| Graphic: Rose Law Group |
California employers would be prevented from discriminating against medical marijuana patients under a bill introduced to the California Legislature on Thursday.
Senate Bill 129, introduced by State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), would not change the current law which prohibits employees from using medical marijuana at the workplace. “This bill is not about being under the influence while at work,” Sen. Leno said. “That’s against the law, and will remain so.”
According to Sen. Leno, his bill “simply establishes a medical cannabis patient’s right to work.”
| Photo: Jody Parker/Alabamians for Compassionate Care |
| Alabama activist Loretta Nall: “I wonder how that judge would feel if he were made to piss in a cup because one of his kids got in trouble?” |
A court in Shelby County, Alabama is drug testing the parents of juvenile children on probation, according to activist Loretta Nall.
“I got an email from a parent in Shelby County last night who has a juvenile child enrolled in drug court,” Nall writes on her blog. “This parent informed me that the judge (Kramer) forced a drug test on the spouse under threat of arrest ‘to prove the parents are good role models’ and that this is a standard procedure in Shelby County drug court.”
According to Nall, she had trouble believing her eyes.
“The parents of the juvenile haven’t violated any laws, they are not under the rule of any courts, no custody battles, no DHR or anything like that,” Nall said. “One of the the parents is a teacher. So how can they be forced to submit to court-ordered drug testing?”
“I wonder how that judge would feel if he were made to piss in a cup because one of his kids got in trouble?” Nall commented on her Facebook wall. “You’d see an uproar if that were the case.”
| Photo: The Pitch |
| I’ll have one of each, please. |
While cannabis-infused soft drinks have been around for awhile, a new brand, Canna Cola, seems to have hit a marketing sweet spot, because its February debut in Colorado is getting a ton of media buzz.
Canna Cola is positioning itself as the “light beer” of marijuana drinks, since it has a lower THC content (35 to 65 mg) than other brands currently on the market, according to Scott Riddell of marketers Diavolo Brands, reports Wallace Baine of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
“It’s got a mild marijuana taste,” Riddell told the Sentinel. “But the taste factor is really negligible compared to some competitors with three times the THC. When you get to that level, you really have a heavy aftertaste.”
| Photo: Chris Bartkowicz |
| Happier Times: In 2009 when he uploaded this photo to Facebook, Chris Bartkowicz wrote in the caption: “it’s legal so I started growing it outta my ears. Love this LAW!! LEGAL WEED!!!” He was sentenced to five years in federal prison on Friday. |
Chris Bartkowicz, a Colorado man who ran a medical marijuana growing operation from the basement of his home, was sentenced Friday morning to five years in federal prison.
Bartkowicz pleaded guilty in October to federal drug charges, which vengeful Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided within hours after Chris showed the grow operation to a TV news team.
Under his plea agreement, Bartkowicz and federal prosecutors settled on a prison term of five years, and federal District Court Judge Philip Brimmer chose to accept that deal, reports John Ingold at The Denver Post. His release will be followed by eight years of supervised probation. Under federal sentencing rules, Chris must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence, which means, like the case of Marc Emery, a minimum of 51 months in prison.
“Five years is a long time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney M.J. Menendez said during the hearing. “It’s going to allow him time to get treatment and it’s going to give him time to reflect on what brought him here today.”
| Photos: U.S. Marshals Service |
| Mark Steven Phillips, 62, was arrested in his senior community apartment 31 years after his original arrest in 1979, left. |
After being on the run for more than 30 years, a member of the legendary Miami-based “Black Tuna Gang,” a marijuana smuggling operation, was arrested by U.S. Marshals Thursday morning in a senior community in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Mark Steven Phillips, 62, had been a wanted man for more than 30 years after he skipped out on his trial for being a member of an operation accused of smuggling some 500 tons of Colombian cannabis into the United States over a period of 16 months in the 1970s.
However, according to Black Tuna Gang leader Robert Platshorn — who is the longest serving pot prisoner in American history, having himself served almost 30 years in federal prison for smuggling marijuana — Phillips was definitely not the “Marijuana Kingpin” prosecutors and their obedient headline writers are trying to make him out to be.
| Photo: KVOA.com |
| Mexican marijuana smugglers ingeniously devised a cannabis catapult to launch their payload over the border. |
| Graphic: AP/CBS |
A coalition of House lawmakers has reintroduced legislation that would legalize and regulate the “production, distribution and sale” of marijuana to adults in Washington state.
House Bill 1550 allows for the state-authorized cultivation and distribution of cannabis and marijuana-related products. It is similar to HB 2401, which in 2010 didn’t make it past the Committee on Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness.
A state fiscal analysis of the measure estimates that regulating and taxing marijuana sales could yield some $300 million in new revenue per biennium, while also reallocating an estimated $25 million annually in law enforcement costs.
| Photo: YouTube |
| Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA conducted the largest-ever study of marijuana’s effect on the lungs. His team found that not only was cannabis not associated with lung cancer, but that it possibly even exerts a protective effect against it. |
Fellow Tokers, meet Ron Marczyk, who’ll be bringing to your attention stories from the cannabis archives that are “Worth Repeating.”
Often, as stories are churned through the media’s 24-hour news cycle, good information flashes by and is lost. We aim to help correct that with “Worth Repeating,” which will cover important cannabis stories that you may have missed.
Ron is a retired health education teacher who taught health ed and psych (drug/sex ed) to high school students for 20 years. He is an R.N. (emergency room) M.S. in cardiac rehab, and worked as a New York City Police officer for two years.
| Photo: The White House |
| President Obama: “I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate” |
President Says We Need To Shift To Public Health Focus, But His Budgets Haven’t Done That
President Barack Obama on Thursday called drug legalization “an entirely legitimate topic for debate,” but quickly added “I am not in favor of legalization.”
The President then went on to say that he sees “drug abuse” as a public health issue and that a shifting of resources is required, away from the traditional approach of incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders.
Obama’s remarks are the first time in history that a U.S. president has called drug legalization a topic “worthy of debate.”
The president made the remarks during the YouTube-hosted “Your Interview With the President,” for which at least the top 100 vote-getting questions dealt with marijuana laws or drug policy.
It was evident that Obama had heard the chorus of protest which greeted his last response to YouTube viewers on marijuana legalization, in which he had laughed off the issue and dismissively said “I don’t know what that says about our online audience.”
Many activists had expected the president would continue his practice of blithely ignoring the marijuana policy questions, despite their overwhelming and enduring popularity with the very demographic which voted him into office.
“The President talks a good game about shifting resources and having a balanced, public health-oriented approach, but it doesn’t square with the budgets he’s submitted to Congress,” said Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore narcotics cop and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group of cops, judges, and prosecutors who support legalizing and regulating drugs.
A video question about legalizing drugs from a former deputy sheriff has come in first place in YouTube’s “Your Interview With the President” competition, where users submitted and voted on questions to be posed to President Barack Obama.
Obama is scheduled to answer the top-voted questions today, Thursday, January 27, at 2:30 pm EST in an interview that will be streamed live online at http://www.youtube.com/askobama.