Legalize It

Mason Tvert Q&A: The burning ambition of an advocate who’s been pushing pot for a decade

By Jack Daniel on February 7, 2014 Culture, Legalize It

Mason Tvert, featured in the following wide-ranging Q&A, has played a key role in Colorado’s legalization of marijuana since 2005.

Mason Tvert, of the Marijuana Policy Project

Beginning with pro-pot campaigns at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, Tvert and his SAFER organization advocated for statewide recreational marijuana legalization for eight years, working step by step on MMJ initiatives and then decriminalization on city and state levels until Amendment 64 passed in November 2012.
Now communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, Tvert has begun work on vaporizing marijuana laws outside of Colorado.
Josiah Hessie with Denver Westword sat down with Tvert to get his take on the black market, contact highs, smoking in public, and why he feels it’s too early to tell what the legal weed world is going to look like.
The full interview can be seen over at Westword

White House Deputy Drug Czar admits weed safer than pills and booze, offers no ideas for reform

By Jack Daniel on February 6, 2014 Legalize It, News

President Barack Obama made waves in an interview with the New Yorker magazine a couple weeks ago, in which he finally stated the plain and simple truth that no American president up until now has had the guts to tell, that marijuana use is no more dangerous than alcohol use. Pro-cannabis advocates took the statement as a cautious grain of optimism, while the DEA and sheriffs across the country crapped their cages.
The question though, whether or not marijuana is just as safe as alcohol, is an important one, as it casts a very real shadow of doubt over the retention of cannabis on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. In a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday on Capitol Hill, the White House’s Deputy Drug Czar was grilled on this very same topic, and like the president, he finally gave in to reality.

WhiteHouse.gov

Deputy Drug Czar Michael Botticelli

17-year study finds legalizing cannabis lowers suicide rates

By Jack Daniel on February 5, 2014 Legalize It, Medical, News

The benefits of cannabis use are many, and are as varied as the types of people who benefit from the plant. Not a week goes by anymore without at least one headline about another person, young or old, who claims that marijuana saved their life.
In a groundbreaking report just published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from the University of Colorado, scouring state-level suicide data over a 17-year period, may have proven that legalizing marijuana may be saving more lives than we think.

Missouri man doing life for pot drafts proposal for legalization

By Jack Daniel on February 4, 2014 Follow that story, Legalize It, News

The effort to legalize marijuana in Missouri is going full-steam ahead with everyone from activists and lawmakers to the state’s only prisoner serving life without parole for marijuana-only offenses trying to free the weed.

Kholood Eid

Mizanskey hopes a measure will pass that would free him from prison after more than 20 years behind bars.

Show Me Cannabis is currently polling two initiatives to see if there’s enough support to try to get on the 2014 ballot. State Representative Chris Kelly (D) introduced House Bill 1659 last week, which would legalize and regulate marijuana for people over the age of 21. And Jeff Mizanskey, the man who has been in prison for the past 20 years serving life without parole for marijuana, has submitted a proposal that would make him a free man.
Dubbed the “Mizanskey Measure” by Mizanskey’s attorney, Tony Nenninger, who filed the paperwork in Mizanskey’s name, the initiative would legalize marijuana for people over the age of 21 and release nonviolent offenders from prison.
Ray Downs at the Riverfront Times has all of the details

Surprising nobody, head of DEA upset about marijuana acceptance

By Jack Daniel on February 4, 2014 Follow that story, Legalize It, News

Visitors to the DEA Headquarters building, located in Washington D.C., may be surprised to learn that there is an actual museum onsite. Fun for the whole family, hard-earned taxpayer dollars were used to construct not only a fully detailed mock medical marijuana dispensary, but a quaint faux crack house right next door. Because, you know, Schedule I, etc.
DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart passes by the monuments to the War on Drug’s failures each day when she arrives to work, and the constant reminder has her lashing out with blame for everyone but her own department.

‘1-in-11 get addicted to pot’ stat debunked

By Jack Daniel on February 3, 2014 Legalize It, News, Say what?

Toke of the Town

You may have heard the sarcastic saying that “95% of statistics are made up on the spot”. It is beginning to look like that may be the case for the decades-old study on addiction rates by the National Institute on Drug Abuse(NIDA) that both pro- and anti-cannabis supporters cite when they say that roughly 9% of marijuana users will become addicted.
The same NIDA study, released in a trade journal named Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology in 1994, actually places pot near the bottom of the list, if that 9-10% figure is to be believed. Marijuana advocates can point to the study and show that addiction rates, according to the study, are much higher in substances like heroin (23-25%), cocaine (15-20%), or even tobacco (20-30%) and alcohol (15%), but progressive thinkers on the topic feel that even 9% is way off on weed, and that the number is truly much lower.

Arkansas Attorney General rejects confusing marijuana legalization proposal

By William Breathes on January 31, 2014 Legalize It, News, Say what?

Arkansas AG Dustin McDaniel

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel ruled that a marijuana legalization measure that repeals state laws on marijuana possession, use and cultivation for being too vague.
This is the second time that McDaniel has rejected the ballot proposal. And no, he is not unclear as to what “repealing all laws related to cannabis” means, nor does he seem to have a personal grudge against pot. Basically, the proposal just doesn’t make sense.

Wyoming has three possibilities for upcoming marijuana reform

By Wax Jones on January 29, 2014 Legalize It, Legislation, Medical, News

Red state are going green. We have recently reported that Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Alabama, which are all predominantly republican, are making strides towards legalization, or at least decriminalization, of marijuana.
Today we are adding another to that list — Wyoming.

Uruguay looks to lead in cannabis research, Paraguay still in the dark ages

By Jack Daniel on January 28, 2014 Global, Legalize It, News

With marijuana still sitting unjustly on Schedule I of the controlled substances list here in the U.S., official in-depth studies on the specific effects that differing strains of weed can elicit have been limited, both in number and in scope.
Fortunately, the South American nation of Uruguay has recently legalized marijuana use on a national level, opening the door for a very willing and eager community of scientists and researchers to set up shop and begin to give ganja a long overdue honest lab-grade analysis.

Missouri Governor won’t talk about marijuana reform?

By William Breathes on January 24, 2014 Legalize It, Say what?

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (in the orange cap).

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon talked about many things in his State of the State speech Tuesday night. He talked about jobs (used the word 20 times), kids (said “child” 16 times), the economy (12 times), and he even gave a shout-out to the LGBT community.
But one thing he never mentioned: marijuana reform.
Why not? The Riverfront Times digs deeper.

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