Monthly Archives: April, 2012

Reason
From the letter to Obama: “[Y]ou have turned your back as career law enforcement officials have run roughshod over some of the most professional and well-regulated medical marijuana providers”

Six National Drug Policy Organizations Call on President Obama to End Unnecessary Assault on Medical Marijuana Providers
 
Coalition to President Obama: “It is time for a new approach on marijuana policy.”
 
In the wake of recent attacks on medical marijuana providers and patients by multiple branches of the federal government, including Monday’s raids on Oaksterdam University in Oakland, California, a coalition of six national drug policy reform organizations is appealing to President Obama and his administration to follow its own previously stated policies respecting state medical marijuana laws.
In the letter, posted in full below, the organizations call on the Obama Administration to bring an end to the federal government’s ongoing campaign to undermine state efforts to regulate safe and legal access to medical marijuana for those patients who rely on it.
 
The Obama Administration’s National Drug Control Strategy Report 2012, reportedly being released in the coming days, is expected to cling to failed and outdated marijuana policies which further cement the control of the marijuana trade in the hands of drug cartels and illegal operators, endangering both patients in medical marijuana states and citizens everywhere.

Library Foundation of Los Angeles

Editor’s note: Los Angeles writer Mark Haskell Smith’s new book Heart of Dankness sprang from his news coverage of the Cannabis Cup for the L.A. Times. Novelist Smith sampled varieties of marijuana that were unlike anything he’d experienced before, unlike any typical stoner weed. In fact, it didn’t get you “stoned,” as such. This cannabis possessed an ephemeral quality known as “dankness.”

Haskell began a journey into the international underground where super-high-grade marijuana is developed. He tracked down the ragtag community of underground botanists, outlaw farmers, and renegade strain hunters who pursue excellence and genetic diversity in cannabis. The dank journey climaxes at Amsterdam’s Cannabis Cup, which Mark portrays as the Super Bowl/Mardi Gras of the world’s largest cash crop.

Cannabis writer and connoisseur Caitlin Podiak got a chance to chat with Haskell Smith about the book, about good cannabis, and about what, exactly, constitutes a state of dankness. Enjoy!

Discussing Dankness
By Caitlin Podiak
Special to Toke of the Town
Caitlin Podiak: Your quest for the “heart of dankness” centers on the annual High Times Cannabis Cup event in Amsterdam. But how relevant do you think those awards are to cannabis users in California? I know many of the strains we have here come from Dutch seeds, but beyond that, I wonder how much the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup results should matter to us in the United States.
Mark Haskell Smith: Oh, I think they’re very relevant to what goes on in California. The strains that win the Cannabis Cup ultimately become the popular strains you find in medical dispensaries or being sold by dealers. AK-47, Super Silver Haze, Willie Nelson, Lavender, LA Confidential… these are all fairly common strains nowadays, but they were first introduced at the Cannabis Cup. I imagine Kosher Kush, which is originally a SoCal strain, will become huge in the next year or two because it just won the Indica Cup in Amsterdam. It’s sort of like Coachella for cannabis. It’s where the unknowns get their shot at the big time. And that resonates in California. We want those seeds.

SF Weekly

After federal agents swept across a formerly down-on-its-luck area of downtown Oakland, raiding the businesses owned by ganjapreneur Richard Lee which had revitalized the community, officials connected with Lee’s flagship Oaksterdam University vowed the cannabis college would reopen on Wednesday.

U.S. Marshals and agents from the IRS and DEA on Monday morning raided all of the downtown businesses connected to Lee, including Oaksterdam, the medical marijuana dispensary Coffeeshop Blue Sky, and a plant nursery connected to the dispensary, reports Chris Roberts at SF Weekly.

MMJ Truth

It can be hard to find areas of agreement in politics — but the federal government’s assault on medical marijuana patients and providers has resulted in a lot of city and state officials finding common ground in California.
On Tuesday, on the steps of City Hall (Polk Street entrance) at 11:30 a.m., an overwhelming number of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will be joined by representatives from the offices of the City Attorney, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, State Senator Mark Leno, and the Board of Equalization to show their support for medical cannabis patients by delivering a strong message to the Obama Administration regarding recent actions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the State’s four U.S. Attorneys against local medical cannabis dispensaries.

THC Finder
The annual “4/20 Smokeout” event on CU-Boulder’s campus has drawn as many as 10,000 pot smokers on past years. University officials and goody-two-shoes student government tools say their precious little “reputations” are being hurt.

