Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

The federal government has been chasing award-winning former baseball pitcher Roger Clemens since 2007 with a swarm of investigators and prosecutors.  Ninety agents worked on the case and 200 interviews were conducted.  After one jury was stopped due to a prosecution miscue that caused a mistrial, the second jury trial poured out testimony from 40 witnesses over 7 weeks.  The trial concluded a few weeks ago with a jury verdict of not guilty on all counts.

Having faced one count of obstructing Congress, three counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury, all arising from his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs and his denials under oath to a Congressional committee, Clemens walked out of the courtroom a free man.  Why Clemens ever testified before Congress in 2008 was a mystery to me.  He did not have to appear, but when he did, he testified to a House committee that it was liquid vitamin B-12 and lidocaine with which Brian McNamee,  his former strength coach, had injected him.  But Brian McNamee testified to the same committee that he had injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, both banned performance-enhancing substances. So, to prove perjury, the government had to prove Clemens lied about what actually happened with those injections.

While wondering why Clemens volunteered to stick his head in this noose, let us also wonder why the federal government has gone so long and squandered such resources on sports doping. Reports are that the government has spent $50 million for its investigations of doping for all sports figures over the last few years, this in middle of a slump in the economy.  Yes, the public is entitled to integrity even in its sporting events, but how much are we willing to pay?

Two witnesses against Clemens that were vital to the government’s case had serious weaknesses.  Brian McNamee was the chief witness for the government as the only person who claimed to be an eyewitness.  In fact, McNamee claimed to be the person who injected Clemens with prohibited substances.  In his 24 hours of testimony given over 5 days on the witness stand, McNamee  claimed he had kept a needle and medical waste from one his injections of Clemens in 2001 in a Miller Lite beer can.  But he also said he kept in that can leftovers from injections of other players.  McNamee could not explain how the leftovers from the other players got into that same beer can.  Under cross-examination, he admitted he never told the government agents about putting the materials from the other players in the same can.

After the verdict, jurors said they thought it was devious of McNamee to secret this personal medical evidence in beer can for years.  The jurors also confirmed that McNamee had too many consistencies. The jurors did not believe McNamee’s claim that he had preserved from the incident and kept it in beer can for 7 years. He admitted he initially lied about his involvement with steroids.  Clemens’ criminal defense lawyer painted McNamee as a chronic lier, the jury agreed, and that spelled doom for the government’s case.

Clemens’s criminal defense attorney raised numerous unsavoury personal details from McNamee, that he had tampered with a dead body when he was a New York City policeman, he lied to investigators looking into a Florida incident in 2001, that he had two driving-under-the-influence arrests in 2002, and that he got caught up in an Internet fraud investigation after ordering diet pills over the Web in 2004.

The other important witness for the prosecution was Andy Pettitte, Clemens’ long-time friend and teammate.  Pettitte testified to hear an admission by Clemens, the next best thing to an eye witness. Pettitte testified Clemens acknowledged to him in 1999-2001 Clemens had used HGH, a growth hormone.  But then, every criminal defense attorney’s dream, on cross-examination, Pettitte backed up and admitted he was not sure now what Clemens had said those many years ago and admitted it was fair to say there was only a “50/50″ chance he misunderstood Clemens.  Unlike McNamee, Pettitte had no fleas on him and had no apparent motive to lie about his friend, Clemens.  The government lawyers knew they had problems with McNamee, but Pettitte’s cratering was surely unforseen.

So the government’s case went from one eyewitness and one admission from the defendant to none of the above, and the hard tip of the government’s spear turned out to be marshmellow.  No wonder the jury had reasonable doubt about Clemens’ guilt.

There is a push to raise the security classification of hydrocodone.  Law enforcement claims it is the second-most abused drug and wants to make it more difficult to obtain the painkiller pill because of that abuse.  Hydrocodone is now classified as a Schedule III drug, and can be refilled up to 6 times without a visit to the doctor, and a doctor can renew the prescription by fax or phone.

If raised from a Schedule II to a Schedule II drug, like oxycodone, hydrocodone would have to be kept under lock and key.  A patient has to to present a prescription bearing the doctor’s original signature on it to obtain a Schedule II drug, and a pharmacy can give a patient only one bottle at a time.

