DocumentDump.com ^ RWCS.com > Steal This Blog

RT @TIME See primo photos from yesterday’s 4/20 Great American Smoke-Out | http://ow.ly/3thv

via @lostmarblesmart twitter web

Popularity: 2% [?]

[SOURCE: NORML News of the Week 8/21/2008 @ Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 4:19 PM]

Sacramento, CA:

According to recent media reports, Attorney General Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown is currently privately circulating to top state and law enforcement officials the “final draft” of his long-awaited rules for ensuring “the security and non-diversion of marijuana grown for medical use.” These, when finalized, will be the first definitive guidelines provided by the state of California in the decade plus since Prop. 215 was approved by the voters.

According to the attorney general, these guidelines are intended to accomplish three objectives: to avoid diversion of marijuana grown for authorized patients; to help law enforcement understand and apply the law consistently throughout the state; and to “help patients and caregivers …cultivate, transport, possess, and use marijuana under California law.”

Brown, who earlier announced his intension to appeal the recent Kelly decision (People v. Kelly), holding SB 420, the act passed by the legislature that placed limits on the amount of medical marijuana a patient could legally possess, to be an unconstitutional infringement on the power of voters to adopt state policy via initiative. Brown has consistently indicated his opposition to private dispensaries, and his draft guidelines reportedly reflect that position, and may present a new challenge to dispensaries.

Brown’s draft guidelines reportedly have this to say about dispensaries: “Although medical marijuana ‘dispensaries’ have been operating in California for years, dispensaries, as such, are not recognized under the law.” Individuals who operate dispensary establishments “that do substantially comply with [the] guidelines… may be subject to arrest and prosecution under California law.”

For patients who may possess more than the authorized amount, the guidelines also reportedly present a problem. “If a person has what appears to be valid medical marijuana documentation, but exceeds the applicable possession guidelines identified above, all marijuana may be seized. “

On the positive side, patients would reportedly be entitled to the return of their authorized medical marijuana from law enforcement, once their authorization was verified, and state officers would be protected from liability for following this guideline.

For more information, contact NORML Legal Counsel Keith Stroup or California NORML director Dale Gieringer or call 415-563-5858

Popularity: 4% [?]

Opponents: www.nomeasureb.org

—–

—-

—

–

-

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2008
(05-30) 04:00 PDT Mendocino County
SFGate.com

Marijuana is so ubiquitous here that everyone, from schoolteachers to kids, can tell you when a sinsemilla bud is ripe. From late summer to fall, the county reeks with the skunk-like stench of ready-to-harvest weed. The annual $1.5 billion pot crop constitutes two-thirds of Mendocino County’s entire economy.

“You tell people from other parts of the country that folks grow pot all over town, and they think this is just a freak show here,” said Ross Liberty, who owns a welding shop in Ukiah. “They’re not far off.”

Earlier this year, Liberty and others who used to be benign about the issue decided enough was enough. They put Measure B on Tuesday’s ballot to repeal the nation’s most liberal rules for growing pot, which for eight years have allowed anyone to grow up to 25 plants for personal use. If Measure B is approved by a majority vote, the per-person limit will revert to the statewide limit of six plants.

But then there’s the other side.

Opponents of Measure B call it a meat-ax approach to an emotionally volatile issue and say that going after the weed in Mendocino’s backyards and spare rooms is wrongheaded at best, cruel at worst. What is really needed, they argue, is a better effort to eradicate large-scale plantations that are hidden in the heavily forested mountains and are guarded by thugs toting assault rifles.

The anti-measure forces are led by an ex-congressman’s daughter who was busted and later cleared for growing a medical pot garden.

“We need to harness this gigantic industry, not try to kill it,” said Laura Hamburg, whose arrest last fall so infuriated her that she decided to head up the anti-Measure B push. “There’s this caricature about this county that we’re all hippies sitting around smoking joints, but that’s the last thing from reality. Medical users truly need this plant.”

The homegrown weed in most of those yards and rooms is medicine to be used by those who grow it, Hamburg said, or sold to the 400 medicinal marijuana clinics in San Francisco, Berkeley and the rest of the state. These grow-farms are not the problem, she insisted – flashy out-of-towners are.