Inserting a bunch of cops into a heretofore peaceful, uneventful cannabis protest — yeah, that’s the ticket! Marijuana smokers at this month’s 4/20 smoke-in on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus will be ticketed, the university announced on Tuesday. School officials urged students and the general public not to attend the “unsanctioned” event on April 20.

Appallingly enough, even members of the student government have joined in the university administration’s vendetta against the peaceful cannabis-oriented event, their eyes focused greedily on the eventual corporate jobs they’ve been promised (but probably won’t ever get).

WPBF
Michael Cabral entered the police station carrying 12 marijuana plants, seeds and “drug paraphernalia.”

Maybe some people really shouldn’t be allowed to grow cannabis.

A Florida man walked into the Port St. Lucie Police Department on Monday carrying marijuana plants and seeds, saying “he wanted to turn himself in to do the right thing,” according to the cops, reports WPBF.
Michael Cabral, a resident of the Treasure Coast, entered the police station carrying 12 marijuana plants, seeds and “drug paraphernalia,” according to Port St. Lucie police.
Cabral, 34, told the cops he was growing the plants for his personal use.

THC Finder
Former LAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing called the Ohio Medical Cannabis Act “a beautifully, effectively balanced and very reasonable amendment for medical cannabis”

​The Ohio Medical Cannabis Amendment is “a beautifully, effectively balanced and very reasonable amendment for medical cannabis,” according to Stephen Downing, former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, who endorsed OMCA at a press conference in Columbus, Ohio, on March 29.

A proposed citizen-initiatied amendment to the Ohio Constitution, the measure’s language is focused on extending to patients eight rights based on the Bill of Rights within the Ohio Constitution. The amendment also establishes an Ohio Commission of Cannabis Control to support, uphold and defend those rights, as well as to regulate medical marijuana in the state.

CannabisChildProtectionAct.org

​​With controversy swirling in Washington state about the merits and shortcomings of I-502 — a marijuana legalization voter initiative which has already qualified for November’s ballot — another effort to regulate cannabis kicks off on Tuesday.

The Cannabis Child Protection Act focuses on protecting minors from the effects of the marijuana economy and keeping pot out of schools and away from kids, according to advocates.
Proponents of I-1223 and I-514 said will begin collecting signatures at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 3 across Washington. Both initiatives need 241,153 valid signatures from registered Washington voters in order to qualify.

KTVU
Proud storm troopers: Cocky federal agents outside Oaksterdam University on Monday morning

“Confirmed RAID currently happening at Oaksterdam University – DEA and IRS. Please come show support, bring signs, get the word out. 1600 Broadway and 1776 Broadway Oakland!”Sacramento Americans for Safe Access (Facebook status update, 8:20 a.m.)


Oakland’s Oaksterdam University, famed as the first and probably biggest institution of cannabis education, was taken over by federal agents on Monday morning.
Toke of the Town was able to confirm reports Monday morning that owner Richard Lee had at first been detained in his apartment by federal agents. He was reportedly released around 10 a.m.
Officers wearing U.S. Marshals, Internal Revenue Service and Drug Enforcement Administration jackets swarmed over the Oakland medical marijuana teaching facility at the corner of 16th Street and Broadway before 8 p.m. Monday morning, reports NBC Bay Area. Yellow “crime scene” tape was keeping everyone away.

Old Hippies Cookbook
“Fifteen minutes before the homeroom bell, I spy a long-haired student being dropped off by his long-haired father in a Prius in front of the school with a public radio playing and a Greenpeace sticker on the bumper.”

​By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent


Jazz Musician’ Son Brings Brownie To Fourth Grade Class!

Panic broke out this morning at Redwood Elementary School when a local jazz guitarist’s son smuggled in through the opened doors of the grammar school a “red” sequestered Tupperware-covered container of evenly-cut Betty Crocker’s “More Fudge Than Fun Brownies,” for Pebbles Shapiro-Naguchi’s birthday party. There’ll be no birthday celebration in Room 102 this afternoon because of the quick judgment of a teacher who thinks profiling is more than tracing a child’s silhouette.  
This fast-acting teacher intercepted the suspicious treats once the child was caught off-guard opening his desk. Fearing the inevitable — that the child was part of a drug ring intended to imprison our innocent youth from their eight to nine hours of day of playing ‘World Demands To Die Warfare,’ videogames, the untested, sugar-laced, possible store-bought opiates were removed. 
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