When you speak to a cannabis festival audience — as I did Saturday at Hempstalk 2012 in Portland — you’d better have some attention-grabbers to share, since these good folks have typically been hearing speeches about marijuana all day.
One thing that I shared with the sizable crowd was the not-nearly-well-enough-known fact that babies born to mothers who smoke marijuana are both healthier and smarter than those born to women who don’t do any drugs or herbs at all.
​The prohibitionists tell us that the smoking of marijuana by pregnant women results in lower birth weights and less intelligent babies. The scientific research tells us that toking mothers have babies that are just as healthy, with birth weights just as normal, as babies born of non-toking mothers.
| David Downs – Journalist |
One medical marijuana patient collective in Los Angeles is taking a unique approach in its fight to defend itself from being forced to close. It is targeting the L.A. Police Department in a lawsuit.
Other suits have been filed by other dispensaries and collectives following the city council’s unanimous decision to ban the shops from operating, but this is the first lawsuit to directly take on the city’s police department, reports the Cannabis Law Group.
The case is Collins Collective v. City of Los Angeles, LAPD. Cannabis Law Group attorney Damian Nassiri is handling the case.
According to the collective, the reason for the suit is that L.A. police officers, in violation of California law, threatened “severe repercussions” on August 13 if the collective continued in its efforts to establish a storefront dispensary. Cops said that if the collective opened, they would forcibly shut it down and arrest the members.
| MLive |
| Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is, as my mama in Alabama would say, a horse’s ass |
A new recall effort against Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette — infamous for his dogged opposition to the medical marijuana law approved by an overwhelming 63 percent of state voters in 2008 — is underway.
Attorney General Schuette has been busily trying to dismantle the state’s medical marijuana law ever since it was passed by voters. He claims to be a “states’ rights conservative” — unless the “state’s right” we’re talking about is a medical marijuana law.
Marijuana activist Richard Clement is trying, for the second time, to remove the attorney general after falling short with a petition signature drive last year, reports WKZO.
| Speckled Axe |
| Judge Richard A. Posner: “I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana” |
Most-Cited Judge In America Criticizes Drug War As ‘Absurd’
A widely respected federal judge called for the legalization of marijuana in a lecture at Elmhurst College in Illinois on Thursday.
Judge Richard A. Posner of the influential Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago “is an intellectual giant who is the most-cited judge in America,” reports Larry Bodine at Lawyers.com. “His call for legalization is considered significant because Posner is considered a legal conservative,” Bodine wrote.
“I don’t think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have,” Posner said. “I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana. I can’t see any difference between that and cigarettes.”
| Hercules Health Center is located in a state-o-the-art medical facility in Hercules, California, just north of Oakland |
Story and Photos by Sharon Letts
Hercules Health Center, named after the bedroom community by the same name just north of Oakland, California, is located in a well-manicured, modern industrial park in a state-of-the-art, modern medical facility.
The large building is occupied by dozens of medical specialists who are no strangers to the dispensary or the magic of cannabis.
“We have many specialists in the building who send patients here for alternative therapies,” said Ed Breslin, co-founder of the center.
| Hispanically Speaking News |
| Uruguay President Jose Mujica: “We feel that putting it aboveboard, regulating it, can be a lesser evil than what is happening today” |
Aw, man! If Uruguay’s parliament approves a historic plan to legalize marijuana, drug tourism will not be allowed in the South American nation, President Jose Mujica said on Wednesday.
The plan, under which Uruguay would sell marijuana to its citizens, will require people to prove they are Uruguayan before scoring any weed, Mujica told Agence France Presse (AFP). The legalization bill — the first complete legalization in the world, as opposed to decriminalization of “tolerance” as practiced in places like the Netherlands and Portugal — “is to resolve a problem that we ourselves have,” President Mujica said.
| Helena Independent Record |
| Medical marijuana provider Tom Daubert was facing a 20-year federal prison sentence — and he was following Montana state law. On Thursday, he got five years’ probation. |
Tom Daubert, a drug policy reform activist with a long history of work for humane medical marijuana laws, received five years’ probation in a decision reached Thursday by federal U.S. District Court.
“I’m grateful for the judge’s leniency but I will never stop believing that patients deserve to live under a law that recognizes true science,” Daubert said upon being sentenced.
Daubert’s former business, Montana Cannabis, was raided by federal agents in March 2011. Despite having worked closely with state and local law enforcement leaders throughout his involvement in marijuana production for state-legal patients, Tom was prevented from submitting a defense under federal law that his company complied with Montana’s medical marijuana law.
| Mary Jane’s House of Glass |
| Rob Kampia, shown here partying at the Playboy Mansion, doesn’t seem too concerned about getting a marijuana DUI. Oh yeah, those are only for Washington state, right? |
Rob Kampia, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, published a Huffington Post column this week which included a chart supposedly illustrating “the Facts on I-502” which included an unintentionally humorous section.
Under “Arrests,” the chart tells us “If I-502 passes in WA on November 6th,” “NO ARRESTS,” and then in smaller print, “as long as you’re complying with the new law.” Gee, Rob, how many law degrees do you have, again?
It’s much the same with the rest of the chart. Under “Penalty for Wholesale Cultivation,” it’s “NO PENALTY if you have a marijuana producer’s license.” What the chart doesn’t tell you is that after an initial $250 setup fee, “marijuana producer’s licenses” will cost $1,000 per year (expect this number to go up quickly.)
Even the chart has to admit that the penalty for growing your own “Doesn’t change from current law. Manufacture becomes legal for licensed producers, not for home growers.”
Kampia, much of whose staff at MPP resigned a couple years ago after a sex scandal, spends most of the article lecturing Washington state activists on how the 502 debate is “off-track,” presumably because patients are insisting upon actually reading and questioning the legislation upon which they’re being asked to vote.
| Dampfparade 2012 |
Rally Would Likely Have Been Largest Cannabis Demonstration In German History
A cannabis demonstration and parade planned for Saturday in Cologne, Germany — which was shaping up to be the largest marijuana protest ever held in Germany — is being shut down at the last minute by the Versammlungsbehörde, a local government office that oversees public gatherings.
“This is the first time a pro-cannabis march has been planned for Cologne, which is located in the most populous area of Germany,” Daniel S. of Duisburg, Germany, told Toke of the Town on Wednesday morning. (Dan in no way speaks for the parade or any associated organizations; he just happens to live nearby and knows some people involved in the parade’s planning.)
The march was shaping up to possibly be the largest demonstration of its kind ever in Germany, thanks in large part to a positive response on Facebook and word-of-mouth advertising.
Planned speakers included Lars Scheimann, the first German citizen to be granted a medical marijuana card to treat his Tourette’s and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Scheimann has since helped more than 60 other people get similar approval for medicinal cannabis to treat various conditions through his organization, “Cannabis Als Medizin” (Cannabis As Medicine).
On September 3, in what President Obama’s press secretary described as an attempt to appeal to “the youth vote,” the Obama campaign released an ad featuring fictional potheads Harold and Kumar.
The President asks them for their support and they agree, mindlessly gobbling junk food and chuckling at cartoons. But the Obama Administration has waged a war on marijuana users at a faster pace than President Bush, even attacking state-legal medical marijuana at nearly every turn.
Your vote is worth more than a stoner “wink-and-nod” commercial.