California Attorney General Responds to Feds Assault on Medical Marijuana

by Dorian Hargrove

California’s top attorney, Kamala Harris, is asking that federal attorneys scale back their recent assault on medical marijuana dispensaries, reports the Washington Post.
Harris’ statement comes weeks after U.S. prosecutors sent letters to landlords who rent to dispensary owners, warning them that their property could be confiscated if pot-operations are occurring on their property.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2011/oct/21/california-attorney-general-responds-to-feds-assau/#.TqHbrXpXQuY.facebook

WAMMFEST 2011 ANNOUNCED

WAMM’s Freedom and Music Festival Is A GO!

WAMMFEST 2011 ANNOUNCED America’s oldest medical marijuana collective will host its annual community appreciation event in Santa Cruz on Saturday, October 22.
The 9th Annual WAMMFEST in Santa Cruz–a free, public event sponsored by California’s oldest medical cannabis collective–will take place Saturday, October 22 from 12-5 PM in San Lorenzo Park, featuring live music from headliners MOONALICE (moonalice.com), plus Bayonics and the Green Lights, with an after party to follow.
Featuring special guest speakers, a medical marijuana information booth, an art gallery, crafts, dozens of vendors, local food, and a special Prop 215 medicating area for qualified patients, the event began as WAMM’s way of thanking the city for all of its support after a 2002 DEA raid targeted the groundbreaking organization.
Along with both the city and the county of Santa Cruz, WAMM later sued the federal government, forcing them to back off. Today, WAMM not only remains open, they are once again accepting patients as new members. The group also continues to collectively cultivate an outdoor, medical cannabis garden each year, which they use to supply high quality, low cost medical marijuana, edibles, tinctures and more to those in need.
“WAMM is about more than pot, it’s about people,” says Valerie Corral, who co-founded the organization in 1993, and later helped write California’s Proposition 215 voter initiative, which legalized medical marijuana in 1996. “WAMMFEST is our chance to show Santa Cruz who we are and what we stand for, while making sure they know how much we appreciate living in a supportive, compassionate community.”
This year’s WAMMFEST will also feature, for the first time, a special “Halloweed” themed after party fundraiser at the Cypress Lounge. Tickets are available at the door, and cost $10.
http://www.wammfest.org/

Hemp Versus the Status Quo

by Rand Clifford
The US rose to eminence by producing value, and by a fair percentage of citizens sharing the wealth. The further the nation has been corrupted from the stability of fairness, the faster our rate of decline.
 
Runaway greed, lust for power, and raw capitalism have reversed our national trajectory so insidiously that not just we, but even Earth’s biosphere, are in free fall. Is it more than simple coincidence that such comprehensive decline so closely parallels our prohibition of hemp?
 
Sure, there was a glitch 5 years after hemp was banned as the evil weed with roots in hell. Top government officials still insist, forcefully, that there is no difference between “marijuana” and industrial hemp. With that in mind, please compare marijuana propaganda and hysteria that heralded hemp prohibition and haunts us to this day, with the government’s own film, Hemp for Victory, produced in 1942. We needed hemp to “win” WWII, so under duress, the feds resorted to truth.
 
So what changed in those 5 years? Certainly not hemp, exactly the same resource extraordinaire that has served humanity for at least 12,000 years. Priorities changed, propaganda changed. And hemp didn’t change when the war ended and hemp reverted to our enemy. You might wonder, whose enemy?
 
Arguably, hemp is the most useful member of the entire plant kingdom. So how could nature’s premier converter of sunshine and water into value, a superstar of the biosphere and powerful supporter of life on Earth be considered an enemy?
 
