californians in need of medical marijuana will be able to choose from several varieties at a new store in Roseville -- at least until the feds move in to shut it down. The store doesn't bother the local police chief, who acknowledges that Proposition 215 made the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes a legal business under state law.

Federal law is a different story. Listen to Richard Meyer, a special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco:

"Federal law is clear about marijuana: It is illegal to cultivate, possess or distribute it," Meyer said. "So if that club is selling marijuana, it's going to be in violation of federal law.

"Just because (the Roseville club) is in operation doesn't mean it's legitimate or that we condone it. They should not be surprised if one day we show up with a warrant at their door."

Although Meyer complained that staff shortages made it difficult to close marijuana clubs, the Roseville business has reason to worry. Other distributors of medical marijuana have been arrested or shut down, and the Ashcroft Justice Department seems determined to stand in the way of states that enact sensible legislation to benefit the sick and dying.

The question, according to this article in the Lincoln Journal Star, is "Where do tobacco pipes end and marijuana bongs begin?"

The U.S. attorney for Nebraska, Mike Heavican, announced the indictments Wednesday of four people from two shops on federal drug paraphernalia charges. If convicted, they could face up to three years in prison for each charge and fines of up to $250,000 each.

They also face federal inspection of their business bookkeeping, authorities said, efforts that could lead to the forfeiture of money made selling illicit items.

Compare the state and federal penalties:

Federal drug paraphernalia charges are felonies; Nebraska law treats paraphernalia possession and sales as low-grade misdemeanors.

This is part of Attorney General John Ashcroft's zero tolerance policy. The Government thinks it is attacking the drug policy from the demand side by busting head shops:

Heavican called the effort part of the United States’ push for narcotics “demand reduction.” When U.S. officials ask countries such as Mexico and Colombia to fight drug supplies, he said, officials there ask Americans to fight demand..... Many drug dealers, addicts and users would not seek “the carrot of treatment” without “the stick of prosecution.”

We agree with Eric Sterling, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, who says of the busts:

“The goods are out there in the public eye, so it requires absolutely zilch investigation. It’s easy, cheap and headline-grabbing.”

[comments now closed]

It's official. Effective today, Great Britain has reclassified and downgraded marijuana. Instead of being a class B drug like amphetamines, it is a class C drug like tranquilizers and steroids. Possession of small amounts results in an on-the-spot warning.

Under the reclassification, the possession, production and supply of marijuana are still illegal, but the penalties are different. Adults found carrying the drug are now more likely to receive a warning than a prison sentence. And the maximum prison sentence for possession has dropped from five to two years. Legally, this brings Britain in line with some European countries such as the Netherlands, although in practice these laws are likely to be more strictly enforced in Britain.

At least in Britain, reefer madness is slowly giving way to acceptance that marijuana does have medical benefits:

...the drug may have positive effects for some. Marijuana is thought to dull chronic pain and may ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), an incurable disease of the nervous system that causes spasms, pain and tremor.

In a recent large-scale trial, 60% of MS patients who took synthetic cannabis said it helped their mobility and eased their pain and muscle stiffness. "It doesn't suit everyone, but it does suit some," says Clare Hodges, MS sufferer and founder of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, a pressure group that lobbies for the medicinal use of marijuana. About 10,000 seriously ill patients in Britain use cannabis to control their symptoms, says Hodges. Sufferers tend to smoke or eat the drug.

A leading British criminologist gives the reasons why the downgrading should be extended to small home growers.

How do our presidential candidates stack up on the issue? Check out NORML's presidential score card and find out where they stand on decriminalization, on medical use and on the Higher Education Act provision that prevents convicted marijuana offenders from receiving student aid.

John Kerry scores the highest of the viable candidates. He is the only candidate expressing any support for medical marijuana:

There was a stand-off at San Francisco General Hospital yesterday, as a doctor refused a police request to search a female suspect's private body parts for cocaine.

San Francisco has had some touchy police standoffs -- but nothing quite like the 10-hour showdown that came to a head in the San Francisco General emergency room between cops, doctors and a female drug suspect who refused to surrender several rocks of crack cocaine she was concealing in her very private parts.

Before it was all over, a doctor was herself being threatened with arrest -- and the head of the city's Health Department was on his way down to do the search himself.

The police obtained a "body cavity" search warrant. The doctor refused to perform it, stating it wasn't a medical emergency.

Professor and blogger Mark A.R. Kleiman sees this as a negative, but we applaud it.

The Justice Department has decided to stop testing new jail inmates for drug use.

It was a social science project begun by former Attorney General Edwin Meese under President Reagan.

The program, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program, or ADAM, tests newly arrested criminals entering jail for narcotics violations in 35 cities. Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, in the Reagan administration, started it in 1986.

Cops and "criminal justice experts" (we put that in quotes because in our experience the term means one with a law enforcement leaning-- for some reason we rarely if ever hear criminal defense lawyers referred to as "justice experts") want to keep the program and argue that it's a useful tool in the drug war.

"This is a real loss," said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is editor of The Drug Policy Analysis Bulletin. "Closing down ADAM indicates a complete lack of seriousness about getting a handle on the drug abuse problem in this country."

We think it's a privacy invasion to the inmates. They committed a crime, they go in to do their time. Why should the Government be entitled to their bodily fluids? Sorry, but we don't think a social studies project is a good enough reason.

Law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts criticized ending the program, saying it was ....widely credited for tracking the rise and fall of the crack epidemic and detecting the beginning of the methamphetamine epidemic on the West Coast.

The Justice Department cites a lack of funding for cutting the program. The "criminal justice experts" think the Office of National Drug Control Policy should have lobbied Congress harder for more money.

Why is the Government spending so much money --$23 million--on social science projects and surveys instead of on providing treatment and alternatives to prison for drug users? Why are inmates being forced to be statistical guinea pigs?

True Story:

David Dean Davidson, 52, and Cynthia Barcelo Blake, 53, grew marijuana on their own property for their own use. They had a doctor's recommendation to take marijuana for their illnesses. Yet they were arrested, and Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom pursued a case against them for six months. Then, in the courtroom, she suddenly dropped the charges.

Thinking the case was dismissed, the couple's lawyers were lured into the judge's chambers. While the lawyers were absent, the feds swarmed into the courtroom and arrested Davidson and Blake on federal charges. The lawyers were deprived of the opportunity to advise their clients of their rights. If convicted, the couple now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

You can read more here.

Strom "knew she couldn't win," defense attorney Tony Serra said. "So, she concocted this terrible, illegal, underhanded scheme to separate David and Cindy from their attorneys and transition them into federal jurisdiction, where she knows that medical necessity is not a defense."