Double Toke! Ammiano Reintroduces Bill to Legalize, Tax Marijuana
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has reintroduced his pioneering bill seeking to legalize and tax pot in California.
In a statement released this afternoon, Ammiano's office said the San Francisco Democrat hopes the new legislation will build on support garnered by AB 390, his first pot-legalization measure, which passed out of committee in Sacramento but overran its deadline for consideration by the rest of the Legislature.
The bill's expiration last month appeared more or less in line with the grand strategy of Ammiano, who said he wanted to take plenty of time to build consensus on the issue. Now AB 2254, the latest incarnation of the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, will get a second shot.
"We're even more optimistic about the fate of this bill than we were about AB 390," Aaron Smith, California director for the Marijuana Policy Project, told SF Weekly.
Iowa pharmacy board to discuss medical marijuana
Iowa likely won't be the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana any time soon, but there has been plenty of talk about the idea with two bills in the Legislature and a possible recommendation on legalization Wednesday by the state pharmacy board.
Although both legislative measures are considered dead for the session, backers said support is growing and some expect the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to add to the momentum when it discusses the issue and considers recommending whether marijuana should be allowed for medical use.
"We're supposedly the drug experts and so, I would hope that the Legislature would consider the recommendation valuable to them," said Lloyd Jessen, executive director of the Iowa Board of Pharmacy.
Medical marijuana initially came before the pharmacy board in 2008 when the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and others petitioned the board to remove marijuana from the Legislature's Schedule I classification. To be classified as Schedule I, a drug must have a high potential for abuse and no safe medical use.
POLL: High Support for Medical Marijuana around the United States
High Support for Medical Marijuana ABC News/Washington Post Poll: 81 Percent Support Legalizing Marijuana for Medical Use Credit: Getty Images
Eight in 10 Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use and nearly half favor decriminalizing the drug more generally, both far higher than a decade ago.
With New Jersey this week poised to become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana, 81 percent in this national ABC News/Washington Post poll support the idea, up from an already substantial 69 percent in 1997. Indeed the main complaint is with restrictions on access, as in the New Jersey law.
Fifty-six percent say that if it's allowed, doctors should be able to prescribe medical marijuana to anyone they think it can help. New Jersey's measure, which is more restrictive than most, limits prescriptions to people with severe illnesses. State health officials can add to the list.
DECRIMINALIZE? – Apart from medical marijuana, there have been recent efforts to decriminalize marijuana more broadly in some states. A preliminary vote on one such measure is to be held in the Washington state Legislature this week. In California organizers say they've collected enough signatures to hold a statewide referendum on the issue next fall. And a separate proposal in California to legalize and tax the drug cleared a legislative committee last week. A Field poll there in April found 56 percent support for the idea, which its backers say would raise $1.3 billion a year.
OREGON: Medical pot a growing problem, but really is it?
Law enforcement officials in Albany and Linn County say there’s been a decline in seizures of large marijuana operations during 2009, but they are growing increasingly concerned about abuse of the medical marijuana card system.
The Democrat-Herald talked with Det. Capt. Paul Timm of the Linn County Sheriff’s Office and Capt. Eric Carter of the Albany police about trends in drug enforcement.
Timm said his agency’s “top four” drug concerns are marijuana, meth, heroin and prescription drugs.
Here is a rundown of the year 2009 in drugs from the sheriff’s office:
Seized: Some 1,294 grams of meth, 9,905 grams of dried marijuana, 1 gram of heroin, 27 prescription pills and six MDMA (Ecstasy) pills.
In 2008, 336 grams of meth were seized as were 1,831 grams of marijuana, 1 gram of heroin, 3 grams of cocaine and 95 prescription pills.
During the summer, Linn County runs special marijuana eradication efforts. Of the 526 marijuana plants seized in 2009, only seven were in outdoor grows. In those cases, 21 arrests were made.
The economics of drugs: marijuana, cocaine, meth – supply vs demand is twisted!
