| High-CBD oil. |
A plan that would have limited Colorado caregivers to just ten patients that would have cut off the supply of high-CBD oil to hundreds of epileptic and sick children in the state was killed by the state Board of Health yesterday.
| BruceRauner.com |
| Republican Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, who would have vetoed the Illinois medical marijuana laws. |
Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner wouldn’t have allowed medical pot in Illinois had he been governor over this past term. Since he’s not governor, though it’s easy for him to sit back and play armchair quarterback when it comes to medical cannabis and criticize the current administration for following through with the will of the people and their elected officials.
But medical marijuana is legal, and now Rauner says he would milk it for all he can. His latest idea? Give out grow and dispensary licenses to the highest bidders, effectively cutting out small business owners and giving preferential treatment not to those who care about patients and medicine, but those who purely see dollar signs in the new industry.
| Coleen Whitfield. |
There’s a legal challenge over how licenses might be doled out for growers cultivating a special, high-CBD strain of medical marijuana, which doesn’t make users high and which has already been approved via state law.
Two Florida plant nurseries have sued to replace a proposed lottery system with a more rigorous, merit-based approach.
Comedian-turned-political-rabble-rouser Steve Berke may have lost his latest bid for Miami Beach mayor, but he hasn’t given up on spreading the message of his pet political project: legalized pot.
Berke is back with a stab at viral video campaigning with a pro-medical marijuana parody of “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease. He even apparently tracked down the original funhouse set used in the 1978 film.
According to a Denver Police Department podcast, calls have already started coming in from parents concerned that their kids will be slipped pot edibles while trick-or-treating on Halloween.
We highly doubt that. In fact, if anyone does hand out pot-laced candy to kids, we wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone from the anti-cannabis side trying to make legal cannabis look bad.
| photo by William Breathes. |
The debate for legalizing medical marijuana has been traveling throughout Florida the past few weeks, and now it’s making its stop in our neck of the woods. United For Care and Drug Free Florida will be going head-to-head before the public in Broward, in a town hall debate this morning. The debate, scheduled to start at 11 a.m. today at Broward College, at the Judson A. Samuels South Campus Performing and Cultural Arts Center, is being held a month prior to the gubernatorial debate happening at the college.
Things could get interesting as United For Care campaign manager Ben Pollara is set to debate the folks from Drug Free Florida, which has recently begun attack ads on medical cannabis. More at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.
| New York City Diesel. |
The 2015 legislative session doesn’t start for another four moths, but New York state Sen. Liz Krueger says she’s readying a bill that would legalize the recreational use of limited amounts of pot for adults 21 and up.
The bill will be based on originally introduced last December that never made it out of committee, but Kreuger’s office says it will be further amended to be more palatable to other lawmakers.
| Edibles selection at a Colorado dispensary. |
Should recreational cannabis edibles manufacturers be required to ensure that their products are distinguishable from similar non-medicated products even outside the original packaging materials? That’s the tricky question that was discussed on Thursday, September 11, when a working group met to discuss implementation of the Smart Colorado-sponsored House Bill 14-1366.
In perhaps one of the most blatantly obvious and useless pieces of research to ever emerge on the marijuana culture, pseudo-scientists from the Boston Children’s Hospital claim that the youth of America is using recreational marijuana to put them in a better mood after suffering the heinous wrath of a bad day. In other words, these hoodlums are smoking weed to forget about the dreaded events of the day rather than going on a violent rampage against everyone who even looked at them wrong.
How dare they!
With the vote a mere two months away, the No On 2/Drug Free Florida people are decidedly taking it strong to the hoop with their TV airtime buys, trying to get their message across to as many people as possible. The Miami Herald‘s Marc Caputo reports that Drug Free Florida is putting in $1.6 million in TV ads for the first week of October, and are promising more to come after that.
United For Care campaign manager Ben Pollara released a statement on Drug Free Florida’s planned TV ads:
“It’s no surprise Drug Free Florida Committee is making such a large buy so far out from Election Day. When your basic position runs completely counter to public opinion, millions in misleading advertising is the only strategy available. But no amount of advertising can overwhelm the basic facts. Floridians know the benefits of medical marijuana are real, and the people of this state are deeply compassionate. We believe the overwhelming majority will vote to make sure patients no longer have to risk incarceration for listening to their doctors and seeking relief from debilitating diseases and medical conditions.”