Oh look. Steve Lopez wrote about one of my favorite ladies. Possible bias aside, she's a nice doctor who examined me and asked questions when I had seen her as a patient.

High fashion in the medicinal high business -- latimes.com

Dr. Sona Patel, who worked as a model while going to medical school, is not your ordinary medical marijuana specialist. Her ads and her appearance emphasize glamour.

By Steve Lopez
November 18, 2009

The physician was wearing high heels, a tight-fitting white lab coat and lots of gold jewelry, which is not quite what you expect to see when you visit a pot doctor. Nor do you expect to see a chandelier the size of a Christmas tree in a waiting room decorated like an Indian palace.

Dr. Sona Patel told me that's just who she is. Her Melrose Avenue office, she said, is designed in much the same way as her home in Hollywood.

You may be wondering what I'm doing in the office of yet another cannabis specialist, given my fruitful encounter last month with a physician in Glendale. That doctor had told me he knew nothing about back problems because he was a gynecologist, but he wrote me a marijuana recommendation after a 10-minute "exam."

But in California, you're entitled to a second opinion, and I had some more questions. I was wondering how and why a doctor goes from conventional to herbal medicine, and I called Patel, intrigued by her glamorous ads in local publications. The whole California marijuana adventure seems like an herb-fired hallucination, but what must her story be?

Before I visited Patel, I called state regulatory officials to discuss my Glendale experience. Much has been written about the explosion of dispensaries, particularly since Los Angeles has made such a mess of things, allowing several hundreds of storefront pot outlets to open without permits. But far less has been written about the doctors.

Is there any oversight for those who appear to be running patients through mills at $100 or more a pop, faster than you can open your mouth and say, "Ahhhh?"

Not a great deal.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California told me that only 81 complaints have been made against marijuana doctors since 1996, and investigations have led to disciplinary action against just 10 doctors. The medical board is expected to consider early next year whether to be a little more proactive, and re-establish guidelines for conducting exams and issuing "recommendations."

Frank Lucido, an Oakland physician, has been speaking out for doctors who fear they're all being tainted by unprofessional colleagues who are rubber-stamping marijuana recommendations.

"I schedule 45 minutes for a first-time patient and 30 for a repeat patient," said Lucido, who suggests that California has become the "Wild West," with thousands of dispensaries, hundreds of doctors and varying laws from one city to the next.

Lucido said he's trying to hold the middle ground between drug war partisans who oppose marijuana altogether, and those who are ready to party on the other side, faking medical need so they can light up recreationally.

Where does Dr. Patel stand?

Her office, which doesn't look like much from the outside, sits across the street from Melrose Organic Pharmacy, where I purchased some Skywalker buds as part of my research last month. Good for back pain, said the clerk.

At Patel's office, Shannon, the office manager, was also in high heels. All right, what is this, a modeling agency or a doctor's office?

The high fashion is just a style preference, said Dr. Patel, 34, who uses her own image in advertising materials, often in different hairstyles.

But is the glamour about creating a marketing niche -- she'll fix what ails you, and she looks like a beauty queen, to boot! -- in a crowded field?

No, Patel said. But as a matter of fact, she worked as a model to help pay medical school bills, and the glam shots she uses were actually meant to market a cosmetics line that never got off the ground.

So how did she get into herbal medicine?

Patel said she grew up in Chino Hills and went to medical school in the Caribbean, having wanted to be a doctor from the time she was 5.

She ran a family practice and clinic in Hollywood, but grew weary of prescribing pharmaceuticals with potentially serious side effects to patients suffering from diabetes, AIDS, migraines and other maladies. Some of those patients asked if she would recommend marijuana instead.

"I began to research it and incorporated it into my practice," Patel said.

To her surprise, patients often got greater relief from pot than from prescription drugs -- and they reported no side effects. In 2007, she shut down her family practice on Sunset and went herbal all the way on Melrose. Her answer to the obvious question? Yes, the money is better.

Patel told me she worked briefly in San Francisco and was the subject of an unflattering TV news story in which two TV producers said that getting a recommendation from her was laughably easy. The story, which I later checked, also noted that Patel was in hot pants and high heels on materials advertising her business, and that she used the name Doc 420, the 420 being street slang for marijuana. We've come a long way since Marcus Welby.

The story was a distortion, Patel insisted.

Well, whatever. I still find the high heels and lab coat a little strange, but it also seems weird that I can legally buy buds in virtually every corner of the city because a gynecologist said I could.

Patel said she now sees 15 to 20 patients daily and said she generally spends 30 minutes or so with each, and she reviews their medical records before recommending marijuana. On average, Patel said, she denies recommendations for between two and five patients daily who don't prove a medical need.

I should note here that before I met Dr. Patel, I got an e-mail from a patient who was upset about her denying him a recommendation, and that was one reason I wanted to meet her.

Patel said that if you haven't been previously diagnosed with a condition that has existed for at least six months, and you haven't tried conventional medicine, don't bother making an appointment with her.

But she's convinced that marijuana, used properly, is improving the quality of life for many patients who got no such relief from prescription drugs.

If marijuana becomes completely legal, regulated and taxed in California -- which is where we ought to go, if you ask me, ending the bogus drug war and the dispensary/recommendation charade -- it might mean the end of Dr. Patel's business.

If so, she said, she won't go back to conventional medicine. She might instead go back to school and study various Eastern and alternative medicines.

That would cost a ton.

But modeling got her through school once, and she's still got the high heels.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Yep... what do you think. I asked a fellow citizen, if he thought cannabis should be legalized, his response was:
Prostitution should be legalized, because it would save marriages and make money....
pot or butt?

Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care
By FRED GARDNER

Doctors Philip A. Denney and Michael Gitter and businessman Omar Salah are buying NorCal Healthcare, the chain of cannabis-consultation offices whose founder, Hany Assad, has had his license revoked. Denney, 61, will be seeing NorCal patients in Oakland as of today (Nov. 19). He is past president of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, and widely respected within the field. Denney will continue to see patients two days a week in Carmichael at the office he shares with Robert Sullivan, MD.

Gitter, 65, who has offices in Redding and Lake Forest, will recruit more doctors to help staff NorCal. Assad had been the sole MD, flying from city to city in his own small plane. He employed a nurse practitioner in Oakland and Ukiah, and a physician's assistant in Arcata to examine patients and update charts. Assad saw patients himself in Bakersfield, and it was in this context that he conferred an ADD diagnosis on an 18-year-old after a work-up that the medical board deemed inadequate.

"The reason NorCal needed to be rescued was not because of the mid-level practitioners," says Denney, referring to the nurse practioner and PA. "The use of mid-levels in a cannabis practice is perfectly appropriate. There's still a stigma that keeps physicians away from the field, and perhaps millions of patients who could benefit from cannabis as medicine and need the service [a consultation leading to a doctor's approval]." Denney will supervise NorCal's mid-levels to ensure that patients are examined and records kept according to accepted medical standards.

The medical board insists on a "good-faith examination" prior to a cannabis recommendation. This is how Dr. Denney interprets that vague requirement:

"The patient sits down and you take a history. 'How old are you? What do you do for a living? What medical problem brings you to see us today? Do you have a history of other illness? Have you had previous surgeries? Are you currently taking medications? What are you allergic to?' Etc., etc. With a new patient you have to ask about family history and do a brief 'review of systems.' That involves asking, 'Do you have any vision problems? Hearing problems? Headaches? Knee problems? Any problems with your teeth? Back problems? Chest problems? Cough?' You go down the list. I like doing it verbally because the interaction with the patient can be revealing. Most doctors do it by questionnaire.

"After taking a history and reviewing what records are available, the practitioner conducts a physical examination. It can be fairly focused and brief. It includes complete vital signs -height, weight, temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and quality, pain assessment and body-mass index. My practice involves a head-to-toe -and this is what the mid-levels will do for NorCal under my supervision. For a new patient I look in your throat, I look in your ears, I check your pupils, I check your scalp, I check the range of motion in your eyes, I palpate your neck, I look for thyroid lymph nodes. Depending on the circumstances I may listen to your carotid arteries. I will certainly listen to your chest, your heart, check your peripheral reflexes and strength. I typically do a Romberg exam, meaning you stand up with your eyes closed and your feet together. I ask patients to squat. If you have back pain I'll do a straight leg-raising test and test the strength and sensation in your toes. If you have a history of chronic Hepatitis C I'm going to lay you down and feel your liver. I only occasionally do a genital exam. I have done one rectal exam -on a patient who had had extensive rectal surgery.

"Then I -or the mid-level- would have a discussion with the patient about cannabis. 'How much do you use? How does it help you? Adverse effects Has it ever gotten you in trouble? Any current issues with it? Etc. etc.' We typically have a discussion about the benefits and alternatives. We have to formulate a treatment plan- another vague term. I typically write 'Okay for cannabis for one year. Continue primary care. Call or come in if any questions or problems.'

"And then of course the exam has to be properly recorded in the patient's chart."

Under Assad, NorCal was charging new patients $125; renewals, which were available by phone, cost $100. The new owners plan to charge new patients $150 -"for superior service," says Denney- and have yet to define their policy on renewals. The ballpark price for a medical practice is one year's net income. Assad was reportedly asking $1.2 million.

Assad Defends His Approach

Hany Assad, MD, the prolific issuer of cannabis approvals whose license was revoked Oct. 23, emailed a response to our account of his downfall in CounterPunch (which, he acknowledged, "did not depart from the facts.") His English is funky but some of his points are well taken. The first refers to SW, an 18-year-old alcoholic whose cannabis use Assad authorized after diagnosing him with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). SW's parents complained to the Medical Board of California (MBC) which, after an investigation and a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ), determined that Assad had not conducted a proper exam to support the ADD diagnosis. (The parents pressured the kid into testifying against Assad. Could the family dynamic have something to do with his problems?)

1 RE the charge of the way I have approached for evaluating and then making the new diagnosis of ADD. The patient while under oath announced, as a surprise to the ALJ and to everyone at the court at that time, that a diagnosis of ADD was made 4 months (about 19 months after my diagnosis was made) prior to that hearing through an expert psychiatrist out of Kaiser with tests that complies with the "Standard of Care". That was not taken into consideration by the judge. Did she missed or just ignored it? Is there any questions will be asked why that diagnosis was missed by his treating psychiatrists at Kaiser for many years till Hany Assad can make it without following the standard of care???

2 RE charge of failure to obtain 'Medical Records' from treating physician. It is a known fact that the previous medical records for a patient are only critical within first 12 hours of treatment on emergency setting ER or ICU.

3 Charge of illegible hand writing in the records. Still I prefer to have my treating physician caring about my health and the best to be done at the time allowed vs caring to have nicely written medical records for the satisfaction of the MBC.

4 It is a fact that if the case against a physician after investigation initiated by a consumer is closed no cost recovery will be done. On the other hand, if MBC can find a way to file charges through their paid AG Office they can request cost recovery to be paid by the physician as a condition of his probation. YES cost recovery of exaggerated expenses. I have to admit that I had mine at that time at a sale price with discount of 50% so I had to pay only $50,000 initially then $4000 for each year of probation. I found accepting a deal of that nature instead of going to a trial by an administrative Judge paid by MBC is the least harmful of the two options. FYI MBC had to stop that "Bully" strategies after the Precedential case of Dr Mikuriya.

5 The only interview by MBC for me in the presence of my attorney was conducted by 2 ignorant investigators asking me how did I evaluate my patient. Yes two ignorant police officers reading questions from a piece of paper in their hands. I got the impression that one of the Gods (one of the 12 members of MBC) dictated them these questions in a hurry while awaiting for the elevator. It is sad and actually disgusting to find interrogation of a physician by an agency licensing already almost 200,000 physicians could not find one of them to conduct that meeting.

6 RE safety for the patients. I have to clarify that for 30 years as a physician who treated thousands of patient each year there was not even one case RE safety of the patient. Many of them in ICU or ER, before that case!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,
Hany Assad

PS So if doctors at Medicann and other clinics are not doing hands on evaluations what the future hold for them???:kiss:

ANAHEIM - Three billboards located within a block of Magnolia High school for a network of medical marijuana dispensaries will be removed and replaced by public service announcements, officials with a billboard company said today.

The billboards were erected within the past few weeks for MediCann, a San Francisco-based network of clinics aimed at providing marijuana to patients suffering from chronic illnesses.
The billboards, located near the corner of Ball Road and Gilbert Street, originally depicted a man described as a plumber who was able to return to work after suffering from back pain because he used marijuana. The ad described the man as "A Typical Stoner," and also said "Marijuana Works."

Those billboard signs were replaced last week by others that just displayed MediCann, with the company Web site and toll free phone number.

A MediCann dispensary sits about four miles away on Ball Road and Anaheim Street.

Mike Cossota, a sales manager with Lamar Advertising, the company that owns the billboards, said advertisements for MediCann should have never gone up so close to a school.

MediCann officials did not immediately return phone calls.

Cossota said his company inherited the billboards after Lamar Advertising took over Vista Media, the billboard company that originally contracted with MediCann.

"Our company policy is not to have any adult-themed billboards next to schools or churches," he said. "We are going to take them down within the next 48 hours."

Cossota said Lamar Advertising, which operates thousands of billboards across the country, has a policy against placing any advertisements for alcohol, medical marijuana, or other content not suitable for children within 1,000 feet of schools or churches.

Lamar Advertising was unaware the billboards it inherited from Vista Media for MediCann were adjacent to the school, Cossota said.

Linda Padilla, a grandparent of a student at nearby Savanna High School, said she saw the billboards while driving by and was "outraged."

"My concern was that this advertisement was so close to the school," she said. "We're trying to send a message to our children that drugs are bad, but then they see signs like these ones."

Deputy DA Admits Membership In Medical Pot Collective - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego



How is it that the Deputy D.A. can use MMJ legally and be a Collective memeber ? But San Diego Patients have to worry and look over there shoulders?


Stay Green!!

Pot Farm Found Behind Police Station


Police busted a sophisticated marijuana farm inside an industrial building 25 feet from the back door of the Topanga Community Los Angeles Police Station. Michael Brownlee has the video report.

myFOXla.com

Dope of the Day http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/news/local/pot-farm-police-station-20091118


:doh:

from the LA Times:

West Hollywood's medical marijuana success story

The small city enforces a strict ordinance and eliminates the drama that plagues L.A.

By John Hoeffel
November 16, 2009


A few miles from Los Angeles City Hall, a small experiment in marijuana regulation has been underway for years. While the state's largest city passed a flawed moratorium, failed to enforce it, debated proposed rules endlessly and watched flummoxed as dispensaries multiplied, West Hollywood pressed ahead.

Confronted with its own dispensary explosion in 2005, the city surrounded by L.A. imposed a moratorium on dispensaries, clamped interim rules on the ones that were open, passed a strict ordinance and capped the number allowed at four, all within two years.

When the West Hollywood City Council updated its ordinance earlier this month, the vote was unanimous, no residents spoke in opposition and the city's dispensary operators lined up in support.

Today, in contrast, two Los Angeles council committees will hold what is sure to be a boisterously contentious hearing as they try to finish an ordinance now in its fifth draft.

In West Hollywood, city officials say, it's been more than two years since a resident has complained about a dispensary. Neighborhood watch leaders say their streets are safer because the dispensary guards are required to walk nearby blocks. School officials welcome dispensaries as neighbors. And the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which patrols the city, says there have been no recent crimes at dispensaries and no calls from agitated neighbors.

"We've been on top of this from Day 1," said Lisa Belsanti, a senior management analyst with the city who helped draw up its rules. "There's a problem, but it's in Los Angeles, it's not in West Hollywood."

Cities with no medical marijuana regulations, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Long Beach, have seen an outcry from neighborhoods upset that dispensaries open wherever they want, often in close proximity, and attract nuisances, such as traffic, and real dangers, such as robberies.

But some cities, notably San Francisco and Oakland, have tightly regulated their dispensaries, and officials there say they have had little or no trouble with them.

Although at 1.9 square miles and about 36,000 people West Hollywood is a fraction of L.A.'s size, it offers an example of how a city that adopted rules and enforced them has largely eliminated its problems.

"We've kept them on a short leash," said City Councilman John Duran, who has been involved with medical marijuana issues for years. "Today, we have minimal complaints, and they are acting responsibly."

West Hollywood -- with its large population of gays and seniors and its pride in its progressive politics -- welcomed medical marijuana as word spread that it can help AIDS patients and glaucoma sufferers. But it too experienced a neighborhood backlash as the number of dispensaries started to climb in 2004 and 2005.

Three appeared within a block of Fountain Day School. One, the Farmacy, was around the corner. Its customers lit up in a parking lot shared with the private school, upsetting parents.

"All of a sudden they started opening up boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," said Andrew Rakos, the school's general manager. "Our parent organization came to me and said we're not happy about this. There was an immediate influx of a lot of unsavory people."

The Farmacy is run by a pharmacist, JoAnna LaForce, who has treated critically ill patients with marijuana for more than 15 years. She contacted the school's parent organization, offered tours of her store, hired security and banned smoking in the parking lot. The Farmacy, like the other dispensaries, belongs to the Chamber of Commerce and its manager serves on a community advisory board.

"We're just part of the community, a part of the neighborhood. They don't see us as a risk," said LaForce, who has watched the situation in Los Angeles with dismay. She also has Farmacy dispensaries in Venice and Westwood that followed the rules to operate under the city's moratorium.

Rakos is now one of the Farmacy's most valuable supporters. Because it was within 500 feet of the school, the city wanted the Farmacy to move by the end of the year. But Rakos asked the City Council to make an exception, and it did. "We felt that it was important for the city to know that there are some businesses that are not only respectful, but listened to the needs of the community," he said.

In Los Angeles, a controversial draft ordinance has ping-ponged between the council and the city attorney's office. Neighborhood activists and dispensary operators have been largely excluded, except to speak at public hearings. West Hollywood officials, however, worked closely with residents, dispensary owners and the Sheriff's Department.

The West Hollywood ordinance restricts where dispensaries can open, sets security requirements, limits hours and bans on-site consumption. It goes further than the proposed Los Angeles ordinance to ensure that dispensaries are responsible neighbors.

The dispensaries must provide nearby residents with the name and phone number of a contact person. To discourage robberies, dispensaries must deposit each day's cash. Security guards have to patrol a two-block radius to prevent loitering and smoking, and guards must be unarmed. "We don't want the wild, wild West shootouts over marijuana and cash," Duran said.

The city also requires the dispensary operators to meet regularly with city officials to discuss problems. Those meetings are now very short. "We go in there for 10 minutes," LaForce said, "and they say -- the sheriffs in there -- any problems? No. Any concerns? No."

City officials were alarmed recently when Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said he believed most dispensaries were illegal and threatened to prosecute them. But Sheriff Lee Baca, who has advised cities to ban dispensaries, said he considers West Hollywood a model and even suggested Los Angeles adopt the same ordinance.

Baca said his deputies work closely with the city's dispensaries. "I know they're transparent, and I think the key is that our people can go in there at any time and look at their documentation," he said. "What we're interested in is organizations that try to blend commercial sales with medical sales. That's clearly illegal."

West Hollywood has four approved dispensaries, all on busy Santa Monica Boulevard.

Don Duncan, the area's most visible medical marijuana advocate as the California director for Americans for Safe Access, runs the unflashy Los Angeles Patients & Caregivers Group. A security guard is always on the sidewalk in front of the cannabis-green storefront.

"We haven't had a complaint in three years," Duncan said.

The Farmacy, unlike most outlets, leaves its door open, inviting passersby to check out its surf-and-Buddha-influenced vibe. Alternative Herbal Health Services, across the street, is more discreet, with a colorful sign much like those found at natural food stores.

Near the west end of town is the Zen Healing Collective, with an enormous neon cannabis leaf in the window.

A fifth dispensary, the Sunset Super Shop, which city officials want to shut down, occupies a metaphorical sweet spot on the Sunset Strip between the Hustler Hollywood boutique (sex) and the Whisky a Go Go (rock 'n' roll).

One issue still troubles some West Hollywood officials: that people exploit the state's medical marijuana laws to buy pot simply to get high or to resell. "There are a lot of people that hang around that look to us as undesirables, but we don't really get many complaints from the community," said sheriff's Lt. Dave Smith.

Duran believes the downside does not outweigh the benefit of giving truly sick people safe access to marijuana and creating a system that allows the city to monitor sales.

"We're the home of the Sunset Strip," he said. "We've had people smoking marijuana on Sunset since 1920. That's not going to change."


West Hollywood's medical marijuana success story -- latimes.com

Man could get life in pot bust | clarionledger.com | The Clarion-Ledger


Heather Civil • heather.civil@clarionledger.com • October 31, 2009

A 33-year-old Jackson man accused of growing marijuana in his apartment could get up to life in prison if convicted.

In the case of Ronald Christopher Sekul, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intends to ask prosecutors to apply a law called the "kingpin" statute, MBN Director Marshall Fisher said.

The statute can be applied to Sekul's case because he allegedly had a drug operation for longer than 12 consecutive months and had more than 10 pounds of marijuana, Fisher said.

Sekul was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing 4-foot marijuana plants in the back bedroom of the fourplex he lives in at 1510 Myrtle St., according to MBN.

He is out of jail on $50,000 bond.

"It was a pretty sophisticated operation," Fisher said.

Sekul is charged with manufacture of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute and possession of two handguns and an assault rifle, Fisher said.

Authorities found 51 marijuana plants growing under florescent lights with a system set up to keep humidity levels optimal for growing in the room, Fisher said.

The plants could have produced 10 pounds of processed marijuana with an estimated $50,000 street value.

Sekul also was allegedly in possession of eight pounds of processed marijuana.

Agents seized growing materials usually seen in indoor marijuana operations, a .40-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber handgun and a .223-caliber semi-automatic rifle.

Investigators from the Jackson Enforcement Team were told about Sekul's alleged operation by an anonymous tipster, Fisher said.

JET, formed in August 2008, is funded by part of a $3.5 million federal grant.

"It's valuable to have different levels of expertise (with JET)," Jackson Police Department Assistant Police Chief Lee Vance said. "I think JET is a successful venture."

Sekul is the second Jackson person arrested in as many weeks with an alleged indoor marijuana-growing operation.

Fisher said indoor growing operations might be on the increase, but only slightly.

"We've seen a steady downward trend on outdoor growing over the years," he said.

On Sept. 18, the home of Zachary Alexander, 33, at 378 Naples Road, was raided and plants with an estimated street value of $325,000 were seized.

He is charged with manufacture and felony possession of marijuana. He is out on $5,000 bond.

washingtonpost.com



By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

Smoking pot isn't what it used to be for Joe Lee, a 62-year-old vintage-record dealer in Rockville.
Back in the late 1960s, as an art student in Baltimore, he kept his landlord in a constant state of suspicion, with clouds of marijuana smoke poorly masked by clouds of incense.

These days, after four decades of regular use, cannabis is a smaller deal. Lee takes a few hits every other day or so, when he wants to listen to music or laugh with a few friends on the porch. And he's happy to talk about it.

"There's gotten to be greater tolerance, that's for sure," said Lee, the son of one-time acting Maryland governor Blair Lee III. "I know literally hundreds of people my age who smoke. They are upright citizens, good parents who are holding down jobs. You take two or three puffs, and you're good to go. I'm not a Rastafarian; I don't treat this as some holy sacrament. But pot is fun."

A federal survey of Americans' drug use shows that Lee and his friends are not the only baby boomers approaching the age of retirement much as they departed the Age of Aquarius -- with an occasional case of the munchies. The government's most recent survey showed that the share of marijuana users ages 50 to 59 increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to almost 10 percent in 2007.

Some of those users are empty-nesters, returning to the drug decades after their pot habits gave way to raising children and building careers. Others, like Lee, have kept using pot all along, researchers said.

"We're concerned by the public health impact of this," said Peter Delany, who heads the office in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that conducts the survey. Marijuana could present special problems for older users, he said, including unknown interactions with prescription drugs. "Doctors need to be more sensitive to it," he said. "They may ask older patients about alcohol now but not think to ask about illicit drug use."

But some older marijuana users say they are living evidence that smoking pot does not preclude a normal life, and more older smokers seem more comfortable than at any point since their teen years with going public -- a tribute, they say, to a big boost in public tolerance of marijuana use.

Mainstreaming marijuana

In parts of California, licensed medical marijuana dispensaries have become as common as In-N-Out Burger stands. At least 13 other states allow some form of pot use for medicinal purposes, and the Obama administration announced last month that federal prosecutors would no longer go after medical users in those states, a policy shift that activists hailed as a watershed.

Last week, in a reversal, the American Medical Association called for a review of marijuana's status as a Schedule 1 hard drug alongside LSD and PCP and for more study of its medicinal potential.

In May, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said it was "time for a debate" on the merits of legalizing and taxing the drug. Nationally, support for legalization has jumped to its highest level in 40 years, up in a Gallup poll from 31 percent in 2000 to 44 percent last month.

In much of American pop culture, the taboo against smoking pot lies largely in ashes -- in ubiquitous references in hip-hop music and in TV programs such as Showtime's "Weeds." Even iconic potheads Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are in vogue again, back on the road with their 22-city "Light Up America" comedy tour.

All of which adds up to what some commentators see as marijuana's steady march into the mainstream. Conservative pundit George Will recently declared the drug "essentially legalized" in California and predicted that the rest of the nation would follow suit.

That shift in atmosphere has encouraged more older users to take their pot habits public.

"I don't think more people in their 50s are smoking marijuana. I think we are just more comfortable talking about it," said Rick Steves, who writes travel guidebooks and hosts a public TV series on travel. At 54, the clean-cut guru of mass-market European tourism has begun to present himself as the hard-working, successful face of the longtime smoker.

"Even my pastor knows I smoke pot," said Steves, who was recently named Lutheran activist of the year for his work on international poverty relief.

"It's just not that big a deal anymore. It's another recreational drug, like alcohol."

For Steves, the starkest sign of pot's growing acceptance is the annual Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of marijuana enthusiasts each summer to a park in his home town of Seattle. But he said he has detected a change in more straitlaced cities, including the District, which he visited last week to see his daughter at Georgetown University.

"When I stepped out of my daughter's apartment, a couple of guys were passing a bong on the front stoop," Steves said. "They weren't self-conscious at all."

Although young users generally go to some lengths to keep their pot use under wraps, those of a certain age -- especially those not in danger of being kicked out of school or subjected to workplace drug tests -- seem more likely to talk about their usage.

"It seems the stereotype of the marijuana user as a goofy teenage boy has begun to change," said Shelby Sadler, 48, a freelance editor from Rockville. She described a wide circle of professional friends in the Washington area, many of them women, who use the drug socially. "They are less inclined to hide it now. The kids are gone, and they no longer have to worry about losing their jobs because they're the ones doing the hiring."

Sadler, who was journalist Hunter S. Thompson's longtime editor and works on books with historian Douglas Brinkley, said she smokes a few times a month, usually with friends. The only difference now, compared with when she started at Cornell University, is the clothing.

"Then, it was Crazy Horse crewneck sweaters and oxford shirts," said Sadler, who is editing a history of pot by Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Now I dress like Hillary Clinton."

Police, others disagree

Drug counselors bemoan the softening views on marijuana, saying that it complicates their efforts to steer addicts away from illicit substances.

"It's more of a struggle for us when the parents just see heroin or cocaine as the dangerous drugs and sort of turn their heads with marijuana," said Carol Porto, who runs an inpatient drug treatment center in Calvert County.

Most Washington area police departments enforce the laws that make marijuana illegal, officials said. A Montgomery County police spokesman would not comment other than to say that the department has seen no spike in marijuana use by older residents and is not targeting those users.

One older smoker who doesn't mind outing herself is Florence Siegel, an 88-year-old artist from New York who has been smoking regularly since her early 50s. That's when the family's pediatrician suggested they try marijuana together to see "what the kids were so excited about." The pediatrician didn't feel a thing. Siegel said she never stopped.

Now her routine is to sit in her favorite chair each evening, listen to Bach and take a few hits from one of her many pipes. Marijuana boosts her creativity and helps with joint pain that has come with aging, she said.

Siegel smokes occasionally with her daughter Loren Siegel, 64, a recently retired lawyer. But does her 93-year-old husband ever join her?

"Oh, no," she said. "Well, only very rarely."

Ex-U.S. attorney: Time to change pot laws

Ex-U.S. attorney: Time to change pot laws

Last updated November 16, 2009 11:32 p.m. PT
By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Three years ago, former U.S. Attorney John McKay was somewhere near the front lines of the nation's drug war.

Directing federal prosecutions in Western Washington before he was fired in 2006 by the administration that appointed him, McKay's office sent marijuana smugglers and farmers to prison on decade-long terms. It indicted a loudmouth Canadian pro-pot activist for selling cannabis seeds by mail order.


So the crowd at an Edmonds auditorium could have been forgiven its surprise on Monday when McKay stood on stage with travel author and decriminalization advocate Rick Steves and declared that, of course, he is "against stupid laws."

"I think there has to be a shift in the paradigm," said McKay, now a professor at Seattle University. "The correct policy change would be a top-to-bottom review of the nation's drug laws."

McKay joined a panel as part of an effort by Steves and the American Civil Liberties Union to, in their view, return rationality to discussions about the nation's drug laws. They were joined there by Egil "Bud" Krogh, a former official in the Nixon White House who gained notoriety during the Watergate scandal, and state Rep. Mary Helen Roberts, an Edmonds Democrat who joked Monday about being dubbed by her colleagues the "Marijuana Queen of Northwest Washington" for her efforts on medical marijuana law reform.

While the panelists did not agree on all points, each said they see the need for substantive change in the way marijuana is regulated and offenders are punished. They also each spoke about the fears, or lack of courage, of elected officials in addressing issues surrounding the drug.

Steves and the ACLU launched the initiative last year partly as a response to that fear. The effort, built around an infomercial "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation," is aimed at encouraging citizens to discuss the issue openly.

"This is an issue that's scary for people," Steves said. "I have friends who oppose what I do on this issue because they're worried about their kids. What they don't understand is that so are we."

Addressing the audience, a group mixed in age and outward appearance, Roberts argued that the law as it stands takes an unjust toll on minority communities. In essence, she said, it leaves law enforcement agencies to pursue people who are easiest to catch while their efforts could be more productively spent elsewhere.

At the same time, she said, lawmakers -- even those who believe the laws to be unjust with regard to marijuana -- are afraid of being branded soft on crime.

"As a community and a society, we're afraid of crime," Roberts said. "And if what you're doing is being referred to as 'soft on crime,' even without details, legislators respond negatively to it."

Roberts also said the Legislature must revisit the state's medical marijuana law, which, in her view, fails to adequately protect patients.

McKay, though, said such changes fail to address the larger problems with marijuana laws in the country.

Even as the Obama administration has adopted medical marijuana rules similar to those he advocated while U.S. Attorney -- specifically, that federal agents not interfere with state medical marijuana regulations -- McKay said that simply having federal agencies ignore the laws enacted by Congress does not go far enough.

"Federal law makes the possession of any amount of marijuana a crime," McKay said. "So, even if you've got a certificate from your doctor, a federal officer could arrest you. That's just bad policy."

McKay faulted Congress for failing to take initiative on the issue. It is not the place of federal prosecutors or law officers to make policy, he said, nor should the White House go it alone.

In the end, he argued, marijuana should not be lumped in with cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin as part of the war on drugs. Marijuana law, McKay said, "should look a lot more like alcohol (regulations) and a lot less like cocaine and methamphetamine (laws)."

