Search Results: three years (685)

Dr. Lester Grinspoon.

Dr. Lester Grinspoon is easily one of the most prominent, and influential voices within the cannabis reform movement, and he has been for decades. A retired Harvard Psychiatry Professor, Grinspoon is the author of numerous books, including the popular Marihuana Reconsidered and Marihuana The Forbidden Medicine. He’s also on the Board of Directors for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and has appeared in several television shows and movies, including The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. We caught up with Grinspoon recently, and he was kind enough to answer some questions for Toke of the Town.

A greener New Hampshire.

New Hampshire has three different marijuana related bills for state legislators to consider this session, including two bills concerning recreational cannabis use and one allowing for medical marijuana in that state.
Currently, possession of any amount can net you a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. Cultivation falls under sales and possession with intent to sell in that state and is based on weight. Anything over an ounce (roots, leaves, stalks and all) will get you seven years in prison and $100,000 in fines.

Cannabis Culture
Aaron Sandusky: “This is a terrible injustice. Nobody wins.”

Aaron Sandusky Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison
By Cheri Sicard
Aaron Sandusky, the president of G3 Holistics, which operated three legal (under state law) California medical marijuana dispensaries, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Monday in Los Angeles. Once his sentence is served, Sandusky will then face five years of supervised probation, including random drug testing. 
He is also being compelled to complete a drug rehab program, despite any evidence he actually has a drug addiction problem.
Defense attorney Roger Diamond made an impassioned plea on behalf of  his client, highlighting the conflicting opinions not only between state and federal law, both also laws within the state of California. He pointed out that Sandusky provided much needed medicine to seriously ill patients in full and open compliance with California state laws.

Free Chris Williams/Facebook
Chris Williams faces a mandatory minimum sentence of more than 90 years in federal prison

Courageous Caregiver Refuses Constitutional ‘Compromise’
By Kari Boiter
“I have decided to fight the federal government because for me, not defending the things that I know are right is dishonorable,” writes Chris Williams from his cell at Crossroads Correctional Center, a for-profit prison in Shelby, Montana. “Every citizen has a responsibility to fight for what is right, even if it seems like the struggle will be lost.”
 
Williams’ words are particularly poignant. As he writes from prison, he faces the near-certainty that he will spend the rest of his life locked away in an industrial-size cage. His crime? Providing medical marijuana to terminally ill and disabled patients authorized to use cannabis under Montana law. 
Williams co-owned Montana Cannabis, along with Tom Daubert, Chris Lindsey and Richard Flor. Daubert was a lobbyist who helped write Montana’s medical marijuana law; Lindsey was a former public defender; Flor was the first registered caregiver in Montana; and Williams was the consummate farmer. Together, these men established a “gold standard” for strict compliance with Montana law. 

Andy Bronson/The Bellingham Herald
Renee Devan, right, takes down a phone number for Martin O. Nickerson of Northern Cross medical marijuana collective, as he sits in the back of a Bellingham Police Department vehicle, under arrest, in the alley behind the store, March 15, 2012

Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans Disproportionately Arrested; 25 Years of Arrests in WA Cost $300 Million or More 
With just three weeks remaining before Washington voters decide whether to make possession of up to an ounce of marijuana legal in their state, a new report — “240,000 Marijuana Arrests: Costs, Consequences, and Racial Disparities of Possession Arrests in Washington” — reveals that nearly a quarter of a million people have been arrested in Washington for marijuana possession since 1986.  Police made more than half of those marijuana arrests in just the last 10 years.

All Voices

Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, RN
In 1964 THC, the molecule, was first discovered. What do the last 48 years of science have to say about medical marijuana stripped of DEA bias and its groupthink ideologically driven research?
The time is NOW to listen, and let the science supporting medical marijuana speak for itself! 
In a loud, clear voice the science concludes overwhelmingly: YES! Marijuana is medicine! And Schedule I is an outdated scientifically false claim! 
After 10 years of stonewalling by the DEA, medical marijuana patients will finally get their day in federal court to prove that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s marijuana claims are false!

