Search Results: gregoire (76)

Gov. Christine “Pants On Fire” Gregoire seems to have appointed herself a federal official. Hey Chrissie, Obama’s not gonna give you that plum Cabinet appointment he promised you unless he gets reelected.

​CannaCare, a medical marijuana activist group in Washington state, is calling Governor Chris Gregoire “a liar” for claiming state officials could be arrested by federal agents if she signs a bill that would legalize medical marijuana dispensaries in the state.

Gov. Gregoire told the Seattle Times, reacting to a medical marijuana dispensary bill currently in the Legislature, “In light of the Department of Justice’s guidance, it is clear that I cannot sign a bill that authorizes our state employees to license marijuana dispensaries when the department would prosecute those involved.”

The governor, in effect, asked the federal government for permission to sign a bill in a state of which she is presumptively in charge. This pitiable attempt to gain cover for her own political cowardice is certainly contemptible enough on its own.
But CannaCare, led by firebrand Steve Sarich, goes a little farther than that.
“Governor Christine Gregoire is a liar!” the group headlines a press release.
“Under most circumstances, this would be considered a pretty brash statement,” Sarich says in the release. “Frankly, if she wasn’t an attorney, and the former Attorney General of the State of Washington, it might very well be. The fact is that she was the Attorney General of a state that has had a medical marijuana law for over a decade and has had to grapple with state versus federal law issues on numerous occasions.”


In a move that somehow attracted very little media attention last week, a Washington state appeals court upheld a previous decision allowing the County of Kent to ban all medical marijuana-related collective cannabis gardens and growing operations.
In doing so, they may very well have driven the final nail into the coffin of true, legal medical marijuana in the same state that joined Colorado in 2012 as becoming the first two in the country to legalize recreational weed smoking.

Washington state medical marijuana patients have been under attack by lawmakers attempting to force the state’s existing medical cannabis providers and patients into the heavily-taxed, limited recreational cannabis program. Namely, that attack has come in the form of House Bill 2149, which restricts home growing and forces existing medical clinics to follow recreational rules and laws.
The bill would essentially guts the medical program according to many patients and activists. Lawmakers say the law is justified and medical dispensaries have been running too unregulated for too long. But a newly-proposed bill stemming from a group of patients and physicians could protect the current medical program by introducing a regulatory system catered specifically for medical marijuana.

Opposing Views

What do our servants in the federal government do when the voters have spoken? They promptly announce their intention to ignore the voters. At least, that’s what happens when it comes to the marijuana laws.

The citizens of Colorado and Washington may have thought the decision was theirs on whether to legalize cannabis — that they’d have the final say in the matter. But a spokesperson for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has other ideas.
“The Drug Enforcement Administration’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,” an agency spokesperson blithely told Reason this morning, Mike Riggs reports.

The Marijuana Project

By John Novak
The Washington State Office of Financial Management has finally released its much anticipated report on the marijuana “legalization” initiative, I-502. (See link to the report at the end of this article)
While it claims that the state could see a financial windfall in the billions from the taxation and regulation of cannabis, it also warns of some very serious consequences and the possibility of zero revenue.
Steve Sarich, a well known Seattle area medical marijuana personality and anti-I-502 activist, sued the Office last month, stating the early numbers being used “are so far off it’s incredulous.”
He and the other activists that joined the lawsuit demanding a new report that included all the risks, including possible results from federal lawsuits.

