Toke of the Town

Author Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Hundreds Protest At Medical Marijuana Defendants’ Hearing

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By on Medical, News

Photo: Charles V. Tines/The Detroit News
Chuck Ream of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association rallies supporters on Thursday.

​Several hundred chanting demonstrators showed their support as 10 people appeared in court on Thursday on multiple charges of delivery of marijuana.

The 10 were among 16 Metro Detroit residents arrested August 25 across Oakland County and charged with violating Michigan’s medical marijuana act, reports Mike Martindale of The Detroit News. All are free on bond and facing charges in Bloomfield, Ferndale and Waterford district courts.
All were arrested and charged following raids and seizures by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Narcotics Enforcement Team at a Ferndale medical marijuana dispensary and a Waterford compassion club and its related dispensary.
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Prop 19 Pot Legalization Pulling In High Dollar Donations

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By on Culture, News

Photo: Green Patriot
David Bronner, Dr. Bronner’s Natural Soaps: “Cannabis for me is a daily sacrament and a communion that at the end of each day helps me get past my small petty self and find my moral center”

​With the election less than a month away, the campaign to pass Proposition 19, California’s marijuana legalization initiative, is pulling in some high-dollar donations.

The owners of a natural soap company and a hemp clothing store announced on Thursday a $100,000 contribution to pay for a voter registration drive aimed at California’s college students, reports John Hoeffel of The Los Angeles Times. That donation followed the contribution of $100,000 on Monday by Napster co-founder Sean Parker and the recent donation of $50,000 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, based in Escondido, Calif., announced the $100,000 donation to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) in The Huffington Post. Bronner put up $75,000, and the founders of Capitol Hemp in Washinton, D.C., kicked in $25,000.
“Something like this will benefit everybody in America, and we just want to do our small part,” said Alan Amsterdam, co-owner of Capitol Hemp. “It’ll trickle down to the rest of the states.”
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Mexico’s President Concerned About Legalized Marijuana In CA

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By on Legislation, News

Photo: Vivirlatino
Mexico President Felipe Calderon: Marijuana legalization would mean a “terrible inconsistency” in U.S. drug policy

​The president of Mexico has given his two pesos’ worth in the debate over whether Californians should legalize marijuana at the polls next month.

President Felipe Calderon told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday that he was concerned about what legalizing cannabis in California would do to the larger Drug War. Calderon told AP that legalization would mean a “terrible inconsistency” in U.S. drug policy, reports The Los Angeles Times.
Calderon’s statements are a little puzzling in view of the fact that in August, he said he is open to a debate on the legalization of marijuana and other drugs.
At that time, Calderon called the increasingly widespread public discussion of legalization in Mexico “a fundamental debate.”
“You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons of the argument on both sides,” Calderon said in August.
Before that statement, however, Calderon had long maintained he is opposed to the idea of legalization. The Mexican president’s office issued a second statement, hours after the first one in August, saying that while Calderon was “open to debate on the issue,” he remained “against the legalization of drugs.”
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N.J. Medical Marijuana Rules Doom Patients To Weak Weed

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By on Dispensaries, Medical

Graphic: Cafe Press

​The New Jersey Health Department on Wednesday night released 97 pages of rules for what patients, advocates and lawmakers are describing as one of the most restrictive medical marijuana programs in the country.

In an extreme bonehead move, the state limited the potency of cannabis to just 10 percent THC, according to the rules. This means that New Jersey medical marijuana patients must deal with marijuana that is only half the potency of top-shelf medical cannabis in other states.

Patients must have one of nine diseases or conditions, and their authorizing doctors must have been treating them for at least a year or have seen them four times, and be willing to certify that traditional forms of relief have failed, reports Susan K. Livio of NJ.com.

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Napster Co-Founder Gives $100K To Prop 19 Pot Legalization

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By on Legislation, News

Photo: aducation.net
Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, has donated $100,000 to the Prop 19 marijuana legalization cause in California.

​Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and a current venture capitalist, on Monday donated $100,000 to Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana for adults in California, according to campaign finance records.

