By Jacqueline Street
Australians may have consumed a lot of food over the Christmas weekend but it is unlikely many thought about eating hemp.
Products like hemp chocolate and hemp ice cream are available in other countries but are banned in Australia
Now a group of Tasmanian farmers is renewing a push to overturn the ban.
They say industrial hemp will not make you high and has many health benefits.
Phil Reader, who has been growing industrial hemp in northern Tasmania for five years, says the plant’s similarity to cannabis ends at the leaves.
“There’s absolutely no drug in it; it’s below 0.35 per cent THC, so it cannot be confused with marijuana,” he said.
Mr Reader says Tasmania has the ideal climate for growing hemp seeds, but his crop is tightly controlled because under state law hemp is classified as a poison.
“The reason it hasn’t taken off is the legislation. In Tasmania we come under the Poisons Act,” he said.
“It’s not a poison; there’s no reason for that to be called a poison.”
Mr Reader says industrial hemp is not regarded as a drug crop anywhere else in the world.
“It’s only in Tasmania that we have this problem and that means a whole host of issues with regards to licensing, administration and where we can sell the crop,” he said.
Hobart hemp producer Brandt Teale says he is frustrated because he believes hemp could be a profitable food product in Tasmania and other states.
“The products being made from it include chocolate bars, food drinks, granola bars like sesame seed-type bars,” he said.
Mr Teale says hemp has many health benefits.
“It’s proven scientifically to have the highest omega 3 and omega 6 levels of any of the oils, leaving fish oil for dead, leaving flax oil for dead,” he said.
Month: December 2010
Hemp Wanted
Once illegal material promises dizzying array of green energy uses
by Miles Howe
The Dominion – http://www.dominionpaper.ca
The seeds are currently the only part of the hemp plant that are processed and sold in Canada. cc Photo: Yesica
HALIFAX—Wanda Beattie, president and CEO of Atlantic Healing Hemp, paces the floor of her flagship store in Berwick, Nova Scotia. She is a woman on a mission. The shelves around her are lined with hemp salves, hemp balms, cold-pressed hemp seed oil and vacuum-sealed bags of crushed hemp seeds. The hemp is top quality and Canadian grown, but it’s definitely not local—and that’s something Beattie would like to change.
“At the moment I’m bringing in hemp oil in large quantities from Winnipeg,” she says. “That’s the hemp heartland. There was an attempt to grow hemp in Nova Scotia, back in 2000, but it wasn’t feasible because there wasn’t a market for the product. There was some amateur processing being done, but nothing of any scale.”
Beattie’s mission: to resurrect the deep-seeded relationship between Nova Scotia soil and hemp.
Port Royal, Nova Scotia, was the site of North America’s first recorded hemp crop, in 1606.
Hemp stalk can be processed into various materials, including durable, waterproof cord. There are currently no hemp stalk processing facilities in Canada. cc Photo: SnapKracklePop
But by 2009, Saskatchewan had 5,090 acres licensed for hemp and Manitoba had 6,015 acres. Nova Scotia had none.
“The issue is not related to soil,” says Beattie. “There is wonderful soil here in the Annapolis Valley. You can grow hemp here. Top quality hemp. In 2000, Nova Scotia farmers proved it could be done. There’s simply not enough of a market.”
The hemp plant has had many uses. Christopher Columbus swore by hemp sails. Hemp rope, even 50-year-old hemp rope, is still highly sought after for its water-resistant qualities. Anything oil, lumber or cotton can do, hemp can do better. The seeds can be eaten or pressed into oil. Both methods of ingestion are extremely healthy.
As Beattie will tell you, hemp seeds contain all the essential fatty acids. Her hemp cream also goes on smooth after a shave.
Re-education is a large part of Beattie’s campaign to get hemp back into the Nova Scotia diet and consciousness. She and her husband Brian offer weekly, one-hour information sessions out of the Berwick store. She also offers free presentations to Nova Scotia groups and businesses.
“People in the area just don’t know about the benefits of hemp. We grew up in a generation that didn’t hear anything about hemp. Consumers are looking at our products now, and they know they have a value, because they have been used for thousands of years. Younger people are using hemp as a preventative, incorporating it into their diets to stay healthy.”
Hemp was banned in Canada and the US in 1938. Jack Herer, in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, highlights the link between DuPont’s patenting, that same year, of the processes of making plastics out of petroleum and paper out of wood pulp, and the continent-wide ban on growing hemp. In 1998, amid growing interest in textile alternatives, Health Canada lifted its ban.