In Redding we are fighting to keep our collectives open as well ( i watched the la feed this morning, good luck guys) within the past few months redding and red bluff california have been attempting to make there own laws regarding marijuana. Going so far as to propose only allowing us access to one club within the county and making clones illegal to sell in a collective. please take a little time and read a few articles about our situation.


redding.com and redbluffdailynews.com are our too newspaper sites and news sources for the area.

today: Redding police prepare to inspect marijuana collectives Redding Record Searchlight

redding council approves tougher regulations: Redding council approves tougher medical marijuana regulations Redding Record Searchlight

another: Redding council will consider tough new medical pot ordinance Redding Record Searchlight

and for red bluff:

puts pot ban on hold: Red Bluff puts pot ban on hold - Red Bluff Daily News Online

collective forced to vacate: Mother Earth Medicine collective vacated - Red Bluff Daily News Online

theres tons more articles in these papers if you wish to browse thru them, and thank you for your time.

mike. :hippie:

Earlier this month, the New Mexico Department of Health issued its long overdue regulations for state-licensed, nonprofit medical marijuana providers, making it the first state to do so. Advocates say the new rules will allow for expanded access to medical marijuana for qualified patients. Not everyone is happy.

The process was long and involved, with numerous state agencies and law enforcement entities, as well as patients and advocates all trying to ensure that their interests and concerns were met. Originally mandated to be done by October 2007, the regulations were only finalized this month, with the Department of Health making late revisions based on public comments to earlier versions.

Under the newly promulgated regulations, nonprofit providers can grow no more than 95 plants, including both mature plants and seedlings, and can possess an amount of medical marijuana “that reflects current qualified patient needs.” The nonprofits must sell medicine at constant unit prices and without volume discounts.

In order to apply for provider status, the nonprofits must provide copies of their articles of incorporation and bylaws, a list of all people involved in operating the facility, a list of all people who have a 5% or greater ownership in the facility, and have a board of directors that includes at least one health care professional and three qualified New Mexico medical marijuana patients. All of these people must also undergo a criminal background check.

But wait, there’s more. As the regulations state:

All applicants must develop, implement and maintain on the premises policies and procedures relating to the medical cannabis program. At a minimum, the policies and procedures will include the following criteria:

* Distribution criteria for qualified patients or caregivers appropriate for medical cannabis services.
* Distribution criteria must include a clear identifiable photocopy of each registry identification card of a qualified patient and the patient’s caregiver (if applicable) who are served by the nonprofit.
* Policies and procedures relating to an alcohol and drug free workplace program.
* A job description or employment contract developed for all employees, which includes duties, authority, responsibilities, qualifications and supervision.
* A personnel record for each employee that includes an application for employment and a record of any disciplinary action taken.
* On-site training curriculum, or enter into contractual relationships with outside resources capable of meeting employee training needs, which includes but is not limited to:
a) Professional conduct, ethics and patient confidentiality.
b) Informational developments in the field of medical cannabis.
* Training in security measures and specific instructions on how to respond to an emergency, including robbery or a violent accident.
* All nonprofits will prepare training documentation for each employee and have employees sign a statement indicating the date, time and place the employee received training and topics discussed, to include the name and title of presenters. The nonprofit will maintain documentation of an employee’s training for at least six (6) months after termination of employment.

The new regulations also require patients who are growing their own to submit an application. Patients can grow up to four flowering plants and 12 seedlings. They can also possess up to six ounces of usable marijuana.

“We have worked hard to create a medical cannabis program that will be viable and meet the needs of patients in New Mexico,” said Health Secretary Dr. Alfredo Vigil when the regulations were announced. “Now patients can get medical cannabis for their chronic health conditions in a way that is safe and legal under state law.”

“I think the regulations will serve the patients of New Mexico well,” said Melissa Milam, administrator of the Medical Cannabis Program in the state Department of Health. “I’m really happy that we are moving forward; I think that’s better than to continue having this drawn-out debate over the regulations.”

The first application by a nonprofit organization was accepted last week, said Milam. “We expect several more soon,” she added. One hold-up, she said, was the requirement that all members of the nonprofit’s board of directors pass a background check. “We’re asking them to do that through the state Department of Public Safety, and those take about two weeks to process,” Milam said.

Advocates are hoping the new regulations are a first step only. “We were able to get a lot of the changes we wanted into the regulations, so we’re glad that the governor’s office was receptive, but we didn’t get everything we wanted,” said Reena Szczepanski, head of the Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico office, which worked closely with Gov. Richardson for years to push medical marijuana through the legislature. “There will be room in the future to look at things like the regulations on nonprofits and plant limits.”

That’s because the regulations call for an annual evaluation report, Sczcepanski said. “We were able to get that yearly evaluation in there, and that will give us a chance to look at revisions in the future in light of how well the program is meeting the needs of patients. We also wanted state-run providers and didn’t get that. That’s another thing we can look at in coming years,” she said.

Some advocates wish the department had gotten it right the first time around. Bernie Ellis, MA, MPH, an epidemiologist with more than 20 years experience in substance abuse-related research and administration, is one of them. Ellis has worked for medical marijuana in New Mexico for years, dating back to the days of Gov. Gary Johnson. Ellis also brings with him the bitter experience of a federal medical marijuana prosecution in Tennessee where he currently resides. He submitted detailed recommendations on the regulations during the public comment period last year, which interested readers can obtain by contacting him via the link above.

“The biggest frustration that I share with other medical marijuana activists nationally is that the New Mexico legislation could have been the gold standard for administering medical cannabis programs, but instead it has turned out to be just one more ’same old-same old’ program with unrealistically low limits on the amount of cannabis patients can possess and providers can grow,” said Ellis. “Limiting patients to no more than six ounces of medicine means that patients who grow outdoors will face arrest for possessing any more cannabis than their first six weeks supply. Limiting providers to 95 plants, including those in vegetative growth, means the producers will be able to produce medicine for no more than six patients apiece.”

According to Ellis, there are at least 46,000 New Mexicans whose medical conditions currently make them eligible for the state’s program, and the state is now considering adding more qualifying conditions. “With these regulations, we are talking about the potential need to license about 7,500 producers (or more) to serve a population like that, instead of licensing a smaller number of producers who could produce at a more realistic level,” he said.

Ellis had argued for much larger state-licensed medicinal grows. “I have done preliminary cost and staffing estimates for providers growing an acre of cannabis, which would serve several hundred patients,” he said. “There is no state better than New Mexico to do this right. The population there has centuries of medicinal use of this substance, the cultural climate is very favorable for success, and Gov. Richardson put a considerable amount of his own political capital to work to get this passed. But now, after a fifteen month delay releasing the program regulations, we have a program with unrealistically low limits on patients and providers, which will allow patents to be ‘legal’ only a few months of the year.”

“The federal government doesn’t seem to get involved with less than 99 plants or 99 pounds; that’s where that number comes from,” said Milam. “It is a measure to protect providers.”

More importantly, said Milam, the patients seem satisfied. “No patients have complained to me about the plant limits,” she said. “If they don’t have a problem with it, I don’t either.”

The regulations contain a safety valve for patients, Sczcepanski noted. “If a need is indicated by their medical provider, patients can apply to possess amounts over the limit,” she pointed out.

The limits on providers also have another negative consequence, Ellis argued. “With those sorts of limits, producers will not have the ability to reduce the price for medical cannabis below the current illicit price, which would defeat the goals of a program like New Mexico’s,” he said. “If you tell a nonprofit it is limited to 95 plants and it has to set up an elaborate security system and staff the effort commensurate with the security and horticultural needs, I don’t see how they will be able to reduce the market price doing that. A larger, properly staffed facility could bring those prices down. Right now, the few providers I’ve talked to in New Mexico say they’re just buying cannabis for patients from the illegal market and paying $200-$500 an ounce for it. I think if it were done right, we could get the cost down to around $50 an ounce.”

“We’re a very poor state, and many of the patients are on Medicaid or disability,” said Milam. “California may have dispensaries everywhere, but they’re charging black market prices. Our patients can’t afford to pay $400 an ounce on top of their other medications. We’re trying to set it up so marijuana is an affordable medication,” she said, adding that she was sure licensed growers could beat black market prices.

“The state of New Mexico said it wanted to make cannabis available on demand to patients,” Ellis continued, “but the way they’re treating medical marijuana patients is analogous to telling a patient with a major infection that she needs penicillin immediately, and then handing her a loaf of bread and instructions on growing her own antibiotics. If a cancer patient has to undergo chemotherapy soon after diagnosis, he needs access to medical cannabis then, not five to seven months down the road when his first harvest might be ready.”

Milam didn’t disagree. “I’ve had doctors call me saying their patient needed medical marijuana on an emergency basis, and I have had to tell them to tell their patients to go find it themselves. This is a prime example of why the federal government needs to get marijuana rescheduled as Schedule II. The patients need to be able to go to the pharmacy and pick it up when they need it.”

Despite his litany of criticisms of the new regulations, Ellis took pains to emphasize he supports the New Mexico medical marijuana program. “I am a proponent of the New Mexico approach as outlined in their legislation, but an opponent of the current regulations. Martin Luther King once said he would not have had the success he did in the civil rights arena without [black radical] Stokely Carmichael and others agitating for change. I’m trying to be Stokely Carmichael on this. If we don’t watch out, they can incrementalize us, and too many patients, to death.”

There are currently 207 patients registered with the New Mexico Department of Health. Now, they will soon have the opportunity to procure their medicine through the nonprofits — or at least a few months after one actually gets up and running. In addition to the one application already in process, said Milam, at least two more are going through the criminal background check requirement and should be applying soon.

Whether and how well the new regulations will serve the needs of patients remains to be seen. “We will be monitoring the implementation, and we’ve been doing that through this whole process,” said Sczcepanski. “As these nonprofits are going forward, we will be watching to see if they are approved and if not, why not, and making sure the regs are being followed.”

Link: Feature: New Mexico Issues Regulations for Nonprofit Medical Marijuana Grows | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
Source: StoptheDrugWar.org

The Ventura City Council indicated this week that it’s willing to take a serious look at allowing medical marijuana collectives to operate legally in the city.

Medical marijuana patients hailed the decision, but top city and police officials cautioned that pot clubs could pose enforcement and regulatory challenges and bring increased crime.

After a long discussion and impassioned public input, the City Council voted unanimously Monday night to enact a yearlong moratorium on medical pot operations as it studies how to craft language allowing nonprofit collectives, which typically are operated by medical marijuana users and focused on patient care.

Pot dispensaries, on the other hand, are often run like for-profit stores and should not be considered, said Councilman Ed Summers, who made the motion.

“I really believe there are valid medical uses,” said Summers, who favored a yearlong ban to allow further study despite some people’s concerns that such a ban would send the wrong message.

Los Angeles has been overwhelmed with dispensaries capitalizing on loopholes because the city “didn’t do it right” when it drafted its rules, Summers said. Ventura’s temporary ban, he said, would “start the clock ticking while the city develops the right rules.”

No city or unincorporated area in Ventura County currently allows medical marijuana operations. Some cities, including Moorpark, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, have adopted temporary moratoriums. Camarillo just extended its ban. Simi Valley enacted a permanent one.

The Oxnard City Council explored allowing dispensaries when it enacted a moratorium in November 2005 but later backed down because of unresolved conflicts between state and federal law.

Dozens of medicinal marijuana patients and supporters filled Ventura City Hall on Monday, urging the council to give them a fair shake.

Although their comments were limited to two minutes, patients shared stories of how medical pot has helped them cope with pain and lead productive lives. They complained about how they have to drive to Santa Barbara, Malibu or the San Fernando Valley to buy their medicine.

Backers, stressing the medical benefits and how legal outlets could provide a potential financial windfall for the city, urged the council to show compassion and create a regulated, taxed program for nonprofit marijuana collectives under Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. The act permits patients to legally use medicinal marijuana in California.

Attorneys who specialize in medical marijuana laws volunteered to help the city devise rules.

“It can be done, it should be done, it needs to be done,” said Duke Smith, a longtime patient, former Los Angeles pot club operator and founder of Citizens for Safe Access, an advocacy group.

Although Mayor Christy Weir and Councilman Jim Monahan said they preferred a permanent ban on any form of pot outlet, both ultimately supported the moratorium and potential legalization process, which would have to return to the council for adoption by a majority vote.

Afterward, the mayor said pot clubs would be a “disservice” to the community and Police Department. “I’m usually in favor of shopping locally, but these establishments would do more harm than good in our community,” she said.

Council members Brian Brennan, Carl Morehouse and Neal Andrews disagreed, voicing support for the careful crafting of new regulations. It was time the city “treat the issue with the dignity and respect it deserves,” said Brennan.

Recent polling shows more than half of Californians support legalizing and taxing marijuana, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder pledged in March to no longer take action against medical marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state and local laws.

Ventura City Manager Rick Cole expressed concerns about how the city would enforce new rules and warned that pot outlets, even ones run by well-intentioned owners, could cause complaints from neighbors and increased crime.

Police Chief Pat Miller told the council he didn’t have the resources to regulate or monitor a new program and that other communities have experienced problems with such clubs. “Any time you have a lot of money involved, you have a lot of people coming out the woodwork to make it and take it,” he said.

The California Police Chiefs Association has said that marijuana clubs across the state are little more than fronts for drug dealers.

Prosecutor Gregory Brose of the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office urged the city to develop rules to block dispensaries, which, he said, were illegal.

Pot patients agreed. Instead, they pointed to the four nonprofit collectives in Oakland that are operating legally and with city permits — and cited a new tax on them supported overwhelmingly last week by Oakland voters to help the cash-strapped city. They argued Ventura could charge higher licensing fees to pay for increased city and police oversight, require on-site security, and mandate that the clubs be far away from schools and homes.

After the council decision, some patients said they were so accustomed to rejection that they were unsure whether to believe Ventura was serious about creating a legal path, particularly with the mayor’s opposition. Others were encouraged, giving each other high-fives and hugs.

“I hope tonight’s vote was a serious and meaningful step to providing Venturans with lawful and safe access to medical marijuana,” said Jay Leiderman, a local criminal attorney who volunteered his services to the city. “One year is a long time to freeze an issue and study it, and I hope all the positives from tonight’s meeting don’t die a slow death in bureaucratic committee.”

Councilman Andrews, who worked in the healthcare industry for 35 years, said state law encourages local governments to help make distribution of medical marijuana safe and affordable for seriously ill patients.

“It’s time we take that direction, embrace it and find the right solution for our community,” he said.

Source: Ventura County Star (CA)
Copyright: 2009 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact: letters@venturacountystar.com
Website: Ventura County Star: Local Ventura, California News Delivered Throughout the Day.

Rejecting Advice to Ban Sales, L.A. City Concil Panels Endorse Patient’s Cash Contributions.

Two Los Angeles City Council committees rejected the advice of the city attorney and voted Monday to approve an ordinance that allows marijuana dispensaries to continue to sell the drug to people with a doctor’s recommendation.

The city attorney’s office has maintained for a year and a half that Los Angeles has no choice but to ban sales because state law and court decisions are clear that collectives can only cultivate marijuana. That opinion had stalled the council’s deliberations because dispensary operators insisted it would force them to close.

Four hours into a raucous hearing, frustrated council members decided to replace the provision with one that authorizes cash contributions as long as they comply with state law, which prohibits collectives from making a profit.

“When can we finally stop the merry-go-round?” said Councilman Dennis Zine, who urged his colleagues to discard the city attorney’s version. “We’re going to come back with another version and another version, and it’s going to be 2010, and then 2011 and 2015, and we’ll be dead by then and we won’t accomplish anything.”

The decision broke the major deadlock on the contentious issue. The planning and Public Safety committees sent the draft ordinance to the full council, which is likely to consider it Wednesday.

“We need something on the books now. There is no reason why we should delay,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, who has overseen the council’s effort to write an ordinance.

Don Duncan, a Los Angeles resident who is the California director of Americans for Safe Access, said he believed the decision would resolve one of the last obstacles. “It sounded like they were going to let a patient walk in and reimburse a collective for their medicine. We can live with that,” he said.

The council’s action came after a judge ruled last month that the city’s 2007 moratorium on new dispensaries was illegally extended, which essentially left the city with no rules that it could rely on to shut down the hundreds of stores that have opened in the last two years.

Some council members responded favorably to the city attorney’s suggestion to consider capping the number of dispensaries. Councilman Jose Huizar proposed a cap of 70, allowing two in each of the 35 community plan areas.

“Hopefully, that will allow us to control for the over-concentration,” he said.

Almost 400 people crowded into the main council chamber and about 70 spoke, most testifying passionately about the medical value of marijuana and the role dispensaries play. If the council members decide to ban sales, said Dege Coutee, who runs the Patient Advocacy Network, “You will create a black market overnight. You will turn good citizens into criminals overnight. And you will get the city involved in costly litigation for years to come.”

About a half-dozen neighborhood activists spoke. Their complaints about vandalism, noise, loitering and dispensary operators with criminal backgrounds drew thundering boos and persistent catcalls from medical marijuana supporters.

“This has become a public safety nightmare,” said Michael Larsen, the public safety director for the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council. James O’Sullivan, the president of the Miracle Mile Residential Assn., advised: “Do the right thing. Protect your community.”

A vote for a sales ban would take Los Angeles into uncharted legal territory. Two organizations, Americans for Safe Access and the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, have threatened to sue the city if the council adopts the provision.

Throughout the hearing, William Carter, the chief deputy city attorney, cited state law and court decisions and insisted they do not allow collectives to sell marijuana.

Several council members pointed out that West Hollywood has an ordinance that allows sales.

“There are other cities throughout the state that may not be complying with state law as we see it,” Carter said.

Reyes, who expressed exasperation with the city attorney’s office, said, “I think they are very, very narrow in that they’re taking their prosecutorial perspective.”

Zine urged the council to interpret state law in a way that would not disrupt how dispensaries now operate.

“Why don’t we push the envelope to the edge and see what we can do?” he said.

After the vote, David Berger, a special assistant to City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, said the council had the right to decide whether to accept the office’s legal advice. “Our duty is to advise them on what the law allows for, not to go on a whim,” he said. “They decided to go a different way.”

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Website: Los Angeles Times - California, L.A., Entertainment and World news - latimes.com

Here they are for all to read. Enjoy :doh:

A-D

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Kgbud1:hippie:

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	08-0923_mot_11-18-09.pdf (62.8 KB)
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The DA is wasting his time & ALL of our Tax $ on focusing on the MMJ arrests on any over the counter sale of mmj.

There are better uses of the DA's time & the money his office receives from our taxes

1. The DA should spend his time & our tax $ arresting Gang members who are on the streets selling to & children and teens. What about all the murders and severly injuring people from these gang drive by shootings. Put the street pushers out of business.

2. The DA should spend his time & our tax $ on all of the backlog of Rape and Murder evidence kits that sit in a warehouse, waiting to be processed.

3. Finish looking for all of those hit and run drivers that have killed, and crippled so many. The DA should be more focused in prosecuting drunk drivers, that are responsible for hit and runs, and many deaths. I see them getting off with a slap on the wrist, no jail???

4. The DA should spend his time, & our tax dollars to prosecute sex affenders, child molesters, and the parents or foster parents, whose children end up dead, because of abuse.

5. The DA should be thanking the mmj community. The mmj shops have helped put many corner drug pushers out of business.

We need new DA's that have compassion.

In my opinion both of the DA's are not doing their jobs very well. I am not seeing enough of the above criminals being sent to jail. The jails are sooo overcrowded. If they were to release all of the mmj offenders doing time out, there would be more room for long jail terms from the above group of criminals that I described.

STOP upsetting the MMJ Patients and there shops.

Thank you.

dj pebbles

:doh: :dizzy: :drama: :frusty: :sick:

ADDA Sues Cooley, Claims Retaliation for Exercising Rights

Here is an article about how Cooley is attempting to bust the Deputy D.A.'s union. I find this disgusting. Cooley is a cowboy, and thinks Los Angeles is Marlboro Country. Sorry to my Republican friends, but Cooley is pushing a right wing agenda agenda on us. Public employees are allowed to unionize, and should not get retaliated on by management for doing so. Now Cooley wants us patients to go enrich street dealers, and put thousands out of work. In his zeal for his private culture war, he is undermining economic growth and trying to destroy a reliable tax base.

November 17, 2009
By Steve Lopez

Dr. Sona Patel, who worked as a model while going to medical school, is not your ordinary medical marijuana specialist. Her ads and her appearance emphasize glamour.



The physician was wearing high heels, a tight-fitting white lab coat and lots of gold jewelry, which is not quite what you expect to see when you visit a pot doctor. Nor do you expect to see a chandelier the size of a Christmas tree in a waiting room decorated like an Indian palace.

Dr. Sona Patel told me that's just who she is. Her Melrose Avenue office, she said, is designed in much the same way as her home in Hollywood.

You may be wondering what I'm doing in the office of yet another cannabis specialist, given my fruitful encounter last month with a physician in Glendale. That doctor had told me he knew nothing about back problems because he was a gynecologist, but he wrote me a marijuana recommendation after a 10-minute "exam."

But in California, you're entitled to a second opinion, and I had some more questions. I was wondering how and why a doctor goes from conventional to herbal medicine, and I called Patel, intrigued by her glamorous ads in local publications. The whole California marijuana adventure seems like an herb-fired hallucination, but what must her story be?

Before I visited Patel, I called state regulatory officials to discuss my Glendale experience. Much has been written about the explosion of dispensaries, particularly since Los Angeles has made such a mess of things, allowing several hundreds of storefront pot outlets to open without permits. But far less has been written about the doctors.

Is there any oversight for those who appear to be running patients through mills at $100 or more a pop, faster than you can open your mouth and say, "Ahhhh?"

Not a great deal.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California told me that only 81 complaints have been made against marijuana doctors since 1996, and investigations have led to disciplinary action against just 10 doctors. The medical board is expected to consider early next year whether to be a little more proactive, and re-establish guidelines for conducting exams and issuing "recommendations."

Frank Lucido, an Oakland physician, has been speaking out for doctors who fear they're all being tainted by unprofessional colleagues who are rubber-stamping marijuana recommendations.

"I schedule 45 minutes for a first-time patient and 30 for a repeat patient," said Lucido, who suggests that California has become the "Wild West," with thousands of dispensaries, hundreds of doctors and varying laws from one city to the next.

Lucido said he's trying to hold the middle ground between drug war partisans who oppose marijuana altogether, and those who are ready to party on the other side, faking medical need so they can light up recreationally.

Where does Dr. Patel stand?

Her office, which doesn't look like much from the outside, sits across the street from Melrose Organic Pharmacy, where I purchased some Skywalker buds as part of my research last month. Good for back pain, said the clerk.

At Patel's office, Shannon, the office manager, was also in high heels. All right, what is this, a modeling agency or a doctor's office?

The high fashion is just a style preference, said Dr. Patel, 34, who uses her own image in advertising materials, often in different hairstyles.

But is the glamour about creating a marketing niche -- she'll fix what ails you, and she looks like a beauty queen, to boot! -- in a crowded field?

No, Patel said. But as a matter of fact, she worked as a model to help pay medical school bills, and the glam shots she uses were actually meant to market a cosmetics line that never got off the ground.

So how did she get into herbal medicine?

Patel said she grew up in Chino Hills and went to medical school in the Caribbean, having wanted to be a doctor from the time she was 5.

She ran a family practice and clinic in Hollywood, but grew weary of prescribing pharmaceuticals with potentially serious side effects to patients suffering from diabetes, AIDS, migraines and other maladies. Some of those patients asked if she would recommend marijuana instead.

"I began to research it and incorporated it into my practice," Patel said.

To her surprise, patients often got greater relief from pot than from prescription drugs -- and they reported no side effects. In 2007, she shut down her family practice on Sunset and went herbal all the way on Melrose. Her answer to the obvious question? Yes, the money is better.

Patel told me she worked briefly in San Francisco and was the subject of an unflattering TV news story in which two TV producers said that getting a recommendation from her was laughably easy. The story, which I later checked, also noted that Patel was in hot pants and high heels on materials advertising her business, and that she used the name Doc 420, the 420 being street slang for marijuana. We've come a long way since Marcus Welby.

The story was a distortion, Patel insisted.

Well, whatever. I still find the high heels and lab coat a little strange, but it also seems weird that I can legally buy buds in virtually every corner of the city because a gynecologist said I could.

Patel said she now sees 15 to 20 patients daily and said she generally spends 30 minutes or so with each, and she reviews their medical records before recommending marijuana. On average, Patel said, she denies recommendations for between two and five patients daily who don't prove a medical need.

I should note here that before I met Dr. Patel, I got an e-mail from a patient who was upset about her denying him a recommendation, and that was one reason I wanted to meet her.

Patel said that if you haven't been previously diagnosed with a condition that has existed for at least six months, and you haven't tried conventional medicine, don't bother making an appointment with her.

But she's convinced that marijuana, used properly, is improving the quality of life for many patients who got no such relief from prescription drugs.

If marijuana becomes completely legal, regulated and taxed in California -- which is where we ought to go, if you ask me, ending the bogus drug war and the dispensary/recommendation charade -- it might mean the end of Dr. Patel's business.

If so, she said, she won't go back to conventional medicine. She might instead go back to school and study various Eastern and alternative medicines.

That would cost a ton.

But modeling got her through school once, and she's still got the high heels.

Some horrible individual submitted this to the City Clerk, and it now appears on the agenda for tomorrow (Wednesday 11/18/09) City Council:

http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/...c_11-18-09.pdf

NOT FUNNY!!!

Here it is cut and paste:

November 17, 2009
Dear Honorable Los Angeles City Council Members,
I'm Michael Larsen from Angelenos for Reasonable Marijuana Regulation, but today
(eventhough Iam not one) I'd like to speak to you on behalf of the Drug Dealers of Los
Angeles.
And on their behalf, I'd like to congratulate you and thank you.
Thank you for your compassion.
Without your progressive policies and amazingly brave approach, we would not be able to do
the work that we do and contribute so much to financial and cultural character of this great
City.
Who would have thought that the City Council of Los Angeles would not only encourage and
facilitate our enterprise, but to also diligently protects us from the unfair interference of local
and federal law enforcement? We can't thank you enough.
We are seeing an incredible surge in sales of weed in this city, our retail outlets continue to
grow and flourish -(we are opening a new outlet in Eagle Rock as I write!), and we could not
have done it without you, especially CM Reyes.
Thank you.
With your forward thinking stimulus programof we have been unfettered by draconian
permits, inspections, fees, taxes, audits, hearings, pesky Neighborhood Councils, unfettered
by all the bureaucratic nightmares that hinder other businesses in the City.
We have been, and it looks like we will continue to be, free to attend to the business that we do
best: selling quality bud and making mad profits. Our customer base has expanded
exponentially and is getting younger thanks to the access and legitimatcy you have given us.
We don't take this special status that you have given us lightly. We know how important it is
to you and to the people of this great city that we provide' affordable, convenient weed and
edibles to discriminating and compassionate Angelenos.
Thanks to your efforts everyone accross the country and indeed througout the world knows
that LA is the place to come to buy, sell, grow, eat and smoke pot without any governmental
interference whatsoever.
Now with your clear endorsement and saction at yesterday's joint committee meeting, we can
go on to create an even more successful business in Los Angeles (non-profit of course, wink
wink) thereby solving the City's budget woes, curing most medical ailments, and keeping
everyone super high and happy!
Thanks to to all of your hard work, LA IS and hopefully will continue TO BE The
Marijuana Mecca of America! (We are already crafting and will work closely with the City
on a billion dollar advertising campaign to get the word out and give L.A. the boost it needs!)
Remember, stay uniformed and confused and you'll do great!
Thank you again.
Michael Larsen
Angelenos for Reasonable Marijuana Regulation

I found this to be a very positive piece about this autistic boy and California MMJ. It aired on KTLA Monday night. While it will definitely create arguments about the morality of it, the improvement on the quality of this boys life is undisputed!!

http://www.ktla.com/news/extras/ktla...,6959760.story

D.A. will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries -- even if L.A. does not ban sales [Updated] | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times


Councilman Ed Reyes, who has overseen the development of the city’s ordinance, said he did not think Cooley’s comments would cause the council to rethink whether to allow sales. “This is not about Cooley versus Reyes, or Cooley versus the council. This is about the quality of life. We all have better things to do than to do this legal jousting,” he said.

Reyes said the law was not clear on the issue. “We’ll let the courts decide,” he said. “We are trying our very best to work with a system that is very vague at this moment.”

He also noted that Cooley and Trutanich were allies and that both spoke at a training session for narcotics officers focused on eradicating dispensaries. “We’re here to serve the people, not to serve each other’s political agenda,” he said. “It makes no sense to play political football with people’s lives.”

Once the council acts on the issue, Reyes said, “We expect the city attorney to vigorous defend our medical marijuana ordinance.”

LA Times:
D.A. will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries -- even if L.A. does not ban sales

Link:
D.A. will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries -- even if L.A. does not ban sales [Updated] | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times


Highlight (or lowlight is more like it) of the Article:


Ladies and gentlemen the DA of the City of Angels.

This is Awesome!Deputy DA May Be Defense Witness In Medical Pot Trial - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego

L.A. City Council panels reject ban on medical marijuana sales
November 16, 2009 | 3:17 pm
Rejecting the advice of the city attorney, two Los Angeles City Council committees voted today to scrap a proposed provision that would have banned the sale of medical marijuana.

The controversial measure, first proposed a year and a half ago, delayed deliberations as council members debated the wisdom of ignoring the opinion of the city's top prosecutor. But about four hours into a raucous hearing, council members made it clear they were ready to move on.

"When can we finally stop the merry-go-round?" said Councilman Dennis Zine, who kicked off the City Council's consideration of the issue in 2005 when concerns about dispensaries first surfaced. He proposed an alternative provision that would allow dispensaries to accept cash for marijuana as long as they comply with state law.


William Carter, the chief deputy city attorney, repeatedly argued that state law and state court decisions make it clear that collectives can cultivate medical marijuana but not sell it. "We're stuck with the current law," he said.

But Zine urged the council members to adopt an interpretation of the law that would not upend how dispensaries operate in Los Angeles and most of the state. "I'm saying let's push that to the edge," he said.

After the members of the planning committee and Public Safety Committee voted, David Berger, a special assistant to City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, said it is up to the council to decide whether to accept the office's legal advice. "Our duty is to advise them on what the law allows for and not to go on a whim," he said. "They decided to go a different way."

Councilman Ed Reyes, who has overseen most of the council's consideration of the issue, expressed exasperation with the city attorney's office. "I think they are very, very narrow in that they're taking their prosecutorial perspective," he said.

The long-delayed measure could be taken up by the full council as soon as Wednesday. "We need something on the books now. There is no reason why we should delay," Reyes said.

Four years ago, when the City Council first began to look into regulating dispensaries, there were four. A year later, there were 98. In 2007, when the city adopted a moratorium, 186 dispensaries were allowed to remain in business. Now, the city attorney's office estimates there could be as many as a thousand spread throughout the city, and heavily concentrated in some neighborhoods.

At the hearing, scores of dispensary operators and marijuana users argued that the proposed ban would force them to close. "It simply won't work," said Don Duncan, a Los Angeles resident who is the California director of Americans for Safe Access.

A vote for a sales ban would have taken Los Angeles into uncharted legal territory. Duncan's organization and the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients threatened to sue the city if the council adopted the provision, arguing that the city attorney's opinion was flawed.

About 400 people crowded into the main council chamber for the hearing. Most of the speakers were supporters of medical marijuana who became increasingly rowdy. They repeatedly interrupted the handful of neighborhood activists who spoke, urging the adoption of an ordinance that would reduce the number of dispensaries and clamp down on operations that create nuisances.

"Do the right thing. Protect your community. You're going to get sued anyway," said James O'Sullivan with the Miracle Mile Residential Assn.

-- John Hoeffel at City Hall

ASA's suggested changes:
http://www.safeaccessnow.org/downloa...ort_LA_Ord.pdf
Download, Read, Print, Share

City Attorney Trutanich's false reality:
http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/...c_11-13-09.pdf
Don't download, Don't print (Unless you highlight and laugh at it)


Uhh.. Where to begin?

LA City Attorney's Office: 'We deleted the unnecessary requirement that collective members provide their names to the city as part of the registration process.'


However they will still need to have them on hand and ready to hand over to law enforcement at any time.


