Author Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Hemp Activist Creates Stir At National Night Out Event

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 6, 2011 Culture, News

“It’s the ultimate in ridiculousness if you ask me,” activist Michelle Graye told Toke of the Town.

Oh, the drama. When hemp activist Michelle Graye set up a small table with hemp and medical marijuana information Tuesday night at Tucson’s National Night Out event in Amphi Neighborhood Park, she had made the honest mistake of going to the wrong place — there were two National Night Out events in Tucson.

But some “offended” parents in attendance called Graye’s very presence at the event “inappropriate” and said the booth had no business at an event whose focus is crime-fighting. You almost get the idea that advocating for cannabis reform is roughly equivalent to leprosy with some of these folks.

Congress Set To Escalate Drug War After Decades Of Failure

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 6, 2011 Legislation, News

DarkGovernment

A few billion dollars thrown away there, a few million people in prison here, first thing you know you’ve got a Drug War

Bill Would Make It A Crime

To Even PLAN To Smoke Marijuana In Another Country– Even If It Is Legal In That Country

The House Judiciary Committee is considering legislation (HR 313) Thursday that makes it a federal crime to plan to commit a drug offense in another country that would be illegal if it was actually committed in the U.S. — even if the offense is actually legal in the other country.

Federal legislation (HR 1254) that would criminalize possession and sales of chemical compounds found in products such as K2, Spice, and “bath salts” will also be voted on in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday and is expected to pass. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Charles Dent (R-Pennsylvania), has already passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, so the next step would be the full House. Similar legislation is sailing unimpeded through the Senate.

Both bills would subject Americans to mandatory minimum sentencing and increase prison expenses that taxpayers have to pay — at a time when members of Congress are cutting drug education, treatment and prevention citing the need to reduce federal expenses.

Worth Repeating: Want To Help With Cannabis Legalization? Sign These 11 Petitions!

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 5, 2011 Legislation

Sign These 11 White House Petitions Today!

Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.

Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

(Editor’s note: Major props to Morgan Fox over at Marijuana Policy Project, who, as I was preparing Ron Marczyk’s post, published MPP’s list of petitions to sign, here.)

That’s right, from the comfort of your living room, you can have green petition party, punctuated with bong rips if you so desire.

If this community can get all 11 of these petitions maxed out with signatures, it’ll help put medical cannabis issues on the table for the 2012 Presidential race.

Click on the name of each petition to go to the White House page where you can vote for it.

No Guns For Pot Patients? My Government Embarrasses Me

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 5, 2011 Culture

The Inquisitr

By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent

I’ll give you my joint when you take it from my brown, resin-soaked fingers.

What comes first… A revolution or a war? Right now more Americans are taking to the streets in numbers not seen since they tried to do away with the original Coca-Cola. And with the same reasons, the Cola-Baggers in the Day wanted to turn back the clocks to a simpler time. The message was simple: Don’t mess with our Coke.

In 1937 marijuana was politically shoved into a niche alongside heroin and other bad stuff, because of money. Behind the scenes, the same names were at work. Great American families like the Hearsts, the Mellons and the DuPonts needed cannabis to go away, so they could make money the old fashion way — by manipulating the markets.

Too High: Oregon Marijuana Cardholders Hit With New Fees

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 5, 2011 Legislation, Medical

The Portland Mercury

When the state’s looking for “additional revenue,” keep an eye on your money. Oregon residents applying for medical marijuana cards will have lighter pocketbooks this month. State fees for the card applications took a dramatic jump on October 1 — and as usual, low-income patients who rely on food stamps and the Oregon Health Plan will be hit the hardest.

Annual application and renewal fees for the cards were $100, with a discounted low-income rate of $20. Now the annual fee is $200 and the discounted rate is $100, reports Peter Korn at Pamplin Media Group.

U.S. Rastafarian Is Exempt From Probation Pot Testing

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 5, 2011 Culture, Legislation, News

Jamison Arend

Jamison Arend of Minnesota won a groundbreaking religious exemption to being drug-tested for marijuana during his probation

It’s not very widely known. But in a groundbreaking case, at least one American citizen, a licensed Rastafarian minister in Minnesota, has been openly smoking marijuana daily with a judge’s approval for the past year and a half, despite the fact that he is on probation.

