Reschedule Cannabis

Who cannot agree with this?

Post gazette writes in: State to consider medical marijuana use HARRISBURG — A state legislator from Philadelphia said today it’s time to get rid of the decades-old negative image surrounding marijuana and replace it with “a new, honest image.”

How? By legalizing the use of small amounts of marijuana for medicinal purposes, such as reducing pain for sufferers of cancer or multiple sclerosis, helping people with glaucoma and assist with insomnia and mental disorders such as manic depression, said Democratic Rep. Mark Cohen.

There are so many uses for medical grade cannabis, including Migraine nausea and relief.

He introduced House Bill 1393, which would put Pennsylvania in a league with 13 other states that permit a person, with a doctor’s recommendation, to apply to the state Department of Health for a “registry card” that would allow the patient to purchase or grow one ounce of marijuana at a time.

“The only thing blocking this bill’s passage is the old image that marijuana has from the 1930s,” Mr. Cohen said. “It’s time to create a new image, as a form of treatment that, when prescribed by responsible doctors, could help thousands of patients in Pennsylvania.”

People with state-issued registry cards could either grow up to six marijuana plants at their home or buy it at yet-to-be-created “compassion centers,” legal dispensaries of medical marijuana. The sale of marijuana would be subject to the state’s 6 percent sales tax, and Mr. Cohen claimed that the state could get up to $25 million a year in new revenue.

Patients should be able to grow more than six plants, and should be allowed to grow as much as needed to treat their condition. The amount of medicine one can harvest from one plant differs so much, it is not hard to imagine that some people can grow plants better than others and some people will not be able to grow enough medicine with just six plants. Sometimes plants get sick and more than six is needed to grow enough for one patient to be able to use regularly.

He appeared at a news conference today with Chris Goldstein, an advocate with Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana, and Chuck Homan, a 58-year-old roofer from York County who was arrested last year for growing marijuana plants on his property. He uses marijuana to allow him one or two hours of sleep a night.

Without it, he said, he can’t even sleep that long. He attributed his insomnia to suffering from depression. His legal case is still pending, he said, but now he has joined the effort to legalize medical uses for marijuana.

Mr. Cohen said he has six co-sponsors for his bill, far short of the 102 votes he needs in the House. The Senate, controlled by Republicans, many of them social conservatives, will likely be even tougher.

And then we get to what is holding back progress… instead of the patients and citizens being allowed safe and effective medicine they can grow themselves, the politicians sit back and vote against medical marijuana while the people suffer pain.

More and more Americans are finding out the truth. Using cannabis as medicine is not only safe, but it is effective.

The rise in requests for medical marijuana has been dramatic of late. In various states where laws allow, dispensary owners recently admitted to an increase in 2009 requests for the pain reducer that ranges from 50 percent to as much as 300 percent. The high numbers seem to be implicitly linked to the stance of the Obama administration on the subject; the federal government will not interfere with state laws and patients who abide by them.

As people feel safer with the idea of medical cannabis and a President who supports the idea of “medical cannabis.” more states will follow and allow its citizens to become medical marijuana patients.

While some analysts insist the rise in medical marijuana requests pertains to the economic recession and subsequent growing number of Americans without health insurance, as they may turn to alternative and less expensive treatments for pain and disease, treatments like medical marijuana. However, most dispensary owners attribute the increase to the word from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that the Obama administration would not involve itself in state matters regarding medical marijuana.

The word first hit the medical marijuana community when the Obama for America campaign acknowledged its opposition to the Bush policy on the matter. A response letter to those inquiring on the subject read, in part: “Many states have laws that condone medical marijuana, but the Bush Administration is using federal drug enforcement agents to raid these facilities and arrest seriously ill people. Focusing scarce law enforcement resources on these patients who pose no threat while many violent and highly dangerous drug traffickers are at large makes no sense. Senator Obama will not continue the Bush policy when he is president.”

Every citizen in any state of America should be allowed to use medical cannabis.

