Polls Show Marijuana Legalization More Popular Than President Obama

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WASHINGTON, DC -Crimebeat- “Late Friday night the White House issued a typical evasive rejection of the several marijuana legalization petitions that collected more signatures than any other issue on its “We the People” website,” stated retired Baltimore narcotics cop Neill Franklin. “Even though recent polls show that more voters support marijuana legalization than approve of President Obama’s job performance, the White House categorically dismissed the notion of reforming any laws, focusing its response on the possible harms of marijuana use instead of addressing the many harms of prohibition detailed in the petitions”.
 
Read complete article here:
http://netnewsledger.com/2011/10/29/polls-show-marijuana-legalization-more-popular-than-president-obama/

Experienced Pot Consumers Less Likely To Exhibit Impaired Performance, Study Says

Maastricht, the Netherlands–(ENEWSPF)–28 October 2011.  Experienced cannabis consumers exhibit tolerance to some of the drug’s acute impairing effects, according to clinical trial data to be published in the journal Psychopharmacology.
Investigators at Maastricht University in the Netherlands assessed behavioral performance following THC administration in 12 occasional cannabis consumers and 12 experienced cannabis consumers in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial.
Researchers reported that THC administration “decreased amplitude in occasional but not heavy cannabis users” on certain cognitive tasks, such as a divided attention task. Authors stated that the difference in the experienced users’ performance compared to inexperienced consumers was “not completely due to behavioral compensation.”
They concluded, “The present study confirms that heavy cannabis users develop tolerance to some of the impairing behavioral effects of cannabis.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/health-and-fitness/28299-experienced-pot-consumers-less-likely-to-exhibit-impaired-performance-study-says.html
 

Cannabis a federal issue?

By Joe G. Welz
Cannabis a federal issue?
 
Recently it was printed in the newspaper that a Lake County Supervisor was quoted as saying cannabis is a federal issue.
I believe an idea starts with a person, then a city, county, state and country. For an elected representative to say cannabis is a federal issue is a cop-out. With that kind of thinking we would still be under British rule?
I attended and spoke at the Board of Supervisors meetings regarding my opinion of cannabis cultivation in Lake County. When the ordinance passed, I didn’t like it.
I liked it less when I heard the same supervisor tell those people if they didn’t like it they could move to Mendocino County.
At this time, I would like to point out the importance of registering to vote. If your elected representative does not represent your views, remember to replace the supervisor in the next election.
Medical marijuana brought the old Lake County grower out of the back country and onto private property where cannabis can be better cared for.
Stopping cannabis cultivation will only send the gorilla grower back up into the back country to their old grow sites, which in some cases means right into direct conflict with drug trafficking organizations. The difference is where the old Lake County grower grew 15 or 20 plants, the drug trafficking organizations grow thousands of plants from the same water source.
So after growing in the backyard for a few years, the supervisors say no


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more and if you do, the Lake County Sheriff’s Department will be stopping by. A misdemeanor means a $1,000 fine, six months in county jail and probation. No matter what, you are in trouble and the court system does not care.
The six-plant grower is pushed out by the supervisors, the gorilla grower can’t go back into the hills because of the water conflict with the drug trafficking organizations and for the drug trafficking organizations it is business as usual, ever expanding in our most precious public lands.
Taking cannabis away from the little guy will only burden the legal system, law enforcement, the county jail and the probation department, all at a cost to the county. At what cost to the grandparents, parents and children of Lake County?
Remember, register to vote. Vote for representatives supportive of your views. The future of cannabis is most certainly political.
Joe G. Welz
Spring Valley
 
http://www.record-bee.com/ci_19217405

Colombia’s President Wants to Give Pot Peace a Chance

by


 
In a recent interview with Metro, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says he would support worldwide legalization of “softer drugs” such as marijuana “provided everyone does it at the same time.” He cannot act on his own, he says, “because for Colombia, this is a matter of national security.” Since “drug trafficking is what finances the violence and the irregular groups in our country,” Santos explains, “I would be crucified if I took the first step.” At the same time, he emphasizes that “the world needs to discuss new approaches. We are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years.”
Coming from a front-line drug warrior, these comments are significant. Latin American politicians have long complained that the demand for drugs in the United States leads to violence, corruption, and disorder in their countries. But lately the emphasis has been shifting from the demand for drugs to the laws that make it a crime to supply them, thereby delivering a highly lucrative business into the hands of armed thugs. Last week, for instance, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who launched a bloody crackdown on his country’s drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, had this exchange with Time‘s Peter Hapak:

