Legislation

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Medical Marijuana Supporters Rally In Sacramento Today

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 9, 2011 Legislation, News

Protester Brian David at the Sacramento Federal Courthouse on October 7

The Marijuana Policy Project and a coalition of advocacy and labor groups are staging a demonstration today to protest the federal government’s escalated attack on California’s medical marijuana laws. A rally of medical marijuana patients and supporters is taking place in front of the Sacramento Federal Building and features state legislators, advocates, labor unions, and dispensary operators impacted by the recent Department of Justice (DOJ) crackdown in California.

Since the beginning of October, U.S. Attorneys in California have released statements giving some medical marijuana businesses 45 days to close or risk prosecution. They have also issued threats to landlords, indicating that they will be prosecuted and their property seized if they rent to medical marijuana businesses.

In addition, media outlets have been warned that advertising for medical marijuana businesses, a major source of media revenue in California, could lead to federal charges as well.

“The recent announcements by the U.S. attorneys of the intent to target the California medical marijuana industry are a waste of law enforcement resources and a betrayal of campaign promises made by President Obama,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). “Shutting down businesses that provide medical marijuana to patients, and threatening their landlords and media advertisers, will not have any effect on the illicit marijuana market.

Medical Marijuana Might Not Be On Ohio Ballot Until 2014

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 9, 2011 Legislation, Medical

Medical Marijuana Blog

When the Ohio Attorney General recently gave the OK for backers of a measure which would legalize medical marijuana in the state to begin gathering signatures to put it on the ballot, the assumption was it was the 2012 ballot being discussed. But now it appears the amendment to Ohio’s constitution might not go before voters until 2014, if at all.

The group backing the Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment will need about 385,000 valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot, meaning roughly twice that number to allow for mistakes and invalid names, and they plan to do the entire effort with volunteers, reports Maude L. Campbell at the Cleveland Scene.

So far, only 250 people have volunteered to collect signatures.

“Other ballot efforts that have succeeded [in Ohio]in a volunteer fashion usually had three to four thousand volunteers,” said Alternative Treatment spokesman Ryan Maitland. “Typically it has taken two full summers. We never claimed to have the ability to get it on the ballot in 2012.”

Tacoma Resoundingly Passes Lowest Priority For Pot Enforcement

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 9, 2011 Legislation, News

Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Tacoma Police officers hassle booth vendors selling pipes at this year’s Tacoma Hempfest in June. Police claimed that pot was “already their lowest priority,” but voters made it official on Tuesday.

Voters in Tacoma, Washington, just south of Seattle, sent a powerful message Tuesday to law enforcement and to state legislators in Olympia by joining Seattle in officially declaring marijuana possession laws the city’s “lowest law enforcement priority.”

Organizers Don Muridan and Sherry Bockwinkel, cosponsors of Tacoma Initiative No. 1, CannbisReformAct.org, gathered the necessary signatures and the voters of Tacoma resoundingly agreed, passing with measure with 65 percent approval.

The measure overwhelmingly passed by an almost 2:1 margin, despite being voted on in an off-year election. Modeled after Seattle’s 2003 initiative, Tacoma Initiative No. 1 makes adult marijuana possession offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement.

Can The Cops Track You With GPS? Supreme Court To Decide

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 8, 2011 Legislation, News

Washington City Paper

The United States Supreme Court will decide whether law enforcement should have obtained a search warrant before placing a global positioning system (GPS) tracking device on the car of a Washington, D.C., man who was suspected of dealing drugs, so they could covertly track his movements.

The justices on Tuesday heard oral arguments in an appeal from the Obama Administration, which wants the power to track suspects’ movements without getting a warrant, reports Bill Mears at CNN.

A majority of the justices appeared adamant after a one-hour public session that police officers should have gotten a warrant before placing the device on the subject’s vehicle, Mears reports. A government lawyer didn’t help the Feds’ case when he suggested that such surveillance could be used on members of the Court itself.

Ohio Could Get Chance To Decide On Medical Marijuana In 2012

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 8, 2011 Legislation, Medical, News

Ohio Patient Network

Ohioans could grow and use marijuana for medicinal purposes under a state constitutional amendment voters may get the chance to consider in 2012.

The Ohio Alternative Treatment Act recently cleared initial hurdles to allow supporters to start getting more than 385,000 signatures required to place the issue on the November 2012 general election ballot, reports Evan Bevins at The Marietta Times.

The amendment would allow medical practitioners in a “bona fide practitioner-patient relationship” to recommend marijuana for qualifying medical conditions including cancer, AIDS, Parkinsson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder and other diseases, conditions or treatments that produce severe nausea, pain or muscle spasms.

