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By Martin Williams
The nation’s largest medical marijuana patient advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), filed a petition with the federal court of appeals March 22 in its epic battle to force the federal government to comply with its own laws on medical marijuana.
The UN drug control treaties authorizes nations to allow the medical use of cannabis and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is required to move the plant out of its banned status, Schedule 1, if it has accepted medical use. Currently 18 states and thousands of studies agree that it has medical value and is wrongly prohibited.
In its widely watched case that seeks to reclassify marijuana for medical use, ASA v. DEA, the patient group seeks a rehearing before the original panel, as well as seeking full (en banc) review by the US Court of Appeals for the Washington DC Circuit. The circuit court
Read More: Patients battle federal cannabis ban in appeals court
By Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
California medical marijuana patient Daisy Brant has had her infant child literally torn from her breast twice to be handed over to Child Protective Services and been charged with child abuse because police found medical marijuana growing in her home. She won the first case, got her child back, was raided again and is now fighting the second case as a new published study shows how wrong and cruel the police have been in this and other cases in what amounts to little more than what Brant has called “government-sanctioned child-stealing.”
“The role of child protection in grow-operations,” a study in the March 2013 International Journal of Drug Policy, shows that children who live in homes where marijuana is being cultivated do not suffer from adverse health effects at any greater rate than do comparable children in cannabis-free environments.
A pair of investigators with
Read More: Study: Home marijuana gardens not a health risk for children
By Phillip Smith, stopthedrugwar.org
A marijuana policy trifecta hit Capitol Hill in February 2013 regarding recreational marijuana, medical marijuana, and hemp.
Early in the month, reformist House members filed bills to end federal cannabis prohibition and tax the trade, and in mid month a bill to legalize hemp. By the end of the month, legislators had filed bills to protect medical marijuana patients and providers, and US senators filed a companion bill to legalize industrial hemp.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who earlier sponsored a marijuana tax bill, rolled out House Resolution 689, the “States’ Medical Marijuana Protection Act;” Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) introduced House Resolution 710, the “Truth in Trials Act;” and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and three co-sponsors filed the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013,” a companion bill to House Resolution 525.
Blumenauer’s bill, introduced with bipartisan co-sponsorship, would grant federal recognition to medical use and remove marijuana
Read More: Bipartisan hemp and marijuana bills hit US Congress
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful and top-ranking leaders of the Democratic Party in the US, told a Denver Post columnist that she agrees that federal authorities ought to respect state marijuana laws.
When Electa Draper asked, “What are the measures in Washington (DC) that might address states that legalize marijuana and what is your view of federal policy,” Pelosi expressed her support for state laws and encouraged a tax and regulate marijuana policy in an interview published March 11, 2013.
“I support the leadership of Jared Polis, who has been a leader on this issue as well as other members. I understand some of the Republican members support the law now that is passed, even if they didn’t before. But in any case, to answer your question, what is my position regarding the states that have medical marijuana or recreational marijuana as the law of
Read More: Top House Democrat supports state-regulated cannabis
By Chris Conrad
In a pivotal election Nov. 6, 2012, voters in the states of Colorado and Washington passed the first marijuana legalization initiatives in US history. Massachusetts became the 18th state to legalize medical use of cannabis, and voters in that state approved six resolutions calling on the federal government to legalize adult use of cannabis. Michigan voters approved five local reform measures, as well.
Meanwhile, voters in Oregon rejected personal adult legalization, voters in Arkansas narrowly defeated medical use, California voters removed marijuana offenses from the onerous “Three Strikes” life imprisonment penalty, and a spattering of local votes in that state have made it more difficult for collectives and individual patients to cultivate, obtain or provide medical marijuana.
The results were: Colorado Amendment 64 passed 54 to 46%; Washington Initiative 502 won 55 to 45%; Massachusetts medical use act passed 63 to 37%; Oregon Measure 80 lost 45
Read More: VICTORY AT THE BALLOT BOXES
Michelle Obama is a loving mother, a concerned parent and an intelligent woman, and we wonder how she would answer these three questions: 1) How would you and your husband, family and country have benefited if Barack as a young man had gotten a marijuana arrest, destroying his chance to go to college, his job prospects and, if charged with sales, maybe spent a few years behind bars? 2) How will anyone be better off if that happens to one of your daughters? 3) Can you know this happens to 800,000 Americans a year — even seriously ill patients with a physician’s approval who live in states where doctors, families, voters and legislators have recognized the medical use of cannabis — and not do anything? All pretense to the contrary notwithstanding, your husband is the one person on Earth who can order the DEA to deschedule marijuana, desist in its
Read More: It’s Time to Tell Michelle
Look back 50 years to the US Civil Rights struggle. Southern states twisted States Rights into a legal device to craft the Jim Crow laws used to deny Americans of color their fundamental rights through segregation, prohibiting mixed-race marriage, denial of education and vot- ing rights, etc. The US Fifth Circuit Court June 25, 1962 ordered that a man named James Meredith be admitted to integrate the University of Mississippi. A courageous young President John F. Kennedy dispatched the Mississippi national guard to hold back a mob of more than 2,000 segregationists who repeatedly attacked federal marshals, allowing Meredith to register for college and ultimately paving the way for US voters to elect a mixed-race African-American president.
Five decades later, 17 states have asserted States Rights to restore their citizens’ right to use cannabis therapeutics as allowed by international treaty. Congress refused to cut off funding to DEA raids,
Read More: Federal Policy on Cannabis is New Jim Crow
By Paul Armentano, NORML
Levels of the cannabinoid CBD (cannabidiol) are declining in marijuana, according to a review* of over 5,000 samples seized by law enforcement in California. The review appears on the website of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Investigators at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica assessed changes in the median THC and CBD levels of cannabis seized between 1996 and 2008 and found that THC levels rose during this time peri- od while CBD levels fell.
“[M]edian THC potency has increased from 4.56% in 1996 to 11.75% in 2008,” they reported. “The increase in THC was far more dramatic in non-border areas (from 4.18% to 13.95%) than in border areas (from 4.52% to 6.84%). … The median level of CBD dropped from 0.24% in 1996 to 0.08% in 2008.” The authors speculated that the shift was because “growers are making greater use of plant strains that
Read More: More THC, less CBD in confiscated cannabis
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It’s Time to Tell Michelle
Michelle Obama is a loving mother, a concerned parent and an intelligent woman, and we wonder how she would answer these three questions: 1) How would you and your husband, family and country have benefited if Barack as a young man had gotten a marijuana arrest, destroying his chance to go to college, his job prospects and, if charged with sales, maybe spent a few years behind bars? 2) How will anyone be better off if that happens to one of your daughters? 3) Can you know this happens to 800,000 Americans a year — even seriously ill patients with a physician’s approval who live in states where doctors, families, voters and legislators have recognized the medical use of cannabis — and not do anything? All pretense to the contrary notwithstanding, your husband is the one person on Earth who can order the DEA to deschedule marijuana, desist in its
Read More: It’s Time to Tell Michelle