8. No medical marijuana collective shall possess more than 5 pounds of dried marijuana or more than 100 plants of any size at the location. No collective shall possess or provide marijuana othat than marijuana that was cultivated by the collective: (1) at the location; or (b) at the collective's previous location if that previous location was registered and operated in strict accordance with this article;

No more patient-growers. Dispensaries will now be the growers, on site. With only 5lbs available at a time. And every patient now has a green thumb as they will be required to help cultivate the marijuana under this new ordinance.


14. 'Medical marijuana may not be inhaled, smoked, eaten, ingested, or otherwise consumed at the location, in the parking areas of the location, ...'

All patient volunteers must wait until they go home to medicate for their serious illnesses. No more vapor lounges, testing buds. Unless you live on-site, then it's okay.


15. Nothing in this article shall prevent members engaged in the collective cultivation of medical marijuana in strict accordance with this article from sharing the actual, out-of-pocket costs of their collective cultivation. Actual, out-of-pocket costs shall not be recovered through the sale of marijuana.

You will now share the costs of growing medical marijuana as a collective. You will be given marijuana as divided per harvest, not per your doctors orders, and you will be charged by out of pocket expenses. Err..Okay.

I guess California can't be first at everything......

First U.S. marijuana cafe opens in Portland | U.S. | Reuters

Commerce Online Announces Agreement With RedFin Network For Medical Marijuana Dispensary Pre-Paid Loyalty Card Program

Corporations want in. They know we are here to stay!

Sorry to post this so late but I just received it. I am not sure if I can listen to it but I hops someone can.



ASA Debates LA City Attorney

Today, Friday, November 13th at 10am, ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford will be on Air Talk with Larry Mantle on 89.3 KPCC Radio (LA's NPR affiliate).

Joining Joe on the show will be Los Angeles Council member Ed Reyes and Assistant City Attorney David Berger.

Air Talk is a call-in show, and folks from LA are encouraged to call in at 866-893-5722.

If you don't live in LA, you should be able to hear it live online at AirTalk | 89.3 KPCC

HARMFUL? HELPFUL?

Medical marijuana inspires strong opinions, but what does science say?
A look at the pros, cons.
By Jill U. Adams
E-mail Print Share Text Size

August 18, 2008 - Depending on whom you ask, marijuana is a dangerous drug that should be kept illegal alongside heroin and PCP, or it's a miracle herb with a trove of medical benefits that the government is seeking to deny the public -- or something in between: a plant with medical uses and drawbacks, worth exploring.

As the political debates over medical marijuana drag on, a small cadre of researchers continues to test inhaled marijuana for the treatment of pain, nausea and muscle spasms.

All drugs have risks, they point out -- including ones in most Americans' medicine cabinets, such as aspirin and other pain-relievers or antihistamines such as Benadryl. Doctors try to balance those risks against the potential for medical good -- why not for marijuana as well, they ask.

The truth, these researchers say, is that marijuana has medical benefits -- for chronic-pain syndromes, pain, multiple sclerosis, AIDS wasting syndrome and the nausea that accompanies chemotherapy -- and attempts to understand and harness these are being hampered. Also, they add, science reveals that the risks of marijuana use, which have been thoroughly researched, are real but generally small.

Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of hematology and oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at UC San Francisco, says he sees cancer patients in pain, not eating or sleeping well, experiencing nausea and vomiting from treatment, and being depressed about their situation. He says he is glad that he lives in California, where use of medical marijuana is allowed by state law, although federal officials continue to raid cannabis dispensaries in the state and scrutinize practices of physicians who specialize in writing cannabis recommendations for patients.

"I can talk to patients about medicinal cannabis [and] I'm often recommending it to them for these indications," Abrams says.

Pro marijuana: A balm for pain

Medical marijuana use has a history stretching back thousands of years. In prebiblical times, the plant was used as medicinal tea in China, a stress antidote in India and a pain- reliever for earaches, childbirth and more throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

In recent decades, medical researchers have investigated marijuana's effects on various kinds of pain -- from damaged nerves in people with HIV, diabetes and spinal cord injury; from cancer; and from multiple sclerosis. Marijuana has also been hypothesized to help with nausea induced by chemotherapy and antiretroviral therapy, and with severe loss of appetite as seen in people with the AIDS wasting syndrome.

The weed's actions are due to the active ingredients tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and some 60 other cannabinoids, which mimic the action of chemicals -- known as endogenous cannabinoids -- that exist naturally in the brain. Those cannabinoids activate receptors in our nerves, triggering physiological responses.

A legal prescription form of THC (Marinol) exists, yet researchers say it's far from a perfect drug. Taken orally, its absorption is highly variable and unpredictable and often delayed, says Dr. Igor Grant, a UC San Diego psychiatrist who directs the university's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. "Smoking is a very efficient way to deliver THC," he says.

As a result of its federally illegal status, medicinal use of marijuana is restricted to carefully vetted clinical research studies or to patients in states such as California that have passed laws to allow for personal medical use. Research on the medicinal use of marijuana relies on government-issued marijuana cigarettes, which come in different strengths and are supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The UC Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research in San Diego helps coordinate clinical studies to investigate the safety and effectiveness of marijuana. Here's what they've found.

Neuropathic pain

Recent research suggests that marijuana can assuage this chronic-pain syndrome in which burning sensations occur and simple touch can feel like hurt. It is unaffected by aspirin-like drugs and fairly resistant to stronger analgesics such as opiates.

In a 2007 study on neuropathic pain related to HIV infection, 50 patients smoked marijuana cigarettes three times a day or marijuana cigarettes from which active ingredients had been extracted. Subjects then rated their pain on a scale ranging from "no pain" to "worst pain imaginable." The results, published in the journal Neurology, showed a 34% reduction in ratings of pain in the marijuana group compared with 17% in the placebo group over five days of treatment.

Another study in 44 patients reported in June in the Journal of Pain found that marijuana alleviated neuropathic pain arising from a variety of conditions, including spinal-cord injury and diabetes. Participants smoked marijuana on a set schedule -- first two puffs, then three puffs an hour later, then four puffs an hour after that -- from a single cigarette containing either 0%, 3.5%, or 7% THC. Average pain ratings before smoking were 55 on a 100-point scale and decreased by 46% in both treatment groups and by 27% in the placebo group one hour after the last puff.

Analgesic drugs are often tested against experimentally induced pain. Such studies have been conducted for marijuana too. In one 2007 report in the journal Anesthesiology, 15 healthy volunteers received skin injections with capsaicin -- the chemical behind that fiery spice in chile peppers -- and then smoked different-strength marijuana cigarettes. The medium dose, with a 4% THC concentration, lessened the burning pain.

These three pain studies all concluded that smoked marijuana can bring relief to sufferers of neuropathic pain comparable to other analgesic drugs. It is not a cure, Grant says: "It's like other pain medicines, you have to keep taking it."

Study subjects did feel high, an effect that varied among individuals. Marijuana also affected thinking, shown as problems with tasks of memory and complicated reasoning after the strongest marijuana cigarettes were used. Potentially problematic, these effects were tolerated by subjects -- no one opted out of the study because they couldn't think straight.

Grant says it's important to have a choice of treatments because not everyone responds to or can tolerate the available drugs. Antidepressants are used for neuropathic pain but cause dry mouth, constipation and urinary problems, and must be avoided by people with conditions such as glaucoma. Others can't take aspirin-like drugs. "Having an alternative compound is always good," Grant says.

Multiple sclerosis

Patients with multiple sclerosis suffer muscle spasms, pain and tremor. Anecdotal reports suggest that marijuana may be helpful, but controlled studies are few. One, presented at an April meeting, had 51 multiple sclerosis patients smoke 0% or 4% THC marijuana cigarettes daily for three days. Intensity of spasms was reduced by 32% and pain ratings by 50% after smoking marijuana, compared with 2% and 22% reductions after placebo cigarettes. Five subjects withdrew, citing side effects: feeling too high, dizzy or fatigued.

Other studies in patients with multiple sclerosis used a cannabis extract that can be taken orally. In a 2007 European Journal of Neurology study, nearly half of 184 patients experienced at least 30% improvement in muscle spasms.

But a 2004 Neurology paper showed no reduction in objective measures of arm tremor with cannabis extract, although five subjects out of 13 reported feeling improvement. This might have resulted from mood-altering effects of the drug or from some aspect of tremor not measured.

Nausea

A 2008 review published in the European Journal of Cancer Care analyzed 30 clinical studies using cannabinoid drugs synthesized in the lab and concluded that they were better than standard antinausea drugs in alleviating the nausea and vomiting that accompanies chemotherapy. One such drug is Marinol, a THC preparation approved by the Food and Drug Administration for precisely this purpose.

Survey studies suggest that some people with HIV smoke marijuana to counteract nausea caused by antiretroviral therapy. Researchers at the UC Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research have tried to study the effect of smoked marijuana on nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing chemotherapy but have struggled to enroll enough subjects, Grant says.

Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project -- a group that lobbies for the decriminalization of marijuana -- says he is all for research on the chemical components in marijuana with the goal of making more-purified and perhaps more-targeted drugs that do not deliver a "high," but does not see "criminalizing use of that plant by people who are ill when you are making its main psychoactive ingredient legal in the form of a very expensive pill."

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, says marijuana advocates are seeking a free pass. "They want to be exempted from the regular [drug] approval process," he says.

Con marijuana: Damaging habit?

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the country -- an estimated 25 million Americans smoked it within the last year and close to 100 million have smoked it at least once in their life, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Rates and severity of marijuana addiction pale in comparison to that of legal addictive drugs, alcohol and nicotine, according to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a panel of independent experts advising the British government, in a rare head-to-head, scientific comparison.

Yet, the fact is, recreational use can lead to addiction, and inhaling marijuana smoke is unhealthful for the lungs. Some researchers argue that marijuana may predispose heavy users to mental illnesses such as psychosis and depression.

How big are these risks and how should they be measured against health benefits? "The FDA has ruled that marijuana has no medical benefits, but its harms are well known and proven," says Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, referring to an April 2006 statement released by the FDA and several other federal agencies concluding that smoking marijuana was not of medicinal use.

For comparison's sake, Riley cites the prescription drug Vioxx. The FDA, he notes, pulled Vioxx off the market in spite of its proven efficacy, because it created problems in a small number of people.

Then, too, the number of people adversely affected by marijuana use is large, Riley says. "There are more teens in drug treatment for marijuana dependence than for alcohol or any other drug," he says.

Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration's Controlled Substances Act, a classification reserved for drugs carrying the highest risk for addiction and no medical benefit.

Scientists have reviewed the weed's risks and find them to be real, but small. Ten years ago, the Institute of Medicine reviewed the scientific evidence about marijuana at the request of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 1999 report states that, "except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."

In February, the American College of Physicians, the nation's second-largest physicians group, released a position paper in support of medical-marijuana research, protecting doctors from criminal prosecution and rescheduling marijuana as a less harmful drug.

A British advisory group this year found no evidence to reclassify cannabis as a more harmful drug in that country. In contrast to the U.S., the U.K. puts cannabis in the lowest category (Class C) in terms of criminal penalties for possession or sale, although government officials are campaigning to move it to Class B.

To investigate the risks of marijuana, researchers typically use heavy marijuana smokers as subjects. Though such a study design may be convenient, it makes interpretation tricky because heavy users may have traits in common besides smoking pot. Thus, says psychologist and marijuana researcher Stanley Zammit of Cardiff University in Wales, it is not easy in these kinds of studies to separate out the contribution of marijuana to any measurable effect in the group.

Psychosis

Claims of a link between marijuana use and psychotic episodes came under scrutiny after the U.K. downgraded cannabis from Class B to Class C in 2004. In 2007, Zammit was asked by England's Department of Health to survey the existing evidence to determine the long-term risks for mental illness from using cannabis. After researching the literature and including only those studies that satisfied certain criteria, he combined the results in a 2007 Lancet paper.

He concluded that marijuana use was associated with an increased risk of psychosis -- ranging from self-reported symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations to clinically diagnosed schizophrenia.

The risk is small, he adds. Cannabis use was associated with a 40% increase in risk overall and up to a twofold increase in heavy users. Because the risk of any person developing psychosis in their lifetime is about 2% to 3%, cannabis use at worst increases that to 5%. "So 95% of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis," Zammit says.

Zammit adds that "the main limitations of these studies is that you can never be sure that it's the cannabis itself that's causing this risk." Heavy users of marijuana may differ from nonusers in other traits -- including those that lead independently to increased drug use and risk of psychosis. The studies he reviewed tried to take into account this possibility but could not rule it out entirely.

The bottom line? "The evidence is probably strong enough that people should be aware of this risk," he says.

Even if it's real, the risk of developing psychosis because of marijuana use is smaller than with use of some other drugs -- including legal ones such as cigarettes, says Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist at the State University of New York University at Albany.

Grant says that numbers of schizophrenia cases have not increased since before the 1960s, when widespread marijuana use began. "The data are variable to be sure, but most studies have found that over the years the rate of schizophrenia has been stable or even declining," he says.

Depression

In an American Journal of Psychiatry study, 1,920 adults were assessed for marijuana use and depression and followed for 15 years. In those subjects who had no depressive symptoms at the study's start, marijuana abusers were four times more likely to develop depressive symptoms down the road. But Zammit, who reviewed this paper and 23 others in his 2007 Lancet paper, says the data overall are even murkier than for psychosis. Most of the studies he reviewed did not assess symptoms of depression before marijuana use, and so didn't rule out the idea that depression makes someone more likely to smoke marijuana -- and not the other way around.

Thinking

A review of the scientific literature published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society in 2003 looked at whether marijuana smoking had lasting effects on cognition after THC has left the body. Marijuana use was found to have small effects on memory in long-term users -- measured by asking subjects to recall words, for instance -- but no differences were seen on attention, verbal skills and reaction time. "We were actually surprised," says Grant, an author on the study. Even if the marijuana itself wasn't causing such things, he expected marijuana users might have other less-than-healthful behaviors -- they may drink a bit more, or use some other drugs, and "you might expect them to do a little worse."

A 2002 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found that a group of 51 heavy marijuana users (two joints per day) recalled two to three fewer words on average than nonusers in a memory test with a list of 15 words.

A second study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2001, found a similar deficit in 63 daily marijuana smokers who hadn't smoked for up to a week. After 28 days of not smoking marijuana the effect disappeared.

Children

Studies on brain function and mental illness cited above were conducted in adult marijuana users. How the drug affects adolescents is not completely resolved, but the data are more troubling.

A 2000 paper in the Journal of Addictive Diseases recruited 58 marijuana users and found structural changes in the brains of those who had starting smoking marijuana before age 17 but not in those who didn't start smoking until they were older.

"There's also a modest decrease in IQ if teens use heavily, though weekly users and folks who quit don't seem to show it," Earleywine says. Adolescence, he says, is a time when brain neurons are making oodles of new connections, and it's possible that a psychoactive drug such as marijuana may adversely influence that process.

Lungs

Before it has any effect on the brain, marijuana smoke enters the body through the lungs. Dr. Donald Tashkin, professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, has studied the pulmonary consequences of marijuana use for 25 years, recruiting a group of 280 heavy habitual pot smokers in the early 1980s, including some who also smoked cigarettes. (Subjects averaged three joints per day for an average of 15 years.) For comparison, he also recruited cigarette smokers who didn't use marijuana and people who didn't smoke anything.

Tashkin has done a number of studies over the decades comparing these groups. "I began with the hypothesis that regular smoking of marijuana would have an impact on the lungs qualitatively similar to the impact of regular tobacco smoking," he says. That's because the smoke of both plants are more similar than different.

Tashkin and his colleagues did find symptoms of chronic bronchitis in his marijuana-smoking group. In a 1987 study in the American Review of Respiratory Diseases, they reported that incidence of chronic cough, sputum production and wheezing was similar to that in cigarette smokers.

In a second study in the same subjects published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in 1998, examination of the airways and the cells lining the airways found swelling, redness and increased secretions in marijuana users. Biopsies showed "extensive, widespread damage to the mucosa," Tashkin says, similar to what was seen in tobacco users. "This is amazing, because the marijuana smokers average three joints a day, but the tobacco controls smoked 22 cigarettes, suggesting that on a cigarette-to-cigarette basis, marijuana may be more damaging."

But marijuana smokers differ from tobacco smokers in other, potentially more important ways, Tashkin adds. They do not seem to develop more serious consequences of cigarette smoking, namely chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) -- the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., killing 130,000 people each year -- or lung cancer, the most common cancer in Americans and responsible for an additional 160,000 annual deaths, according to 2005 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To study lung cancer, Tashkin looked at more than 600 lung cancer patients and more than 1,000 control patients matched for age, socioeconomic class, family history and other alcohol and drug use (along with many other potential influences).

The results, published in a 2006 paper in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, found a large number of regular marijuana smokers were present in both groups, but statistically there were no more in the cancer group than control group, suggesting no association between marijuana use and lung cancer. Tobacco smokers, on the other hand, showed a dose-dependent increase in risk: with a 30%, 800% and 2,100% increased risk of lung cancer in those who smoked less than a pack, one to two packs or more than two packs per day, respectively.

Other studies have found increased cancer risk. A study of 79 lung cancer patients and 300 controls published in the European Respiratory Journal this year found a fivefold increased risk in the heaviest marijuana users (daily use for 10 years) and no effect in less heavy users.

But Tashkin says this conflicting report was much smaller in scale, having fewer than 20 subjects in the group of heaviest marijuana users. "My critique would be: It's a small study. I think that their small sample size is responsible for vastly inflated estimates," he says.

Vapor versus smoke

Smoking anything is perceived as bad these days, says Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of hematology and oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at UC San Francisco. And so he devised a pilot study to evaluate a novel inhalation method conducted in 18 otherwise-healthy subjects. "We used a device that heated cannabis below the point of combustion -- basically, a heating element and a fan. The fan filled up a balloon from which the patients could inhale," Abrams says.

The findings, published in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 2007, showed that levels of THC were "virtually identical," as were patients' reports of subjective "high." No increase in exhaled carbon monoxide was observed with vaporized marijuana, as was the case with smoked marijuana, and patients preferred vaporization to smoking.

"The fact is that whole marijuana, particularly when vaporized and not smoked, is a safe and effective delivery system," says psychiatrist Dr. Igor Grant, director of the UC Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research in San Diego.

health@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Medical marijuana inspires strong opinions, but what does science say? -- latimes.com

ROOR USA Is Closing, For Real This Time!
ROOR DE (Germany) has issued a cease and desist order to ROOR USA. As of November 30, 2009 ROOR USA is closed. What does this mean for ROOR, Kulture, and for you in the future? We're not sure. We will not be making further comments on this situation right now. It would only be speculation if we did. We'll let you, if and when any new information becomes available. LUX and Sheldon Black, which are under the same family of companies as ROOR USA are not affected by this.

Update on November 5, 2009 at 12:38 AM by Admin
"Originally Posted by Roor USA
ROOR USA® ANNOUNCES OFFICIAL DEPARTURE FROM ROOR® LICENSER.

California, USA—October 2009—Due to the onslaught of counterfeit and otherwise unofficially licensed ROOR® products surging into the American smokeware marketplace along with a seemingly overwhelming difference of interest, the company popularly known as ROOR USA® has severed its license agreement with its German counterpart, ROOR.DE®.

In 1995, ROOR USA® was established as a separate entity and licensee for ROOR® (the now world famous all-glass water pipe glassblowing company from Germany, who subsequently went on to distinguish its own self as ROOR.DE®). With exclusive North American production rights, ROOR USA® took full responsibility for the production, marketing, and financing of its own ROOR® product line for fourteen years, ultimately branding ROOR® as one of the most successful all-glass water pipe companies worldwide. January 2009, however, marked the beginning of a continuous surge of counterfeit ROOR® products entering into the United States. After a series of unsuccessful attempts between the two ROOR® divisions at resolving the issues presented by the contagious counterfeiting, ROOR USA® has decided to discontinue its license agreement with ROOR®. As the industry’s leading American glass manufacturer, ROOR USA’S® departure from ROOR® marks a bold attempt to pursue its own unique interests in smokeware production while preserving the premium standards of quality and integrity that it believes are being threatened by the rampant counterfeiting of its former ROOR® product line.

“It’s clear that the USA team has it's own vision for the future that does not necessarily serve the interests of ROOR® globally,” states Sheldon Black, CEO of newly established SHELDON BLACK DESIGNS™ (formerly ROOR USA®). One thing is certain, Sheldon Black has no desire to rest on his laurels. With promise of superior quality and cutting-edge design, Sheldon and his team have proudly given back the ROOR® license and have launched their own premium quality signature brand, SHELDON BLACK™.

SHELDON BLACK DESIGNS™ specializes in the development and production of technically based, premium, handblown glass smokeware. The SHELDON BLACK™ product line offers industry firsts such as a new “triple-thick” sample size bowl, removable and fixed microfiltration downstem systems, ground glass joints featuring authentication marks and manufacture dates, and a complete line of products intended for efficient and ergonomic use of concentrates, among other quality-minded, high fashion products.

ABOUT—SHELDON BLACK DESIGNS™ - Sheldon Black began making and designing commercial smokeware in Los Angeles in 1988 and can be considered one of the pioneers of the American Smokeware Industry. Sheldon’s curiosity and passion for smoke culture led to his development of two United States Patents [Combined Tobacco Smoking Pipe Bowl and Receiving Stem, US Patent #D 346, 877 (5/10/1994) and US Patent #D 413,002 (5/17/1999)]] that have revolutionized the way people smoke the world over. Sheldon’s success and influence in the market is most evident through the products that he produced in his Los Angeles based glass production factory when he established the relationship with ROOR® that produced the ROOR USA® (1995-2009) product line that the world has come to know today. For over 20 years, Sheldon Black has literally created the American Smokeware Industry with almost perfect anonymity and is happy to finally tip his hat to the public for the first time in his dedicated career. For additional information on SHELDON BLACK™ inquire at Sheldon Black - Maker Of Premium American Smokeware or the nearest SHELDON BLACK™ authorized dealer. SHELDON BLACK, MAKER OF PREMIUM AMERICAN SMOKEWARE™, is a registered trademark of SHELDON BLACK DESIGNS™ and is in no way affiliated with ROOR® or ROOR.DE®.

“DO NOT SMOKE THIS STATEMENT.” –SHELDON BLACK, 2009"

From the Wall Street Journal....
Mexican Pot Gangs Infiltrate Indian Reservations in U.S. - WSJ.com

Mexican Pot Gangs Infiltrate Indian Reservations in U.S.

By JOEL MILLMAN


WARM SPRINGS, Ore. -- Police Chief Carmen Smith says he knows three things about suspected drug trafficker Artemio Corona: He's from Mexico, prefers a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and is quite possibly growing marijuana on the Indian reservation that Mr. Smith patrols.

Last year, Mr. Smith's detectives identified Mr. Corona as the alleged mastermind behind several large marijuana plantations on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. These "grows," as police call them, had a harvest of 12,000 adult plants, with an estimated street value of $10 million. Five suspects were arrested and pleaded guilty to federal trafficking charges. But their alleged boss, Mr. Corona, who has not been indicted, remains a "person of interest" to federal authorities and hasn't been found.

Cultivating marijuana in Indian country represents a new twist in the decades-old illicit drug trade between Mexico and the U.S., the world's largest drug-consuming market. For decades, Mexican drug gangs grew marijuana in Mexico, smuggled it across the border, and sold it in the U.S. But in the past few years, they have done what any burgeoning business would do: move closer to their customers.

Illicit pot farms, the vast majority run by gangs with ties to Mexico, are growing fast across the country. The U.S. Forest Service has discovered pot farms in 61 national forests across 16 states this year, up from 49 forests in 10 states last year. New territories include public land in Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama and Virginia.

The area where Mexican gangs seem to be expanding the fastest is on Indian reservations. In Washington state, tribal police seized more than 233,000 pot plants on Indian land last year, almost 10 times the 2006 figure. Pot seized on Washington's reservations accounted for about half of all pot seized on both private and public land last year. Police are finding pot farms on reservations stretching from California to South Dakota.

"These criminal organizations are growing in Indian country at an alarming rate," says Chief Smith. "The [growers] on our reservation were sent directly from Mexico."

At Chief Smith's reservation, police found trash piles that included crushed Modelo-brand beer cans and tortilla packages. They also recovered cellphones with a flurry of calls to and from Michoacán, Mexico -- an important drug-producing state. One grow in Washington state's Yakama Reservation featured a makeshift shrine to Mexico's unofficial patron saint to smugglers, Jesús Malverde, complete with votive candles and a photograph of the mythical figure.

Part of the trend is due to unforeseen consequences of stepped-up security on the U.S. border to slow the tide of illegal immigration from Mexico. Tighter borders make it harder to smuggle pot north, creating the need to produce the cash crop closer to market.

U.S. officials say the quality, and thus price, of U.S. grown weed is much higher than that grown in Mexico. The Mexican variety, typically full of stems and leaves, with a lower content of THC, the active narcotic in marijuana, brings in about $500 to $700 a pound, estimates Washington State Patrol Lt. Richard Wiley, who monitors marijuana grows on the state's public lands. By contrast, a pound of Washington-grown marijuana can command $2,500 locally or up to $6,000 on the East Coast.

Marijuana is a lucrative business for Mexican cartels, generating at least $9 billion a year in estimated revenues, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. Mexican gangs are relying even more on income from pot, U.S. drug authorities say, as they burn through cash fighting each other and the Mexican government, which has launched a crackdown. The math is tempting. Start-up expense for about dozen plots, with 10,000 plants each, is well under $500,000, U.S. officials estimate, including the cost of hiring 100 workers to plant marijuana and then several "tenders" to water them for three to four months until harvest. Incidental costs might include generators, PVC pipe and food supplies for the growers. Those plants could fetch about $120 million on the open market. With such impressive profit margins, a cartel can afford to have dozens of grows spotted and eradicated for every one that it harvests successfully.

The tighter U.S.-Mexican border is also prompting an unwillingness by illegal farm workers to cross back and forth. These migrants have decided to stay put in El Norte rather than return to Mexico after harvest -- creating a year-round labor force in rural areas. In a down economy, those workers face long stretches of unemployment -- leaving them easily swayed by offers to make quick cash growing marijuana.

That seems to be happening in Indian country. Chief Smith, who is a Wichita tribal member from Oklahoma but came here for the job, says the cartel growing pot on his reservation was paying tenders $2,000 a month each to water and watch their plots.

Indian reservations are full of transients, either people from other tribes whose members have married into local families, or undocumented farmworkers from Mexico. "Around here it's not easy to tell who's a tribal member and who's Hispanic," says Police Chief Keith Hutchenson of Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Tribe. That makes it easier for Mexican drug traffickers to blend in, he adds.

A decade ago, police in Washington state say most of the state's pot was grown by hobbyists indoors, using high-powered lamps. But that has changed in recent years to larger, outdoor grows that are more "corporate," run by sophisticated Mexican gangs.

At first, the Mexican growers began using remote public parkland in California, and have since expanded toward neighboring Oregon and Washington. Both states have two things gangs need: lots of unguarded forest land and lots of cheap Mexican labor.

Mexican gangs also are moving east, into Idaho and the Dakotas, using reservations to grow pot as well as distribute narcotics smuggled from Mexico and Canada, according to U.S. law enforcement.


Mexico-based cartels exploit several conditions unique to reservations, starting with chronically understaffed tribal police departments. Overlapping jurisdictions between tribal courts and outside agencies -- from the local sheriff to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration -- confuse the issue of who should take the lead in prosecuting crimes.

Federal authorities coordinate with tribal authorities on issues related to investigations, search warrants and other criminal proceedings, says Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Bickers of Portland, who prosecuted the men growing pot on the Warm Springs Reservation.

Another attraction is the sheer size of the jurisdictions. Colville Reservation is 2,200 square miles and patrolled by just 19 tribal police officers. The ancestral homes of tribes such as Oregon's Umatilla, Idaho's Nez Perce and Washington's Yakama have thousands of acres of often uninhabited land, and also abut huge tracts of public land.

The cartels often mix the marijuana plants in with other crops, such as corn, or plant them deep inside forests amid pine and oak trees to make them difficult to detect from air patrols.

The reservations aren't only home to marijuana farms but are becoming sites for gun trafficking. At the Yakama homeland, a 1.4-million-acre reservation near Toppenish, Wash., a Mexican gang allegedly has planted hundreds of acres of marijuana and run guns to Mexico. U.S. investigators say the guns have ended up in the hands of Mexico's most feared paramilitary drug group, Los Zetas.

There is enough gun trafficking that Washington state now ranks fourth as a supplier of weapons to Mexican drug gangs after Texas, California and Arizona, according to police. "A weapon bought here for $1,000 can be sold for $3,000 or even $6,000" south of the border, says Michael Akins, lead investigator for a multiagency drug task force, called Operation Green Jam. "That might buy cocaine for $3,000 a pound, which then could be sold in Washington for $20,000 a pound."

State police believe gunmen from Los Zetas, a group initially formed by deserters from Mexico's army and famed for its brutality, are already in Washington to provide security during harvests. In 2008 police recovered a small arsenal of powerful weapons near the Yakama grows.

"AR-15s and Berettas, mostly. At least a dozen," says Lt. Wiley, of the Washington State Patrol.


There is enough money involved in growing to tempt some legal residents. In September, law-enforcement officials in Benton County, Wash., busted three men working at a private ranch owned by Jose Luis Cardenas, a legal immigrant from Mexico. He allegedly earned $3,000 from a drug gang to rent his barn for eight days, the Benton County officials said. Stalks of fresh marijuana were dried and picked by workers arranged in a circle, like an old-time shucking bee, according to state police. Mr. Cardenas, who was charged with harboring and abetting illegal production of a controlled substance, is in custody, and didn't respond to requests for comment.

The operations can be elaborate. One site at the Yakama reservation sat more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road. Tapping water from an abandoned livestock trough, growers had workers string more than 1,000 yards of plastic irrigation pipe down to a cistern that fed a primitive treetop sprinkler system.

Tribal police uncovered another irrigation network in July at the Colville Reservation, just south of the Canadian border. After damming a small spring, guerrilla cultivators strung drip irrigation pipe hundreds of yards to marijuana fields. At one spot, the gang dug a rustic cistern from the crater of a fallen ponderosa pine. Nearby, they ran a gasoline-powered generator hitched to a pump that took spring water to a second cistern almost a mile away. The jury-rigged spillway nourished a total of 24,000 plants along the mountain slope.

That grow at Colville was found deep in the backwoods, where the tribe harvests timber for two reservation lumber mills. Colville Police Chief Matt Haney suspects immigrant workers hired to replant trees end up doing reconnaissance work for drug organizations.

"We've got over a million acres and forest fires are common," the chief explains. "Mexican laborers are hired by the U.S. Forest Service to do replanting, and work for the tribe's timber operations, too. They notice where there are streams, where there aren't streams. What can be reached by road, what can't. They share that information with some very sophisticated growers."

Warms Springs Reservation police say the drug gangs planting marijuana on the reservation since 2007 may have had Mexican workers spotting sites for them. Workers are often hired by tribal enterprises, including a small company that collects pine cones and fronds to fashion into Christmas tree ornaments.

John Webb, a tribal police detective, says collecting pine cones gives outsiders an excuse to be on the reservation -- something normally not allowed -- and form friendships.


Mr. Webb doesn't know whether pine-cone collecting prompted Oscar Castillo Zapién to come to Warm Springs. But in September 2008, Mr. Castillo was arrested for assault after allegedly firing his Glock semiautomatic pistol into a van departing from his home, striking one passenger in the neck. Eventually police linked him to the outdoor marijuana grows, together with at least three cousins, Héctor Castillo, Alejandro Zapién and Alfredo Olivera.

The men told authorities, as part of a plea bargain, that they reported to Artemio Corona, who was also a relative. In court papers, some of the suspects claimed to have been terrorized by Mr. Corona, who they say threatened them with his own Glock as he supervised work in the secret marijuana gardens.