Is it true that you would like to see America legalize drugs?
I can hit the criminals, I can put them in jails, I can take control of their structures, I can rebuild the social fabric. But if Americans don’t reduce the demand or don’t reduce at least the profits coming from the black market for drugs, it will be impossible to solve this problem.
So the answer is yes? 
I want to see a serious analysis of the alternatives, and one alternative is to explore the different legal regimes about drugs.

Meanwhile, a leading candidate to replace Calderon says he would de-escalate Mexico’s drug war, which has led to more than 40,000 deaths since 2006. Santiago Creel, a former interior minister who is seeking the nomination of the ruling National Action Party, tells Reuters “the direct, frontal, expansive strategy is a strategy that should end with this administration.” Instead of a military solution, “he said priority should be given to attacking cartels’ revenue streams, cracking down on money laundering and cleaning up Mexico’s prisons, where top criminals are often able to continue running their crime gangs on the outside.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/10/27/colombias-president-wants-to-g

An Open Letter to California Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs

– Former LAPD Deputy Chief

 
Dear Fellow Law Enforcers,
The federal government has put up another $72 million in “war-on-drugs-grants” to redirect your police resources once again from true public safety duties in order to extend their failed war on drugs; this time with a savage assault on California’s 15-year-old medical marijuana law. Are you going to take the money and enforce federal law in lieu of upholding the will of the people of California or are you going to honor your sworn oath to uphold the laws of our sovereign state and send the money back?
August Vollmer, the police chief whose name is synonymous with the origins of professionalism in American policing, would urge you to send it back.
In his work as president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Wickersham Commission Vollmer contributed to the successful campaign that led to the repeal of alcohol Prohibition. In an address to the IACP he stated “drug addiction is not a police problem; it never has and never can be solved by policemen, but by scientific and competently trained medical experts…”
Unfortunately Vollmer wasn’t around when Nixon decided to wage his war on drugs against the American people in 1971. I was a police commander in South Central Los Angeles at the time, and most of us believed Nixon’s propaganda; that it was a just war, that the “druggies” were evil and comprised a threat to our communities.
We saw our resources dedicated to public safety bought off by Department of Justice and White House grants so that we could leverage their political priorities at the expense of our communities. Using their grant money and the lure of budget dollars though asset seizures they co-opted our public safety priorities and our role as public servants in deciding what was best for our communities. Evidence based budgeting and responsible, prioritized policing went out the window in favor of the war on drugs. We morphed from public servant to drug warrior; blindly serving their interests and their agreements with those who benefited most by a continuation of their war on drugs. We helped them invade and occupy our poorer communities. Their money allowed us to build war machines to batter down doors, purchase sophisticated weapons, surveillance equipment and intelligence apparatus. We arrested and imprisoned thousands and then hundreds of thousands, and while most users were white, the majority we sent to prison were from our minority communities.
Most of us stood proudly at the show and tells hovering over tons of drugs, mountains of cash and hundreds of weapons as a compliant media snapped our pictures and hailed our progress toward winning Nixon’s war on drugs.
But, many of us came to see that we were not winning. We saw the gangs grow, fueled by drug money, the cartels better armed, death squads trained by our own military unleashed across Mexico and our border states. The bodies began to stack up, the gangs became more and more violent, the cartels outgunned us and many of our police officers, our public servants, were killed and maimed for life while the communities we were sworn to protect and serve huddled in their homes dodging bullets and watching their children die by gunfire, night after night after night. For what?
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downing/an-open-letter-to-califor_1_b_1028628.html
 

