House approves marijuana legislature

One bill moves to Senate, another to Governor

By Jessica Silva
Lawmakers take up pot dispensary rules
 
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – After the Rhode Island Senate approved legislation concerning compassion centers earlier this month, the House approved their own version today.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Scott A. Slater (D-Dist 10, Providence), was developed to address safety concerns about the Ocean State’s compassion centers.
Some of the safety measures include limits on the amount of marijuana a center can have on-hand and criminal background checks for employees. Also added were provisions to allow State Police to work with the centers for better security.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/providence/house-approves-marijuana-legislature
 

A Judge’s Plea for Pot

By GUSTIN L. REICHBACH
 
THREE and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

Kristian Hammerstad

 

My survival has demanded an enormous price, including months ofchemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery. For about a year, mycancer disappeared, only to return. About a month ago, I started a new and even more debilitating course of treatment. Every other week, after receiving an IV booster of chemotherapy drugs that takes three hours, I wear a pump that slowly injects more of the drugs over the next 48 hours.
Nausea and pain are constant companions. One struggles to eat enough to stave off the dramatic weight loss that is part of this disease. Eating, one of the great pleasures of life, has now become a daily battle, with each forkful a small victory. Every drug prescribed to treat one problem leads to one or two more drugs to offset its side effects. Pain medication leads to loss of appetite and constipation. Anti-nausea medication raises glucose levels, a serious problem for me with my pancreas so compromised. Sleep, which might bring respite from the miseries of the day, becomes increasingly elusive.
Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/a-judges-plea-for-medical-marijuana.html?_r=2&smid=fb-share

Prominent Milwaukee couple proposes legalizing marijuana

By Colleen Henry
 
MILWAUKEE –
 
One prominent Milwaukee couple is making a pitch in a documentary to not only legalize marijuana but to turn it into a cash crop grown in Milwaukee.
Their argument: America has spawned a criminal class by prosecuting pot users, creating a hopeless cycle of poverty.
They believe legalizing marijuana and producing it could transform Milwaukee’s economy, taking it from Brew City to Bud City.
Popular culture has long captured the stark contrast between the high life of America’s elite tokers and the lowdown on the inner-city smoker.
“There are many, many myths regarding the idea of marijuana. The documentary is being created to dispel those myths,” Mary Freeman said.
Freeman is the founder of the Milwaukee Yoga Movement that brought yoga to inner-city schools, and she’s a daily marijuana user.
“It’s a peaceful drug. It’s a creative drug, a drug that takes away all kinds of pain,” Freeman said.
 
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http://www.wisn.com/news/south-east-wisconsin/milwaukee/Prominent-Milwaukee-couple-proposes-legalizing-marijuana/-/10148890/13421380/-/mrms6n/-/index.html

Kicking Ass and Taking Names: Another Anti-Medical Marijuana Candidate Bites the Dust

 
Last night, the medical cannabis advocate community defeated a second anti-medical marijuana candidate in a state Attorney General race. In Oregon, Dwight Holton, a former US attorney, lost in a landslide after medical cannabis became a campaign issue. In 2010, we defeated Steve Cooley in a very close race for California Attorney General. And these are not the only recent victories.
Any day now, Connecticut will become the 17th state to adopt medical cannabis laws. Last week, 73% of President Obama’s own party in Congress voted against his policy of cracking down on medical marijuana, and the week before, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi stood up to condemn Drug Enforcement Administration raids in medical cannabis states.
These are pretty exciting times for a movement under attack, but this momentum is no accident.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steph-sherer/medical-marijuana-politicians_b_1522396.html

Medical Marijuana Laws For States Supported By More Than Two-Thirds Of Republicans, Poll Finds


lucia@huffingtonpost.com
Marijuana
 
WASHINGTON — Nearly three-quarters of Americans and more than two-thirds of Republicans believe federal officials should respect state laws on medical marijuana, a new Mason-Dixon survey of 1,000 likely 2012 general election voters found.
“What the results of this survey show is that there is absolutely no political justification for what President [Barack] Obama is doing with respect to medical marijuana laws,” Steve Fox, director of government relations for The Marijuana Policy Project, told HuffPost on Tuesday afternoon. “Across the board … there is extremely strong support for respecting state medical marijuana laws.”
 