Advocates disagree

But that’s a key assertion with which Measure B advocates vehemently disagree. And to illustrate how bad they think neighborhood pot farms have become, they point to a 2004 incident in Ukiah.

That’s when a would-be robber leaped the fence of Larry Puterbaugh’s back yard and shot and wounded his neighbor, Memo Parker. The man was trying to steal from Parker’s pot farm, police said. Puterbaugh had already complained for years about the stench from the hundreds of pot plants over his back fence – but even after the shooting, police did nothing about it. Parker had doctor-signed cards authorizing medicinal growth on the farm.

Parker later pleaded no contest to cultivating too many plants in a separate case. But in 2004, all Puterbaugh could do was fume.

“That’s when I began thinking we have to do something,” Puterbaugh said. “Why should we be scared in our own neighborhoods, in a quiet town like this?

Measure B backers date the genesis of their troubles to 2000, when 58 percent of the county’s voters passed Measure G, which allowed anyone to grow as many as 25 marijuana plants for personal use – far exceeding the state guideline of six plants per person for medicinal use only.

The “personal use” reference, in practice, has meant growing for medical use – but the kicker for critics was that each lot of 25 plants required only a doctor-signed permission card saying the grower would use the pot or that the grower was cultivating it for another patient. Some houses began displaying as many as 12 cards, leading to complaints that the new rule was allowing people to grow commercially for cash, not medicine.

“It’s like we kicked the door open and said to the rest of the nation, ‘Come on in and grow pot!’ ” said Mike Sweeney, an environmental activist who is helping direct the Measure B campaign. “Now, what we want to do is slam that door shut. We want people around the country to know that Mendocino has changed its ways.”

One who answered Mendocino’s siren call is Ukiah Setiva Morrison. After hearing in North Carolina about the area’s legendary pot leniency, he changed his name from Ronald Matthews and, in 2005, moved to Ukiah to run a short-lived church called the Hemp Plus Ministry.

“I really believe that cannabis isn’t bad for you – stupidity is bad,” he said, standing in his garden of 11 outdoor plants in Redwood Valley. Now he is running for county supervisor.

Measure B’s proponents and opponents agree on one thing: the necessity for a prohibition on large pot farming operations, some of which sport as many as 500 plants, no matter where they are.

But as for crimping everything back to a six-plant limit? A popular local T-shirt speaks for Measure B opponents. “Let It Grow,” it reads below a jaunty pot-leaf drawing.

Hamburg points to her own 39 plants – which were ripped out by police last fall – as an example. They were used as medicine for an intestinal condition as well as for her cancer-survivor mother and two others, and she had doctor-signed growing cards to justify the garden – which the search warrant didn’t note, an omission that led a judge to throw out the case in March. It was a typical-size “grow” for the county.

However, Hamburg’s political profile was anything but typical, and she thinks that’s why she was targeted. Hamburg’s father, former Democratic Rep. Dan Hamburg, helped lead the 2000 campaign that liberalized the county’s pot laws, and she spearheaded the 2004 drive that passed the nation’s first local ban on growing genetically altered food. Hamburg also worked as a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle in 1997 and 1998.

“I wasn’t going to be ‘the pot girl,’ leading this campaign, but that all changed when 11 deputies tore out my plants and locked me out of my own house,” she said. “Now I just want to make sure that never happens to anyone else.”

Legalize pot, they say

Hamburg and other Measure B opponents say that instead of limiting pot, Mendocino should be a beacon for the decades-old movement to legalize the $3,000-a-pound weed. The county’s liberal guidelines are just that – guidelines tacitly respected by federal officials who still operate elsewhere under U.S. law banning pot of any quantity. But if it were legalized instead of demonized, Hamburg’s group maintains, the economically struggling county could tax that $1.5 billion crop and become hugely prosperous.

“This whole fight is like Prohibition,” said artist Catherine Magruder, a cancer survivor who says smoking pot erased the pain of chemotherapy. “You can’t squish marijuana out of existence, it’s too late. So why not figure out, together, how to make it work for all of us? And why not start that movement right here in Mendocino?”