Industrial hemp’s benefit to Hunter Region

BY FRANCES THOMPSON
DOING THEIR BIT: Jerrys Plains farmers Paul and Vicki Nichols have just finished sowing a crop of hemp on their property, above, and a hemp crop in the region, below. –  Main Picture by Max Mason-Hubers

DOING THEIR BIT: Jerrys Plains farmers Paul and Vicki Nichols have just finished sowing a crop of hemp on their property, above, and a hemp crop in the region, below. – Main Picture by Max Mason-Hubers

AN ADVOCATE of industrial hemp says the Hunter’s mining industry and farmers have a lot to gain from the plant’s large-scale production and processing in the region.
Ecofibre Industries managing director Phil Warner has supplied seed to about eight Upper Hunter properties this season, including farmer, miner and Singleton councillor Paul Nichols and his wife Vicki at Jerrys Plains.
It is the couple’s first hemp crop and they have sown a 20-hectare paddock.
‘‘We have to diversify,’’ Mr Nichols said.
Cattle and feed crops, such as lucerne, are the Nichols’ traditional mainstay.
Ecofibre Industries distributed CHG, a sub-tropical fibre hemp variety, for the Hunter trials.
The Nichols’ crop is due for harvest in February.
‘‘The summer storms can knock out the leaves because we only need the stalk,’’ Mr Nichols said.
‘‘While it’s growing the leaves keep the sun off and they cut down on weeds.’’
That saves on fertilisers because the leaves are removed in harvesting and ploughed back into the soil.
In the Hunter, Mr Warner said hemp could be used in mine rehabilitation as soil stabiliser, a compost or spray mulch.
The dry fibre could be used for horse bedding, erosion control, wine storage or even building products.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/industrial-hemps-benefit-to-hunter-region/2332835.aspx
 

Hemp cheese on sale at Borough Market

Hemp cheese on sale at Borough Market

Brought to London for the first time, the unique feature of the cheese is the use of hemp in its production.
Made of unpasteurised cows’ milk, the cheese is smooth and creamy and the small hemp seeds pop between your teeth like a cross between popcorn kernels and flaxseed.
The texture of Hanfmutschli is semi soft and slightly springy with an interior paste the colour of old ivory, punctuated with hemp seeds. The rind is a soft orange-brown, with the distinctive hemp leaf design on the top surface.
The Joint is just one of the extensive range of artisan cheeses available from Borough Market‘s newest traders, Jumi. You can find their stall in the Jubilee Market on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
 
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/5614

Life’s great inside our new ‘hemp house’

Life-changing: the new home in West Drayton

Life-changing: the new home in West Drayton

 
HILLINGDON pensioner is living with his family in a new environmentally-friendly ‘hemp home’ for people with disabilities.
The house in Mulberry Crescent, West Drayton, was built with Hemcrete, a blend of a lime-based binding and hemp that absorbs CO2 during the manufacturing process.
It has water-heating solar panels, extensive insulation and emits 100% less CO2 than a standard building.
Father-of-four Sharif Omar, 37, who lives in the house with his 79-year-old disabled father, said: “It has changed my life – my whole family is very happy here.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.hillingdontimes.co.uk/news/localnews/9322913.Life_s_great_inside_our_new__hemp_house/

Cannabis Rising: Carl Hedberg Comes to Boston University

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marijuanaCannabis held in high esteem. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia user Kilom 691
 

Most people associate marijuana first and foremost with its recreational uses. Carl Hedberg, who visited BU to present his lecture, “Cannabis Rising,” set his agenda straight in the very beginning, saying that “cannabis is a medicinal herb we use recreationally, not the other way around.” As a consultant to users of medical marijuana, Hedberg drew on his own experiences during the lecture to validate his points about the medicinal properties of marijuana. He stressed the ability of the non-toxic, natural herb to help cancer patients and others with chronic illness deal with their symptoms without the dangerous side effects of standard pharmaceutical drugs.
 
Read complete article here:
http://buquad.com/2011/10/24/cannabis-rising/