Though Holder has not always held the same view, he has changed course since his appointment as the Attorney General. And despite Drug Enforcement Administration raids that happened as Obama took office in late 2008 as a continuation of the Bush policy, which stated that federal law overrode that of the states, those have since been ordered to an end. Holder stated in February of 2009, “What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing in law enforcement… What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”

According to Colorado clinic numbers, applications for medical marijuana have risen significantly. As December 2008 came to a close, there were 4,720 applications on file, as compared to the 6,796 by February 28, 2009. While this certainly does not indicate that doctors are willing to authorize all of the new patients for marijuana use, the requests are difficult to ignore. And to accommodate, some dispensaries are paying doctors to be on staff and provide the oversight to patients whose own doctors are unwilling to sign off on the applications.

medical marijuana applications continue to rise, and it is time for other states who do not have medical marijuana programs to start them!

The push for medical marijuana is getting some attention in New York…

The movement to legalize medicinal marijuana is gaining momentum in New York, with a proposal to let some people grow their own or buy from a state-approved organization.

Sen. Thomas Duane of New York City is introducing the bill, which will have a matching version sponsored by Manhattan Assemblyman Richard Gottfried. The Democrat-led Assembly has passed similar measures in recent years, but the issue fizzled in the formerly Republican-led Senate.

Now Democrats have taken control the Senate and the issue could get some traction in that chamber. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith didn’t immediately comment.

Gov. David Paterson’s office also did not comment on the proposal Duane is set to release Tuesday.

Hopefully we see more and more medical marijuana bills introduced this year.

Here is further proof that once you set up legal, safe medicinal marijuana programs, citizens will in fact sign up!

In the past 16 days, almost 500 residents statewide have applied for Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Program.

According to the Michigan Department of Community Health, 483 people have applied for the program, however no cards have been issued thus far.

“(This) week we are going to issue our first set of licenses,” said MDCH Spokesman James McCurtis Jr. “And I don’t suspect we are going to have any problems.”

That’s almost 500 people in 16 days, standing up for their patient rights, and rights as any American should be afforded. The freedom to self medicate with a natural, safe, and effective form of organic medicine. Marijuana.

McCurtis said as of April 14, the number of applicants was 252, but there was a spike in applicants at the end of the week and the department has not run into any problems yet.

“We have all the information posted on the Web site telling people what to do, how to do it,” he said. “And basically if they follow those basic instructions then they shouldn’t have any problem either.”

According to MDCH’s Web site, michigan.gov/mmp, to register, all an applicant must do is complete the form and procedures on the MDCH’s Web site, have a physician certify them as a “qualifying patient” and pay an application fee of $100, or $25 if enrolled in a Medicaid health plan or receiving Supplemental Security Income.

Under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, a qualifying patient is “a person who has been diagnosed by a physician as having a debilitating medical condition.”

According to the act, MDCH has 15 days to verify the applicants’ information and if approved has five days to issue the identification card.

“I was expecting maybe we would hear some people receiving them today,” said attorney Matthew Abel on April 17, who is a criminal defense attorney for marijuana cases.

Abel said he spoke with a doctor who has written some recommendations for patients and MDCH had not contacted him to confirm his approval.

“They certainly have the right to contact the physicians, we thought they would be, but I don’t want to say anything negative,” the Central Michigan University alumnus said. “There’s no reason to expect they are dragging their feet, we just haven’t seen anything one way or the other.”

The problem is, as more and more states implement medical marijuana programs, it still leaves citizens in other states vulnerable for prosecution and/or jail time for using medical marijuana. We need a federal rescheduling of cannabis to protect all medical marijuana users in this country, not just a select few or those lucky enough to live in a state that can see past the War on Drugs.

We need a new way of thinking in this country in regards to medical marijuana. America accepts it, and welcomes it, it is time for law makers and police to step aside and allow patients access to this medicine. Medical grade cannabis.

Michigan has some new laws on the books, and one concerns medical marijuana.

Detroit Free Press reports in Medical Marijuana Law Put To Test: Michigan’s medical marijuana law is getting two tests in metro Detroit, with a Madison Heights couple arraigned Tuesday on drug manufacturing charges and a Chesterfield Township man using it to fight an arrest for possession.

