Raids, Closings Leave Medical Marijuana Patients Hurting
Many medical marijuana dispensaries in Michigan closed their doors on Thursday following a Court of Appeals ruling.
“It would be dangerous to operate with the specter of a criminal case hanging over our head,” said John Lewis, lawyer for Compassionate Apothecary in Mt. Pleasant, the center of the controversy, reports the Detroit Free Press.
Some Ann Arbor area activists sought to regroup at a rally Thursday night, reports Kyle Feldscher at AnnArbor.com.
| Photo: The Republican |
| Lyle E. Craker, UMass-Amherst professor of plant, soil and insect sciences, in the campus greenhouse |
One well-known professor’s attempt to get federal permission to grow marijuana for research into its potential medical benefits has been — once again — rejected by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
The DEA has for years claimed that letting anybody other than the federal government grow marijuana would “lead to greater illegal use” of the herb, reports Robert Rizzuto at The Republican.
Lyle Craker, a University of Massachusetts professor of plant, soil and insect sciences in Amherst, has been trying for 10 years to get a license to perform potentially life-saving research on medicinal cannabis.
| Photo: Steve Sisney/The Oklahoman |
| Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics buffoons, I mean agents, rappel from a helicopter, supposedly to show off “pot-fighting techniques” on Wednesday, August 24, 2011, in Norman, Oklahoma. |
File under “This is just sad.”
Gung-ho but none-too-bright agents from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs this week showed off to media and politicians the “tactics and techniques” they use to supposedly “eradicate” marijuana crops in their state.
“You mean besides just chop the fuckers down?” you may reasonably be asking. Just shows how damn little you know about this here mary-ju-wanna, there, hippie!
This stuff is serious and dangerous. You can’t just walk up all casual-like and uproot the shit. Oh, no. You’ve gotta sneak up on it, or maybe drop out of the sky.
You need a multi-million dollar helicopter and a military-style team all Rambo’d out in the finest assault gear. You need these heroes rappelling from that helicopter going after those horribly dangerous weeds. Takes a true hero to do this shit, doncha know!
The OK Bureau of Narcotics has been working out of Norman, Oklahoma all week, flying as far north as Guthrie, south to Pauls Valley, east to Shawnee and west to El Reno, according to spokesman Mark Woodward, reports NewsOK.
Agents start searching for the cannabis crops in June and continue sweeps until the first freeze, according to Woodward.
“It’s something we’ve done in the late summer since the late ’80s,” Woodward said.
Consider for a moment the vast stacks of taxpayer dollars these morons have pissed away playing Army.
The Bureau of Narcotics found and “eradicated” about 200,000 plants during their summer sweeps when they started about 20 years ago, Woodward said, but these days it’s more like 20,000 to 30,000 a year. (Likely explanation: When the Bureau started its “eradication” program 20 years ago, they were going after Oklahoma’s vast fields of feral hemp; after they got all the easy pickin’s, the annual plant count went down.)
| Graphic: The Pacific Northwest Inlander |
Medical marijuana dispensaries can be shut down as public nuisances, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in a decision announced Wednesday morning.
The three-judge panel, ruling on an Isabella County case, said the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act “does not include the patient-to-patient ‘sales,’ ” report Joe Swickard and John Wisely of the Detroit Free Press.
Unfortunately, the unfavorable decision can be used as precedent and applied to other cases.
A lower court had ruled that the Compassionate Apothecary was within the law when its operators allowed patients or caregivers to buy marijuana that other members had stored in their lockers rented from the facility. The owners, according to court papers, took at 20 percent cut of the price.
But Michigan’s medical marijuana law doesn’t include sales as “medical use,” according to the appellate judges’ 17-page opinion, and therefore it does not trump existing anti-drug laws.
| Photo: Val Does Politics |
| Dumb-ass alert: Florida Gov. Rick Scott said it is “unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction” when he signed this bill in May. So why is it OK for them to subsidize politicians’ stupidity? |
Welfare Drug Testing Program Costs $5 For Every $1 It Saves
Florida’s dumb-ass new law which requires the drug testing of all families applying for welfare benefits kicked in on July 1. It forces already financially challenged public assistance applicants to front the cost of the drug test, then reimburses them only if they test negative.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who spends most of his time with head way up his ass, said it is “unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction” when he signed this bill back in May, reported CNN. So why is it OK for them to subsidize politicians’ stupidity?
“It is the right thing for taxpayers,” the deeply clueless governor said at the time. “We don’t want to waste tax dollars.”
| Photo: Mobipocket |
| Tommy McCarthy’s “Growing Marijuana” isn’t just an instruction book — it’s a celebration. |
If you’re entering the increasingly crowded market of marijuana grow books, you’d better be good. There’s a plethora of cultivation guides available, from some of the biggest names in cannabis culture, and if you don’t want to get lost in the crowd you’ve got to shine.
Shine is exactly what outdoorsman Tommy McCarthy does in his book Growing Marijuana: How To Plant, Cultivate, And Harvest Your Own Weed. If I’m going to be taking cultivation advice from someone, I want that they should be as passionate about pot as am I, and McCarthy bountifully proves himself in this delightful book.
“…[P]lants your pot garden produces with seeds culled from a bag of street marijuana may vary noticeably because the plants they came from were of different species and strains,” McCarthy writes. “I actually kind of like this grab bag of mixed greens, because you never know when you’re planting just what will come up — as I stated at the beginning of this book, personal-use growing should be fun.”
| Phot: news.com.au |
One out of every three police officers in New South Wales, Australia will be tested for illegal drugs over the coming year.
The NSW Police Force’s Professional Standards Command has more than doubled the number of random drug tests, from about 2,000 to 5,000 for this fiscal year, reports 702 ABC Sydney.
The decision was taken after two senior officers and a constable were recently caught snorting cocaine, according to Assistant Commissioner Paul Carey.
“In July there were five recall targeted tests on people who we had reasonably good intelligence to say that they may have been using drugs,” Assistant Commissioner Carey said.
| Photo: Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ |
| Guru of Ganja Ed Rosenthal at Hempfest last weekend. Ed will be leading a medical cannabis cultivation seminar tonight (Wednesday, August 24) in Seattle. |
Ed Rosenthal, the Guru of Ganja and author of The Marijuana Grower’s Handbook, the official course book for Oaksterdam University, will lead a ganja growing seminar tonight in Seattle.
The indoor medical cannabis cultivation seminar, presented by Northern Waters Patients Network, will benefit the Seattle-based Cannabis Defense Coalition.
Attend this class and learn the terminology of the indoor gardener: seed germination, clones and cloning, hydro, N-P-K balance, pH, light cycles, begging, flowering, pruning and trichomes are just a few of the terms you’ll be using correctly after a session with Ed.
Rosethal will present a comprehensive overview of cultivation. Gardeners at all levels, new or advanced, will find tips and techniques to save time, labor and energy. The seminar will include Q&A time with “Ask Ed.”
Rosenthal starts at the basics and takes you through the entire process of how to grow a personal indoor garden — with little or no experience required. You will learn what equipment to use, how to care for plants, the different stages of plant growth, and how to harvest beautiful buds.
| Graphic: Dispensary Business News |
What do you look for when choosing a medical marijuana dispensary?
If you live in one of the 16 states where medicinal cannabis is legal, Dispensary Business News is interested in how you select a shop. Is it price? Location? Ambience? Selection? Specific strains? (If your state doesn’t yet allow medical marijuana, keep working until they do.)
This is a good way for you to help keep the best dispensaries in business, and give new ones a fighting chance to win your business.