Author William Breathes


Last week, Gov. Mark Dayton named 16 people to a task force that’s responsible for evaluating the state’s medical cannabis program. The list is a mixed bag, including eight healthcare providers and four members of the public — but also four opponents from the law enforcement community.
None of them have been content to sit on the sidelines. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, for instance, once wrote an op-ed calling cannabis “the most dangerous illegal drug in our nation,” and reaffirmed that position last November, mocking the use of the term “medical.”


Update, July 11 at 2:49 p.m.: We spoke with representatives from the Bakersfield PD who tell us they did not make a mistake. Seriously. The Sergeant we spoke with said that they valued the haul based on a price per-gram. Yes, they value all 3,067,192 grams at roughly $24 a pop. He said they don’t go by the bulk price, only the street price, and according to their research, they think $24 a gram is reasonable.
But the reality is that by doing that, they’ve completely blown any credibility they had left. Nobody is selling 3 million grams of pot by the gram. Nobody. Try as you may to sell even an ounce at that rate, and you’d go crazy. That’s why people (the majority) buy in bulk. Also, nobody in California is paying $25 a gram on the street. Nobody. These cops are just plain clueless about the things they are supposed to know about. A more reasonable figure would be $7.6 million, or just over $1,000 a pound. Even if it was top shelf, it wouldn’t get more than $3,500 a pound — meaning it would be worth $23.67 million at most.

A DEA raid in Denver.


Back in January, Marijuana Policy Project spokesman and Amendment 64 advocate Mason Tvert applauded comments by President Barack Obama in which he suggested that marijuana is not as risky as alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
Nonetheless, the new National Drug Control Strategy document for 2014 (see it below) reflects little or no softening of the feds’ approach to pot. And that leaves Tvert feeling frustrated.

Daniel Soligny.


Daniel Soligny had a good life, except for the whole health insurance thing. He didn’t have the most glamorous job, sure, but spending 14 hours a day on rollerblades at Sonic Beach Miami Gardens kept him active, and his girl, Jacqueline, was always by his side. Although he was 20 and she a young-looking 35, the couple was a psychic match — enjoying weekend outings to South Beach and goofing off.
Then he found out he had tumors on his testicles. Chemo? Nope. Cannabis? Yes. Read more over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

If it wasn’t for cannabis, Danny Belcher wouldn’t sleep. He’s spent more of his life now away from Vietnam as he ever did there but the memories still cause him to have nightmares. It’s illegal in Kentucky, but Belcher doesn’t care. He’s going to use it. He just doesn’t want to be afraid of being a criminal anymore.
“I realize it’s just a nightmare,” he told a joint committee on Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection yesterday according to the the Courrier-Journal. “I will light that pipe up. I’ll be a criminal. I’ll go back to sleep.”


Sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder can begin obtaining medical marijuana legally under Arizona law as soon as January.
Will Humble, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, announced the decision today in his blog. PTSD patients and medical-cannabis advocates have been expecting a decision since last month, when state Administrative Law Judge Thomas Shedden ruled that PTSD should be deemed a qualifying ailment.


On Friday, June 27, several Denver police officers entered Maryjane’s 420 Shop and Social Club, at 539 West 43rd Avenue, and issued citations to some of its members. The club has been closed ever since and comments from his spokesperson suggest that Denver Mayor Michael Hancock would like it to stay that way.
The debate over whether or not marijuana social clubs are allowed under Colorado law has been raging since well before limited legal recreational sales launched on January 1.


With the vote on medical marijuana a mere four months away, a group chaired by both those who advocate and those who are opposed to medical weed has formed a Blue Ribbon Commission to provide research, expert opinions, and feedback on a wide range of medical marijuana issues.
Florida For Care says its purpose is to help formulate a medical marijuana “Gold Standard” for the state by holding several meetings between now and November throughout Florida to not only educate people, but to serve as a resource for state legislators as they seek to develop and support medical marijuana policies. Read more over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.


Two Florida men could be facing a life sentence in Oklahoma for attempting to transport Colorado-and California-made cannabis, hash, edibles and other concentrated forms of herb worth about $250,000.
According to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, Robert Shepard and Andrew Mason were stopped last week outside of Oklahoma City for following another vehicle too closely. That’s a common charge in states neighboring Colorado, where troopers have been profiling certain cars with green-and-white license plates and pulling them over for minor infractions. Narcotics agents say the Florida men were acting nervous during the stop, which prompted agents to call out a drug dog, Xena. (BAD DOG!)


Cops in Grand Rapids, Michigan say a local physician helped a “drug trafficking” ring by writing medical recommendations for cannabis without ever seeing patients or even looking at medical records.
For his part, Dr. Gregory Kuldanek says he was always following state laws.
The charges, made this week in U.S. District Court, allege that Kuldanek and nine other people worked together to grow more than 100 marijuana plants. Kuldanek was also charged with “maintaining a drug-involve premises.” In other words, the DEA is arguing that the doc wrote fake recommendations to members of the pot ring to covering their activities in the state medical marijuana program.
According to the DEA, Kuldanek wrote recommendations for 66 patients and caregivers linked to the organization, often signing over “stacks” of them on the same day. Prosecutors say there’s no way he could have seen all of those patients in that time span.

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