Reschedule Cannabis

Two SoCal counties seek rejection of medical marijuana ruling

SAN DIEGO—Attorneys for San Diego and San Bernardino counties have asked an appellate court to reject a ruling that upholds California’s law legalizing marijuana use by the chronically ill.

Court documents filed Friday urge the Fourth District Court of Appeal to throw out a lower court ruling because local governments shouldn’t be bound to uphold state laws that are weaker than federal guidelines on marijuana.

California voters approved the law in 1996 that allows sick and dying patients to grow and smoke the drug to relieve chronic symptoms. The state requires counties issue identification cards for medical marijuana users and maintain a registry of people who apply for the cards.

Oral arguments in the landmark case are expected this year.

The law was put in place to allow ALL Californians to be able to purchase and use medical marijuana within the state of California. Counties should not be allowed to dictate (against state law) whether or not local citizens may use cannabis as medicine.

Even United States War veterans are behind medical marijuana. This veteran even uses it for “migraines.”

KALAMAZOO — The atomic explosions off remote islands in the South Pacific seemed to turn night into day.

They also turned Martin Chilcutt into a marijuana user.

Chilcutt said the drug has helped him to ease the pain he says dates back to his exposure to radiation during a 1956 U.S. government project testing nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

A state ballot proposal could allow voters in November to decide whether Chilcutt’s measures to self-medicate should be legal in Michigan.

The 74-year-old former intelligence officer with the U.S. Naval Air Force has used other medications to help him with his physical and psychological problems, but marijuana helps “so much better,” he said.

“Sometimes I just want to die,” Chilcutt said. “You can only take intense pain for so long before you’ll do anything to escape it.”

He never intended to put his health at risk.

While part of the testing project, Chilcutt remembers, he donned large goggles and turned his back to protect his eyes as the bombs exploded in the early-morning darkness.

There was no protection, though, from the heavy doses of radiation that spewed from the explosions and reached Chilcutt.

He has battled skin cancer three times, including basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of cancer, with about a million new cases reported in the United States each year. He has been in remission for the past 10 years.

Cannabis has many medicinal uses.

Chilcutt’s four years in the military — he served from the middle to late 1950s — also took a psychological toll, he said.

For 30 years, he said, he has suffered chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, including bouts of anxiety, depression and anger, nightmares, arthritis and debilitating migraine headaches.

Marijuana helps them all, he said.

Although there are different ways to use the drug, such as ingesting or inhaling it, there is no difference in the drug’s effect based on consumption, according to the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care, which is spearheading the state marijuana initiative.

“It just makes life so much easier,” he said. “It allows you to be comfortable.” Chilcutt, a retired psychotherapist, said he first learned of marijuana’s medical benefits in the late 1970s while counseling Vietnam War veterans in California. They told him the drug could help allay his pain, he said.

Cannabis even helps debilitating migraine. If you are a Migraineur (person who has recurring migraines) then you should know that medical marijuana has been known to be one of the best ways to survive debilitating migraines.

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

Humboldt California is known for it’s biggest export. High grade marijuana.

In the biggest pot bust in Humboldt County history, authorities seized more than 134,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated $469 million, law enforcement officials said.

The plants, ranging from one to three feet tall, were discovered on federal and private timberland along the county’s eastern edge north of Dinsmore, according to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department.

The plants, which were spotted during surveillance flights, were eradicated over the past week by county, state and federal officers.

No arrests were made during the raid, but investigators believe a Mexican drug cartel was behind the massive growing operation.

An international group of researchers from Germany, Israel, Italy, Switzerland and the U.S. has found that administering a substance found in the cannabis plant can help the body’s natural protective system alleviate an allergic skin disease (allergic contact dermatitis), Allergic contact dermatitis is caused by reaction to something that directly contacts the skin.

“Many different substances (allergens) can cause allergic contact dermatitis. Usually these substances cause no trouble for most people, but if the skin is sensitive or allergic to the substance, any exposure will produce a rash, which may become very severe. Allergic contact dermatitis affects about 5 percent of men and 11% of women in industrialized countries and is one of the leading causes for occupational diseases.”

An article describing the work of the international research group, led by Dr Andreas Zimmer from the University of Bonn, was published recently in the journal Science. The article deals with alleviating allergic skin disease through what is called the endocannabinoid system. Among the members of the group is Prof. Raphael Mechoulam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Pharmacy.

From BBC:

A man has been shown leniency after explaining he was growing cannabis to use the drug to tackle a genital itch.

Gregor Spalding admitted cultivating the drug at his home in Blairgowrie.

Perth Sheriff Court heard the 30-year-old was arrested in April after police picked up the crop’s smell while at his home looking for someone else.

Sentence was deferred for six months for Spalding to be of good behaviour. He was assured that if he maintained this he would be treated “leniently”.

Relieving pain

The court was told his “amateurish attempt” to cultivate cannabis was provoked by chronic pain he had suffered for three years.

Spalding said prescription medicine had failed to tackle pain caused by constant itching around his genitals.

He had decided to try using the drug as a painkiller, after reading about it on the internet, and wanted to grow cannabis himself, instead of buying it from a drug dealer.

His doctor wrote a letter to the court confirming Spalding had suffered chronic pain from an itching condition known as pruritus for three years.

The doctor added: “It is quite reasonable that he thought cannabis might help his condition as there have been reports in the press of cannabis relieving pain in multiple sclerosis and other conditions.”

The court heard Spalding had not been in trouble with the authorities before and had now been referred to Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital.

Sheriff Derek Livingston said: “It does strike me that this isn’t a case where someone is growing the plant to supply it to others.

“It was a stupid amateurish attempt. I am prepared to give you a chance. As long as it remains proscribed, you cannot grow cannabis plants in your house.”