Current Medical Marijuana News in Michigan.

The Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care (MCCC) is a grassroots organization devoted to passing a medical marijuana initiative in Michigan in November 2008. Currently, seriously ill people who use marijuana for medical purposes face the same penalties as those who use marijuana recreationally.

On November 20, 2007, MCCC submitted nearly half a million signatures to the state to qualify the initiative for the ballot. And on March 3, 2008, the Board formally certified our signatures! The signatures officially counted by the state came back with an 80.2% validity rate, far exceeding what was needed to qualify. This is an historic step forward for patients throughout the state.

The medical marijuana initiative will now be transmitted to the Michigan Legislature, which has 40 days to either pass it into law or send it to voters in November. Because the legislature has considered multiple medical marijuana bills in recent years and none has ever gained traction, Michiganders – who support protecting patients from arrest by nearly a 2 to 1 margin – are all but certain to vote on the issue at the polls later this year.

If the measure is certified and passed by a majority of voters on Election Day 2008, Michigan law will allow patients to use, possess, and grow their own marijuana for medical purposes with their doctors’ approval. This would make Michigan the first medical marijuana state in the Midwest.

Anyone who needs marijuana for medicinal purposes should have access to it.

An August 2003 poll found that 59% of Michigan voters support removing criminal penalties for the medical use of marijuana. And in each of five citywide medical marijuana votes, medical marijuana won in a landslide (with 62% in Flint in February 2007; with 63% in Traverse City and 61% in Ferndale in November 2005; with 74% in Ann Arbor in November 2004; and with 60% in Detroit in August 2004). It’s time for the state to follow the lead of these cities and protect seriously ill patients from the threat of arrest and jail.

Essential Herbs and Oils re-opened its doors for business Thursday, but how long the medical marijuana dispensary on East Palm Canyon Drive will remain open is anybody’s guess.

Although Cathedral City officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to get a federal injunction against the dispensary earlier this week, they are continuing their efforts to revoke the shop’s business license.

The dispensary has also received a notice of eviction.

Efforts to contact the dispensary’s landlord were unsuccessful Thursday, but Anthony Curiale, attorney for the dispensary, confirmed that the business had received an eviction notice and would oppose it.

A Judge has stated this medical marijuana dispensary is within the law and is legal.

The shop also will oppose the city’s efforts to revoke its license, Curiale said. A date for a hearing on the matter has yet to be set.

In the midst of this slippery legal landscape, Virginia and Adam Hurn, the Cathedral City couple behind Essential Herbs, are calmly determined to stay open. They have between 400 and 600 patients, Adam Hurn said, and they want to work with the city, not fight it.

“We plan on donating to the police department and the fire department,” said Adam Hurn, sitting in the dispensary’s freshly painted waiting room on Thursday. “We’ve asked for a meeting with the City Council and their attorney.”

Critics at a Helena hearing denounced a proposed Department of Corrections rule that would bar anyone on parole or probation from obtaining medical marijuana as a prescription drug, despite a state law that makes it legal.

“This proposed rule is illegal,” Tom Daubert of Patients and Families United, a medical marijuana advocacy group, told a hearings officer. “It completely defies Montana’s medical marijuana law.”

Cannabis is medicine it should be treated like all medication, and should be allowed to all people who need it.

Daubert helped lead the 2004 campaign for the ballot initiative, which 62 percent of Montanans approved, that legalized the use of medical marijuana prescribed by physicians. He said 600-700 Montanans overall have received such prescriptions from about 150 physicians.

“These are decisions up to patients and the doctors and perhaps God,” but not a Corrections Department probation officer, he said at Wednesday’s hearing.

Scott Day, a terminally ill Dillon resident who suffers from a rare degenerative disease, said, “We need it for people on probation. It’s vitally necessary for someone to get their medication.

“I can’t imagine how a probation officer should have control over medicine,” he added. “It’s a doctor’s decision.”

The people have shown consistent support for marijuana as medicine. “62 percent of Montanans agreed.”

Another Senator behind legislation to make medical cannabis available to Americans.

SPRINGFIELD — State Sen. John Cullerton is making another run at legislation that would make it easier for the seriously ill to legally use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

“This is about the patients. It’s not about somebody abusing this law to illegally obtain marijuana,” said Sen. Cullerton, D-Chicago.

Wednesday, a Senate committee approved a measure that would allow people to obtain a state-issued medical marijuana identification card so they could legally possess and use marijuana.

More and more states should follow.

Julie Falco, of Chicago, has suffered from debilitating multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years. To ease the pain, she eats 1-inch marijuana brownie cubes three times a day.

Medical marijuana patients do not need to “smoke” the medicine. The woman above chooses to ingest her medicine, via “pot brownies.” Or, by using a vaporizer provides a safe, controlled use of “marijuana as medicine.”

Ms. Falco told lawmakers that she has tried many pharmaceutical drugs for her disease, but marijuana is the only thing that seems to help her symptoms without causing negative side effects. Still, there is always the worry that she will get in trouble, she said.

Sen. Cullerton said the purpose of his bill is to decriminalize the use of marijuana by those who really need it for legitimate medical reasons. A similar bill has been introduced by a Republican lawmaker in the Illinois House.

Under Sen. Cullerton’s bill, a medical marijuana program would be administered by the Illinois Department of Public Health. Qualifying patients would receive an ID card after providing written certification from their doctors.

Decriminalize, and realize most Americans support the idea that marijuana is medicine.

“The will of the California people behind medical marijuana.”

A federal judge refused Monday to issue a preliminary injunction against a Cathedral City medical marijuana dispensary, saying that while he understood the city’s “frustration,” he did not have authority to order the business to cease operations.

“This is complicated by a number of factors,” said Riverside-based U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson, before issuing a decision regarding Cathedral City-based Essential Herbs and Oils.

“It’s complicated by the will of the people of California and the will of the people of Cathedral City. The question is whether the city has a right to bring this action to this court at this time.”

An attorney had this to say.

Essential’s Brea-based attorney, Anthony Curiale, said medical marijuana is legal under California law and “not a criminal act.”

“This is an issue of state’s rights, and the city seems not to care that the people of California voted to allow seriously ill individuals to obtain the medicine recommended to them by their physicians,” Curiale said last week.

American people in general support the idea of allowing medical marijuana.

Reschedule Cannabis