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.

This is the way it should be. If you are following state law, growing legal medical marijuana you should never be put in jail!

After California legalized medical marijuana, Charles Lynch opened a cannabis dispensary nearly two years ago in Morro Bay, getting a license from the city and joining the chamber of commerce.

A year later, U.S. drug enforcement agents raided his business. Now Lynch is worried that he’ll get at least five years in prison when he’s sentenced tomorrow in federal court in Los Angeles on five counts of distributing marijuana.

Whatever happens, Lynch said, he’ll appeal. “I don’t feel like I deserve going through life as a convicted felon for doing things the state of California allowed me to do,” he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said that there would be no more federal prosecutions of cases involving medical cannabis dispensaries. He said they would be left alone as long as they were complying with state laws.

Holder said that his department will focus on people and organizations growing or cultivating “substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that’s inconsistent with federal law and state law.”

As long as you follow the rules you can grow medical marijuana in states that allow you to do so, without fear of prosecution or jail time.

isn’t that beautiful?

Now when will it be coming to a state near you??? When will sick and dying people in states that have no protection, get some???

The decision affects California and 12 other states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state.

Over the past 2½ years, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has raided at least 80 dispensaries in California.

Yet criminal charges have been filed only in several of those cases against the biggest distributors accused of breaking both federal and state laws, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Central District of California.

If this does not prove to you that we need change in America, nothing will. Here is a woman trying to help her sick and dying aunt just to be able to eat a little bit of food so she doesn’t die hungry, and what does she get? Fired from her job as police dispatcher, this shows how desperate Americans are becoming to get safe access to medical marijuana.

Laura Llanes does not regret buying her aunt marijuana, even though it has cost her a job as police dispatcher.

She was stunned, nevertheless, when she was fired last week after admitting she bought the marijuana to help relieve her aunt’s suffering through breast cancer and chemotherapy.

Marijuana for medicinal purposes is legal with a prescription in 13 states; Illinois is not one of them.

This is happening all across the country and it needs to stop! Sick and dying people in states that do not have protection for medical marijuana users are being persecuted, and punished when all they are trying to do is use a natural, safe, and effective medicine to combat chemotherapy loss of appetite and nausea.

Llanes, 28, of Lake Villa remains adamant she did the right thing, saying her biggest mistake was telling a few co-workers what she had done: “They ratted me out.”

It seems her co-workers did not agree with her actions, which she did not do while on employers time, and told her boss. Should people be fired because co-workers rat them out for off-duty things? This is ridiculous, I smell a lawsuit!

Her aunt, who lives in Aurora, was “sick constantly, not eating, not having an appetite. She is diabetic. She has to eat. She was whittling away to nothing,” said Llanes.

“I thought I will get her some marijuana so it would get her to eat. It worked. She did get the munchies.”

Llanes has not been charged with a crime, but when confronted by her supervisor at CenCom E-9-11, she admitted she had bought marijuana and was promptly fired Wednesday.

“All that mattered was that I admitted to committing an illegal act,” she said.

It should not be illegal to purchase marijuana in America, especially for medical reasons. This is absurd and the employees who ratted her out should be ashamed, she is only trying to help her sick aunt. And now, she has declined to buy her more, and now this woman will suffer pain while the co-workers get a pat on the back for ratting out a compassionate family member.

I hope these people sleep well tonight knowing a woman will be laying in pain dying slow because of their actions.

We need to protect patients like this and shield them from persecution like this. We need change in America regarding marijuana laws, and now is the time!!!!

A prescription drug in pill form called Marinol contains synthetic THC, the main ingredient in marijuana. But it doesn’t work for everyone, and its results are slow-arriving and unpredictable, Mirken said.

“If you talk to cancer patients, they don’t want to get high,” he said. “They just don’t want to feel sick.”

meanwhile a woman lay dying, vomiting, cannot eat in her bed… while we fight over laws regarding her smoking three (yes count them) three marijuana joints.

Patients have the right to sue drug companies.

The Supreme Court today upheld the right of patients who are hurt by a prescription or over-the-counter drug to sue the drug maker for damages.

The 6-3 decision rejected a strong move by the Bush administration and the pharmaceutical industry to shield drug makers from lawsuits if their products were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

At issue were suits involving the more than 11,000 drugs on the market in the United States. The outgoing Bush administration told the court last fall that federal approval of a drug “preempts,” or bars, juries from deciding whether it is unduly dangerous.

But the high court, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, disagreed and said Congress had not taken away the consumer’s right to sue. He said the view of the Bush administration “does not merit deference,” particularly considering that the FDA prior to the Bush era had favored lawsuits as a means of protecting consumers from dangerous drugs.

Instead of using deadly, and potentially harmful (amputation) medication, why not use some of that natural, safe, and effective medical marijuana for nausea?

Well, if you are like most Americans, you are forced to use medicine that carries some fairly risky warnings. But this latest news shows why it is important for Americans to be informed and also have access to safe and natural forms of mediciation and not just harmful chemical compounds made and trademarked by drug companies.

Here is what happened to a patient who was suffering from nausea,…

Today’s ruling upholds a nearly $7 million jury verdict in favor of a Vermont musician whose right arm was amputated after she was injected with an anti-nausea drug made by Wyeth.

The injection struck an artery and caused gangrene, a rare but occasional complication from directly administering Phenergan, the anti-nausea drug.

Diana Levine, the Vermont woman, settled a suit against the clinic that gave her the injection and then sued Wyeth. She contended that the drug maker had not properly warned her and other consumers of the danger.

In its defense, Wyeth said the federally approved warning label told doctors and nurses to use extreme caution when injecting the drug. Levine and her lawyers said that was not sufficient. Who would take an injection to relieve nausea, she asked, if a patient knew she could lose her arm as a result?

The jury agreed with her and awarded her $6.7 million in damages.

The FDA has been under scrutiny for a very long time regarding its labeling of medication and also has been sued for its published lies regarding medical marijuana.

Considering the quote “the FDA prior to the Bush era had favored lawsuits as a means of protecting consumers from dangerous drugs” you can clearly see, the FDA has never stated its warning should protect from lawsuits.

Why does this matter?

Because nausea medicine like above are prescribed to cancer patients suffering from nausea, and medical marijuana should be more available as a safe and effective means for controlling nausea, rather than injecting yourself with chemicals than can result in you having limbs amputated, can’t you see this is exactly why we need medical marijuana in our communities. Because the medicine the drug companies want to sell us, is killing us, and the medicine that would help us, they are keeping illegal and out of our reach.

Well, not in all states. In California, you can have your medical marijuana and a police officer cannot take it away from you. Hurray for those free Cali folk.