Browsing: Medical

C3 Collective
A sample of the wares at Walnut Creek’s C3 Collective.

​Five hundred bucks a day adds up fast. Brian Hyman, director of the only medical marijuana dispensary in Walnut Creek, California, can tell you that.

Hyman’s dispensary, the C3 Collective, has been fined $500 a day by Walnut Creek since shortly after opening in June.
As people discover all the time, once you’re in city government’s crosshairs, they can find something to for which to harass you. In C3’s case, the official reasons have been things like violation of a general nuisance clause in the city code that prohibits any organization that violates federal law.
Sounds reasonable enough, until you remember that federal law recognizes no such thing as medical marijuana. Seems even if the Obama Administration is reluctant to enforce federal marijuana laws, Walnut Creek isn’t willing to back down.

Photo: Derrylwc
Mendocino fave OG Kush at about 6 weeks into flowering.

​Two members of the Mendocino County, Calif., Board of Supervisors’ Health and Human Services Committee say their reworking of the county’s medical marijuana ordinance is ready to be sent to the full board, reports Mike A’Dair of The Willits News.

Committee member John McCowen said the draft revision, prepared along with Kendall Smith, would be sent to the board sometime next month.
Even while the proposed ordinance clamps down on some aspects of medical marijuana growing, it loosens others.
The indoor growing of marijuana would e limited to a space of no more than 100 square feet, and outdoor cultivation would “not subject residents of neighboring parcels who are of normal sensitivity to objectionable odors.” (You know, every time I read something like that, I try to imagine why anyone would find the odor of fresh marijuana “objectionable.”) 

Graphic: Reality Catcher
The Michigan Department of Community Health has been overwhelmed by the number of medical marijuana applications and calls.

​A lack of resources has left the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) unable to process medical marijuana permit applications within the 15-day time frame specified under state law, the agency announced today on the state website.

With an average of 66 applications received every day, the agency has fallen behind and says it is just now processing applications from late September.

MDCH is asking users of the system for patience while they work out the kinks in the system, Eartha Jane Meltzer reports at The Michigan Messenger.
“The statute currently allows for a copy of the application submitted to serve as a valid registry if identification if the card is not issued within 20 days of its submission to the department,” the MDCH explains. “At this time, we are unable to process the valid cards within the statutory time frame with the resources available to us.”

The Save Jersey Blog
Flaunting ignorance: Conservative columnist Paul Mulshine doesn’t trust those damned medical marijuana patients.

​Once in awhile, some rabidly anti-pot yahoo publishes a piece so mean-spirited and so bereft of facts that it calls out for correction. Paul  Mulshine, who purports to be a conservative columnist for The Star Ledger, today published just such a piece.

Mulshine is unhappy that New Jersey is apparently, at long last, going to allow the medical use of marijuana. His toxic little screed is shot through with the sort of sneering, self-satisfied ignorance of the boorish know-it-all who sees nothing but avarice and darkness in others (Projection? You make the call), and is filled with a resolute refusal to empathize or understand.
The benighted columnist’s “Legalizing medical marijuana in N.J.: What life will be like in the marijuana Garden State” isn’t even close to journalism, unless you have a taste for the yellow variety. His smug insinuations about the motivations and medical conditions of patients seeking relief through marijuana reveal a wrenchingly bitter and unhappy worldview.

Westword
“Nature’s Choice” is a dispensary located near South Colorado Boulevard and Evans. This ad appeared in a recent edition of Westword.

​​Denver City Council members, in the midst of hammering out regulations for the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries, suggested Wednesday that they’d bar recently convicted felons from getting into the business of dispensing pot.

The council held no formal vote on Councilman Charlie Brown’s package of proposed dispensary regulations, Christopher N. Osher reports in The Denver Post, but agreed to meet in committee again on Dec. 16.
A full set of dispensary regulations will likely go before the city council in January.
Brown’s initial language, requiring applicants for marijuana dispensaries to state whether they had “ever been convicted of a felony, or of violating any federal, state or local law governing the manufacture, distribution, possession or use of controlled substances,” struck some council members as too onerous.

Cannabis Defense Coalition
It’s the place to be Saturday night in Seattle.

​​The Cannabis Defense Coalition (CDC), always a great group of folks with whom to hang out, is throwing a benefit party this Saturday night, Dec. 5, at the Cannabis Resource Center in Seattle’s beloved South Park neighborhood.
“We’ll be setting aside our ‘marijuana is safer than alcohol’ rhetoric for the night and serving up the hooch to fund pot activism,” said spokesman Ben Livingston of the CDC.
Musical entertainment will be provided by acoustic/bluegrass/Celtic group Boys of Greenwood Glen and blues/roots artists Sidestreet Reny.

Graphic: PHenry

​As pharmacists and drug regulators from across the United States meet in Tucson this week, marijuana will be headlining the agenda.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) opens its symposium today with presentations on medical marijuana by experts including Caren Woodson, government affairs director with Americans for Safe Access, the country’s largest advocacy group focused on the issue.

Photo: Coaster420
Washington state health officials are considering expanding the categories for which medical marijuana may be used.

​Washington State health officials are on the verge of deciding whether patients suffering from depression or certain anxiety disorders should be allowed to use medical marijuana as part of their treatment, Molly Rosbach at The Seattle Times reports.

Washington’s medical marijuana law, adopted by voter initiative in 1998, limits the legal use of medical marijuana to patients who have been diagnosed with a “terminal or debilitating medical condition.”
That includes patients with cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis C and several other diseases causing pain or nausea  “unrelieved by standard medical treatments and conditions.”

Monroe Co., FL Sheriff’s Dept
Marijuana still equals money — but now nobody has to get arrested.

​With a recent softening in attitudes toward medicinal use of the herb, along with a more pot-tolerant administration, Colorado’s medical marijuana industry is going into high gear — and the increased profile of dispensaries has made them among the biggest newspaper advertisers, according to public radio station KUNC.

With more than 14,000 patients statewide approved to use medical pot — more than a 70 percent jump since last year — the dispensaries have a bigger customer base. And, according to Sensible Colorado member Brian Vicente, the pot outlets have money to spend.

Photo: Selkem
What the doctor ordered?

​A new scientific study published in Harm Reduction Journal suggests that marijuana is a safe and effective substitute for alcohol and prescription drugs.

The study, published by researchers at the University of California, Berkley, showed that 40 percent of marijuana users said they’ve used pot to control their alcohol addictions, 66 percent said they used marijuana instead of prescription drugs, and 26 percent said marijuana helped them stay off harder “street” drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.