Emergency room visits related to non-medical use of hydrocodone increased nationally from 19,221 to 86,258 in the years 2000-2009.   In Florida alone, hydrocodone reportedly caused 910 deaths between 2003 and 2007.  According to DEA reports for the country, police drug labs have found pill seizures of hydrocodone second only to those of oxycodone, e.g., OxyContin and Percocet.

The increase in hydrocodone’s schedule would ordinarily be the concern of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).  The agencies would enact a change in their administrative rules to effect the change, but the agencies have been studying the issue for 12 years.   But law enforcement wants the change, so its agents have gone around the agencies to lobby Congress directly.  The signatures of 58 members of Congress appear on a bill to enact a bill in Congress without any rule changes from the agencies.  It is unclear whether Congress would actually vote for that bill.  Having 58 members onboard is a long way from 535 members or half of them, 267.

Celebrity deaths resulting from hydrocone abuse have helped the public relations campaign to make the drug harder to get.  Actors Heath Ledger, Corey Halm, and Brittany Murphy all died from overdoses of drug cocktails that included hydrocodone.  The president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, a think tank, has expressed its support for the increase in scheduling of the drug.

Hydrocodone was originally placed in Schedule III in 1970, when it was used as a cough suppressant.  It’s use has changed, and it’s now commonly used as a painkiller.  And as users find other painkillers, like oxycodone, hard to get, they are turning increasingly to hydrocodone.

Making the drug harder to get, raising the schedule to Schedule II, would cause significant inconveniences and difficulties to many patients who use hydrocodone legitimately, like having to travel to the pharmacy every time they need to pick up their prescription, perhaps miles every trip.  These patients are dealing with real pain.  Those who suffer from neurological diseases depend on hydrocodone to carry on with normal lives.

And doctors, whose prescriptions of scheduled drugs are all tracked by law enforcement by monthly reporting, are already looking over their shoulders.  Some patient say doctors are so afraid the FDA is going to come after them, the doctors are too stingy with, or outright refuse to prescribe, Schedule II drugs.

She is 25 years old and has children 1, 3, 4, and 9 years old.   She has never been arrested before, but she sold marijuana one time, so she’s headed to prison.  Too harsh?  She certainly thinks so.  She was startled at the sentence she received.

Patricia Spottedcrow lived with her husband, 4 children and her mother, Delita Starr.  She sold $20 worth of marijuana to someone who was an informant for the police.  Two weeks before that, the informant had come to the home to buy marijuana.  On that earlier occasion, it was Starr who sold the informant $10 worth of marijuana, a “dime bag.”  At that sale,Starr directed her 9-year-old grandson to fetch the marijuana.  Thereafter, both Spottedcrow and Starr were arrested and charged in Kingfisher County District Court with distribution of a controlled dangerous substance, marijuana.  Added to those charges, both were charged with possession of a controlled
dangerous substance in the presence of a minor.

When they got to court, Spottedcrow decided to decline the District Attorney’s plea bargain offer of a two-year sentence, two years in prison.  Spottedcrow, after talking it over with her lawyer, thought her clean record and the small amount of drugs involved ought to give her a chance at probation.  Thus, she turned down the offer to agree to a sentence and threw herself on the mercy of the court.  She “pled blind,” that is, she pled guilty without any limitation on the high or low end of the sentence she could receive, so long as the sentence she received was within the range of punishment set out by statute.  That range is from 10 years to life imprisonment for the distribution charge.

Obviously, she believed her circumstances, perhaps including having young children at home, gave her a very good chance of probation.  Added to this, her sentencing was scheduled just before Christmas and the judge was due to retire a few days later.

The judge gave Ms. Spottedcrow a sentence of ten years in prison.  No probation.  Her 50-year-old mother, Delita Starr, received probation for 30 years, along with a fine of $8,600, making her available to take care of the children.   “Never in a million years did I think I’d be here 10 years,” Ms. Spottedcrow said later from Eddie Warrior women’s prison in Taft.  She said when she went to court for her sentencing she just knew she would receive probation.

