Search Results: pain (860)

Photo: The Salt Lake Tribune
Robert Whaley is learning that getting busted for pot can be a real pain in the ass.

​Police in Salt Lake County, Utah have arrested former Utah Jazz center Robert Whaley and found marijuana “between his buttocks,” according to a jail document.

Whaley, 27, had warrants for his arrest for absconding from probation in Michigan. A police document filed with Salt Lake County Jail said gang detectives stopped a car about 4:30 a.m. Thursday. Whaley was a passenger and was not wearing a seat belt, the document said, reports Nate Carlisle of The Salt Lake Tribune.
Unified Police Department Lt. Don Hutson said gang unit officers were monitoring apartment complexes which have had recent crime and gang problems, including shootings.
Detectives on gang patrol saw an occupied car sitting in a parking lot with no lights on, and investigated.
Whaley identified himself as Kareem Johnson, according to the document. Detectives were not fooled.
“They recognized him as being a former Jazz player,” Hutson said.

Graphic: Reality Catcher

​Despite medical marijuana being legal in Michigan, WalMart has fired a cancer patient and former employee of the year who tested positive for the drug, which was recommended by his doctor.

“I was terminated because I failed a drug screening,” ex-WalMart employee Joseph Casias told WZZM-13.
In 2008, Casias was Associate of the Year at the WalMart store in Battle Creek, Mich., despite suffering from sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor.

Graphic: Cannabis Culture

​A group of medical marijuana patients Thursday held a press conference in Boston to ask lawmakers to support legalizing medical marijuana in Massachusetts.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health is currently considering a bill that would make Massachusetts the 15th state in the U.S. to give seriously ill patients safe and legal access to medical cannabis.
Patients called for the bill to receive a committee vote before a deadline on March 18, after which passage out of committee becomes much more difficult.
“Watching my 29-year-old son struggle with the side effects of brutal chemotherapy treatments was heart wrenching,” said Lorraine Kerz of Greenfield, Mass., who said her son benefited from medical marijuana.


Photo: Todd Bigelow/Aurora for NPR
Laguna Woods resident Margo Bauer, 73, tokes up on the porch with her plant.

​​Residents of Laguna Woods Village retirement community have a new club to promote education on medical marijuana.

The Village Cannabis Club was started by Lonnie Painter, who also directs Laguna Woods for Medical Cannabis, a 100-member patient collective centered in the community, reports Claire Webb of The Orange County Register.
The main difference between the Village Cannabis Club and the patients’ collective is that any resident can be a member of the club regardless of medical status, while the collective requires members to have a doctor’s permission to use marijuana for medical purposes.

Photo: LEAP
Officer David Bratzer: “I will try to find other venues to present my views about drug policy”

​The BC Civil Liberties Association has filed a complaint against the Victoria Police Department for muzzling one of its officers, reports ‘A’ News.

Constable David Bratzer was scheduled to speak at a harm reduction meeting in Victoria Wednesday night representing the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).
Bratzer says the War On Drugs is not winnable and is doing more harm than good.
But the Chief of the Victoria Police Department doesn’t want Bratzer to share those views.

Graphic: Seriously Free Speech

​A pro-legalization Canadian police officer has been ordered by his department’s leadership not to show up at a drug policy event where he was scheduled to speak on Wednesday.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international group of cops, judges and prosecutors who oppose the “War On Drugs,” is criticizing the gag order from the Victoria, British Columbia Police Department that limits the freedom of speech of one of its officers.
Officer David Bratzer, who volunteers with LEAP while off duty, was ordered not to speak at an official, City of Victoria-sponsored event on harm reduction scheduled for Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
Even though the event is scheduled outside his regular working hours, management from the Victoria Police Department, without Bratzer’s knowledge, informed city staff that he was being “withdrawn from speaking.” Then on February 24, a senior officer at the department directly ordered Bratzer not to participate in the event.

Graphic: Oregon NORML
Medical marijuana has never lost the popular vote in a statewide election — except in South Dakota.

​South Dakotans will probably get to vote (again) on legalizing medical marijuana this November.

Cannabis advocates on Monday filed petition signatures seeking a statewide vote on a proposal to legalize marijuana in South Dakota for medical use in treating pain, nausea and other health problems, reports KELO.
Nearly 32,000 signatures — almost double the 16,776 valid signatures needed to make the November ballot — were turned in to the secretary of state’s office in Pierre, according to one of the organizers, Emmett Reistroffer of Sioux Falls.

Photo: Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight
Veteran Sean Merritt has spoken out against gun store owners who won’t sell firearms to medical marijuana patients.

​Morphine? Klonopin? No problem. But if you use medical marijuana, no gun for you!

Redding, California gun dealer Patrick Jones — who happens to also be mayor of the town — refuses to do business with known medical marijuana patients.

That refusal has drawn lots of criticism from patients such as Army Spc. Sean Merritt, an honorably discharged and disabled veteran. The patients, who have twice gone to Redding City Council chambers to denounce Jones, say he is violating patients’ rights, reports Scott Mobley at the Redding Record Searchlight.
“There is nothing in state law that says I cannot own or possess a firearm,” Merritt said at a recent city council meeting. And to be told as such is branding me as a severe mental patient or a felon. I am neither.”

Reality Catcher
Once again, a jury has seen through the lies and distortions and found a medical marijuana patient not guilty

​Washington state jurors took less than two hours Thursday afternoon to find Cammie McKenzie, who grows marijuana to treat her chronic back pain, not guilty of all charges in a case where prosecutors tried to portray her as a drug dealer.

The prosecution’s unsuccessful case was notably nasty, even for a medical marijuana arrest in a state where some law enforcement officials have been slow to adjust to the legalization of medicinal cannabis passed by voters in 1998.

“This case is not about medicine. This case is about money,” Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Matthew Baldock said in his opening statements Tuesday. “The defendant was masquerading as a marijuana patient and was in reality a drug dealer, no question.”
One can only imagine the incensed reaction of Snohomish County’s good voters when they realize their scarce tax dollars are being wasted on foolishness like this.
Prosecutors and narcotics detectives claimed McKenzie, 24, was using her medical marijuana authorization as a front for an illegal pot farm at her home in Bothell, Washington, reports Diana Hefley of the Everett Herald Net.

Photo: intellectual vanities

Next time someone says “there’s no reliable research,” call BS. The results are in. Medical marijuana works.

​The evidence is in. In a landmark report to the Legislature, the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research announced that its studies have shown marijuana to have therapeutic value.

CMCR researchers, in a decade-long project, found “reasonable evidence that cannabis is a promising treatment” for some specific, pain-related medical conditions.
These long-awaited findings are the first results in 20 years from clinical trials of smoked cannabis in the United States.
“We focused on illnesses where current medical treatment does not provide adequate relief or coverage of symptoms,” said CMCR Director Igor Grant, M.D., executive vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the UCSD School of Medicine.
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