It was an eventful week in medical marijuana news with groundbreaking discoveries happening in laboratories around the world.
In addition to finding out that cannabis can lower risks for bladder cancer and diabetes, scientists this week announced several other interesting findings regarding our favorite plant.
| Wikipedia commons. |
Vermont farmers will likely have one more option of what to cultivate this summer after the state legislature Monday gave final approval to Senate Bill 157 which lifts a state ban on hemp farming.
The bill still has to be signed by the governor, but so far he hasn’t made any indications that he will veto it.
A proposal to decriminalize marijuana across the state will have a hearing this morning at the Missouri House of Representatives — which appears to be the farthest this effort has ever gone in the legislature. It will not, however, make it much farther this time around given that today is the last day of the legislative session.
Still, supportive lawmakers and marijuana reform advocates from Show-Me Cannabis are celebrating the opportunity to have the issue finally debated in this setting. “It’s a big step forward for Missouri,” State Rep. Rory Ellinger, a University City Democrat, tells the Riverfront Times, which as the rest of this story.
| Morgan Loew. |
Morgan Loew, a douchebag reporter with Phoenix’s CBS 5, had a hunch: that only young and healthy people were getting a medical marijuana card from doctors who didn’t really care about following the rules. Sick people be damned.
So what did he do? He faked his way into getting a card with a real ailment: a sore back. He saw both a chiropractor (to build up a history) as well as the doctor who recommended cannabis for what Loew described as “distracting” pain that limited his ability to run.
| Brick weed. |
At least one drug warrior is admitting that marijuana legalization measures in the states are leading to a decline in weed crossing the border from Mexico. An unnamed El Paso undercover narcotics officer tells KHOU in Houston that he’s starting to see more marijuana grown in the U.S. in the border town he patrols.
The city of Garden Grove, Calif. has had a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in the town since 2008, though up until last week you wouldn’t have known it by driving through the municipality of about 175,000 southeast of Los Angeles.
But all that changed May 6 when the California Supreme Court ruled that cities do have the power to ban medical marijuana collectives and as of today, the city is actively enforcing it’s ban.
| TokeoftheTown.com |
Serious marijuana discussion is taking place in our nation’s capitol, if only at the municipal level.
According to the Washington Post, D.C. city council members are trying to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana and have a few proposals in the works to do just that.
Marijuana advocates were abuzz last month — and by “abuzz” we mean excited, of course — when a bill to reduce penalties for marijuana possession was passed out the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. The bill had been watered down to apply only to people younger than 21, but the Texas chapter of NORML, the national pot-legalization organization, still called it an “amazing step for Texas.”
Also encouraging was progress on a medical marijuana bill that would make medical need a valid defense in pot possession cases. The measure, some version of which has been introduced in the past several sessions, got a hearing for the first time ever. Both those bills — the only pro-marijuana legislation to get any sort of traction this session — are now officially dead, which isn’t to say that marijuana activists are admitting defeat. Dallas Observer has more.
| CBS8 San Deigo. |
Here’s an awful situation no matter which way you view it. One-year-old Harley Bradford and her two-year-old brother, Jason, are dead after their mother found them both face down in a San Diego area swimming pool just before 10 a.m. on Monday morning. The children’s mother has yet to be charged with a crime.
The mother, identified as Tessie Behrens by CBS8 San Deigo, claims that she could not find her kids when she awoke at the home of a family friend around 9:30 a.m. Searching frantically, she found them both unconscious in the pool.
| Flickr.com/Alden Chadwick. |
Regular marijuana use can reduce the risk of developing diabetes, according to new research published in the American Journal of Medicine.
The study shows that marijuana users have better blood sugar control, lower levels of insulin and much thinner waistlines than non-users. All that despite the munchies.