Petition Circulating To Legalize Marijuana In Missouri

Initiative could be on November 2012 ballot

A petition now circulating in Missouri would place a constitutional amendment on the November 2012 ballot to legalize marijuana for those 21 or older.

The “Show-Me Cannabis Initiative” calls for a sweeping repeal of criminal prohibitions against marijuana in Missouri.
The measure would regulate cannabis in many of the same ways the state now regulates alcohol. Marijuana would be legal and could be sold by licensed vendors or grown at home for personal use. Medical cannabis would be made available to those with a physician’s recommendation, including those under 21 with parental consent and physician supervision. Retail sales would be taxed by the state (up to $100 per pound).
The petition, approved Nov. 7 for circulation by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, goes further in requiring the release of those incarcerated on non-violent, cannabis-only offenses, and would expunge all records related to such offenses.
The measure would also allow for the cultivation of low-potency (non-smokable) hemp, allowing for the return of a hemp industry that flourished in this country up until World War II.
 

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Vancouver mayor tweets support for legalizing marijuana

Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver has joined four former city mayors in support of legalizing marijuana.

 Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver has joined four former city mayors in support of legalizing marijuana.

Photograph by: Jason Payne, PNG

 

VANCOUVER — Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver has joined four former city mayors in support of legalizing marijuana.

 
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http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+mayor+tweets+support+legalizing+marijuana/5769669/story.html#ixzz1f4GI8pHA

Obama picked the wrong moment for a crackdown on medical marijuana

Nov 24, 2011 19:52 Moscow Time

Photo: EPA
The debate about the legality of medical marijuana has once again got into the spotlight in the US. Obama’s federal crackdown on Californian producers and retailers of marijuana has not only shaken the industry, but also revealed a bundle of contradictions between federal law and individual states’ policies.  Meanwhile Obama’s decision to initiate the crackdown on such a scale seems to have become the president’s another odd mistake. Medical marijuana is approved for use by 16 states including California, and the President’s move may easily cost him the support of many of his followers.
The federal prosecutors made a risky move targeting the billion dollar industry of Californian medical marijuana growers and retailers. This decision highlights the problem which has been successfully ignored for decades. While cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug and is officially prohibited in the United States under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 it is still legal in 16 states, including California. Federal law does not grant any exceptions for medical use, which means that any local state programs which allow medical use of the substance violate federal law. By staging an attack on California’s med. marijuana industry, the authorities would automatically have to deal with the problem on a full scale.
 
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http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/11/24/60986624.html

Vet to Feds: Enough Stonewalling, Give Us Pot for PTSD

By Katie Drummond

By the time Sgt. Ryan Begin obtained his medical marijuana card last March, he’d already hit rock bottom.
During his second deployment to Iraq in 2004, Sgt. Begin was evacuated to Maryland’s Bethesda Naval Hospital after enduring an IED attack that left him with a stump for a right arm. The years that followed were a haze of prescription drugs, arrests, overdoses and stints in several mental institutions.
“My life went downhill from the moment I came back from Iraq,” Begin, now a 31-year-old veteran, tells Danger Room. “Doctors at Bethesda had me on so much, and on such high doses of everything, that I didn’t even know what was a symptom and what was a side effect.”
At one point, Begin, diagnosed with PTSD shortly after coming home, was taking more than 100 pills a day. So many that he would stuff dozens of bottles into a backpack to lug everywhere he went. Now, he’s cut his dependency on prescriptions to zero. Their replacement? Five joints a day.
“Using marijuana balances me out,” he says. “It takes those peaks and valleys of PTSD and it softens them. It makes my life manageable.”
Begin’s now launched an online petition asking the feds to change their course on marijuana as a treatment for PTSD. In September, the first-ever study proposed to evaluate marijuana as a potential treatment for PTSD was blocked by officials at the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA). With an estimated 37 percent of this generation’s vets afflicted with PTSD, and a dearth of effective treatment options available, Begin thinks pot deserves, at the very least, a single study.
 

Over 12,000 people in 40 states have signed his petition so far, most of them in the past three days. And Begin has been inundated with e-mails from vets who are both supportive and curious. “If I come out and admit ‘this works for me,’ they want to know whether it’ll work for them,” he says. “That’s why we need research.”
 
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/pot-for-ptsd/
 
 

Monsanto, Bayer and Dow face trial for ‘systematic human rights abuses’

Pesticides

Agrochemical companies are accused of promoting dangerous and unsafe pesticides

Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal accuses biotech giants Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and BASF of promoting dangerous pesticides including endosulfan, paraquat and neonicotinoids

The world’s major agrochemical companies, Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and BASF, will face a public tribunal in early December accused of systematic human rights violations.
They are accused of violating more than 20 instruments of international human rights law through promoting reliance on the sale and use of dangerous and unsafe pesticides including endosulfan, paraquat and neonicotinoids.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), an international opinion tribunal created in 1979, will hear expert testimony from scientists, medical doctors and lawyers to prove the charges. Victims who have been injured by these products – from farmers, farmworkers, mothers and consumers from around the world – will also testify to the causes and nature of their injuries.
 
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http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1122020/monsanto_bayer_and_dow_face_trial_for_systematic_human_rights_abuses.html

Copenhagen votes to legalise marijuana

Copenhagen votes to legalise marijuana

Copenhagen overwhelmingly voted in favour of a scheme that would see marijuana sold through a network of state-run shops and cafes Photo: ALAMY

Richard Orange

By , Malmö
 

The scheme, if approved by the Danish parliament at the start of next year, could make the city the first to fully legalise, rather than simply tolerate, marijuana consumption.
The drug is already sold openly on the streets of Christiania, a self-proclaimed ‘free town’ in the city centre, despite the closure of the neighbourhood’s Amsterdam-style coffee shops in 2004.
But marijuana has never been officially decriminalised and those caught in possession of even small amounts face fines of up to £450.
“We are thinking of perhaps 30 to 40 public sales houses, where the people aren’t interested in selling you more, they’re interested in you,” said Mikkel Warming, the Mayor in charge of Social Affairs at Copenhagen City Council. “Who is it better for youngsters to buy marijuana from? A drug pusher, who wants them to use more, who wants them to buy hard drugs, or a civil servant?”
The City Council voted on Thursday night, by a margin of 39 votes to nine, to empower Mr Warming’s Social Affairs committee to draw up a detailed outline of how the plan would work.
 
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/8899243/Copenhagen-votes-to-legalise-marijuana.html
 

HEMP Party rolls out to make joint point

By Bruce MacKenzie
The HEMP Party's giant joint at the Nimbin Mardi Grass

The HEMP Party’s giant joint at the Nimbin Mardi Grass (Jo Joyce – ABC North Coast)

Members of the Nimbin-based HEMP Party are hoping to catch the eye of the world’s most powerful man in Canberra this week.
The HEMP Party’s Michael Balderstone says local campaigners will join a range of other protesters attending a visit by US President Barack Obama.

He says permission has been granted for the party’s notorious 10-metre long Big Joint to be inflated on site.
Mr Balderstone says the idea is to catch the President’s attention.
“Just a flash of recognition, a little smile, Julia will say ‘oh what was that Barack?’ and he’ll say ‘well, took me back to the old days’,” he said.
 
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http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/11/15/3366755.htm