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Browsing: Legislation
| Photo: Brian Grimmer |
| Patient activist Brian Grimmer: “Once the dispensary/co-op situation is figured out at the state level, we will work with the city council to begin the process of opening a dispensary in Ellensburg” |
Ellensburg, Washington has joined the short, but growing, list of cities in the Evergreen State which have decided to allow medical marijuana collective gardens.
On Monday night, the city council unanimously adopted an emergency ordinance on the issue to allow patients to grow cannabis collectively for medical use, reports Aaron Hilf at KNDO.
However, the same emergency ordinance which allows collective marijuana gardens also places a six-month moratorium on medical cannabis dispensaries.
The collective marijuana gardens must be indoors and at least 300 feet from schools, along with other zoning regulations.
“We really wanted to be able to move quickly so that if someone did want to come forward there was a framework within the city, an application process within the city, and zoning within the city that allowed them to become a collective,” said Mayor Bruce Tabb.
For an eminently reasonable $25 permit fee, along with a doctor’s medical marijuana authorization, patients in Ellensburg can now get together and grow cannabis for medicinal use.
| Graphic: Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol |
The effort to legalize marijuana in Colorado in 2012 is kicking into high gear. A former cop and a former judge will be among those collecting signatures in Denver on Wednesday.
Police officers, judges and other criminal justice professionals who once enforced Colorado’s marijuana prohibition laws are now helping to get an initiative to legalize and regulate cannabis onto the state’s 2012 ballot.
This Wednesday a former Denver cop and a former Lafayette judge will participate in a signature-gathering drive to support the new initiative by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.
| Photo: Teesha McClam/Dayton Daily News |
| Tonya Davis and other activists are working to get a Constitutional amendment on the Ohio ballot in November 2012 to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Davis said cannabis relieves her symptoms without the problems associated with harsh pharmaceutical narcotics. |
A group favoring the legalization of marijuana for medical uses in Ohio has taken initial steps to place a Constitutional amendment on the ballot in November 2012.
Supporters of the “Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment” last week submitted 2,143 signatures on petitions to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine with summary language of the proposed amendment, reports Lynn Hulsey at the Dayton Daily News. DeWine sent the signatures out to local election boards for verification.
The group needs 1,000 valid signatures before DeWine will determine if the amendment summary is a “fair and truthful statement.” It will then be reviewed by the Ohio Ballot Board and Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.
| Photo: Washington Highways |
| The collectives will be limited to a strip along State Route 525 in Mukilteo |
On a 5-2 vote Monday night, the Mukilteo City Council approved an ordinance allowing collective medical marijuana gardens in the Snohomish County, Washington city.
The move is significant, according to patient activist Philip Dawdy of the Washington Cannabis Association and 4 Evergreen Group, because it makes the city the first in Snohomish County to allow for collective gardens. Other cities in the county, including Everett, Lake Stevens and Marysville, have banned them.
| Photo: Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger |
| Multiple sclerosis patient John Ray Wilson is handcuffed after being sentenced to five years in prison for “manufacturing and drug possession” |
A New Jersey multiple sclerosis patient appears to be headed to prison for growing 17 marijuana plants behind his home.
John Ray Wilson said the plants were for medicinal use, and New Jersey — since Wilson’s arrest — has legalized medical marijuana. But patients in the Garden State still aren’t allowed to grow their own medicine.
Wilson was acquitted of maintaining or operating a “drug-production facility,” which could have gotten him 20 years behind bars, but was found guilty of manufacturing and possessing marijuana and sentenced to five years in prison.
| Photo: The Mad Professah Lectures |
| California Attorney General Kamala Harris appears to be taking orders from law enforcement in drawing up the state’s new medical marijuana guidelines |
In her bid to defeat Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley for the job of California’s top cop, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris got the support of the state’s medical marijuana community — not so much because she was great, but because Cooley royally sucks ass.
In a rare show of unity (unlike what happened with pot legalization initiative Prop 19), the state’s marijuana activists seemed to all agree on an “Anybody But Cooley” campaign. That effort may well have been the difference between the two candidates last fall, as less than 80,000 votes separated the victorious Harris from Cooley. There are 750,000 medical marijuana patients in California.
But, as pointed out by Chris Roberts at LA Weekly, if Harris feels any gratitude for the support of the medical marijuana community, she’s doing a good job of hiding it.
| Photo: Salem-News |
| Eddy Lepp walked his last mile to federal prison as a free man. |
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and 10-year prison sentence of Charles “Eddy” Lepp, who grew 32,000 marijuana plants for patients and fellow Rastafarians on his land in Lake County, California.
The federal judge who sent Lepp to prison in 2009 criticized the federal law which required a 10-year prison term for growing more than 1,000 cannabis plants, reports Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle. But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of San Francisco said she had no choice under the law, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
“The statutory minimum sentence is not cruel and unusual punishment,” the three-judge panel ruled.
| Photo: Elaine Thompson |
| Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn: “We hope that if we can demonstrate, here in Seattle, a more sane approach to how we can work with this, that we can continue to move towards a transition on how we regulate and oversee the use of marijuana in an intelligent way rather than the irrational way that the prohibition era has given us.” |
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn scheduled a Wednesday signing ceremony with City Attorney Pete Holmes, state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles and other officials to sign a bill regulating medical marijuana like any other business.
Marijuana prohibition “denies an appropriate medication” to patients who need it, Mayor McGinn said at the ceremony. “Prohibition does not work.”
“We are taking the approach that what we need to do is honor the wishes of the City of Seattle and honor the wishes of the voters of Washington when it comes to medical marijuana, and appropriately regulate its use,” Mayor McGinn said.
| Photo: California Cannabis Coalition |
| Members of California Cannabis Coalition and Patient Care Association celebrate after repeal of San Diego’s highly restrictive medical marijuana ordinance |
On Monday, the San Diego City Council repealed an ordinance that would have forced almost all currently operating medical marijuana dispensaries in the city to close their doors.
If the ordinance had taken effect, only a couple of collectives would have been allowed to open after they came in compliance with with one of the most restrictive ordinances in the state and the most restrictive zoning and operational requirements imposed on any businesses in San Diego, according to the California Cannabis Coalition.
According to critics, the city council ignored its own task force in establishing the highly restrictive rules that would have severely limited the number of dispensaries. Medical marijuana activist Eugene Z. Davidovich, in fact, said the original ordinance effectively banned dispensaries from San Diego, reports Neiko Will at KPBS.