Only a few months ago, Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom called a press conference to announce that “marijuana is not a medicine.” It may come as a surprise, then, that the Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition recently outlined for lawmakers the perimeters in which they could work with a medical marijuana bill. Backstrom was unavailable for comment, but Pipestone County Sheriff Dan Delaney, another member of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition, took our call.
“I’m not a doctor,” Delaney explains, but if the medical community believes this could benefit patients, “Who am I to say that is wrong?”
Minneapolis City Pages has more.
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Think the New Jersey Department of Health has your back if you’re an MMJ patient? You’re wrong.
Only 78 percent of New Jersey’s 1,670 medical marijuana patients have made a marijuana purchase from one of only three medical marijuana dispensaries around the state, things are going just fine according to the state Health Department. Not only that, but the department has no plans to expand the list of qualifying conditions until at least next year. Sorry those of you with severe, chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder – you’ll have to go on being a criminal if you choose to use cannabis.
California has allowed for the compassionate use of marijuana since 1996. And while the state has become known for it’s medical pot tolerance, the industry has gone unchecked since it’s inception. Despite some cities and municipalities banning marijuana collectives, the system seems to work well for everyone involved.
Except, of course, the government. But a California lawmaker wants to change that, and has introduced a bill that would establish state oversight on the industry while butting into the business of doctors and their patients.
After decades of the war on drugs, countless efforts to decriminalize dope, and tens of thousands of drug arrests, Florida has finally reached a turning point. The marijuana movement has reached critical mass.
In January, the state supreme court ruled that voters can decide whether or not to legalize medical marijuana in November. Some Floridians may not even have to wait that long. Yesterday, one of the legislature’s most conservative committees voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill allowing certain strains of marijuana for epilepsy patients. The Miami New Times has the rest.
Maria Botker throws her arms forward and droops her head, mimicking, in slow-motion, the way in which her seven-year-old daughter wilts daily. She calls the worst of these “drop seizures.” The Botkers live a fragmented life between Minnesota and Colorado so they can get access to Charlotte’s Web — a strain of marijuana that, when ingested as an oil, has been shown to control epilepsy and help children like theirs regain cognitive functions.
“This is not the way we want to live,” Botker says.
Minneapolis City Pages has the full coverage.
| CBD-rich hash oil. |
A Georgia bill that would (sort of) legalize medical cannabis for children only has gained overwhelming approval from the state House yesterday and now heads to the state Senate for approval.
House Bill 1107, also called the “Therapeutic Cannabidiol Research Act of 2014”, would allow for clinical trials on CBD for children suffering from severe forms of epilepsy. The bill does not legalize CBD for adults, nor does it come anywhere close to legalizing medical cannabis as a whole.
| JoelK75/Flickr |
| A handful of herbal healing |
Rarely does a week go by without a new headline, from a respected publication, coming out highlighting another of the amazing benefits of responsible cannabis use. While critics of medical marijuana ignorantly, and incessantly, argue that a majority of medicinal weed smokers have no real physical ailment, every day more and more people across the country are stepping out of the cannabis closet to treat their illnesses.
The headlines regarding cannabis and health benefits have become so commonplace, that we as advocates need to constantly remind ourselves that while it is a miraculous plant, marijuana is not a “miracle drug”. Still, it comes as a bit of a shock when otherwise respected scientists and researchers rush so quickly to condemn pot as a useless form of pseudo-medicine, as a recent article in the journal of Arthritis Care and Research unfortunately did.
A bill that could legalize medical use of marijuana in Minnesota undergoes its first test this morning. It’s scheduled for conversation at the House Health and Human Services Committee, and both sides of the debate have begun preparing their people.
At the moment, the list of speakers remains hush-hush as committee administrators want to avoid the possibility that either side will try to stack the room. It’ll be made public about two hours before the meeting. Minneapolis City Pages has the complete story.
Thanks to a lot of hard workers hawking petitions in parking lots, not to mention the shifting pop cultural sands, it looks like Florida has a fighting chance for legalizing medical marijuana. Come November, we’ll find out. But as with any political movement, despite best intentions and hopes, it’s money that’s really powering the show. And the funding trail behind the legalization effort leads right back to South Florida.
Broward-Palm Beach New Times has the full story
Yet another compassion club in the Phoenix area has been raided by police. This time, it was a place called Delta 9, located in a strip mall at Broadway Road and Hardy Drive in Tempe.
For those who don’t know, the compassion club model has been a method used to provide medical-marijuana users with their medicine. They were more common before dispensaries were allowed to open, the concept being is that a donation — as opposed to a direct purchase — to the club gets a patient the pot. Phoenix New Times has the full story.