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Cops taking to the skies to waste money bust marijuana grows

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By on Growing, News

It’s that time of year again: harvest season. And while it means a stony winter is ahead for many, it also means a season of increased paranoia as the buzzing of helicopters overhead has hundreds if not thousands of marijuana growers in the United States scared they are the next to be busted.
Already, stories are coming in from all over about police buzzing fields to find pot then raiding the homes below. Police in Indiana, for example, are bragging about a $75,000 harvest they raided Thursday.

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Marijuana Legalization: We Won This Battle, But It Isn’t Over

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By on Culture, Legislation

David Stevens / Cheryl Shuman
Amendment 64 supporters Tuesday night celebrate the legalization of marijuana in Colorado

By Dr. Robert Townsend
         
“The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will,” Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said in a written statement released by his office. “This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or gold fish too quickly.”
The voters have spoken indeed. Legalization in the face of federal law has passed by a large margin in two states, we added the 18th medical state, we nearly got a 19th in the South, and all ballot initiatives supportive of cannabis passed in Michigan. But like the Colorado governor demonstrates, there are many politicians rushing to smoke filled back rooms to try and figure out a way to circumvent the will of the voters. 
Is he isolated in his views? We see so many examples of politicians like Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and agencies like the Department of Justice, HUD, and the ATF doing everything they can to maintain the status quo of prohibition. Private employers hide behind federal law to discriminate against the sick, adopting the position that it is OK to show up to work stoned out of your mind on oxycontin, but if you used cannabis 3 weeks ago… welcome to the world of unemployment. 
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Michigan: ‘Suspicion-Based’ Drug-Testing For Welfare Is ‘Likely’

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By on News

Jezebel
Want your welfare check? Whip it out, hippie.

​It’s a popular strategy — blame and victimize the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, punishing them for an activity which all social classes engage in, by taking away what little they have.

Michigan’s Department of Human Services says it is still in the “early process” of developing drug-screening policies for welfare benefit recipients, but have said the plan is “feasible.”
Questions of when and how the policy will be implemented can’t be answered yet, according to DHS spokesman David Akerly.

Michigan Radio‘s Rick Pluta reported on Monday that it is “likely” that welfare recipients would receive the testing.
“DHS officials say they want the new policy to be part of an overhaul of the state’s welfare-to-work program in the spring of next year,” Pluta reported. “The department submitted a report with its recommendations to the Legislature earlier this month.”
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Doctor: My Patients Showed Me Medical Marijuana Works

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By on Medical

Brittney Lohmiller/The Saginaw News
Dr. Bob Townsend meets with a patient in Saginaw, Michigan. “My patients didn’t tell me it helped them; they showed me by getting rid of narcotics,” Townsend said.

​One Michigan physician says that counter to what he was told in medical school, his patients have shown him that medical marijuana produces results.

“I, like most physicians, was taught that ‘medical marijuana’ was a political movement and marijuana has no medical use,” wrote Dr. Robert Townsend in the Lansing State Journal on Saturday. “But we were also taught to listen to our patients and base our decisions on evidence, not dogma.”
“Take chronic, severe pain — a qualifying condition for medical marijuana,” Dr. Townsend wrote. “IF my professors in medical school were correct, if marijuana is a Schedule I narcotic because it has no medical value, I would not expect marijuana use to result in a decreased need for pain medication.
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Doctor Faces Jail For Recommending Medical Marijuana

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By on Medical, News

Dr. Ruth A. Buck could be facing up to 20 years in prison.

At first, the DEA went after dispensary owners. Now they’re going after doctors who simply recommend medical marijuana to their patients.


​A federal district attorney in Michigan has asked a judge to revoke bond for a Saginaw Township doctor facing drug charges.

In June 2010, Dr. Ruth A. Buck was indicted on three counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances, a 20-year felony, for prescribing pain and nerve pills, reports LaNia Coleman of The Bay City Times.
Dr. Buck was released on the condition that she not violate any federal, state or local laws.
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California Green Rush: Real Housewives Or Weeds Wanna-Be’s?