That was the problem, She never seemed to take it seriously in the eyes of the judge.  Judge Suzie Pritchett, who retired last December and was not a harsh judge, said later she thought the sentence she gave was lenient under the circumstances.  She said, “It was a way of
life for them,” referring to Spottedcrow and Starr selling drugs.  Of course, that’s what the drug agents often tell judges.  But it is clear these were not the only sales the two had made.  Both sales were made by a confidential informant, meaning that the sale was set up in advance, which means the police already had information they had already been selling.  Otherwise, they would not have had a reason to set up these two controlled sales. And after acknowledging that suspended sentences are often given in cases involving first time offenders, the judge also said:  “When kids are involved, it’s different.”  The children in this case, because they were present and even involved in the sale, did not help Ms. Spottedcrow get a lesser sentence.

As usual when a judge is the one to make the decision on what sentence a defendant should receive, the judge in this case ordered a presentence investigation and report to be made.  As part of that, the probation officer who writes the report interviews the defendant about what happened.   The report in this case reported, “It does not appear the defendant is aware a problem exists or that she needs to make changes in her current behavior.. and she makes justifications for her actions.”

As any criminal defense lawyer will tell you, that is the absolute last thing a defendant wants a judge to read.  It is fatal for a judge to believe that a defendant does not accept responsibility for her actions or is not contrite.  That means she not just sorry that she got caught, especially when the judge is in a position to give a maximum sentence.

If there were any doubt whether Ms. Spottedcrow had taken serious the sentence she was facing, any doubt whether she had gotten the message, a discovery immediately following her sentencing ended such doubt.  As Ms. Spottedcrow was led away from the courtroom to the jail, a deputy sheriff searched her pockets and found marijuana in Ms. Spottedcrow’s pocket.

Since Oklahoma banned the unregulated sale of pseudoephedrine in 2004, the availability of methamphetamine declined for a while. Now it’s coming back.  Last year, 743 meth labs were discovered, and this year is on track to exceed that at 300 labs seized to date.  Most of the labs were of the one-pot lab variety, also called “shake-and-bake” process of cooking or concocting meth.  Most of them have been located in Northeast part of the state or around the Tulsa area.

Last May, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control found one one-pot lab in Oklahoma City, while 23 were discovered in Tulsa.  The ingredients are cheap: one 20-ounce bottle of water, pseudoephedrine, camp fuel, chemical ice packs and some other easily-obtained materials are all it takes to make some meth with this method.  Recipes can be found online, along with step-by-step videos explaining how to do it.

So far this year, the state’s Medical Examiner has identified 26 deaths associated with meth, from overdoses of meth to burns from accidents in the cooking process.  Nathan Knapp of Luther was one of those, burned with third-degree burns from an accidental fire and later died.  No chemists are needed to try this process, no laboratory, and they usually yield only enough for the cook’s own addiction.  But sometimes several people will contribute pseudoephedrine to share in the product.

In the year before the regulation of pseudoephedrine went into effect, the number of labs exceeded 1200.  The number shrank by 90% until the one-pot labs started springing up in 2008.  Mexican cartels brought their product to Oklahoma to meet the demand with ice, a crystallized, smokable meth.  Last month, agents arrested one Albert Gomez-Gomez, whom they claim is a member of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, here to establish an operation to rival the established Juarez Cartel.

The OBNDD claims 20% of the meth consumed in Oklahoma comes from Mexico, brought overland on the highways.  The agency also claims to have b locked 54,349 sales of pseudoephedrine since enactment of the law last November that requires a would-be purchaser to provide his date of birth and Oklahoma driver’s license.  They claim that prevents those previously convicted of meth-related crimes from purchasing pseudoephedrine for up to 10 years.  They are still pushing to make pseudoephedrine a prescription drug.

Ingestion of meth triggers release of dopamine, a neurochemical in the brain.  Meth causes high amounts of dopamine to collect in the brain, causing a rush of euphoria.  It makes the user wanting more.  Too much dopamine in the brain causes schizophrenia, a condition characterized by delusions, hallucinations and bizarre behavior.  Too little pseudoephedrine causes Parkinson’s disease and affects motor areas of the brain.

A meth addict will do whatever he can to get more.  Well known is the addictive aspect of meth, psychologically, of course, but also physiologically and neurologically, such that, once use of meth is stopped, the user should have medical supervision.  That’s for those lucky enough to quit.

The Supreme Court of South Dakota ruled a violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a police search when they conducted a routine inventory search of an automobile lawfully impounded by police for violations of municipal parking violations.

