| Graphic: ALCP |
A political party in New Zealand has guaranteed patients access to medical marijuana if elected to office in November.
The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party (ALCP) said it will disband Medsafe if elected to ensure that cannabis and other natural medicines are freely available to patients who need them, reports Scoop.
According to the group, Medsafe in 2007 began a “modern day witch hunt” against the natural health industry in New Zealand, prosecuting merchants and seizing stock from producers of natural remedies who say their products have therapeutic benefits.
| Graphic: Ed Rosenthal |
| Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government arrested 58,000 Canadians for marijuana possession last year. |
Canada’s crime rate has dropped to its lowest level in almost four decades, according to Statistics Canada, but marijuana-related arrests are dramatically increasing.
Stats Canada shows that 58,000 Canadians were arrested for cannabis possession in 2010, a number that is 14 percent higher than the year before, reports Renee Bernard at News 1130.
Pot smokers are being unfairly targeted by the Harper government, according to Jacob Hunter with the Beyond Prohibition Foundation.
| Photo: KOMO News |
| All charges against Guy Casey, above, were dismissed — but the cops still don’t want to give his medical marijuana back. |
Two operators of a Tacoma, Washington medical marijuana dispensary beat drug charges earlier this year. Now they want their cannabis back.
Guy Casey and Michael Schaef said they are legally authorized to possess the marijuana seized during a raid and that the government no longer has any interest in the pot, reports Adam Lynn at the Bellingham Herald.
They’ve asked a Pierce County Superior Court judge to return to each of them 48 ounces of harvested marijuana and 30 plants — or their equivalents in cash.
| Graphic: Reeferpunk |
Fistful of Reefer is a dieselpunk, weird Western pulp novel featuring goats, guns, and the camaraderie of outcasts. Marijuana was the plan, liberty the dream, revolution the result. Viva this!
David Mark Brown’s debut novel is the first in a series he calls Reeferpunk — an alternate history that explores the ramifications of an industrial revolution sans cheap oil.
Set along the Texas-Mexico border during the waning years of the Mexican Revolution, Fistful of Reefer focuses on a group of unlikely heroes and their equally unlikely foe as they stumble upon the fringes of a cabal bent on nothing short of redrawing geopolitical boundaries and world domination.
Anticipated release of this ebook exclusive is July 31. ~ Editor
By David Mark Brown
Special to Toke of the Town
If any of you are old enough, you might remember the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” The ad ended with the tagline, “Two great tastes that taste great together.” That’s how I feel about Reeferpunk. Whether you end up preferring punk in your reefer or reefer in your punk, from now on they just gotta go together.
| Graphic: Sodahead |
Changes to Washington state’s medical marijuana laws kick in today, Friday, July 22. But cities, counties, providers and patients are still trying to make sense of the new guidelines, a patchwork of confusing and often contradictory rules left by Governor Christine Gregoire’s hen-hearted line-item veto of legislation which would have regulated the shops.
The dispensaries have popped up all over the state in the past couple years, reports Liz Jones at KUOW. But the changes in Washington’s medical marijuana law make dispensaries illegal, while authorizing “collective gardens” of up to 45 plants for up to 10 patients.
| Graphic: Chico Police Officers’ Association |
Members of the Chico Police Officers’ Association have revealed themselves to be some real grandstanding hot-doggers. These “public servants,” the lowest-paid of whom makes $70,000 a year straight out of your taxpayer pocket, are refusing to do their jobs.
Did you know police officers got to pick which laws they enforce? Did you know these big-bellied buffoons in blue, if they personally disapprove of a law, feel entitled to ignore the damn thing? Hell, maybe we should have all gone into law enforcement, if it’s that cushy a gig.
These drama queens, apparently trying to make some sort of point but mostly just ending up with “we’re a bunch of unprofessional ass-bags,” have sent a letter to Chico, California City Councilman Mark Sorensen stating that under federal law, they cannot be involved in any part of the city’s recent commercial growing and marijuana selling ordinance.
| Photo: Office of the Attorney General |
| California Attorney General Kamala Harris |
A draft copy of the new 2011 California Attorney General’s guidelines on medical marijuana have been leaked. They are reproduced below in their entirety.
An official release of these guidelines is expected sometime between now and the end of August.
The section on collectives and dispensaries, among others, doesn’t seem to be good news for patients as far as affordable access is concerned; the section seems to limit individual patient options.
“While many advocates argue for ‘safe access’ I want not only ‘safe access’ but ‘affordable access’ and at times I get the impression that ‘affordable access’ is lost in the discussion among many,” commented Brett Stone, who manages the Medical Marijuana News group on Yahoo!, through which he released the draft guidelines.
“A special thanks to Shona Gochenaur of San Francisco’s Axis of Love for uncovering and forwarding this copy to me,” Stone said.
| Photo: Fred Sternkof |
| Pebbles Trippet is a quiet hero in Mendo. She’s over 70 and works every day for the cause. |
When Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board member Pebbles Trippet’s car breaks down on the way to an activist meeting, she hitchhikes — and she never says anything to anyone about needing a ride home. She goes way back in the scene and has been there, according to locals, for almost every cannabis event “since the whole thing started.” Toke of the Town‘s own Jack Rikess recently had the honor of chatting with Pebbles on our behalf. ~ Editor
By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
Even when she’s preachy and almost bullying and dogmatic in her principles, there is something so exquisitely human about Pebbles Trippet, that you’ve just got to love her.
For many outside the Mendocino area Ms. Pebbles Trippet, the consummate steady-Eddy patients’ rights activist, may be an unknown commodity, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the laws that she’s impacted and personally changed.
California Senate Bill 420 expanded and redefined Proposition 215 and gave another face to medical marijuana by allowing collective associations of patients to grow for their own memberships. Prop. 215 allowed for the right to grow, possess, obtain and use cannabis for medicinal purposes.
What you couldn’t do with cannabis was transport it. Yeah, go figure.
| Photo: Frontline |
| Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Randy Johnson (left) visits a marijuana farm run by Matt Cohen (right), as featured in “The Pot Republic,” airing July 26 and 29 on PBS. |
Frontline is presenting “The Pot Republic,” a report on the effort to legalize marijuana in California, this month on PBS.
While the bulk of cannabis used in the United States used to come across the border from Mexico, Colombia, Canada and elsewhere, more than half of it is now believed to be domestically grown, much of it in California, “where an enormous black market has emerged under the cover of the state’s medical marijuana law,” at least if PBS is to be believed.
With more than a third of the U.S. now experimenting with some form of legalization and decriminalization — and several California counties attempting to openly regulate cannabis production — Frontline and the Center for Investigative Reporting teamed up to take a look at the country’s oldest, largest and most wide-open marijuana market.
| Photo: WTSP |
| Some of the plants seized from the home of 84-year-old Bernardino Gonzalez. Of course, asshole cops couldn’t resist going ahead and mutilating the plants, just to prove what macho ass-bags they are. |
An 84-year-old Florida man faces drug-trafficking charges after Sarasota County, Florida sheriff’s deputies busted into his home and claimed they found 60 marijuana plants in what they described as an “elaborate” grow house.
Members of the Special Investigations unit conducted surveillance on the home, wasting untold thousands of taxpayer dollars in the process, after a butt-insky deputy responding to an unrelated call in the neighborhood claimed he smelled the odor of cannabis coming from the area.
The Sheriff’s Office claims it pinpointed the smell as coming from a home in Island Date Street and were able to get a search warrant, reports Beau Zimmer at WTSP.