At first, the Mexican suspects thought operating on tribal land shielded them from prosecution, says Mr. Webb. While the tribal court declined to prosecute, federal authorities were eager to take the case. To avoid the cost of trial, the U.S. attorney in Portland allowed the five defendants to plead guilty to a relatively minor charge of "conspiracy to manufacture marijuana," and receive sentences of up to 70 months in prison. Four are now serving time in U.S. federal prisons. One received probation.

Tribal police in Washington and Oregon say they expect Mexican gangs to keep reappearing every year during the summer harvest season. Says Chief Smith: "If we ever catch them, we'll run them off the reservation."

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

Cities, counties no longer mellow about pot dispensaries
At least 120 cities and eight counties in California have banned medical pot shops, fearing crime and profiteering. Some cite the proliferation of dispensaries in L.A.

Varieties of marijuana line a shelf in Green Oasis, a dispensary in Los Angeles. Nearly 1,000 pot shops have opened in the city since a 2007 moratorium. (Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times / October 19, 2009)

By John Hoeffel

November 10, 2009

As hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries have opened this year in a startling rollout across California, unnerved local officials have started to push back aggressively.

Many cities and a few counties have banned them. Others have imposed emergency moratoriums. And some have started to sue dispensaries to force them to close. So far, the state's courts have sided with local officials.

For marijuana advocates, who have seen over-the-counter sales become commonplace and watched the steady drift of California's vibrant weed counterculture into the mainstream, these setbacks are a discordant development.

"At this point, we're not winning a battle we should be winning," said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, who believes that local bans violate state law. "There's been this kind of backlash of 'Let's give ourselves this great enforcement tool of just banning dispensaries.' "

Three years ago, Elford's organization found that 29 California cities had banned dispensaries. Now, at least 120 have done so, according to advocates and opponents of medical marijuana. That's a quarter of the state's cities. In recent months, the pace appears to have accelerated. The number of cities allowing dispensaries has grown much more slowly, from two dozen to about 30.

Last week, Red Bluff, about 130 miles north of Sacramento, became the latest city to vote for a ban, one that outlaws not only dispensaries, but also collectives and marijuana cultivation. This week, Nevada City, a postcard-perfect Gold Rush city in the Sierra foothills, is likely to follow.

Los Angeles, the apogee of the uncontrolled dispensary boom, has become the scare story that has driven many other cities to act. The city attorney's office estimates that about 1,000 dispensaries have opened, most of them after a moratorium that was adopted in 2007.

"We actually tell cities around the state to look at the failure in Los Angeles," said Paul Chabot, the founder of the Coalition for a Drug Free California. "That's why the cities are moving fast and furious across the state to adopt bans."

This blow-back has come as local politicians look at the experiences of other cities and decide that they don't much like what they see: Anyone who wants to smoke pot can easily get a doctor's recommendation; dispensaries can attract crime; and some operators are in it for the money even though profits are prohibited.

Even places widely seen as pot-friendly have become wary.

Santa Cruz passed a law in 2000 to allow dispensaries. One opened in 2005, another in 2006, in the same industrial area. City officials say they have not had any trouble with them.

But Mike Ferry, a Santa Cruz city planner, said he was inundated with inquiries about opening dispensaries after the Obama administration announced in March that federal agents would lay off stores that adhered to state law.

"It goes from a trickle to a call a day, from all over the state and even out of the state," he said.

The city studied its dispensaries and learned that about three-quarters of their customers were not from Santa Cruz. The prospect of being a regional marijuana hub did not excite city leaders.

"We kind of felt like we were going to end up with a concentration," he said.

City officials have recommended a cap at two.

Some towns that once welcomed dispensaries have switched off the "Vacancy" sign. Dixon, a bedroom community on Interstate 80 between the Bay Area and Sacramento, decided years ago to allow dispensaries. None opened. This year, several people who did not live in the city inquired about starting one.

This was surprising to Jack Batchelor, the mayor. Why Dixon, a city of about 17,500?

"My sense is that it would be people living outside Dixon and driving by," Batchelor said.

Given the push-the-envelope innovation in California's marijuana industry, Batchelor's fear that his city might host the first drive-through dispensary doesn't seem far-fetched. It was not an appealing prospect, he said.

The more Batchelor learned, the more he worried. On the web, he realized how easy it was for anyone to get a doctor's recommendation for marijuana. He read reports that dispensaries attract crime. And he decided that he didn't believe that the aspiring dispensary operators had approached Dixon out of compassion for its residents.

"It's a monetary issue," he said. "Here's a way to expand their business."

In August, Dixon's City Council banned the stores.

Other cities, including many in the Inland Empire and Orange County, have similarly enacted outright bans.

Laguna Beach adopted a ban in September. Mayor Kelly Boyd said school officials urged the city to prohibit dispensaries. "We saw what was happening in other cities, and how they were rapidly growing and opening, and we didn't want that happening in our city," he said.

At least eight of California's 58 counties now have bans.

Supervisors in Madera County, in the Central Valley, voted unanimously in September to outlaw dispensaries after listening to almost two dozen supporters. One after another, they pleaded to be allowed to buy marijuana at the county's two dispensaries, telling emotional stories of how it helped them deal with anxiety, glaucoma, lupus, asthma, chronic pain and headaches. One man, who said he was a veteran and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, said, "I don't know why you are being backward about it."

But the board was swayed by the sheriff who cited crime statistics, insisted a vote for dispensaries would be a vote to violate federal law, noted that county voters had rejected the 1996 medical marijuana initiative and offered this opinion of dispensary operators: "They're not compassionate caregivers, they're criminals."

Elford and other advocates for medical marijuana argue that it is the bans that are illegal and insist that the California Supreme Court will eventually invalidate them. "They can't pass ordinances that are inimical to a matter of statewide concern," said Elford, who has provided legal counsel on many of the state's medical marijuana cases.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown concluded last year that dispensaries run by collectives "may be lawful," but did not address whether cities and counties could outlaw them.

So far, cities have won several cases in state courts.

As cities wait to see whether an appeals court will uphold a ban imposed by Anaheim, they have embraced another appellate court ruling. The state 2nd District Court of Appeal recently ruled for Claremont in its three-year battle with a dispensary that opened after the city denied it a business license and permit. The panel decided the state's medical marijuana laws did not stop the city from enforcing its licensing and zoning requirements.

That approach -- using licensing and zoning rules to keep dispensaries out of town -- is becoming increasingly popular with cities. A Superior Court judge recently sided with Fresno and ordered nine dispensaries to shut down. In the Bay Area, Walnut Creek has issued daily $500 fines to a dispensary that officials say violates its zoning rules and have filed suit. City Atty. Paul Valle-Riestra estimates the total fine at about $15,000. "Clearly, there seems to be a lot of money involved in this, and they don't seem to bat an eye at those kind of penalties," he said.

Lake Forest in Orange County has seen many dispensaries open in strip malls near the junction of the 5 and 405 freeways. The city has sued 21 dispensaries; five have closed.

Red Bluff officials said the Claremont decision emboldened them to push for their sweeping ban. As in Claremont, a dispensary opened in Red Bluff without permission, triggering the City Council's action. But city leaders also worried about crime and complaints of people smoking pot at houses used as collectives.

"You can really just start seeing that there's a dark side to this," said Scott Timboe, the city's planning director, "and so it was really the dark side that our community was concerned about."

john.hoeffel@latimes.com
Cities, counties no longer mellow about pot dispensaries -- latimes.com

Local ASA just delivered this to my email and I to you. This is amazing news, and about time!
:tortue-musique:

Houston, TX -- The American Medical Association (AMA) voted today to reverse
its long-held position that marijuana be retained as a Schedule I substance
with no medical value. The AMA adopted a report drafted by the AMA Council
on Science and Public Health (CSAPH) entitled, "Use of Cannabis for
Medicinal Purposes," which affirmed the therapeutic benefits of marijuana
and called for further research. The CSAPH report concluded that, "short
term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic
pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with
reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with
multiple sclerosis." Furthermore, the report urges that "the Schedule I
status of marijuana be reviewed with the goal of facilitating clinical
research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate
delivery methods."

The change of position by the largest physician-based group in the country
was precipitated in part by a resolution adopted in June of 2008 by the
Medical Student Section (MSS) of the AMA in support of the reclassification
of marijuana's status as a Schedule I substance. In the past year, the AMA
has considered three resolutions dealing with medical marijuana, which also
helped to influence the report and its recommendations. The AMA vote on the
report took place in Houston, Texas during the organization's annual Interim
Meeting of the House of Delegates. The last AMA position, adopted 8 years
ago, called for maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance, with no
medical value.

"It's been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that marijuana
has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical utility," said
Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D., the medical student who spearheaded both the passage
of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS and one of the CSAPH report's
designated expert reviewers. "The AMA has written an extensive,
well-documented, evidence-based report that they are seeking to publish in a
peer-reviewed journal that will help to educate the medical community about
the scientific basis of botanical cannabis-based medicines." Aggarwal is
also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access
(ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in the U.S.

The AMA's about face on medical marijuana follows an announcement by the
Obama Administration in October discouraging U.S. Attorneys from taking
enforcement actions in medical marijuana states. In February 2008, a
resolution was adopted by the American College of Physicians (ACP), the
country's second largest physician group and the largest organization of
doctors of internal medicine. The ACP resolution called for an
"evidence-based review of marijuana's status as a Schedule I controlled
substance to determine whether it should be reclassified to a different
schedule. "The two largest physician groups in the U.S. have established
medical marijuana as a health care issue that must be addressed," said ASA
Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson. "Both organizations have
underscored the need for change by placing patients above politics."

Though the CSAPH report has not been officially released to the public, AMA
documentation indicates that it: "(1) provides a brief historical
perspective on the use of cannabis as medicine; (2) examines the current
federal and
state-based legal envelope relevant to the medical use of cannabis; (3)
provides a brief overview of our current understanding of the pharmacology
and physiology of the endocannabinoid system; (4) reviews clinical trials on
the relative safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis and botanical-based
products; and (5) places this information in perspective with respect to the
current drug regulatory framework."

Further information:
Executive Summary of AMA Report:
<http://americansforsafeaccess.org/do...ive_Summary.pd
f>
http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/do...ve_Summary.pdf
Recommendations of AMA Report:
<http://americansforsafeaccess.org/downloads/AMA_Report_Recommendations.pdf>
http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/do...mendations.pdf
American College of Physicians resolution:
<http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/wh...s/medmarijuana.
pdf>
http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/wh...medmarijuana.p
df

From the Sacramento Bee...

Patients flock to California doctors practicing pot medicine [The Sacramento Bee, Calif.]

Patients flock to California doctors practicing pot medicine

[The Sacramento Bee, Calif.]

Nov. 8--In Mississippi, where Dr. David Allen worked as a heart surgeon, authorities seized his home and ranch this year after finding $800 worth of marijuana and $1,000 in hashish. A grand jury is to consider a cultivation charge that could net him 30 years in prison under Mississippi's drug laws.

In Sacramento, where he now lives, Allen is a legal, licensed member of a community of physicians that enables hundreds of thousands of Californians to lawfully consume or grow marijuana for personal use.

His recently opened cannabis evaluations clinic on Auburn Boulevard is a newcomer in an increasingly robust medical industry. Born with California's Proposition 215 in 1996, the profession is newly energized by the federal government's recent decision to relax enforcement policies for 14 states that have legalized medicinal use of marijuana.

Voters approved California's Compassionate Use Act amid stories of AIDS patients needing marijuana to boost appetites and cancer patients needing it to counter nausea and other side effects of chemotherapy.

These days pot physicians, touting marijuana as a healthier alternative to pharmaceuticals, are writing medical cannabis recommendations for a far wider range of ills, from restless leg syndrome to psoriasis, from sleep apnea to menopause.

The widely available doctor's "recommendations" -- they're not formal prescriptions -- stir intense debate in the medical community, even among cannabis doctors.

Doctors argue over whether the recommendations, costing anywhere from $50 to $250 each, go to patients who truly need medical marijuana or help facilitate recreational drug users and provide hefty profits for the doctors writing the notes.

Doctors are barred by state law from giving out marijuana or instructing patients where to get it. But cannabis recommendations are necessary for patients to make their purchases at the pot dispensaries now sprouting like Starbucks in some communities.

The dispensaries must operate as nonprofits. The doctors are under no such constraints.

170,000 patients seen

Already, a lucrative medical industry is taking shape with pot evaluation networks such as MediCann, a "health and wellness service" started with one San Francisco clinic. It now operates 20 offices in California -- including sites in Sacramento, Elk Grove and North Highlands -- and has overseen the care of 170,000 cannabis patients since 2004.

"The growth has been steady. We open up a new clinic every few months," said Matthew Desanto, MediCann's marketing director. "Honestly, it's just that patients need to use cannabis as medicine."

In the past year, another group, Marijuana Medicine Evaluation Centers, opened clinics in 10 California cities. It advertises on "********," an Internet service for patients seeking doctors, dispensaries and other pot services.

The newfound visibility of the medical marijuana trade is pronounced on the eclectic boardwalk of Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

Along the boardwalk's short span, greeters work the crowd in front of three oceanfront clinics, pitching the benefits of medical pot. One large beachfront house holds the Medical Kush Doctor physician's office and the Kush Clubhouse dispensary. Another doctor's walk-in clinic is next door to a dispensary entrance, where a woman shouts out: "Free hash bar -- patients welcome!"

In his Sacramento office, where medical diplomas are displayed with a news article on a rare beating heart bypass surgery he performed in Mississippi, Dr. Allen is bullish on his career change to full-time pot doc.

Allen was living in California last February when his Mississippi ranch was raided. He denies participation in any illegal marijuana activities.

Jackson County, Miss., Sheriff's Lt. Curtis Speirs said Allen is being investigated for felony cultivation and distribution.

"In the state of Mississippi," Speirs said, "whether you think it's for medicinal use or not, it's against the law."

In California, Allen charges $150 for medical evaluations and exults over his work with pot patients.

"Cannabis is a miracle drug that works so well for so many reasons, for so many people, that millions are willing to risk jail and property seizures to use the medicine," he said.

He said he is dedicated to serving the people who tell him that cannabis "is better for my migraines, for my asthma, for my menstrual cramps" than traditional treatments. "How can you deny these patients?"

Construction worker Brent Bomia, 36, who said he had back surgery after a work-related fall, showed up with his medical records and got a recommendation from Allen.

"I'm happy he is here," said Bomia. "I believe as a community this is a steppingstone to more people realizing medical marijuana really helps."

Prop. 215 applied broadly

Under Proposition 215, physicians can recommend cannabis for cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraines or "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief."

Clinical support for pot's potential health benefits comes from the likes of Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Abrams conducted state and federally funded research that showed marijuana to be beneficial for patients with HIV and for pain from nerve damage.

"I see cancer patients every day who suffer from loss of appetite, weight loss, pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia and nausea," he said. "With cannabis, I can recommend one medicine instead of writing prescriptions for six or seven."

But Dr. Lee Snook, a Sacramento pain physician who serves on the public policy committee for the California Society of Addiction Medicine, is alarmed over the burgeoning use of medical cannabis.

Snook, who heads Metropolitan Pain Management Consultants Inc., said he encounters many patients with marijuana recommendations who don't need them or are better served by other treatments.

"People go into an outpatient clinic, say, 'I have chronic pain,' pay $100 for a card," Snook said. "That's it. I see it as a business. I don't see it as practicing medicine at all."

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws -- which advocates easing marijuana restrictions -- lists more than 160 California doctors and clinics as "medical cannabis specialists." Their work, as with all doctors, falls under the scrutiny of the California Medical Board.

Since 1996, the board has investigated 81 complaints against doctors who recommended pot to patients.

Regulators revoked licenses for 10 physicians for violating guidelines published to ensure they conduct in-person "good faith" examinations and review patients' health and medical histories when recommending cannabis. Some were sanctioned for failing to detect overt, drug-seeking behaviors.

Medical Board records indicate some pot doctors attracted attention after other physicians or psychiatrists complained. Other complaints came from undercover police who said they got cannabis recommendations with little or no medical exam.

All 10 license revocations were stayed and the doctors allowed to continue practicing under supervised probation.

In July, the Medical Board sanctioned Dr. Robert Cohen of Santa Monica for recommending cannabis without a physical exam or patient records for a board investigator who said she was a mother of five and needed pot to relax.

In August, the board found that El Dorado County doctor Marion Fry improperly recommended marijuana to a patient with chronic paranoid schizophrenia despite warnings from Merced County health officials that pot exacerbated his condition.

The board put Fry's medical license on probationary status for three years. That action came two years after she and her husband were sentenced to federal prison for conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana. A trial revealed that her medical pot recommendations netted between $750,000 and $1 million over a 26-month period.

Even some pot doctors question whether the expanding industry has sufficiently established standards and oversight.

Dr. Frank Lucido, a Berkeley family physician and leader in the medical marijuana movement, worries about a proliferation of "quick-in, quick-out mills that pretty much give out cannabis recommendations to anyone 18 or over that has money."

"It gives the industry a bad name," he said.

Lucido said he pre-screens patients in a telephone interview, conducts 45-minute examinations and requires medical records documenting serious health issues.

Then, there is Venice Beach.

On an oceanfront featuring four new pot clinics, one employee drew in passers-by by handing out fliers adorned with a cannabis leaf and a list of medical conditions.

"Do you have any of these?" he asked. "We can get you a recommendation. It will only take a few minutes."

Gilbert, a 42-year-old Los Angeles man who didn't want his last name used, was in and out of the doctor's office next to the hash bar. He got a cannabis recommendation minutes after a brief exam and blood pressure check.

"He asked me what medications I was on and what do I think marijuana would do," said Gilbert, who said he smokes pot to alleviate pain and high blood pressure.

"Pot smokers are going to be pot smokers. If this is going to make them feel better, then so be it."


Call The Bee's Peter Hecht, (916) 326-5539.

CBS hosts a point-counterpoint discussion between pro and anti legalization experts. Gray kicks the other guy's ass! :der:

Should Pot Be Legal? - CBS News

Check out the comments, totally in support of legalization!

GB
:couch2:

From foodconsumer.org

foodconsumer.org - Medical marijuana: Do state laws matter?

Medical marijuana: Do state laws matter?

09/11/2009 03:33:00

California has seen more medical marijuana clinics now than ever, prompting a debate over the legitimacy and worthiness of using the drug banned by the federal government, according to media reports.

In the state of California, residents are by law allowed to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal medical use, as recommended by their physicians. The specific legislation rendering medicinal use legal is known as California’s Compassionate Use Act, which was passed in 1996.

Medical marijuana is reportedly much more effective than conventional pain management medications or painkillers in patients with terminal diseases like AIDS, chronic pain and cancer.

Some patients who have used medical marijuana in the past, such as recording artist Melissa Etheridge and actor Patrick Swayze, have said that conventional painkillers did not work to release the pain they were suffering. However, medical use of marijuana is a violation of federal law and the feds wouldn’t sit still and allow people to use the "illicit drug".

In 2007, a federal appeals court ruled against a California woman who claimed that she has a constitutional right to pursue the medical use of marijuana; she wants a court order to prevent her from being prosecuted by the federal government for it.

Angel Raich, 41, an Oakland resident, suffered at the time from a brain tumor known as scoliosis, which causes chronic nausea and other serious conditions. She had smoked marijuana since 1997, as her doctor said this federally illegal drug is the only viable preventive to keep her from dying from the disease.

But the court said that the federal government does not recognize the constitutional right and no patients should smoke marijuana for any medical reason; the federal government has the overriding authority to prosecute whoever uses marijuana, no matter for what purpose.

A dozen states allow their residents to use marijuana for treating diseases, as evidence has become prevalent that the drug is superior, to say the least, to other painkillers typically used for pain management. In fact, some active ingredients from the plant have already been synthesized and used as active components in conventional painkillers.

Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital, who conducted research on medical marijuana funded by the state and federal government, was quoted as saying, "I see cancer patients every day who suffer from loss of appetite, weight loss, pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia and nausea. With cannabis, I can recommend one medicine instead of writing prescriptions for six or seven."

The California Medical Board has reportedly received 81 complaints against physicians who've recommended marijuana to patients since 1996. Some complaints were sent by undercover police officers, UPI reported.

saw this question on ASA, asking about a product that was called 'Stinky Bags'... closest thing I could come up with was this:

Product Comparison

anyone ever tried 'em?

Jack needs our positive energy, whatever controversy is surrounding his recovery. Please send your prayers, good vibes, etc. to Jack!

Jack Herer: A Man Well-Loved is Saved Again - Salem-News.Com

Read comments left by family on website!:doh:

Jack Herer: A Man Well-Loved is Saved Again
Bonnie King Salem-News.com

The Hemperor is slowly improving, with constant TLC the best medicine.
Salem-News.com
Jack Herer proudly shows off his hemp boxers!
At HempStalk in Portland, Ore., 2008.
Photo by Bonnie King

(EUGENE, Ore.) - For over 30 years, Jack Herer has been the inexhaustible guru of the hemp movement. Many people have expressed their deep concern for Jack's well-being since his heart attack in mid-September, at an Oregon hemp festival.

Sunday night, Jack Herer was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Eugene from the rehabilitation center where he has been receiving care. His breathing became more distressed throughout the afternoon, and finally he was rushed to the Emergency Room.

He was diagnosed with bronchitis, and given antibiotics to overcome the illness. Such prevention may not have been possible just a few days ago, when a "Do Not Transport" order was in effect. Because of a recent change in Jack's care, they were able to get him appropriate treatment, which could literally have saved his life.

More good news, Jack has been responding well to Speech, Physical and Occupational therapy treatments administered at the care center where he's residing in Eugene, Oregon. He is coherent. His speech is beginning to come back. He has no IV's, no breathing tube, and though he has a feeding tube, they expect to remove it as soon as this week.

The bad news, is the breakdown within the ranks of Jack's supporters. While Jack works to heal and rehabiitate, the world outside his room is swirling with controversy.

Much has been said as of late regarding the recent change of Jack's care management, and the subject has seemingly taken on a life of its own. Jeannie Herer and others are unhappy with the new decision by the care center to acknowledge a Power of Attorney that moves authority of Jack's care to Joy Graves and Chuck Jacobs.

Avamere Riverpark is a reputable facility providing nursing care and physical rehabilitation for Jack. Nurses and rehab therapists are working closely with him and the medical staff, providing a personalized treatment program for Jack.

Before the Storm

Chuck Jacobs has been Jack's right hand man for three years. As driver/assistant and friend, he worked, lived, and traveled with Jack and the team. He just returned from a European tour with hemp oil innovator Rick Simpson, standing in for Jack. Jack depended on Chuck.

Joy Graves is Jack's assistant and long time friend. Working shoulder to shoulder at the hemp festivals through the summer, she was a strong, trustworthy staple of the team.

In early summer, Jeannie and Jack went their separate ways. Not surprisingly, they are both overwrought with obligations and a packed schedule, and she hoped to inspire Jack to take it easy. She says she believed they would reunite at the end of the season. Jack had Jeannie's name taken off his lease in July. By many accounts, they were separated.

From his house, Jack worked on his new book and prepped for the festivals. Eve Lentz was a writer-in-residence for some time, editing the long-awaited mushroom book, which is still a work in progress. Jack was continuously surrounded by friends, new and old, confidants and professional partners.

According to friends, he was outspoken, as usual, and made it known that he didn't plan to leave his house to move with Jeannie, or accept the "take it easy" proposal. He left for the festivals in the NorthWest, an annual tradition for the Jack Herer team.

At noon on September 12th, 2009, the first day of the Portland HempStalk, Jack called a meeting with Chuck, Joy and a notary public. Jack had a Power of Attorney drawn up, and explained that, in addition to other issues, he had concerns about the publication of his upcoming book in case something should happen to him. It was a subject of some contention between he and Jeannie, as she's recently noted there were some "problems with the book" that he had been working on for over a decade. Chuck and Joy signed the paperwork, and got back to work.

Little did they know, the documents would gain sudden importance, and become the fuel for an underlying flame, ready to ignite.

When Jeannie heard that Jack had been hospitalized in Portland, she flew in and assumed her position as caretaker and wife. And it's been a tough road to haul. Since his heart attack, Jack has been moved 3 times, had one diabetic episode, and even suffered a fall out of bed.

There have been difficult challenges, difficult decisions, and more than not, long difficult days.

His drive to decriminalize marijuana and bring the value and benefits of the hemp plant into focus has never waned. The people that have joined him on this journey are not just a bunch of followers. They are leaders in their own right, speaking up and putting into action their belief in the future of legal cannabis use, and industrial hemp production in United States.

Chuck and Joy, along with many others, were integral in the successful organization, set up, break down, manning of the booths, travel to and fro, and overall care of Jack throughout the festival season.

Now, seven weeks later, they have taken the reigns of his care again.

DO NOT RESCUSCITATE

Joy Graves was at his bedside last week when she discovered there was a DNR order in Jack's chart. "Do Not Resuscitate", the nurse explained, means that should Jack have a heart attack, he would not receive CPR, they would not make every effort to save him. They would let him die in peace. "Do Not Transport" was also checked, which means there would be no ambulance ride to the hospital.

The order was a surprise to Joy, and a shock after all the effort to save his life. She inquired as to how it came to be, and how it could be changed. Jeannie Herer had signed the order, so it was up to her to change it. Unsatisfied with that conclusion and in an attempt to ensure Jack's ability to survive a future health emergency, she revealed that she held Jack's Power of Attorney.

The care center took some time to deliberate the ramifications of the situation, bringing in their legal team, and determined that the document was legal and binding.

The DNR order was reversed.

"For a person that was extremely displeased that it took so long for CPR to begin at the time of his heart attack, it was baffling as to why Jeannie signed a DNR," Joy Graves said.

"They wanted me to sign a DNR form," Jeannie wrote in a MySpace bulletin. "The doctor explained that if he had another heart attack, he wouldn’t be able to survive it but if I didn’t sign the paper, they would still have to pound on his chest and possibly crack his chest and also shock him. He said that when people die a natural death, endorphins are released that make them more comfortable at the end but not when you do that. So I agreed."

Sunday night, the DNR order reversal may well have saved Jack's life.

Throughout the evening, Jack's breathing became more and more distressed, and the rattle in his chest turned to a struggle for air. Medical attention clearly was in order. Because the DNR had been revoked, they were able to get Jack to the Emergency Room at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center where he was diagnosed with bronchitis.

He received x-rays, a breathing treatment, and a prescription for antibiotics. Without intervention, he would likely have developed pneumonia. He was back in his room and in good spirits Sunday evening, feeling much better.

The DNR would have made the ambulance ride to the ER impossible.

Jack's Progress Report

Last week, I was told that Jack slept most of the time, day and night. Sometimes he grumbled in his sleep. He had barely spoken, and was so tense that physical therapy seemed a moot point.

Prior to the change of care, Jack was on daily narcotics including Percocet and Oxycodone (every four hours), which have since been nearly discontinued, and are relegated to specific pain relief when necessary. Saturday night, he didn't need any drugs to sleep well through the night.

He is NOT being given any hemp oil. The care center, driven by federal guidelines, refuses to allow it.

The staff at the care center has been happily surprised at his improved response in all three therapies. So well in fact, that they are increasing it to five days a week.

According to Eve Lentz, he has been singing "You are my Sunshine". "It is hard to hear him, his voice is very light and breathy, but he's trying," she said.

He has also said a few people's names, and short sentences like "I love you", "Oh boy", "Oh man", and "Where's the baby?" referring to his godchild. Seems like rather slow progress, but then again, his mouth has really been hurting.

Jack has been recovering from oral thrush, a painful mouth infection that often affects those with a weakened immune system. This caused him to be unable to swallow easily, and it was necessary to limit his water intake, for risk of pneumonia.

Joy was corrected when she gave him water one day, and the next day another old friend was stopped from giving him a drink several times. After a brief argument, she was asked to leave by the care center, not due to an order by Joy, which has been inferred.

This week they will begin regular eating and drinking, and hopefully remove the feeding tube.

Jack has been surrounded by his loved ones. His children have been with him often, and Jeannie, now understood to be Jack's estranged wife, has been allowed in to see him though her authority has been circumvented.

Because of the negative publicity, specifically via online networking sites, the facility has allegedly received threats since the change in his caregivers, and even has fielded calls from imposters of family members and others. This could have interrupted his care, requiring him to be moved yet another time. Fortunately for Jack, that is not the case.

One More Thing

Rumors abound, most have so little merit that it insults the intelligence of the reader to be bothered with them. However, one such claim regarding alleged drug use by Jack at the festivals requires attention.

No one would disagree that a man with his health history should not consider such things, but there is no evidence to back up the charge that has become nearly viral online. There was a drug screen soon after Jack was taken to the hospital initially, and we are told that it revealed THC and nothing else.

Where Does He Go From Here?

The frustration, fear and confusion felt by so many of Jack's friends is not to be understated. This is a sensitive, emotional subject. Keeping the faith is something they take to heart, and love Jack they do. All the people involved seem to sincerely want what's best for him, and with time will likely find level ground with one another.

But what's really important here isn't all of that, it's JACK. He still has a long, climb ahead, and he's showing real progress. He's working hard.

Several groups and organizations including the THCF in Portland and Jim Matthieson of the Herbivores in Seattle have expressed their intentions to host benefits to help offset the costs of Jack's care, which is mounting.

By all accounts, Jack loves his home in California where he has lived for several years. Should Jack continue improving at the rate he is, he will be home again, watching the sunset from his porch, pondering his next adventure, in good time. Whether or not he is able to resume his previous lifestyle completely, he well may return to it.

Though his home was nearly given up for lack of finances, some quick minded friends made sure that didn't happen. Efforts have been successful in keeping Jack's house, and it waits for his homecoming.

Be it known: The Hemperor Shall Return.

********************************
Bonnie King has been with Salem-News.com since August '04, when she became Publisher. Bonnie has served in a number of positions in the broadcast industry; TV Production Manager at KVWB (Las Vegas WB) and Producer/Director for the TV series "Hot Wheels in Las Vegas", posts as TV Promotion Director for KYMA (NBC), and KFBT (Ind.), Asst. Marketing Director (SUPERSHOPPER MAGAZINE), Director/Co-Host (Coast Entertainment Show), Radio Promotion Director (KBCH/KCRF), and Newspapers In Education/Circulation Sales Manager (STATESMAN JOURNAL NEWSPAPER). Bonnie has a depth of understanding that reaches further than just behind the scenes, and that thoroughness is demonstrated in the perseverance to correctly present each story with the wit and wisdom necessary to compel and captivate viewers.

I have attached a PDF of the very long and legalese paper if any of you Constitutional scholar types want to tackle it. Am hoping some input or feedback from our very own Voodoo Chile. :kiss:

Maybe ASA or someone can get him to speak to city officials.:tortue-musique:

TIPSHEET: Vanderbilt law professor available to speak on marijuana law - VUCast: Vanderbilt University's News Network



Governments across the country are grappling with thorny legal issues as they ponder the most significant reforms to marijuana laws in decades. A Vanderbilt law professor who previously has commented on marijuana law issues in news stories is available for interviews.

Robert Mikos, professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School, is an expert in federalism and criminal law issues, including drug law and policy. He has recently published a paper on the conflict over state and federal medical marijuana laws, On the Limits of Supremacy: Medical Marijuana and the States’ Overlooked Power to Legalize Federal Crime.

He can provide insights into the history and content of state and federal marijuana laws, the limits of federal government’s constitutional authority over drug policy, the growing conflict between state and federal marijuana laws, and the prospects for reform. Mikos has not taken sides on the issue of legalization of marijuana, but he does have serious concerns about the way that strict federal laws on the subject may prevent states from adopting a more moderate approach including tight controls on the production and distribution of the drug.

Thirteen states now permit citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes and the Obama Administration recently announced it will not target marijuana distributors in compliance with state law in these states. California is also considering proposals to legalize recreational marijuana; proponents are gathering the signatures necessary to put an initiative on the ballot in the state in 2010.