Joe Mabel
The medical marijuana industry in Washington state does not oppose legalization in the wholesale manner in which Dominic Holden, above, claims they do; they merely object to many of I-502’s provisions

By Philip Dawdy
Special to Toke of the Town
The road to cannabis legalization is certainly proving to be an odd one in Washington State, filled with so many ironies that I’ve lost count. Here comes another set of ironies.
On April 13th, the New York Times published an op-ed by Dominic Holden, “news” editor of The Stranger. Its contents prompted me to send the following letter to the editor, which the paper decided wasn’t important enough to share with its readers. In my opinion, Holden has been writing about I-502 in a way that is both deceptive and journalistically unprofessional.
Here’s what I sent the Times:
In journalism school, I was taught that journalists should strive to avoid conflicts of interest and should always reveal them in instances where they cannot be avoided. Interesting then that in his “Smokeless in Seattle” opinion piece on April 13 in which he lambasted the medical marijuana industry for opposing a legalization initiative in Washington State, Dominic Holden did not inform readers that he used to be an employee of the ACLU of Washington.

Releaf
Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has reached a compromise with the Legislature under which medical marijuana dispensaries will be allowed to open in the state

​Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee and the Legislature on Thursday agreed to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to open in the state after negotiating a compromise. Chafee had blocked the dispensaries from opening, fearing they would violate federal law and result in DEA raids in the state.

Three dispensaries already picked by the state to distribute medicinal cannabis could open soon after the General Assembly endorses the compromise, reports the Associated Press.
According to lawmakers, state health officials will be directed to limit the amount of marijuana dispensaries may possess to answer concerns that larger shops would run afoul of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which outlaws any amount of marijuana for any purpose.
Chafee, even while slamming the Obama Administration’s crackdown on medical marijuana, put on hold the licensing of the three dispensaries last year after the state’s U.S. Attorney warned that operators of the shops could face federal charges. Chafee had joined Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire in asking the federal government to reclassify marijuana from its current status as a Schedule I substance, meaning the feds regard pot as having no medical value and a high potential for abuse.

Broadcast Engineering
Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said the results of the Obama Administrations crackdown on medical marijuana were “Utter chaos”

​Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, under political fire for blocking three medical marijuana dispensaries authorized back in 2009 and selected in 2011, says the real problem is the inconsistent policy of the President he endorsed in 2008.

When asked by Rolling Stone magazine what the result has been of the Obama Administration’s effort to prevent states from implementing laws allowing the distribution of medicinal cannabis, Gov. Chafee replied, “Utter chaos,” reports Ted Nesi at WPRI.com.
The governor has faced protests and legal threats from medical marijuana patients and advocates since suspending Rhode Island’s dispensary program in May 2011.

The Pacific Northwest Inlander

​Almost 14 years after Washington state voters approved the medicinal use of cannabis, patients in many parts of the state still have no safe access to it. A bill which would have formally legalized medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington has died in the Legislature.

Thus ends yet another effort to clearly define the legal status of the cannabis storefronts, of which there are already more than 100 in Seattle, Tacoma and surrounding areas, reports Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times.
Although there were enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, according to sponsor Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), it didn’t make it past the deadline for bills to advance because of limited time in the short session, as well as due to opposition from some Republican lawmakers and a handful of cities.

Cannabis Defense Coalition

​Seattle-based medical marijuana patient advocacy group the Cannabis Defense Coalition (CDC) has expressed serious concerns about Senate Bill 6265, currently in the Washington state Legislature.
A internal email sent to CDC members on Tuesday, February 7, outlined the group’s five biggest concerns with SB 6265 thusly:
1. Giving too much for too little
“SB 6265 would legalize a limited number of medical cannabis access points in a limited number of jurisdictions, but it will come at great cost to the Washington State medical cannabis community,” CDC said. “Governor Gregoire — whose partial veto last year put an end to the ‘designated provider model’ under which most access points were operating — has set boundaries on any medical cannabis bill she is to sign, and SB 6265 represents what is acceptable to her.
“The bill would provide broad authority to local counties, cities and towns to regulate medical cannabis collective gardens and access points through zoning, taxation, licensing, health and safety requirements, etc.,” the email said. “This will allow pot-friendly jurisdictions like Seattle and Tacoma to license, tax and regulate the medical cannabis businesses which have sprouted up in their midst, and over which they have uncertain authority.”
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