The always amazing Big Picture blog has a series of arresting images from the world of drug law enforcement and treatment.

The 2009 United Nations World Drug report, released earlier this year, notes that 2009 marks "the end of the first century of drug control (it all started in Shanghai in 1909)", and that the illicit drug market worldwide has now become a $320 billion-per-year industry. As drug-related violence in Mexico appears to continue unabated, and crackdowns in Afghanistan are being made against its massive opium crops, new efforts are also being made worldwide in methods of enforcement and treatment of recovering addicts.

Marie Claire is jumping on the pot bandwagon with a feature on modern women pot smokers.

Jennifer Pelham* kicks off her black Marc Jacobs pumps, slips out of her trim Theory blazer, and collapses on the couch. The 29-year-old corporate attorney for one of Manhattan's top law firms has just clocked another 12-hour day, and though it's over, she's having a hard time shaking off her frustrations. (A partner had eviscerated the contract she'd drafted, then left before Pelham had a chance to explain herself.) Still distracted, Pelham orders dinner—sushi, as usual—then reaches for a plastic orange prescription bottle standing on the corner of her coffee table alongside a glass pipe and blue Bic lighter, just as the cleaning lady left them. She twists off the cap, pinches off a piece of the fragrant green bud inside, gingerly places it in the bowl of the pipe, and lights up. Over the next 30 minutes, she takes three deep drags, enough to drown out the noise whirring in her head. Then she eats.

"I hate the term pothead—it connotes that I'm high 24/7, which I'm not," Pelham says, wincing. "I don't need it to get through my day. I just enjoy it when my day is over." Her nightly ritual costs only $50 a month, a pittance compared with the cost of her monthly gym membership or a Saturday night out with her fiancé, an investment banker, who occasionally smokes with her. At 5'4", slim and athletic—she ran three miles a day while in law school—Pelham insists that pot is the ideal antidote to a hairy workday: It never induces a post-happy-hour hangover and, unlike the Xanax a doctor once prescribed for her anxiety, never leaves her groggy or numb. "Look, every female attorney I know has some vice or another," Pelham shrugs, tucking her long brown hair behind her ears, her 3-carat cushion-cut engagement ring catching the light. "It's really not a big deal."

Most of us know someone like Jennifer Pelham, a balls-to-the-wall career animal whose idea of decompressing after a grueling day isn't a glass of Chardonnay but a toke (or three) of marijuana—not just every now and again, but on a regular basis—the type who stashes a pack of E-Z Wider rolling paper in the silverware drawer or keeps a pipe at the ready next to a pile of bills. According to a recent study by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an estimated 8 million American women smoked up in the past year—a lowball figure that reflects only those willing to cop to it. Among them is the upper-middle-class Pottery Barn set: One in five women who admitted to indulging in the previous month lives in a household earning more than $75,000 a year. They cut a wide swath across the professional spectrum, including lawyers, editors, insurance agents, TV producers, and financial biggies, looking nothing like the blotto hippie teens of Dazed and Confused or the unemployed, out-of-shape schlubsters who are a staple of the Judd Apatow canon. By all outward appearances, they are card-carrying, type A workaholics who just happen to prefer kicking back with a blunt instead of a bottle.

They just keep comin'

In a remarkable opinion issued today with potential Orange County implications, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blasted the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for committing "highly objectionable," "tainted," "reckless," "misleading" and "illegal" conduct in a 2005 attempt to seize more than $186,400 from a legally compliant Southern California medical marijuana distributorship.

The justices showed no patience for LAPD's efforts to keep the cash for itself and then later--after it was clear they couldn't take possession legally--transferred it to Thomas P. O'Brien's LA-based U.S. Attorney's office, which planned to kickback as much as 80 percent of the money to the local cops.

"We are particularly concerned by the possibility that the LAPD might stand to profit from [its own] unlawful activity," wrote circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton, who went on to describe the money grab as "disturbing" and a "distinct" violation of the U.S. Constitution's limitations of police state activities such as tainted searches and seizures of private property.

I saw Where the Wild Things are last weekend. It was very intensely interesting and moving. I got into a discussion online with some people who said they didn't want to see it because the music in the trailer turned them off. One person compared it to "weak norwegian folk music sung by tone deaf high people". Actually, this is not far off the mark. But if you see the movie, you will understand that the music isn't supposed to be "good".

The most striking thing to me about the movie (other than that I cried for a half hour after it was over, and again every time I tried to talk about it) is that it defies a normative narrative convention of conflict-tension-resolution. I mean, it's not news that many movies have taken various approaches to the idea of portraying "real life" in one form or another, thus requiring a departure from the breaking-things-down-into-units-of-narrative-logic. This does it in a way that is different from any other movie I've ever seen, and it does it well.

The point of the movie is to put you inside the head of a lonely, lovable, scared child, living in difficult circumstances, who doesn't understand why the world is not how he wants it to be, doesn't understand his own emotions, doesn't understand other people's emotions. It does this better than anything else I've ever seen. It is not comfortable to experience Max's mental landscape. The music did not make me comfortable. Nothing about the movie made me comfortable. It was profoundly moving.

The story I read is that Maurice Sendak, the author of the original book, asked Spike Jonze to make a film adaptation after seeing Being John Malkovich. This movie has a similar trippy eeriness to it as Malkovich, a similar sense of being inside someone else's experience. I imagine that was the appeal of Jonze as a director.

