| Michele Leonhart telling Congress that pot is as bad as heroin or meth in 2012. |
DEA administrator Michele Leonhart has made it clear she doesn’t like marijuana. This is a person who sat with a straight face and told the U.S. Congress that she didn’t think meth or heroin was any worse than marijuana.
So it should come as no surprise that she (and her ilk at the DEA) would freak out over the fact that some people have chosen to break the law and travel out of Colorado with marijuana – like they’ve been doing since well before Amendment 64 passed, making the possession of up to an ounce legal in the state.
Though it was a slim one, medical marijuana actually had a chance in Louisiana this year. “Had”, of course, being the operative word here.
Yesterday a medical cannabis bill that arguably would have set up the most restrictive in the country was shot down by the state Senate Health and Welfare Committee.
| 707 Headband shatter oil. |
Earlier this month, lawmakers in the Colorado House approved a bill that would limit the amount of hash and other cannabis concentrates that retail marijuana stores can sell to both in-state and out-of-state customers.
State representative Jonathan Singer sponsored the legislation — partially in response to the March death of a Wyoming college student that was questionably linked to marijuana consumption. But Singer says the measure has another goal: to prevent marijuana products leaving the state by making them harder to buy in large quantities.
The state of Florida continues to edge closer to passing some sort of reasonable medical marijuana legislation, but not everyone in the state is happy about it. We have been reporting on the totally predictable knee-jerk opposition from the state sheriff’s association, but as the Florida state legislature is beginning to make moves to legitimize the plant for medical needs, anti-cannabis groups have decided to enter the political arena as well.
Drug Free Florida is an anti-marijuana group whose sole purpose is to oppose, and eventually defeat, the amendment scheduled for a vote this November to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Funded by a 6-digit donation from Mel Sembler (a local land developer, former U.S. Ambassador to Italy and Australia, and long-time money bundler for the Republican Party), the group’s ties to the GOP do not end there.
| Hector Diaz. |
Last November, the DEA and Colorado law enforcement conducted marijuana raids at multiple cannabis businesses, including VIP Wellness.
This morning, Hector Diaz, a 49-year-old from Colombia, is due in court to be formally advised of the charges against him related to the sweep — including dropping more than $500,000 on the Colorado pot industry and weapons beefs he considers to be unconstitutional. VIP Wellness, which reopened briefly after the November raids, was re-raided this morning.
In October 2012, the Judicial Qualifications Commission’s investigative panel filed formal charges against Palm Beach County Judge Barry M. Cohen for using his bench as, in their words, a “bully pulpit” and “a neutral and detached magistrate.”
The findings came after the outspoken judge made some comments about racial profiling and mandatory sentences.
Specifically, Cohen criticized the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office for the way it handles criminal cases. He also criticized the law making marijuana illegal and has been outspoken on the county’s police department’s alleged racial profiling and racial bias. Some would say Cohen is just speaking the truth (including us here at Toke of the Town). The panel, however, found it inappropriate behavior for a judge and recommended a reprimand by the Florida Supreme Court. On Tuesday morning, Cohen received that reprimand.
| U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Virginia. |
Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Republican from Virginia, has introduced a bill this week in Congress that would reclassify the plant from a Schedule I controlled substance with no medical value according to the feds to a less restrictive Schedule II status. The move, he says, will allow doctors to legally prescribe cannabis as well as give protection to states around the country with medical laws in place.
Florida is still a long way from legalized medical marijuana. The Sheriff’s Association is waging a fierce campaign against it. The governor has hinted he might not sign any new laws on it. The conservative House has yet to take up the issue.
Yet history was made in the Florida Senate Monday, when legislators for the first time passed a bill to legalize medical pot. The bill, which would make it legal to obtain low-THC marijuana from a doctor to treat epilepsy in children, flew through the Senate with a 36-3 vote.
Yesterday, as we reported, a bill calling for post-traumatic stress disorder to be added to the conditions approved for treatment by medical marijuana came before the Colorado House committee on State, Military and Veterans Affairs. But it was rejected by a 6-5 vote.Sensible Colorado’s Brian Vicente, attorney and co-author of Amendment 64, has been fighting for this cause since at least 2010. He’s clearly frustrated by this turn of events, as well as some of the misinformation heard during testimony. But he’s not ready to give up.
“This is something Sensible Colorado has worked on for four years-plus,” Vicente notes, “and it seems that time and again, the government has acted to prevent PTSD sufferers from ready access to medical marijuana. We think the vote last night was just shameful.”