Mikos spoke about marijuana reforms on CNN and Fox Business News.

Media contact: Jennifer Johnston (615) 322-NEWS
jennifer.johnston@vanderbilt.edu

GB
:couch2:

Attached Images

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Attached Files

ssrn-id1356093.pdf (726.5 KB)

Leave it to Fox....I mean Farce News.

http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/...marijuana-bust

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Jim Ready and Barney Frank from www.washblade.com
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Barney Frank present during marijuana bust

Updated: Friday, 06 Nov 2009, 10:54 PM EST
Published : Friday, 06 Nov 2009, 5:59 PM EST

* Alison Bologna

Alison
Bologna

BOSTON (FOX25, myfoxboston) - FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready's home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank.

According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008.

Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars.

Congressman Frank tells FOX25 that he was surprised and disappointed with what police found. He also tells us that he wouldn't recognize a marijuana plant if he saw one because he is, "not a great outdoorsman," and ,"wouldn't recognize most plants."

GB
:couch2:

Perhaps it's best that all of SB 420 stay unconstitutional.

It seems to serve the Attorney General and local governments more by allowing/requiring them to implement restrictions and establish limits which means less access and fewer protections for us.

Kelly Case Sees Oral Argument | California NORML

Kelly Case Sees Oral Argument
Posted November 4th, 2009 by canorml_admin

Berkeley, Nov. 3rd - In a remarkable turn of events, both sides at today's California Supreme Court Hearing on the Kelly case agreed that the so-called SB 420 quantity limits in Health and Safety Code 11362.77 are unconstitutional when applied to limit patients' right to a compassionate use defense under Prop. 215. Instead, they discussed how the Kelly decision could be recast so as not to invalidate 11362.77 when used for other purposes: for example, to protect card-holding patients from arrest when they are within the limits.

Michael Johnsen from the Attorney General's Office admitted that their "position had evolved" since the Kelly case was first argued, when they had tried to claim that the limits in 11362.77 were constitutional. Asked by the court why they should even be hearing the case in that event, Johnsen said that the court should narrow the Appellate Court decision so as to not throw out 11362.77 altogether.

"I have never had the pleasure of getting up in an appellate argument and saying I agree with everything my opponent said," remarked defense attorney Gerald Uelmen.

Patrick Kelly was originally charged with growing 7 plants and 12 ounces, an amount above the SB 420 limits. His defense argued that he could not be convicted for exceeding the limits, because Prop. 215 guarantees patients the right to have whatever amount is reasonably related to their medical needs. The Appellate Court agreed that the limits were an unconstitutional amendment to Prop. 215, and struck down the entirety of H&SC 11362.77 as unconstitutional.

Today, both sides agreed that 11362.77 was unconstitutional as applied to Kelly's case, but that it should be preserved in other situations, where it provides useful guidelines for arrest. The court's final decision will be forthcoming in 90 days.

- D. Gieringer, Cal NORML


SB 420 Text: SB 420 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED

from the LA Weekly:


L.A. Medical-Pot Shops Peddle to LAUSD Pupils
As kids flood weed outlets, Ramon Cortines admits there's no plan

By Paul Teetor
November 05, 2009


Los Angeles City Hall is thrashing around as the City Council and mayor belatedly try to control a pot-shop explosion they ignited, which has spawned dozens of freewheeling weed emporiums near public schools. The Los Angeles school board’s response? Nada.

That’s what the Los Angeles Unified School District has done to stop kids from trekking a short distance from Fairfax, Hollywood and other high schools and middle schools to score buds at unregulated neighborhood pot shops that have opened, often in the same block as schools or very nearby.

The LAUSD school board and Superintendent Ramon Cortines have held no meetings about the impact on kids, have no idea how many children are turning to the flood of easy weed, have not tried to assess the money the dispensaries are making off healthy kids, and have not trained faculty and administrators in how to deal with ever-younger stoned students.

Now, following routine questions from L.A. Weekly, some school board members are pledging to deal with it.

The lack of interest from LAUSD’s top officials seems unlikely to help the district — already hammered by high dropout rates and intense competition from charter schools — to win back parents. Scott McNeely, of the Pico Neighborhood Council, complained to the City Council last summer when he heard about 17 dispensaries within a mile and a half of his home, three near elementary schools. “It’s a little discomforting when parents try to walk their kids to and from school and the kids smell marijuana smoke in the air,” he says. “It’s long past time for the LAUSD to weigh in on this issue and pressure the City Council, work with the City Council, just as we are doing. ... The school board needs to raise a little hell.”

Some school board members believe the weed-and-kids situation is out of control. “After school you can see students stopping at the dispensary before going home,” says school board member Tamar Galatzan. “That’s unacceptable.”

The first sign that kids were being affected by the medical-pot explosion — and even directly targeted — arose at Grant High School in Van Nuys. It was the end of summer 2006 and time, apparently, to get back to the San Fernando Valley’s version of the three R’s: reading, writing and rolling joints.

On August 10 of that year, Van Nuys police found that a nearby marijuana dispensary, Pacific Support Services, had left fliers on cars in the Grant High School student parking lot. The fliers were emblazoned with the iconic, three-leaf marijuana bud, and underneath was a friendly message:

“It is still legal to own, grow and smoke marijuana as long as you do it properly. Qualification is simple and our experienced physicians are more than happy to help you,” it informed students, who probably had no idea California law gives seriously ill patients the right to smoke pot if they merely obtain a doctor’s verbal recommendation.

The flier language was directly aimed at those who might be tempted to spend their burgers-and-fries money: “$15 off with this flier. ... If you do not qualify for a recommendation your visit is free.”

In other cities, the targeting of an academically struggling school like Grant High and its mostly minority, mostly working-class students, which resulted in a Los Angeles Daily News story, might have prompted school leaders to act. But it just floated right over the heads of the seven LAUSD board members.

“We had so many other things going on that I guess we just plain missed it,” says school board member Marguerite LaMotte, who represents much of South Los Angeles. “I can’t speak for the rest of the board but myself, I was more worried about the gangs, the liquor stores and all the other problems in my district. ... There’s so much going on in my district.”

Since then, neither the school board nor Cortines has done anything — no new policies, rules or special teacher or principal training — to protect children from unregulated pot dispensaries.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council today have no idea how many pot stores exist, where they are, where they are getting their pot, who is financing them or where the huge profits are going. The exact number of stores in L.A. is a highly fluid calculation, with dispensaries opening and closing daily and dozens filling out paperwork but never switching on the lights. On paper, there are more than 1,000; hundreds are believed to be actually operating.

An analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed that at least 240 of the 1,000 dispensaries are within 1,000 feet of a school, park or library. Teenagers can be seen heading into them after school lets out in Hollywood, Fairfax, Northridge, the San Fernando Valley, Wilshire District and other areas.

According to both police and residents, many medicinal-marijuana shops are covertly targeting healthy kids as young as 14 through street contacts who urge students to “get your card.”

Yet the City Council and school board have yet to open a meaningful dialogue. “On issues that impact LAUSD, there’s been a lack of formal or even informal communication and coordination between the [City] Council and the school board,” says board member Galatzan. “This is the latest manifestation of that problem.”

Galatzan, an attorney who works for the L.A. City Attorney’s Office dealing with street-level crime, supports a tough ordinance proposed by her boss, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, which among other things would ban dispensaries within 1,000 feet of a school.

The Los Angeles City Council failed for years to adopt state-required local medical-marijuana regulations that other cities, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, long ago debated and approved.

Those three politically liberal cities cracked down on pot profiteers while adopting rules that allow the ill to easily obtain weed. The City Council here, gridlocked and unable to decide what to do, instead adopted a series of moratoriums — and then missed the state’s legal deadline for acting. Now the council is unhappy with Trutanich’s plan, and is looking at its options once again.

At the time of the Grant High incident, Los Angeles dispensaries had mushroomed from just four in 2005 to dozens in 2006. That was before the great medical-bud flood of the last 18 months.

LaMotte and recently elected school board member Steve Zimmer say they too support a 1,000-foot restriction. Zimmer, however, says his is a narrow endorsement of that one provision. He has problems with the rest of Trutanich’s ordinance, which bans the selling of pot over the counter and profiting from it. Zimmer particularly objects to calls to shut down the existing pot stores.

“I support the 1,000-feet restriction because I believe in creating ‘safe passages’ for our students to travel to and from school,” Zimmer says. “But I also support medical marijuana, and I think Trutanich and [Steve] Cooley are focused too much on suppression and not enough on harm reduction.”

Zimmer insists, “They won’t get one student to stop smoking weed by shutting down the dispensaries.”

Frank Sheftel, an advocate of the medical-marijuana movement and co-founder of the Toluca Lake Collective, a medicinal-pot outlet, favors a restriction of 600 feet, as with liquor stores and pharmacies. “Why create a different set of standards for this industry?” he asks.

But Galatzan notes that pharmacies require written physician prescriptions — not verbal recommendations, as with medical pot — and are so heavily regulated that no L.A. schoolchildren can score drugs at pharmacies. Moreover, liquor stores operate under strict laws forcing them to check age and I.D. Pot stores “are totally different from liquor stores, where kids are not allowed, because minors are [being] allowed into dispensaries,” Galatzan says.

David Berger, a special assistant to Trutanich, tells the Weekly that at least two police investigations are under way involving students and medical marijuana. One stems from a community complaint about a dispensary whose “stoned people” hang out next to a Lexington Avenue elementary school. The other is in Venice, where a pot store opened directly across from one public school and down the block from another. Berger says, “LAPD is documenting all this stuff for us now.”

Contact the writer at paulteetor@verizon.net.
Los Angeles News - L.A. Medical-Pot Shops Peddle to LAUSD Pupils - page 1

By TERI FIGUEROA - tfigueroa@californian.com | Posted: Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Judge finds Temecula man tried to run 'legitimate collective'

A Temecula man cried Wednesday after a judge dismissed criminal charges accusing him of trying to game the state's medical marijuana laws with a collective garden the man ran from his home.

"They are attempting to operate as a legitimate collective," Riverside Superior Court Judge Mark Mandio said at the end of a key pretrial hearing in his French Valley courtroom. "That is how I view the evidence."

In dismissing the case against Martin Jay Victor, Mandio also said vague state laws governing medical marijuana put "law enforcement and patients in an untenable position."

As he listened to the judge toss the case, Victor hugged his attorney, Zenia Gilg, and then pressed his hands to his face. Victor's wife, seated in a wheelchair, embraced a female friend and cried.

When the hearing ended, Victor hugged his wife for a long moment as they both cried.

"It's over," a teary-eyed Victor said, leaning on his cane as he left the courtroom.

After spilling out into the courthouse hallway, some of the couple's supporters, including members of the collective, let out cheers of "Yes!"

Prosecutors had charged 57-year-old Victor with illegally cultivating marijuana and possessing it with the intent to sell. Investigators said Victor possessed more marijuana than legally permissible and questioned whether Victor was gaming the system.

Victor argued through his attorney that the marijuana garden and its harvest were done in line with state laws as well as guidelines laid out by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in August 2008.

Mandio's finding that there was insufficient evidence in the case came at the end of a preliminary hearing, at which prosecutors must show that enough evidence exists to force a defendant to stand trial.

Defense attorney Gilg said she was "thrilled" by the ruling.

"I think the judge did the right thing," Gilg said.

Deputy District Attorney Greg Garrison, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

In September 2008, acting on a complaint, Temecula police raided the home of Martin and LaVonne Victor, seizing more than 70 plants as well as what police said was 5 pounds of already harvested marijuana.

During the raid, the couple reportedly showed officers their medical marijuana cards and provided photocopies of cards for 10 members of the cooperative. According to testimony, the couple also kept detailed ledgers that included how much money each member had put into the collective, as well as receipts for expenditures for soil and garden equipment.

Collective member Lanny Swerdlow testified that everyone in the group not only supported the garden with money, but also with time, getting their hands dirty in the cultivation process.

Mandio found that the amount of plants as well as harvested marijuana at the Victors' home were in line with the amount permissible for the collective under the state's medical marijuana laws.

Victor has been diagnosed with optical edema, a swelling of the eyes' optic nerve.

His wife, LaVonne, suffers from multiple sclerosis and panic attacks. Victor said he is also a caretaker for his 82-year-old mother, a cancer survivor who uses a walker, and that she is also a member of the collective. The frail-looking woman embraced her son after the hearing.

In making his ruling, Mandio said the statutes put law enforcement and legitimate medical marijuana patients at risk because there is no licensing agency to which patients can report how much they are growing, what they are harvesting and how much they are allowed to have. Likewise, the judge said, law enforcement officers could go to such an agency to find out just who is growing what and how much.

"We will continue to be in this position ... until the Legislature clarifies the statutes, or better yet, creates such a licensing agency," Mandio said.

Aside from the now-dismissed criminal case Victor had faced, eight members of the collective sued the Sheriff's Department and the city of Temecula last month, arguing that authorities "unlawfully" seized their share of the marijuana.

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/te...3a390c529.html

YouTube - Jessica Corry Speaks on Marijuana Prohibition and the Growing National Debt
I wish they could all be like her

in the kelly case both sides agree that the plant and poss. limits in s.b. 420 are unconstatutional. both sides agree that there should be limits. the court can't just forget that it's unconst.. what are they to do? i think that they should put plant limits at the federal level (99). i have no idea as to what that would make in poss. limits. only nature knows.

Great news! Two marijuana-related ballot initiatives, one in Maine and one in a ski town in Colorado, won in voting booths on Tuesday.

By 59%-41%, Maine voted to become the third state to license nonprofit dispensaries to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients.

And by an overwhelming 73%-27%, Breckenridge, Colorado voted to allow adults over the age of 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana. The Breckenridge initiative was spearheaded by MPP grant recipient Sensible Colorado.

Maine's new law is enormously important. While 13 states permit medical marijuana use, until now only Rhode Island and New Mexico have had laws allowing dispensaries, both of which were adopted by the states’ legislatures. Patients in the other states have had to grow their own marijuana, find someone to procure it for them, or buy it from the criminal market.

Tonight's vote is a dramatic step forward, the first time that any state’s voters have authorized the state government to license medical marijuana dispensaries. Coming a decade after passage of Maine’s original marijuana law in 1999, this is a huge sign that voters are comfortable with these laws, and also a sign that the recent change of policy from the Obama administration is having a major impact.

The new Maine law also expands the number of conditions that make a patient eligible for medical marijuana use and protects patients from discrimination in employment, housing, education, and child custody.

A coalition of activists and marijuana policy reform organizations are responsible for this victory: MPP got the momentum going by drafting the initiative and providing start-up funding to Maine Citizens for Patients' Rights, and the Drug Policy Alliance provided assistance to help complete the signature drive.

If you support initiatives like this, would you please consider automatically donating $5 or more on your credit card each month to help us pass more laws like these?

We have momentum on our side, so now is the time to push even harder for change. Please consider helping us rack up more victories like these.


Got this from Mpp

October 1, 2009 - Halle, Germany

Halle, Germany: Symptoms associated with so-called "cannabis withdrawal" among marijuana "dependent" subjects are relatively mild, short-lived, and "may only be expected in a subgroup of ... patients," according to the results of a prospective clinical study to be published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Investigators at four separate German universities assessed the self-reported withdrawal symptoms of 73 subjects diagnosed with "cannabis dependence."

"The intensity of most self-reported symptoms peaked on day one and decreased subsequently," authors reported. "Most symptoms ranged on average between low to moderate intensity. The most frequently mentioned physical symptoms of strong or very strong intensity on the first day were sleeping problems (21 percent), sweating (28 percent), hot flashes (21 percent), and decreased appetite (15 percent). ... Other often highly rated psychological symptoms included restlessness (20 percent), nervousness (20 percent), and sadness (19 percent)."

Overall, less than 50 percent of the trial subjects reported physical or psychological withdrawal symptoms.

"Only a subgroup experienced a cannabis withdrawal syndrome of clinical significance despite the fact that all patients had a diagnosis of cannabis dependence according to DSM-IV criteria," investigators concluded. "Significant associations of personality characteristics with psychological withdrawal symptoms suggest that at least some of the elevated symptoms are related to factors other than cannabis consumption."

The trial is the first study to prospectively investigate cannabis withdrawal symptoms in an inpatient sample of cannabis dependent subjects.

A 1999 review by the US National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine reported that marijuana's withdrawal symptoms, when identified, are typically "mild and subtle" compared to the profound physical and psychological syndromes associated with most other intoxicants, including alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.

Cannabis "Withdrawal" Syndrome Short-Lived, Affects Few, Study Says - NORML

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, "Cannabis withdrawal severity and short-term course among cannabis-dependent adolescent and young adult inpatients," will appear in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

updated: Oct 01, 2009

Colorado ski town votes to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana

Early returns Tuesday night showed the proposal winning with 72 percent of the vote. The measure would allow adults over 21 to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The measure is largely symbolic because pot possession remains a state crime for people without medical clearance. But supporters said they wanted to send a message to local law enforcement to stop busting small-time pot smokers.

The vote comes as communities nationwide are struggling with how to enforce pot laws at a time when medical marijuana has surged in popularity.


http://kabc.com/UniversalSearch.asp?...FOR=marijunana

L.A.'s crazy medical marijuana charade

Even if a majority of 'patients' are scammers and most dispensaries are operating illegally, it's a murky area. Once you've said it's legal for people in pain, how do you decide whose pain is real?
By Steve Lopez

November 4, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size All right, so I'm a few days late with this update on my medical marijuana adventures. In answer to readers, no, I was not too stoned to write about it earlier.

Nor was I under the influence when I proposed on Sunday to Jamie McCourt, who hopes to get $487,000 a month in support from Dodgers owner and estranged husband Frank. I simply had to pour out my heart, and I'm still hoping to hear from Ms. McCourt.

In the meantime, let's get back to that doctor in Glendale. You may remember that he was the one who told me that, as a gynecologist, he didn't know a thing about bad backs. But within 10 minutes, he had written me a recommendation for an herbal remedy to ease my pain.

That meant I could go to any dispensary for my medicine, simple as that. But in Los Angeles, you can get light-headed trying to decide where to go.

There's the Unique Vapor Lounge in Tujunga, Green Easy in Mid-City, Westside Medical on Wilshire, and on and on. Some places have free delivery. Some are open all night. The buds go by names like Trainwreck, Purple Voodoo, Mango Og and Purple LA Confidential.

Don't like to smoke? No problem. You can get your medicine in brownies, crackers and even tortilla chips.

Nobody knows how many dispensaries there are in L.A., but estimates run as high as 1,000. Fourteen states allow medical marijuana, but no other place in the nation has lost control the way we have here in the City of Angels, where hundreds of outlets were allowed to open during a ban while City Council members fiddled.

Now the city attorney promises a crackdown, arguing that there has to be a whole lot of recreational use under the guise of medical need. So, I figured, I better shop fast.

I'm actually not a user. Yeah, my back aches, but so far I haven't turned to herbal remedies. I know, though, that there are lots of people with far more serious medical problems, and if marijuana gives them the best relief, good for them. So why did I bother to get a prescription -- excuse me, I mean a recommendation? As we get closer to a showdown, I wanted to know what it's like out there.

First stop: Hollyweed. The name got me.

On my way into a small, two-story building, I noticed a separate dispensary on the ground floor, with Hollyweed upstairs. Yes. Two outlets at the same address.

I knocked on the locked door of Hollyweed and a no-nonsense voice instructed me to slide my driver's license and marijuana recommendation through the mail slot. It was kind of creepy. Would I ever see my license again? Was a DEA agent inside making a copy? I was getting paranoid and I hadn't even had a puff.

A few minutes later, a guard opened sesame. Inside, a 20-year-old, dreadlocked gent named Charlie greeted me. He wore a T-shirt that said "Marijuana Cures Racism," and he had me sign forms spelling out the terms of my acceptance into a nonprofit collective run by members for the benefit of patients. Membership does have its rewards.

Then he unlocked another door and took me into a small room with jars of buds on display, just like in a candy shop. Charlie recommended a strain called Indica, which he called a good muscle relaxant for back pain. I opted for something called Chunky Munky and found myself craving the ice cream without even lighting up. He weighed a gram and put it into a prescription bottle, like it was Vicodin, and I handed him a $20 "donation."

Was this really happening?

It'd make more sense, I told Charlie, to completely legalize, regulate and tax marijuana rather than have this crazy charade we've got now in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, billions have been spent on a drug war that has transferred wealth to drug cartels and domestic gangs, filling up the morgues in the process.

"The emperor has no clothes," Charlie agreed.

Councilman Ed Reyes told me he believes that despite some legitimate need, the majority of "patients" are scammers. But it's a murky area. Once you've said it's legal for people in pain, how do you determine whose pain is real?

Reyes also says that at least 70% of the dispensaries are operating illegally. He suspects that gangs or other groups are selling to collectives, which are supposed to obtain their product only from members who grow it for strictly medical purposes.

"Look at the volume," Reyes said, insisting there's no reason to delay tougher enforcement. "How can you have such large volumes flowing without an organized effort?"

Some of the dispensaries out there do look a little shady. But Cornerstone Research Collective in Eagle Rock was chic and professional looking, and a guy in a sport coat answered the door.

Michael Backes, a Cornerstone board member, agreed that lots of players are gaming the system. Dispensaries ought to be required to show where they're getting their supply and have it tested for impurities, he said. He'd tax growers too to clear out the riffraff, and he'd like for the California Medical Board to clamp down on doctors who write recommendations with their eyes closed.

Speaking of recommendations, I was told that L.A. Organic Pharmacy on Melrose is a popular herb dispensary, so I decided to check it out. While waiting for service, I was tempted by Purple Diesel, White Widow and Afgani Kush, but I finally settled on a gram of Skywalker, which was recommended for back pain.

But wait a minute. Was it the marijuana dust in the air, or were all the employees speaking Russian?

Sasha Churprovsky took me into a back room and said in a heavy accent that he was in heating and air conditioning until a few years ago, when someone suggested a career change. Now he's worried about the threat of a crackdown by L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who reminds Churprovsky of another iron-fisted ruler.

"He's like Joseph Stalin!"

I noticed as we spoke that his imposing security guard was moving pillowcase-sized bags of weed out of a locked storage room, so I asked where all that product comes from.

Someone grows it for medicinal use, Churprovsky said, and ends up with some extra. So it gets donated to his collective, and for hundreds of members, the pain just melts away.

Beautiful. With a system like that, who needs healthcare reform?

steve.lopez@latimes.com

More good news.

Mainers Approve Expanded Medical Marijuana Law
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) ― Medical marijuana users in Maine will be able to buy their pot at licensed dispensaries after voters approved a bill that expands the state's existing medical marijuana law.

The new law allows patients to buy marijuana at nonprofit dispensaries. It also expands the medical conditions under which people can be prescribed the drug.

In unofficial returns, Question 5 was leading 59 percent to 41 percent with three-quarters of precincts reporting.

Supporters say the law will give people with chronic illnesses a legal and convenient way to obtain marijuana. Critics say the law has a lack of controls and will increase the availability of the drug to people not authorized to have it.

Mainers approved a referendum in 1999 allowing the medical use of marijuana.

GB
:couch2:

So there! :thumb:

Breckenridge, CO legalizes pot:

Associated Press - November 3, 2009 10:14 PM ET

DENVER (AP) - The ski town of Breckenridge has voted overwhelmingly to decriminalize marijuana possession.

Early returns Tuesday night showed the proposal winning with 72 percent of the vote. Breckenridge is poised to clear adults over 21 to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The measure is largely symbolic, though. Pot possession remains a state crime for people without medical clearance.

Elsewhere in Colorado, Denver voters appeared headed toward rejecting a measure that would have forced police to seize cars from people caught driving without a license. Dozens more municipal questions were on ballots.

GB
:couch2:

Feds to Continue Raids on Medical Pot in California By: Bryan GibelNovember 3, 2009 ’Äì 12:51 am The federal government will continue raids on medical marijuana operationsin California despite guidelines issued by the Justice Department two weeksago indicating the contrary. ’ÄúI think it’Äôs unfortunate that people have for some reason picked up on thisas a change in policy, because it’Äôs really not a change at all,’Äù said JosephRussoniello, federal prosecutor for the northern district of California, whowas appointed in 2007 by then-President George W. Bush. Asked if federal officials will halt investigation and prosecution ofmedical marijuana operations in the state, Russoniello said simply, ’ÄúTheshort answer is no.’Äù The city has 23 dispensaries, four of which are in the Mission District,according to the Department of Public Health. A memo sent Oct. 19 by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden to federalprosecutors in California and the other 13 states where medical cannabis islegal stated that law enforcement should focus on major drug traffickingnetworks, rather than entities ’Äúin clear and unambiguous compliance withexisting state laws.’Äù The memo clarified a policy announced by Attorney General Eric Holder inMarch: Federal officials should desist from raiding and prosecutingstate-approved medical marijuana providers. Less than a week after Holder’Äôs announcement, more than a dozen DrugEnforcement Agency agents raided Emmalyn’Äôs California Cannabis Clinic, amedical marijuana cooperative located near the intersection of 12th andHoward streets on the edge of the Mission District. ’ÄúThey came in with their guns drawn and pointed them right in our faceslikewe are criminals,’Äù said Rose, a quiet Filipino woman with rheumatoidarthritis who manages the spotless clinic. ’ÄúThey twisted one of ourpatient’Äôs arms and put a gun to his head. He was crying. It was soscary.’Äù The agents confiscated plants and medical cannabis, which were neverreturned. Nobody was arrested and no charges were ever filed. The clinic, which has 4,500 registered patients, is a nonprofit medicalmarijuana dispensary that is licensed by the city, Rose said. It only sells marijuana grown specifically for its patients, all of whommust have a medical marijuana card issued by the state of California and avalid state ID. Inside the doors of the clinic, meticulously guarded by a polite butstringent doorman, the clinic greets customers with Zen-like simplicity,meditative music and more than 20 strains of pot. Prices range from $10 per gram for Space Queen to $20 for Super Grape andChemDog. Last year, State Attorney General Jerry Brown set guidelines mandating thatcity dispensaries are legally required to operate as not-for-profitcollectives or cooperatives. That means they can only obtain cannabis from growers that are members oftheir co-op or collective, and their customers have to be members too. Russoniello said many dispensaries in San Francisco and around Californiaaren’Äôt really not-for-profit, and he will prosecute any distributorfraudulently operating as a commercial enterprise in violation of statelaws. ’ÄúBy that I mean people who are in it as if they were running aneighborhoodcandy store instead of running a commune, a collective or a group club thatcaters only to specific identified persons,’Äù he said. The DEA operation against Emmalyn’Äôs in March was the only raid that hasbeenconducted in San Francisco in 2009 to date, said DEA spokeswoman CaseyMinor. Asked if federal agents are currently preparing to raid dispensariessuspected of illegal activities, Russoniello declined to comment. ’ÄúI cannot affirm or deny the existence of ongoing criminalinvestigations,’Äùhe said. The statements made by Northern California’Äôs top prosecutor stand in starkcontrast to the guarded optimism of many medical pot activists in the cityin response to the Justice Department’Äôs recent guidelines. ’ÄúYou’Äôre going to see a change,’Äù said Mark, who helps run Medithrive, adispensary on Mission Street that has been open for six weeks and has about1,100 patients. ’ÄúThere is going to be a new demographic of patients thatwere worried about the federal aspect.’Äù That may be true, but Russoniello said it’Äôs a mistake to think recentJustice Department guidelines will mean no more raids. ’ÄúWhether people understand that there is a very high risk of detection andprosecution if they are engaged in this business as a commercial enterprise,I don’Äôt know,’Äù he said. Back at Emmalyn’Äôs, Rose said she is diligently making sure the cliniccomplies with all state laws, but she’Äôs still fearful federal agents couldagain show up at her door. ’ÄúWe just provide medicine for our patients, and we try to be ascompassionate as we can,’Äù she said in a soft voice. ’ÄúLast time wastraumatizing. I don’Äôt want to feel that again.’Äù Feds to Continue Raids on Medical Pot in California – Mission Loc@l -- San Francisco Mission District's News, Food, Art and Events :faint:

Federal prosecutor: Medical marijuana raids won’t stop | Raw Story

Can we expect the same from the US Atty in LA. Sure as hell! We're fighting Babylon, Orwellia (aka USA today), Fourth Reich vertically integrated mentality here folks so we better dig in for the long haul. Seriously, this shit is getting stupid. The feds are lining up with the locals to put an end to our freedom since our flaunting of their system is just that, pure unadulterated Freedom.

When will we unite and show we are not just 100 or so patients, impotent in our rage, howling in the wilderness like John of old?

Can we stop being so lame and fucking make activism a priority? Yes, we can!

Federal prosecutor: Medical marijuana raids won’t stop

By Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 -- 12:55 pm
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medical marijuana bud Federal prosecutor: Medical marijuana raids wont stop'Not a change' in policy 'at all,' US attorney says

Operators of medical marijuana dispensaries in California are quickly learning that, contrary to recent news headlines, federal raids of medical marijuana clubs aren't going to stop -- an assertion the US attorney for northern California is unequivocally making.

Numerous news sources reported in February that the Obama administration plans to put an end to DEA raids of medical marijuana dispensaries. But last month's memo from Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecutors in 14 medical-marijuana states, instructing them on the new policy, wasn't quite as clear-cut as an outright ban on raids.

As the Associated Press noted, the new guidelines mean that the federal government will defer to state law and won't raid medical marijuana dispensaries in the 14 states that allow them "as long as they conform to state laws."

To Joseph Russionello, the US attorney for the northern district of California, that means raids will continue wherever federal authorities believe laws surrounding medical marijuana clinics are being flouted.
Story continues below...

“I think it’s unfortunate that people have for some reason picked up on this as a change in policy, because it’s really not a change at all,” the Mission Local news site in San Francisco quotes Russoniello as saying.

Asked by Mission Local if federal prosecutors would stop investigating and prosecuting dispensaries in California, Russionello said: “The short answer is no.”

It's not clear from Russionello's comments whether Holder's instructions were intended to have no effect on policy, or whether Russionello, an appointee of President George W. Bush, is himself applying a restrictive interpretation of the attorney general's memo. But it does contradict what had been reported about Holder's memo, which is that it would represent a "significant departure" from Bush-era policy.

That the raids will continue is a fact that Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic, in San Francisco's Mission District, experienced first-hand. Although the dispensary says it follows California's regulations on dispensaries -- they must be not-for-profit, all customers must be club members and have a valid marijuana prescription, and pot growers must also be club members -- the cannabis dispensary was raided by federal authorities "less than a week after Holder’s announcement," Mission Local states.

The local news service reports:

“They came in with their guns drawn and pointed them right in our faces like we are criminals,” said Rose, a quiet Filipino woman with rheumatoid arthritis who manages the spotless clinic. “They twisted one of our patient’s arms and put a gun to his head. He was crying. It was so scary.”

The agents confiscated plants and medical cannabis, which were never returned. Nobody was arrested and no charges were ever filed.

The clinic, which has 4,500 registered patients, is a nonprofit medical marijuana dispensary that is licensed by the city, Rose said.

It only sells marijuana grown specifically for its patients, all of whom must have a medical marijuana card issued by the state of California and a valid state ID.

The Associated Press reported two weeks ago:

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in March that he wanted federal law enforcement officials to pursue those who violated federal and state law, but it has not been clear how that goal would be put into practice.

The government will still prosecute those who use medical marijuana as a cover for other illegal activity, the officials said.

The memo warns that some suspects may hide drug dealing or other crimes behind a medical marijuana business. In particular, the memo urges prosecutors to pursue marijuana cases that involve violence, illegal use of firearms, selling pot to minors, money laundering or other crimes.

GB
:couch2:

Now that he will be named to replace Chief Bratton today, just who is Charlie Beck? Does anyone know the background and his stance on our issues?

Dont know if its been posted before.
Up In Smoke - SoCal Connected

the guy and clinic featured at 3:30 are terrible.

interesting article from SLATE:

The End of Prohibition
Why gay marriage, getting high, and going to Cuba will soon be legal.