Parker, the guy played by Justin Timberlake in the new Facebook movie, The Social Network, donated the money to the Drug Policy Action Committee, which is separate from Richard Lee’s Yes On 19 committee, reports Chris Roberts at our sister Village Voice Media blog, SF Weekly.
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CA Atty. Gen. Candidates Won’t Pledge To Defend Legal Marijuana

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By on Legislation, News

Photo: KALW News
Kamala Harris (left) and Steve Cooley: Neither will give a straight answer on defending Prop 19 marijuana legalization if California voters pass it

​Both Candidates Hazy On Whether They’d Defend Prop 19 In Court

It seemed a simple enough question in Tuesday’s debate between the two candidates for Attorney General of California: If voters pass Proposition 19, legalizing marijuana, would they defend it in court?
Neither Democrat Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, nor Republican Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles district attorney infamous for his personal battle against medical marijuana, was able to muster the courage for either a “Yes” or a “No” on the ballot initiative to legalize cannabis for recreational adult use, reports Peter Hecht at The Sacramento Bee.
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‘Mayor Juana’ Wants Downtown Pot Garden In Dunsmuir, CA

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By on Culture, Dispensaries

Photo: Andreas Fuhrmann/Redding Record Searchlight
Dunsmuir, California Mayor Peter Arth, himself a medical marijuana patient, stands on his land in the center of town where he is proposing to grow a medical marijuana garden in greenhouses

​Peter Arth, mayor of Dunsmuir, California, doesn’t mind being called “Mayor Juana” for his highly visible advocacy of medical marijuana in the tiny Northern California town.
The mayor is aware he has become a lightning rod for a pot culture war in Siskiyou County that is being waged not in the forests or streets, but in the minds of local residents, reports Damian Mann of the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune.
Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta are the only two cities in the mostly rural county where medical marijuana dispensaries are allowed to operate. Elsewhere in the county, government leaders have banned pot shops in their communities.
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Michigan: Silverdome Cannabis Convention Cancelled

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By on Culture, Products

Photo: dscriber
Bruce Perlowin: “They were clear we weren’t going to get a city permit, so I decided to reschedule it”

​Organizers have canceled a marijuana festival planned for October at the Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions.

Elected officials and police cast the show as a “pot party,” and pointed to advertising materials they claimed “upset” them because the materials described the event in much the same way. Local officials claimed the event would tarnish the reputation of Pontiac and Oakland County, Michigan.
Promoters said the International Holistic Health Cannabis Convention Halloween Harmony & Harvest Festival (damn, how were they going to fit that on the marquee?) had been “moved,” Pontiac Silverdome Building General Manager Grant Reeves told Shaun Byron of The Oakland Press.
Reeves declined to say if the promoter had given a specific reason for moving or canceling the festival, and said that any information about the move would have to come from the promoter.
The event had been planned for October 29-31.
The event was a trade show focusing on natural and healthy products, as well as green technologies, claimed promoter Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Medical Marijuana Inc.
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Federal Marijuana Patient Safe From The DEA

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By on Culture, Medical

Photo: Michael McElroy/Miami New Times
Irv fires up a federal joint. He works at Fort Lauderdale’s New Bridge Securities, where he is senior vice-president of the stock trading firm. Yeah, his boss is cool with it.

​The next time someone tells you the FDA says marijuana isn’t medicine, remind them that Irvin Rosenfeld gets his weed from the federal government.

Irv tokes up every day in the parking lot of Fort Lauderdale’s New Bridge Securities, which shares a building with the local offices of the Drug Enforcement Administration. And the DEA can’t touch him.
“Marijuana is fantastic medicine,” Rosenfeld said. “Doctors should be allowed to prescribe it nationwide.”

Rosenfeld, who at age 10 was diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes tumors to grow at the ends of his bones, was taking all kinds of narcotics as a kid. But as a 19-year-old who had just moved to Florida on his doctor’s advice, who felt the warm weather would do his body good, Irv accidentally discovered in 1971 that marijuana worked way better than the prescriptions he’d been taking.
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