Search Results minister

Canada: Court Orders Nova Scotia To Pay For Woman’s Marijuana

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 31, 2010 Legislation, Medical

Nova Scotia has been ordered to pay for the medical marijuana used by a woman who is on social assistance. In a decision released Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia ordered the Department of Community Services to pay for Sally Campbell’s prescription pot, reports Beverley Ware of The Chronicle Herald.

Campbell suffers from numerous ailments, and has a certificate from Health Canada giving her permission to use cannabis to relieve her nausea and pain.

Marijuana Policy Project Joins National Boycott Of WalMart

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 16, 2010 Medical, News

Graphic: pyrello3000

The nation’s largest marijuana policy reform organization on Tuesday joined Toke of the Town in calling upon shoppers across the country to boycott WalMart Stores, Inc. The boycott is to protest the unjust and possibly unlawful firing of a medical marijuana patient and sinus cancer survivor who suffers from an inoperable brain tumor.

Joseph Casias, 29, legaly uses medical marijuana to alleviate the pain resulting from his cancer, which is in remission.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is asking shoppers to demand WalMart abandon its discriminatory policy of firing employees who are legal medical marijuana patients under state law.

After dutifully working at a WalMart in Battle Creek, Michigan, for five years, Casias was suddenly terminated because he tested positive for marijuana during a drug screening administered after he sprained a knee on the job.

Canada: All 3 National Parties Support Prince Of Pot

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 12, 2010 Culture, Global, Legislation

Photo: Jodie Emery

Jodie and Marc Emery in a legal industrial hemp field outside Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

MPs from all three of Canada’s major national political parties — Conservative, Liberal, and New Democrat — are about to submit petitions calling for marijuana activist Marc Emery to not be extradited to the United States.

Scott Reid of the Conservative Party, Ujjal Dosanjh of the Liberal Party, and Libby Davies of the New Democratic Party will submit the petitions, reports Carlito Pablo at Vancouver’s Georgia Straight.

According to press reports, the petitions will likely be submitted by the three MPs on Monday, March 15.

Last Summer, Emery agreed to a plea bargain with American authorities that will probably see him thrown into a United States prison for at least five years for distributing marijuana seeds through the mail.

This Just In: Reefer Madness Is Still B.S.

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 5, 2010 News

Photo: 4&20 blackbirds

“Just get me some more reefers… NOW!”

Every few months, you can count on it: Another “scientific” study that attempts to draw some connection, however tenuous, between getting high and going crazy. But those outlandish claims amount to just putting a white lab coat on the “Reefer Madness” warnings of the 1930s, and it’s easy to see why.

I mean, get real: Considering modern rates of usage, if cannabis really produced psychosis, the streets would be choked with a gibbering throng of burned-out potheads. It doesn’t. They aren’t.

“I’ve said it for years now,” film director John Holowach, responsible for the documentary High: The True Tale of American Marijuana, told Toke of the Town. “If pot and mental illness were linked, the two should rise and fall with one another, but they don’t.”

Stossel To Look At Drug Prohibition Thursday Night

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 4, 2010 Culture, News

Photo: OregonLive.com

John Stossel: “It’s not the intoxicant that causes crime — it’s prohibition.”

Host John Stossel will take a look at the effects of prohibition during part of his Fox Business Network show, Stossel, Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

“In part of my show tonight, I’ll talk about how laws against prostitution, organ selling, and drug use hurt more people than prostitution, organ selling, and drug use do,” Stossel wrote Thursday.

Stossel notes that the first argument against legalizing drugs is usually “Then more kids will abuse drugs!”

“But there’s little evidence for that,” Stossel points out. “The Netherlands has officially ‘tolerated’ marijuana for 30 years. So is there violent marijuana crime? No. Fewer young people in Holland smoke marijuana than do Americans. Legalization took the mystique away. A Dutch minister of health said, ‘We’ve succeeded in making pot… boring.’ “

Denver Pot Dispensaries Have Five Days To Get A License

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on February 22, 2010 Dispensaries, Legislation

Graphic: Out Front Colorado

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver have only five days to apply for a city-required specific dispensary license.

Under Denver City Council Bill 34, the pot shops must have a city sales-tax license and also must apply for a specific dispensary license by March 1, reports Patricia Calhoun in Westword.

420 Girls: Mother Nature’s Messengers Keep It Smokin’ 17 Years

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on February 14, 2010 Culture, Products

420girls.com

“What do you mean, what would I do for a lighter?”

Marijuana activist/visionary Rob Griffin set the standard, simply because he was there before almost anyone else. When he launched 420 Girls in 1993, there weren’t any other sites centered around photos of naked women smoking weed.

The goal, Griffin says, was always to draw more people into the legalization movement through the beauty, glamor and sex appeal of the nude female figure.

The site features nude women smoking pot, posing with cannabis paraphernalia, marijuana plants and buds, posing in dispensaries, fields and grow rooms.

While the formula has certainly caught on — there are many others like it today — 420girls.com was the original.

Griffin’s mission came into being as a result of a marijuana possession conviction from 1992, while Rob was living in Maryland. Because he was then considered, by law, to be a felon due to drug-related charges, his right to vote was permanently suspended.

(NSFW after the fold)

‘Cannabis Casualty’? Brit Government Goes After Scientific Independence

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on February 10, 2010 Global, Legislation, News

Photo: Political Scrapbook

U.K. drugs advisor David Nutt was sacked for… well, advising about drugs.

It all started late last year when David Nutt, chairman of Britain’s Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse (ACDM), was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after Nutt said scientific evidence showed cannabis and ecstasy are less dangerous than alcohol.

Now more than 80 leading scientists in the United Kingdom have signed a document rejecting a set of government principles which they say would compromise their scientific integrity, reports health editor Sarah Boseley at The Guardian.

N.M. Medical Marijuana Tax Could Push Patients To Black Market

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on February 2, 2010 Dispensaries, Legislation, Medical

Photo: Flickr / Westword

New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. And, well, taxing the sick.

New Mexico’s Legislature has been looking mighty hungrily at the state’s medical marijuana program as a source of tax revenue. But according the state’s Tax and Revenue Department, such a tax could cause patients to turn to the black market.

A 25 percent excise tax on medical marijuana could potentially raise about $1.2 million for the state, according to the Legislative Finance Committee’s fiscal impact report on Sen. John Sapien’s bill, SB 56, reports Marjorie Childress at The New Mexico Independent.

The analysis estimated a typical patient spends $6,256 annually on medical marijuana, and would pay about $1,564 in excise tax per year.

Denmark Considers State-Licensed Cannabis Stores

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 15, 2010 Global, Legislation, News

Photo: preamp.us

Copenhagen’s Christiania section is famed for its “Pusher Street,” where the sale of cannabis and hashish is unofficially tolerated. Now the city is thinking of making it official.

Denmark is looking at borrowing a page from the Netherlands’ approach to cannabis, as the Copenhagen City Council examines a plan to set up state-licensed marijuana stores to remove the trade from the control of gangs.

But the plan, supported by a majority of the city council, may not have enough support in the Danish Parliament, reports The Copenhagen Post.

The proposal is to run a three-year trial in which stores staffed by healthcare professionals would sell cannabis in small quantities for about 50 kroner per gram, close to the current street price in Denmark’s capitol city.

Search Results: minister (207)