Graphic: Jodie Emery

​It’s Reefer Madness all over again as David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush who now has his own conservative political website, claims that last weekend’s tragic events in Tucson, Arizona are a good reason to continue America’s war on marijuana users.

“After horrific shootings, we hear calls for stricter regulation of guns,” he wrote on FrumForum in an idiotic little piece entitled “Did Pot Trigger Giffords Shooting?
“The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana,” Frum wrote. “Jared Lee Loughner, the man held as the Tucson shooter, has been described by those who know as a ‘pot smoking loner.’ He had two encounters with the law, one for possession of drug paraphernalia.”
But, as pointed out by Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story, Frum has a tenuous grasp of the facts.

Graphic: MJ Dispensaries of Southern California

​Medical marijuana proponents in Michigan say confidentiality of patient records is at risk if the federal government can obtain state-compiled records as part of a federal witch hunt, I mean “drug investigation.”

“It would set a pretty significant precedent against patient privacy rights,” said Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), reports John Agar of The Grand Rapids Press. “It’s not just a problem in Michigan, it’s all over the country.”

The Michigan state agency that collects confidential medical marijuana patient information will comply with a federal request for access to its records if ordered to do so by a judge, the state said in court filings.

ASA had planned to protest Wednesday morning outside of U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids — where the federal government’s request was to be heard — but the protest was canceled when the hearing was postponed by a last-minute filing from the Michigan Association of Compassion Clubs (MACC).

Graphic: THC Finder

​A coalition of lawmakers in the Washington House and Senate has introduced legislation seeking to expand the state’s 12-year-old medical marijuana law and create greater legal protections for authorized patients, providers, and caregivers.

Senate Bill 5073 and House Bill 1100 seek to provide state licensing to medical marijuana producers and dispensaries in order to assure that qualified patients “will have access to an adequate, safe, consistent, and secure source of medical quality cannabis.”
The proposed laws do not in any way alter or amend patients’ existing rights to possess up to 24 ounces of marijuana for medical purposes, and cultivate up to 15 cannabis plants.

Graphic: Arkansans For Medical Cannabis

​​An Arkansas state senator who previously said he expected to file a bill this year to legalize medical marijuana in Arkansas now says the bill should be filed in the state House, not the Senate.

“My thinking at this point is that the bill should probably start at the House end,” said Sen. Randy Laverty (D-Jasper) in the Capitol rotunda, where the group Arkansans for Medical Cannabis was launching a two-day program to promote legalizing marijuana for medicinal uses.
“I think perhaps the bigger challenge will be on the House end,” Laverty said. “Do we [in the Senate]want to devote a lot of time and enter into the fray that will come about naturally because of this kind of controversial legislation if we can’t get it out of House committee?”
Laverty said he’d talked to some House members about the issue, but would not name names, reports John Lyon of the Arkansas News Bureau. The chances of a medical marijuana bill getting through a House committee may vary, depending upon the committee to which it is assigned by the House speaker, according to Laverty.
“My guess would be Public Health” would be the committee most favorably inclined toward it, Laverty said.

Photo: freepress.net
Washington State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles: “Creating a statutory and regulatory structure for licensing growers and dispensaries will allow us to provide for an adequate, safe, consistent, and secure source of the medicine for qualifying patients”

​New legislation to provide clarity and a stronger legal framework for Washington’s existing medical marijuana laws was introduced in the Legislature on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 5073 and House Bill 1100, introduced by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle and Rep. Jim Moeller (D-Vancouver), would establish a regulatory system for the sale and purchase of medical marijuana by qualifying patients. Current law, established under voter-approved I-692 in 1998, permits patients with specified terminal or debilitating medical conditions to grow medical marijuana for personal use or designate a provider to grow on their behalf.
Under the new bill, the Department of Agriculture would develop regulations through a public rule-making process for growing medical marijuana. Patients would be permitted to buy medical marijuana products from dispensers licensed by the Department of Health or by taking part in a regulated patient collective.

Graphic: Patient and Caregiver Rights Litigation Project

​Colorado’s Supreme Court has refused to hear a sweeping challenge to the state’s new medical marijuana laws.