Now that's a nice cloud of marijuana smoke. Credit: Pam Templeton
The Government Action Plan on Methamphetamine is working by at least one measure – price. A gram of P, according to one Auckland drug dealer, now costs around $800, whereas a year ago the same amount set users back about $300-$400.
The doubling in price tells a supply side-story. Prime Minister John Key launched the plan in early October and, among other measures designed to restrict supply, made the important precursor drug, pseudoephedrine, prescription-only.
Also, in the two months to early December, Customs intercepted a total of 230kg of pseudoephedrine at the border. When commodities become scarce, consumer demand drives the price up.
The government is, says Key, winning "the fight against P".
But if "we" are winning the fight, what will success entail? An exhaustive account of the global cocaine trade (The Candy Machine, How Cocaine Took Over the World, by Tom Feiling) suggests all of the efforts by government and its agencies will make not a jot of difference and may even generate a worse social outcome.
PR Award of the Year goes to marijuana cannabis weed pot!
What a year it’s been for medical weed. No other substance has enjoyed such a huge amount of favorable press across a wide spectrum of media outlets, even managing to look good on traditionally slanted networks like Fox, repeatedly. Equally impressive, are the string of political victories on the local, state, and federal level. There’s been so many positive mentions that Americans may even finally be warming up to the idea of regulating the good herb like alcohol and booze, which is good for patients and partygoers alike, as well as the economy, as it can generate lots of much needed revenue. Let’s take a quick look back at the public relations coup that the ganja pulled off in 2009.
Life after cannabis prohibition – Plant saves planet! Marijuana saves world! Herb saves Earth?
Credit: Dexter Phoenix Salem-News.com
These are some of the headlines we might see, if things continue the way they've been going - with the increasingly global movement towards a more rational policy regarding the use of a naturally occurring, yet chemically compelling plant/substance called Cannabis. Cannabis Sativa, and its sister, Cannabis Indica, otherwise know as Pot, Marijuana, Mary Jane, Herb, Grass, Weed, Reefer, Gage, Kind, Ganja, et cetera (the list goes on and on) is the world's most popular social relaxant, but simultaneously most controversial "narcotic" drug. The terminology is debatable, as many don't consider it a drug at all. Many find it just helps them unwind.
Although its effects, especially from the Indica strains such as Afghan and cross-bred hybrids such as White Widow can be a bit narcotizing, in that they can make you sleepy (good for insomnia), Cannabis in its various forms such as "Bud", the dried flowers of the plant, and "Hash" or Hashish or "Kief", the concentrated resin glands of the plant, cannot credibly continue to be classified by the US DEA, NIDA, FDA, ONDCP et al, as a dangerous "Schedule I" narcotic lumped in with the likes of LSD, PCP, Heroin etc. as having a high potential for abuse and having no medical applications.
As California's current governor once said "It's not a drug, it's a leaf!" More recently he added "It's time for a debate" about whether we should consider the ramifications of legalization of the herb by examining those countries (Portugal has over seven years of success with decriminaliztion of most drugs) that've implemented drug reforms such as decriminalization and legalization. He could make a tremendous difference to the forward movement of this thinking by signing such legislation into law before he leaves office. That just might happen.
Mankind has a symbiotic (mutually helpful) history with marijuana, or cannabis, going back many thousands of years - no one knows for sure how long, but medical uses in China have been documented as far back as 5,000 BC. Modern medicine was just beginning to understand this unique plant's potential protective, anti-emetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, and psychopharmacological properties when the US Government took drastic steps to ban its use and study.
The plant and hominids have happily coexisted in harmony for many millenia, as evidenced by the fact that humans have developed an "endocannabinoid" system which mimics the cannabinoids (active elements) in Cannabis itself. The human brain and nervous system has evolved with specific receptor sites that match cannabinoids such as THC and CBD, thus enhancing the existence of both man and plant.
