Bill Rosendahl

Los Angeles City Council member for the 11th District

It’s true. I use cannabis.
First I used it to treat neuropathy in my feet and now it provides incredible relief from the severe and sometimes debilitating pain caused by a late stage cancer strangling the nerves in my lower back.
As the first elected official in United States to openly use medical cannabis — and belong to a collective in West Los Angeles — this “coming out of the cannabis closet” is a moment for me to encourage others to openly share their amazing success stories.
Unfortunately for many patients this coming out is a problem. The legalized marijuana industry — and the thousands of patients who benefit from the plant’s medicinal use — still deal with the stigma of pot as a form of dope. There are people who still view the use of medical marijuana as just another reason to enjoy marijuana under the guise of medicine and pain management.
There was a political risk in sharing my personal health care choices. I finally arrived at my decision based on personal experience, listening to constituent concerns, and reading their email about the need to protect those patients who feel their voice doesn’t matter. Staying silent on treatment meant keeping someone else from a life-changing experience.
I’m seeing dramatic improvements in my health. I’m walking without the stinging pain in my feet from neuropathy. I walking more freely and faster without assistance. I can sit longer than five minutes without pain. I’m getting pretty close to feeling like the old Bill Rosendahl.
I represent 275,000 constituents on the Westside. In my eight years as Councilmember, I have learned that my title has a tremendous amount of responsibility and power, especially when I speak.
There is a real need for alternatives to the powerful and highly addictive pain medications currently on the market. Medical marijuana is that alternative and cities are making tough policy decisions that are only making the situation for patients even more problematic. Every voter who publicly comes out of the cannabis closet will positively influence our representatives in Washington.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-rosendahl/coming-out-of-the-cannabis-closet_b_3315723.html

By Gene Cubbison

A pretrial hearing took place for Ronnie Chang of San Marcos Monday. Chang was busted during this marijuana dispensary raid on September 9, 2009.

 

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has injected himself into a federal criminal case against the operator of a medical marijuana dispensary, intensifying his standoff with federal prosecutors on cannabis enforcement issues.

Timeline: Medicial Marijuana in San Diego

Filner’s urging jurors who’ll be chosen for the trial to reject federal law in favor of state statutes under a centuries-old legal concept known as “jury nullification”– whereby jurors can refuse to convict people under laws they believe should not be applied.

It’s a bold, brash move that’s potentially controversial and politically risky for a mayor.

But that’s not atypical of the former “Freedom Rider” who served two months of jail time in Mississippi during the early years of the Civil Rights Era.

“This is way overdoing it when local laws, state laws allow compassionate use of medical marijuana,” Filner told reporters at the downtown U.S. District Court complex Monday. “Someone should not be going through this stage of prosecution for trying to help people to have access to medical marijuana.”

Full Article:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Filner-Urges-Jury-Nullification-In-Medical-Pot-Dispensary-Case-208246501.html

A bipartisan legislative movement toward legalizing the growing of industrial hemp is finally on the rise. Last week, the Vermont General Assembly voted to lift a state statute that banned the growing of industrial hemp. While this, if enacted, would allow Vermont farmers to grow hemp under state law, it is still illegal under federal law. This last hurdle could be confronted, as some Congressional lawmakers are about to introduce legislation legalizing the growing of industrial hemp.
Hemp is an amazingly versatile plant with thousands of uses — none of which are remotely mind-altering. It can be used in paper, food, carpeting, home furnishings, construction materials, auto parts, textiles and even as an alternative fuel source.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/legalize-hemp_b_3307123.html

by Johnny Green

 
Moms for Marijuana’s main focus is to bring education and awareness and to create honest discussion in our communities about the cannabis plant. In doing so, we are fighting decades of lies, fear and propaganda, propagated by our government and big industries that don’t care about anything other than their huge profits. Today we need your help in stopping some of this “Reefer Madness” from affecting our families.
Mayor Tammy de Weerd of Meridian Idaho has signed a $625,000 Executive Order to establish the Mayor’s Anti-Drug Coalition (MADC), which received its money from a Drug-Free Community Grant through the federal government. This coalition is, of course, against cannabis use and is spreading lies and misinformation throughout the community.
Reefer Madness by Executive Order? Can you imagine? Well that’s exactly what’s happening in Idaho. Mom’s needs YOU to spring into action to help stop the madness.
Read more here:
http://www.drugwarrant.com/2013/05/reefer-madness-by-executive-order/
 
 
Full Article:
http://www.theweedblog.com/tell-the-mayor-of-meridian-idaho-to-stop-the-lies-about-cannabis/

By Robyn Griggs Lawrence,Next Avenue Contributor

Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock
 
Like many of her peers, Zoe Helene, 48, smoked marijuana in her early 20s but gave it up as her career in the digital world took off in the 1990s. Today the multidisciplinary artist and environmental activist lives in Amherst, Mass., and is building a global network of trailblazers called Cosmic Sister. Since she married an ethnobotanist in 2007, she has returned to using cannabis occasionally — “as a tool for evolving and expanding my psyche.”

Scott Sawyer

Klara Marosszeky with farmers Connie and Lonnie Minos who have been growing the industrial hemp crop at Ashford.
 
