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Woody's Take

From The Daily Bulldog:

Ah, springtime in college... who can forget those glorious days of trying to concentrate on a textbook with your back against a big tree and your face upturned toward the warm April sun? Or the frisbees and the whiffle ball games and the early morning walks to class in shirtsleeves and sandals in the balmy springtime air? And who can forget the drug dogs?

You know, the drug dogs. The drug dogs requested by campus security to make sure that no student could possibly be committing the unthinkable -- smoking marijuana at a time when he should be studying 24 hours a day. The drug dogs that can feret out that single joint of marijuana which, under current federal law, will cost even the best student every bit of her student aid for the next 12 months. (That the same student could be convicted of one or two or even three OUI charges without any effect on her student aid isn't the point of this editorial).

It happened here at the University of Maine at Farmington less than two weeks ago. It happened, as I understand it, when a drug dog was brought onto campus to sniff his way around vehicles and people at an event sponsored by a UMF student group, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. Put aside the fact that a court could well find that this kind of selective scrutiny by campus security violated this group's free speech rights. (That meritorious potential lawsuit is not the point of this editorial either).

My wife and I moved to Farmington 22 years ago, in no small part, because there was a vibrant college like UMF so closely integrated with the town. For most of those 22 years I have coached UMF rugby players and taught UMF students about the law and personally taken advantage of many of the cultural offerings the college generously shares with all of us.

More than anything, I think it is my great affection for UMF that causes me to write this now. Drug dogs patrolling the campuses at Bates or Bowdoin or up in Orono would unquestionably offend me, but somehow they would not seem quite so offensive. That the "war on drugs" would be so aggressively and foolishly waged at UMF, for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that a group of students want to explore a more "sensible" drug policy, seems incredibly ironic.

And don't get me wrong about dogs. I love them at home and on the farm and in the law office. My dog Mike and I even attended our first UMF faculty meeting yesterday. Dogs doing police work can sometimes bother me more.

As a college-age student back in 1970 I visited the Berlin Wall before it was torn down. The narrow strip of "No man's land" that ran like a long ribbon between between the two Germanys was studded with land mines and barbed wire, but most forboding of all to me were the vicious looking guard dogs walking the perimeter with their armed East German handlers.

Maybe you're right, I probably am going too far. This isn't East Berlin and it's not 1970. But when I heard last week about this ill-conceived decision at UMF, I thought of those East German guard dogs nevertheless. Without very good cause, we don't need drug dogs patrolling the UMF campus.

My Letter to the Editor...

From the Daily Bulldog:

Security at Event Excessive

On Friday, April 27th, a local organization held an event. The University of Maine at Farmington's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy put on a concert in coordination with UMF's Spring Fling, a week long organization of events. The concert was held in the Fitness and Recreation Center on-campus, from midnight to 3AM. There was reasonable debate before the concert was put on about security and what would be the best option. Other members of SSDP and I really saw no need for the excessive amount of security Campus Safety wanted us to have, but when braced with an ultimatum of having the event with plenty of security or not having the event at all, we decided to put it on with the amount of security Campus Safety deemed necessary.

Not to my surprise, a day before the concert, I received word that Campus Safety was going to have the Farmington Police Department bring their K-9 Unit. There were at least five police officers at this event and no more than sixty to seventy people attending. Separate security included student security and campus safety. In my opinion, this is extremely excessive. To my knowledge, two women were summonsed for possession of cannabis and one man was arrested for public intoxication.

Campus Safety has no defined security policy and hence never really has to specify how much security will be anywhere. I am an out-of-stater from Rhode Island, but going to school in Maine has made me realize how much Mainers value their civil rights and liberties. This event sent a message to me and many of the members of my organization that slowly but surely those civil right and liberties are being stripped away from us one by one and the biggest proponents are the Drug War and the impeding police state. Please, citizens, realize what the federal government is doing to us every day. Wake up.

Mike Simpson
President
University of Maine at Farmington's Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Check it;

Fuck the police.

Bill to enhance Maine Medimari law

Sen. Ethan Strimling (D-Portland) has introduced a bill to strengthen the state's medical marijuana law.

From MaineToday.com

Strimling's bill would order the state Department of Health and Human Services to create a registry of nonprofit corporations that could dispense marijuana to people who have permission to use it.

The bill would increase the amount of marijuana a user can legally possess from 2.5 ounces of harvested plant and six plants to 2.5 ounces and 12 plants. It would allow nurse practitioners, not just doctors, to authorize marijuana use for medicinal purposes.

"We need to do what we can do" at the state level, Strimling said. Although Maine voters passed the law eight years ago, he said, "we have yet to figure out a system to get people their medication."

The proposal would direct the state to issue identification cards to eligible patients and permit marijuana use for diseases that are not covered by the current law, including Crohn's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

The bill would prohibit any Maine police officer from helping federal agents investigate, arrest or prosecute anyone holding a valid state marijuana card, unless the case involves a violation of state law. Any police officer who violates that ban would be suspended or fired, according to the bill.

"The law that's in place right now in Maine for medical marijuana is not acceptable," said Jonathan Leavitt of the Maine Marijuana Policy Initiative, which supports legalizing marijuana and strengthening the medicinal law.

"Without dispensaries being set up, it's not a real option," he said of the current law.

Boy on skunk cannabis butchered a grandmother

The Story

A teenager who was crazed by high-strength cannabis butchered a grandmother after 'voices in his head' told him to stab a woman.

Ezekiel Maxwell, a paranoid schizophrenic, launched the horrific attack after years of smoking super-strength 'skunk weed'.

Yep it's all the fault of the demon weed he killed that woman and not that he was a paranoid schizophrenic.

The 17-javascript:void(0)
year-old claimed 'gangster voices' from the ultra-violent computer game Grand Theft Auto had set him on a mission to stab a black woman.

So it's not just weed it's violent video games. I bet Jack Thompson is creaming himself over this story.

-Nick