Search Results: speech (156)

Photo: KSBW
Free speech? How about “restricted access” speech?

​University of California Santa Cruz officials are restricting campus access for visitors and vehicles, in an attempt to muzzle Tuesday’s 4/20 marijuana smoke-out.

UCSC police have restricted access to the campus in past years, but the “unsanctioned” event continued to grow. There are still no plans to make any arrests or issue citations to anyone for smoking pot on campus, reports KSBW Action News.
The university reportedly realizes there’s no way it can stop thousands of people from taking part in the 4/20 celebration, so they focus on restricting “outsiders” and enforcing strict traffic measures.

Graphic: Cannabis Therapy Institute

​Two law enforcement bills are now working their way through the Colorado Legislature that would, according to Cannabis Therapy Institute, seriously harm medical marijuana patients and their caregivers. According to CTI, both of these bills have seen strong support from legislators, both Democrats and Republicans. 
Law enforcement bill #1 (SB 109) would destroy the confidentiality of the Registry by allowing the government to use patient records to determine “suspicious” activity by physicians. It allocates more than $1 million of patient registration fees to prosecute these supposedly “suspicious” physicians.


Photo: americancannabis.org
Jack Herer (1939-2010)

​Famous marijuana activist and author Jack Herer, “The Emperor of Hemp,” died Thursday morning at 11:07 Pacific time.
“Jack deserves kudos for having publicized the benefits of cannabis hemp in his classic book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” said Dale Gieringer of California NORML.
“He also labored long and hard on innumerable initiatives to re-legalize hemp in California,” Gieringer said.
Last September, Herer suffered a serious heart attack at the Portland Hempstalk Festival, just two minutes after giving his last, impassioned speech. He was taken from the site by ambulance and hospitalized, and had struggled with health problems since that time.
“No one has ever educated more people about hemp and cannabis than Jack Herer,” said Paul Stanford, organizer of Hempstalk. “Jack’s legacy will live on for generations to come.”
“I’ve known and been friends with Jack since 1982, and he wrote the first edition of his book in my home in 1985,” Stanford said. “I am going to miss you, Jack.”

Photo: MPP
Every year, CAMP goes all Rambo, terrorizing ordinary citizens for growing marijuana, of all things.

​Should a local radio station broadcast information on the real-time movements of police and drug agents? Community station KMUD, based in southern Humboldt County, the unofficial capital of marijuana cultivation in California, says its reports are an essential tool in protecting the community from police abuse.

The broadcasts grew from a citizens’ monitoring project that began after the Reagan Administration in 1983 launched the huge, wasteful and ineffective “marijuana eradication campaign” known as CAMP, or Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.
The waste, arrogance and abuse associated with the program — which has unfortunately become the largest law enforcement task force in the United States, with more than 100 agencies taking part — have become legendary.


Photo: Pundit Kitchen

​Immediately following her Tuesday speech at the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America’s national convention, a marijuana advocacy group says it will offer former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin $25,000 to deliver a similar address to supporters of a regulated cannabis market in the United States.

In exchange for the $25,000, Palin will be asked to speak at one of the upcoming events of Nevadans for Sensible Marijuana Laws (NSML), according to NSML campaign manager Dave Schwartz.
According to Schwartz, Palin will be asked to acknowledge the fact that marijuana is just as legitimate a recreational substance as alcohol, which she is talking about at the WSWA convention (and in fact, marijuana is objectively much safer), and endorse taxing and regulating marijuana in Nevada and throughout the U.S.

Photo: Big Island Video News
Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle: “Compassion centers” are an “insult,” because they are really “pot stores”

​During a recent speech before the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle took a hardline stance against the recent legislative effort to legalize and establish medical marijuana dispensaries for the state’s patients.

Governor Lingle pointed to the situation in California, where she claimed marijuana dispensaries now “outnumber both McDonalds and Starbucks,” reports Baron Sekiya at Big Island Video News.
The hard-hearted governor said the term “compassion centers” given to these dispensaries is an “insult,” because in reality, she says, they are simply “pot stores.”
Lingle also claims that today’s marijuana, which she says is 26 percent THC, is far more potent than the herb which was around “when we were in college,” which she claimed ran 2 to 3 percent THC.

Photo: LEAP
Officer David Bratzer: “I will try to find other venues to present my views about drug policy”

​The BC Civil Liberties Association has filed a complaint against the Victoria Police Department for muzzling one of its officers, reports ‘A’ News.

Constable David Bratzer was scheduled to speak at a harm reduction meeting in Victoria Wednesday night representing the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).
Bratzer says the War On Drugs is not winnable and is doing more harm than good.
But the Chief of the Victoria Police Department doesn’t want Bratzer to share those views.

Graphic: Reason.com

​A New Mexico medical marijuana patient battling cancer has been dropped by a state-licensed dispensary after he voiced his frustrations with the cannabis provider to the press.

Robert Jones, of Las Vegas, New Mexico, has been a qualified medical marijuana patient since November 2007, just after the state-licensed program began — but he has yet to get his hands on any medical marijuana.
When Jones spoke of his frustrations to the Santa Fe Reporter for a story last August, his licensed grower, Santa Fe Institute of Natural Medicine, terminated Jones’ membership, reports Alexa Schirtzinger.

Graphic: thefreshscent.com
OK, quick: You’re head of the Department of Corrections. Officers under you misbehave and improperly arrest a medical marijuana patient. What do you do? Lie and cover up for them, if you’re Eldon Vail of the Washington DOC.

​The head of the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC), Eldon Vail, seems to put a lot more effort into covering up the lousy job his subordinates are doing, than in actually doing his own job.

The Washington DOC, following the example of the not-cool Attorney General Rob McKenna, is already notorious for its extremely hard line against the use of medical marijuana for individuals on probation.
Now, newly revealed documents show that Vail and the DOC have been involved in misconduct, cover-ups, and possibly outright law-breaking, reports Lee Rosenberg at the highly recommended Seattle political blog, Horses Ass.

Photo: The Wow Report
Dennis Peron is co-author of Prop 215, which legalized medical marijuana in California.

​The man who opened the very first “pot club” in the United States for medical marijuana users is coming to Ashland, Oregon Tuesday night to speak in favor of legalizing cannabis.

Dennis Peron, known as the “father of medical marijuana,” is lending his support to full legalization in Oregon, reports John Darling of the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune.
Peron, 64, of San Francisco, was co-author and a major backer of California’s successful 1996 medical marijuana ballot measure, the first in the United States.
Peron is famed for his statement, “All use of marijuana is medical use.”
The passage of medical marijuana laws changed the image of cannabis from something used by “long-hair, hippie crazy” people to a drug of middle class people, Peron said.
“It helped make [marijuana use]more benevolent,” he said. “We turned the tide.”
Peron said the thrust of his work now is ballot measures to normalize marijuana distribution, so “you can get it at Walgreen’s” at affordable prices.
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