Not surprisingly, considering how firmly pot culture is laced through this county, even Measure B proponents – who include virtually every elected or law enforcement official – say they support medicinal marijuana. The Board of Supervisors and many of those pushing for the rollback supported the lenient rules when they passed in 2000.

But now they say Hamburg and her backers – mainly patients, small-time growers, doctors, the San Francisco office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law (NORML) and a former county prosecutor – are deluded.

“What really got to me was when I tried to hire some teenagers for my shop and they laughed at me,” said Liberty. “They said they make so much money harvesting pot for growers that they don’t need my $8-an-hour jobs.

“Look, they can make $30 an hour, and I see them driving $50,000, tricked-up trucks all over town,” he said. “I can’t compete with that. Nobody can. How in the world can we attract new business when the workforce just wants to grow or harvest pot?”

There’s more at stake here than just local regulations.

“This is the only battle going on in the entire country about marijuana cultivation, and anyone who cares about this issue in the United States is watching it very closely,” said Dale Gieringer, California director of NORML.

Lots of money

Marijuana has been a significant presence in this county since the 1970s. Though grapes are the big legal crop here, Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties are fabled as the “Emerald Triangle,” considered by many to be the premier pot-growing region in the nation.

But at the same time, the area has an outdoorsy charm that draws not just environmental progressives but families hunting the kind of solitude that can be found only in a Rhode Island-sized county with 88,000 residents and four small incorporated communities. With the collapse of the local timber industry, poverty here is slightly worse than the state average, but the restored Victorians and tidy ranch houses in most towns and county roads reflect recovery more than despair.

The only immediate sign to outsiders that there’s more going on here than simple rural living is the preponderance of shops selling pot-growing equipment and the occasional sign extolling the virtues of the herb. One of the first sights greeting drivers rolling into Ukiah is the Adopt-A-Highway sign proudly proclaiming cleanups by the “Medical Marijuana Patients Union.”

“We definitely go our own way,” said longtime resident Randy Bream, leaning against the till at his Mendocino Hobbies shop in Ukiah. “Look, I call myself a conservative, and I don’t care who grows pot as long as they don’t push it on me or my kids.

“What matters for me is that there are friendly people here. On Memorial Day, the city puts flags up and down the main street. All this fighting over pot? I wish they’d just hurry up and decide whether it’s legal so we can stop talking about it.”

Inside Uphill battle: Authorities say they manage to seize only 20 percent of Mendocino County’s marijuana crop. A8

Info on B

For more information on Measure B:

Text of Measure B: www.yesonbcoalition.org/fullmeasureb.php

Opponents: www.nomeasureb.org

Proponents: www.yesonbcoalition.org/index.php

Popularity: 3% [?]

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #538, 5/30/08

With Memorial Day now just a memory, the summer music festival season is on — and with it, special drug law enforcement aimed at festival goers in what could be called a form of cultural profiling. If years past are any indicator, music lovers should be prepared to encounter everything from announced “Drug Checkpoints” that aren’t — they are instead traps to lure the freaked out — to real, unconstitutional, highway drug checkpoints masquerading as “safety checks” (complete with drug dogs) to undercover cops working inside the festival grounds themselves.

Richard Anderson, via commons.wikimedia.org

Nationally known festivals like Bonaroo in Tennessee and Wakarusa in Kansas, as well as countless lesser festivals, especially in rural areas, have drawn special law enforcement efforts in the past. With this year unlikely to be any different, festival goers will need to know their rights and how to exercise them when they encounter the cops.The police enforcement actions are already getting underway. Last weekend, the 2008 Summer Camp Festival in Chillicothe, Illinois, drew some 13,000 fans to hear a diverse line-up of bands including the Flaming Lips, George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, Blind Melon, the Roots, and the New Pornographers. It also drew city and state police, who claimed 20 drug arrests — for marijuana, ecstasy, and LSD — between them in and around the festival.

The police were pleased. “I think a lot of it had to do with all of the agencies getting together before the event and really planning out our attack,” Chillicothe Police Chief Steven Maurer told local HOI-19 TV News. “Our goal is to prevent it from coming in and that’s what we did a lot of.”

