FOOD FIGHT

I've been working on defining and refining this blog for about eight months now and I want to take a moment to thank my readers for the positive feedback you have lent to this project. I was reminded of how lucky I am to have your support yesterday when I found my first negative review on the Nacho Nation site.

I guess I should confess this is actually my second negative review, when I had the luck to meet Dan Forbes at the DPA conference, he told me I was too strident, but he at least said that to me privately and had read more than three paragraphs of my work.

But this was my first public panning. It pissed me off at first - I thought I had given Nachoman a pretty good plug - he called me self-informed, ill mannered and lukewarm, not to mention he misquoted my initial email. He left off the punch line.

But as my long term readers know, I don't hold a grudge and tell you the truth, I love to be challenged. It didn't take long to find it funny. Besides, on review I realized what we had here was a simple failure to communicate. We've since resolved our differences and I still recommend you check the site if you like nachos. I also still stand by the original post however - the major content of the site doesn't change a lot outside of the contests, but the archived pages do hold a wealth of information for the nacho afficionado that is worth checking out. I should also add though that are other interactive pages on the site and he does have a feature that updates daily called Something I Learned Today that is really a blog in disguise that offers a look inside the head of this 'nacho-master'.

He claims he going to apologize on it for being mean to me. I haven't seen anything posted as I write this. Do you think he's waiting to see what I said? If that's the case, this is what you get Mark, and I hope it's enough because there's still a war going on out there and we won't have time to dwell on culinary pleasures for a long time at the Last One Speaks HQ.

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SEA TO SHINING SEA

The WOSDU never sleeps but tonight we actually have a wealth of good news within our golden shores. In no particular order, Detroit will have a medicinal marijuana initiative on the 04 ballot.

Detroiters will have a chance to vote on the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes next August.

If the issue passes, authorities said users in Detroit would be exempt from marijuana-possession laws if they have a medical need for the drug.

Earlier this month, Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie validated 7,779 of the signatures submitted by the Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care, a group of metro Detroiters that has been fighting to get marijuana on the ballot for several years.

I'm telling you again, 04 is feeling the year for this movement to see the fruits of their long labors.

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In Alaska, the case of Noy v. State, which resulted in Attorney General Gregg Renkes instructing all state law enforcement agencies not to arrest or cite adults for personal marijuana use in their home survived an appeal.

In an opinion released Friday, the court denied the Alaska attorney general's petition to rehear the case, which invalidated a 1990 voter initiative criminalizing all amounts of marijuana by calling the resulting ban on personal pot use in the home unconstitutional.

Definitely feels like time to visit my brother in Anchorage...

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In Watauga County, North Carolina, prosecutor Jerry Wilson's misguided plan to prosecute meth labs as WMDs was shot down.

On November 12, Superior Court Judge James Baker dismissed 15 WMD charges against 10 people accused of cooking meth. Making meth in home labs does not rise to the level of possessing, creating, or using weapons of mass destruction, despite Wilson's novel arguments, the judge ruled.

Unsurprising, the DA appealed the ruling.

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California Superior Court judge James Gray has announced that he will run for U.S. Senate in 2004 -- and said his campaign will focus on his signature issue, ending the War on Drugs.

He's running as a Libertarian and while I have some issues with this party's platform, their stance on the drug war is spot on. Gray has this to say.

"I want to make this clear: If we focus our campaign on the Drug War, people who agree with us will not worry about 'throwing away their vote' on a third-party candidate. Our campaign will convince them, because of our anti-war stand, that every vote will rightfully be seen as a vote to end the Drug War."

....he joined the LP because he "realized that the major parties will never begin the process of ending the War on Drugs. The Republican and Democratic parties are invested in the drug war, committed to it."

... Gray is the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs.

Published in April 2001 by Temple University Press, the book expounds on Gray's premise that "drug policy reform [is] the most important issue facing this great country, and our so-called War on Drugs [is] our biggest failure."

Makes me want to move to California just so I can vote for him.

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Speaking of the golden state, The new administration of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday agreed to a settlement that will result in thousands of paroled California drug offenders avoiding a return to prison for "administrative" violations.

As long as the parolees don't have serious felonies on their record, they will no longer be re-incarcerated for simply faililng a urine test.

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Meanwhile Senator Kennedy introduced a bill that contains a provision that would eliminate the federal student aid ban for individuals with drug convictions. It's about time that somebody made an effort to get rid of this dunderheaded HEA nonsense. Why anyone thought denying a young person an education would prevent drug abuse is beyond me.

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Finally in a piece of especially cheering news, Congress is expected to cut funding for the Drug Czar's pet project, anti-drug advertising.

It's only a 5 million dollar cut, but a major psychological victory against the prohibition extremists who wanted a big increase.

$145 million would represent the “lowest budget level since the program launched.”

In addition to being a triumph for taxpayers, a cut in ONDCP funding would be a victory for the Drug Policy Alliance and its supporters – many of whom took action by flooding conference committee member offices with phone calls demanding a reduction in funding.

I was one of those callers. Even a small victory feels pretty large in this war.

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SAYING GRACE

On that note, we're stealing the last word from Drug Sense Weekly's quote of the week.

"Who does not thank for little will not thank for much."

-- Estonian Proverb

Little by little, we will go far.

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