A New Jersey bill that would allow reciprocation with other state medical marijuana programs has been approved by the state General Assembly already, despite an all-but-certain veto from Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
Assembly bill 4537 now moves on to the state Senate, passed with a 50 to 23 vote. Read more on the bill below.
Assembly bill 4537 would allow New Jersey medical marijuana patients to use possess and use medical marijuana bought legally “from another jurisdiction” as well as allow other state medical marijuana patients to have pot on them when visiting New Jersey. The bill would also allow parents to serve as the primary caregivers for their children, though that only means they are legally allowed to possess it for their kids.
It’s actually a really common-sense piece of legislation that has garnered a lot of undue attention. It’s been framed as a pot passport brought about because of the need for two-year-old New Jersey medical marijuana patient Vivian Wilson and her parents purchase high-CBD cannabis in Colorado and bring it back to New Jersey. A noble cause and one we fully support, but something nobody in the New Jersey local media has pointed out is that the bill wouldn’t make purchases of cannabis in Colorado legal at all — Colorado doesn’t allow for reciprocation of medical cannabis licenses and no New Jersey law is going to change that.
In that same light, New Jersey medical marijuana patients can already visit other medical marijuana states that do have reciprocity and acquire, use and possess cannabis. More so, they can also fly between those states with it due to a quasi-legal loophole that Federal Transportation Security Administration agents defer to local law enforcement if something like cannabis were to turn up in a routine security screening. Basically, if it’s legal for a patient to have medical pot on them in that state when the TSA finds it, then the police have nothing to enforce.
The missing link is that because there are no private caregivers, the only legal cannabis is medical cannabis sold through the New Jersey medical marijuana program. A4537 would change that, but it wouldn’t change federal laws about flying between states – an image that is no doubt adding fuel to Christie’s anti-pot fire.
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In a town where weed is medically legal and quite easy to find, bad guys still find incentive to rob and plunder marijuana dispensaries. Case in point: A Valley Village pot shop was robbed by two big guys Wednesday afternoon. The suspects reportedly got away with a whopping 40 pounds of bud. That could be $100,000 worth of green gold using a $2,500-a-pound wholesale price.
LA Weekly has the rest of the details.
Every parking spot and nearly every seat was taken at the St. Louis Ethical Society Wednesday night as Show-Me Cannabis executive director John Payne took on Jason Grellner, the vice president of the Missouri Narcotics Officers Association to debate the pros and cons of marijuana legalization.The buzz started with a Riverfront Times post in October about retired Missouri drug cop Kevin Glaser’s Facebook comments about what he saw as “stupid, lazy potheads” filling up a town hall meeting in Cape Girardeau on marijuana legalization. Payne, none too happy with the comments, challenged Glaser to a debate, but the ex-drug cop declined. However, when RFT reached out to the MNOA’s Grellner for comment (Glaser is a board member of the MNOA) and told him about Payne’s challenge, he accepted.
Read the entire account of the debate as well as audience reaction over at the Riverfront Times.
A proposed New York medical marijuana bill saw huge support in a Assembly Committee on Health meeting on Wednesday, with dozens of supporters turning out to speak in favor of legalizing the plant for sick New Yorkers according to Long Island Newsday.
The Compassionate Care Act would legalize the possession of up to 2.5 ounces of pot for people with debilitating conditions including cancer, aids and multiple sclerosis. The state Health Department would monitor the program.
A recent study by the National Institutes of health shows teen cannabis use increasing across the U.S. as perceptions of the of the plant as a dangerous drug have declined. Probably because of all of the bullshit fed to them over the years about cannabis being a harmful, life-wrecking substance turned out to be so wrong in the first place.
The NIH 2013 Monitoring the Future Survey polled 41,675 kids from 389 public and private schools around the country. Only 39 percent said marijuana was harmful and about 6.5 percent of the seniors say they smoke weed daily – up only slightly from ten years ago when 6 percent admitted to a daily toke.
| Gross. |
As you know, real marijuana is now legal for 21-and-over adults in Colorado, at least in small amounts.
But smokable synthetic drugs (often dubbed “synthetic marijuana”) remains illegal — and a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows why. In August, use of synthetic marijuana was linked to 221 Colorado emergency-room visits — one of the largest totals since the quasi-legal compounds first became popular a few years ago. Read the rest over at Denver Westword.
Arizona’s medical-marijuana dispensaries sold more than 2.5 tons of marijuana in the past 12 months, officials say.
From December 6th, 2012 — opening day for the state’s first state-authorized dispensary, Arizona Organix — to December 9th of this year, 5,279 pounds of marijuana were sold, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. The health department provided the numbers this morning following a Phoenix New Times records request made last month. Click over to the New Times for the rest of the story.
While there are no doubt some fruity-smelling and candy-tasting strains of pot out there, a bag of Skittles is not the best way to try and sneak pot into a maximum security state prison. And while sandy, amber hash can sometimes look like small roasted pieces of corn, Corn Nuts should also be avoided as a potential weed Trojan horse.
Two separate California women visiting their respective companions in jail learned that the hard way over the weekend.
When legal cannabis sales begin in Washington state next year, dispensary owners are hoping for a little business from north of the border.
Take Mike Momany, president and founder of the Washington State Cannabis Tourism Association, who plans to open a pot pedi-cab business as well as host a “Can-Am Cannabis Celebration” in a border town, a pot party where Yankees and Canucks can light up together.
A Chicago doctor could face a suspended or repealed medical license after the state regulatory board accused him of taking fees for “pre-approval” medical marijuana consultations with patients even before the state program is officially underway.
Dr. Brian Murray charged patients a $99 fee for an initial clinic visit needed to establish a “legitimate physician-patient relationship” as required under Illinois law. According to a Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation filed Monday, the fee is “misleading” and falls under state medical malpractice laws.