| Photo: Ann Arbor Wellness Collective |
| Nebula, available at Ann Arbor Wellness Collective, 321 E. Liberty Avenue, Suite 1. |
The Ann Arbor City Council voted unanimously at its August 15 meeting to establish an application fee of $600 for licenses to operate a medical marijuana dispensary in the Michigan city.
According to city officials, the application fee covers a total of about nine hours of work by staff in the city clerk’s office, police department, planning department, and the city attorney’s office, reports The Ann Arbor Chronicle.
It sounds as if prospective dispensary owners won’t be through paying money to the city even after they cough up the six Benjamins. The ordinance distinguishes between an “application fee” (which this is) and a “license fee.” License fees, according to city ordinance, are to be reviewed by a licensing board, the members of which will be appointed by Mayor John Hieftje.
| Photo: CMMNJ |
| Wilson was supported throughout his trial by local cannabis advocates, who demonstrated in front of the Somerset County Courthouse. |
An attorney representing multiple sclerosis patient John Ray Wilson, the man recently sentenced to five years in prison for growing marijuana to alleviate his medical condition, has filed an appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Wilson, 38, was convicted on the second-degree felony of “manufacturing” marijuana for growing 17 cannabis plants, reports Freedom Is Green. Last month an appellate court upheld Wilson’s barbaric five-year prison sentence, ruling that he could not claim the plants were for personal, medical use.
Wilson has no healthcare insurance to aid him in his battle against MS. His conviction came just as New Jersey’s compassionate use medical marijuana law was passed. Unfortunately, the Garden State’s law was the first medicinal cannabis legislation in the United States that prohibited home cultivation by patients.
Local cannabis advocates supported Wilson, demonstrating in front of the Somerset County Courthouse throughout his 2009 trial.
| Graphic: Homegrown Goodness |
Back when I first started noticing such things in 1977, Bill Drake’s International Cultivator’s Handbook was already a classic. Published in 1974, the book was one of the very first to market that went into detail on how to grow not only marijuana, but also coca and opium.
The volume, which became quite hard to find after it went out of print in the early 1980s for a few years, is now available again in a new large paperbound edition from the author.
Author William Daniel Drake Jr. is a writer, teacher and social inventor living and working on a biodynamic vegetable and flower farm located on Johnson Creek in the Texas hill country. Bill is a former professor of international management at the University of Texas at Dallas.
His counterculture books have sold more than three million copies in six languages worldwide since his first book, the Cultivator’s Handbook of Marijuana, in 1969.
| Graphic: Cafe Press |
Classes are being offered in California and elsewhere which combine two kinds of relaxation and centering: yoga and marijuana.
The 4:20 Remedy Yoga Class at Brazilian Yoga and Pilates in Atwater puts together “two of hippy-dippy California’s favorite feel-good, vaguely medicinal pastimes,” reports Amanda Lewis at LA Weekly.
Yoga teacher Liz McDonald noticed that many of her private clients showed up high to practice yoga, so she decided to offer a class specifically catering to a cannabinated clientele.
She conceived of the class as “a gathering of creative minds, a very non-judgmental place where all are welcome,” McDonald said. “Do I really want a couple of uptight conservatives in here? Ideally, no, but … my business welcomes all types of people, especially those tight-asses that may need it most!”
| Photo: Cafe Vale Tudo |
Applicants for the District of Columbia’s medical marijuana program are now required to state in writing that they assume the risk of federal prosecution for growing or distributing cannabis, and that they cannot hold the city liable for arrests, according to newly revised rules.
The rules for the long-awaited program, published on Friday, for the first time pointedly mention federal prosecution because a Department of Justice memo from June says the federal government still considers marijuana a controlled substance, reports Tom Howell Jr. at The Washington Times.
| Photo: Cigarettes Flavours |
| Sure looks “agricultural” to me. |
Yes, marijuana is a plant you grow from the ground. No, it’s not an agricultural crop. Confused yet?
