The debate for legalizing medical marijuana has been traveling throughout Florida the past few weeks, and now it’s making its stop in our neck of the woods. United For Care and Drug Free Florida will be going head-to-head before the public in Broward, in a town hall debate this morning. The debate, scheduled to start at 11 a.m. today at Broward College, at the Judson A. Samuels South Campus Performing and Cultural Arts Center, is being held a month prior to the gubernatorial debate happening at the college.
Things could get interesting as United For Care campaign manager Ben Pollara is set to debate the folks from Drug Free Florida, which has recently begun attack ads on medical cannabis. More at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

With the vote a mere two months away, the No On 2/Drug Free Florida people are decidedly taking it strong to the hoop with their TV airtime buys, trying to get their message across to as many people as possible. The Miami Herald‘s Marc Caputo reports that Drug Free Florida is putting in $1.6 million in TV ads for the first week of October, and are promising more to come after that.
United For Care campaign manager Ben Pollara released a statement on Drug Free Florida’s planned TV ads:
“It’s no surprise Drug Free Florida Committee is making such a large buy so far out from Election Day. When your basic position runs completely counter to public opinion, millions in misleading advertising is the only strategy available. But no amount of advertising can overwhelm the basic facts. Floridians know the benefits of medical marijuana are real, and the people of this state are deeply compassionate. We believe the overwhelming majority will vote to make sure patients no longer have to risk incarceration for listening to their doctors and seeking relief from debilitating diseases and medical conditions.”

L.A city voters last year decided to shut down a vast majority of the medical marijuana businesses in town, and the City Attorney’s office says many of them have indeed closed their doors. But a new anti-marijuana, federally-funded study by UCLA social welfare professor Bridget Freisthler suggests, at least, that shutting down pot shops might just put the whole business on the road.
You read that right: the government paid someone to “discover” that, if you close down legal storefronts where people access their medicine, they are going to have someone deliver it or drive to get it from someone’s house.

Dr. Sue Sisley was about to conduct some of the most important cannabis research in the United States when she was abruptly fired from her job at the University of Arizona this past June for what she says (and what clearly appears to be) purely political reasons.
Our cohorts at the Phoenix New Times have done an amazing job looking into what happened and, more importantly, what is in store for Sisley’s study that looks at how military veterans can use cannabis to help treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nine medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon – six in Portland alone – have been forced to shutter their doors after state officials say they were operating illegally and in opposition to the state’s newly-launched medical marijuana program.
For some, it is because they were too close to schools. Others simply didn’t have a license, or even an application in the works, but kept their doors open anyway.

Through early October, the state is accepting applications from entities interested in becoming one of Minnesota’s two official medical marijuana growers.
Via a spokesperson, family members from one prominent Twin Cities business, Bachman’s Floral Gift & Garden Centers, told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal they’ll throw their hats in the proverbial ring, though the spokesperson said the Bachman’s Floral business itself won’t be involved.