This coming year should prove very interesting indeed with respect to developments on the medical cannabis front. With the AMA's recent reversal of its 70-some year boycott on the beneficial herb, maybe congress or the President himself will see fit to remove this incredibly medicinally useful plant from the Schedule I, paradoxical purgatory it has languished in for decades. The stars (movie and cosmological) are aligning in support of this potentially earth-shaking plant. By 'earthshaking' I mean it can literally save lives, economies and the overall ecology of the planet on which we have but a tenuous hold.
Washington among states considering legalizing marijuana, dozens of states weigh other reforms
Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb.
"In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we've ever seen," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which supports reforming marijuana laws.
Nadelmann said that while legalization efforts are not likely to get much traction in state capitals anytime soon, the fact that there is such an increase of activity "is elevating the level of public discourse on this issue and legitimizing it."
"I would say that we are close to the tipping point," he said. "At this point they are still seen as symbolic bills to get the conversation going, but at least the conversation can be a serious one."
Opponents of relaxing marijuana laws aren't happy with any conversation on the topic, other than keeping the drug illegal.
"There's no upside to it in any manner other than for those people who want to smoke pot," said Travis Kuykendall, head of the West Texas High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area office in El Paso, Texas. "There's nothing for society in it, there's nothing good for the country in it, there's nothing for the good of the economy in it."
NORML: A Father’s greif: Cannabis Prohibition, Race and My Son
An unfortunate college photo of Barack Obama comes back to bite. During Obama’s freshman year at Occidental College, a classmate took a picture of the “cool cat.”
Despite the bizarre claims of some prohibitionists and law enforcement representatives that ‘no one in America gets arrested or goes to jail for cannabis charges’, NORML receives hundreds of emails and letters a week from our fellow citizens who’ve been negatively impacted by cannabis prohibition laws–notably due to an encounter with law enforcement.
A few weeks ago I received a letter from a father of a young man arrested and incarcerated on minor cannabis-related charges in Arlington, Virginia. The father’s lament is deep and profound, beyond the standard pleas for help NORML so regularly receives. So much so that I asked him if he would send NORML the original letter for publication.
Saving Mexico: To weaken the cartels, some argue the United States should legalize marijuana
An agent carries marijuana plants at a large plantation found near San Cristobal de Coyutlan in August. Credit: Associated Press
To weaken the cartels, some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade
In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion.
A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government's war on drugs summed up recently what he's learned from his long career: "This war is not winnable."
Just last week, Mexican Navy Special Forces swarmed a luxury apartment tower in a central city and gunned down Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a drug trafficker whose organization helped smuggle several billion dollars worth of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. during the past decade, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Within days of Mr. Beltrán Leyva's death, Mexican officials were already trying to guess which of his lieutenants would take his place. Almost no one expected the death of Mr. Beltrán Leyva to slow down the business of drug trafficking or the horrific drug-related violence in Mexico that has claimed around 15,000 lives in the past three years. On Monday, hit men gunned down several family members of a Mexican naval officer who had been killed in the Beltrán Leyva raid. Four people have been arrested in connection with the killing, though Mexican authorities say the hit men are still at large.
CANADA: Guelph cannabis club a smoking “business” — not far from Toronto
Rade Kovacevic runs the Medical Cannibis Club of Canada in Guelph where medicinal marijuana is available. Credit: Guelph Mercury
It’s a controversial operation but quietly so.
While it promotes itself and its workings via the internet, it guards its location closely. Even when you’ve arrived at the lobby of the downtown building where it’s situated – for now at least – only a simple sign marks its presence. White plastic letters on a brown board softly announce: Medical Club of Guelph.
The front door of the second-floor office is always locked. A doorbell chimes when a visitor wants access.
Behind the closed door, employees of the club – the Medical Cannabis Club of Guelph — dispense medical marijuana. It opened just over three years ago. It has quietly grown to 238 members.
The discreetness is to keep away those seeking recreational marijuana, said club founder Rade Kovacevic.