Meanwhile, down in northeast Georgia, some other law enforcement agencies had also gotten together to plan an attack. This one wasn’t aimed directly at concert-goers, but at the highway-traveling public in general. In what the Northeast Georgian described as “one of the county’s largest highway interdiction and safety checks in at least five years,” personnel from the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, Northeast Georgia Drug Task Force, Georgia National Guard Counter Drug Task Force, Georgia State Patrol, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Department of Public Safety Motor Carrier Compliance Unit, Lee Arrendale State Prison, Phillips State Prison and Cornelia Police Department participated in a 24-hour checkpoint on a local highway.

Police bragged about the success of their checkpoint, which netted 74 arrests, 31 of them for drug offenses. “It worked well, I thought,” said Habersham County Sheriff De Ray Fincher. “The operation resulted in a seizure of $36,000 in illegal drugs. And a total amount of currency, drugs and vehicles seized is estimated to have a value of $82,000.”

Police did write some tickets for traffic offenses, Fincher told WNEG-TV 32 News. “We got a lot of people with no insurance, no driver’s license or suspended license,” he said. And some pot smokers: “The majority of our cases were marijuana cases; however, we did get several methamphetamine and we got one case of cocaine,” Fincher explained.

In a 2000 Supreme Court decision, Indianapolis v. Edmonds, the high court held that indiscriminate highway drug checkpoints were unconstitutional since motorists were being stopped without suspicion for a law enforcement — not a public safety — purpose.

But Fincher was open about his constitutionally-suspect highway checkpoint. “We are trying to do everything we can to prevent drug activity in Habersham County, whether it’s just passing through or stopping here,” he said, noting that drug arrests in the county were on the rise. “That just means we’ve taken a real aggressive approach to drug enforcement.”

“In the wake of the Indianapolis case, law enforcement has tried to figure out ways to still conduct drug checkpoints that comport with that ruling,” said Adam Wolf of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. “Intent is the name of the game. If the intent is to conduct a checkpoint basically for law enforcement purposes, that’s not okay. If it’s for public safety purposes, such as sobriety checkpoints, that is okay.”

A constitutional challenge to any given checkpoint would turn on intent, said Wolf. “If it turns out the intent was primarily to be a drug checkpoint, that would be an unreasonable search and not comply with the Constitution,” he said. “That kind of checkpoint should be shut down, but it would take someone to challenge it.”

Noting Sheriff Fincher’s report of cash and goods seized, Wolf suggested the purpose of the checkpoints could really be about something other than law enforcement or public safety. “So often these things are being done to fund law enforcement agencies. Asset forfeiture is really a cash cow,” he said.

Whether the checkpoints or other special law enforcement tactics are to raise money, wage the drug war, or indeed for “public safety,” experts consulted by the Chronicle sang a remarkably similar song: Be prepared, don’t be stupid, and don’t give away your rights.

“The most efficient way to get arrested for marijuana possession short of blowing pot smoke in an officer’s face is to smoke marijuana while driving or parked in your car, especially on the way to a festival,” said Steven Silverman of the civil liberties group Flex Your Rights, which has released a video instructing people how to flex theirs. “You have a minimal expectation of privacy, and it reeks. Officers can smell it, and if they can smell it, that’s probable cause to search you.”

“Keep your private items out of view,” recommended the ACLU’s Wolf. A baggie full of weed on the front seat is all the probable cause an officer needs to search the vehicle and arrest the owner.

car search

“The only sure thing to do is not to carry,” said Keith Stroup, founder and currently senior counsel for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “But the problem with that is there may or may not be good marijuana available at the festivals. If you’re going to bring something with you, keep the quantity as small as possible, and for God’s sake, don’t smoke in the car!”If you are stopped at a checkpoint (or pulled over for any reason) and you haven’t provided police probable cause to search you or your vehicle, now is the time to exercise your rights. People in such situations should be polite but assertive, the experts said.

“If you are pulled over by police for any reason, the officers are very likely to ask you to consent to a search,” said Silverman. “Don’t do it. Never, ever consent under any circumstances. It might be couched in terms of a command, but it is a request. If you consent, you are waiving your Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They won’t ‘go easier’ on you; anything they find, they will confiscate, and arrest you and put you in jail. Don’t do their job for them.”