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By on Culture, Growing

Photo: Qwickstep.com

​​​By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

“Angela” blames most of her problems on the economy. “I had a total of three houses, the one I lived in and two others I bought as investments in early ’04. After my real estate business stalled in ’08, I was basically sitting on three empty houses that I couldn’t move or even rent. That when I decided that maybe there was another way: I would grow marijuana.”
And that’s where all of Angela’s troubles started.
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Entrepreneurs Eager To Tap Into Saginaw Medical Pot Market

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By on Medical

Photo: Jared Hamilton/The Saginaw News
Keith Beyerlein, left, and Christopher Krieger, both of Reese, Mich., are the owners of GrowMart, a new hydroponic indoor growing store. The store’s merchandise could be used to grow any plant indoors, but they said 85 percent of their sales are to people who grow marijuana.

​Getting their first retail business off the ground in Saginaw, Michigan’s untapped medical marijuana market made sense to two 20-something entrepreneurs from Reese.

High school buddies Keith Beyerlein, 25, who graduated from Reese High School in 2003, and Christopher Krieger, 28, a 2001 graduate, opened their new hydroponics business, GrowMart, in Saginaw in mid-July, reports Gus Burns of The Saginaw News.
The business partners are quick to point out that their store doesn’t sell marijuana or paraphernalia.
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DEA Returns $62 Cash Seized In Marijuana Grow Room Raid

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By on Growing, News

Photo: Jeff Schrier/The Saginaw News
Ed W. Boyke, 64, stands with some of the belongings that the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department seized when they raided his home on April 15. Boyke legally grows medical marijuana and police raided his home because they claimed to believe he was violating the law. He had to pay $5,000 to get his own stuff back.

​Medical marijuana patient and provider Edwyn W. Boyke hoped he was going to get his guns and grow equipment back when, two days after the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department returned his TV, he was asked to return to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Saginaw, Michigan.

But when Boyke arrived at the DEA office on Friday afternoon, he said an agent told him the guns and other items, including grow equipment, “would be retained as possible evidence” in an ongoing federal investigation into whether Boyke violated drug laws by growing and possessing harvested marijuana and plants inside his home.
​The DEA agent handed Boyke $62 in cash that was taken from Boyke’s wallet during the raid and wished him a good day.
“They called me and said come pick up my stuff, said they had it, they were through with it,” Boyke said. “It sounded like he was going to give me everything,” he said, reports Gus Burns of The Saginaw News.
Boyke, a legal, registered patient who smokes marijuana to ease back pain caused by a pinched nerve, hoped to recover his four guns — three hunting rifles and an antique, inoperable Russian gun — which he said Saginaw deputies seized from his Saginaw Township home while a DEA-secured search warrant was being served on April 15.
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DEA Raids Medical Marijuana Protest Organizer

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By on Medical, News

Photo: Gus Burns/The Saginaw News
John Roberts, 48, said he and his fiancee, Stephanie Whisman, 38, were raided after he organized a medical marijuana protest last week. Roberts is holding a syringe of Rick Simpson hemp oil, a liquid cannabis extract ingested orally for pain and to induce sleep.

Perhaps as a warning to those who dare to speak out, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents on Tuesday raided the home of a Michigan medical marijuana patient, activist and caregiver after he organized a protest outside the Saginaw County Courthouse last week.

John F. Roberts, 49, of Thomas Township, said he believes the raid was in retaliation because he organized last week’s protest accusing the Saginaw County Sheriff of raiding patients and caregivers, reports Kim Russell at NBC 25. Protesters had come from around the state, some holding signs reading, “Learn The Law.”
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Legal Michigan Patient’s Property Destroyed In Marijuana Raid

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By on Growing, Medical


Photo: Edwyn W. Boyke
This photo was taken by legal medical marijuana patient Edwyn W. Boyke Jr., 64, of Saginaw Township, after police raided his home and destroyed his $7,000 grow setup.

​When U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department raided Edwyn W. Boyke Jr.’s house on April 15, they didn’t just thuggishly bust up his grow room.

They also confiscated a lot of his property — including a car, TV, two lawnmowers, a little pocket cash, scales, five jars of harvested marijuana, little seedlings, and larger plants — along with Boyke’s Michigan medical marijuana card.

Boyke still hasn’t been charged with a crime, and he is legally allowed to grow and use marijuana under a law Michigan voters passed in a landslide with 63 percent of the vote in 2008, reports The Saginaw News.
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