Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders said Sunday that she supports legalizing marijuana.
“What I think is horrible about all of this, is that we criminalize young people,” Elders said, reports CNN. “And we use so many of our excellent resources… for things that aren’t really causing any problems.”
Californians vote in two weeks on Proposition 19, a ballot initiative to legalize, regulate and tax cannabis. The measure would effectively legalize adult recreational marijuana use in the state, though federal officials including Attorney General Eric Holder have claimed they would continue to enforce marijuana laws in California even if voters approve the initiative.
| Graphic: Zikata’s Blog |
| Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875) |
“Just living
isn’t enough,”
said the butterfly.
“One must also have freedom, sunshine, and
a little flower.”
~ Hans Christian Anderson
Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875) was a Danish author and poet noted for his children’s stories.
These include “The Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
| Photo: The Fresh Scent |
| Maybe they should be brown shirts instead. |
Remember as kids, we were taught that one of the worst things about totalitarian regimes was their propensity to get children to snitch out their parents? Well, welcome to the U.S.S.A.
Two North Carolina parents are facing marijuana charges after their child took their cannabis to school and told an officer there that his parents were breaking the law.
The names of both the parents and the school are being withheld to protect the child’s identity, reports Jeff Rivenbark at WBTV.
| Graphic: Cannabis Defense Coalition |
| Graphic: CDC |
Medical cannabis providers in Tacoma, Washington, were served with cease and desist notices by the city on Friday, a major escalation in what activists are calling the city’s war on medical marijuana.
Most of Tacoma’s dozen or more medical marijuana providers, already licensed to do business in the there, received certified letters from the a city licensing agent claiming that “dispensing medical marijuana to more than one person is illegal” and demanding the dispensaries be shut down by October 24.
The letter, which is copied to several police officials, claims that failure to comply will result in fines and penalties “up to and including criminal prosecution.”
“The City of Tacoma is clearly misinterpreting state law on medical marijuana,” said Douglas Hiatt, chair of the Sensible Washington cannabis legalization initiative campaign and a longtime medical marijuana attorney.
“The city’s reading of the law is inconsistent with what Washington voters approved in 1998,” Hiatt said. “It’s also inconsistent with how the same law is read by King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes.”
| Manatee County Sheriff’s Office |
| Mark Fiasco: Thanks, sheriff dudes… I’ve been looking for that bong for seven years, brah! |
It was a bad news/good news scenario. A Florida man got busted for marijuana, but the search of his trunk revealed a bong inside a plastic shopping bag that he said had been lost for years.
Mark Fiasco (yes, that’s really his last name) thanked deputies who arrested him Friday morning during a vehicle search that also turned up the bong he said he lost years ago, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, reports Paradise Afshar of The Bradenton Herald.
Fiasco and Matthew Haley were pulled over around midnight; officers claimed a license plate light was out. The deputies’ report said the car had also been involved in a previous drug case in which an arrest was made.
When deputies first approached Fiasco, 23, he provided an address that did not match what was listed on his license. He was then asked if there were any drugs in the car and he said no, according to the report.
A search of the vehicle — to which Fiasco apparently consented, which you should never do — revealed just over an ounce, 29.3 grams of marijuana, to be precise, in the trunk. The search also revealed a big bong inside a plastic shopping bag.
| Photo: Gregory Bojorquez/LA Weekly |
| Expo organizer and medical marijuana advocate Richard Eastman, left, talks with Prop 215 co-author Dennis Peron, who is scheduled to speak at the event |
Southern California medical marijuana advocates are spreading the word about cannabis this weekend with a two-day educational event in Long Beach.
The Long Beach, Los Angeles and Orange County Medical Marijuana Exposition and Patients Film Festival (try saying that after taking a bong hit) will happen Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Greater Long Beach, 2017 East 4th Street.
The expo is “an educational event” being held “because of Long Beach being in the center of a heated debate on marijuana,” according to one of the organizers, marijuana advocate Richard Eastman, reports Paul Eakins of the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
“Our goal is to educate the citizens and voters of Long Beach about the positive benefits of medical marijuana,” Eastman said, reports Jonathan Van Dyke at Gazettes.com.
| Photo: Cannabis Culture |
| Bernie Ellis: “If I were a rapist, the government couldn’t take my farm.” |
A public health scientist is losing his retirement, along with part of his farm, in the fight to legalize medical marijuana in Tennessee.
Bernie Ellis grew marijuana on his farm to help dull the pain from fibromyalgia and a degenerative disorder in his hip and spine. When neighbors told him about terminally ill patients in the area, he gave them free cannabis as well.
That’s until helicopters came flying over, and the federal government raided Ellis’s farm, seized 25 acres of it, and sent him to a halfway house for 18 months.
“If I were a rapist, the government couldn’t take my farm,” Ellis said in 2007. “I grew cannabis and provided it free of charge to sick people, so I run the risk of losing everything I own.
“That just doesn’t compute to me,” Ellis said.
“I don’t want to appear to be obstinate, but there’s a point at which you say enough is enough,” Ellis said. “They can’t have my home.”
Does he regret growing marijuana? “There are a number of things I regret in this experience,” he said. “I regret being naive to the process. But I do not regret using marijuana, and I do not regret helping people.”
| Photo: Michael P. McConnell/Oakland County Daily Tribune |
| Barbara Agro, office manager at the Clinical Relief medical marijuana dispensary in Ferndale, Michigan, talks on her cell phone outside the clinic on August 26, the day after police raided the facility and confiscated patient records, TVs, computers, a small amount of marijuana and even the business’s telephones. |
A judge has ordered Oakland County prosecutors to provide copies of seized patient files and ID cards, and to return computer hard drives and other items to two defendants charged in the county’s largest-ever raid on medical marijuana dispensaries.
Attorneys representing the owners of Ferndale medical marijuana dispensary Clinical Relief, Nicholas Agro, 38, of Lake Orion, Mich., and Ryan Richmond, 33, of Royal Oak, Mich., argued Thursday for the return of the items, which were taken by narcotics officers with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers raided the business, along with another dispensary in Waterford Township and multiple homes on August 25, reports Jennifer Chambers of The Detroit News.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the people of California can’t legalize and regulate marijuana. Let’s see what the people of California have to say about that on November 2.
Holder sent a letter earlier this week to former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in which he promised that the Justice Department would continue to enforce federal marijuana laws in California — even if the state’s voters approve Proposition 19, which would make marijuana legal for all adults 21 or older and allow localities to tax and regulate the sale of cannabis.
Holder seems to have forgotten that states are the laboratories of democracy in a federal republic — and he seems to have forgotten that he’s our Attorney General, not our daddy.
“We will vigorously enforce the [Controlled Substances Act] against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law,” Holder wrote in the letter, as reported by The Associated Press.
| Photo: The Information Underground |
| Gil Kerlikowske supports the failed prohibitionist policies which have made marijuana easily available to teens, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. |
MPP Calls On Drug Czar to Support Regulating Marijuana In Order to Take It Out of the Hands of Drug Dealers Who Sell to Young People
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske on Thursday decried recent data showing that American teens are using marijuana at younger ages and in greater numbers.
In response, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a cannabis policy reform organization, called on Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), to abandon the failed policies of marijuana prohibition and instead embrace the regulation of cannabis, accompanied by science-based education campaigns, as the only sensible way to reduce teen pot use.
“After decades of the same ineffective approach, it’s more clear than ever that our government’s current policies have failed to reduce marijuana’s use or availability among young people and that a change is needed,” said Steve Fox, director of government relations for MPP.