By Jacob Weisberg

Posted Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009, at 7:06 AM ET

"I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."

Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.

Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.

A few reference points: In April, Obama lifted restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban-Americans. Last month, the Justice Department announced that it would no longer prosecute cases involving medical marijuana in the 14 states where it is now permitted. Same-sex marriages are recognized in six states and counting. In a larger frame, loosening restrictions and lax enforcement reflect evolving social norms. Since Bush left office, American tourists no longer worry about being prosecuted for visiting Havana without a Treasury license. Gay unions have been celebrated on the New York Times "Weddings" page since 2002. And have you been to Los Angeles recently? You need only tell an on-site doctor at a cheerful, walk-in pot emporium that you've been suffering from anxiety to walk out with a perfectly legal bag of Captain Kush.

The chief reason these prohibitions are falling away is the evolving definition of the pursuit of happiness. What's driving the legalization of gay marriage is not so much the moral argument but the pressures from couples who want to sanctify their relationships, obtain legal benefits, and raise children in a stable environment. What's advancing the decriminalization of marijuana is not just the demand for pot as medicine but the number of adults—more than 23 million in the past year, according to the most recent government survey—who use it and don't believe they should face legal jeopardy. What's bringing the change on Cuba is not just the epic failure of the 48-year-old U.S. embargo, but the demand on the part of Americans who want to go there—whether to visit their relatives, prospect for post-Castro business opportunities, or sip rum drinks at the beach.

For similar reasons, there is not likely to be any retreat on the basic legal status—as opposed to tinkering around the margins—of the right to have an abortion or own a gun. Conservatives would be wise to give up on the one, liberals on the other. In each of these cases, popular demand for an individual right is simply too powerful to overcome. The Internet has been a crucial amplifier of all such claims. With pornography, and gambling, the Web itself became an irrepressible distribution tool for indulgences that were once perforce local. When it comes to gay marriage, the Web has accelerated the recognition of a new civil right by serving as an organizing tool and information clearinghouse. More broadly, the freest communications medium the world has ever known has raised expectations of personal liberty. In a world where everyone has his own printing press, restrictions on private behavior become increasingly untenable.

Republicans face a risk in resisting these new realities. Freedom is part of their brand; if the GOP remains the party of prohibition, it will increasingly alienate libertarian-leaners and the young. But the party as presently constituted has very little capacity to accept social change. Democrats face a danger in embracing cultural transformations too eagerly. Nearly four decades after George McGovern became known as the candidate of amnesty, abortion, and acid, cultural issues are still treacherous territory for them. Why get in front of change when you can follow from a safe distance and end up with the same result?

Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy. Follow him at Jacob Weisberg (jacobwe) on Twitter.

Article URL: Why gay marriage, getting high, and going to Cuba will soon be legal. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

The city says it's seeking documents from five operations in town to figure out if they are legal. The dispensaries refused, in part, on privacy and constitutional grounds.
BY VIK JOLLY


An Orange County Superior Court judge is expected to rule on Friday whether to enforce Dana Point's subpoenas for five medical marijuana dispensaries' records as part of a city investigation.

Among a list of requests the city is seeking from dispensaries is identifications and contact information for clients of the groups.

The dispensaries, among other objections to the subpoenas, say the city did not follow proper procedure to issue a subpoena.

The city in July served the subpoenas for records to those operating marijuana dispensaries following a request to amend zoning laws to permit dispensaries, city attorney Patrick Munoz said.

The city is also seeking financial data and documents that show the collectives selling marijuana have proper state tax papers and licenses.

Because legal battles surrounding medical marijuana dispensaries – or pharmacies as some advocates prefer to call them – are covering new territories of the law as it relates to such establishments, opinions among legal scholars and attorneys vary as to how far reaching the impact will be if Dana Point is successful in obtaining the information it seeks.

Nor is it clear -- in part because of lack of case law -- what impact Dana Point's efforts to seek contact information of members of a cooperative will have on cities around the county and the state attempting to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries.

The city does not have a specific ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries. But that does not mean the operations are permitted, like many other uses not specifically addressed in municipal codes, said Munoz.

Before making any decision, the council wanted to determine if existing dispensaries are complying with state laws or if they are operating illegally, he said.

The subpoenas followed, but the five dispensaries have not complied.

One of the dispensaries argued that the city's request for records among other reasons violates medical and financial privacy rights of its members, the protection against self incrimination and the freedom of association under both the federal and state constitutions.

"The council is curious: are the existing organizations complying with all the state laws, (if so) then they might be more interested changing the municipal codes," Munoz said. "If the exiting businesses are just a sham and basically illegally selling marijuana, then that might change their views."

COMPASSIONATE USE ACT

The California Compassionate Use Act, also known as Proposition 215, which was approved by voters in 1996, allows for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Patients can legally use marijuana with permission from doctors under that law. However, federal law still forbids marijuana possession in most cases, which officials and lawyers say creates conflicts.

Several Orange County cities have adopted ordinances that ban medical marijuana dispensaries, including Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Garden Grove, Seal Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills and Orange. The only city in Orange County that has approved dispensaries is Laguna Woods.

Richard Brizendine, an attorney for the Dana Point Safe Harbor Collective which started in late 2008, said a City Council resolution was required before Dana Point forged ahead with the subpoenas.

The resolution would have defined the "purpose of the subpoena so the legislative body simply cannot go on a fishing expedition," said Brizendine of Evans, Brizendine & Silver in Long Beach.

"It's our position that the use is allowed in the Town Center because they allow uses such as retail and pharmacies," he said. "Just because this is a pharmacy that provides medical marijuana doesn't mean that it cannot operate."

Safe Harbor is a collective licensed and authorized by the state and operating lawfully within state guidelines, Brizendine said.

If the judge on Oct. 2 turns down Dana Point's request to enforce the subpoena, "we'll go back to the drawing board," Munoz said. Should the judge side with the city, the five entities will be asked to produce the records the city is seeking in a reasonable time, he said.

"Over the past several 11 months, the city has received numerous complaints from residents and business owners relating to several dispensaries operating within the city and has discovered the operation of yet other dispensaries by conducting its own investigation," Mayor Lisa Bartlett says in her report to the court signed Aug. 26.

STICKY LEGAL ISSUES

Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UCI's law school, said government has certainly tried to obtain memberships lists in contexts other than marijuana dispensaries.

"The government has often tried to get lists of names, including names of people who have gotten medical procedures," he said.

"Generally, requiring organizations to disclose their members has to be shown to be necessary to achieve a compelling interest," Chemerinsky said. "Whether this would be allowed would depend on whether the city could show this was necessary to enforce the law."

Attorney Anthony Curiale, who specializes in medical marijuana law, said in the context of the subpoena, Dana Point seeking private information about members of cooperatives is unprecedented, a point with which another legal scholar disagrees.

"It's far reaching and in my opinion over broad," he said. "They want everything. This is a fishing expedition. … They're medical patients and entitled to privacy. What would be the reasonable purpose for the city to want to know who the members are? What would the city do with the information? Where's the protection for the patient?"

But Curiale quickly adds that Palm Springs' newly-enacted ordinance permitting no more than two collectives in that city call for an agreement to allow the city manager there to inspect all records, including member information, before such an establishment is approved.

Ultimately, he says, an appeal court might have to decide the Dana Point question, just as he and others now await a ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal on the legality of an Anaheim ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana outlets.

Arguments were heard last week in the case of Qualified Patients Association – a group of medical marijuana patients that Curiale represents – vs. the City of Anaheim, which approved an ordinance in July 2007 that forbids the outlets and makes operators subject to criminal prosecution.

The issue that Dana Point raises in its subpoenas has never been brought up, Curiale said.

"The state law doesn't talk about it; the Attorney General doesn't talk about it," he said, adding that both require that records be kept by cooperatives, but are silent on who should get access to those records.

"So, there's really no standard that we can go to have these questions answered, which creates problems," Curiale said. Dana Point is "trying to regulate in an area where the state has left a void."

But John Eastman, dean of Chapman University's School of Law, says possession and sale of marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

"It's not unprecedented for cities to try and get lists of members of organizations," he said. "I think the city of Dana Point has a fairly credible argument."

Eastman says he can see a judge approving Dana Point's request "given the oddity of the California Compassionate Use Act. The act itself is not odd, but the way people have treated it is – it's still federally illegal."

One of the reasons the dispensaries are referring to its members as patients is to bring them under medical privacy laws, Eastman said, however, that protection does not apply to use of substances illegal under federal law.

"Courts have been careful in allowing government inquiries into memberships of organizations," he said, "but courts have not afforded those protections to organizations that are engaging in illegal conduct, even though California has taken it off its criminal law."

"At its root, it's illegal conduct," Eastman maintains, "We've got an overarching federal law. All California has done is (say) we're not going to have (criminal) provisions. All it's done is remove criminal prohibitions on distribution of marijuana" under the Compassionate use Act.

So, what does the city make of its own request to seek identities and contact information of dispensary members?

It's perfectly natural to ask for the records and the cooperatives are no different than any corporation, City Attorney Munoz said.

"You can only sell (marijuana) to members and corporation code requires that they keep a list of members," he said, " it's no different than any of the other things we're looking for. The questions of safety and security are significant issues; the issue of how much traffic, how many people are coming and going (is important) to the city."

"I have never made a study in what cities have done this," City Attorney Munoz said, "We're not looking to change how they're regulated."

The law already is clear on that, he said.

"You have to be a member non-profit. How are we going to know if they don't tell us who the members are? You can't follow the money until you know who the members are. You can't confirm if they're a co-op," Munoz said.

Identifying the members is an important part of determining if the dispensaries are complying with the law because they are required to share their profits with the membership, Munoz said.

The city would take a statistical sample from each collective's membership and try to determine if profit sharing is indeed happening, he said, and that would not be possible without the identification records.

Contact the writer: 949-465-5424 or vjolly@ocregister.com


Dana Point wants pot dispensary names, records | city, marijuana, dispensaries, law, members - News - OCRegister.com

A tentative ruling favors the city, its attorney says. Judge could make it final today.
BY VIK JOLLY

A judge who shared a tentative ruling last month on whether to force five medical marijuana dispensaries in Dana Point to hand over records to the city as part of an investigation into the facilities' operations is expected to make a final decision this afternoon.nov.2

Asking attorneys to work on a protective order on the issue of the release of names of the members of all dispensaries, Judge Glenda Sanders on Oct. 22 allowed attorneys to read her tentative decision.

"The tentative ruling is that the records would have to be produced and that the privacy concerns that have been raised would be addressed with a protective order," said Patrick Munoz, the city's attorney.

Attorneys appeared unlikely to agree on the language of a protective order that Munoz crafted and filed with the court on Friday. Munoz has shared the order with all parties.

"Direction from court was to put together a protective order that allowed for the release of names but in a very narrow manner," he said. "Unless (the dispensaries) change their view, I don't anticipate the issue being resolved without the court's assistance."

Sanders had said that she was not going to rule on the case until after the city and the dispensaries ironed out the names issue, which balances medical privacy protections and the city's attempt to figure out if the dispensaries are operating legally before changing any laws to allow them in town.

"We're awaiting a final ruling," Munoz said.

"Without the names, we don't know who to talk to" to check if what the businesses have listed in their financial records is true, Munoz has said.

"That's complete nonsense," said Jacek Lentz, attorney for Capistrano Beach dispensary Beach Cities Collective, after the last court hearing. The city would not be able to compare individual transactions because "no one keeps those records." Financials kept are broader accounts of gross sales, he said in an earlier interview.

Attorneys for the dispensaries could not be reached for comment before today's hearing. Attorneys for all five said in court that they would object to any release of member names.

The city in July served subpoenas for records to those operating marijuana dispensaries following a request to amend zoning laws to permit dispensaries.

The city does not have a specific ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries. But that does not mean the operations are permitted, like many other uses not specifically addressed in municipal codes, said Munoz.

Before making any decision, the City Council wanted to determine if existing dispensaries are complying with state laws or if they are operating illegally, he said.

The subpoenas followed, but the five dispensaries refused to comply. So, the city went to court to seek assistance.

One of the dispensaries argued that the city's request for records, among other reasons, violates medical and financial privacy rights of its members, the Fifth Amendment's protection against self incrimination and the Second Amendment protection of freedom of association.

"The council is curious: are the existing organizations complying with all the state laws, (if so) then they might be more interested changing the municipal codes," Munoz said. "If the exiting businesses are just a sham and basically selling dope, then that might change their views."

The California Compassionate Use Act, also known as Proposition 215, which was approved by voters in 1996, allows for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Patients can legally use marijuana with permission from doctors under that law. However, federal law still forbids marijuana possession in most cases, which officials and lawyers say creates conflicts.

Several Orange County cities have adopted ordinances that ban medical marijuana dispensaries, including Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Garden Grove, Seal Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills and Orange. The only city in Orange County that has approved dispensaries is Laguna Woods.

Sanders said if she decides that the dispensaries must turn over names, she would give the facilities 30 days to produce the records.

Attorney Lentz has said the names should be kept private because California's Compassionate Use Act of 1996 allows for anonymity by letting individuals get permission from their doctor in a private setting. Lentz said the city's attempt at getting the names is a way for it to get around the anonymity factor.

The court proceedings come after a Department of Justice announcement last month that the focus in the war on drugs should be on drug traffickers, not medical marijuana dispensaries. Although federal prosecutors may now be backing off these facilities, state and local governments are not.

Contact the writer: 949-465-5424 or vjolly@ocregister.com


Ruling on releasing names of pot dispensary clients expected | dispensaries, city, names, marijuana, records - News - OCRegister.com

I'm not to sure a new guy in charge will do it. From the few interviews I've heard, the one guy Beck, sounds like he wants to spend more time on the street gangs of LA than whats going on now. Does that mean he could tell the Nich to stop using his LAPD officers for stupid raids, or do you think nothing will change with a new chief in charge?

MMJ clinics fight back on channel 7 right now!!!:hippie:

Increased Requests for Medical Marijuana Businesses in Los Angeles - Cannabis Career Institute

When President Barak Obama took office, he made a radical change in the federal government's approach to medical marijuana. On November 5th Cannabis Career Institute will teach how to capitalize on this brand new industry.

Los Angeles, Ca. (PRWEB) October 31, 2009 -- When President Barak Obama took office, he made a radical change in the federal government's approach to medical marijuana. Past presidential administrations enforced federal medical marijuana laws even when it conflicted with state laws. In Los Angeles for example, California law legalized Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries. However, federal and local authorities still arrested people operating medical marijuana dispensaries within Los Angeles city limits and prosecuted them according to federal law.

Cannabis Career Institute's seminar on November 5, 2009 will provide vital information for anyone wishing to learn more about medical marijuana business opportunities in Los Angeles and California wide focusing on the recent Obama administration's decision on MMJ Policy change and the new guidelines released by the Attorney General. Obviously, the law matters a great deal, this should be a good one...brand new policies...brand new industry.... brand new tax dollars.

President Obama marked a sharp turn in medical marijuana laws, stating that he would not enforce federal medical marijuana laws when they conflicted with state laws. As a result, the increased requests for medical marijuana businesses have been historic. States, such as California, which allow medical marijuana dispensaries, have reported an increase in 2009 requests ranging from 50% to 300%! The ability for Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries to operate without serious fear of federal interference is a boom for the medical marijuana industry.

Oddly enough, conservatives such as former President George W. Bush promote state rights, yet when states differ from their world view, the federal government had its way with the law. California lost many legal appeals while battling the federal policies, yet with the new administration it seems there is a great possibility for change.

One of the reason the federal government has changed its stance, as outlined by President Obama, is that the resources used to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives are costly. At a time when the nation is deep in a major recession, spending billions of dollars to prosecute people who are obeying state laws seems both futile and wasteful.

President Obama is bringing in a new era regarding medical marijuana businesses. As progressive states have been willing to recognize the many benefits of it, the federal government seems to be finally opening up to the idea as well.

CCI works to inform people about the legal landscape surrounding medical marijuana laws, as well as all the potential business opportunities. Millions of people across America are interested in learning about the medical marijuana business and have been flooding the seminars held by CCI every month. As the current political climate has changed, so have the business opportunities available to individuals, folks have not rushed to California this fast since 1849.

To learn more about the Cannabis Career Institute or the November 5th seminar, go to C.C.I. (Cannabis Career Institute) cannabiscareerinstitute.com today.


Increased Requests for Medical Marijuana Businesses in Los Angeles - Cannabis Career Institute

Golden State's green future

By Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 10/31/2009 01:39:55 PM PDT
Updated: 11/01/2009 08:17:07 AM PST


Just in from Stockton, Mary parks her car and enters the downtown Oakland coffeehouse — but she hasn't come all this way for a cup of joe.

Instead, she peruses a menu of dozens of strains and preparations of marijuana, all grown in California, all taxed, all legal. Producing a wad of cash and proof of her age — but no doctor's note — for a fragrant ounce of "purple kush," she departs a satisfied customer, perhaps grabbing a snack at a nearby restaurant before hitting the highway.

This could be California's near future, what with three marijuana-legalization initiatives in circulation for the November 2010 ballot. A legislative bill is pending as well, although it's being revamped by its author.

Groups such as the National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project favored waiting at least until 2012, when a presidential vote might mobilize a younger, more progressive electorate. But these measures' proponents believe shifting attitudes and the economic crisis make 2010 the time to act.

They say legalization makes fiscal sense as well as moral sense — ending the centurylong practice of criminalizing a widely used substance that's less harmful than alcohol, America's legal drug of choice. They tout an immediate, massive savings in state and local law enforcement and corrections costs, and perhaps significant new revenue; a state Board of Equalization study found
could reap $1.3 billion a year from licensing and taxing what's already its biggest — albeit off-the-books — cash crop, if the federal ban on marijuana is lifted.

But many in law enforcement contend whatever money is saved and made wouldn't be worth the harm done to communities.

Measure of movement

Of the three ballot measures seeking petition signatures, the one with the most money and buzz behind it would legalize personal cultivation and use but would let local governments choose whether to allow commercial cultivation and retail sales of up to an ounce at a time, creating a patchwork of "wet" and "dry" cities and counties.

"It's up to the local jurisdictions for what works best, just as we have alcohol laws," said co-proponent and Oaksterdam University President Richard Lee, who could see his business — providing "quality training for the cannabis industry" — grow exponentially if his measure passes.

Co-proponent Jeff Jones directed the now-defunct Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and now runs its successor, the Patient ID Center, in Oakland and Los Angeles. They've hired a professional petition drive management firm, and went in expecting to spend about $1 per signature.

"We got 206,000 in the first three weeks, so that's about 32 percent in 14 percent of the time," Lee said. "We think we'll be done maybe a little after Thanksgiving at the rate we're going. People have been ripping the petition blanks out of our hands, they're so eager to sign them."

But would marijuana be sold in coffeehouses, in dedicated stores, in liquor stores or in a neighborhood drugstore? Where and when could one smoke? What kind of advertising would be permitted? Could California employees of national companies be fired for testing positive for cannabis? All these questions and many more would be left up to state and local lawmakers.

Lee hopes places that choose to allow, regulate and tax commercial sales — most likely the more liberal, coastal areas at first — would adopt a "coffeehouse" model like Amsterdam's, which proliferated for a while in Oakland under California's medical marijuana law. Such businesses balance sensitivity to the community with knowledgeable customer service, better than impersonal mass-market retail sales, he said.

Nation vs. states

The wild card is federal law, which still bans all cannabis cultivation, use and sale. The Obama administration advised federal prosecutors last month not to pursue medical marijuana patients and providers adhering to their states' laws. But while health is often constitutionally considered to be within states' purview, interstate commerce and control of dangerous drugs has been federal territory, and there's no telling whether the first county to authorize a big, commercial farm growing marijuana for recreational use would see it immediately busted by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

All the measures' proponents hope legalization in California — a state comprising about 12 percent of the nation's population, and a higher percentage of its agriculture and commerce — would lead other states and eventually the federal government to do the same. Until then, California once again would be a trailblazer, with all the potential headaches accompanying that distinction.

Those headaches would include increased drug abuse and its accompanying crime, according to law enforcement officials who testified at an Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing Wednesday in Sacramento.

Committee chairman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, in February introduced a bill that would legalize marijuana cultivation, sales, possession and use by adults, regulating it somewhat like alcohol; Wednesday's hearing was to gather input as he rewrites the bill to address concerns raised this year.

Officials from various law enforcement agencies and associations testified that legalization under any scheme could lead to more, not less, use by children; more people driving under the influence, causing more injuries and deaths; decreased worker productivity that could hurt the economy; and the continuance of a thriving black market. California Peace Officers' Association President John Standish said there's "no way marijuana legalization could protect or promote society — in fact, it radically diminishes it."

After the hearing, Sally Fairchild — deputy director of the Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, who had testified on behalf of the California Narcotic Officers Association — said a wet-and-dry county scenario like that envisioned by Lee and Jones' measure would be "unenforceable" as a practical matter. Any county choosing to regulate commercial cultivation and sale will become "the dope dealer for that region," fueling rampant black market operations.

Cops aren't only critics

Some say Lee and Jones' measure doesn't go far enough. Dennis Peron, a proponent of 1996's successful medical marijuana ballot measure, Proposition 215, recently likened limits set by Lee and Jones' measure to a hypothetical law allowing only one bottle of wine in a home: "These limits guarantee confusion, harassment and black marketeering forevermore."

There's no exception from the prohibition on "smoking cannabis in any space while minors are present" for parents in their homes, he noted in a recent statement. "We don't lock up parents for having a glass of wine with dinner, and we certainly don't tell the kids to leave the house for the purpose of consuming any other substance, so why start with cannabis?"

And taxation would maintain cannabis "as the most expensive, blatantly overpriced product on the market thus forcing most people to choose cheaper, more dangerous drugs," Peron wrote. "Surely we can do better than this. How about just legalizing it?"

Alternative views

Another proposed ballot measure seems closer to that scenario. One of its proponents, San Francisco attorney James Clark, was helping Lee and Jones draft their measure when he hit upon what he believes is a better plan.

Lee and Jones' limits on personal cultivation and use encourages "very much a commercial model, very much keeping prohibition alive," Clark said, while his proposal seeks to "make this like soybeans" so anyone can grow and use as much as they want for themselves, which he believes will actually reduce demand in the long run. Commercial cultivation and sales would be licensed and taxed; Clark envisions big farms furnishing cannabis products to retail outlets — perhaps liquor stores, perhaps drugstores.

Clark said his measure "was never meant to be a really viable petition," lacking funding and full-time staff members, but "we're really starting to get traction. "... If our growth continues to be exponential, it's possible we'll make the ballot." He acknowledges, however, that Lee and Jones' measure is more likely to qualify.

John Donohue, 84, of Long Beach — a marijuana user since 1946, embittered by his five arrests for the drug — offers another measure, co-authored with longtime marijuana and Peace and Freedom Party activist Casey Peters, of Los Angeles. Donohue said they tried to keep it simple — specifics of taxation and regulation would "just have to be worked out in the process" — and hoped people would get behind it, but their petition drive has stalled as Lee and Jones' measure gets most of the exposure.

"(We are) giving various interviews and telling people what our position is and hoping we can start a movement," he said. "The main point is: Stop arresting people for a non-crime. I have bumper stickers that say, 'Show me the crime.'"‰"

The next Budweiser?

Ultimately, any legalized marijuana scenario will have pluses and minuses, says Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy and director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at the UCLA.

"How much different does it look than today? You don't have to get a phony doctor's recommendation," he said. "How much bigger would the market be than it is today? There's no way to tell."

But Kleiman predicts it would be bigger, especially if commercial advertising — print, online, radio and television ads, billboards, catchy jingles — becomes commonplace.

"Do we get brand names? You can imagine this becoming like the liquor industry," he said. "I don't think it's the end of the world. But if we go the whole commercial route, I think you will have more drug abuse."

If a million more Californians take up marijuana use, "we'll have another 100,000 pretty screwed up on it. Being screwed up on marijuana might not be as bad as being screwed up on alcohol, but it's still bad enough," Kleiman said. "Unlike some people, I don't think the stuff's harmless."

Yet, with careful regulation and steps to avoid commercialization, California could do far worse, he said. "Do I believe the state could get half a billion out of this (in taxes)? Yeah I do. Do I think it could also save a couple of hundred million (on law enforcement)? Yes, probably."


• The plans to legalize pot Assembly Bill 390: Introduced in February by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, it would legalize marijuana cultivation, sales, possession and use by people 21 and older, regulating it somewhat like alcohol. A license to grow for sale would cost $5,000 to start and then $2,500 to renew each year, and a $50-per-ounce tax would be placed on retail sales. Ammiano said he hopes this would bring upward of $1.4 billion per year for drug abuse prevention efforts. No taxation would occur unless the federal marijuana ban is lifted; otherwise, the bill's only effect would be legalization of personal cultivation and use. Ammiano held the bill in committee this year, and is now rewriting it to put it forth again in January.

• The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010: Proposed by Oakland marijuana activists Richard Lee and Jeff Jones, it would legalize personal possession of up to an ounce of cannabis and up to 25 square feet of cultivation per home. It also would give local governments the option of whether to permit, regulate and tax commercial sales, a system akin to show alcohol is or isn't sold in "wet" and "dry" counties in some states. This seems to be the measure to watch; the proponents say their petition drive is surging, and its endorsements include that of Oakland mayoral candidate and former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. For details, go to Tax Cannabis 2010.

• The Tax, Regulate and Control Cannabis Act of 2010: Advanced by proponents Joe Rogoway, Omar Figueroa and James Clark, all of San Francisco, it would legalize personal cultivation and use without limits, but would require -- not just allow -- state and local governments to regulate and tax commercial marijuana cultivation and sales. Tax revenues would have to be spent on education, health care, environmental programs, public works and state parks. For details, go to California Cannabis Initiative: The Legalize, Regulate and Tax Marijuana Initiative.

• The Common Sense Act of 2010: Advanced by proponent John Donohue, of Long Beach, it would require the Legislature to adopt laws regulating and taxing marijuana within one year, but would let local governments choose whether to also tax marijuana's cultivation, sale, and use. For details, go to Home.

Marijuana laws spur small businesses
in Oakland, elsewhere

By Angela Woodall
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 11/01/2009 01:01:00 AM PDT
Updated: 11/01/2009 04:36:10 AM PST

An incremental acceptance of medical marijuana has spurred a cottage industry of business ventures — from iPhone applications to lobbyists — whose expansion shows no sign of slowing despite the recession. Instead, pot is the new growth industry.

The market began to take off in 1996, when California became the first state to approve the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Today, medical marijuana sales in California are estimated at $700 million to $2 billion per year. Profits from "canni-businesses" as a whole are potentially much greater.

"It is a social movement with cash flow," said James Anthony, an activist and attorney who has advised numerous dispensaries, of which there are at least 2,100 nationwide, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The group estimates that Californians alone consume nearly $6 billion of marijuana annually.

The money has always been there, Anthony said. It has just risen to the surface because people think there is less risk of being prosecuted.

The most obvious beneficiaries of what has been dubbed a "hempire" are dispensaries, growers and doctors, who charge up to $200 per consultation.

Newer are the small business ventures such as delivery services and publishers of books about how to start pot-related businesses. Pharmacologists are standardizing the safety and strength of the pot consumed in everything from lemon bars to olive oil.

Companies are preparing special machines, packaging and containers for the industry.

Hotels also are affected by cannabis-related tourism, conventions and competing trade shows that draw thousands to cities. And if anyone has trouble finding what they need, the iPhone and iTouch offer a cannabis application that allows users to locate resources worldwide.

Media involved with pot also have expanded. The Web-based station "Marijuana Radio" has been featured on the front page of the iTunes comedy podcast section, and the Denver Westword news weekly went further by posting a help wanted ad for a reviewer of Colorado's marijuana dispensaries and their products.

In addition, the number of pot lawyers and political consultants have exploded, and a half-dozen marijuana lobbying groups have sprung up in Washington, D.C., a few on K Street. Oakland activist Richard Lee said he spent more than a $1 million gathering signatures for a measure that would permit adults to possess cannabis for personal use and allow local governments to tax it.

Cannabis has become a regular political issue instead of just a crazy, hippie dream, Lee said. His "Oaksterdam University" was the first cannabis college. There are now at least a half-dozen in California, and others are looking at creating online versions of the classes available for about $50 a seminar.

Lee said last year he took in between $4 million and $5 million from his businesses, which also include an advertising agency, a tour company, a bicycle rental and glassblowing business, a gift shop selling souvenirs and merchandise, and the Bull Dog Café in downtown Oakland. (Visitors can take an "Oaksterdam" tour of the city's cannabis dispensaries through Segway of Oakland.)

The Harborside Health Center, an Oakland dispensary that offers numerous services, had about $20 million in gross revenues last year and expects to pay $400,000 in taxes to Oakland in 2010, according to founder and longtime activist Stephen DeAngelo. He employs 76 full-time workers, up from 43 in 2008.

"We are seeing the first stages of this industry that has been in the shadows come into the light," said DeAngelo, a longtime advocate for cannabis legalization. "A legal cannabis industry would be a huge economic benefit."

Those potential benefits have prompted cash-strapped cities and states to take another look at marijuana. Oakland in 2004 became the first city to license medical cannabis outlets. That year, the city's four licensed dispensaries reported $26 million in revenue. Advocates projected income to reach $64 million in 2009.

Those numbers are dwarfed by the $280 billion pharmaceutical industry. But the pot-based figures were enough to convince Oakland voters in July to approve a tax on the proceeds of medical marijuana sales that could raise $300,000 per year for the city.

Advocates also were heartened recently by signals from President Barack Obama's administration that federal authorities were backing off pursuing smokers or distributors of medical cannabis as long as they operate according to the laws of their state.

That does not mean selling marijuana is legal or that the patchwork of local, county, state and federal law has been coordinated. But, DeAngelo said, "it is a significant change."

"Every day I went to work," he said, "I didn't know if I would be going to prison or coming home at night."

Marijuana laws spur small businesses in Oakland, elsewhere - Inside Bay Area

from today's LA Times:

Marijuana growers upend hard-luck California town

They flock to Hayfork to bask in the sunny, cool climate and the permissive rules on medical pot farming and possession.

By Alana Semuels

November 1, 2009


Reporting from Hayfork, Calif. — Education has long been preached as a way to keep kids away from drugs. It's the walk to school that has Supt. Tom Barnett worried.

This hardscrabble Northern California town has become a hotbed for medical marijuana farming. Kids stroll much of the year past pungent plants flourishing in gardens and alleys. The red-and-black clad Timberjacks football team moved its halftime huddle on a recent Friday night to avoid the odor of marijuana smoke wafting over the gridiron from nearby houses. Some students talk openly of farming pot after graduation, about the only opportunity in this depressed timber town.

"It's not a subculture here," said Barnett, who heads the Mountain Valley Unified School District. "Marijuana is drying in their houses. It's falling out of their pockets."

Los Angeles isn't the only place struggling with repercussions unleashed by its permissive medical marijuana laws. Here in Trinity County, cannabis cultivation is upending the rural culture and economy of one of the state's most hard-luck regions.

Drawn by the sunny, cool climate -- and a local ordinance permissive of medical marijuana farming and possession -- big-city refugees have brought a decidedly urban edge to hamlets such as Hayfork, about 60 miles west of Redding.

This town has no stoplights. No home mail delivery. Nearly a quarter of its 1,900 residents are poor. But that hasn't stopped outsiders from bidding up the price of real estate with sun-soaked southern exposures, all the better to cultivate plants that can grow 12 feet high or taller.

The sheriff's office estimates 10,000 plants are growing in a single remote subdivision known as Trinity Pines. Lots on its southwest-facing slope sell for as much as $50,000, up from about $3,500 five years ago, according to Steven Hanover, an area real estate broker.

Fall harvest season brings strangers with dreadlocks and cash boxes. Some farmers guard their crops with electric fences, razor wire and snarling dogs. Hikers have been threatened at gunpoint for wandering too close to where they aren't wanted.