In what is believed to be the first ruling of its kind in the state, a judge in California has ruled that a marijuana collective can’t operate on land zoned for agriculture, reports Lewis Griswold of the Fresno Bee.
In his ruling last week, Tulare County Superior Court Judge Paul Vortmann dismissed a property owner’s argument that a medical marijuana collective’s cultivation of marijuana is legal because it is in an agricultural zone.
“In this state, marijuana has never been classified as a crop or horticultural product,” Judge Vortmann wrote in his ruling. Marijuana is a controlled substance, the judge said.
| Photo: Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ |
| The “medicine wheel” at Ben Reagan’s dispensary, The C.P.C., is used to demonstrate for patients the continuum between sativa and indica varieties of medicinal cannabis. |
By Ben Reagan
Co-Founder, The C.P.C.
Choosing alternative medicine such as medical cannabis is a big decision, and one you probably took a long time to make. Now that you’re here, and whether or not you were previously a cannabis user, there are a few things you should know about dispensaries (also known as collectives) to ensure that you get the quality of life improvement and medical benefits you’re looking for.
Here are five tips to help get you started on your new journey.
| Photo: Santa Rosa Press Democrat |
| Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman: “We are, of course, supportive of legitimate medical marijuana here.” |
By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
The Coming of the New Prophet
Rikess: Last time we spoke in August of last year… (See Toke of the Town’s 2010 interview with Sheriff Allman here.)
Sheriff: Seems like yesterday…
Rikess: (laughs) I know and still…you don’t write and you don’t call…
Sheriff: (laughs) Okay…
Rikess: So last time I was here, you said something that was incredibly right on. You said that there was going to be very little difference between George Bush’s administration and Obama’s, when it came to medical marijuana. You said that someone big in the attorney general’s office sat in the chair I’m sitting in and said, and I’m paraphrasing, “He guaranteed me that it was going to be the same under Obama as it was with George Bush. In the end, Eric Holder will handle medical marijuana the same way [the]George Bush [Administration] did.”
Sheriff: It wasn’t Eric Holder. It was a U.S. attorney. The chronological order was, the U.S. attorney came up here and said, (this is definitely under George W.), saying, “ummm, the U.S. government will not get involved with any marijuana cultivation, distribution, what-ever-you-want-to-call-it, that falls within the boundaries of California’s medical marijuana.”
Okay, thank you very much. And, you know, he took his dog and pony show and went somewhere else.
Then the presidential election happened, okay. Then in the primary or maybe it was before the general election, Obama just mentioned something about medical marijuana.
| Graphic: Cannabis Fantastic |
A narrow majority of Colorado’s registered voters believe marijuana should be legalized, according to a new PPP poll. Voters of the state may have a chance to make that a reality next year.
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is gathering signatures to put a cannabis legalization measure on the ballot in 2012.
When asked, “Do you think marijuana usage should be legal or illegal?” 51 percent of voters said “legal,” 38 percent said “illegal,” and 11 percent were not sure, reports Jon Walker at Just Say Now.
The breakdown of support in Colorado is almost identical to national patterns of support.
| Photo: Wyoming Highway Patrol |
| State troopers said this is one of the boxes of marijuana found in a moving truck after it was stopped in Wyoming on Sunday. |
Wyoming state troopers arrested a suspected marijuana smuggler after they said he ran into another car in an Interstate 80 construction zone on Sunday.
Troopers were alerted that a rental truck had hit another vehicle without stopping on the interstate west of Cheyenne, reports Wayne Harrison of The Denver Channel.
A rental truck matching the description was pulled over about 15 miles west of Cheyenne and a Wyoming Highway Patrol drug detection dog was called in after the driver “appeared very nervous.”
Driver James Richburg, 56, was so nervous, in fact, that he forgot to put his truck in park and started rolling as he was being questioned, reports Rylee DeGood at CBS 5.