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/republicans-state-medical-marijuana-laws_n_1519176.html?1337118069&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Great news! Rosenblum defeats Holton in Democratic primary for Oregon attorney general

PORTLAND, Ore. — Former Oregon Court of Appeals judge Ellen Rosenblum has won the Democratic primary for attorney general.
Rosenblum’s victory Tuesday came with the help of marijuana activists who flexed their political muscles in a state with 55,000 registered pot users. She defeated former interim U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton, who has criticized Oregon‘s medical marijuana law.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/e949e5f0d6cc45af96c241abb161800c/OR–Oregon-Primary-Attorney-General/

Marijuana DUI standard dies a 3rd time in Colorado

By Kristen Wyatt
 

DENVER—A marijuana blood limit for drivers was rejected Tuesday for a third time in Colorado, as lawmakers from both parties argued about how to fairly gauge whether someone is too stoned to get behind the wheel.

The bill would have made Colorado the third state in the nation with a blood-level limit for marijuana, much as the nation has a blood-alcohol limit of .08.

Currently, drugged-driving convictions depend on officer observations.
 
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/05/15/colorado_house_passes_bill_on_marijuana_duis/

War On Drugs

Critic says arrest numbers don’t reflect user truth
NNPA COLUMNIST
Gary L. Flowers
Contrary to public opinion, white people in the U.S. account for more arrests for drug use than do people of color. Yet, the widely-held and erroneous belief that 1) most drug crimes are committed by people of color, and 2) most people of color commit drug crimes that result in the disproportionate imprisonment of non-whites. How did America become come to target people of color for socalled “war on drugs?”
Most Americans have no idea that drugs such as opiates, cocaine, and marijuana were not always illegal in the United States. In fact, in the early 1900s, many wealthy people commonly used such drugs recreationally, peaking with 250,000 American addicts among the nation’s 76 million citizens.
During the 20th century, while some Americans were addicted because of doctor-issued prescriptions, drug use by wealthy whites was considered a medical problem. For others, addictive drugs were considered chic—so much so that Congress enacted the first Food and Drug Safety Act in 1906, requiring drug companies list contents in drugs on their labels. Accordingly, largely due to economic status, the rich were given rehabilitation rather than incarceration.
By 1909, the phrase “war on drugs” was first used and targeted Chinese, African American, and Mexican people as drug users. California passed laws prohibiting smokable opium as people of color were perceived as the “problem.” For example, Chinese immigrants became the face of opium use, despite their low percentage of California’s population. The result came in the form of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As would be the case with other people of color later in America’s history “respectable white women” were thought to be corrupted by Chinese, leading to loose sexual habits. In 1902, the Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit of the American Pharmaceutical Association declared: “If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope, we can get along without him.” Truth be told, competition for cheap labor by Mexicans influenced the discrimination towards Chinese.
 
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http://www.frostillustrated.com/atf.php?sid=10294

Jim Crow, Old Crow, Al Capone, and Richard Nixon

By George Lundberg, MD, Editor-at-Large, MedPage Today
When President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs” in 1971, he was merely placing a new administrative emphasis on the American prohibition of many psychoactive substances that began in 1914 — 41 years later, it isn’t even surprising for this columnist to agree with many others, including noted conservative Pat Robertson, who have declared that war to be over, the country having suffered ignominious defeat.
Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander in her acclaimed new book argues eloquently that the Drug War is The New Jim Crow. It seems that Nixon’s failed drug war was never only about drugs.
It was, and is, about subjugating African Americans by incarceration on felony drug charges, intended to deny them the right to vote, as one element of Nixon’s long successful Southern Strategy for Republican success.
So although this “war” failed in its efforts against drugs, it did and does succeed as a political strategy by depriving millions of citizens of their right to vote, even lifelong.
As a toxicologist and forensic pathologist, I have been on the record since 1971 that marijuana is far less harmful  than either tobacco or alcohol.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Columns/At-Large/32681

Hemp – In search of natural solutions at JEC show

Biocomposites also came under the spotlight at JEC as the European Flax and Hemp Confederation launched the book ‘Flax and Hemp: a natural solution for the composite industry’. The authors claim the book is the first scientific publication on flax and hemp reinforcements as it examines the mechanical properties of flax and hemp used in polymer reinforcement and assesses their major environmental advantages.
 
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http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com/subscriber/featured2.html?cat=1&featuredid=1468