Why should anyone who needs medical marijuana be arrested and denied their medicine?

Both cases have the potential to set precedents under the medical marijuana law, which went into effect Dec. 4.

In the March 30 raid of the home of Robert Redden, 59, and Torey Clark, 47, Madison Heights police seized 21 plants. Redden and Clark said they use marijuana for pain relief and, per the law, have letters from their doctors recommending its use.

Each faces felony manufacturing charges, and because of prior convictions, each faces up to 14 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million if convicted.

14 years in prison for following a doctor’s orders? Imagine if the police kicked in an elderly patients door and arrested their for their prescription Vicodin? That is essentially what this amounts to. These people are growing their own safe and effective medical cannabis. Supplying themselves with their own natural medicine and they are being treated as criminals!

The raid came just days before a state program to issue official ID cards for people allowed to use medical marijuana began, and Madison Heights Deputy Police Chief Tony Roberts said having letters “doesn’t fulfill the legal requirement.”

The couple’s lawyer, Rob Mullen, said of police: “They’re not recognizing the law.”

Robert Dickson, a 53-year-old Chesterfield Township man with liver problems, is trying to use the law to fight a May 2008 arrest for marijuana possession. His case was adjourned Monday for 30 days while Dickson applies for his ID card.

His lawyer, Joe Biondo, said the law opens the door for a medical marijuana defense.

Now that the state has a medical marijuana program people like this need to be removed from the justice system and allowed to remain free and grown their own medicine.

Good news for medical marijuana in North Carolina!

North Carolina could be added to the list of states with legalized medical marijuana. It’s already legal in 13 other states. One lawmaker says it’s something North Carolinians should be able to take advantage of.

State Rep Earl Jones of Guilford County introduced the Medical Marijuana Act. He says the bill would help the seriously ill.

Show your support for rescheduling cannabis in the United States.

Under the bill patients suffering from certain chronic ailments would be able to use marijuana to treat debilitating illness or disease.

The bill says patients would have to go to a licensed dispensary in order to get the drug. Those who qualify would have to keep a registry identification card with them at all times. And must have written certification to ensure the marijuana is necessary

The bill’s sponsor says 99 out of every 100 marijuana arrests are made under state law, rather than federal law; and a change to the state law would protect the seriously ill from civil and criminal charges.

Tripp goes on to say, marijuana in it’s true form would save patients money compared to the cost of synthetic drugs. Ironically, while medical marijuana can’t be legally distributed to patients in our state. Medical marijuana is processed and distributed by the Research Triangle Institute here in North Carolina.

Cannabis is a safe and effective medicine and should be available to all citizens of the United States. As more and more states go forward with medical marijuana legislation, more states will follow to help protect sick people suffering pain and/or dying.

Just because you live in a state that will lock you up in jail for smoking marijuana, does not mean it’s the same way across all states in America. No, in california, you can walk in a store and buy weed, go home and smoke it without fear of arrest, doesn’t that sound like FREEDOM?

Washington Post reports: LOS ANGELES — With little notice and even less controversy, marijuana is now available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked.

Pot is now retailed over the counter in hundreds of storefronts across Los Angeles and is credited with reviving a section of downtown Oakland, where an entrepreneur sells out classes offering “quality training for the cannabis industry.” The tabloid LA Journal of Education for Medical Marijuana is fat with ads for Magic Purple, Strawberry Cough and other offerings in more than 400 “dispensaries” operating in the city.

Los Angeles officials say applications for retail outlets surged after Feb. 26, when U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration will no longer raid such stores. Those pressing for change in drug laws regard the announcement as a watershed in a 40-year battle against marijuana’s official listing as a dangerous drug — a legal fight that, in California, is being waged on ground that has shifted dramatically toward acceptance.

