Search Results: orlando (27)

Platshorn in his smuggling days.

Since late 2012, former drug smuggler turned activist Robert Platshorn has been buying up TV time on local stations for an infomercial. Provocatively titled “Should Grandma Smoke Pot?,” the spot aims to educate the elderly on the pros of medicinal legalization, an extension of Platshorn’s popular “Silver Tour.”
But now Platshorn says his ads are being pulled just as the Florida legislature is taking up medical marijuana legislation introduced last month. “Stations have refused to carry it due to subject matter, and unfortunately the law does allow you to do so,” he tells the New Times.
For the entire story from Kyle Swenson, head over to our friends at The Pulp.

On Sunday, the Florida Medical Association voted to oppose Amendment 2, Florida’s latest effort to legalize medical marijuana. The FMA, which represents more than 20,000 physicians in the state, also opposed a similar effort two years ago.

So why is the doctor’s group hell-bent against a treatment option that has been embraced elsewhere in the U.S.?  Well, after the vote at the group’s annual meeting in Orlando, CEO Tim Stapleton offered the following (factually dubious) reasoning.

“There is nothing ‘medical’ about this proposal, and the lack of scientific evidence that pot is helpful in treating medical conditions is far from inclusive,” he said, according to a press release sent out by Drug Free Florida, the billionaire-backed campaign to scare people from voting for medical marijuana.

But the FMA neglected to mention one key fact about its vote: Its Orlando conference, held this year in Walt Disney World, was sponsored by PhRMA, one of the pharmaceutical industry’s largest trade organizations. PhRMA has spent millions to defeat medical marijuana proposals across the country.

Florida For Care, the group that put together a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Committee to dictate regulatory standards had the medical marijuana amendment passed back in November, is hosting a couple of conferences they’ve dubbed “The Future of Medical Marijuana in Florida.”
With Amendment 2 defeated in the polls in November, the group is moving forward to start, as they put it, “strategizing and planning in advance of Florida’s Legislative Session.”
The next legislative session is scheduled for March.

Buddha Tahoe OG.


A somewhat surprising number of Florida’s biggest and most influential newspapers have come out against medical marijuana. The Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Florida Times-Union are just a few. None of those editorials actually bashes the idea of medical marijuana. They’re cool with it, in theory. They just think that it should be an issue decided on by the Florida Legislature and that the amendment is too vague and will cause some sort of abuse. What kind of abuse? No one knows — the editorials are being very vague about it.
This of course ignores two key points:
1. There is no way the Florida Legislature in its current Republican-controlled form will legalize medical marijuana (and this amendment failing will give it more reasons not to do so).
2. Floridians already smoke tons and tons and tons of marijuana.
More at the Miami New Times.


Anti-medical marijuana group Drug Free America Foundation has taken it up a notch on their “Amendment 2 has loopholes that will lead to legalized marijuana” talking point by putting up a billboard attacking John Morgan.
Morgan, the Orland-based attorney and medical marijuana advocate who has poured millions of his own money into getting Amendment 2 passed, recently made headlines with a profanity-laced speech he gave a group of young voters during a post-debate party last week.

John Morgan.


Opposition to the legalization of medical marijuana has been circulating a cell-phone video showing United for Care benefactor John Morgan giving a profanity-laced speech to young voters about marijuana. The anti-medical marijuana group No On 2 cut down a six-minute video of Morgan at a post-debate party last week, showing him ranting about marijuana to a rowdy crowd.
This, No On 2 is trying to show, is proof that the quest for legalized medical marijuana is a front to getting marijuana legalized outright in Florida.


News reports this week indicate that one of the Cowboys’ few defensive bright spots from last season, cornerback Orlando Scandrick, has been suspended for the first four games of the 2014 regular season for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing substance abuse policy. Scandrick has already lost his appeal in the matter, so it looks like the Cowboys will be stuck with whatever the mercurial Mo Claiborne can give the on the outside for the first quarter of the season.
The details of Scandrick’s indiscretion — if his agent and ESPN’s Ed Werder are to be believed — are pretty mundane. While on vacation in Mexico with an ex-girlfriend, Scandrick, or someone in his party, mixed a drug — reported by Werder to be MDMA — purchased from a street vendor into a cocktail he was drinking. More at the Dallas Observer.

Rick Scott.


Need more proof that spending dump trucks full of cash can win elections in America? Take a look at Florida’s percolating governor’s race, where Rick Scott — yes, the same guy who has had trouble cracking 30 percent approval ratings for the past four years — has suddenly pulled even with likely challenger Charlie Crist in several new polls.
What’s changed? Has Scott suddenly started embracing issues important to voters like medical marijuana reform and green energy? Nah, he’s just spending crazy amounts of money — more than $13 million on TV ads just since November. And it’s working like a charm.

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