| Washington D.C. |
Washington D.C. councilmember David Grosso introduced a bill yesterday that would legalize the possession and sales of limited amounts of cannabis in the nation’s capitol to adults 21 and over.
The bill would remove all criminal and civil penalties for the possession of an ounce or less of cannabis.
Last week, opponents of Proposition AA, the measure to establish tax rates for recreational marijuana, staged a rally at Civic Center Park at which adults 21 and over who attended were given free joints. In the days that followed, board members of Colorado NORML came out against Prop AA, too.
Does that mean support for the proposal is soft? Not in the view of attorney Brian Vicente, a marijuana advocate and co-author of Amendment 64. Denver Westword has the full story.
| William Breathes. |
| Jamaican outdoor herb. |
Marijuana reform is growing around the world, but particularly in the tiny Caribbean island nation of Jamaica, which has long been known as a cannabis capital of the world despite the fact that the plant remains illegal there.
Increasingly, there has been talk of legalization of small amounts of cannabis from some members of the progressive government. But more immediately, Jamaican officials say they will push for legislation that expunges any criminal records for marijuana possession or use.
| NPS |
| Sheep Lakes at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colo. |
Marijuana possession (of limited amounts) might be legal in Washington and Colorado, but considering the federal government owns massive chunks of land in both states you aren’t always legally carrying ganja depending on where you are – namely national land.
According to a study conducted by the Associated Press, more than 27,700 people have been cited for marijuana possession on federal lands in the last four years. While the number is sizable in terms of drug arrests, officials say it is a paltry figure compared to the hundreds of millions of visitors to national parks, forests and monuments.
Despite what many see as a lighters stance on cannabis in recent years, marijuana arrests continued at an alarming rate in 2012, with more than 749,800 people arrested – with most (87 percent) for simple possession.
According to a the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report, marijuana arrests account for 48.3 percent of all drug arrests. Those figures are down slightly from 2011 numbers when marijuana arrests accounted for 49 percent of all arrests, but not by much.
| Florida. |
A Tampa woman wants to get medical marijuana to save her 2-year-old daughter’s life. Although she’s still getting her cancer-stricken daughter conventional treatment, such as radiation therapy, Moriah Barnhart says that’s not enough.
And she wants options other than just chemotherapy. Medical marijuana, Barnhart says, would work better than chemotherapy, particularly considering chemo’s long-term effects.As it is, medical marijuana remains illegal in Florida. Broward-Palm Beach New Times has the rest of this heart-wrenching story.
Linn State Technical College cannot force all of its students to submit to mandatory drug testing, according to U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey, who sided with the American Civil Liberties Union in a decision on Friday.
“The lack of a substantial and real public safety risk alone compels the conclusion that the drug-testing policy is unconstitutional as applied to these students,” reads the decision (on view below), which comes two years after the ACLU of Eastern Missouri first filed a lawsuit challenging the college’s new mandatory drug tests for all incoming students. In March, a federal judge blocked the controversial policy through an injunction and has now ruled that the tests are largely unlawful. Sam Levin with the Riverfront Times.
A conservative anti-tax lobbyist has become an unlikely supporter of marijuana reform at the federal level. On Thursday, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told reporters that despite never trying cannabis (“absolutely not”), he is against the federal over-taxation of medical and recreation marijuana.
“There’s always a slight giggle factor on the issue dealing with marijuana,” Norquist tells Time magazine. “That said, this is tax policy, this is real stuff. This is important. This is everything from jobs to whether the federal government comes in and writes rules that upsets the apple cart in many, many different states.”
The group that was behind Arizona’s medical-marijuana law plans to push a marijuana-legalization initiative in Arizona in 2016.
The national Marijuana Policy Project actually hopes that Arizona is one of 10 states where it can help pass marijuana-legalization laws, such as the one in Colorado, by 2017. The Phoenix New Times has the full story.
| Stay classy, San Diego. |
Estimates are that the city of San Diego has over 70,000 medical marijuana patients, yet, the city has never passed an ordinance allowing medical marijuana dispensaries, nor has it passed any official ban on the blooming industry.
This no-man’s-land of cannabis legality in America’s Finest City, compounded by the confusion and grey-area in the state medical marijuana laws, led to a rampant rise in the number of storefront weed dispensaries to nearly 300 at the peak in 2010…and then an equally rapid shuttering and/or raiding campaign that saw all but a stubborn few shops close their doors in 2011.