“There is no circumstance I can imagine where you should ever consent to a search,” agreed NORML’s Stroup. “If you give permission, you waive your Fourth Amendment protections. They may say it’ll go easier if you cooperate, but that’s bullshit. Their only reason for being there is to see if you have contraband and arrest you and put you in jail if you do.”

“Just say no to warrantless searches,” echoed the ACLU’s Wolf. “Officers won’t tell you you have the right not to consent, but you do, and it is one that people have held dear since the founding of the Republic.”

There are other highway hazards for the unwary festival-goer. Law enforcement can be creative in its unending war on drug users and sellers.

“Anybody driving to see his favorite band should also be aware of fake drug checkpoints,” said Silverman. “Drug checkpoints are unconstitutional, but what some sheriffs will do close to festival sites is set up a big ‘Drug Checkpoint Ahead’ sign, and then watch who turns off the highway at the next ramp or who throws something out his car window. Then they pull them over for littering or failure to signal a lane change or something. If you see such a sign, keep driving — it’s a bluff designed to see who it scares.”

“When you see a sign like that, proceed ahead within the speed limit, driving safely through the area,” advised Wolf.

Wolf has problems with the harassment of festival-goers that run deeper than particular law enforcement tactics. “Profiling based on race is not okay, profiling based on gender is not okay, and profiling based on the type of concert you attend is not okay,” he said. “It’s unreasonable and unjustifiable for police to target a group of people because they are going to any particular type of concert.”

“Simply having a Grateful Dead sticker or dreadlocks doesn’t constitute reasonable suspicion of anything,” agreed Silverman.

But in the real world, it can. Festival-goers and other highway travelers need to be aware of their rights, as well as the realities of life in the contemporary US, as they hit the highway this summer.

And one last thing once you actually make it to the festival. “There’s a big myth out there that police officers must reveal if they’re an undercover cop,” said Silverman. “That’s wrong, and it’s stupid to believe that. Police officers can and do legally lie in doing their jobs. Believing that has probably led to thousands of people being arrested.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Paul Armentano, NORML
Posted on May 23, 2008, Printed on May 23, 2008

In the 14 years I’ve worked in marijuana law reform, few events have struck me as so needlessly tragic as the federal government’s consistent and deliberate stifling of medical cannabis research. Nowhere is the Fed’s refusal to allow this science more overt and inhumane than as it pertains to the investigation of cannabinoids as anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

As noted in today’s wire stories regarding Sen. Edward Kennedy’s diagnosis, glioma is an aggressive form of cancer that affects an estimated 10,000 Americans annually. Standard treatments for the cancer include radiation and chemotherapy, though neither procedure has proven particularly effective — the disease kills approximately half its victims within one year and all within three years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells intact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the above questions are not hypothetical. As I originally wrote in a 2004 essay for Alternet.org, titled “Pot Shows Promise as a Cancer Cure”:

In fact, the first experiment documenting pot’s anti-tumor effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the U.S. government. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana’s psychoactive component, THC, “slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.”

Despite these favorable preliminary findings, U.S. government officials banished the study and refused to fund any follow-up research until conducting a similar — though secret — clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.

However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.

In the years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study examining the drug’s potential anti-cancer properties. Is this a case of federal bureaucrats putting politics over the health and safety of patients? You be the judge.

Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and in one human clinical trial, brain cancer.

Writing earlier this year in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, Italian researchers reiterated, “(C)annabinoids have displayed a great potency in reducing glioma tumor growth either in vitro or in animal experimental models. (They) appear to be selective antitumoral agents as they kill glioma cells without affecting the viability of nontransformed counterparts.” Not one mainstream media outlet reported their findings. Perhaps now they’ll pay better attention.

What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer may have been achieved over the past 34 years had U.S. government officials chosen to advance — rather than suppress — clinical research into the anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It’s a shame we have to speculate; it’s even more tragic that the families of Senator Kennedy and thousands of others must suffer while we do.

Watch a video of Paul Armentano explaining the relationship between cannabinoids and glioma.

Paul Armentano is the deputy director for the NORML Foundation in Washington, D.C.

