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Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego

San Diego has been leading the charge in California against medical marijuana. So it's probably no surprise that a group of federally-funded law enforcement officers and personnel have chosen San Diego for their annual anti-cannabis cabal.

Here's the invitation:

September 5, 2006

To: Invited Guests

Re: National Marijuana Initiative Conference

The National Marijuana Initiative (NMI), funded by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program, will hold its annual conference October 31-November 1, 2006 in San Diego, California. This year, the NMI, in partnership with Californian's for Drug Free Youth and its local affiliate the San Diego Prevention Coalition, has expanded the conference for California and other states' Drug Free Community grantees and prevention organizations. For the first time ever, the NMI is inviting prevention professionals to join us for Day 1, and for a new Day 2. An agenda will be sent out within the next few weeks.

All of the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas) Directors located within the "Marijuana-Seven" states have been invited to participate. The HIDTA and their appropriate state and local law enforcement personnel will share their marijuana investigations and eradication efforts on public lands on Day 1. Day 2 will focus on marijuana prevention efforts.

Day 1 The first day of the conference will be dedicated to discussing the outcomes of calendar year 2006 operations and other topics of interest to agencies participating in the NMI. We know you will find the information provided by HIDTA personnel on Day 1 interesting and useful.

Day 2 The second day of the conference will provide the opportunity for prevention coalitions and organizations to focus on appropriate and timely marijuana prevention actions, involving youth, community members, decision makers and law enforcement. We will focus on successful marijuana prevention strategies, programs and activities from around the US.

The conference will be held at the San Diego Marriott Mission Valley. The hotel's address is 8757 Rio San Diego Drive, San Diego, California, 92108. A block of 100 rooms at the government rate has been reserved for October 30 and 31. A conference fee of $100 payable in cash only will be collected the morning of the 31st from 0700 - 0830. The meeting will run from 0830 to 1700 hours on both days, with a continental breakfast being served from 0700 to 0830 both mornings. A no-host reception will be held from 1800 to 2000 hours on October 31st.

Reservations must be received on or before September 30, 2006 in order to secure the government rate. Please have those attending let hotel reservations know they are with the "National Marijuana Initiative" meeting.

Simply cut and paste any of the links below and to facilitate the reservation process. [links omitted]

If you need additional assistance concerning the hotel, please contact Valerie Taylor at 619-230-8171.

Sincerely,

/s/TOMMY C. LaNIER Director National Marijuana Initiative

Is there anyone out there in readerland who is entitled to attend and who would be willing to infiltrate and sign up to spread the new techniques and their analysis of the disseminated tricks and treats to the rest of us?

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    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#4)
    by Che's Lounge on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 07:02:52 AM EST
    The SD and Riverside County boards of supervisors have shut down any dispensaries in the area and are trying to prosecute the owners. Pop 215 passed overwhelmingly 10 years ago. So much for States rights. Just ask the Republican Guard. Maybe I'll register and pay them a visit. Present an "alternative viewpoint". I may need bail money though.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#3)
    by SeeEmDee on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 09:20:09 AM EST
    Once again, we have purported 'civil servants' attempting to override the democratically expressed will of the people (i.e. Prop215) and using taxpayer dollars in order to do so. The legality of such has long skirted the Hatch Act, which prevents the use of taxpayer funds to promote partisan political operations conducted by 'civil servants' against their political foes using taxpayer funded resources. The Act is in dire need of amending to preclude the use of taxpayer dollars by 'civil servants' engaging in de facto political action designed to maintain themselves financially via those same taxpayer's dollars. For, shorn of all the usual rhetoric about "saving the chil-drunnnnn!", it is a bald-faced attempt to maintain themselves in their jobs, and to continue the DrugWar gravy-train at the expense of the taxpayers...while politically 'giving the finger' to those same people who pay their salaries.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 10:15:34 AM EST
    That this is even on the agenda in a western industrialised country in the twenty first century, I'm sorry I can't bother my arse to pass comment.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#2)
    by kdog on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 10:15:34 AM EST
    I should trek out there and give these clowns a good look at the "face of the enemy"...maybe they'll see we're not so bad.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#5)
    by cpinva on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 10:15:34 AM EST
    isn't this basically a police union meeting, to come up with ways to keep employment in the industry on an upward track? aside from that, what possible use do these laws and people serve?

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#6)
    by Bill Arnett on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 10:24:57 AM EST
    Yet again another way for bush and his republican guard to waste our ever fewer resources fighting a non-issue, violating state's rights, and trying to cement dictatorial control of our citizens. As a cancer survivor I can personally attest to the palliative effects of pot, which proved to be much more efficacious than any of the anti-nausea drugs prescribed me, and that had only euphoria as a side-effect. Most of the other meds made me feel subhuman and unable to function in normal soceital settings including nausea, extreme fatigue (I had to quit driving. I kept falling asleep at red lights.), mental confusion, and the suffering of great pain. I remain a chronic pain patient from all the neurological damage done during a radical neck dissection. And Che, I was a professional bounty hunter and bail bond agent for almost 20-years (pre-cancer), so if you do go and need bail, just have someone post the info here as to where and how much the bail is, and Presto! A get out of jail card!