War is our enemy. Nobody wins in war, everybody loses…except the “money changers”. Ever since Jesus ran them out of the Temple with a whip (remember him, the Prince of Peace?), they have relentlessly, progressively embedded as a certain subspecies—psychopaths born without conscience, without any sense of right or wrong, without a soul; beings to whom truth and justice are alien concepts, to be in any way so much as acknowledged only under extreme duress. So yes, all of humanity loses in war, there are no winners. And coincidence has nothing to do with those at the root of hemp prohibition being the same as those who have blessed us with perpetual war.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/9977-hemp-and-the-corporatist-yoke.html

Certified Organic – Hemp is lightweight, durable, and sustainable seating option

By Avinash Rajagopal
 

Michel Bonvin/courtesy Studio Aisslinger
 
Two years ago, when the engineers at the German chemicals company BASF invited the designer Werner Aisslinger to work with some new materials they’d developed, they didn’t think that he would choose to pair a water-based binder called Acrodur with hemp fibers. But Aisslinger was convinced of his choice. “You don’t think it is that exciting,” he told them. “But as an outside eye, I see it as the most important new material here.”
The product that Aisslinger finally created out of the hemp-based composite vindicates his choice. Displayed at the exhibition Poetry Happens during this year’s Milan Furniture Fair, the Hemp Chair is a lightweight seat with several interesting properties. “At a wall thickness of five millimeters,” Aisslinger explains, “it is as strong and durable as fiberglass.” But unlike fiberglass, it releases no harmful chemical fumes during the manufacturing process, only water. The material, which is 70 percent natural fiber, comes in square sheets that can be layered and easily molded under heat and pressure.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20111018/certified-organic

Protesters focus on federal medical marijuana crackdown

Written by Jen Lebron Kuhney

Demonstrators gather at Civic Center Plaza Tuesday to protest a federal crackdown on medical marijuana stores.

Demonstrators gather at Civic Center Plaza Tuesday to protest a federal crackdown on medical marijuana stores.

SAN DIEGO — Protesters took to the streets Tuesday to oppose a federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries.
Later in the day the city announced a Superior Court judge issued a ruling on Monday that the stores are prohibited by the municipal code in San Diego — a ruling similar to one he made last week.
Approximately 250 protesters marched from City Hall to the federal courthouse to voice their opposition to recent actions by U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy.
The federal prosecutor mailed out hundreds of letters on Oct. 7 to operators of marijuana collectives and their landlords telling them they must shut down within 45 days or risk criminal prosecution and property seizures.
Other U.S. attorneys have sent similar letters to dispensaries across California. They have reminded the public that even though Californians voted in 1996 to allow marijuana for medicinal use, the drug is still illegal under federal law.
Protesters said the forced closure of the dispensaries is going to scare off some of the people who need medical marijuana the most.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/oct/18/protestors-focus-on-federal-medical-marijuana/

The Feds Can’t Stop Medical Marijuana, CA Activists Say

by Phillip Smith
The ongoing federal offensive against medical marijuana production and distribution in California is weighing ominously over the state’s billion-dollar-a-year medical marijuana business, but while the industry could take some casualties, patients could suffer, and the battle field could get ugly, the feds can’t stop it, a trio of well-placed activist observers said this week.

medical marijuana protest, 2006 (photo courtesy ASA)

Despite the Obama administration’s famous 2009 Justice Department memo saying it would not interfere with operations complying with state laws in states where it is legal, the federal government has been raiding medical marijuana operations at a pace faster than the Bush administration. This year, the administration has become evidently more hostile, with a range of federal agencies doing what they can to make life difficult.
The Treasury Department has been scaring financial institutions away from dealing with medical marijuana businesses, the IRS is exercising punitive tax policy decisions designed to run them out of business, and even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms has gotten into the act, warning gun dealers that medical marijuana patients are “addicts” who can’t legally purchase weapons.
Tax liens and banking hassles are one thing, but being confronted by paramilitarized DEA raiders, threatened with having properties seized, or being faced with lengthy federal prison sentences is a whole other category of hurt. And that’s what really has California’s medical marijuana community up in arms. Between threatening news conferences by federal prosecutors, dozens of warning letters to landlords going out, and a steady drumbeat of DEA raids, medical marijuana patients and providers are scared — and angry.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/oct/19/feds_cant_stop_medical_marijuana