© 2008 NORML All rights reserved.

Popularity: 2% [?]

[SOURCE: NORML via Alternet]

By Paul Armentano, NORML
Posted on May 13, 2008, Printed on May 13, 2008

Editor’s note: NORML deputy directoy Paul Armentano catches the latest insanity from the drug czar.

Feds: Teen use of pot can lead to mental illness
via The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Depression, teens and marijuana are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report released Friday.A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used marijuana as teens who have not reported being depressed — 25 percent compared with 12 percent, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years,” said John Walters, director of the office. “This is not just youthful experimentation that they’ll get over as we used to think in the past.”

…

“It’s not something you look the other way about when your teen starts appearing careless about their grooming, withdrawing from the family, losing interest in daily activities,” Walters said. “Find out what’s wrong.”

Gotta love Walters’ remark about hygiene — which he appears to have taken almost verbatim from Above The Influence’s hateful propaganda film, Stoners In The Mist.

Seriously though, it goes without saying that this so-called White House ‘report‘ (I use the term euphemistically here, given that said ‘report’ is under five pages and consists mostly of bar charts rather than text) is much ado about nothing. In fact, the only newsworthy aspect of this supposed ’study’ is that the lapdog mainstream media gave it any coverage at all.

In short, there’s nothing to the Drug Czar’s marijuana and mental health claims that NORML Advisory Board member Dr. Mitch Earleywine and I haven’t previously addressed in our essay here:

Pot Smoking Won’t Make You Crazy, But Dealing With The Lies About It Will
via Alternet

Perhaps the most impressive evidence against the cause-and-effect relationship concerns the unvarying rate of psychoses across different eras and different countries. People are no more likely to be psychotic in Canada or the United States (two nations where large percentages of citizens use cannabis) than they are in Sweden or Japan (where self-reported marijuana use is extremely low). Even after the enormous popularity of cannabis in the 1960s and 1970s, rates of psychotic disorders haven’t increased.

Ironically, just two days prior to the Drug Czar’s much ballyhooed press conference, Britain’s Advisory Panel on the Misuse of Drugs refuted the notion that pot use causes mental illness, stating, “The evidence for the existence of an association between frequency of cannabis use and the development of psychosis is, on the available evidence, weak.”

A 2006 review by the same commission previously concluded, “The current evidence suggests, at worst, that using cannabis increases lifetime risk of developing schizophrenia by one percent.” And more recently, a highly touted meta-analysis in the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported that there is a dearth of scientific evidence indicating that cannabis use causes psychotic behavior, noting, “Projected trends for schizophrenia incidence have not paralleled trends in cannabis use over time.”

Of course, none of this dismisses the possibility that pot use may exacerbate certain mental health problems in a handful of individuals. As NORML notes in a recent white paper, “Cannabis, Mental Health and Context:”

There is limited data suggesting an association, albiet a minor one, between chronic cannabis (primarily among adolescents and/or those predisposed to mental illness) and increased symptoms of depression, psychotic symptoms, and/or schizophrenia. However, interpretation of this data is troublesome and, to date, this observation association is not well understood. Identified as well as unidentified confounding factors (such as poverty, family history, polydrug use, etc.) make it difficult, if not impossible, for researchers to adequately determine whether any cause-and-effect relationship exists between cannabis use and mental illness. Also, many experts point out that this association may be due to patients’ self-medicating with cannabis, as survey data and anecdotal reports of individuals finding therapeutic relief from both clinical depression and schizotypal behavior are common within medical lore, and clinical testing on the use of cannabinoids to treat certain symptoms of mental illness has been recommended.

That said, however, the most practical public policy to address these concerns is not criminal prohibition, but regulation.

If there does exist a minority population of citizens who may be genetically prone to potential harms from cannabis (such as, possibly, those predisposed to schizophrenia), then a regulated system would best identify and educate this sub-population to pot’s potential risks so that they may refrain from its use, if they so choose.

To draw a real world comparison, millions of Americans safely use ibuprofen as an effective pain reliever. However, among a minority of the population who suffer from liver and kidney problems, ibuprofen presents a legitimate and substantial health risk. However, this fact no more calls for the criminalization of ibuprofen among adults than do these latest allegations, even if true, call for the current prohibition of cannabis.

