WEED WATCH: 'AMERICA'S MOST VULNERABLE'

The latest assault on drug reformers has landed in Congress, courtesy
of U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, whose new bill would
beef up mandatory minimum sentences for folks convicted of selling
marijuana to minors -- a measure that rebuffs recent challenges to the
infamous federal sentencing scheme.

Sensenbrenner's HR 4547, titled
"Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and
Child Protection Act of 2004," would amend the Controlled Substances
Act to provide a minimum 10-year federal sentence for adults convicted
of selling, or conspiring to sell, or attempting to sell or offer any
quantity of marijuana to anyone under 18. Any subsequent conviction
would net a life sentence -- an extreme measure apparently needed to
protect "children from drug traffickers," according to Sensenbrenner's
charmingly draconian offering.

But that's not all: The bill would also impose mandatory minimum
sentences on anyone convicted of "manufacturing or distributing"
marijuana in proximity to kid-friendly establishments such as video
arcades and libraries.

At press time, the bill had no co-sponsors.

Ironically, the debut of Sensenbrenner's bill coincided with a strong
condemnation of the mandatory minimum sentence scheme, issued by the
400,000-member American Bar Association. Last year, the ABA leadership
announced it would review and weigh in on man-mins after several
federal judges publicly decried them -- including Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who told the ABA convention last summer that
in "all too many cases" the sentencing scheme is simply "unjust."
After nearly a year of study, it appears the ABA -- whose membership
includes prosecutors as well as defenders -- has come to a similar
conclusion, contained in a report that will be presented to the entire
ABA membership in August for consideration.

The report says that mandatory minimums should be repealed, and the
government should come up with "appropriate punishment without
overreliance on incarceration as a criminal sanction" -- and includes
the novel suggestion that "lengthy periods of incarceration" be
reserved for offenders who "pose the greatest danger to the community
and who commit the most serious offenses." The timing of
Sensenbrenner's bill -- ever so slightly ahead of the ABA's clear
condemnation -- seems intentional, said Allen St. Pierre, executive
director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Foundation. "He simply wanted to be out ahead on this," St. Pierre
said.

But what Sensenbrenner could not have anticipated were two court
decisions -- one from federal district court in Massachusetts and one
from the U.S. Supreme Court -- that also deal a heavy blow to the
man-min scheme.

In a memorandum commenting on a string of recent cases before the
court, a federal judge in Boston concluded last week that mandatory
minimums are unconstitutional because they tip the scales of justice
in favor of prosecutors.

And in a June 24 decision (Blakely v. Washington), the Supremes ruled
that juries, and not judges, must decide the facts of a case if those
facts may result in a sentence harsher than called for by a plea
agreement or sentencing scheme.

According to drug reformers, the case could have a staggering effect
in federal drug cases where judges, after conviction, decide a
sentence solely on the amount of drugs involved, a fact not normally
determined by the jury. "It was a whole week of sentencing reform,"
said St. Pierre, "the most extraordinary anti-drug-sentencing week."

In other legal news, on June 28 the Supremes announced they would hear
the government's appeal in a medical marijuana case originally brought
in California by two of the state's seriously ill medical marijuana
patients. In that case the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
last year that federal drug laws do not apply to sick people using
marijuana as medicine in states where that is legal, as long as the
procurement and use of the drug is noncommercial and remains
intrastate. The government argued that plaintiffs Angel Raich and
Diane Monson were procuring pot in violation of federal law -- that
obtaining the dope was, essentially, an economic act that affected
interstate commerce. After losing on appeal, the feds lobbied for the
Supremes to take the case. The court's last two decisions involving
the commerce clause have weighed heavily in favor of states' rights --
which encourages Raich and Monson's supporters. "This is a historic
case," said David Michael, a member of the Raich-Monson legal team.
"The court is going to consider whether [people] who possess and
cultivate cannabis for their own personal [medical] use [are engaging
in a] class of activities that Congress can't touch under its commerce
clause powers." The court will hear arguments this winter.

But last week wasn't all joints and roses for the drug reform crowd,
whose efforts in Nevada to have a conservative legalization question
land on the state's November ballot have been dashed after initiative
organizers -- ahem -- misplaced 6,000 ballot signatures. The
signatures weren't turned in by the Silver State's filing deadline,
meaning the question is almost certainly off the ballot until at least
next year. That little smoker "moment" has cost the measure's national
supporters, the Marijuana Policy Project (and their donors) over
$500,000 in funding, sources said.