Browsing: Legislation

Photo: Aaron Thackeray, Westword
Dispensaries like Herbal Connections in Denver could be legislated out of existence if law enforcement has its way.

​Colorado lawmakers writing a major medical marijuana regulation bill plan to meet Friday with officials from the state attorney general’s office to work on what they’re calling a “compromise” to include “more law-and-order language” in the bill. But advocates of safe and legal access for patients are blasting the current version of the bill, saying it is already too restrictive, reports John Ingold of The Denver Post.

The bill “cannot be supported by any serious patient or caregiver in Colorado’s medical marijuana community,” attorney/activist Rob Corry wrote in a letter Thursday to state Sen. Chris Romer, the Denver Democrat who is drafting the legislation.

seethru.co.uk
Available at your local liquor store? Yes, in Washington, if HB 2401 passes.

​If you want to be able to grow, sell, or smoke marijuana legally in the state of Washington, next Wednesday you may want to be in OIympia, the state capitol, reports Jerry Cornfield at the Everett HeraldNet.

At 1:30 p.m. on January 13, the House Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee will consider House Bill 2401, which would have Washington treat marijuana much like it does alcohol.
The bill is sponsored by Democratic Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson.
If the bill is passed, those 21 or older won’t face criminal penalties for possessing, transporting, or using cannabis, the HeraldNet reports.
However, growing and selling marijuana would still be unlawful, as only state-licensed growers would be allowed to cultivate pot, and only state-licensed stores would be allowed to sell it.
Like with booze, smoking and driving are a no-no, as is providing pot to minors.
Under HB 2401, marijuana could be bought at state liquor stores. A hefty tax would be added to the herb, with proceeds going to drug education and rehabilitation programs.


Photo: www.medicalmarijuanablog.com
“Guards! Seize that one! He looks too happy!”

​A rural Tennesee judge who “routinely” orders random spectators in his courtroom to be grabbed up and piss-tested for drugs, if he doesn’t like their looks, is finally being sued by an unhappy citizen.

The distinctly yokel-like judge, who ordered a court spectator to submit to a drug test based “on a hunch” is being sued for violating the spectator’s constitutional rights, reports Daniel Tercer at Raw Story.

Benjamin Marchant’s lawsuit against Dickson County Judge Durwood Moore says Marchant was a spectator in the court in January 2009, waiting to give a friend a ride home. Marchant was undoubtedly surprised when the judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to seize him and administer a urinalysis.
Officers grabbed Marchant, allegedly without any evidence of illegal behavior, and took him to a different place in the courthouse where he was forced to submit to a drug screen urinalysis. The man was released from custody when the drug test came back negative.

NORML.org
Professional women across America and the world are coming out of the cannabis closet.

​The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the nation’s oldest cannabis advocacy organization, today announced the launch of the NORML Women’s Alliance.

The NORML Women’s Alliance is a nonpartisan coalition of educated, successful, high-profile professional women who believe that cannabis prohibition is a self-destructive and hypocritical policy that undermines the American family, sends mixed and false messages to young people, and destroys the principles of personal liberty and local self-government, according to the organization.

CMMNJ.org

​On the last day possible, New Jersey’s legislature will debate whether to legalize the medical use of marijuana in the Garden State.

Monday, Jan. 11 is the final day for the current lame duck session of the Legislature before it reorganizes itself the next day, reports Brian Thompson of NBC New York. And it is on that day that Speaker Joe Roberts will post the medical marijuana bill that has been slowly making its way through the labyrinthine halls of the Legislature for months.
The New Jersey State Senate has already passed one version of the bill, but when it reached the Assembly committee, several changes were made. That’s the version the full Assembly will vote on next Monday, and then that same afternoon or evening, the Senate could approve the changes.

Photo: westcoastleaf.com
Medical marijuana activist/provider Mickey Martin: “I was not a criminal then, nor am I one now”

​More than 50 people rallied outside the federal building in downtown Oakland, Calif., Monday to protest a one-year halfway house sentence for a medical marijuana activist, and to demand the federal government respect states’ rights regarding medicinal cannabis.

