Officials at Chicago’s Swedish Covenant Hospital say they want to be the first legal medical marijuana dispensary in the state. Illinois approved a medical cannabis “pilot program” in 2013, allowing for hospitals in the state to act as legal pot dispensaries. So far, none have shown much interest and medical cannabis sales aren’t likely to begin until next year at the earliest.
“We have professionals who very much would like to prescribe those drugs, we have the system in place to manage it and we have the patient population that needs it,” Marcia Jimenez, director of intergovernmental affairs for Swedish, told the Sun-Times. “It just made a lot of sense.
Kids suffering from severe seizure-causing conditions and diseases will be able to access medical cannabis soon thanks to a law signed by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday.
Illinois already has a medical cannabis program in place, but seizures did not qualify a patient for a medical cannabis recommendation. Will the new bill, children as well as adults will have increased access to the plant.
In an unprecedented move earlier this year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to drastically reduce the sentencing recommendations for non-violent convicts of drug-related crimes.
Just this past Friday, in a move that received shockingly little press, that same U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to apply the same guidelines to eligible inmates already serving time behind bars. Though no inmates will see an early release thanks to the new legislation until November of 2015 at the earliest, experts says that as many as 46,000 currently incarcerated prisoners will be eligible to apply for an expedited sentence.
| For adults only. |
In a move so that defies common sense so much that it is baffling, recreational and medical pot stores in Washington can sell cannabis brownies and cookies but can’t sell candy or lollipops because the latter might be appealing to kids.
Adults apparently don’t ever eat candy in Washington, ever. Movie theaters must be stocked with kale chips.
Lakewood, Colorado has become the latest city in Colorado to ban cannabis businesses. But voters will decide in November if retail marijuana shops should be allowed.
During a meeting Monday night, the Lakewood City Council voted to ban marijuana businesses such as cultivation facilities, infused-product manufacturers, marijuana-smoking clubs and research labs, as well as outlawing hash oil extractions. However, council members agreed to let Lakewood residents decide the future of retail dispensaries at the ballot box on November 4.
A Denver marijuana edibles company is being forced to pull their products from all dispensaries after a routine food safety inspection turned up some issues with the manufacturing process. Namely: using an old washing machine for hash making isn’t quite kosher in an industrial kitchen.
The company in question, At Home Baked, makes a line of do-it-yourself hash brownies. The hash is pre-mixed with the brownie powder. All you do is add water.
| Klaus with a K/Commons. |
They said it was a hard decision, but somehow we don’t believe the parents of 18-year-old Joshua Billen. According to them, they struggled with whether or not to turn their small-time pot-using and -dealing son in to police.
Because we would like to think if anyone would have weighed out the pros and cons themselves, they would have realized that branding their own flesh and blood a criminal for the rest of their life over a bag of weed is a cruel, needless thing to do.
| Toke of the Town. |
An Alabama political leader did what any good old boy from the anti-pot Bible belt would have done if caught with a marijuana grow operation on their property – he up and quit, y’all.
A report released earlier this week by The Gadsden Times verified that 52-year-old John Lloyd Ellis resigned from his position as the Cherokee County Republican party chairman after getting busted last Friday growing dope in his backyard. The big dog, State party chairman Bill Armistead says Ellis has since severed all ties with the Alabama GOP, and that the party wishes to refrain from issuing any further comments about the incident. “We will allow legal and judicial system to follow its course,” said Armistead.
As we’ve reported, the University of Arizona fired the lead researcher of a study that looked at the therapeutic benefits of cannabis for treating people with post-traumatic stress disorder. While no reasons were given, Dr. Sue Sisley says that she was fired for political reasons and not because of her performance.
And now she has filed an official appeal with the university, demanding that continue as assistant professor and assistant director of the Arizona Telemedicine Program. She has support, too. As we wrote earlier this week, an Iraq veteran posted an online petition at Change.org that has gathered more than 31,300 online signatures.
At the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention in Duluth last month, 1076 delegates cast ballots related to the party’s 2014-15 action agenda. Resolutions ranged from taxes to veterans to recreational cannabis.
This last one needed 619 votes to pass, but ended up with 603, according to tally takers. In other words, the activists who guide policy for the DFL — the party that currently controls the House, the Senate and the governor’s office — were 16 votes shy of making recreational cannabis a legislative priority for the next two years. That comes out to a mere 1.5 percent.