After incurring two overtime parking citations in the same morning, a car was towed by police and impounded.   At the impound lot, a police officer observed a watch and some other personal property inside the car and ordered the car unlocked to perform an inventory of its contents.  Using a “standard” form to list the property found, a police officer performed an inventory of the contents of the car according to police procedures.  Inside the unlocked glove compartment, police found some marijuana in a plastic bag.  All property, including the marijuana, was sent to the police department for safekeeping.

Respondent Opperman was later arrested and charged with possession of marijuana.  His motion to suppress was denied, and he was convicted by a jury.    He was sentenced to 14 days in jail and a fine of $100.  That conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court of South Dakota in a ruling that found an illegal search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.  That ruling was appealed to the United States Constitution and was decided in South Dakota v. Opperman.

The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized for years the distinction between the search of a building versus the search of an automobile.  According to the Court’s decision in Carroll v. United States in 1925, the “inherent mobility of automobiles creates circumstances of exigency that, as a practical necessity, rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible.”  The Court stated the expectation of privacy was less in an automobile than in a home because its function is transportation and “seldom serves as one’s residence or as the repository of one’s personal effects…”

The Court found state courts have “overwhelmingly” concluded that, even if an inventory is characterized as a search, the intrusion is constitutionally permissible.  The Court noted that the majority of Appeals Courts have approved inventory procedures as reasonable police intrusions, citing decisions from the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth circuits.

The Court cited its prior decision in Cady v. Dumbrowski, which had approved a warrantless search of an automobile which had been towed to a private garage even though no probable cause existed to believe the vehicle contained fruits of a crime.  In Dumbrowski, “the sole justification for the warrantless incursion was that it was incident to the caretaking function of the local police to protect the community ‘s safety.”

The Court distinguished its holding in Preston v. United States in 1964, in which the Court had invalidated a car search after a vagrancy arrest, saying Preston stood for the proposition that “the search challenged there could not be justified as one incident to an arrest.”  The Court said Preston did not raise the issue of the constitutionally of a protective inventory of a car lawfully within police custody.  Preston was not, therefore, at odds with the Court’s decision in Opperman, the Court ruled.

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBN) is the “Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)” of Oklahoma.  Besides stopping cars with out-of-state license plates and running their drug dogs around the cars, the OBN tracks prescriptions of all pain killer drugs.  Its computer programs assemble all such prescriptions obtained by John Doe, patient, the date, the pharmacy where and when the drug was obtained, the quantity and strength of the drug, and the prescribing physician.

The programs also assemble every prescribing physician in the state, and lists all controlled drugs prescribed to all patients of that doctor, the identify of all those patients, the strength and quantity of each drug, and where and when the prescription was filled.  The plan is to track patients who are obtaining too many controlled drugs (likely from multiple prescribing doctors), and to track doctors who are prescribing too many controlled drugs.

Pain pills give a high, especially when they are ingested immediately rather than through their time-release feature.  Of course, they are addictive, as Rush Limbaugh will testify, and now Sean Sutton will perhaps testify.  Sean Sutton, former Oklahoma State University men’s basketball coach, was arrested a week ago as he took possession of a box of pills in the mail from a fellow-pill user.

Those who are addicted to pain pills, like OxyContin, may go to many different doctors without telling any one doctor they are obtaining the pills from the other doctors.  This way the user can obtain more pills than any one doctor would prescribe.  The data base catches this pattern.

This data base, begun in 1991,  is so comprehensive that it is accessed about 25,000 times per month by doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement to track the type, strength and quantify of potentially addictive pain killers.  Controlled painkillers, anti-anxiety medications and amphetamines are the types of drugs tracked in the data base

Once the drug agents observe the pattern of excessive use, they will use surveillance to collect some more evidence to prove their case.  In Sean Sutton’s case, the police arrested him just as he took possession of a box of pills sent from another person, not a doctor.

Marijuana stores are everywhere now in Los Angeles, flourishing under the new state law permitting medical use of marijuana.  They are found next to dry cleaners, restaurants and gas stations.  Advocates claim there are 800 of the stores.   Law enforcement claims the number over 1,000.  There are now more marijuana stores in Los Angeles than public schools, and everyone agrees the number is too high.  Los Angeles has more marijuana stores than any other.