Leading the rally was Michael “Mickey” Martin, who has been sentenced to two years of non-prison confinement after his March 26, 2008 guilty plea for “conspiring to manufacture and distribute” a mixture containing “a detectable amount of marijuana,” reports KTVU-TV.
Martin, 35, ran Tainted Inc., later known as Compassion Medical Edibles, an Oakland-based business producing candies, cookies, ice cream, brownies, energy drinks and other consumables containing cannabis.

MediLeaf

​The city council of Gilroy, California, which had already once approved a lawsuit against a local marijuana dispensary in a closed session, has done so a second time, this time by a 4-3 vote in open session, reports Jonathan Partridge at the Gilroy Dispatch.

The closed session vote on Nov. 16 resulted in Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy on Dec. 15 turning down the city’s request for a preliminary injunction to close MediLeaf dispensary pending a trial. Judge Murphy in part based his action on accusations from the dispensary’s owners that the city had violated the Brown Act, which mandates open meetings.

Photo: Carol Hirata/Windsor Beacon
MediGrow owner Lazarus Pino said he’s ignoring Windsor’s moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries. “I’m here for the patients. I provide medical care.”

​MediGrow, one of three medical marijuana dispensaries operating in Windsor, Colorado, has been ordered to close in compliance with a 75-day moratorium the town board passed on Dec. 16. But MediGrow’s owner, Lazarus Pino, said Tuesday he plans to stay open.

“I’m here for the patients,” Pino said, reports Lisa Mehring of the Windsor Beacon. “I provide medical care. What’s so bad about helping people medically? I’ve invested a lot of money in this place. I wish they would let me operate.”
Since the moratorium on Dec. 16, the Windsor Police Department has issued a citation every single day the business has remained open. Every citation comes with an appearance in Windsor Municipal Court.
If a judge finds MediGrow in violation, the dispensary could face a $293 fine with a $7 surcharge for every day the business remains open.
Chief of Police John Michaels said there’d been no problem in issuing the daily citations. “We go in, we issue our citation, and we make a little small talk,” Michaels said.

Graphic: Reality Catcher

​Medical marijuana patients in Colorado have a constitutional right not only to use cannabis, but to buy it as well, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Arapahoe County District Judge Christopher Cross ruled in favor of CannaMart dispensary, which along with three patients sued the city of Centennial after the city forced it to shut down in October, reports Kristen Wyatt of The Associated Press.
CannaMart maintains that Colorado cities 
are violating the state constitution when they ban all dispensaries. Unlike similar laws in a dozen other states, Colorado’s medical marijuana law is a constitutional amendment.
The injunction granted by Judge Cross prevents Centennial from keeping CannaMart shuttered while the dispensary challenges the city’s ban on pot shops because they’re in violation of federal drug laws. The medical use of marijuana isn’t recognized under federal law.

Graphic: Darwinek

​Vermont legalized medical marijuana five years ago. But eligible patients who want to use the plant to ease chronic pain and nausea have been forced to either grow their own or resort to the black market, since the state never established a legal outlet to obtain it.

A state lawmaker plans in 2010 to introduce legislation that would solve this problem. The bill would create compassion centers where people on Vermont’s medical marijuana registry can buy their medicine, reports Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau.
“What is driving me is a sense of compassion and fairness,” said Chris Bray (D-New Haven). “This is a drug we have vetted as a state as being appropriate for people with defined medical conditions and yet we haven’t provided a safe and legal way for them to purchase it.”
Bray said a constituent, one of 189 people registered as medical marijuana patients in Vermont, has suffered because of Vermont’s lack of dispensaries. “He resents the fact, and I think justifiably, that he was pushed into buying medical marijuana from illicit sources, which is expensive and illegal and often not even available to him,” Bray said.
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