Search Results: legalization (1475)

Photo: Dakta Green
Dakta Green: “I will never stop campaigning to free cannabis users from these harsh and unfair laws”

​The trial of a New Zealand man campaigning to have cannabis legalized is going ahead next week after he lost his bid to stop the proceeding.

Dakta Green said he was nevertheless “encouraged” by comments from the judge.
Green is facing six marijuana charges and is scheduled to go on trial in Auckland District Court next week, reports 3 News.
“The truth is coming out,” Green said on his Facebook page. “If we don’t win in court we will win in the court of public opinion.”
Green had applied for a stay of proceedings on the grounds that the charges against him breached his rights under the Bill of Rights Act.
Friday in a reserved decision Judge Anne Kiernan threw out his application, ruling he had produced no evidence that his rights had been breached.
However, during her ruling, the judge said Green had produced some persuasive arguments for the legalization of cannabis, but that the court was not the right place for such arguments to be heard.

Graphic: The Seattle Times

​The Legislature in Washington state displayed a trait Wednesday for which they are becoming well known: spinelessness, especially when it comes to marijuana law reform.

Despite the fact that a majority of state voters favor legalizing pot, cowardly politicians in the State House voted down a pair of bills aimed at changing Washington’s failed marijuana laws.
House Bill 2401 would have legalized and regulated the adult production, use and distribution of marijuana, in a manner similar to the regulation of alcohol.
The roll call vote on HB 2401, to legalize marijuana, went like this:

Graphic: ABC News/Washington Post
Support for medical marijuana, already high in 1997, his risen to even greater levels in the past dozen years.

​More than eight in 10 Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use, according to a new poll. Almost half favor decriminalizing the herb completely.

According to the new ABC News/Washington Post national poll, 81 percent support legalizing cannabis for medicinal use, up from already sizable 69 percent support in 1997.
Support for both medical marijuana and decriminalizing for all adults is far higher than it was a decade ago, reports poll analyst Gary Langer at ABC News.

Graphic: Cannabis Culture
Professor David Nutt: “We’re going to focus on the science”

​An independent group, designed to give “politically neutral” information in the United Kingdom about the risks of drugs, is being launched.

The group is founded by the British government’s former chief drugs adviser, David Nutt, who was sacked last October for criticizing government drug policy and calling cannabis a relatively safe drug.
The Independent Council on Drug Harms, made up of about 20 specialists, will be “very powerful,” according to Nutt, and its goal will be to take over from the government-run Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), reports the BBC.

CMMNJ.org
Good going, Garden State!

​It’s finally happening: Medical marijuana is coming to New Jersey.

Both the state General Assembly and the Senate approved a medical marijuana bill Monday, reports pressofatlanticcity.com.
The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Jon Corzine, who has already said he’d sign it.
Jim Whelan (D-Atlantic) said the bill is meant to benefit seriously ill people.
“For some New Jerseyans suffering from chronic and terminal diseases, medical marijuana represents a small glimmer of hope for relief from their symptoms,” Whelen said.
The bill disallows anyone under the influence of medical marijuana from operating a motor vehicle.
Monday afternoon, a group of patients suffering from various debilitating diseases convened at the statehouse and urged legislators to make legal medical marijuana a reality in New Jersey. Nearly a dozen medical cannabis supporters sang songs and told stories at a pro-legalization news conference.

photobucket.com
If you live in Washington, you may get a chance to vote on legalizing marijuana this November.

​Five marijuana activists have filed a ballot initiative that would legalize adult cannabis possession in Washington state.

Its sponsors include two Seattle lawyers as well as Vivian McPeak, director of the annual Seattle Hempfest, probably the largest marijuana gathering on the planet.
The group, calling itself Sensible Washington, said it is time that Washington’s state government stop wasting tax money on police, court and jail costs for people who use or grow marijuana.
Douglas Hiatt, a lawyer who represents medical marijuana patients, told The Associated Press after filing the initiative Monday that the bill would remove all state penalties for adult possession of marijuana.

Photo: Amanda Brown/The Star-Ledger
Sandy Faiola, of Asbury Park, and members of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana in New Jersey at a protest in August

​The New Jersey State Assembly has just approved a bill which legalizes medical marijuana in the Garden State.

The bill now goes to the State Senate for its approval later today, before the end of this lame duck session, and Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to sign it into law, reports Brian Thompson of NBC New York.
Monday afternoon, a group of patients suffering from various debilitating diseases convened at the statehouse and urged legislators to make legal medical marijuana a reality in New Jersey. Nearly a dozen medical cannabis supporters sang songs and told stories at a pro-legalization news conference.

NORML.org
Professional women across America and the world are coming out of the cannabis closet.

​The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the nation’s oldest cannabis advocacy organization, today announced the launch of the NORML Women’s Alliance.

The NORML Women’s Alliance is a nonpartisan coalition of educated, successful, high-profile professional women who believe that cannabis prohibition is a self-destructive and hypocritical policy that undermines the American family, sends mixed and false messages to young people, and destroys the principles of personal liberty and local self-government, according to the organization.

Graphic: Darwinek

​Vermont legalized medical marijuana five years ago. But eligible patients who want to use the plant to ease chronic pain and nausea have been forced to either grow their own or resort to the black market, since the state never established a legal outlet to obtain it.

A state lawmaker plans in 2010 to introduce legislation that would solve this problem. The bill would create compassion centers where people on Vermont’s medical marijuana registry can buy their medicine, reports Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau.
“What is driving me is a sense of compassion and fairness,” said Chris Bray (D-New Haven). “This is a drug we have vetted as a state as being appropriate for people with defined medical conditions and yet we haven’t provided a safe and legal way for them to purchase it.”
Bray said a constituent, one of 189 people registered as medical marijuana patients in Vermont, has suffered because of Vermont’s lack of dispensaries. “He resents the fact, and I think justifiably, that he was pushed into buying medical marijuana from illicit sources, which is expensive and illegal and often not even available to him,” Bray said.


KING5
“Anti-drug advocate”/obnoxiously smug yuppie Steve Danishek spouts ignorance and intolerance on cue for reporter Eric Schudiske

​For the past nine years on Christmas Day, 5th Avenue and James Street in Seattle has been at the crossroads of the controversy over marijuana legalization.

As they’ve done every year in the 21st Century, protesters outside King County Jail held a pro-marijuana vigil, maintaining non-violent drug offenders should be home for the holidays, reports Eric Schudiske of King 5 News.
“We just think that otherwise law-abiding Americans should find alternatives to incarceration for marijuana use,” said Vivian McPeak, organizer of the vigil.
McPeak remains optimistic about the prospects for positive change. “We believe very strongly that we’re in the last decade of marijuana criminalization,” he said.