These are medical marijuana dispensaries, and the police promise to crack down on the ones that make a profit.  The police are making noises about conducting raids, and some say this is an effort to influence the City Council to adopt stricter regulations.   It may be working.

The Council was pondering implementation of an ordinance that had been negotiated with medical marijuana supporters, but the city attorney, Carmen Trutanich, has persuaded the Council to adopt instead an his office has drawn up.  This proposed ordinance would provide for  dispensaries to have renewable permits, submit to criminal record checks, register the names of members with the police and operate on a nonprofit basis.  It would result in the closing of hundreds of the existing marijuana dispensaries.

The city attorney argued that state law permits the exchange of marijuana between growers and patients on a nonprofit and noncash basis only. Marijuana advocates say that interpretation would regulate dispensaries out of existence- against the will of voters who approved medical cannabis in 1996.

State laws that are increasingly allowing medicinal use. Thirteen states have laws supporting medical marijuana, and others are considering new legislation, yet federal laws that still treat marijuana as an illegal drug.  California is the testing ground, as police officials and marijuana advocates everywhere watch this experiment play out.

Criminal defense lawyers in California, accustomed to defending their clients from relatively clear  statutes prohibiting most of the cannabis family of plants, now have a lenient state law side-by-side with the standard prohibition of the federal law.  The medical use of marijuana is the only use permitted by this law, but California law is otherwise more lenient than many states.

Speaking at a training luncheon for regional narcotics officers, Los Angeles District Attorney said, “About 100 percent of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally… The time is right to deal with this problem.”  Mr. Cooley is up for re-election next year.   The training was titled “The Eradication of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.   Cooley said state law does not allow dispensaries to be for-profit enterprises.

The Los Angeles city attorney, newly-elected Carmen Trutanich, claims dispensaries are prohibited from accepting cash even to reimburse growers for labor and supplies. He said that a recent California Supreme Court decision, People v. Mentch, banned all over-the-counter sales of marijuana.  Not surprisingly, other officials and marijuana advocates disagree with that interpretation.

Prosecutions of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles so far have been limited to about twelve in the last year, Mr. Cooley’s spokeswoman said. But police are expecting to be called on soon to raid collectives.

As to the collectives, Don Duncan, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a leader in the medical marijuana movement, said marijuana collectives do need more regulation and there need to be fewer of them. He also said dispensaries should be nonprofit organizations, but that over-the-counter cash purchases should be permitted.  “I am under no illusions that everyone out there is following the rules,” Duncan said.  He runs his own dispensary in West Hollywood. “But just because you accept money to reimburse collectives does not mean you’re making profits.”

More than 300,000 doctors’ referrals for medical cannabis are on file, most of them from Los Angeles, according to Americans for Safe Access. The movement has had a string of successes in the Legislature and at the ballot box.  About 40 cities and counties have medical marijuana ordinances.

But last June, a federal judge sentenced Charles  Lynch, a dispensary owner north of Santa Barbara, to one year in prison for selling marijuana to a 17-year-old boy whose father had testified that they sought out medical marijuana for his son’s chronic pain. The mayor and the chief of police testified on behalf of Mr. Lynch, who was released on bail pending appeal.

And last month, San Diego police officers and sheriff’s deputies, along with agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, raided 14 marijuana dispensaries and arrested 31 people. In an interview, Bonnie Dumanis, the district attorney for San Diego County, said that state laws governing medical marijuana were unclear and that the city had not yet instituted new regulations.  Ms. Dumanis said that she approved of medical marijuana clubs where patients grow and use their own marijuana, but that none of the 60 or so dispensaries in the county operated that way.  Marijuana supporters worry that San Diego may provide be the future for Los Angeles if raids there become a reality.

But many look to Harborside Health Center in Oakland as a model for how dispensaries could work.  “Our No. 1 task is to show that we are worthy of the public’s trust in asking to distribute medical cannabis in a safe and secure manner,” said Steve DeAngelo, the proprietor of Harborside, which has been in business for three years.