Time to Allow Farmers to Once Again Start Growing Hemp – by Ralph Nader

Although Rep. Paul has introduced several bills like this one in the past, there are several reasons that this bill should be passed now. Hemp has an amazing number of uses. Its fiber can be used in carpeting, home furnishings, construction materials, auto parts, textiles, and paper. Its seeds can be used in food, industrial oils, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. There are assertions, reported by The Guardian and in Biodiesel Magazine that using industrial hemp in biofuels instead of crops like corn and other feedstock provide greater environmental benefits. The expansion of industrial hemp as a feedstock for biofuels could also help to reduce oil imports.
Not only does hemp have a wide range of uses, but its cultivation in the United States could help to spur our lagging economy. Since the cultivation of hemp is outlawed in the United States, the U.S. market for hemp and hemp-based products is entirely dependent upon imports. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report cited an estimate that the U.S. market for hemp-based products may exceed $350 million annually.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-to-Allow-Farmers-to-O-by-Ralph-Nader-111019-209.html

Resolution introduced to legalize medical marijuana in Florida

By Ashley Lopez

Image: Wikimedia Commons
 
State Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, filed a joint resolution last week that would allow Floridians to vote on whether they want to legalize medical marijuana in the state during the 2012 election. 
The resolution would create an article in the state consitution that would “allow medical use of cannabis by citizens & allow Legislature to implement these provisions by general law.”

 
Read complete article here:
http://www.americanindependent.com/200018/resolution-introduced-to-legalize-medical-marijuana-in-florida

San Diego Reader Announces New “Smokable Ads”

By Walter Mencken
 
In Wake of US Attorney’s Ominous Statements Regarding Alt-Weekly Medical Marijuana Ads, Notorious Publisher Jim Holman Implements “Hemp-Based” Back Pages.
“Let’s give them something to investigate.”
STARING AT THE SALMON-PINK WALLS OF MY CUBICLE, MARVELING AT THE WONDER OF IT ALL – As the Federal Government continues the Great Medical Marijuana Panty-Bunching of 2011, concerns have arisen at alt-weeklies all over the state about the potential loss of ad revenue brought on by a crackdown on pot dispensaries.
In preparation for such an event, Reader publisher Jim Holman today announced his paper’s plan to make the paper’s medical marijuana ads “a little more user-friendly, if you know what I mean. Instead of printing the ads on expensive glossy stock, we’ll be switching over to a more practical paper made from hemp and, um, other natural products.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/almost-factual-news/2011/oct/18/emsan-diego-readerem-announces-new-smokable-ads/

Why Not Pot?

 Posted by Ron Capps
There have been a raft of articles here recently about PTSD and veterans including one on the difficulty of diagnosing PTSD, the staggering number of new veterans seeking mental health care at the VA, and the both surprising and somewhat sobering news that younger veterans are more willing to ask for mental health care—this is sobering in that the number of Vietnam era veterans seeking mental health care might increase if they see a reduction in the stigma of asking for help.
 
Then, I saw this op-ed piece that accused the VA and the U.S. government of slow-rolling acceptance of medical marijuana into treatment regimens for veterans with PTSD. I’ll leave comments on the medical stuff to my colleague Cam Ritchie, a psychiatrist who served a career on active duty in the Army.  But as a patient and someone still trying to work the VA system to get benefits and treatment for my PTSD (see my series on that here on Battleland under the sub-head Limboland.), I think there are some points I would like to comment on.
One of the most important issues for PTSD sufferers is control. When things are bad for me, it’s generally because I can’t control the images in my head, or the levels of my anxiety and fear, or my ability to sleep without nightmares. Some doctors I’ve spoken with tell me they don’t think medical marijuana is a valuable treatment because they believe it causes users to lose control. I suspect this is the same issue many doctors have with alcohol.
 
As a PTSD sufferer, alcohol proved quite useful as a sleep aid and as a way of helping me get control of the memories that flashed through my brain like images on a drive in movie screen. Sometimes I drank too much, and I often wished I had something else to use other than alcohol when the prescribed medications weren’t working well enough to clear my head of the horrific images and relax. Marijuana might have helped.
 
 
 
Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/10/17/why-not-pot/#ixzz1bBMR7KxI