"It's just torn the fabric of our society," said Judy Stewart, a 69-year-old retiree who has lived in Trinity County for more than 50 years. "It's pitted people against one another."

'Pot paradise'

How Trinity County, a sprawling, lightly populated area twice the size of Rhode Island, came to be dubbed "Northern California's pot paradise" by High Times magazine is a story of law, lawlessness and geography.

Just a little more than 14,000 residents are spread across its 3,000 square miles. People live as they like in its mountains thick with trees, separated from civilization by windy roads and "No Trespassing" signs. For decades, that's made it easy for some residents to grow marijuana without much interference.

Trinity County has "always been a pot county. Our climate in these little mountain valleys is conducive to great cannabis," said Mike Boutin, who runs Grace Farm, a collective in the western part of the county. He said he originally moved there to grow and sell medical marijuana on the black market. He now cultivates it legally because of California's Proposition 215.

Known as the Compassionate Use Act, that statewide ballot initiative approved by voters in 1996 allowed patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma and other illnesses, as well as their caregivers, to grow and possess the drug to ease their discomfort.

Concerns by patients and law enforcement that the law was too ambiguous prompted the Legislature in 2003 to clarify just how much pot could be grown legally. California guidelines currently allow half a pound of dried marijuana and six mature or 12 immature plants for patients who obtain a doctor's recommendation. In addition, the law gave cities and counties flexibility to adopt more generous guidelines. Trinity in 2007 upped its limits to 12 mature pot plants, 24 immature plants and 3 pounds of dried weed -- a policy that was later revoked after residents complained.

State law also permits nonprofit cultivation cooperatives where patients can, in effect, pool individual plant limits. That opened the way for large growing operations like Grace Farm, which has 20 members from across the state.

Grace Farm family

Among them is Jacqueline Patterson, 31, who uses marijuana to treat her cerebral palsy and a severe stutter. The single mother of four lives in publicly subsidized housing in Marin County. She fears she would be booted from the program if she tried to grow dope at home or buy it from street dealers. She travels to Trinity twice a year to pick up 3 pounds of marijuana, which she gets free in exchange for working for the co-op. The collective charges most patients about $170 an ounce.

The arrangement has allowed her "to acquire medicine affordably," said Patterson, who moved in 2007 from Missouri where medical marijuana is illegal. "Grace Farm has really given me more of a family out here in California."

But locals in Trinity say California law is so permissive that almost anyone can get a doctor's "recommendation" needed to grow their own marijuana or buy it at dispensaries. ID cards -- which patients can use as proof they have a physician's recommendation for medicinal cannabis -- are voluntary. And because state guidelines aren't hard and fast, some doctors recommend that their patients be allowed to grow many more plants than the suggested ceiling.

Officials say they're powerless to do much about it.

"All they need is a recommendation by a doctor on a match book," said Roger Jaegel, a county supervisor who represents an area that includes parts of Hayfork. " Dr. Seuss could be writing these prescriptions."

The upshot, critics say, is that a law crafted to help sick people has morphed into a lucrative trade, one in which rural farms are supplying urban dispensaries that cater to mostly recreational users armed with doctors' recommendations. Growers have flocked to Northern California's "Emerald Triangle" of Trinity, Mendocino and Humboldt counties for cheap land, a good climate and loose oversight.

In the college town of Arcata, home of Humboldt State University, buildings that once housed car dealerships now host cannabis dispensaries, said Kevin Hoover, publisher of the Arcata Eye newspaper. He said entrepreneurs have converted entire homes into indoor greenhouses rigged with "grow lamps." That's blighting neighborhoods and exacerbating the town's housing shortage, Hoover said. Home invasions and fires are up.

"What's happened is that a lot of the people who are in it for the money have found all the loopholes," Hoover said. "They're gaming the whole thing to enable more of an industrial production of marijuana."

Out-of-towners

In Hayfork, some farmers plant pot near public roads. Cars with out-of-state license plates pour into town during the fall harvest. Authorities suspect that a shooting in Trinity Pines was linked to marijuana. Many residents now avoid that area.

"We're beginning to feel like Colombia," Jaegel said. "It's a difficult thing for small communities to have to put up with."

Marijuana advocates say that trouble makers are a small minority and that the true danger is drug cartels operating large illegal operations on public forest land.

Indeed, the Trinity County Sheriff's Department -- with a total of 15 officers -- devotes most of its drug enforcement efforts to fighting those organized gangs. Partnering with the U.S. Forest Service, they've closed 45 illegal sites in the county since June. They've arrested dozens of laborers and collected nearly 400,000 illegal plants this year, up from 250,000 last year. Weapons have been found at nearly every site they've raided.

Last summer alone in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the government spent nearly $1 million removing 29,085 pounds of debris -- including 14 illegal dams that had been built to siphon water to the farms, 1,004 pounds of fertilizer and 159,240 feet of irrigation pipe -- from abandoned marijuana farms.

Officials see a link between these cartel operations and 215 gardens: Americans' insatiable demand for drugs.

"I just wish recreational pot smokers could understand what they are supporting," said Joshua Smith, natural resources project manager at the nonprofit Watershed Research & Training Center in Trinity County. "They're supporting clear-cutting the forest, pesticides, de-watering the streams, poaching wildlife, Mexican drug cartels and human trafficking."

Money talks

Lack of job opportunities is also driving the trade here. Logging, once a major employer, has all but disappeared. Trinity County's unemployment rate of 15.9% in September was one of the highest in the state. Its median household income of $35,439 is the third-lowest in the state.

Some say that the marijuana industry, for better or for worse, brings some economic benefits. Farmers buy water tanks and other equipment at local stores; laborers eat at area restaurants. A scruffy young man named Jaya traveled from New York to pick up work in the recent harvest. Eating ice cream at the Family Dairy Store in Hayfork recently, he communicated by scribbling on a notepad because, he wrote, he had given up speech "in loving silence."

Locals might not cotton to these outsiders. But at least their money spends.

"The only thing that keeps this economy going is the growers," said Dennis Cooney, owner of the Northern Delights coffee shop in downtown Hayfork.

But retiree Stewart, who owns several rental properties, is sick of the changes. She's tired of battling tenants who try to grow marijuana on her land. She's weary of hearing gunshots and seeing rough-looking strangers loitering around town. She fears growers will only be emboldened by U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.’s recent statement that the federal government will halt raids on legal dispensaries.

"It gives them the license to really be in your face," Stewart said. "I'd leave in a heartbeat if I could."

Marijuana growers upend hard-luck California town -- latimes.com

UK drug adviser fired after marijuana comments - Yahoo! News

I especially liked the part where he say's
"I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis..."

MMJ special report on Ch. 5 news at 10pm !! :grouphug:

Fresno Shuts All Cannabis Dispensaries
The City of Fresno has ordered all nine of its medical marijuana dispensaries to be closed, and Fresno County Superior Court Judge Alan Simpson upheld that order.

At issue in this case was whether city zoning laws banning dispensaries can overrule the state laws that allow them.

The judge made two rulings:

1. State law does not pre-empt enforcement of zoning laws.
2. Dispensaries violate federal law, which make them in violation of local zoning ordinances.


This does not bode well for Fresno or for other localities seeking to keep their dispensaries open in the face of continuing opposition from law enforcement. The case goes to trial in January of 2010.


anyone heard this yet?

i dont like the dea so down with the dea:thumb:

Go here to read the comments left about Steve Lopez' story on his visit to get a rec from a MMJ doctor.
Medical marijuana for an L.A. Times columnist | Comments Blog | Los Angeles Times

His story is here, in case you haven't read it. A visit to the medical marijuana doctor -- latimes.com

Let's get in there ourselves and speak up, trackers!

Comments Blog
Because sometimes the comments are the best part

Medical marijuana for an L.A. Times columnist

October 28, 2009 | 3:49 pm

Marijuana

For a lot of people, the details about medical marijuana can be hazy. Hundreds of dispensaries have grown like weeds around Los Angeles, some of which are open as late as fast-food restaurants (a blessed coincidence). But how does one get a prescription to use this medicine?

Thankfully, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez broke down part of the process in his column today about his visit to the medical marijuana doctor.

In his account, Lopez educates us about obtaining a marijuana “recommendation” from an obstetrician who had advertised as being someone who could write a script for the controversial bud.

So the question is: Is Lopez’s account of visiting the doctor an accurate depiction of the experience?

Do you agree with him that we’re better off legalizing the plant? Or do the recreational users who abuse the system need to be, excuse the pun, weeded out?

Our interactive map of L.A. marijuana dispensaries shows which are licensed and which have been denied applications -- it also marks their proximity to schools, parks and libraries. What do you think about the location of these dispensaries? Does it matter that they are so close to schools and public spaces? Or do you consider this much ado about nothing?

-- Kelsey Ramos

Medical marijuana for an L.A. Times columnist | Comments Blog | Los Angeles Times

Can anyone confirm??

RAID ALERT: LAPD is raiding Woodland Hills Treatment Center 5338
Alhama Dr. (2nd Floor), Woodland Hills, Ca. 91364.

The hearing on AB390 Ammiano is now up on a government website. Entire hearing last over 2 hours and includes public comment.

Takes forever to load. In three parts:

The California Channel: Video on Demand
The California Channel: Video on Demand
The California Channel: Video on Demand

Best,

GB
:couch2:

I have been diabetic for 13 years. Sometimes, it is an uphill battle with producing insulin and keeping sugar levels in check. The pain comes with the battle of your limbs. Often times just walking to the restroom is unbearable. Every day heavy meds gave nausea and headaches although not frequent as they use to be. I am a patient with a recommendation. My problem is recreational users. My problem is the dispensaries operating dirty. My problem is the ease to obtaining a recommendation. My major problem is our City Attorney and the District Attorney. Recreational users represent a big part of Users of MJ. So were on earth were you people during the rally? I see this group as our strength rather than a weakness. With so many of them ranging in the age of 18-26 none of these people were not even old enough to vote for Proposition 215, much less understand what it took to get here. Most recreational users have no business smoking or consuming MJ. Some want to show their friends how cool it is to go in come out scoring. Some are so intelligent to bring an underage friend to wait in the car. RECREATIONAL USERS are the problem unless they are properly educated before they receive education the hard way by local law enforcement. With so many dispensaries popping up all over with all this heated debate, one might think that they would be on their P’s & Q’s. I have been to dispensaries all over California. I have found that some dispensaries are obviously breaking laws and or treating patients with the shittiest attitudes over the amount of a patient donation. Some of them seem like the local gangs are running them. Really, the purpose of dispensaries is to provide SAFE access to our medication. Dispensaries should not be located in areas known for gang violence at all. They should not be located in dangerous parts of our cities. Safe access means: Going to a dispensary that is in a safe neighborhood were you could walk at night. Some dispensaries were clueless when asked if they will join the rallies last week. Just like those hideous neon lights that are killing us, so is the ease of obtaining a recommendation. The guideline to recommendations should have more requirements, with the more terminally ill being exempt. Maybe even raise the age limit to 30. The City Attorney and the District Attorney wants to shut us down. They have raised a big stink. They see Recreational users, Co-ops, dispensaries, and Dr. recommendations as illegal. Illegal? I could have sworn that I helped vote for Prop. 215. The point I am making is WE must fight within ourselves before we can fight them (City Attorney & District Attorney). It is our duty as patients to save our right to medicate. If we see someone putting this law at risk, it should be our responsibility to do something about it. This goes for all of us. Weigh in on your thoughts.
RADDATATPAT

L.A. doesn't need a city bully -- latimes.com

The MMJ community needs to strike while the irons hot! Here is another scathing article about our new publicity-whore Trutanich. Obviously Tru is using the city attorneys office as a stepping stone to higher office. This is critical mass time because he either gets nipped in the bud, or he continues to step on peoples rights on his personal crusade for fame and accolades. I will send out a new set of letters to the council and refer to this article since MMJ was not mentioned. I will also mention how Trutanich has muddied up the discourse with his can of Raid, and how that is patently unfair to try to steer public opinion without proper vetting of his claims. In fact I think the council should formally vet the behavior and claims Cooley and Trutanich have made in the press.

HEY TRACKERS,
A QUICK INQUIREE....DID ANYONE SEE THE INFO. ON CHANNEL 9 NEWS YESTERDAY THAT LONG BEACH IS SET TO REVIEW OR HAVE A PROPOSAL TO THE CITY COUNSEL IN TWO WEEKS? SUPPOSEDLY DRAFTING STRICT REGULATIONS FOR COLLECTIVES IN THE CITY, INCLUDING WHERE (ZONING) THAY ARE ALLOWED TO OPEN, HOW MANY ARE ALLOWED TO BE IN LONG BEACH, HOURS OF OPERATION AND OF COURSE MANY OTHER REGULATIONS. CAN ANY ONEELSE WAY IN ON THIS, I CAUGHT THE LAST PART OF THIS HEADLINE AND DO NOT WISH TO GIVE FALSE/MISLEADING 411. SOMETHING HAS TO BE UP BECAUSE IT SEEMS THAT VALLEY/LA IS BRANCHING OUT TO LB WITH RAMPED UP COMPETITION POPPING UP LOCALLY WITH NEW COLLECTIVES, LOWER DONATIONS (VALLEY CAPS ETC.) AND HIGHER QUALITY OVERALL.....AND NOT JUST BECAUSE OF FALL HARVEST.:whistling:

BY THE WAY......I'M NOT COMPLAINING.
BEST OF HEALTH TO ALL AND MAY WE ALL BE BLESSED WITH THE BEST!:grouphug:

Special report on growing operations and clinics. A supposed inside look and report on channel 5 tomorrow at 10pm. 10/29/09.
Don't know how long (duration) this story will be. Just a heads up.

A visit to the medical marijuana doctor


Atop a Glendale high-rise, a physician checks symptoms and determines if marijuana is the right course of treatment. It seems it often is.
By Steve Lopez

October 28, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size Oooh, there's a pinch in my lower back.

My head hurts too.

And my vision is blurred from going through long lists of Southern California physicians who specialize in herbal medicine. I need relief, and I need it fast, but how does one go about choosing a medical marijuana doctor?

"I am a person first, a scientist second and a friend always," a Melrose Avenue doctor says in an ad that can be found in medical cannabis magazines.

I suppose there are advantages to having a medical marijuana doctor who is a friend always. But I wasn't really looking for a friend.

"Sadly, many of the doctors' offices in our field are shoddy at best," said an ad for a clinic in my neighborhood. "They definitely are not something to gamble on."

Good advice, I guess. In the end, I chose a Glendale clinic because it was close to home, offered "superior professionalism" and had an appointment time that worked for me.

But I was a bit nervous on my way to see the doctor. What if I got rejected?

Not that I've heard of that happening to anyone. The open secret is that it's a cinch to get a marijuana "recommendation" in California. A "recommendation" isn't a prescription, but it would allow me to visit a dispensary and buy my buds.

In Los Angeles, locating such a place would be no harder than locating a palm tree. The little green crosses are everywhere, with 186 dispensaries operating with city permits and an estimated 600 more that found a loophole.

Why so many?

Because of the usual bungling at City Hall. An estimated 600 or so managed to open -- if you can believe this -- during a MORATORIUM on new dispensaries, while city officials fiddled.

Neighborhood groups began complaining about proliferation, proximity to schools and rising crime. So now we've got a city attorney who wants to shut them down and a City Council that will take another whack at this thing in a week or two. But in the meantime, you can shop til you drop for "Sonoma Coma" and "Humboldt Haze."

This is what happens when you're in that murky middle between legal and illegal. I'm all for medical marijuana, and know it brings great relief to many sick people, but it doesn't take a detective to realize that recreational users are driving the industry under the guise of medical need.

As I've written before, we'd be better off legalizing pot altogether in this country, as well as regulating and taxing it. Instead, we spend a fortune on a failed fight that helps cartels and drug gangs prosper, even as bodies pile up.

But let's get back to my courtship of Mary Jane.

I parked in Glendale, took the elevator to the top floor of a high-rise and was greeted by a young man in jeans and a ball cap.

"Are you here to see the doctor?" he asked.

As far as I could tell, the entire floor was abandoned but for this little operation. Nice to know there's still one part of the economy firing on all cylinders.

Three other patients were waiting, including a woman with a cane.

When she stood, she walked gingerly.

I could be in trouble, I thought. My back problem wasn't as obvious.

Should I limp when it was my turn?I felt like I was in a Coen brothers movie. The big empty room, the unseen doctor behind the door, the furtive glances between patients.

I filled out some forms, describing the back pain that began roughly 25 years ago. Surgery was recommended in later years, but I've opted instead for stretching and occasional painkillers.

Sometimes the pain crawls down my legs or up my back, sometimes it wakes me up at night, and that's the truth, so help me God.

I turned in the forms but then, on the table next to me, I saw a medical marijuana magazine called "The 420 Times," in which the lead story was, conveniently, "Your First Doctor Visit. What to expect and know."

I began to read.

"Would they take me seriously? Would I be laughed at?" the author wrote. "Turns out, I really didn't have much to be worried about. Getting medical marijuana wasn't as hard as I thought it would be."

His problem was migraines, and he was in and out of the office in no time, marijuana recommendation in hand.

I was in a panic. I'd had a headache or two. Why hadn't I gone with migraines, and was it too late to switch?

Before I could move, the woman with the cane exited the office 10 minutes after she entered. The doctor, wearing a white lab coat, followed behind her.

"I looked at it from across the table, and I trust you," he said to her.

It sounded promising.

When it was my turn, the doctor sat at a desk in an otherwise empty room and read my papers. The only medical equipment I saw was a blood pressure cuff.

The doctor told me there were many options for treating back pain, and I told him I didn't want to risk surgery or take conventional painkillers. He wanted to know how I'm affected when back pain keeps me awake.

I'm fuzzy and have trouble focusing the next day, I told him.

He seemed to be looking for a different answer. If I'm a writer, he said, did that mean I had trouble doing my job?

Definitely, doctor.

I stood to show him where my back hurts. He asked me to bend down, and I demonstrated that I couldn't touch my toes, but I don't think he could see that. He hadn't moved from his seat.


I pointed again to my lower back and asked if there were a disc that low.

He said he knew nothing about back problems.

"I'm a gynecologist," he said.

I see.

He asked if I could have my primary care doctor fax over a brief note about my back problem.

Sure, I said.

"There's no rush," the doctor said.

Without having laid a hand on me, he led me back out to the receptionist with the ball cap. I paid $150 for my 10-minute exam and was given my recommendation.

"This certifies that Steve Lopez was evaluated in my office for a medical condition, which in my professional opinion, may benefit from the use of medical marijuana."

Several more patients were waiting their turn.

Me? I had some shopping to do, and several hundred stores to choose from.

Check back here Sunday, and I'll let you know how it went.steve.lopez@latimes.com

A visit to the medical marijuana doctor -- latimes.com

My wife Jennifer Harris Crawford (My Caregiver) and Debra Tepel from Kush Korner (neighbor) were two of only three people to support MMJ at the Tarzana Neighborhood Council meeting tonight. GOOD NEWS! The Tarzana community will NOT support the City Attorney's ordinance governing collectives.

Here's my take on what happened:
Jennifer and Debra got their chance to speak. There were only @ six people (3 for MMJ and 3 for other matters) and a cop...the cop left after the City Attorney lost.

The council voted and by one vote we WON!!! Now, begin the begin again... the rest of the Neighborhood Council Local Meetings MUST go the same way! In order to do this people must SHOW UP!!!! SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK!!! Get off the asses/computers and couches unless you use your computer for safe access. Go your local neighborhood counsel meetings and speak up!, the city council people love to hear from you in person.

We can all can spark one up for the rest of us later for the victory that happened hours ago.! Tonight was just three people there that made it happen and what a difference made by showing up to help the undecided members. Yes We Can! We Can! SO CAN YOU! Go out and make it happen!

they got to speak and help a couple undecided. WOW! We're so happy! Also Thank The Tarzana Neighborhood Council people also for voting NO! to a bad ordinance! Now City Council man Dennis P. Zine .. MUST vote NO on 4th Ordinance!!! :thumb:

We need to replace the bad City Counsel people who don't represent us! Let's put a MMJ Patients in! Our numbers are large...we have no power unless we use it.

They are trying to compare a therapeutic place that had two women doing illegal prostitution to Medical Marijuana Dispensary:

OC day spa faces prostitution allegations - 10/27/09 - Los Angeles-Southern California-LA Breaking News, Weather, Traffic, Sports - abc7.com

BREAKING NEWS: California Lawmakers To Debate Marijuana Legalization Tomorrow!
Paul Armentano

California state lawmakers are scheduled to hear testimony tomorrow in support of taxing and regulating the commercial production and distribution of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.

Members of the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety have called for the hearing, entitled “Examining the Fiscal and Legal Implication of the Legalization and Regulation of Marijuana.” The hearing will be chaired by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), sponsor of Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. It will take place at 10am in room 126 of the State Capitol.'

California Lawmakers To Debate Legalizing Marijuana Tomorrow! | The 420 Times

Kgbud1:hippie:

BREAKING: NJ Senators Ask For Pardon on Medical Marijuana - freedomisgreen - Open Salon

New Jersey Senate Democrats :: Scutari And Lesniak Ask For Pardon Of Medical Marijuana User

SCUTARI AND LESNIAK ASK FOR PARDON OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER
Lawmakers Say Imprisonment of Somerset County Man Suffering with MS is Inhumane, Illegal and Inconsistent with Direction of State’s Drug Policies

TRENTON – Calling the prosecution of a self-medicating Somerset County man with multiple sclerosis (MS) a “severe, inappropriate, discompassionate and inhumane application of the letter of the law,” Senators Nicholas P. Scutari and Raymond J. Lesniak today urged Governor Jon Corzine to pardon Franklin Township resident John Ray Wilson, and called on the Assembly to quickly move legislation to decriminalize the medicinal use of marijuana by New Jerseyans with chronic and terminal illnesses.

“It seems cruel and unusual to treat New Jersey’s sick and dying as if they were drug cartel kingpins. Moreover, it is a complete waste of taxpayer money having to house and treat an MS patient in a jail at the public’s expense,” said Senator Scutari, D-Union, Middlesex and Somerset. “Specifically, in the case of John Ray Wilson, the State is taking a fiscally irresponsible hard-line approach against a man who’s simply seeking what little relief could be found from the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. Governor Corzine should step in immediately and end this perversion of criminal drug statutes in the Garden State.”

“Without compassion and a sense of moral right and wrong, laws are worth less than the paper they’re printed on,” said Senator Lesniak, D-Union. “New Jersey’s tough criminal drug laws were never intended to be used against patients suffering from chronic and terminal medical conditions. The prosecutors and presiding judge have set up a scenario where Mr. Wilson is no different than a common street thug in the eyes of the law.”

In August of 2008, a training fly-over by a New Jersey National Guard helicopter spotted 17 marijuana plants in the backyard of John Ray Wilson’s Franklin Township home. Wilson, now 36 years old, was diagnosed with MS in 2002 and at the time, had no health insurance coverage or means to pay for the pharmaceutical drugs needed to keep the symptoms of his disease in check. According to his lawyer, Wilson turned to natural substances to relieve his suffering, including bee-sting therapy and marijuana purchased illegally.

Unable to afford purchasing expensive pharmaceutical drugs to ease his pain, Wilson attempted to grow marijuana for his own personal, medical use in the backyard of his home. Now, he’s being charged with multiple counts of possession and manufacturing of illegal drugs, the most severe of which – first degree maintaining or operating a drug-production facility – carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, and disqualifies him for the Pre-Trial Intervention (PTI) program, an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders. State prosecutors have offered a plea agreement of four years imprisonment, but the Union County lawmakers called on Governor Corzine to pardon Wilson of the drug-production facility charge in order to make him eligible to participate in PTI and avoid a prison sentence.

“It is legally inappropriate, humanly cruel and fiscally wasteful to impose any kind of prison term for Mr. Wilson,” said Senator Lesniak. “If anything, this is precisely the sort of case that should have been diverted to Pre-Trial Intervention. A lengthy prison sentence for John Ray Wilson would most likely guarantee that he will die behind bars, and the court should have pursued other options if it was truly concerned with justice.”

Last week, Superior Court Judge Robert Reed ruled that Wilson’s medical condition, and the fact that he had been taking marijuana to treat his condition, could not be revealed to the jury during the course of the trial. The trial, which will be given a starting date on Friday in Superior Court in Somerville, NJ, will likely be a “relict of New Jersey’s outdated, inconsiderate, socially irresponsible and fiscally reprehensible zero-tolerance approach in treating patients using medical marijuana to relieve their suffering like hardened criminals,” according to Senator Scutari.

“Not only is the prosecutor over-reaching and overzealously pursuing the letter of the law, but the judge is enabling this kind of witch hunt,” said Senator Scutari. “It seems patently unfair and unjust to force John Ray Wilson into jail without taking serious consideration of his medical condition. The court should have also taken into account the extenuating circumstances involving new Federal guidelines on medical marijuana and the progress of in-State legislation decriminalizing marijuana possession and use by New Jerseyans with debilitating medical conditions.”

In addition to asking Governor Corzine to issue clemency for John Ray Wilson, both lawmakers agreed that the Assembly must quickly move S-119, sponsored by Senator Scutari and co-sponsored by Senator Lesniak, when the Legislature reconvenes this fall. Entitled the “New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act,” the bill would decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana by State-registered patients with “debilitating medical conditions,” as identified by a New Jersey-licensed physician. The bill would also require the State Department of Health and Senior Services to oversee the establishment and administration of alternative treatment centers, where qualified, registered patients would be able to obtain medical marijuana and any related supplies and educational materials.

“The only way we’re going see less of these cases come before the court is if the ‘New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act’ becomes the law of the land,” said Senator Lesniak. “This has been an issue that has taken years to resolve in New Jersey, and legislative approval and enactment into law are long past overdue. It’s time that the Assembly post this bill for a vote, so we can focus our attention on putting real criminals behind bars, and not piling on the suffering for terminal patients simply seeking a little relief from the symptoms of their diseases.”

“For the men and women in New Jersey who have no where else to turn to effectively manage their debilitating illnesses, the ‘Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act’ would give them an alternative, and protect them from overly harsh and unnecessary drug crime prosecution,” said Senator Scutari. “If we had just passed this legislation years ago, we wouldn’t even be having a discussion about John Ray Wilson, and he’d be able to get access to drugs to manage the pain and spasticity of MS without fear of persecution. On behalf of John Ray Wilson and the thousands of State residents suffering from long-term, chronic and terminal illnesses, I call on the Assembly to send the medical marijuana legislation to the Governor to finally be signed into law.”

The “New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act” was approved by the Senate in February by a vote of 22-16, and was advanced out of the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee in June by a vote of 8-1, with 2 abstentions. It is currently pending before the full Assembly before going to Governor Corzine to be signed into law.

October 27, 2009, 10:30 AM
One City's Insane Fight Against Obama's Sane New Pot Policy

The administration has officially put a stop to crackdowns on the medical-marijuana business, but to hear the dispensers tell it, nothing's stopping Los Angeles from finding every last ridiculous loophole

Two years ago, in the throes of a Bush administration that disregarded states' rights whenever it felt like getting high on itself, there were fewer than two hundred medical-marijuana outlets in Los Angeles. Today, even the most conservative estimates say that number has quadrupled. On one stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard alone, four thriving pot shops estimate their tax payments at $4 million a year. Got an emergency radiation treatment and can't find the nearest store? There's an iPhone app for that.

With patient demand pushing dispensaries in several of the fourteen states that allow medical marijuana to expand their business, the Obama administration last week ordered the Justice Department to respect state laws and stop harassing them.

You would think, after our new president's ups and downs on what is ultimately the road to wholesale legalization, that calling off the pot bullies would be, by all accounts, A Good Thing. Hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Americans have used the approved stuff, after all, whether as therapeutic medicine or therapeutic something else.

Trouble is, all this common sense seems to have fried the brains of the law-enforcement leaders in the City of Los Angeles. They've suddenly come up with a bizarre new interpretation of the law — that the requirement for pot dispensaries to be "nonprofit" actually means that they can't accept cash.
Yes, you read that right. This is how Deputy City Attorney David Berger put it: "We can still use state law to enforce, and we still believe that the only legal way to do that is to enforce against the selling of marijuana, as opposed to giving it away as a collective." This has to be the first time in American history that the government is ordering its citizens to start collectivizing our farms.
The backwards logic was codified in the fourth version of a draft ordinance that City Attorney Carmen Trutanich submitted last Tuesday to the Los Angeles city council. Apparently a hard-core member of the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Republican party, Trutanich even argued that dispensary owners shouldn't use cash to pay for labor or fertilizer — that the voters of California actually intended for marijuana to be produced and dispensed, unlike all other drugs in the known universe, on a pure barter system. (This from the man who made Michael Jackson's funeral look like it switched from the Staples Center to Tammany Hall.)

Naturally, the government's marijuana bait-and-switch over the past eight days has producers and dispensers very upset. When I spoke with her late last week, Yamileth Bolanos, owner of a shop called PureLife Alternatives and president of an influential medical-marijuana trade group, summed up the general sentiment:
"They expect people who are sick and on chemotherapy to get up and farm their own crop? If you're not directly involved in growing the crop, you can't have any of it?"

Imagine the unintended consequences, Bolanos said. "They say there's between 250,000 and 300,000 medical marijuana patients in the city of Los Angeles, and we don't have wide-open spaces here where we can grow. That means every building in Los Angeles will be a grow site."

The draft ordinance is city's latest attempt to bring some kind of order to the explosion of pot stores, all of which have so far failed. Bolanos insists that she and the marijuana community want to be partners in this, helping to clean up the shady cannabis clubs that don't pay taxes or check prescriptions. "We've been screaming for regulation," she told me. "I've gone to the city council and said, 'Show us the rules. Tell us what to do, so we can provide for patients in a safe manner.' [But] the city let the situation get out of hand — they wouldn't give us regulations, so we made up our own regulations, we started accrediting clubs. We follow the rules very strictly, but what they're asking us to do now is impossible."

For example, the draft ordinance includes a clause saying you can't have a shop across an alley from a residential area. "That alone wipes us all out," Bolanos says. "Who doesn't have an alley behind a commercial property in Los Angeles? That's how the blocks were built — the outer block is commercial and there's residential behind it."

A true believer in medical marijuana, Bolanos began smoking when she was diagnosed with liver cancer. "I use cannabis every day — I have a new liver, I don't want to put any medicine in my body that will tax my liver. What are people supposed to do, go back to the streets? That's what they're doing: they're sending sick people out on the street to get their medication."
As a result, she has no sympathy for the argument that the government should just stop the charade and legalize pot altogether. "No, no, I am not for full legalization — this is medicine to me. There are real patients here. It's very sad that because of a few people who are abusing the system, the real patients have to suffer. What is the old line? Non-sinners pay for what sinners do?"
Despite all that, nobody really thinks this fight is about medicine. It's about the virtual legalization of drugs that is slowly but surely happening in California.

Here's are some of the online reviews for a club in Reseda called
Nature's Natural Collective Care, for example:

"They have a nice little smoke room where you can try your samples and they have a few water pipes, glass pipes, papers in there for you to use. I was asking about a certain strain and the guy busted out the Cannibible and gave me the low down on that strain. I like that type of service."

"They have over 60 strains at times all capped at $50 an 1/8th and no more than $400 an oz on the highest quality. With ounces ranging from like $180-$400. They even let you have free samples."

"Full O's are all sub $400 for great shit and the service here from the budtenders is beyond fantastic. Their knowledge and ability to work with you is amazing."


As the right-wingers warned from the beginning, medical marijuana is turning out to be the genie you can't stuff back in the bottle. Even if the L.A. city council's rushed vote comes down in favor of the Trutanich ordinance, it seems likely that the regulations will be overturned in the courts — which is exactly what happened with Trutanich's last attempt to shut down the clubs. The state attorney general has already gone on record saying — and reiterated to Esquire.com when we asked him for comment — that the law allows sales. In the end, this case of bureaucratic bullying — and others across the country as states come to terms with a (relatively) sane White House pot policy — will be just another pointless and expensive skirmish on the inevitable road to marijuana legalization.