Harborside is one of four licensed dispensaries in Oakland run as nonprofit organizations. It is the largest, with 74 employees and revenues of about $20 million. Last summer, the Oakland City Council passed an ordinance to collect taxes from the sale of marijuana, a measure that Mr. DeAngelo supported.  Mr. DeAngelo designed Harborside to exude legitimacy, security and comfort. Visitors to the low-slung building are greeted by security guards who check the required physicians’ recommendations. Inside, the dispensary looks like a bank, except that the floor is covered with hemp carpeting and the eight tellers stand behind identical displays of marijuana and hashish.

There is a laboratory where technicians determine the potency of the marijuana and label it accordingly. (Harborside says it rejects 80 percent of the marijuana that arrives at its door for insufficient quality.) There is even a bank vault where the day’s cash is stored along with reserves of premium cannabis. An armored truck picks up deposits every evening.

City officials routinely audit the dispensary’s books, and “surplus” cash (no profits here) is rolled back into the center to pay for free counseling sessions and yoga for patients. “Oakland issued licenses and regulations, and Los Angeles did nothing and they are still unregulated,” Mr. DeAngelo said. “Cannabis is being distributed by inappropriate people.”

But even Oakland’s regulations fall short of city attorney Trutanich’s proposal that Los Angeles ban all cash sales.  Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for State Attorney General Jerry Brown, said that after Trutanich’s comments in Los Angeles, law enforcement officials and advocates from around the state had called seeking clarity on medical marijuana laws.

Jerry Brown has issued legal guidelines that allow for nonprofit sales of medical marijuana, she said. But, she added, with laws being interpreted differently, “the final answer will eventually come from the courts.”

To the horror of the “zero-tolerance-for-drug” people, the Republic of Mexico has decided to be lenient with those caught with small amounts of drugs.  The new laws allow up to about four joints of marijuana for personal use and about one-half gram of cocaine, which translates into about four “lines” of cocaine or half the weight of a paperclip.  The limits for heroin and methamphetamine are about half the size of a pencil eraser, for LSD about enough to make a few grains of salt.

Oklahomans must even show identification to purchase some cold medications at a pharmacy because those medications contain ingredients used to manufacture methamphetamine.  Previously such cold medicines were purchasable over the counter.  No more.  And some credit this tightened policy with a significant drop in the number of meth labs making methamphetamine in Oklahoma.

“That’s just a reckless policy to have,” said Mark Woodward spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics about the new Mexican policy.  It takes away a huge deterrent away from someone using drugs.”  No surprise that this agency is completely against backing up one inch in the “War on Drugs.”

Are we winning the “War on Drugs?”  Most criminal defense lawyers in Oklahoma would be skeptical.  I guess the argument to continue the “War on Drugs” is that the drug situation would be even worse if we ever let up, if we ever stop prosecuting to the maximum against any use of any drugs at any time in any place no matter what.  That is one reason the United States allows those in serious, genuine pain to suffer so much, unlike European governments, because “drugs” are medically indicated to address pain and “drugs” are seen in the United States as inherently evil and criminally tainted, something to prosecute rather than to use as a medical tool to alleviate suffering.

The new Mexican laws do not make it strictly legal to possess the enumerated small quantities of drugs, but such users arrested face drug treatment instead of jail, so long as no violence is involved.

About 90-95 per cent of the illegal drugs entering the United States come across the Mexican border.  That is why drug enforcers in the United States worry about the more permissive law in Mexico.  “I think it’s going to increase the work of our customs agents,” Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said.  Law enforcement commonly develop a prosecution for large amounts of drug distribution or trafficking from witnesses prosecuted for possession of small quantities.  Without the arrests for smaller amounts, the thinking goes, the potential for larger prosecutions diminishes.  Whether those arrested for the smaller quantities possess the smaller amounts for personal use or not, law enforcement will lose the leverage over them to reach up the distribution ladder without the threat of jail on the smaller fish.

The new law allowing possession of smaller amounts in Mexico is intended to concentrate on catching and prosecuting the big dealers rather than the smaller possessors of drugs.  Mexican President Felipe Calderon reportedly hopes the new law will help with the increasing drug addiction in Mexico.

Mexico has seen a doubling in drug addiction in six years to 307,000, according to a Mexican government study.  Meanwhile drug use in the United States has remained fairly constant at around 10 million from 2002 to 2007, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.   The number of Mexicans who have tried drugs, which is not the same as “drug use” and certainly not “drug addiction”, rose to 4.5 million.  Mexico has a population roughly one-third that of the United States.