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Speakers Urge Rhode Island To Decriminalize Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 25, 2011 Legislation, News

Photo: WPRO

Wife, mother, PTA member — and marijuana user — Catharine Leach, right, testified on Tuesday before the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee

”Look at me, and tell me I should go to jail,” Catharine Leach said to the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Leach — who described herself as a wife, mother and PTA member — also described herself as a marijuana user who has used it daily for more than 10 years.

The 29-year-old office manager from Warwick, R.I., was one of nine people to testify for a bill which would decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, reports Randal Edgar at the The Providence Journal. The bill would add Rhode Island to a list of about a dozen states that have relaxed their cannabis laws for recreational users.

“It’s like coming home and having a glass of wine after a hard day,” Leach said, except that she runs the risk of jail, while “the drunks don’t go to jail for their vice.”

Montana Stops Issuing Medical Marijuana Cards

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 25, 2011 Legislation, Medical, News

Graphic: The Walrus Speaks

The Montana Department of Health and Human Services has stopped issuing new medical marijuana cards, a spokesman announced on Tuesday.

The agency is complying with a strict new medical marijuana law that requires the department to stop issuing the cards on May 14, according to spokesman Jon Ebelt, reports the Associated Press.

Ebelt had previously said the department would continue issuing the cards to patients because of confusion over the law.

Connecticut Bill Would Make Pot Possession Like Traffic Ticket

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 25, 2011 Legislation, News

Graphic: NBC Connecticut

It’s about time for the politicians to catch up with the people in Connecticut.

Connecticut lawmakers are taking up a bill that would decriminalize marijuana. The legislation has made its way to the state Senate.

If passed, it would mean that adults caught with less than half an ounce of cannabis would face a penalty similar to a traffic ticket, instead of a criminal charge, reports NBC Connecticut.

The idea of loosening Connecticut’s pot laws is predictably meeting resistance in the Senate among hidebound Republicans and a handful of regressive Democrats.

Arizona Governor Sues To Stop Medical Marijuana Program

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 24, 2011 Legislation, Medical, News

Photo: News Real Blog

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer will not defend her state’s medical marijuana law, approved by the voters last November. Instead this asswig is asking the feds for instructions on how to run her own state. Nice “leadership” there, Jan.

Redundant Lawsuit Supposedly Aims To Establish Federal Legality

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne announced that they are filing a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the medical marijuana program established in Arizona by the passage of Proposition 203 last November.

Even though the law was passed by a majority of Arizona voters, the governor and attorney general will not defend the law and instead asked the courts to decide if it is illegal under federal law.

“We are deeply frustrated by this announcement,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “The law Governor Brewer wants enjoined established an extremely well thought-out and conservative medical marijuana system.”

New Yorkers To Hold May 25 Pot Rally Outside Mayor’s House

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 24, 2011 News

Photo: Death By 1000 Papercuts

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he enjoyed smoking marijuana. He must also enjoy busting people for it, since his city is the world capital for pot busts.

Thanks to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City has the dubious distinction of being the marijuana arrest capital of the world.

Marijuana possession arrests are the number one reason for arrest in New York City, making up 15 percent of all arrests there, according to activists. On average, police arrest 140 people every day in New York City for possessing small amounts of pot.

More than 50,000 marijuana possession arrests were made in the Big Apple in 2010, despite marijuana being decriminalized statewide in New York 34 years ago, in 1977.

Marijuana Decrim Bill Returns To Rhode Island Senate

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 24, 2011 Legislation, News

Photo: Senator Joshua Miller

Sen. Joshua Miller: “I think it’s an appropriate time for Rhode Island to act”

One year ago, Senator Joshua Miller’s bill to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana got held up in committee, but the Democrat from Cranston doesn’t give up that easy. He’s introducing the legislation again this year and hoping for a different result.

Senate Bill 0270, scheduled for a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, would make possession of an ounce or less of cannabis a civil offense, punishable by only a $150 fine, reports Randal Edgar of the Providence Journal.

