Yearly Archives: 2011

Study: Marijuana Growers’ Kids In Better Health

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 28, 2011 Culture, Global, Growing

Photo: Niagara Regional Police/Canadian Press

New research questions the automatic removal of children living in marijuana grow-ops, finding they may not be exposed to any alarming health risks. In fact, children of marijuana-growing homes are healthier than other kids, according to the research.

A new study from Canada flies in the face of stereotypes regarding the offspring of marijuana-growing parents. Children from homes where cannabis is grown were healthy and drug-free, according to the study — in fact, healthier than other children — leading to questions about why such kids are often removed from their homes.

The research from the Motherisk Program at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children indicates the automatic removal of kids from marijuana-growing parents can be worse for the children than allowing them to stay at home, according to Gideon Koren, a University of Toronto professor and the program’s director, reports CBC News.

Synthetic Marijuana Ban Sailing Through Congress

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 28, 2011 News, Products

Photo: Daily Record

Federal legislation that would ban possession and sales of chemical compounds found in products such as “K2,” “Spice,” and “bath salts” began moving this week in House and Senate committees. Lawmakers are considering four bills — three in the Senate and one in the House — that would add these synthetic drugs to Schedule I, which is the most restrictive category of drugs that have a “high potential for abuse and no medical value.”

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on Health approved legislation by voice vote, and today (Thursday, July 28) the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Senate Judiciary Committee are scheduled to vote on legislation.

“Lawmakers are poised to repeat mistakes from the past by creating ineffective laws that will criminalize more people and drive these substances into the illicit market,” said Grant Smith, federal policy coordinator with the Drug Policy Alliance. “History has clearly shown that prohibiting a drug makes it more dangerous, not less.”

Marijuana Suspect’s Daughter Asks Willie Nelson For Help

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 27, 2011 Dispensaries, News

Photo: Jessica Vogel-Laberdee

Jessica Vogel-Laberdee: “We need the voice of a great man like yourself to speak out about the unjustice that my dad is facing”

The daughter of a Spokane, Washington medical marijuana dispensary operator recently indicted in federal court is calling on legendary country singer and cannabis advocate Willie Nelson for help.

In an email to the Spokane Spokesman Review, Jessica Vogel-Laberdee asks Nelson, who plays locally at Northern Quest Casino on Sunday, “to speak out about the unjustice that my dad is facing.”

“I am aware that you owe us nothing, and doing this would be a gesture that would fulfill only my wildest dreams,” Vogel-Laberdee wrote, “but I am sending you this because there is a chance that you will step into my dad’s shoes (if only for a moment) and decide to take action.”

Nelson is on vacation and is unavailable for comment, according to his publicist. Willie’s had a few pot-related legal hassles of his own, with a judge recently rejecting a proposed plea bargain that would have resolved a misdemeanor marijuana possession case with a fine.

Sheriff REALLY Doesn’t Want Marijuana Patients To Carry Guns

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 27, 2011 News

Photo: Jackson County Sheriff

Sheriff Mike Winters doesn’t want medical marijuana patients to carry guns — and he’s fought all the way to the Supreme Court to stop them, even though he’s lost at every step along the way.

An Oregon sheriff is so determined to stop medical marijuana patients in his county from having guns, he’s taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — even though his legal argument has been shot down by every court so far.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters claims he can’t issue concealed handgun licenses to medical marijuana patients because it would violate federal law, specifically the Gun Control Act of 1968, reports Damian Mann at the Ashland Daily Tidings.

The sheriff has, so far, lost in Jackson County Circuit Court, the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court.

Cynthia Townsley Willis, who uses cannabis for muscle spasms and arthritis pain, has no criminal record. But she admitted to using medical marijuana when she filed her application with the sheriff in 2008 for a concealed handgun license.

Sheriff Winters denied her application, claiming that her possession of a medical marijuana card indicated she was a “drug user.”

Willis now carries a concealed weapons license, which Sheriff Winters was forced to approve after the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled against him.

But the sheriff soldiers on, wasting untold thousands of tax dollars in his doomed, quixotic and expensive attempt to deprive medical marijuana patients of their rights.

Benefit Event Set For Fired Walmart Medical Marijuana Patient

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 27, 2011 Medical, News

Photo: Joseph Casias

Cancer patient Joseph Casias, former Employee of the Year at Walmart: “I just don’t understand why it is so bad to use something that helps me and many others who suffer with illnesses and pain”

Once in awhile, corporate America commits such a glaring injustice that people are sickened by the inhumanity of it. Such was the case last year when a Michigan Walmart fired its former Employee of the Year, Joseph Casias, after he showed up positive for marijuana on a routine drug test — despite the fact that he is a seriously ill cancer patient legally using medical cannabis on the recommendation of his physician.