You can read the full report here.

Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.

© 2008 NORML All rights reserved.

Popularity: 2% [?]

[SOURCE: NORML News of the Week 5/8/08]

Davis, CA:

Cannabis significantly reduces neuropathic pain compared to placebo and is well tolerated by patients with chronic pain conditions, according to clinical trial data to be published in The Journal of Pain.

Investigators at the University of California at Davis, in conjunction with the University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR), assessed the efficacy of inhaled cannabis on pain intensity among 38 patients with central and/or peripheral neuropathic pain in a randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Researchers reported that smoking low-grade (3.5 percent THC) and mid-grade (7 percent THC) cannabis equally reduced patients’ perception of spontaneous pain.

“[A] significant … reduction in [a 100-point visual analog scale of] pain intensity per minute was noted from both 3.5 percent and 7 percent cannabis compared to placebo,” authors wrote. “Separate appraisals using the patient global score and multidimensional [eleven-point neuropathic pain scale also] revealed that both active agents alleviated pain compared with placebo.”

Investigators added: “[N]o participant withdrew because of tolerability issues. Subjects receiving active agent endorsed a ‘good drug effect’ more than a ‘bad drug effect.’”

They concluded: “In the present experiment, cannabis reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness equally. Thus, as with opioids, cannabis does not rely on a relaxing or tranquilizing effect, but rather reduces both the core component of nociception (nerve pain) and the emotional aspect of the pain experience to an equal degree.”

The study is the second clinical trial conducted by CMCR investigators to conclude that inhaled cannabis significantly reduces chronic neuropathy, a condition that is typically unresponsive to both opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen.

Commenting on the study’s the findings, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said: “With the results of each published study it becomes increasingly apparent why the US government has tried consistently to stonewall clinical research on the therapeutic effects of inhaled cannabis. Each new trial the Feds approve provides additional evidence undermining the government’s ‘flat Earth’ position that cannabis is without medical value.”

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, “A randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial of cannabis cigarettes in neuropathic pain,” will appear in the Journal of Pain.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From NORML.ORG:

Action Alert: California Assembly Considers Bill to End Employment Discrimination of Medi-Pot Patients

NORML is pleased to announce that Assembly Bill 2279, which would declare it “unlawful for an employer to discriminate against” persons who use medical cannabis, has been approved by the Assembly Committee on Judiciary and the Assembly Committee on Labor & Employment and will now be heading to an Assembly floor vote.

Under a recent California Supreme Court ruling, state-authorized medical marijuana patients may be fired for their off-the-job marijuana use.  Passage of AB 2279 would correct this injustice.  Employees who possess a physician’s approval to use medicinal cannabis should possess similar workplace protections as do those workers prescribed other prescription drugs — many of which are far more impairing than marijuana.

Please take a moment and write your California Assemblyperson today and urge him or her to support AB 2279.  Since a vote on the Assembly floor is imminent, now is the time that your Assemblyperson must hear from you.   For your convenience, a prewritten letter will be sent to your state Assemblyperson when you enter your zip code into our online advocacy system.

NORML and the NORML Foundation: 1600 K Street NW, Suite 501, Washington DC, 20006-2832
Tel: (202) 483-5500 • Fax: (202) 483-0057 • Email: norml@norml.org

Popularity: 2% [?]

[SOURCE: indybay.org]

by CA NORML via list
Sunday Mar 23rd, 2008 10:05 PM

Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer walked out of US Court free on bail pending appeal after being sentenced to a five-year mandatory minimum by a US District Judge Frank Damrell, who deplored the sentence as a “tragedy” that should “never have happened.”

SACRAMENTO, Mar. 19th – Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer walked out of US Court free on bail pending appeal after being sentenced to a five-year mandatory minimum by a US District Judge Frank Damrell, who deplored the sentence as a “tragedy” that should “never have happened.”

