Delegate Mike Maypenny, a democrat from Taylor County, introduced House Bill 2961 on Tuesday, which would allow for a medical marijuana program in West Virginia.
This is the second bill introduced by Maypenny regarding medical marijuana this session. His first bill, HB 2230, submitted in February, did not provide protections for doctors who recommend medical marijuana to patients among other things. Maypenny has said he is putting all of his efforts into his new proposal.
Congratulations New Hampshire, you’re one step closer to having medical marijuana.
Yesterday the House approved House Bill 573 that would allow patients to grow up to three plants or get it from one of five state-regulated medical marijuana centers. Even better, it passed with more than 80 percent support from both sides of the aisle 286 to 64. The bill now moves on to the senate for approval.
| Chuck Coker/Flickr |
Who regulates medical marijuana in California? Well, basically, nobody. State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano wants to change that. Today he announced legislation, introduced last month, that would bring medical cannabis under the policing of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
The proposal is called AB 473 and it would mandate that the ABC police “the entire supply chain” and “work to eliminate criminal involvement in the industry.”The language of the bill also states that pot would be tested and that guidelines for growing would be established. LA Weekly has the rest.
| Dr. Lester Grinspoon. |
Dr. Lester Grinspoon is easily one of the most prominent, and influential voices within the cannabis reform movement, and he has been for decades. A retired Harvard Psychiatry Professor, Grinspoon is the author of numerous books, including the popular Marihuana Reconsidered and Marihuana The Forbidden Medicine. He’s also on the Board of Directors for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and has appeared in several television shows and movies, including The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. We caught up with Grinspoon recently, and he was kind enough to answer some questions for Toke of the Town.
| Industrial hemp. |
Did Henry Ford really make a car out of hemp? Was the Declaration of Independence written on hemp paper? Did Abraham Lincoln use hemp oil in his lamps?
The hemp plant, a variety of Cannabis sativa that’s the subject of this week’s cover story “Green Acres,” is steeped in lore. Some hemp legends are true. Others are half-true, and some are completely false. Denver Westword presents ten hemp myths culled from the Internet — and attempt to separate the fact from the fiction.
Update – Wednesday, March 20, 2013: The Maryland Senate voted to decriminalize marijuana possession of up to ten grams of marijuana yesterday. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Robert Zirkin, a democrat from Baltimore, told the Washington Post that he was pleased with his colleagues and says the House would be smart to pass the legislation.
“Incarceration does not make sense [for small amounts],” he told the PostWashington Post newsroom.)
New York City police have spend more than 1 million man hours arresting making about 440,000 marijuana arrests since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, according to a study released by the Drug Policy Alliance earlier today.
That number could even be higher. The study, conducted by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, used a two-and-a-half hour average for each arrest and multiplied that by the 439,056 arrests made in from 2002 through 2012.
| wikipedia.com |
| Bathsheba, Barbados. |
Barbados Attorney General Adriel Brathwiate last week said that he had doubts his country was winning the war on drugs and said the country should re-examine their existing marijuana laws.
According to the Stabroek News, Brathwaite made his remarks while speaking at the opening of a national drug council meeting that was reviewing the country’s drug policies. He pointed to what he sees as an increase in the country’s marijuana use – particularly by young people – as evidence that their policies are failing.
| SBCS |
| $4 million in wet schwag. |
Despite their taste in verdant herbal remedies, smugglers did not have the luck of the green on St. Patrick’s Day. Authorities in Santa Barbara said they found and seized their $4 million stash on Arroyo Camada Beach early Sunday morning.
The weed, found near an abandoned Panga boat, weighed 2,000 pounds. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time this month such a large haul has been found on a California beach near an empty boat. LA Weekly has the details.
| Tim Gabor for Westword.com |
Last week, Denver Westword writer Melanie Asmar took a closer look at what recent marijuana legalization laws have done for industrial hemp in Colorado and what that could mean for the rest of the country.
In it, she details “a merry band of hempsters, a small but dedicated group of supporters that includes a retired Yellow Pages saleswoman, a self-described mad scientist, the victorious defendant in one of Colorado’s landmark medical marijuana cases and a handful of stone-cold sober lawmakers who represent the type of places where people have dirt under their fingernails and make their living off the land. Together, this group is determined to create a hemp industry and position the state at the leading edge of an agricultural boom.”
Read Asmar’s story “Can hemp escape the role of marijuana’s sober stepsiter” in its entirety over at Westword.com