Author Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Tucson Will Be Toke Town In April: Medical Cannabis Conference

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 2, 2012 Culture, News, Products

By Al Byrne

Patients Out of Time

While the U.S. federal government’s regulators and lawyers, drug czar and others are paid to say whatever is dated and wrong about therapeutic cannabis, medical and nursing professionals are in wonder that so many can so willingly display their ignorance of therapeutic cannabis in public.

On November 23, 2011, the associate director for public affairs of the Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP), Rafael Lemaitre said, “The Food and Drug Administration has not found smoked marijuana to be either safe or effective medicine for any condition.”

This statement made by a person of responsibility for citizen health in the U.S. is apparently in denial of a decades-long study of cannabis “smokers” by Donald P. Tashkin, M.D., medical director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Professor of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

At the Patients Out of Time clinical cannabis conference in Pacific Grove in April 2008, Dr. Tashkin announced his study showed that no patient, of more than 2,200, who smoked only cannabis had lung cancer, COPD or other pulmonary problem other than mild bronchitis.

Smoking cannabis results in no lung cancer.

Activist Legend Dana Beal Headed To Prison

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 2, 2012 News

Freedom of Medicine and Diet

Dana Beal: Fighting for your rights since the 1960s, now he’s going to prison

Political activist Dana Beal turns 65 next week. For more than 40 years, Dana has been on the forefront of the battle for drug law reform and civil liberties. And in a few weeks, he’ll turn himself in to serve an 11-month prison sentence.

Beal, as has been the case for his entire life, has a lot of irons in the fire. Besides his work to ensure safe access for medical marijuana patients nationwide, the firebrand radical works to bring ibogaine, an herb that promises to cure heroin/opiate addiction, to the people who need it most.

Of course, his impending prison sentence will interrupt the many projects about which Beal is passionate, including the Yippie Museum in New York, which will chronicle the 1960s’ culture of rebellion which spawned the Youth International Party (YIP), which Beal co-founded with his legendary friends Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman back in 1968.

Weed Wipe-Out? Pro Surfers To Be Tested For Drugs

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 2, 2012 Culture, News

Marijuana.com

The inevitable crackdown came, not as a result of harmless cannabis nor even of is frisky big brother, LSD — but due to the same, tired old death drugs that have been killing people and destroying lives for generations

Drug Screen of Surfers Could Wipe Out Sport’s Rebellious Image

The mystique of surfing, since its music-fueled rise on the American West Coast during the 1960s, has always had a lot to do with rebellion, with alternatives, with a countercultural image. With the “bushy bushy blonde hair” and the rest of the accoutrements, of course, came marijuana and LSD, drugs of choice for the surfing culture which, unlike traditional narcotics and stimulants, didn’t noticeably reduce the physical abilities of those participating in the sport.

The mystic search to catch the perfect wave became the obsession of many a stoner — but the perfection of the art of surfing was a double-edged sword. It brought with it the inevitable commercialization of the sport, and big-purse surf competitions, along with their attendant product endorsements, became the tail that started wagging the dog.

Attacking Marijuana Patients Is Not A Good Legalization Strategy

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 1, 2012 Legislation, News

Patients Against I-502

The Unraveling of Dominic Holden

By Lee Rosenberg

Horses Ass

The New Approach Washington campaign turned in its signatures this week for Initiative 502. This initiative would legalize personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and regulate the distribution and sale of the drug to anyone over 21 [in Washington state]. It also introduces a per se DUI limit for “active” THC – in layman’s terms, the amount of “unprocessed” THC in your body.

Over at Slog, Dominic Holden continues to lash out at the folks in the medical marijuana community who oppose it – primarily due to the DUI provisions. I’ve been trying to stay out of this fight for my own sanity, but Holden’s anger is so misdirected (and misinformed), I have to speak up.

Cops Destroy BMW Looking For Nonexistent Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 30, 2011 News

Darren Richardson

An exterior view of Darren Richardson’s BMW after cops pried it apart looking for marijuana

Sometimes they have to destroy your car in order to save you from weed that isn’t even there. New Jersey police caused more than $12,000 worth of damage to a BMW 325i, tearing the vehicle apart in a frenzied search for marijuana. After tearing off the dash, doors, seats and even prying up the exterior body panels, they didn’t find so much as a roach.