Jamison Arend was sentenced to five years’ probation on March 24, 2010 after an altercation at his home, reports WeedPress.

During sentencing, Judge Judith Tilsen handed down a trail-blazing exemption to Minnesota’s drug testing laws.

“[T]he defense has proven a colorable claim of religious right to ceremonial use of cannibus [sic], otherwise known as marijuana,” Judge Tilsen ruled. “Ceremonial use is intermittent use, but because of our chemistry and how we do UAs [urine analyses], it would seem to me that even with limited ceremonial use that a UA would come up dirty on a regular basis.

Medical Marijuana Job Fair Weekend: West Coast Cannabis Expo

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 5, 2011 Culture, Products

West Coast Cannabis Expo

Inspired by President Barack Obama with his American Job Act, the West Coast Cannabis Expo’s organizers say it will be the very first to feature a Job Fair with career opportunities in the $1.7 billion legal medical marijuana industry.

The event launches this Friday, October 7, and continues through Sunday, October 9 at the Cow Palace – South Hall, located at 2600 Geneva Avenue in Daly City, just south of San Francisco.

The Job Fair idea came from the dynamic Cheryl Shuman, executive director of celebrity, media and public relations for KUSH Magazine and director of special projects for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA).

“Working with KUSH Magazine, I see hundreds of job opportunities,” Shuman said. “West Coast Cannabis Expo organizers are taking a more serious look by focusing on getting Americans back to work.”

Pardon Marc Emery Petition To Get White House Response

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 4, 2011 News

Jodie Emery

Jodie Emery and her imprisoned husband Marc at Yazoo City Medium Security Prison in Mississippi, July 4, 2011

More than 5,000 people have signed an official White House petition for President Obama to pardon Canadian “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery, who is serving a five-year federal prison term in the United States.

The White House recently launched its “We The People” website for Americans to submit petitions on any issue. The Obama Administration initially set the threshold at 5,000 signatures within 30 days in order to get a formal response.

After overwhelming response, including numerous petitions to legalize cannabis, the White House announced on October 3 that it was upping the threshold fivefold to 25,000 signatures, but said that petitions which had already gotten 5,000 or more signatures before the announcement would still be included.

The official White House website called it “a good problem to have.”

“Planning for the new We the People platform, we were confident the system would ultimately get a lot of use, but we expected it would take a little longer to get out into the ether and pick up speed,” reads an October 3 post by Macon Phillips on whitehouse.gov.

MTV Wants ‘Marijuana Addicts’ For Reality Show

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 4, 2011 Culture, Products

OpalMist

Just in case you aren’t already sick to death of MTV’s endless stream of brain-dead “reality shows” starring stupid, annoying people you’d never want in your life or on your TV, there’s — you guessed it! — plenty more on the way.

The network which may be single-handedly responsible for a precipitous lowering of the average American IQ is now looking for “marijuana addicts” to provide its slack-jawed audience with entertainment.

The “addicts” will be featured on MTV’s “True Life,” which is what you get when you combine a network too stingy to invest in actual programming content with pathetic, whiney wanna-be-stars who’d gladly eviscerate their mothers for 15 minutes of fame.

Or, as MTV would have it, the show, um, “covers important social and personal issues for young people in a straightforward, empathetic style that respects its participants and its impressionable viewers.”

Oh, I get it! They’re impressionable, so of COURSE you must lie to them that marijuana is addictive! Makes perfect sense, if you’re an amoral showbiz douche-bag who’d peddle his mother’s wrinkled ass if he thought he could make a couple extra bucks.

Washington State Woman Shoots Would-Be Marijuana Thief

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on October 4, 2011 News

KHQ

The homeowner at this Spokane residence told police she shot at two men attempting to steal her marijuana crop, hitting at least one of them.

A Washington state woman who is a legal medical marijuana patient shot a man in the head Monday; she said the guy was trying to steal part of her backyard cannabis crop, according to Spokane police. His alleged accomplice is still at large, and possibly wounded as well.

Officers found the man about two hours later with a gunshot wound to his skull — but “for whatever reason he was walking and talking,” said Officer Jennifer DeRuwe, spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Department, reports Meghann M. Cuniff of The Spokesman-Review.

The man had a bullet lodged in the back of his head.

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