The fine would double repeatedly over time, up to a maximum of $1,000 if it remained unpaid, but there would be no other criminal or civil punishment, except for repeat offenders who — on their third offense — could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Canadian Marijuana Bears Wake Up With The Munchies

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 24, 2011 Global, Growing, News

Photo: CBC News

RCMP officers were amused last year when the friendly bears came out to greet them as they raided a marijuana grow operation. Now they’ve woken up after a long winter’s nap — and they have a major case of the munchies.

The infamous marijuana bears of British Columbia have woken after their winter hibernation, and they have the munchies — but they seem to be weaning themselves off dog food, according to the man who was once feeding them $100 of kibbles a day.

Allen Piche of Christina Lake, B.C., pleaded guilty in March to feeding the roughly two dozen wild black bears on his remote property after the B.C. Conservation Service last summer charged him and ordered him to stop, reports CBC News. Piche was charged after police found the mellow bears when they raided a marijuana grow operation on his property last August.

Initially there was speculation the bears might be guarding the cannabis crop, but Piche denied that.

Supreme Court Upholds Order To Reduce Prison Overcrowding

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 23, 2011 News

Photo: Drug War Chronicle

Overcrowding at Mule Creek State Prison, Ione, California

Advocates Urge Ending Prison As A Response To Drug Use

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the unconstitutional conditions of California’s prisons were caused primarily by overcrowding, and ordered California to reduce its prison population from more than 200 percent of design capacity to 137.5 percent of capacity within two years.

“The U.S. Supreme Court was right to uphold the order to reduce California’s prison population,” said Theshia Naidoo, staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). “Tough-on-crime policies have crowded prisons so severely with people convicted of nonviolent offenses, including drug possession, that they are not only unsafe and overly costly, but also a net negative for public safety.”

Marijuana Advocates Sue Government Over Rescheduling Delay

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 23, 2011 Legislation, Medical, News

Photo: MyMedicineTheBook.com

The federal government refuses to reclassify marijuana as medicine — despite the fact that it has sent Irv Rosenfeld and a handful of other patients hundreds of joints a month for close to 30 years.

A coalition of medical marijuana advocacy groups and patients filed suit Monday in D.C. Circuit Court to compel the Obama Administration to answer a nine-year-old petition to reclassify medical marijuana.

The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) has never received an answer to its 2002 petition, despite a formal recommendation in 2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is unfortunately the final arbiter in the rescheduling process.

As recently as July 2010, the DEA issued a 54-page “Position on Marijuana,” but failed to even mention the pending CRC petition.

Plaintiffs in the case include the CRC, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Patients Out of Time, as well as individually named patients, one of whom is listed on the CRC petition but died in 2005.

Court Order Reopens Shuttered Marijuana Dispensaries

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on May 23, 2011 Dispensaries, News

Photo: OC Weekly

Dispensary owner and former City Council candidate Sue Lester: Judge’s decision to let shops open was the “right thing to do”

A group of shuttered medical marijuana dispensaries previously deemed public nuisances were allowed to reopen in Costa Mesa, California this weekend thanks to a court order, one of the business owners confirmed on Saturday.

Sue Lester, former City Council candidate and owner of Herban Elements at 440 Fair Drive, said an Orange County Superior Court Judge’s order Friday allowing her business to reopen was the “right thing to do” while waiting for a court hearing next month, reports Joseph Serna at the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot.

City officials in April declared several marijuana and massage parlor businesses at Fair Drive public nuisances in April. Police claimed some of the massage parlors were fronts for prostitution.

Lester’s dispensary was among those ordered to shut down earlier this month under a temporary injunction until they had a chance on Friday to appeal the decision. The judge lifted the injunction and scheduled the business owners and Costa Mesa’s attorneys to come back to court June 3 to argue their cases.

Costa Mesa has for about a year now targeted certain marijuana dispensaries throughout the city. Some were ordered to close because they allegedly violated California’s medical marijuana dispensary rules, and others were left alone because they appeared to follow state standards, according to city officials.

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