New Times Broward-Palm Beach

In this week’s issue, New Times Broward-Palm Beach (which, like Toke of the Town, is part of Village Voice Media) looks closer at the rise and eventual crack down on the synthetic cannabinoid industry.
Over the past three years, manufacturers and retailers of so-called “herbal incenses” have popped up in all 50 states. It quickly became a multibillion-dollar industry built on products that had names like Crazy Eyes, Cowboy Kush, and Skull Killa.
It’s actually a horrible misnomer to call these substances “synthetic marijuana” or “fake pot,” because they actually have nothing to do with real cannabis, and unlike herbal cannabis, they can be dangerous.
Until two months ago, many of these herbal incenses remained legal because state and federal lawmakers couldn’t keep up with the onslaught of new chemicals being churned out by overseas labs and imported by herbal-incense manufacturers. Whenever the government banned one synthetic cannabinoid, chemists simply tweaked their formulations to concoct new, legal replacements that still got people stoned.

Bangor Daily News

By Bryan Punyon
Special to Toke of the Town

It’s turned into a joke, you know.  
I listen to standup comedians all the time, cracking jokes about how easy it is to get a cannabis medical authorization, how “anyone” can just waltz into a clinic and pay for a Green Card.
Sure, they usually go on to talk about how harmless pot is, and it makes for effective humor because it’s widely accepted at this point that cannabis isn’t as bad as some people and organizations have made it out to be.  Even in rural towns in Tennessee that I’ve visited, when people hear about me being an MMJ patient, their reactions are more of curiosity and interest than treating me like a drug addict.
For the most part, one of the biggest victories for the legalization movement has been the public shift in mindset from cannabis being a horribly addictive substance used by pushers to hook kids into a life of crime and debauchery (thank you, Reefer Madness: The Musical), into a more constructive mindset where the majority of the public have realized that it has medicinal benefits and isn’t as bad as other drugs in recreational use.
One of the major causes for this shift has been the rise of more publicly available MMJ resources. As public awareness of dispensaries and authorization clinics has risen, so has public knowledge about qualifying conditions and acceptance of the medicinal use of cannabis.
This reduction of social stigma for all cannabis users, recreational and medicinal alike, has been a major boon for the cause, as some who were previously cautious now have an avenue to show support for the cause without automatically being labeled “counterculture” or “hippie,” and others, seeing the effects of medical marijuana on those they know and care about, begin to change their minds about the plant. If political progress on a cause means causing a cultural and perception shift in the minds of the public, then congratulations: the Pro-Cannabis team has largely won that battle.

Toke of the Town editor Steve Elliott: You’ve come to the right place if you wanna talk about marijuana.

​Two years ago today — actually two years ago tonight, at 7:08 p.m. — fingers trembling with excitement, I hit the “Post” button for the first-ever story on Toke of the Town.

“The good thing about a free marketplace of ideas is,” I wrote, in the first sentence ever to appear on this site, “despite the best efforts of prohibitionists and their fear-mongering propaganda, the truth eventually prevails.”

Thousands of stories, joints, medibles, and bongloads later, I’m still loving this gig, and judging by pageviews, so are more than half a million of you every month.
Toke didn’t just happen. If it hadn’t been for Village Voice Media’s then-social media talent scout, John Boitnott, spotting my personal blog Reality Catcher making the front page of social news-sharing site Digg, I wouldn’t have had the chance, starting early in 2009, to write “Chronic City.” That was a twice-weekly cannabis column for S.F. Weekly‘s online blog, “The Snitch.”
And if it hadn’t been for Boitnoitt and Bill Jensen, then in charge of VVM’s web presence worldwide, that well-received column would not have opened the door for Toke of the Town about six months later.

Irvin Rosenfeld
Irv Rosenfeld, a 58-year-old stockbroker from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, doesn’t look like a record-setting pothead. But he’s smoked more than 120,000 U.S. government joints since 1982.

​On November 20, 1982, the United States federal government sent a Florida citizen 300 cannabis cigarettes in a shiny tin can. 
The U.S. government, known the world over as a champion of preying on the sick with a weapon they call the “War On Drugs,” continues to send that same man the same ration of joints 29 years later.
This delivery of medicine is part of a “Compassionate Investigative New Drug” Program that exists to study “new drugs”, in this case, marijuana.
Over that 29-year period the government has performed no such study.
Irvin Rosenfeld of Florida will begin his 30th year of smoking cannabis cigarettes on November 20, 2011 — and he feels great.
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