The impotently frustrated Pompton Lake cops impounded Darren Richardson’s 2004 3-series Beamer after claiming they smelled “a strong odor of marijuana” during a routine traffic stop, reports Wes Siler of Jalopnik.

When Richardson’s car was returned — days later — he found the dash cut apart, the seats slashed, the console pried open and the bumpers and other body parts pulled off the vehicle. His insurance company, GEICO, estimated the damages at $12,636.42, more than he’d paid for the car — which was designated a total loss.

2011: A Cannabis Ode

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 30, 2011 Culture

Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Grand Daddy Purple. Happy New Year from Toke of the Town!

By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent

2011 seems like it came and then it went,

While 99 percent of us looked like we’re going to end up in a tent.

Obama looked the other way while Big Pharma continues to have their say,

Reversing his stance because the lobby-heavy drug companies pay.

Heroes of the movement like Matt, Lynnette and Dr. Fry,

Are shut down, victimized and hung out to dry,

While G.W. Pharmaceuticals and others receive the right to dispense,

And they say it’s not medicine unless it makes some cents.

Smoked Marijuana IS Medicine: Feds Still Distributing Rolled Joints

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 29, 2011 Medical, News

The Weed Blog

U.S. federal government joints come ready-rolled in tins of 300, as pictured above.

Despite the continued denials from the U.S. federal government — and its absurdly erroneous classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance, meaning it by definition has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical uses — the feds themselves have been giving out free marijuana to a limited group of patients for 30 years.

The program had grown to close to 30 patients at its height, but in 1992 stopped accepting any new participants, during the George H.W. Bush Administration.

Activists speculated that happened because of the advent of the HIV/AIDS crisis; with the widespread need of such patients for medicinal cannabis, pot’s medical usefulness could have become uncomfortably obvious to the public at large once hundreds or thousands of people had permission to use it.

Despite the program not having accepted any new patients for more than 20 years, the four surviving federal medical marijuana patients still get their 300 (stale, low-quality) joints a month, and will until they die. Never mind that it’s only 3.5 percent THC (maybe that’s why the federal government recommends its patients use 10 “marijuana cigarettes” a day!) plus being 10 years old and stale as shit by the time the patients receive it.

Campaign To Legalize Marijuana Ready In Michigan

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 29, 2011 Legislation, News

Federaljack.com

The effort to legalize marijuana in Michigan will be officially underway in two weeks.

The 2012 Michigan Ballot Initiative to End Marijuana Prohibition, sponsored by a grassroots group named Repeal Today For A Safer Michigan 2012, hopes to give the voters a chance to decide for themselves next November, reports Ryan J. Stanton at AnnArbor.com.

“We do have language written and petitions getting ready,” said RTFASM supporter T.J. Rice on Wednesday afternoon.

The petition seeks to amend the Michigan state constitution to legalize marijuana for people 21 and older.

Colorado Asks DEA To Reclassify Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 29, 2011 Legislation, News

Anondora

The head of Colorado’s Department of Revenue has written a letter to the director of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration asking that the U.S. government slightly loosen its strict controls on marijuana due to its “potential medical value.”

Colorado is the fourth state within the past few weeks to ask the DEA to reschedule cannabis from its current, most restrictive classification as Schedule I, which means the government regards pot as having a high potential for abuse and no valid medicinal uses. Heroin and LSD are also considered Schedule I substances under federal law.

Surprise, Surprise: Black Market Cashes In On Pot Crackdown

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 29, 2011 News

Nick Bhardwaj/The Fiscal Times

In a development that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with drug policy and its effects, black-market marijuana growers and dealers are profiting greatly from the federal crackdown on legal medicinal cannabis dispensaries.

It’s Economics 101, after all: When the market demand exceeds the legal supply, people turn to illegal sources of a desired product. And there aren’t many products more desired than cannabis, both by patients who need the stuff for quality of life issues, to the recreational tokers who want their albums to sound as good as possible.

According to a recent report from California Watch, a division of the Center for Investigative Reporting, prices for black-market, high-grade, outdoor-grown Cali weed — after plummeting in 2010 — have risen by 20 to 40 percent since the state’s four U.S. Attorneys announced a crackdown on medical marijuana growers and dispensaries, reports the Chico News Review.

Previous 1 … 105 106 107 108 109 … 377 Next