I highly recommend this movie, especially for anyone who considers her/himself a student of the interplay of inner and outer phenomenal reality.

David wrote to tell us about DrugCritics.com, a drug education website focused on the experiences of drug users. Drug users can sign up and submit reviews and experiences for the commonly used legal and illegal drugs. Users rate drugs, share experiences, and debate the controversial issues of drug use. For instance, does pot make you lazy?

Yes, pot makes you lazy. Marijuana is a depressant by nature. It makes you tired and less likely to move. I’ve never smoked weed and done anything productive, and, all of my friends and acquaintances that smoke a lot of weed are complete burnouts. All they do is play video games and watch TV...

And on the other side of the debate:

No, pot does not make you lazy... What I have found is that marijuana can make everything seem much more interesting. Whether it is a movie, sporting event, video game, or homework - when you are high, it is more fun. This causes unmotivated people to become content with sitting on a couch and watching TV or playing video games all day. These people are already lazy and unmotivated before they ever smoked marijuana. Marijuana was just a simple solution that allows their lazy, boring life to seem exciting and interesting. If these people stopped using marijuana, they might get off the couch more often, but not out of a new found motivation, but because of the boring reality they are experiencing without marijuana...

Feel free to weigh in on this issue at the site. They have polls for the items they discuss.

Marijuana reform trifecta in play...

Los Angeles' ban on new medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid, a Superior Court judge said Monday in a decision that undermines the city's 4-month-old drive to shut down hundreds of the stores.

The judge issued an injunction banning enforcement of the moratorium against Green Oasis, a dispensary in Playa Vista that had challenged the ban. But city officials acknowledged the ruling would effectively block current efforts to enforce the ban against other dispensaries.

The decision came on the day the Obama administration issued guidelines that limit federal prosecution of medical marijuana users and dispensaries. A Justice Department memo makes official a policy change that the president adopted earlier this year -- one that inadvertently contributed to the city's dizzying dispensary boom.

Those actions cheered supporters of medical marijuana, but Los Angeles officials insisted they were committed to closing down and prosecuting dispensaries. The city attorney and the district attorney maintain that most are selling marijuana for profit in violation of state law.

The Global Post ran a piece on the legalization movement in Central and South America. Mexico and other Latin American countries are moving toward drug decriminalization — and Washington isn't complaining.

After carefully packing light green Mexican marijuana into a homemade water pipe, university student Salvador Chavez drew a deep breath from the tube and blew the smoke out of the window of his modest family home.

“I don’t care if the neighbors call the police on me. They can’t arrest me for this anymore,” he said behind lightly glazed eyes. “But then police here never cared much about a bit of marijuana anyway. Everything has just stayed the same really.”

Almost two months after Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts all major narcotics — including marijuana, cocaine and heroin — the most notable thing is how little has changed...

But while the law has yet to have a measurable impact on the Mexican streets, it has sent waves across the Americas to groups campaigning to change drug laws in their own countries.

Shortly after Mexico enacted its decriminalization act on Aug. 20, the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish people for personal consumption of marijuana.

“The state cannot establish morality,” Argentine Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti said following that ruling.

The Argentine Congress is now looking to change its laws accordingly.

Then weeks later in Colombia, the Supreme Court also ruled that people could not be prosecuted for possession of narcotics for personal use, resisting pressure from conservative President Alvaro Uribe to lock up drug users.

“Real change is happening. More and more people over the world are taking a more rational view on drugs,” said Maria Lucia Karam, a retired judge in Brazil who is part of the pro-legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

“People are understanding that the prohibition of drugs does more damage than the actual drugs themselves,” she said.

A similar court ruling to that of Colombia and Argentina may soon be passed in Brazil, Karam said.

Thanks Tina!

Tom Angell at LEAP sent us this news:

What a news day for marijuana policy!

Coming on the heels of today's new federal medical marijuana policy, Gallup just released a poll showing record-high support for full marijuana legalization, at 44%.

Check out the link to Gallup's site for some interesting demographic breakdowns, especially among voters in the West and liberals.

Thanks Tom!

Bad news for those of you who love to trash the Obama administration for not being so radical that he never could have been elected:

WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said on Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.

In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources, and that going after individuals who were in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement accompanying the memo. “But we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”

So apparently the new admin took their time to think about it, and then after careful consideration, came to the correct rational conclusion.

Seriously, though, this is HUGE news. I bet I'm not going to be the only one to post it here, too. It's all over the news, just hit an hour ago but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of talk about this. It will be interesting to see whether the admin is clever enough to throw "states' rights" in the face of the inevitable conservative attack dogs who try to score cheap points off this.

Now if I could just find some way to make sense out of the trillion-dollar bailout. At least they'll save a bundle now that they're not busy arresting cancer patients.

Anyway.

Here is a news article suggesting a very reasonable solution to the problems of Afghanistan. Turning the opium trade into a legitimate business, helping the economy and ending the nightmare of the Taliban.

Today, it's Afghanistan. Ongoing attempts by the United States to obliterate the poppy fields of that embattled land have been a fiasco. Afghan fields now supply the opium for 92 per cent of the global heroin trade.

And Turkey? It's still growing opium poppies and selling the product – but not to the black market. It earns $60 million (all figures U.S.) a year exporting the raw materials that are turned into medical morphine and codeine.

The country's shift in 1974 from an out-of-control supplier of criminal narcotics into a licensed system of legal farming is a clear model for what could be done in Afghanistan. Or so a growing number of analysts are controversially arguing.