| TokeoftheTown.com |
In just six days on Dec. 5 the Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether or not a proposed medical marijuana initiative already in the signature-gathering process will be allowed to move forward.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says that the language proposed would open the floodgates for rampant abuse of the medical marijuana program. Medical marijuana supporters – including nearly 80 percent of Florida voters – think Bondi is horribly out of touch.
Fifteen years ago, voters in the state of Washington passed into law one of the nation’s first state-level medical marijuana programs. While certainly flawed, as most of those early laws were, the pioneering program has produced a robust network of doctors, growers, dispensaries, and patients in the Pacific Northwest.
Last year, in the 2012 elections, Washington joined Colorado as the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults, enjoying an easy 55-45 victory at the polls. More recently, a memo was sent out by Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice, essentially giving the two states the feds’ blessing to move ahead with their experiments with legal weed. It’s all good in Washington, then, right? Unfortunately, no.
Could medical marijuana be sold through actual pharmacies in Michigan? That’s the hope of a few Michigan lawmakers, who say that the plant should be rescheduled to include it along with other beneficial medicines and have it sold over-the-counter in licensed pharmacies.
The only catch: the feds would have to give their okay first.
Senate Bill 660, written by Michigan state Sens. Roger Kahn and Randy Richardville, would reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II drug, alongside drugs like morphine and OxyContin. Cannabis is currently a Schedule 1 drug, which means it has no medicinal value whatsoever in the eyes of the (clearly shortsighted) federal government.
| Lorelei Ulrich from mmj4l.com |
Could a six-year-old sick child help turn medical marijuana laws in Pennsylvania? If lawmakers there have a heart, the answer will hopefully be yes.
Lorelei Ulrich has been steadily declining in health for four years, suffering from epilepsy that has her lifeless, not wanting to eat or play and basically wasting away. Her parents say that all of the treatments they have tried haven’t helped – but medical cannabis treatments high in CBD have worked for kids in other states and now the Ulriches are fighting to make it legal in their state.
Portland, Maine voters this November are being asked to legalize the possession (not the purchase or sale, mind you) of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis for adults over the age of 21 in the city. Currently, that amount is decriminalized with no jail time and a maximum $600 fine.
While the law change really won’t changemuch, news reports this week tout Portland as a test-case for future East Coast cities and states thinking about similar progressive marijuana laws. But is it?
A law that many argued would help end widespread prison overcrowding in California was killed by Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday.
Senate Bill 649 would have given state judges and district attorneys the ability to charge small possession cases as either felonies or misdemeanors, dropping prison times for personal amounts of drugs from up to three years in jail to under a year in some cases. Provisions were also included that would have increased treatment options for addicts.
The Washington state Liquor Control Board, which was charged with overseeing cannabis regulations after voter approved Initiative 502 last November, is expected to pass the state’s initial set of rules governing the cannabis industry later today.
The rules will iron out the details of things like the number of plants in grows, security at recreational shops and how many shops can open in each city and county.
| John Morgan. |
Orlando attorney John Morgan has become the face of a growing grassroots medical marijuana ballot initiative campaign in Florida.
Morgan, who has recently taken to radio airwaves to get his message across, has also put his money where his mouth is by donating more than a quarter-million dollars to the People United for Medical Marijuana campaign.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Thursday heard an earful from some wicked-pissed prospective dispensary owners who say that they can’t find a place to do business in the medical marijuana-legal state.
More than 400 people packed the boardroom of a Holiday Inn in Somerville, Mass. yesterday for the first and only public hearing regarding state licensing.
A leading Jamaican justice official says Jamaica will consider changes to their cannabis laws, easing restrictions on a plant many worldwide already associate with the tiny, beautiful island nation.
Justice Minister Mark Golding tells the Jamaica Gleaner that changes to state marijuana laws in Colorado and Washington and the subsequent reaction by the federal government are signs of a shifting attitude towards cannabis. Golding also points out that much of the fight against ganja in his country over the last fifty years has been at the insistence of the United States.