Search Results: challenge (377)

Photo: Robyn Twomey
California patients wait for assistance at a marijuana dispensary. Los Angeles currently has more pot stores than either Starbucks or McDonald’s.

​After nearly a month, the Los Angeles City Council returns Wednesday to the contentious issue of how to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. City leaders hope they will finally be able to vote on the long-delayed ordinance, in the planning stages for nearly two years.

The council stalled in December over possible zoning restrictions on where dispensaries can be located. Debate was postponed until planners completed an analysis of several proposals.
Maps drawn by city planners show that placing strict limits on the dispensaries’ proximity to residences would eliminate almost all locations, reports John Hoeffel of the Los Angeles Times.

Graphic: Reality Catcher

​Medical marijuana patients in Colorado have a constitutional right not only to use cannabis, but to buy it as well, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Arapahoe County District Judge Christopher Cross ruled in favor of CannaMart dispensary, which along with three patients sued the city of Centennial after the city forced it to shut down in October, reports Kristen Wyatt of The Associated Press.
CannaMart maintains that Colorado cities 
are violating the state constitution when they ban all dispensaries. Unlike similar laws in a dozen other states, Colorado’s medical marijuana law is a constitutional amendment.
The injunction granted by Judge Cross prevents Centennial from keeping CannaMart shuttered while the dispensary challenges the city’s ban on pot shops because they’re in violation of federal drug laws. The medical use of marijuana isn’t recognized under federal law.

Federal Art Project

“A weed is a flower, too, once you get to know it.” ~ Eeyore from “Winnie The Pooh”

After 72 years of the debate being controlled by those who’ve made it taboo to even talk honestly on the subject, it’s time to tell the truth about marijuana.
The deck remains stacked, of course, in favor of cannabis prohibition. The reason? Folks who know that marijuana should be legal are often too intimidated to say so — because, until now, speaking cannabis truth has sometimes carried a heavy price.
For years, a few brave medical doctors such as Lester Grinspoon of Harvard have been voices in the wilderness of marijuana prohibition. Their repeated calls for an open and honest debate on the subject have largely fallen on deaf ears.
Until now, when it comes to marijuana, those who know won’t say, and those who say don’t know.

Graphic: mrc.la
Compassion and common sense: a good combination in La Puente

​In an inspiring show of common sense, the La Puente, Calif., City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to allow six medical marijuana dispensaries to open.

The first pot shop in town, La Puente Medical Cannabis Center, opened two weeks ago. Employees there declined to comment, reports James Wagner at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.
City officials appeared not to take very seriously the grandstanding tactics of pot-hating Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. Media whore Cooley last month said he would prosecute medical marijuana shops — even those protected by city ordinances.
“If they sell it, it’s illegal,” Cooley’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told the Daily Bulletin on Wednesday.

MPP-NV
Nevadans, do you want legal marijuana? Sign the initiative, then get out and vote in 2012

​Nevadans, after turning down similar initiatives in 2002 and 2006, may get to vote again on legalizing marijuana in 2012.

Dave Schwartz, manager of the Marijuana Policy Project of Nevada (MPP-NV), announced today that he has filed documents with the Nevada Secretary of State establishing a Ballot Advocacy Group to support an initiative to legalize and regulate marijuana for persons 21 or older.

Nevadans for Sensible Marijuana Laws has been organized to conduct a signature drive in 2010 that will place an initiative on the November 2012 ballot. The committee says it will file the language of the initiative with the state in January.

Graphic: Reality Catcher
The State of Maine will be selling marijuana by spring.

​A 14-member task force assigned by Gov. John E. Baldacci is trying to iron out the kinks in Maine’s new medical marijuana law so it can be implemented by its deadline at the beginning of April, 2010.

The committee, made up of state officials, police, medical professionals and others, meets today to address potential problems in the law voters approved in November.
The new law allows for state-run medical marijuana dispensaries, and also expands the conditions for which medical marijuana can be legally used in Maine.
Medical marijuana has been legal in the state since the Maine Medical Marijuana Act of 1998. This year’s voter initiative was designed to solve the conundrum of where those patients, legal for 11 years now, are supposed to buy their medicine.

Courtesy Mason Tvert
Marijuana’s momentum in Colorado is giving Mason Tvert plenty to smile about.

​If Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente — along all the marijuana users in Colorado — get their way, weed could become legal in the Rocky Mountain state in 2012.

Tvert and Vicente unveiled their plan Monday for a statewide initiative that will legalize pot for all Coloradans over 21.
If California’s 2010 ballot initiative to legalize fails, Colorado could become the national leader in the marijuana legalization movement. 
It’s going to be a challenge. Just three years ago, 60 percent of Colorado voters rejected a much less ambitious initiative that would have decriminalized an ounce or less of weed. But the political winds are shifting so rapidly, the legalization initiative’s chances are looking less like a long shot and more like a dogfight.
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