Show Me Cannabis: MO May Vote On Marijuana Legalization In 2012

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 8, 2011 Legislation, News

Riverfront Times

A Missouri group has won approval to start circulating petitions to legalize marijuana in the state of Missouri.

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan on Monday gave the Columbia-based group Show-Me Cannabis the go-ahead to begin circulating two ballot referendum petitions that, if successful, would make marijuana use legal for all state residents 21 and older, and make Missouri’s laws the most relaxed in the country, reports Chad Garrison at Riverfront Times.

One petition would amend the Missouri Constitution to legalize cannabis, allow doctors to recommend the medicinal use of marijuana and release prison inmates convicted of nonviolent pot offenses, reports The Associated Press. It would also allow the Legislature to enact a marijuana tax of up to $100 per pound.

Worth Repeating: Reasons Obama Will Shut Down Medical Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 7, 2011 Dispensaries, Legislation, Medical

Medical marijuana advocates protest outside the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento on October 7 as officials inside held a press conference on their plans to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries in California

Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.

Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

Once again, you are witnessing medical cannabis history. Starting with California, and then nationwide, Obama’s goal is to shut down every state’s medical cannabis care facilities across the country.

So far, President Obama’s cannabis policy appears to be the “shut them up, and shut them down” strategy.

Why? Because medical cannabis culture is winning! The 75-year-old war on cannabis is a failure and is over and cannabis has won the day! Straight up. How unhinged are they? Our freedom of the press is also being threatened.

Coalition Sues Feds, Seeks Halt To Medical Cannabis Crackdown

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 6, 2011 Dispensaries, Legislation, News

Melissa Barnes/ABA Journal

San Francisco attorney Matt Kumin: “This is a multi pronged, organized effort to get into court and to send a message to the federal government that we need to stop the aggression and sit down and talk reasonably about these issues”

Lawyers for a growing coalition of Californians including patients, property owners and medical cannabis cooperatives — who suddenly find themselves under attack by the state’s four U.S. Attorneys — will file suit against the federal government, seeking an immediate halt to a statewide crackdown.

The lawsuit will be brought simultaneously in each of the four federal districts in California – San Francisco (Northern), Sacramento (Eastern), Los Angeles (Central) and San Diego (Southern) – where U.S. Attorneys have threatened criminal prosecution of both tenants and landlords where medical cannabis dispensaries exist.

The four U.S. Attorneys have also threatened the landlords with forfeiture of their properties.

A press conference will be held in San Francisco Monday morning to announce the lawsuit.

The lawsuit will seek an immediate order from a federal judge to stop the crackdown on cooperatives, property owners and businesses that support them. (Americans for Safe Access also filed suit last month against the federal government, but did not seek an immediate restraining order.)

“This is multipronged, organized effort to get into court and to send a message to the federal government that we need to stop the aggression and sit down and talk reasonably about these issues,” said San Francisco attorney Matt Kumin, one of the lawyers bringing the federal suit forward.

Florida Medical Marijuana Petition Needs Shitload Of Signatures

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 3, 2011 Legislation, Medical, News

Joshua Giesegh/PUFMM

If you live in Florida and you want to vote on whether to legalize medical marijuana on the 2012 ballot, you’d better hope that either House Joint Resolution 353 makes it through the Legislature, or that 646,889 more Floridians sign the People United for Medical Marijuana petition.

PUFMM has gotten 29,922 of the 676,811 valid signatures needed by February 1 to qualify for the ballot, which means they’re only 4.4 percent of the way there, reports Matthew Hendley at Broward Palm Beach New Times.

Legalizing Medical Marijuana Won’t Hurt Kids: Hospital Study

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 2, 2011 Legislation, News

MarijuanaPictures.com

A new study by Rhode Island Hospital concludes that legalizing medical marijuana in that state did not increase use among youth.

Lead author Esther Choo, M.D., an emergency medicine physician with Rhode Island Hospital, said the study was performed to gauge the impact of medical marijuana legalization in the state in 2006, reports GoLocalProv.

Choo and her coauthors compared trends in adolescent cannabis use between Rhode Island and Massachusetts using a self-report called the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System. The team included surveys completed between 1997 and 2009 in their study.

Based on their analysis of 32,570 students, they found that while marijuana use was common throughout the study period, there were no statistically significant differences in marijuana use between states in any year.

“Our study did not find increases in adolescent marijuana use related to Rhode Island’s 2006 legalization of medical marijuana; however, additional research may follow future trends as medical marijuana in Rhode Island and other states becomes more widely used,” Choo said.

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