By BARBARA JONES and TOM GOODENOUGH

Mysterious demise: Alexander Monson, who died after being arrested for smoking cannabis in Kenya, with his mother Hilary Martin and sister Isabella
Kenyan police last night agreed to set up a task force to investigate the death of British aristocrat’s son Alexander Monson after protests from his family and allegations of a cover-up.
Alexander, 28, died in mysterious circumstances after spending nine hours in a police cell following his arrest for smoking cannabis outside a bar near his mother’s home in the coastal resort of Diani, south of Mombasa.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150531/Alexander-Monson-memorial-service-Father-eulogizes-son-Kenya-task-force-set-probe-mysterious-death.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

By Fred Dickey

Upon first meeting Michael Dunstan, you might think: This guy voted for every Bush on the ballot. He’s as straight an arrow as ever flew from a corporate bow. He could wear a three-piece suit as comfortably as a shark wears its skin.

To reinforce that image, he’s a 58-year-old retired PR executive living in Valley Center, where he scans hazy vistas and watches underfoot for rattlers. It’s bucolic intense. He’s a squire, of sorts.

But then the picture grows cloudy when you learn he is a devoted smoker of marijuana. It doesn’t fit the image, so there must be a back story.

There is, and it dates back to an intersection near Sacramento on Christmas Day 2006. Dunstan was driving in his BMW convertible when he made a turn that suddenly stuck him in traffic. He glanced left and in the distance, he saw what remains a freeze-frame in his mind to this day.

He saw a woman driving toward him at high speed. Then he saw her — and this is the image that sticks — reach around to the back-seat floor with her head fully turned. Then, nothing.

Her car T-boned his vehicle, smashing it across several lanes. Dunstan was thrown into the steel frame of the convertible top. He suffered a concussion, several broken ribs, amnesia that lasted two months and a mouthful of knocked-out teeth.

It wasn’t his first bad accident. He had suffered a serious neck injury and a broken shoulder that resulted in an implant. Pain on top of pain.

As a result of these bone-crushers, he became married to powerful painkillers. It was a union with drawbacks: the mental haze, the constipation, the energy drain and the unsettling knowledge that he was a prisoner. He wanted out.

Acting on a doctor’s advice, he decided to try marijuana in place of prescribed drugs. It wasn’t a new acquaintance. He was a student at UC Berkeley back in the day when it was Berserkley and marijuana haze on campus could cause a smog alert. Nuff said.

He went cold-turkey on the pills and turned to weed. For a month he fought painkiller withdrawal, with its joint aches, its gut tension and the bands squeezing his skull, but he never turned back.

 
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http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/27/tp-retired-exec-obeys-the-law-except-when-smoking/

By Eugene Davidovich
Dexter and Mariesol Padilla (Photo: ASA)

SAN DIEGO – On May 16th, twelve jurors and two alternates were selected in the trial of DA Bonnie Dumanis v. Dexter Padilla, navy veteran, medical marijuana patient and president of Therapeutic Healing, a San Diego based non profit medical marijuana coop.
The jury began deliberations on Tuesday, May 22, after a long week of arguments and testimony from experts and the defendant, Dexter Padilla.
Two notes were turned in by the jury less then an hour after deliberations. The first was a request for the defendant’s testimony to be read and the second was a concern from all the jurors about juror #10 being hostile, refusing to participate, and preventing everyone from working towards a verdict.
After hearing from both sides about this issue and interviewing the foreman of the jury, Judge Parsky decided to admonish the jurors to be courteous to one another and sent them back to the jury room to continue deliberating. Within nineteen minutes of the second attempt at deliberations another note came in from the jury raising the same concerns about juror #10. Once again the judge interviewed the foreman, heard from the defense and prosecution, as well as disruptive juror #10. This time however, both sides were asking for the juror to be replaced with an alternate. The judge agreed and an alternate was selected.
Judge Parsky then brought the entire panel into the courtroom, dismissed juror #10 and instructed the new panel to start deliberations from scratch. By the time jurors began the second round of deliberations it was 3pm, and less than an hour to reach a decision was not enough.
Deliberations resumed yesterday at 9am. By 2:15 pm the jurors once again sent a note to the Judge. Everyone including the attorneys, defendant, his family and all the supporters rushed to court to find out what the note stated.
By 2:45pm court was in session and Judge Parsky revealed that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked and could not reach a verdict. After a few brief questions the Judge dismissed all the jurors, thanked them for their service, and proceeded to declare a mistrial, concluding the two charges would be dismissed.
 