Read complete article here:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3789
Ed Rosenthal: Letters #7-8 from Eddy Lepp via Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution
Eddy in prison, November 2010
Dear Ed and Angela [Ed’s Assistant],
Sorry it took a minute to write this but it is a tough subject for me because now it is hitting very close to home. I have mentioned the horrid diet and all the deaths and heart attacks inside here.
This last week I tested positive for possible colon cancer. I have been told that if caught in the very early stages it is 90% curable but if caught in the later stages it is fatal 90% of the time. I just wonder if I will have to wait 6-12 months to navigate the Federal Prison medical system.
The medical staff tries to help us all they can but the system is defective. I have to travel to the Medium Security Federal Prison [at Lompoc] to see a doctor, it takes hours to do simple appointments.
I fear I may be allowed to die like so many others I have seen in the 18 months I have been in. These and many other issues really must be addressed by someone someday. To call this the land of the free is a joke. The home of the brave is even more laughable.
As one politician after another is elected by screaming he is tough on crime only to abuse the pages, take the bribes, screw those who elected him while touring the country and world on lobbyist money as he or she sells their soul, we suffer.
If you care (VOTE!) call someone and complain about it.
Respect All
Hurt None
Love Another
Eddy
Original blog here plus another letter from Eddy.
Shock: Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson favors marijuana legalization
By Stephen C. Webster
Robertson a welcome addition to drug reform circles, former narc tells Raw Story
Count this among the 10 things nobody ever expected to see in their lifetimes: 700 Club founder Pat Robertson, one of the cornerstone figures of America’s Christian right movement, has come out in favor of legalizing marijuana.
Calling it getting “smart” on crime, Robertson aired a clip on a recent episode of his 700 Club television show that advocated the viewpoint of drug law reformers who run prison outreach ministries.
A narrator even claimed that religious prison outreach has “saved” millions in public funds by helping to reduce the number of prisoners who return shortly after being released.
“It got to be a big deal in campaigns: ‘He’s tough on crime,’ and ‘lock ’em up!'” the Christian Coalition founder said. “That’s the way these guys ran and, uh, they got elected. But, that wasn’t the answer.”
His co-host added that the success of religious-run dormitories for drug and alcohol cessation therapy present an “opportunity” for faith-based communities to lead the way on drug law reforms.
“We’re locking up people that have taken a couple puffs of marijuana and next thing you know they’ve got 10 years with mandatory sentences,” Robertson continued. “These judges just say, they throw up their hands and say nothing we can do with these mandatory sentences. We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes and that’s one of ’em.
“I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”
Read complete article here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/shock-christian-leader-pat-robertson-favors-marijuana-legalization/
Arizona More Progressive Than California? When it Comes to Marijuana, Yes.
In Arizona, what he does on his own time is his business. Not so in the Golden State.
Arizona’s taken quite the beating from Californians recently, what with the red state’s anti-immigrant, anti-civilization stance creating both headlines and policy. But Arizona’s not all bad — in fact, it can be downright progressive. In at least one instance, more progressive than California.
The Retiree State became the 15th in the union to approve medical marijuana in November, when its voters gave the green light to Proposition 203 by a razor-thin margin. Most California marijuana users would think the Arizona law sucks: It’s much more difficult to get a recommendation (“anxiety” or “insomnia” won’t work), possession is limited to 2.5 ounces (compared to at least eight in California — more in some counties), no patient can grow more than 12 plants, and patients can’t grow any plants at all if they live within 25 miles of one of the few dispensaries to be allowed in the state.
Nobody is going to mistake Maricopa for Mendocino County anytime soon, but medical cannabis patients in Arizona have one gigantic leg up over their California counterpart: Employment protection.
That’s right, kids: In California, a positive drug test can still get you fired from your job, recommendation or no recommendation. In Arizona, unless you show up to the job blitzed out of your mind with a joint hanging out of your mouth, you’re good.
Read complete article here:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/12/marijuana_arizona.php
The Today Show: Women and Marijuana
The Today Show on NBC discusses the growing number of “educated, career-minded women who regularly smoke marijuana.” Guests include a professional woman who enjoys using marijuana, as well as Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles and Dr. Julie Holland, a psychiatrist at the NYU School of Medicine. All three women seem to agree that marijuana poses far fewer negative side effects than alcohol, and that there should not be such a stigma surrounding it.
Christie sabotages medical marijuana program
By Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger
Tony Kurdzuk/Star-Ledger – A marijuana plant
Lisa Segal wakes up every morning locked in a fetal position, her muscles in spasm from multiple sclerosis.
She’s 59 years old, and has tried everything. The only medicine that relaxes those muscles and settles her nausea is marijuana.
