Browsing: Medical

Photo: Pablo-flores, Wikimedia Commons
Washington judge gives the green light to medical pot patient

​An interesting thing is happening in states which have legalized medical marijuana. There’s an ongoing culture war between cops who hate all marijuana, period, and patients who take the law at its word when it says they can use pot legally. From time to time, the patients win big.

Such is the case in Kent, Washington, where King County Judge Mary Roberts ordered the police department to give 11 pounds of seized marijuana back to Matthew Zugsberger, who holds a valid California medical marijuana card.
After police (with the aid of a trusty drug dog) found the stash in the trunk of Zugsberger’s car last February in the parking lot of a pharmacy in Kent, they arrested the Californian and his girlfriend and seized the weed.
Zugsberger says the cops accused him of importing marijuana from Canada (which does happen a lot in this area, being not far from the B.C. border). “Why the hell would I buy pot from Canada if I have a field of it in my back yard?”, Zugsberger reasonably asked, according to the Seattle P.I.

The California man said he began using marijuana medicinally in 2007 to manage nausea caused by a severe injury sustained while working as a underwater welder in the Gulf of Mexico. After the accident, he was prescribed opiate painkillers; Zugsberger said the drugs gave him liver problems, and he was concerned about becoming addicted to them.

Zugsberger pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession and was sentenced to three months’ probation. But defense attorney Aaron Pelley wasn’t done with the case. Pelley, who is active with Seattle-based medical marijuana advocacy organization Cannabis Defense Coalition,  filed a petition in August seeking the return of the marijuana to his client, since Zugsberger is a legal medical pot patient.

Photo: Horsma / Hamppuforum, Wikimedia Commons
Sweet Tooth #3 cannabis bud, grown in Finland

​For all the progress toward a European Union, there is still no unified approach to medical marijuana in Europe, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Cannabis is legal for treating certain illnesses in the Netherlands, but Sweden, for example, doesn’t recognize any medical use for the herb at all.
Legal expert Catherine Sandvos of the Dutch Cannabis Bureau (a government agency providing high-quality medical marijuana) told the Journal that cannabis is just “too controversial and too political” to even be on the European agenda.
The Dutch have led the continent in legalizing medical marijuana, which is treated separately from the recreational cannabis available at Amsterdam’s coffee shops.

Photo: Antoinel, Wikimedia Commons
Could marijuana brownies be the key to treating autism?

​Should parents be allowed to use medical marijuana to treat autistic children if they believe it is more effective than the chemicals offered by pharmaceutical corporations? More and more doctors, and members of the general public, are saying “Yes.”

After Mieko Hester-Perez appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America this week, telling how she believes doctor-recommended medical marijuana brownies saved her son’s life, she received an outpouring of support from TV viewers and commenters on ABC News’ website.
Mieko’s 10-year-old son, Joey, weighed only 46 pounds due to his unwillingness to eat. “You could see the bones in his chest,” she said. “He was going to die.”

MPP.org
Will Foster, victim of the war on medical marijuana patients

​Medical marijuana patient Will Foster, who once faced 93 years in prison for growing pot in his closet, is now a free man, according to the Drug War Chronicle.

Foster was released on parole from an Oklahoma prison today, adding a happy note to a saga that stretches back to his bust in the 1990s.
Foster was in the unfortunate position of being a public example of the mindless cruelties of the war on marijuana. The 36-year-old father of two, a computer programmer, had his life changed forever when Tulsa, Okla., officers showed up at his door with a “John Doe” warrant to search for methamphetamines. No meth was found — even after officers tore apart his 5-year-old daughter’s teddy bear.
But behind a locked steel door in his basement, the cops found a 25-square-foot marijuana garden. Foster said he grew the plants to treat the chronic pain of acute rheumatoid arthritis.

Image: russiatoday.com
Israel is one of the first countries to permit the use of medical marijuana.

​Twenty patients in an Israeli hospital have been treated with medical marijuana in the first program of its kind in the Mideast nation.

Head Nurse Ora Shamai of the pain management program at Sheba Medical Center in the town of Tel Hashomer recently drafted a formal protocol for administering cannabis to patients. The document has already been approved by the Health Ministry’s Dr. Yehuda Baruch, and is expected to soon win final approval from the hospital.
According to the protocol, if a patient needs marijuana, the doctor in charge of treatment will help secure the necessary permit from the Health Ministry. Patients who are able to walk will smoke their joints in the hospital’s smoking room, while bedridden patients will be allowed to smoke in private rooms, near an open window.
“We make it clear to the staff that smoking medical marijuana doesn’t endanger the medical staff on the wards,” Shamai said. “It does not harm those in the area via passive smoking.”

Photo by Laurie Avocado, Wikimedia Commons
We got a thousand of ’em! Medical marijuana dispensary on Ventura Boulevard in L.A.

​How many medical marijuana dispensaries are needed in a city with 4 million people?

That’s the question the Los Angeles City Council will be grappling with Tuesday as they decide how to deal with an explosion of the pot shops. Two years ago, when the number reached 186 registered dispensaries, a moratorium was put in place, but a boilerplate “hardship” exemption was included that proved to be a big enough loophole for hundreds more to slip through.
Current dispensary estimates run between 800 and 1,000, and the truism that “L.A. has more marijuana shops than Starbucks” has already captured the public imagination.
Councilman Jose Huizar has suggested a cap of 70 dispensaries; “I’d rather start with a low number,” he told the Los Angeles Times, calling 70 “a reasonable number” since that would be two for each of L.A.’s designated communities. Huizar’s proposal is one of more than three dozen changes the council will consider as it resumes debate on L.A.’s proposed medical marijuana ordinance.
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