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http://obrag.org/?p=61067

1. The Choom Gang

A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning “to smoke marijuana.”
 

2. Total Absorption

At a  recent campaign stop in Colorado, a CBS news reporterquestioned Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on a number of issues relevant to Centennial State voters. Among them was marijuana. Romney, appearing visibly agitated, did not take kindly to the inquiry.

“Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about?” Romney barked, before veering off into prototypical Reefer Madness territory: “I think marijuana should not be legal in this country. I believe it is a gateway drug to other drug violations. The use of illegal drugs in this country is leading to terrible consequences in places like Mexico — and actually in our country.

Aside from the irony of a lifelong social conservative balking at the opportunity to pontificate on camera regarding what is no doubt one of the leading social issues of the day, little else in Romney’s reply is surprising. After all, this is the same man who at a campaign gathering in New Hampshire in 2007 abruptly walked away from an 80-pound, wheelchair-bound muscular dystrophy patient who credited his use of marijuana for keeping him alive. (Watch the video here.) “I’m not in favor of medical marijuana,” Romney stated curtly at that time. In the five year’s since, it’s apparent that Romney has neither revisited his position nor, by his own admission, taken steps to further educate himself as to the issue of marijuana in general. (“I have no idea what industrialized hemp is,” Romneyacknowledged at another recent campaign stop.)

 
Read complete article here:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/155605/how_many_anti-pot_politicians_will_be_ousted_before_they_realize_the_will_of_the_majority

By John Guzzon

Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble talks to supporters of medical marijuana.
 

Public Hearing To Add Migraines, PTSD, Depression And Anxiety Is Held On Deadline Day To Apply For A Dispensary Certificate

 
 
May 26, 2012 — It was an extremely busy day for the Arizona Department of Health Services Friday, as they accepted a flood of applications for medical marijuana dispensary certificates and held a hearing to add migraines, depression, post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety to the list of acceptable medical conditions that are eligible for a patient license.
The two-week period to apply for dispensary applications began May 14. According to the latest information from the Arizona Department of Health Services, or DHS, 488 applications were received. In developing the rules that would guide Arizona’s medical marijuana program, one dispensary would be allowed in each of the Community Health Analysis Areas which the DHS uses in most of its data processing. There are 126 Community Health Analysis Areas in Arizona, and as per the rules of the medical marijuana program, dispensaries are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. If more than one application is received during the application submission period, a random drawing will be held to determine who gets the dispensary certificate.
 
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http://www.moderntimesmagazine.com/page16/Arizona_MMJ_120526/Arizona_MMJ_120526.php

Drug addiction psychiatrists say prohibition of cannabis use has failed in New Zealand and it is time to talk about adopting another strategy.
As Parliament prepares to debate the Alcohol Reform Bill, the call is growing to re-examine the 37-year-old cannabis laws.
Wellington Community Alcohol and Drug Service psychiatrists say the law around cannabis is illogical.
Psychiatrists say one of the worst aspects of criminalising cannabis use is that it leaves people, particularly young people, with a record that is out of proportion to the offence.
 
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http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/106798/new-cannabis-strategy-needed,-say-psychiatrists

 
Kwame Tango, a 32-year old mason was on Thursday sentenced to ten years imprisonment in hard labour by a Circuit Court in Cape Coast after he was found guilty of possessing Indian hemp.
 
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http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/crime/artikel.php?ID=239930&comment=0#com