News

Oregon AG Outcome Has National Implications For Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 15, 2012 News

The victory of Ellen Rosenblum, right, over Dwight Holton in the Oregon attorney general race has national implications for marijuana policy

Support for Medical Marijuana Ensures Victory for Ellen Rosenblum in Oregon Attorney General Race

Drug Policy Action: Holton’s Defeat Sends Message to US Attorneys Nationwide That Attacks on Medical Marijuana Have Steep Political Price

Outcome Has National Implications for Increasingly Formidable Drug Policy Reform Movement

Medical marijuana was a major issue in the Democratic primary for Attorney General in Oregon – and the candidates’ starkly different positions on the issue ensured victory for former judge Ellen Rosenblum.

Pro-Medical Marijuana Candidate Wins Oregon AG Race

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 15, 2012 News

Ellen Rosenblum For Attorney General

Ellen Rosenblum won big in the Oregon attorney general race with the support of the marijuana community

With early results showing a commanding 62 to 38 percent lead, pro-medical marijuana candidate Ellen Rosenblum is the winner of the hotly contested race for attorney general of Oregon.

Two Democrats — Rosenblum and Dwight Holton — had battled it out in the primary for what effectively is all the marbles, since there will be no organized Republican opposition on November’s general election ballot.

The candidates had seemed similar until the medical marijuana issue became a major part of the campaign, with Rosenblum’s friendliness to safe access for cannabis patients distinguishing her from her more hardline opponent, who was cast as an enemy of Oregon’s medical marijuana law.

Both candidates were moderate Democrats, and both were attorneys. Holton was the former U.S. Attorney in Portland. Rosenblum is a long-time judge.

The race took a unexpected turn last month when the marijuana community got behind Rosenblum, spurred on by Holton’s characterization of the Oregon marijuana law as a “train wreck.”

Marijuana DUI Bill Fails Again In Colorado

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 15, 2012 Legislation, News

Timothy Tipton

The Colorado Senate on Tuesday afternoon killed a marijuana DUI bill

A marijuana DUI bill early Tuesday afternoon failed again to clear the Colorado Senate, once again being voted down.

The DUI bill has been a rollercoaster for the past two years, reports Michael Roberts at Denver Westword, perhaps due at least partially to the fact that there’s no solid science supporting the proposed limit of five nanograms per milliliter (5 ng/ml) as being at all correlated with actual driving impairment.

Failure of the bill once again in the Colorado Legislature (for the third time) may have reverberations all the way to the U.S. West Coast, since an identical DUI limit — 5 ng/ml — currently threatens to derail a semi-legalization initiative, I-502, in Washington state.

Anti-Pot Wingnut Wants Ammiano Removed From Committee

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 15, 2012 Legislation, News

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Anti-marijuana wing nut Paul Chabot: “Ammiano is a long-time advocate of drug legalization and has sponsored a number of anti-pubic [sic]safety bills”

Coalition for a Drug Free California Wants To Punish Assembly Member For Supporting Medical Marijuana Patients

The Coalition for a Drug Free California (CDFC), an extremist anti-marijuana fringe group headed by entertaining wingnut Paul Chabot, has called for California Assembly Member Tom Ammiano to be removed from his chairmanship of the Public Safety Committtee.

You see, Ammiano has dared to voice his support for medical marijuana, and that’s just not permissible in the stuffed-shirt little nightmare world inhabited by Chabot and his minions — and they want to force the rest of us to live in that fucked up little world, too.

Colorado Marijuana DUI Bill Again Poised For Approval

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 15, 2012 Legislation, News

THC Finder

Like a bad penny that just won’t go away, Colorado’s marijuana blood-level limit for drivers is back again, and once again is poised for approval, after two previous failures.

The Colorado House gave its initial thumbs-up to a bill setting the cannabis driving limit at 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood (5 ng/ml), reports The Associated Press.

Last year the pot DUI bill was rejected in the Senate after it was brought to light that a 5 ng/ml cut-off point is unsupported by science; the link between that blood THC level and driving impairment appears tenuous at best.

Last week, the Colorado House was once again poised to adopt the bad legislation, but the bill died as a result of a filibuster on a civil unions measure.

Fire Leads To Discovery Of 400 Pot Plants In Restaurant

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 14, 2012 Growing, News

KOMOnews.com

Nearly 400 marijuana plants were found in the basement of this restaurant, My Canh, in the south Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Valley on Monday morning after an electrical fire

A fire at a South Seattle Vietnamese restaurant led to the seizure nearly 400 marijuana plants on Monday morning.

When firefighters responded to the blaze at My Canh restaurant in Rainier Valley on Martin Luther King Jr Way South at about 8 a.m., they saw flames on the back side of the building, reports Q13 Fox News. Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore said the blaze was difficult to fight because it was an electrical fire caused by the restaurant’s badly-wired power system.

“After we got the fire knocked down it appeared that there was some type of illegal wiring to City Light,” Moore said. “The business may have been drawing power that it illegally wired.”

Study Confirms: Marijuana Helps With Multiple Sclerosis

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 14, 2012 Medical, News

MedPage Today

Researchers Note Cannabis Impacts Cognitive Function — But So Do Other MS Drugs

Smoking marijuana cuts spasticity and pain that’s resistant to conventional treatments in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), although it does have some cognitive effects as well, a small clinical trial has unsurprisingly confirmed.

Spasticity scores on the modified Ashworth scale dropped by an average 2.74 points more with smoked cannabis than with a placebo, researchers at the University of California San Diego found, reports Crystal Phend at MedPage Today.

Oregon Cannabis Tax Act Makes Early Turn-In Of Signatures

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 12, 2012 Legislation, News

OCTA 2012

The Oregon Cannabis Tax Act 2012 initiative petition on Friday turned in 27,401 signatures from the month of April, exceeding the minimum number of signatures for a statutory ballot measure by more than 2,000 signatures.

According to an official at the Oregon Secretary of State Elections Division [PDF], OCTA 2012 is the third initiative to meet the early turn-in requirement by exceeding the minimum number of signatures required for qualification for ballot status.

“We are continuing our petition drive,” said initiative sponsor Paul Stanford of OCTA 2012. “We estimate that, on Monday, May 14th, another 10,000 signatures to be turned in to our office by petitioners that are gathered this week, and at least 10,000 more in each subsequent week.”

Colorado Marijuana Legalization Effort Airs First TV Ad

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 11, 2012 Culture, Legislation, News

Colorado’s marijuana legalization campaign is courting mothers in its first television ad, airing Friday in Denver.

The initiative’s first ad of the year features a young woman emailing her mother about marijuana, reports The Associated Press.

The young women argues that cannabis is safer than alcohol, the central theme of the current push to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The woman in the ad also mentions that pot doesn’t give her hangovers.

I-502 Legalization Initiative Sponsor Calls Cannabis ‘Injurious’

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 10, 2012 Legislation, News

Images

Could this have been what I-502 proponent Roger Roffman was thinking about when he said “It is injurious to young people and their families. There are people who are victims of marijuana”?

By Philip Dawdy

Cannabis Activist

A debate on the merits of I-502 was held on May 8th at a theatre in Monroe in Snohomish County. About 100 people attended and they were treated to one of the initiatives main sponsors, Roger Roffman who is a social work professor at the University of Washington, calling cannabis “injurious.” So why is he a sponsor of an initiative that would make it legal for adults 21 and older to buy, possess and consume one ounce of cannabis?

Roffman explained that he thinks we can do better as a society in addressing the “harms” of cannabis by bringing it into a public health model of control and working to educate and discourage people from using it. Yes, one of the main proponents of the initiative said this.

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