We need to reschedule cannabis:

All told, 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, a trend advocates credit in part to growing openness to alternative healing. As a “Schedule 1″ drug under the 1970 federal narcotics act, marijuana officially has “no currently accepted medical use.” But doctors have found it effective in reducing nausea, easing glaucoma, and improving appetite and sleep in AIDS patients.

Marijuana has been used as medicine for thousands of years, and has been in medical journals for over 100 years, yet when they started the “War on Drugs” they started making demonizing this medicine.

But in California, pot is such a booming growth industry that lawmakers are being asked to consider its potential as a salve to the state’s financial woes. Betty Yee, chairman of the California State Board of Equalization, endorsed a bill in February to regulate the estimated $14 billion marijuana market, citing the state’s budget problems. California currently collects $18 million in sales taxes from marijuana dispensaries, and Yee said a regulated pot trade would bring in $1.3 billion.

“I think the tide is starting to turn in terms of marijuana being part of the mainstream,” she said. “The pieces seem to be falling into place.”

In Los Angeles, Councilman Dennis Zine warned that half the city’s sales outlets might be forced to close, but only to control the growth of what the city now regards as an accepted business. “We’re not getting complaints about people smoking marijuana,” said the retired motorcycle policeman. “We’re seeing complaints about the proliferation of facilities. They opened up right down the street from my district office, in the same complex as a liquor store. Got the big green leaf in front.”

This has been my main point all along. Politicians and fear mongers try and paint medical marijuana as evil, yet they do not see a problem with liquor stores next to daycare centers or schools, yet the concept of medical marijuana dispensaries for sick people makes them nervous?

Maybe we should rethink our acceptance of the most abused drug in the world, alcohol, around our kids and stop worrying so much about sick people seeking safe and effective medicine.

Meanwhile, alcohol is being sold next to daycare center…

The new reality can be disorienting. In Mendocino County, the heart of Northern California’s “Emerald Triangle,” marijuana farming has been openly tolerated since the arrival of counterculture refugees in the late 1960s. But elected officials say they are being forced to crack down on growers who offended neighbors with aggressive farming after medical marijuana laws hastened pot’s shift from the black market to a gray zone.

“Prop. 215 opened up a new world for people who had been underground,” said Scott Zeramby, referencing the 1996 ballot proposition that legalized pot for medical users. By 2007, Zeramby’s garden supply business in the town of Fort Bragg was doing $2.5 million in business amid a land rush by new growers eager to cash in.

All Americans should be free to grow marijuana in their backyard if they want.

“Medical marijuana, right here, right now,” chants a barker on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, outside the doorway of the Medical Kush Beach Club. “Get legal, right now.”

It really is that easy, the barker explains. Before being allowed to enter the upstairs dispensary and “smoking lounge,” new customers are directed first to the physician’s waiting room, presided over by two young women in low-cut tops. After proving state residence and minimum age (21), customers see a doctor in a white lab coat who for $150 produces a “physician’s recommendation.”

Valid for one year, it is all that California law requires to purchase and smoke eight ounces legally.

“I told him I had problems with my knee,” said Joe Rizzo, 31, emerging from an examination recently with a knowing grin and a renewed card.

Outside the Blue Sky Coffee Shop in Oakland, Ritz Gayo clutched an eighth of Blue Dream ($44) and tried to remember the nature of his complaint.

“Um, my back,” said Gayo, 20. He went on to recite a partial list of symptoms suggested in newspaper ads: “Chronic back pain and the rest, like everyone else,” he said. “Non-sleeping. Can’t eat very much.

“That, and I love pot.”

Sean Manzanares, 41, a hardware store manager who had no previous experience with weed, parsed the advantages of sativa strains for night smoking and an indica for morning. “It got me off some really intense painkillers that were screwing with my liver and all kinds of stuff,” he said.

Ben Core, 41, an HIV-positive commercial insurance agent, said, “The usage effects are overtaking the political and cultural effects that have suppressed it.”

Stop arresting sick people and get safe and effective access to medical marijuana. People who use medical marijuana know, when compared with the damaging medicine doctors prescribe everyday, medical grade marijuana is more safe and effective.

