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Philadelphia Weekly cover art 3/2/2011

The Philadelphia Weekly has published a groundbreaking feature article looking at the racial disparity of the city’s marijuana arrests. Blunt Assessment: The Need for Legal Weed in Philadelphia explores the issue from the streets to the courts.

Journalist Nina Hoffmann interviewed hip-hop artists, retired law enforcement, marijuana policy experts (including this author) and most revealing; black Philly residents as they go though Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program.

Each year PhillyNORML compiles the arrests statistics for the state of Pennsylvania using the annual Uniform Crime report. PA’s crime datatbase is actually easily accessible by the public, unlike other states like New Jersey.

Read the numbers in the following articles:

2008 city stats – Philly: White women rarely arrested for pot

2009 city stats – Philadelphia: Marijuana arrests remain high

2009 PA statewide – Pennsylvania saw 25,635 marijuana arrests last year

In 2009 and 2010 PhillyNORML urged city officials to change local marijuana procedures.

Last year Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams and the State Supreme Court created a diversion process called the Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) Program. The tangibly eases the penalties for the over 4,700 adults caught with small amounts of pot each year. The successful and publicly popular shift will save the city about $3 million annually.

Unfortunately, Philly still requires the custodial arrest of citizens caught with any amount of marijuana before they go into the SAM program. Most counties in Pennsylvania issue a summary violation: A ticket with no arrest.

Take a moment to read Blunt Assessment: The Need for Legal Weed in Philadelphia

Amy Winehouse, who reportedly has used weed in the past as a way to suppress her urge for harder drugs, is found dead in her London flat. The singer/songwriter has had well-known battles with addiction over the years.

LONDON — Amy Winehouse, the beehived soul-jazz diva whose self-destructive habits overshadowed a distinctive musical talent, was found dead Saturday in her London home, police said. She was 27.

Winehouse shot to fame with the album “Back to Black,” whose blend of jazz, soul, rock and classic pop was a global hit. It won five Grammys and made Winehouse — with her black beehive hairdo and old-fashioned sailor tattoos — one of music’s most recognizable stars.

Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene.

An ambulance could be seen parked beneath the trees outside her London home, and the whole street was cordoned off by police tape. Officers kept onlookers away from the scene.

Last month, Winehouse canceled her European comeback tour after she swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs in her first show in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Booed and jeered off stage, she flew home and her management said she would take time off to recover.

Read more.

Amy Winehouse, the artist:

Quotes are kinda like quick and easy snack food for the brain. Here’s some mental potato chips for your mind munching, thanks to the good folks at Baked Life.

1. “Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”- William F. Buckley Jr.

2. “Forty million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn’t like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.” – Jay Leno

3. “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast” – Ronald Reagan

4. “The drug is really quite a remarkably safe one for humans, although it is really quite a dangerous one for mice and they should not use it.” – J.W.D Henderson Director of the Bureau of Human Drugs, Health and Welfare, Canada

5. “Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.” – Darryl Gates Head of Los Angeles Police Department, United States Senate Judiciary Committee

6. “When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale and never tried it again.” –Bill Clinton

7. “When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point.” – Barack Obama

8. “Now, like, I’m President. It would be pretty hard for some drug guy to come into the White House and start offering it up, you know? I bet if they did, I hope I would say, ‘Hey, get lost. We don’t want any of that.” – George W. Bush

9. “I think pot should be legal. I don’t smoke it, but I like the smell of it.” – Andy Warhol

10. “I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening – or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early midafternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk.” – Steve Martin

BONUS QUOTES!!!  BONUS QUOTES!!! BONUS QUOTES!!!  BONUS QUOTES!!!

“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I use to, too.” -Mitch Hedberg

“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” – Thomas Jefferson

Editor’s Note – The TJ quote was unattributed – LINK. The following however is fully attributed.

“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!”
George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), The Writings of George Washington, Volume 33, page 270 (Library of Congress)