The Court turned down — only five days after it was filed — a request by marijuana advocates to hear arguments on whether parts of those laws violate the constitutional amendment that made medical marijuana legal in Colorado in 2000 after being approved by voters.
The pending rules violate patient privacy because of a requirement that dispensaries record medical marijuana sales on video, according to patients and advocates who mounted the challenge. The patients also argue that the laws wrongly give local cities and counties the ability to ban dispensaries.

Photo: MyMedicineTheBook.com
Irvin Rosenfeld holds up a tin of 300 federal joints. He receives one of these tins every 25 days.

​​On a recent chilly morning, Fort Lauderdale, Florida stockbroker Irvin Rosenfeld interrupted his client calls for a quick joint in the company parking lot. Then he went back to work inside — and nobody said anything about the smell.

That joint — legal, for him — was one of more than 120,000 the federal government has given Irv at taxpayer expense for the past 29 years, reports Fred Tasker at the Miami Herald. Rosenfeld, 58, is one of only four people who remain in a now-closed “compassionate” drug program that, at its peak in the 1980s, provided 13 patients across the United States with marijuana to help manage medical conditions.
Rosenfeld smokes 10 to 12 government joints a day to help relieve a rare, painful condition called multiple congenital cartilaginous exostosis, which causes tumors to grow from the ends of his bones.
Not only does marijuana ease Rosenfeld’s pain and make his joints more flexible — for decades now, the tumors of have stopped growing, which Irv attributes to the pot.
His new self-published book, My Medicine: How I Convinced The Federal Government To Provide My Marijuana And Helped Launch A National Movement, tells the story of his cannabis use, and argues that the federal government should be more active in studying pot’s medical uses.

Photos: SanLuisObispo.com
Charles and Rachel Tamagni were arrested on December 27 for operating a mobile marijuana dispensary. All charges have now been dropped, according to their lawyer.
“They were put through hell for nothing, their names dragged through the mud. Now, it’s like ‘Oops, sorry, never mind.’ “
~ Attorney Patrick Fisher

​A Southern California couple arrested for operating a mobile medical marijuana dispensary won’t be facing any jail time — because they are no longer facing charges.

Officials from the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s office said they are dropping charges against the Paso Robles couple, Charles Tamagni, 47, and his wife Rachel Tamagni, 57, according to Patrick Fisher, one of their attorneys, reports Cal Coast News.
“We have to get confirmation in court, but they told us over the phone that they are rejecting charges,” Fisher said.

Photo: yasni.de
Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin: “Politicians should not get in the way of people getting the medical relief they need”

​Just weeks after a bill to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland failed last spring, the state senator who sponsored the legislation — Jamie B. Raskin of Montgomery County — found himself with a very personal perspective on the issue.

His doctor told him he had a “worrisome” mass the size of a golf ball in his colon. Raskin, 48, learned four days later he had cancer, reports Ann E. Marimow at The Washington Post.
“Public health is now personal for me,” Raskin said. “I know what it means for people to be living on the absolute edge of hope and despair, and politicians should not get in the way of people getting the medical relief they need.”
Raskin, a Democrat, will be a leading voice on several issues during the legislative session, according to the Post, but when he talks about medical marijuana he’ll add a compelling personal story to the debate over whether Maryland should join 15 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing cannabis for medicinal use.
Raskin said he didn’t consider medical marijuana during his chemotherapy because of a family history of asthma and cystic fibrosis. But he insists that he and his fellow legislators should work “to relieve suffering.” Medical marijuana, according to proponents and patients, can ease pain and nausea and stimulate appetite for those suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Photo: Dancing Blue Steel
Is this worth fighting for?

​“I was mad at the bitch for not giving me my apple pie,” a Florida man explained after attacking a McDonald’s employee. The man was arrested when St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies found a bag of marijuana in his pocket.

Antonio Dreveal Boatwright, 33, was at a McDonald’s on January 4 in Lakewood Park, Fla., when he became upset about the omission of what he evidently felt was a crucial part of his order, reports Will Greenlee of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers.
1 616 617 618 619 620 771