Supporters were elated by Damrell’s decision to grant release on bail, which capped a tense and dramatic day that began with a succession of adverse rulings for the defense. Defense attorney Tony Serra called it “one of the saddest days I’ve confronted in a long career” after Damrell turned down all the defense’s motions to avoid the mandatory minimums. Mollie Fry stirred the courtroom to tears as she related the story of her cancer and subsequent desire to help people with medical marijuana. “We caused no harm to anyone,” she said, “There were no victims.” Judge Damrell acknowledged the legitimacy of Fry’s medical use of marijuana, but said that the couple had “spiraled out of control. ‘ He concluded that he had “no choice” but to impose the mandatory minimum of 5 years, a sentence dictated by the jury’s finding that the couple had grown a total of slightly more than 100 plants over a period of three years.

On the final and crucial issue of the day, however, Damrell agreed that the couple had “substantial” grounds for appeal so as to justify their release on bail. Following expert testimony by attorneys J David Nick and Ephraim Margolin, Damrell found substantial appeals issues relating to entrapment, the defendants’ state of mind, and the conflict between state and federal laws. He added that the couple’s precarious state of health was further extraordinary grounds for keeping them out of prison. He reprimanded Dr.Fry for her loose standards in recommending marijuana, and stipulated as a strict condition for her release that she desist from further recommendations, to which she assented.

To this observer, today’s events felt like a momentous step forward towards the inevitable changing of federal marijuana laws. Judge Damrell effectively declared the bankruptcy of US laws regarding mandatory sentencing and medical marijuana, and rightly referred the matter to higher authorities to decide. There are good grounds to hope that Dale and Mollie will be vindicated by the Ninth Circuit and/or a change in administration.

More later…. Dale Gieringer, Cal NORML
–
California NORML, 2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114 -(415) 563- 5858 – http://www.canorml.org

Popularity: 2% [?]

MY COMMENTS:

Sen. Tom Harkin was a hero of mine, as far as mainstream senators go. So, this is very sad to see that he has put out a letter like this. It shows grave, grave ignorance. It shows that even the most heroic of politicians can often end up disappointing us all. It goes to show that even if a politician is correct on most issues, one singular issue can prove them to be a total bullshitter and a dangerous fool.

I sure hope that it comes out that this letter is not legitimately from Sen. Harkin’s office…

DOCUMENTDUMP.com ^ RWCS.COM * Steal This Blog ¿©?

[SOURCE, for below: wonkette.com & NORML]

It’s 2008, and that teenager drug marijuana is still raping our children. But why does that have to be illegal? According to The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), some person wrote to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin “asking him to justify why medicinal cannabis is still illegal” after the American College of Physicians recommended it shouldn’t be. It merited a hilarious reply from Harkin, which noted many of pot’s notorious doom scenarios: “the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix.” Harkin knows the routine: smoke up, eat gyro, play Legend of Zelda, sell children to pirates for more pot, repeat. The full, horrifying letter, after the jump.

Dear XXXX:

Thank you for contacting me. I am always glad to hear from you.

I do not believe the answer in solving this country’s problem of drug abuse and the violence associated with drug trafficking is to make drugs legal. I have seen too much of the ill effects of these illegal drugs on our nation’s young people, as well as this country’s law enforcement officers, to believe the solution is to make these drugs more readily available by legalizing them.

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.

I was deeply troubled when I learned of another recent study which found that nearly one-third of all eighth graders had tried marijuana. As the father of two daughters, it greatly disturbs me that children are exposed to drugs at such a young age. I am concerned that legalization of this drug will only increase the number of children who gain access to its harmful effects.

The victims of the drug war are many – the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police officer’s family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry. These are the people I think of when I say that drugs pose a significant threat to the security of this nation.

In addition to helping to double federal funds for Iowa’s anti-drug programs, I am an active supporter of the Smoother Sailing Programs in the Des Moines public schools. This program is designed to help children cope with the violence, confusion and trauma associated with the abuse of drugs in our society.

Legalizing drugs is equivalent to declaring surrender in the war on drugs. However we may differ in tactics, I am hopeful that we can work together to fight drugs in our communities and to make Iowa drug free.

Again, thanks for sharing your views with me. Please don’t hesitate to let me know how you feel on any issue that concerns you.

Sincerely,

Tom Harkin

United States Senator

[via NORML]

Popularity: 5% [?]