U.S. House Unanimously Passes Legislation Creating National Commission to Reduce Incarceration and Reform the Criminal Justice System.  Commission Would Likely Analyze Over-Incarceration, Failed Drug War Policies, Racial Disparities, and More

The U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation tonight sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) which would create a national commission to study the U.S. criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. The bill passed under an expedited process that presumes unanimity unless a member of Congress objects. No member objected.

“It is a sign of how quickly the tide has turned against punitive criminal justice policies that this bill passed without opposition,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “Prisons are overflowing at great taxpayer expense, in large part because of the failed war on drugs, and members of Congress are finally saying enough is enough, we need ideas for reform.”

The House bill is identical to a bill in the U.S. Senate introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). That bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and will most likely be voted on in the full Senate sometime this year. Sen. Webb (D-VA) has said, “either we have the most evil people in the world or we are doing something wrong with the way we approach the issue of criminal justice.” And “the central role of drug policy in filling our nation's prisons makes clear that our approach to curbing illegal drug use is broken.”

It is widely believed that the national commission created by Sen. Webb’s and Rep. Delahunt’s legislation would make recommendations for reducing incarceration, reforming U.S. drug policy, eliminating racial and gender disparities, improving re-entry efforts, and expanding access to substance abuse treatment, mental health services and health care.

“The House has spoken decisively. Now it is time for Senators to act,” Piper said. “Sen. Webb’s and Rep. Delahunt’s bipartisan commission legislation needs to be passed quickly before the war on drugs and punitive criminal justice system bankrupt our country and destroy more lives.”

Canadian "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery's battle to avoid being extradited to the US to serve a five-year federal prison sentence for selling pot seeds over the Internet continues as the clock ticks down toward May 10 -- the date by which Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is to decide whether to okay his extradition or not. Emery and his supporters are fighting to the bitter end, and they're picking up some significant support along the way.

Last month, members of all three major English speaking political parties, including the ruling Conservatives, handed in 12,000 signatures on petitions to parliament demanding he not be extradited and addressed the House of Commons on the issue. Shortly thereafter, the French speaking Bloc Quebecois announced it, too, was joining the cause of keeping Emery in Canada.

Emery was Canada's best known marijuana legalization advocate and a leading funder of marijuana reform groups there and in other countries when he was arrested in Vancouver on a US warrant for marijuana seed-selling after being indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle. He faced up to life in prison under the US charges.

Emery, his supporters, and other marijuana reformers have argued that he was arrested for political reasons -- for his support of the legalization cause -- and the gleeful words of then DEA administrator Karen Tandy provided valuable ammunition for the claim. Emery's arrest was "a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the US and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement," Tandy said in a statement the day of the bust.

"His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on," Tandy gloated.

For four years, he and his employees and fellow indictees, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, negotiated with federal prosecutors, before Rainey and Williams struck plea deals that allowed them to simply remain in Canada. Then, last September, Emery himself agreed to a plea bargain that would see him serve five years in US prison.

Emery was detained in Canada on September 28 and was jailed until mid-November before he was released pending the justice minister's decision on whether to approve his removal to the United States. Since then, the campaign to block his extradition has gone all out. Even in prison, Emery did podcasts -- "potcasts," the magazine calls them -- and since his release, he has been as media-friendly as ever. He has used his Cannabis Culture magazine as a bully pulpit and established a No Extradition! web site to further the cause.

The high point of the campaign so far came on March 12 when three members of parliament, Conservative MP Scott Reid, New Democratic MP Libby Davies, and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh stood before parliament in Ottawa to deliver the petitions. All three told the Commons that extraditing Emery for what is considered a non-serious offense in Canada was unfair.

MP Reid, a Conservative leader in the House, reminded the Commons that the Extradition Act specifies that the justice minister "shall refuse to surrender a person when that surrender could involve unjust or undue or oppressive actions by the country to which he is being extradited."