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Graphic: Darwinek

​Vermont legalized medical marijuana five years ago. But eligible patients who want to use the plant to ease chronic pain and nausea have been forced to either grow their own or resort to the black market, since the state never established a legal outlet to obtain it.

A state lawmaker plans in 2010 to introduce legislation that would solve this problem. The bill would create compassion centers where people on Vermont’s medical marijuana registry can buy their medicine, reports Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau.
“What is driving me is a sense of compassion and fairness,” said Chris Bray (D-New Haven). “This is a drug we have vetted as a state as being appropriate for people with defined medical conditions and yet we haven’t provided a safe and legal way for them to purchase it.”
Bray said a constituent, one of 189 people registered as medical marijuana patients in Vermont, has suffered because of Vermont’s lack of dispensaries. “He resents the fact, and I think justifiably, that he was pushed into buying medical marijuana from illicit sources, which is expensive and illegal and often not even available to him,” Bray said.

Graphic: thefreshscent.com

​Proposed regulations for the operation of compassion centers to dispense medical marijuana have been issued by Rhode Island health regulators, but it could still be up to a year before the first center opens, reports Mike Stanton of The Providence Journal.

“What’s a reasonable timeline? You could be talking about up to a year, or maybe it will take less time,” said Health Department spokesman Robert Vanderslice.

Artwork: Jim Wheeler
Safe access to marijuana remains a distant dream to many patients — even in states which have legalized medical use

​One by one, the lights are winking out. In city after city, town after town, in states where medical marijuana is now legal, patients who had dared hope they would at last have safe access to the medicine recommended by their doctors are having those hopes dashed.
The problem? Political cowardice and the panicked reaction of the status quo.
Every week brings more news of freaked out city councils and county boards of supervisors who desperately want to appear to be “doing something” — anything — about the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries.
This phenomenon is so far mostly confined to California and to a lesser extent Colorado, but it’s unfortunately also starting to happen in Michigan, Montana and even Maine — where voters specifically approved dispensaries in November.
Rather than showing true leadership by showing genuine concern for patients and communities, too many local government officials are going for the easy, knee-jerk reaction. The level of disregard for the intentions of the voters — who clearly expressed their will by legalizing medical marijuana — is breathtaking.

Photo: Pablo-flores, Wikimedia Commons
Washington judge gives the green light to medical pot patient

​An interesting thing is happening in states which have legalized medical marijuana. There’s an ongoing culture war between cops who hate all marijuana, period, and patients who take the law at its word when it says they can use pot legally. From time to time, the patients win big.

Such is the case in Kent, Washington, where King County Judge Mary Roberts ordered the police department to give 11 pounds of seized marijuana back to Matthew Zugsberger, who holds a valid California medical marijuana card.
After police (with the aid of a trusty drug dog) found the stash in the trunk of Zugsberger’s car last February in the parking lot of a pharmacy in Kent, they arrested the Californian and his girlfriend and seized the weed.
Zugsberger says the cops accused him of importing marijuana from Canada (which does happen a lot in this area, being not far from the B.C. border). “Why the hell would I buy pot from Canada if I have a field of it in my back yard?”, Zugsberger reasonably asked, according to the Seattle P.I.

The California man said he began using marijuana medicinally in 2007 to manage nausea caused by a severe injury sustained while working as a underwater welder in the Gulf of Mexico. After the accident, he was prescribed opiate painkillers; Zugsberger said the drugs gave him liver problems, and he was concerned about becoming addicted to them.

Zugsberger pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession and was sentenced to three months’ probation. But defense attorney Aaron Pelley wasn’t done with the case. Pelley, who is active with Seattle-based medical marijuana advocacy organization Cannabis Defense Coalition,  filed a petition in August seeking the return of the marijuana to his client, since Zugsberger is a legal medical pot patient.

Illustration: Mladifilozof, Wikimedia Commons
Yes we cannabis.

​The good thing about a free marketplace of ideas is, despite the best efforts of prohibitionists and their fear-mongering propaganda, the truth eventually prevails.
That’s what we’re witnessing right now, with the tidal change in public perception of marijuana — both as a medicine and palliative, and as a recreational drug.
Within the past months, more and more of the once seemingly insurmountable barriers to widespread acceptance of cannabis have been looking mighty shaky. Nationwide polls show that more and more Americans support legalization across the board.
The latest Gallup poll on the subject found 44 percent approve full legalization of pot, representing a 13-point rise in the past nine years. According to Gallup, if public support continues growing at the present rate of 1 or 2 percent per year, “the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years.”
Toke of the Town tends to think majority support could happen even more quickly than that, as more “closet” supporters are emboldened by an increasingly public shift in opinion.
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