So when her supply runs out, she drives an hour from her Gloucester County home to Philadelphia, and walks the streets to buy pot, leaning on her cane. It scares her to death, but it’s better than spending her remaining years curled up in bed, in pain.
“These are not people I want to deal with,” she says. “I have nightmares that the police are going to come into my house and arrest me.”
The medical marijuana movement aims to end this official cruelty, and allow people like Segal to live in dignity. That was the idea, anyway, when the Legislature passed the law last year. It was supposed to be up and running by now.
But thanks to Gov. Chris Christie, this effort has gone terribly off track. So Segal still has to sneak to Philly for her fix, like a criminal.
“The way the rules are written now, I’ll have no choice but to continue doing what I’m doing,” she says.
Read complete article here:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2010/12/post_1.html
Terminally ill to police: Keep hands off medical marijuana
By BEN HARTMAN
Medical marijuana patients protest police raid of “Tikkun Olam” storefront at demonstration in Tel Aviv.
Dozens of disabled and terminally ill Israelis protested outside a Tel Aviv medical marijuana clinic on Sunday, in response to recent police actions against the clinic.
The protest came four days after police raided a storefront on Ibn Gvirol run by “Tikkun Olam”, where patients would come to get their doses. During the raid, police arrested two managers of the storefront and held them for questioning for several hours, on suspicion of drug trafficking.
Shai Meir, spokesman for Tikkun Olam, Israel’s largest medical marijuana supplier, told reporters at the organization’s headquarters in an apartment in north Tel Aviv that police actions against the clinic and its patients mainly harms those seeking medical treatment.
“The bottom line is that the only ones who have suffered as a result of these police actions are the patients. Every arrest, every detention of a patient disrupts their treatment, treatment which demands routine. This causes serious harm to the patients.”
Dozens of patients, many of them in wheelchairs, clamored to receive their monthly doses at a makeshift drug counter set up in the apartment’s back yard on Sunday. Many of the patients were not able to receive their cannabis after Tikkun Olam closed their doors following the police raid last Wednesday, and by Sunday afternoon the courtyard was full of patients showing their prescriptions and identification cards, handing over 400 shekels for their monthly dose as a cloud of marijuana smoke hung in the air.
One patient who took part in the protest, Yedidya Kanuf, sat inside the apartment in a wheelchair hooked up to a life support system, where he has been confined since a car accident ten years earlier left him paralyzed from the neck down.
His breathing labored, Kanuf described the cannabis he receives for his pain as nothing short of a lifesaver.
“Before I was on medical marijuana, I was being treated for pain with all types of very strong drugs. I never got out of bed, never saw the sun. Once I started taking prescription cannabis the amount of drugs I took plummeted. When people call it a drug I get annoyed because for me it has given me life,” Kanuf said.
Read complete article here:
http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=200135
Jury Pool In Marijuana Case Stages Mutiny; Won’t Convict
By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~
Graphic: The Bilerico Project
In a move sure to sweep the land, a jury pool has refused to convict the defendant of a marijuana charge.
In what could grow into something much bigger in future cases, potential jurors in Missoula County District Court staged a revolt Thursday, taking the law into their own hands and making it clear they would not convict anybody for having less than 2 grams of marijuana.
The tiny amount of marijuana police found in Touray Cornell’s Missoula, Montana home on April 23 became a big point of contention for some members of the jury panel, reports Gwen Florio of The Missoulian. One juror after another said there was no way they would convict somebody for having 1/16 of an ounce of pot.
One juror wondered aloud why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, according to a “flummoxed” Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul, who called it “a mutiny,” Florio reports.
When District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll to find who might agree, of about 27 potential jurors before him, around five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.
“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess to address the situation.
Deschamps said that in his nearly 30 years as a prosecutor and judge, he had never seen anything like it.
Read complete article here:
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/12/jury_pool_in_marijuana_case_stages_mutiny_wont_con.php
New Mexico OKs More Plants For Medical Marijuana Producers
By Steve Elliott
NEWS JUNKIE POST
The New Mexico Department of Health on Friday announced changes to its medical marijuana regulations, one of which will add to the supply of legally grown marijuana by increasing the number of plants licensed producers can grow from 95 to 150.
Another change will create a permanent revenue stream to allow the program to pay for itself by increasing producer fees.
The new regulations take effect December 30, reports Phaedra Haywood at the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Under the new fees, marijuana producers who have been licensed for less than a year will pay $5,000 annually; those in business for more than a year will pay $10,000; and producers in business for three years or more will be charged an annual fee of $20,000.