Casias, 30, who has an inoperable brain tumor, was sacked by the Battle Creek Walmart after he failed a routine urine screen following a workplace injury. And despite a chorus of nationwide protest, the corporate behemoth stuck by its heartless decision and eventually prevailed in court after a judge upheld the dismissal.

Casias said that he only used marijuana after his work shift, and never used on the job. He tried cannabis after his oncologist suggested it.

Seattle Mayor Signs Medical Marijuana Dispensary Law

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 27, 2011 Dispensaries, Legislation, News

Photo: Elaine Thompson

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn: “We hope that if we can demonstrate, here in Seattle, a more sane approach to how we can work with this, that we can continue to move towards a transition on how we regulate and oversee the use of marijuana in an intelligent way rather than the irrational way that the prohibition era has given us.”

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn scheduled a Wednesday signing ceremony with City Attorney Pete Holmes, state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles and other officials to sign a bill regulating medical marijuana like any other business.

Marijuana prohibition “denies an appropriate medication” to patients who need it, Mayor McGinn said at the ceremony. “Prohibition does not work.”

“We are taking the approach that what we need to do is honor the wishes of the City of Seattle and honor the wishes of the voters of Washington when it comes to medical marijuana, and appropriately regulate its use,” Mayor McGinn said.

San Diego Repeals Restrictive Medical Marijuana Ordinance

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 26, 2011 Dispensaries, Legislation

Photo: California Cannabis Coalition

Members of California Cannabis Coalition and Patient Care Association celebrate after repeal of San Diego’s highly restrictive medical marijuana ordinance

On Monday, the San Diego City Council repealed an ordinance that would have forced almost all currently operating medical marijuana dispensaries in the city to close their doors.

If the ordinance had taken effect, only a couple of collectives would have been allowed to open after they came in compliance with with one of the most restrictive ordinances in the state and the most restrictive zoning and operational requirements imposed on any businesses in San Diego, according to the California Cannabis Coalition.

According to critics, the city council ignored its own task force in establishing the highly restrictive rules that would have severely limited the number of dispensaries. Medical marijuana activist Eugene Z. Davidovich, in fact, said the original ordinance effectively banned dispensaries from San Diego, reports Neiko Will at KPBS.

NAACP Joins Call To End War On Drugs

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 26, 2011 Uncategorized

Photo: The Daily Record

Benjamin Jealous, NAACP president and CEO: “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped”

The NAACP has just joined the list of prominent organizations and individuals calling for a major paradigm shift away from the failed and punitive “War On Drugs” and toward a health-based approach with a historic resolution passed Tuesday at the organization’s national conference in Los Angeles.

“Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice, and effective law enforcement,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP. “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidence-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”

Neill Franklin, an African American former narcotics cop from Baltimore and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), had presented a talk on the need to end the War On Drugs at the NAACP conference on Monday.

“The NAACP has been on the forefront of the struggle for civil rights and social justice in this country for over a century,” Franklin said Tuesday about the passage of the resolution.

“The fact that these leaders are joining others like the National Black Police Association in calling for an end to the ‘war on drugs’ should be a wake up call to those politicians — including and especially President Obama — who still have not come to terms with the devastation that the ‘drug war’ causes in our society and especially in communities of color,” Franklin said.

California Marijuana Dispensary Worker Gets 3 Years In Prison

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 26, 2011 Dispensaries, News

Photo: Michael Fagans/Bakersfield.com

Israel Cavazos, manager of Nature’s Medicinal Co-Op in Bakersfield, California, measures bags of marijuana for a patient one day after the dispensary was raided again in 2009. Cavazos has been sentenced to 42 months in federal prison, and his co-worker Jonathan Chapman on Monday got 37 months.

A medical marijuana dispensary employee in Bakersfield, California has been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for “conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana.”

Jonathan Michael Chapman, 32, of Bakersfield, was sentenced to 37 months in prison, reports TurnTo23.com. The barbaric sentence was handed down Monday by U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii and announced by U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner.

Chapman admitted that between 2005 and July 2007, he worked at Nature’s Medicinal Co-op, a Bakersfield business engaged in distributing marijuana. In 2007, federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized what they claimed was more than 85 kilograms (187 pounds) of marijuana from the dispensary.

Study: Marijuana Derivative Fights Cocaine Addiction In Mice

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 26, 2011 News

Photo: FOX 43 TV

A marijuana component helps mitigate cocaine addiction in mice, according to a new study, lending further evidence to the notion that marijuana is an “exit” drug and could become the next big anti-addiction therapy.

The discovery by researchers in China and Maryland was announced in the July 2011 issue of Nature Neuroscience magazine, reports Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story.

Cannabidiol (CBD), a medically useful component of marijuana that does not produce a “high,” effectively turns down a receptor in the brain that is stimulated by cocaine, the study found.

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