ESTABLISHING a commercial hemp industry on the Sunshine Coast has been made an official policy of the Australian Independents Party after surprisingly strong support for the idea from the community.
But party officials say that while former cane land was the preferred site for hemp crops, their first priority would be getting the cane industry back on its feet.
A Daily online poll on May 15, which revealed a staggering 89% in favour of growing hemp, helped push the party towards its final decision.
Leader Dr Patricia Petersen, said the party’s own polling had shown a surprising 87% support.
“I was incredibly surprised. I spoke to a lot of people in Noosaville, especially a lot of elderly people, and there was so much support for the proposition,” she said.
“I could not find one elderly person against the idea.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/new-party-sweetens-coast-farming-options/1873682/

by MAGGIE HARBOUR & MICHAEL GLYNN, NATIONAL ENQUIRER

 
PAT BOONE is more than in a metal mood – he‘s gone to pot!
The squeaky-clean ’50s crooner is singing the praises of marijuana, saying it’s helped his 36-year-old grandson cope with a debilitating injury.
While strongly opposed to “getting high,” the 78-year-old conservative Christian is making an exception for legal use for Ryan, son of Lindy Michaelis, one of Pat’s four daughters.
“Pat feels as long as it’s not being used for recreational purposes, and is used to help people cope with pain and anxiety, then it’s all right,” revealed a family friend.
A dozen years ago, Ryan was severely injured in a three-story fall through a skylight while sunbathing on the roof of his apartment.
One of Pat’s other daughters,Debby, famous for her ’70s hit “You Light Up My Life,” was first to get the terrifying news.
“Lindy was vacationing in Spain when it happened,” said the friend, “and she gets a call from her sister saying that Ryan had been in this terrible accident.
“He was so severely injured they didn’t think he would make it.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/exclusive-interview-pot-boone

by Johnny Green

 
The Israel Government has recently introduced new regulations on the medical marijuana program in the country, including limitations on what patients and conditions qualify for treatment. Now, doctors and patients are protesting the new restrictions. One of their methods; a hunger strike outside the home of Health Minister Yael German.
The new list of qualifying conditions is short, and many illnesses, such as Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma and psychiatric disorders are left off. In addition to the hunger strike, Dr. Ilya Reznick of the Reut Hospital in Tel Aviv (Forum Chairman), Dr. Jonathan Greenfeld, Director of the palliative oncology medicine service at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, Dr. Alan Flashman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr. Yakir Rotenberg of the Hadassah Medical Center, from the Doctors’ Forum for Safe Access to Cannabis, warn that the new law could cause patients who no longer qualify for medical marijuana to purchase drugs from illegal sources, stating in a letter to the Health Minister that the regulations are “arbitrary and discriminate among patients with different conditions without any logical explanation, and are liable to lead to damage to the continuity of treatment for some of them, contrary to the Patients’ Rights Law.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.theweedblog.com/patients-and-doctors-go-on-hunger-strike-in-israel-over-new-medical-marijuana-restrictions/

By Steve Elliott

Assemblyman Steve Katz voted against safe access for medical marijuana patients, but doesn’t mind burning a joint in his car
[Courier Post Online]
 
Members of the hacktivist collective temporarily took down Katz’s site, katz4ny.com, on Wednesday morning. The site was still down as of 1:42 p.m. Pacific.
Katz was hit with a pot possession charge when an officer smelled weed after stopping him for going 80 miles an hour in a 65 mph zone on the New York State Thruway.
That was the 59-year-old Putnam County lawmaker’s first known pot bust, but oddly, he was arrested two times for allegedly mishandling dogs when he worked as a veterinarian. Both of those cases were dismissed.
 
Full Article:
http://tokesignals.com/anonymous-team-vendetta-takes-down-site-of-hypocritical-anti-weed-lawmaker/

Sam Brounstein

DARE is No Longer Anti Marijuana But Can This Save the Unpopular Program
 
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or as it is more commonly known, D.A.R.E., is dropping marijuana from its curriculum. The international, federally funded program has been teaching the dangers of cannabis, among other things, to children ages 10 to 18 since its inception in 1983. Despite the lack of press release that might qualify a seemingly radical omission for a government institution such as D.A.R.E., the evident reasons are twofold.
First off, this report originally emerged in November exclusively from a fifth and sixth grade D.A.R.E. officer in Washington state. This was on the eve of the vote for initiative 502, legislators put forth to tax and regulate cannabis for medical use. This timing underscores the reconsideration of the drug in the national discourse. All that pre-2008 footage of Barack Obama talking about “starting a new conversation” on the supposed “gateway drug” has finally come to fruition, paradoxically, by abandoning one of the primary, government-regulated forums on the supposed ‘gateway drug’. This irony is even more rich when considering apparent, apples-to-apples comparisons with alcohol. That substance’s legality is not under debate, nor will it ever be again, yet D.A.R.E. continues to teach freely the negative impacts of this seemingly more prevalent drug. Given, it is a generally accepted fact that weed is a less dangerous than alcohol, but the federal government, considering the laws in place, has traditionally been the last bastion of hegemonic ignorance on this discrepancy.
 
Full Article:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/42679/d-a-r-e-is-no-longer-anti-marijuana-but-can-this-save-the-unpopular-program