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#8)
    by Sumner on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 02:18:48 PM EST
    The recent DoJ report that over half of prison inmates show signs of mental illness, begs the question: How many lawmakers show similar signs of mental illness? The "we don't make the laws, we just enforce them" crowd are at it again, this time back on "drug laws". I attended one of their early meetings in their war on sex. They were even bent on raising the age of consent to 24 years old, all around the world. They were mostly cops and prosecutors but there were right-wing psychologists there as well. From my submission to the United States Sentencing Commission, re their RFC:
    [O]n Tuesday, May 20, 2003, there was a massive blitz of television stories on "sexual predators". The same day, the local county board of supervisors launched their day-long "Chairman's Conference on Sexual Predators". It included the law enforcement community, the prosecutors, and just about everyone that has a financial stake in a War on Sex. The TV blitz and county conference timing seemed powerfully coordinated. We guessed that the conference was funded by a massive OJJP grant that had been published in the Federal Register. We have since learned we were right. Their main objectives were to change the laws regarding minor offenses, to major felonies for "sexual predator" crimes (in which they included possession of child pornography), and to insure massive punishments, such as life imprisonment, as they asserted that "sexual deviants cannot be cured". They planned to pursue massive new grants for myriad programs under this cash-cow. Yet commensurate with our moratorium on the War-on Sex, some 30,000 registered sex offenders failed to register in California. If the 400 victims per offender figure was real, we would have seen an enormous number of offences by those 30,000 ("incurables") in that time. We didn't. The number is obviously wholly exaggerated. Back on August 29th 2001, the Scottish Rite Center hosted the "First Bilateral Conference on Commercial & Sexual Exploitation of Minors", a salient in the anti-sex, anti-nudism and anti-pornography pogroms. Dr. RICHARD ESTES from the University of Pennsylvania was the chief attack-dog, introducing his iatrogenics. Dr. ESTES warned that there were probably pedophiles secretly in attendance, and he pronounced "pedophiles" with the same hate, loathing, animus and disdain as other bigots might intone the slur, "nigger-lover". Dr. ESTES laid out conference goals as being to initiate fundamental change in the laws, including, raising the age-of-consent in all 50 states, and then around the world. He stressed the agenda of passing harsh criminal sanctions against child pornography and sexual relations involving minors. To fail to do so, he insisted, was to invite acceptance, and "normalcy". We inquired at the conference, "what is the critical mass necessary to achieve 'normalcy'?" ... While the Miller decision pretended to Community Values, (a ruse; witness the pogrom at Samagatuma or the California Proposition 215), at least Miller respected literary, artistic, political, and scientific value. New York v. Ferber, fails dismally in that regard. Without the multi-disciplinary examination of a social current or group, then what we have with Ferber, is a grotesque caricature of early human sexuality pathologically perverted to the narrow purview of police mostly operating in their self-interest.
    I was not invited back. Millions of dollars have been funneled into Southern California by DoJ in order to get the proposition on the ballot here to make a felony of possession of "under age porn". The definition of that then builds out to include swimsuits, sexy clothing etc., ("mission creep" and "sentencing creep"). I find this proposition a "DoJ virus". "The Hatch Act of 1939... named after Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico, ... was officially known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities." Note that is very definitely not a product of Orrin Hatch. The Bush attempt to rush legislation for even more rights-gutting in the continuum, ignores that there are legitimate reasons for people to have secrets from their government and each other. Some say that the United States of America would not even exist but for General George Washington. Even more fundamental than that, America would probably not even exist but for the anonymous and ubiquitous "Publius".

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 06:10:44 PM EST
    Clinton wasted resources in the same way Bill. The truth is both sides of the aisle are against sensible drug policy because there is no profit to be squeezed from a sensible drug policy. Che...rather than register, let's bust down the door with assault weapons, steal everything that isn't bolted down, auction it off and add the bounty to our collective budgets. Ya know...what they do for a living.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 06:10:44 PM EST
    Sumner. Tell me to respect your anonymity and be content to read what you have say in these forums, but at the same time blame me not for wondering, for want of a better phrase, "What are you about?" Do you have a web page, are you published? Please forgive if I cross the bounds of propriety.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#10)
    by Sumner on Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 09:37:32 PM EST
    Hey, oscar wilde. I admire Che's Lounge's to offer to attend a "law enforcement" crowd's conference. Been there, done that. People in attendance at such conferences are often about "punishing" their fellow human beings. "Punishing" usually means, "damaging" them. "Rehabilitation" of non-compliant individuals is not what they are usually about. Power, is. They really, really enjoy what they do. If this meeting on drug law compliance actually extends an "open invitation" to people with all points of view, then perhaps it is actually progressive. In any event, it is a big deal that Che's Lounge offers to go. Overall, I am a generalist, but my field and discipline are in child pornography.

    Re: Anti-Marijuana Cabal to Meet in San Diego (none / 0) (#11)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Sep 09, 2006 at 06:48:40 AM EST
    the NMI is inviting prevention professionals to join us for Day 1, and for a new Day 2. An agenda will be sent out within the next few weeks. How do you like my new title: "Prevention professional"