But for now, the fight is on: One day after Trutanich submitted the draft ordinance, the LAPD raided Nature's Natural.

"We expect more," Bolanos says. "They told us there are going to be more. We are in the fight for our lives."

Obama Medical Marijuana Laws - California Laws on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries - Esquire

EDITORIAL

Portions of the US public and media have praised the unilateral decision by President Barack Obama to partially legalise possession, use and sale of so-called ''medical'' marijuana. The legal issue is a local matter, but the fallout will not remain inside US borders. The sudden turn-around on an important drug issue by the US leader will have ramifications in many other countries, including Thailand and its neighbours. As the public debate over this controversial step shows, the issue goes well beyond the intent of the Obama government to put anti-drug agents to work on more important cases than people trying to alleviate their pain through a drug.

First and foremost is the question of whether the term ''medical marijuana'' is warranted and deserves recognition by a government. Thousands of anecdotes attest that sufferers of advanced glaucoma, back pain and other often untreatable symptoms feel better after smoking marijuana. But hundreds of medical studies have found no physiological support for the claims. In addition, hundreds of herbal and medical drugs are available over the counter or through prescription to treat pain. The available scientific evidence hardly supports the decision by the US federal government to legalise a prohibited drug for the first time in many generations.

Sale and use of medical marijuana in the US and other countries has already become a joke. In Europe, Canada and in several US states, marijuana shops sell tonnes of the drug annually. Prescriptions allowing purchase, storage and use are simple to obtain from licensed ''medical workers''. There is no reason to believe that more widespread licensing of marijuana shops is likely to end the fraud: a tiny number of pain sufferers targetted for benefits from marijuana are almost lost in the crowd of scammers who simply want to smoke marijuana.

The debate about marijuana _ whether it is harmful, whether it is rightly part of the worldwide ''war on drugs''' _ is beside the point. The decision by the US government, especially after President Obama specifically promised there would be no moves towards drug legalisation, will reverberate in many quarters. At the least, the effective if restricted legalisation will encourage illegal marijuana farming. The most ignored question in western countries which have blithely and unilaterally legalised recreational drugs is where the supplies come from. The US, like other governments, has made it legal to use a product that remains largely illegal to grow, harvest, package or sell in wholesale lots.

In Thailand, of course, the US government's decision has no legal effect. Possession, sale in drugstores and use of marijuana may now be legal under government supervision in the US. But it remains illegal here. In both countries, it is illegal to grow, harvest, ship across borders or sell marijuana in large quantities. The profits for illegal drug dealing are therefore not going to be reduced, in Thailand and other countries, or in the US.

While drug legalisation is a domestic US issue, there is great danger in the actions of the Obama government. The decision to support, rather than to target, the sellers and buyers of medical marijuana might deserve support except for one problem. By assuming control of the market, the US government now becomes both the regulator and more importantly the tax collector in a portion of the illicit marijuana trade in the US. This is potentially a dangerous and slippery slope. A government dependent upon taxes from the drug trade will naturally extend the scope of that business. One need only look at the virtual explosion of gambling in the US, let alone the expanding gambling business under the Thai government's supervision, to envision a government with a ''drug dependence'' and deeply involved in such a morally controversial subject.

HOW are dispenseries supposed to pay taxes if they are non profit? What do they pay for it out of there pockets or what? Dosent make sense????

Ill-Conceived L.A. Medical Marijuana Proposal Would Cost $36 - $74 Million In Tax Revenues | California NORML

Posted October 26th, 2009 by canorml_admin
California NORML Release - Oct 26, 2009

A medical marijuana regulation ordinance proposed to the L.A. City Council by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich would cost $36 - $74 million in lost tax revenues plus untold additional enforcement costs, according to an analysis by California NORML.

The hastily written ordinance, which is being rushed for an early vote in November, would effectively shut down the city's medical marijuana distribution system by banning all sales of marijuana and sharply curtailing collectives' ability to grow and obtain medicine.

As a result, the city would forfeit millions of dollars in sales tax revenues that are currently being paid by the city's dispensaries. Other cities and counties that regulate dispensaries
allow them to sell to their members as non-profit collectives so long as they pay sales taxes.

California NORML estimates that there are currently some 100,000 to 200,000 medical marijuana patients in the Los Angeles area, generating some $400 - $800 million annually in retail sales. At this rate, banning sales would cost some $36 to $72 million annually in lost sales tax revenues.


A survey of California dispensaries by California NORML found that they pay an average of $82,000 per year in sales taxes. At this rate, some $74 million per year in sales taxes would be generated by Los Angeles' estimated 900 dispensaries.

In addition, Cal NORML's survey found that the average dispensary has 7.4 employees, so that closing 900 dispensaries would cost Los Angeles some 6,500 paying jobs.

No other city or county in California has successfully regulated collectives while banning sales. Contrary to claims by Trutanich, sales to members by non-profit collectives and coops are allowed under state law SB 420 (Health and Safety Code 11362.775) and the attorney general's guidelines.

The proposed ordinance would effectively make distribution of medical marijuana unviable in L.A. by limiting collectives to a single garden of 100 plants. This would limit collectives to serving a handful of members, requiring tens of thousands of collectives and grows throughout the city. Nothing in state law authorizes such limitations. Most collectives now serve hundreds or thousands of members and draw from many gardens.

Patient advocates are expected to sue if the proposed ordinance is passed, on the grounds that it would unconstitutionally limit patients' right to collectively cultivate and obtain medicine, as guaranteed under Prop. 215 and SB 420.

Patients also object to a provision in the ordinance that would ban cannabis extracts and edibles, which are legal under Prop. 215. Oral preparations are especially important for patients who want to avoid the respiratory hazards of smoking. Advocates argue that oral preparations should be available, but should preferably be prepared in county-licensed kitchens with appropriate labeling of contents.

Cities with successful dispensary regulations, such as Oakland, San Francisco and West Hollywood, are currently collecting millions in taxes and license fees from dispensaries. A recent poll by Mason-Dixon found that 77% of Angelenos favor regulated dispensaries.

"Los Angeles would be foolish to pass this unworkable, ill-conceived ordinance," says California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer, "Not only would it cost $36 - $74 million in lost sales taxes and thousands of jobs, but the city can expect serious legal challenges in the courts. The city would be better advised to adopt a system of licensed regulation and taxes, which has proven successful elsewhere in the state."


--
Dale Gieringer - dale@canorml.org
California NORML, 2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114
(415) 563- 5858 - California NORML | Dedicated to reforming California's marijuana laws!

in today's New York Times:

States Pressed Into New Role on Medical Marijuana

By KIRK JOHNSON
October 26, 2009

GREELEY, Colo. — Health and law enforcement officials around the nation are scrambling to figure out how to regulate medical marijuana now that the federal government has decided it will no longer prosecute legal users or providers.

For years, since the first medical marijuana laws were passed in the mid-1990s, many local and state governments could be confident, if not complacent, knowing that marijuana would be kept in check because it remained illegal under federal law, and that hard-nosed federal prosecutors were not about to forget it.

But with the Justice Department’s announcement last week that it would not prosecute people who use marijuana for medical purposes in states where it is legal, local and state officials say they will now have to take on the job themselves.

In New Hampshire, for instance, where some state legislators are considering a medical marijuana law, there is concern that the state health department — already battered by budget cuts — could be hard-pressed to administer the system. In California, where there has been an explosion of medical marijuana suppliers, the authorities in Los Angeles and other jurisdictions are considering a requirement that all medical dispensaries operate as nonprofit organizations.

“The federal government says they’re not going to control it, so the only other option we have is to control it ourselves,” said Carrol Martin, a City Council member in this community north of Denver, where a ban on marijuana dispensaries was on the agenda at a Council meeting the day after the federal announcement.

At least five states, including New York and New Jersey, are considering laws to allow medical marijuana through legislation or voter referendums, in addition to the 13 states where such laws already exist. Even while that is happening, scores of local governments in California, Colorado and other states have gone the other way and imposed bans or moratoriums on distribution even though state law allows it.

Some health and legal experts say the Justice Department’s decision will promote the spread of marijuana for medical uses because local and state officials often take leadership cues from federal policy. That, the experts said, could lead to more liberal rules in states that already have medical marijuana and to more voters and legislators in other states becoming comfortable with the idea of allowing it. For elected officials who have feared looking soft on crime by backing any sort of legalized marijuana use, the new policy might provide support to reframe the issue.

“The fact that the feds are backing off is going to allow changes that are going to make it more accessible,” said Bill Morrisette, a state senator in Oregon and chairman of a committee that oversees the state’s medical marijuana law. Mr. Morrisette said he expected a flurry of proposals in the Legislature, including a plan already floated to have the state grow the marijuana crop itself, perhaps on the grounds of the State Penitentiary in Salem.

“It would be very secure,” he said.

Here in Greeley, anxiety and enthusiasm were on display as the City Council considered a ban on dispensaries.

Most of those who testified at the hearing, including several dispensary operators, opposed the ban and spoke of marijuana’s therapeutic benefits and the taxes that dispensary owners were willing to pour into Greeley’s budget, which has been battered by the recession.

But on the seven-member Council, the question was control. Mr. Martin, for example, said that he hated to see the spread of marijuana, but that the barricades had fallen. Still, he said he opposed a local ban on dispensaries.

“If we have no regulations at all, then we can’t control it, and our police officers have their hands tied,” Mr. Martin said.

Mayor Ed Clark, a former police officer, took the opposite tack in supporting the ban, which passed on a 6-to-1 vote.

“I think we do regulate them, by not allowing dispensaries,” Mr. Clark said.

The backdrop to the debate here in Colorado is a sharp expansion in marijuana dispensaries and patients, fueled in part by the State Board of Health decision in July not to impose limits on the number of patients handled by each marijuana provider.

The state attorney general, John W. Suthers, said the federal government’s retreat, combined with the growth in demand, had created a legal vacuum.

“The federal Department of Justice is saying it will only go after you if you’re in violation of state law,” Mr. Suthers said. “But in Colorado it’s not clear what state law is.”

In New Hampshire, by contrast, where the state legislature is scheduled to meet this week to consider overriding the governor’s veto and passing a medical marijuana law, government downsizing has colored the debate.

The state agency that would be responsible for licensing marijuana dispensaries has been battered by budget cuts, said Senator Sylvia B. Larsen, the president of the New Hampshire Senate and a Democrat. Concerns about the department, Ms. Larsen said, have made it harder to find two more votes in the Senate to reach a two-thirds majority that is needed to override a veto by Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat.

An even odder situation is unfolding in Maine, which already allows medical marijuana and where residents will vote next month on a measure that would create a new system of distribution and licensing.

The marijuana proposal, several political experts said, has been overshadowed by another fight on the ballot that would overturn a state law and ban same-sex marriage.

The added wrinkle is that opponents of same-sex marriage, said Christian Potholm, a professor of government at Bowdoin College, have heavily recruited young, socially conservative voters, who by and large tend to not be concerned about medical marijuana expansion.

“The 18- to 25-year-old vote is going to be overrepresented because of the gay marriage situation, so overrepresented in favor of medical marijuana,” Professor Potholm said.

Some legal scholars said the federal government, by deciding not to enforce its own laws (possession and the sale of marijuana remain federal crimes), has introduced an unpredictable variable into the drug regulation system.

“The next step would be a particular state deciding to legalize marijuana entirely,” said Peter J. Cohen, a doctor and a lawyer who teaches public health law at Georgetown University. If federal prosecutors kept their distance even then, Dr. Cohen said, legalized marijuana would become a de facto reality.

Senator Morrisette in Oregon said he thought that exact situation — a state moving toward legalization, perhaps California — could play out much sooner now than might have been imagined even a few weeks ago. And the continuing recession would only help, he said, with advocates for legalization able to promise relief to an overburdened prison system and injection of tax revenues to the state budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/us...ml?_r=1&ref=us

Bong Water Can Be Illegal Drug, Minnesota Court Rules - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

Not sure what is worst, the Minn. Sup. Crt. ruling this way based on the idiot narc's opinion, or the opinion of the idiot narc that users are known to keep bong water to drink or inject. The court bought it hook line and sinker.

Here's article in case link fails:

MINNEAPOLIS — Bong water can count as a controlled substance, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a decision that raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers who fail to dump the water out of their pipes.

In a 4-3 decision Thursday, the state's highest court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance.

The decision, which reverses two lower court rulings, came in the case of Sara Peck. Items seized during a search of her Rice County home in 2007 included a glass bong — a type of water pipe often used to smoke drugs — that contained 37 grams — about 2 1/2 tablespoons — of a liquid that tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine.

The Supreme Court said that unambiguously counts as a drug "mixture" under the wording of state law and sent the case back to Rice County District Court for further proceedings. The decision, authored by Justice G. Barry Anderson, noted that the liquid wasn't plain clear water, but had a pink color and fruity odor, and that a narcotics officer had testified that drug users sometimes keep bong water to drink or inject later.

The statute defines a drug "mixture" as "a preparation, compound, mixture, or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity." When the language of a statute is unambiguous, the high court said, precedents prohibit courts from disregarding the letter of the law under the pretext of pursuing the letter of the law.

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Paul Anderson said the majority's decision "does not make sense, and borders on the absurd." He said it isn't consistent with what the Legislature intended when it wrote the state's drug laws. And he blasted Rice County authorities for charging Peck with such a serious crime.

If bong water is considered a drug mixture, and it weighs enough to raise the crime to a first-degree drug offense, the presumed sentence for a first-time offender is seven years and two months in prison, and a felony drug offense goes on his or her record, Paul Anderson wrote.

But if the bong water is treated as part of the drug paraphernalia, as the lower courts held, he wrote, the same defendant would face no more than a $300 fine and the petty misdemeanor conviction would not go on his or her record.

Justices Alan Page and Helen Meyer joined in Paul Anderson's dissent.

Attorney Bradford Delapena, who represents Peck, said he had not yet had a chance to discuss the ruling with her, but he said the dissent correctly pointed out the problems the ruling raises.

"They're treating Ms. Peck, who had two tablespoons of bong water, as if she were a major drug wholesaler," he said.

Delapena said Peck's case now goes back to the trial court, where he said prosecutors could use the ruling to try to extract a guilty plea to a more serious offense with a stiffer sentence than a $300 fine on a petty misdemeanor. He laughed at the suggestion that it means dope smokers should empty their bongs promptly.

"I wouldn't presume to draw that lesson," he said. "I would just stick with the legal lessons."

Come to think of it, makes sense I found it on Farce News Network, but to be fair to them, it's all over the web and on the AP wire so everyone picked it up.

Folks, however distant this incident may seem, unless you eat Lutefisk, these events in MN bear a direct relationship to us in CA.

That is, everyone is watching what we're doing in LA and CA. I think everyone will follow some of our better examples and in a sense are waiting for CA to bring some common sense to all this reefer madness. :huh:

Fruity Odor? I want to fart in that judge's face. :asshole: :Tipped-Cow:

Best,

GB
:couch2:

Here is a link to an interesting article I found....

'Tony's Law' Would Require Marijuana Users To Inform Interested Neighbors

:mullet:

Wow! ABC News This Week with George Stephanapoulos discussed MMJ and legalization during the last Round Table portion of the show. :tortue-musique:

Roundtable: W.H. War on Fox; Cheney's War on W.H. - ABC News

Relevant portion at -4:18; that is, when there is 4 mins 18 secs left in the clip. The clip has a counter that counts down to end of footage. You'll figure it out!:kiss:

You know there is a shift in national opinion when the first to pipe in support is the conservative George Will who suggests that it's since it's already legal in a de facto sense that it makes more sense to tax it and let it pay for our public health policy.:high5:

Then all the rest of the panel agreed it was silly. Never seen this kind of movement in TV. Finally they're starting to listen to polls and comments which are like 99% in support of MMJ and legalization.

We're on a roll...don't give and don't let up!:whoo:

GB
:couch2:

New Rasmussen poll

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...ed_pot_is_okay

63% Say Doctor-Prescribed Pot Is Okay

Wednesday, October 21, 2009


Sixty-three percent (63%) of Americans believe patients should be allowed to smoke marijuana if it is prescribed by a doctor.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 24% of adults say patients should not be allowed to smoke pot in cases like that. Thirteen percent (13%) are undecided.

The survey was taken following the announcement Monday by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. that the federal government will no longer prosecute those who use marijuana for medical purposes or those who sell the drug to them.

Americans are more closely divided, however, when asked if the federal government should go after marijuana users even in states that allow its use for medical purposes. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the government should pursue criminal action against those who use pot in violation of federal law, but 45% disagree. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Most Americans (57%) think that the federal government’s decision not to pursue marijuana cases in states that allow its use for medical reasons is at least somewhat likely to lead to the national legalization of the drug. Twenty-three percent (23%) say that is very likely.

Thirty-six percent (36%) believe the new government decision is unlikely to lead to legalization: 28% say it’s not very likely, but only eight percent (8%) say it’s not at all likely.

Democrats and adults not affiliated with either major party are much more likely than Republicans to support medically-prescribed marijuana and to oppose federal criminal action against those users.

Republicans are more worried that failure to prosecute medical pot users will lead to legalization.

Forty-one percent (41%) of voters think the United States should legalize and tax marijuana to help solve the nation’s fiscal problems, but 49% oppose that idea.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. Just 19% disagree and say pot is worse, but 25% say both are equally dangerous.

Only 29% of adults say they have smoked marijuana at some point. Sixty-eight percent (68%) say they have not smoked pot.

Americans 40 to 64 are more likely to have tried marijuana that those in any other age group.

Among those who say they have smoked marijuana, 85% believe patients should be allowed to use the drug if prescribed by a doctor. Sixty-six percent (66%) of that group oppose federal pursuit of pot users in states that allow marijuana for medical reasons.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of those who have tried marijuana believe the new decision not to pursue cases in states that allow its use for medical purposes is likely to lead to legalization.

Fifty percent (50%) of all adults say they followed recent news reports about the Obama administration’s new medical marijuana policy, including 20% who have followed very closely. Forty-seven percent (47%) say they haven’t followed those reports closely or at all.

Those who have smoked marijuana are following the story more closely.

There were early signals from the administration of a shift away from the decades-old war on drugs toward more emphasis on health treatment for drug users. At that time, 54% of voters said illegal drug use is primarily a criminal justice issue rather than a matter of public health.

California and Massachusetts, both facing major budget problems, are discussing the possibility of legalizing and taxing marijuana, but action in the near future is unlikely. In July as California struggled through budget negotiations, 47% of voters in the state favored legalizing and taxing pot, while 42% were opposed.

Geraldo Rivera @ 7:00 Tonite!---FNC

1:00pm pacific
4:00pm eastern
Today

1hr special on the recent medical mj issues.

Title "Mellowing on Medical Marijuana"

From Salon...

Why is it bad to smoke weed and OK to sell beer?
Michael Phelps smoked a bong, Lance Armstrong is pushing alcohol.
Why is Phelps the bad guy?

Left: Michael Phelps speaks candidly about the night he was photographed allegedly smoking marijuana. Right: In this July 3, 2009 file photo, Lance Armstrong looks up as he prepares to leave for a training in Monaco ahead of the start of the 96th edition of the Tour de France cycling race.


By David Sirota

For better or worse, our American Idiocracy has come to rely on athletes as national pedagogues. Michael Jordan educated the country about commitment and just doing it. A.C. Green lectured us about sexual caution. Serena Williams and John McEnroe taught us what sportsmanship is -- and is not. And Charles Barkley outlined how society should define role models.

So when a single week like this one sees both the Justice Department back states' medical marijuana laws, and a Gallup poll shows record-level support for pot legalization, we can look to two superjocks -- Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps -- for the key lesson about our absurd drug policy.

This Tale of Two Supermen began in February when Phelps, the gold-medal swimmer, was plastered all over national newspapers in a photo that showed him hitting a marijuana bong. Though he was smoking in private, the image ignited a public firestorm. USA Swimming suspended Phelps, Kellogg pulled its endorsement deal and the Associated Press sensationalized the incident as a national decision about whether heroes should "be perfect or flawed."

The alleged imperfection was Phelps’ decision to quietly consume a substance that "poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol," as a redacted World Health Organization report admits. That's a finding confirmed by almost every objective science-based analysis, including a landmark University of California study in 2006 showing "no association at all" between marijuana use and cancer.

Alcohol, by contrast, causes roughly one in 30 of the world's cancer cases, according to the International Journal of Cancer. And a new report by Cancer Epidemiology journal shows that even beer, seemingly the least potent drink, may increase the odds of developing tumors.

Which brings us to Armstrong. This month, the Tour de France champion who beat cancer inked a contract to hawk Anheuser-Busch’s alcohol. That's right, less than a year after Phelps was crucified for merely smoking weed in private, few noticed or protested the planet's most famous cancer survivor becoming the public face of a possible carcinogen.

"Apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable for a world-class athlete to endorse a substance like alcohol that contributes to thousands of deaths each year, as well as hundreds of thousands of violent crimes and injuries," says Mason Tvert, a co-author of the new book "Marijuana Is Safer." "Yet a world-class athlete like Michael Phelps is ridiculed, punished and forced to apologize for marijuana, the use of which contributes to zero deaths, and has never been linked to violent or reckless behavior. Why the double standard?"

The data prove the answer isn't about health, and our culture proves it isn't about widespread allegiance to "Just Say No" abstinence. After all, whether through liquor commercials, wine magazines, beer-named stadiums or cocktail-drenched office parties, our society is constantly encouraging us to get our liquid high.

No, the double standard is about know-nothing statutes and attitudes promoting the recreational use of alcohol and banning the similar use of marijuana -- all thanks to retrograde mythologies of post-'60s Americana. In our now-dominant backlash folklore, the patriots are the straitlaced Joe and Jane Sixpacks -- and the Armstrongs who encourage their drinking. Meanwhile, the supposed evildoers are the pot-smoking Cheeches, Chongs and Phelpses, whose marijuana use allegedly underscores a dangerous hippie-ness.

Ergo, the moral of this Tale of Two Supermen: To end contradictions in narcotics policy and permit safer recreational drug choices, we have to first reject the outdated Silent Majority-vs.-Counterculture iconography that defines so much of our politics. We must, in other words, replace caricatures with scientific facts and mature into something more than an Idiocracy.

We should all be able to imbibe -- or inhale -- to that.


Why is it bad to smoke weed and OK to sell beer? | Salon

from the LA Weekly:

Potshots Over Los Angeles Pot Shops
A year late, the City Council tries to uninvite its unvetted marijuana collectives

By Daniel Heimpel

The broke — and, many say, broken — Los Angeles City Council, fresh from brutal budget negotiations last Friday in which city-employee labor unions prevailed, now faces one of its potentially most expensive legal battles ever, a war over medical pot that could draw in shady drug dealers, serious medical-marijuana activists, gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown — and even U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Unusual among big California cities, the Los Angeles City Council failed for four years to create rules to regulate medical-marijuana collectives allowed under state law. Unlike Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley and other cities who quickly created local regulations, the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM), led by Eastside politicians Jose Huizar and Ed Reyes, spent years squabbling over how pot collectives should be run.

According to City Hall insiders, Huizar and Reyes, along with a group of private medical-marijuana advocates invited to participate in a special city working group, wanted looser pot regulations than City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The two camps endlessly feuded.

City Council President Eric Garcetti backed a City Council “moratorium” to prevent unvetted and unregulated pot shops from opening until the warring sides could agree on permanent rules. But Garcetti, Huizar, Reyes and the rest failed to grasp the fine print in their own moratorium language. While Delgadillo fought for much stricter permanent rules than those supported by key City Council members, including Reyes and Garcetti, the medical-marijuana industry utilized an obscure boilerplate paragraph written by the city attorney and approved by the 15-member council. This fine print allowed “hardship exemptions” during the purported moratorium, so hundreds of pot peddlers filled out a simple form claiming that the City Council’s moratorium was causing a “hardship” as to their ability to sell pot.

Some see a replay of the digital billboard debacle last year, after the City Council and Villaraigosa Administration approved more than 800 ultrabright outdoor signs with virtually no rules governing their locations or zoning. In the case of medical pot, city bureaucrats let a crush of unvetted pot dispensaries open during the citywide “moratorium,” and pot stores jumped from 186 to about 800, including hundreds near public schools.

Last Friday, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that the dispensaries, whose sources of pot are unknown, are attracting a wave of violent crime, with roughly 100 pot dispensaries in the Valley getting robbed an average of twice each. Police now say the chaotic pot-selling explosion is attracting stickup crews intent on carting off pounds of high-grade marijuana. One dispensary employee was shot in the back in a quiet West Valley area in August, but lived.

Bedroom areas such as Carthay Circle, near Wilshire Boulevard, and Woodland Hills, near Ventura Boulevard, whose residents for years kept crime magnets like liquor stores to a minimum through loud activism, are watching as empty shops get rented out, then fortified with bulletproof glass, panic buttons, security cages — and armed guards who pat down customers.

The bickering City Council is expected to soon receive from PLUM a belated set of basic regulations. But now, sellers are threatening to launch a massive lawsuit if City Hall tries to stop them.

LAPD officials tell the Weekly that outgoing Police Chief Bill Bratton has no plan for dealing with illegal pot shops. Newly elected City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is refusing to comment on the controversy. And the Department of Building and Safety has assigned only a handful of inspectors out of 1,000 workers to determine which dealers are breaking existing building codes — as the department just lost General Manager Andrew Adelman, who is under investigation in a lurid sex-toy rape scandal.

Storefront pot dealers may have reasonable grounds on which to sue. Yet councilman Dennis Zine responds, almost cavalierly, “They can file a lawsuit. Lawsuits don’t scare us.”

Attorney General Jerry Brown may come under pressure to jump in. He has issued detailed legal guidelines for regulating collectives, stating that it is illegal for pot dispensaries to make a profit. Cities like Berkeley, San Francisco and Oakland all created tight rules, leaving San Francisco with 23 dispensaries, Berkeley with three and Oakland with four. Oakland will soon levy a 1.8 percent tax on its four dispensaries’ gross receipts — totaling a staggering $19.7 million in the past year — in addition to a $3,200 licensing fee.

But when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would not prosecute medical-marijuana cases, the city of Los Angeles, lacking any local rules, became an Amsterdam of opportunity. Tamar Galatzan, who ran for the City Council special election in District 2 on September 22, laments the fact that a package of proposed rules for governing L.A.’s medical-marijuana scene has languished on the desks of City Council members. “This is billboards all over again,” Galatzan says, referring to the council’s decadelong failure to regulate 11,000 billboards that also proliferated during a “ban.”

“I think what the whole billboard fiasco has taught us is that settlements from lawsuits make bad law,” Galatzan says.

Even leading marijuana proponents are appalled by the bumbling. Oakland attorney Robert Raiche campaigned for medical marijuana in 1996, served on Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s marijuana task force in 2003 and has brought two medical-marijuana cases to the Supreme Court. He scoffs at L.A. politicians’ claims that they did the best they could, saying, “The city didn’t get its act together in time to pass a permanent ordinance, so now [they] are in a position where no rules apply because existing rules have expired. This puts the city in a position to have to go to court.”

At City Hall, much of the same crowd that could not draw up simple rules for four years is still in charge. City Attorney Trutanich’s spokesman Frank Mateljan says he was advised to reiterate that he is working closely “with council member Ed Reyes and the rest of the City Council.” Numerous calls from the Weekly to Reyes were not returned.

Battered by negative media coverage, PLUM, chaired by Reyes, is now denying “hardship exemptions.” The committee recently voted to stop about 42 pot shops from operating, prompting more than a dozen others to simply withdraw their hardship paperwork. At a hearing on September 1, the City Council backed PLUM, throwing out several hardship requests, including one from Craig X. Rubin, who ran an unsuccessful recent campaign against Villaraigosa for mayor. After the vote, Rubin was asked if he would abide by the City Council’s vote. He smiled and said, “No, we are going to stay in business.”

Los Angeles News - Potshots Over Los Angeles Pot Shops - page 1

Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.

Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

The guidelines issued by the department do, however, make it clear that federal agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes.

When the president signs the bill...

So I'm watchin' Kcal 9 news and they just said, in their lead off report, that something like 70% of Angelenos favor MMJ :whoo:

Amidst footage of Zine auditioning for the role of human enema, they said that the city council's gonna vote on regulations during the first week of Nov? I was under the impression that they were gonna do this on Tuesday. Are they stalling again? :huh:

the LA Weekly weighing in on current events:

MEDICAL POT IS BRINGING L.A. TOGETHER

In the increasingly acrimonious pot wars, all sides agree City Hall is incompetent

BY PATRICK RANGE MCDONALD AND JILL STEWART
Published on October 21, 2009 at 5:04pm

When Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled on October 19 that the Los Angeles City Council’s two-year moratorium on medical-marijuana dispensaries was illegal, invalidating the ban, few legal experts seemed surprised — including City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, whose aide promptly admitted that the City Council had indeed been in the wrong.

The judge issued an injunction banning L.A. from enforcing its moratorium against Green Oasis, a popular pot shop in Playa Vista. That decision is widely expected to prevent City Hall from enforcing its ban throughout Los Angeles.

Now the 15-member City Council and the Villaraigosa administration are struggling to explain why L.A., apparently alone among big California cities, failed to follow state law by approving local medicinal-pot regulations, and then adopted an illegal moratorium that badly backfired, feeding a proliferation of pot stores citywide.

The controversy has split Los Angeles’ citizenry roughly into three camps, with pot advocates applauding the situation as an apparent backdoor legalization of marijuana, even as medical-marijuana advocates for the seriously ill voice anger that the flamboyant drug dealers openly selling pot for profit in L.A. are ruining their legitimate, hard-fought medical-marijuana movement.

A third group is angry about the crime and sleazy trappings that for-profit pot shops bring to its neighborhoods. The mostly Latino members of the Panorama City Neighborhood Council, representing a working-class area of the San Fernando Valley, for example, voted last month to oppose pot shops, while the Mid-Wilshire Neighborhood Council demanded last May that the city enforce its failing moratorium. The Melrose-Fairfax Neighborhood Watch and Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council have been vocal in insisting that city officials control pot-shop proliferation.

But these disparate groups in the pot debate agree on one thing: Los Angeles City Hall has been almost comically inept at complying with simple state deadlines for municipalities to create rules for medicinal marijuana — unmet deadlines that Villaraigosa, City Council President Eric Garcetti and former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo had known for years were approaching.

Instead, a gridlocked Council adopted an illegal two-year moratorium to buy more time. During the moratorium, more than 800 pot sellers used a city-provided form to claim they would face a “hardship” if they could not open for business, and then hundreds of those applicants opened without permission — many of them not even bothering to get the certificate of occupancy required of all businesses.

The maneuver blind-sided Villaraigosa, Garcetti and the now-departed Delgadillo. Now, with recently elected City Attorney Trutanich and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley threatening to go after stores that operate for profit or otherwise break state medicinal-marijuana laws, the pot wars are providing fuel to critics who see L.A. as a failed government.

As the activist Joseph Mailander argues on the CityWatch Web site, L.A. “now resembles New York City in the [1970s]: a nearly bankrupt, fully corrupt, failing city-state.” After listing numerous City Hall blunders and miscues, Mailander declares: “The council has even attempted to raise fees on farmers markets even while letting medical-marijuana dispensaries skate without fees. And through it all, travesties like developer doormat Gail Goldberg, an amateur from San Diego whose Planning Department actually publishes how-to brochures for zoning easements, are still found in top city slots.”

Now, as the celebrants and critics of L.A.’s rapidly expanding pot industry weigh in on the court ruling, Los Angeles City Council is preparing to meet once again. Its goal: to adopt local rules for medical marijuana.

Los Angeles News - Medical Pot Is Bringing L.A. Together - page 1