The topic of medical marijuana is a touchy one, and the subject of people growing pot together in collectives is even more so.

There are major differences between dispensaries and collectives, read on…

Daily Journal reports

The county is moving forward with a plan to further regulate medical marijuana businesses in the unincorporated areas of the county to meet growing concern about the nature of the businesses in the unincorporated areas of the county.

The Housing, Health and Human Services Committee of the Board of Supervisors approved forwarding a draft medical marijuana ordinance to the full board at its Tuesday meeting and it will likely be heard by the board April 28, according to county officials.

The draft ordinance was requested after three San Mateo collectives were shut down in raids Aug. 29, 2007 and the city began its own investigation. The San Mateo City Council had its second reading of its own ordinance Monday night that would require medical marijuana dispensaries to register through the police department and meet certain security and business regulations. It also prohibits collectives from anywhere in the city but manufacturing and service commercial areas.

For the most part, the ordinance regulates the “collective” cultivation of medical marijuana. Collectives are places where people pool their money and time to grow marijuana in one central location. Dispensaries simply distribute and are already prohibited by law.

While state law allows collectives, it places few limits on the activity and some cities, like San Mateo, are taking steps to fill the void. San Mateo County is moving forward with its own ordinance after two medical marijuana businesses opened in North Fair Oaks. The proposed county ordinance requires primary caregivers to maintain a list of people to whom they provide care and would require a license. Before such a license is granted, the County License Board would ensure that the collective would not adversely affect the economic welfare of the community and the use of property used for a school, playground, park, youth facility, child care facility, place of religious worship or library and be buffered from any residential area.

California voters passed Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, in 1996, allowing sick patients to either grow their own marijuana or have a primary caregiver grow it for them. In 2003, the state Legislature passed the Medical Marijuana Program Act to clarify vague portions of Proposition 215.

No matter the location a patient or care giver should be allowed to grow the state allowed number of plants for either him/her self but their medical marijuana patients under their care.

And in regards to medical marijuana collectives, their location can and should be debated, however their ar bars next to day care centers and places that sell alcohol across the street from churches and primary schools in many towns across America. At least medical marijuana is, well … “medical.”

Alcohol is sold on our televisions and every street corner that has liquor stors and gas stations. Yet somehow, we feel compelled to fear medical marijuana plant collectives?

Its time to change this way of thinking.

And we agree!

The argument to legalize marijuana is back in the news, after rock legend and Obama supporter Carlos Santana said that marijuana needs to be legalized, while also taking a hard swipe at California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, the Grammy-winning guitarist said, “I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana, we can actually afford a really good governor who won’t keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do ‘D’ movies and we can get an ‘A’ governor.”

Santana went on to give a heart-felt plea to President Obama, saying, “Bring the brothers home, and sisters home now. Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.”

The amount of money wasted on arresting and jailing Americans for smoking pot is in the billions. That money alone could help change our education system in America. Let alone, the money made from taxing the legalized cannabis products that would come after its legalization across the United States.

To those reading this who live in Florida, keep up the fight!

People United for Medical Marijuana (PUFMM) has received approval from the Florida Division of Elections to circulate a petition that may place a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot that would allow marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes.

PUFMM chairman Kim Russell says patients need “safe, affordable and effective medication.” With already 5,000 supporters statewide, this amendment would give patients the right to grow, purchase, possess and obtain marijuana for medical treatment.

PUFMM says that the medicine can be used to treat Alzheimer’s, arthritis, cancer, glaucoma, and Parkinson’s disease in addition to being an appetite stimulant and natural pain reliever.

Opponents of medical-use laws believe that the passing of this amendment will lead to the legalization of marijuana and substance abuse.

“The door has already been open to substance abuse. Since this drug war has started, we have larger users than ever before so it is not going to affect that in any way. People are already getting their drugs that want to get them. It is the law abiding citizens that are sick that are the ones getting hurt in all of this,” says Russell.

Thirteen states have already passes similar legislation and nine other are in the process of moving in this direction.

Medical marijuana should be legal in America.