David Downs

 
SoCal activist Lanny Swerdlow recently notified us that the California Democratic Party passed two historic resolutions on the issue of marijuana at its Executive Board meeting in Costa Mesa on Sunday, July 21.
“The first resolution called on President Obama to (1) respect the voters of Colorado and Washington and to not allow any federal interference in the enactment of their marijuana legalization initiatives, (2) end the federal raids on patients and providers in medical marijuana states and (3) appoint a commission to look into the reform of our nation’s marijuana laws.
“The 2nd resolution calls on our state legislature to enact statewide guidelines for medical marijuana distribution that respects the rights of local municipalities to regulate and license but will also provide marijuana ‘to all patients in all areas of California, rural as well as urban.’
“These are now official positions of the party and add another level of mainstream approval for medical marijuana and marijuana law reform – approval that will hold us in especially good stead when speaking with Democratic elected officials and candidates,” Swerdlow wrote.
 
Full Article:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2013/07/22/california-dems-say-no-to-medical-marijuana-crackdown-federal-interference-in-co-wa

By OLIVIA WILLIAMS

 
 
Cannabis plants are sprouting up all over a German town after pro-marijuana supporters planted tens of thousands of seeds last month.
Supporters of the group A Few Autonomous Flower Children spread several kilograms of seeds around the university town of Gottingen last month.
They say they are protesting its ‘demonisation’ in Germany’s ‘restrictive drug laws’.
Full Article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2372554/Cannabis-plants-spring-German-town-campaigners-plant-thousands-seeds-protest-demonisation-drug.html

By Nolan Clay

Caddo County District Attorney Jason Hicks on Thursday defends his hiring of a private company to provide traiining to his task force on drug stops. STEVE SISNEY – THE OKLAHOMAN
 
HINTON — After seizing more than $1 million in cash in drug stops this year, a district attorney has suspended further roadside busts by his task force because of growing criticism over a private company’s participation.
His prosecutors have dropped all criminal cases arising from the drug stops, The Oklahoman was told. Some seized money is being returned. The attorney general’s office is investigating one complaint some seized funds went missing.
“I’m shocked,” a Caddo County special judge said July 2.
The judge spoke at a hearing after learning the private company’s owner pulled over a pregnant driver along Interstate 40 and questioned her even though he is not a state-certified law enforcement officer.
“For people to pull over people on I-40 without that license is shocking to me,” Special Judge David A. Stephens said.
 
Full Article:
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-da-halts-i-40-drug-stops-after-criticism-from-judge/article/3864488

By Doug Fine

 

“I can find another job, but I’m not going back to pharmaceuticals.”

As it has with thousands of PTSD patients nationwide, cannabis gave 32-year-old Augustine Stanley his life back. Already a decorated veteran, already the youngest Lieutenant at New Mexico’s Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, he could survive IEDs in Iraq and prison gang member sequestration cells in Albuquerque. But it looks iffy whether his promising, unblemished career will survive a urine test.
Stanley led the team of corrections officers that handles the highest risk inmates in the Albuquerque area – not just violent criminals, but people at risk to themselves. “I was interviewing for promotion to Captain,” he told me. “I don’t even have a disciplinary file. Then last September I failed a urine test.”
This is, sadly and temporarily, not a unique case of what happens in the final days of cannabis prohibition when a patient who works in a “drug”-tested position and his family choose his well-being over even his livelihood and obligation to support, in Stanley’s case, his four kids. And when you talk to this local boy, he makes no bones about one truth: cannabis was and is a life-or-death necessity for him. Otherwise he would never have threatened a career that had logged 13 years toward a lucrative 20-year retirement plan.
In a steady, non-emotional voice, Stanley told me, “The Xanax (alprazolam anti-anxiety pharmaceutical) I was prescribed (after a traumatic tour in Iraq in 2005) just deepened my depression. I was a worse person to be around. I’d take even half the prescribed amount and fall asleep on the couch. I think of that time and the word that comes to mind is zombie.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.thedailychronic.net/2013/24696/new-mexico-corrections-officer-fired-for-medicating-legally-with-cannabis/

By Chris Hopper

On Saturday, Bob and Cathy Jordan set up a stand along Manatee Avenue Causeway, asking people to sign a petition to support the legalization of medical marijuana. (Photo: Chris Hopper, staff)
 
A Manatee County man has marched, petitioned, even been arrested all in an effort to legalize medical marijuana and make his wife’s life a little bit easier.
Bob Jordan has been fighting this fight for the better part of two decades.
“The whole thing is very, very frustrating,” he said. “I mean, if you would have told me 15 years ago I’d still be doing this, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
The inspiration to wage the battle comes from watching his wife Cathy fight her own war against ALS.
“My wife has Lou Gehrig’s disease, one of the most horrible things you could ever see,” Jordan said. “It devastates the whole body and you drown in your own fluids and you suffocate to death.”
The Jordans set up shop Saturday along Manatee Avenue Causeway, asking people to sign a petition to hopefully bring back a bill that will legalize medicinal marijuana for people who need it.
“You know, I use it so I can sleep, I can eat, I can go to bed on time,” said Jeffrey Gillard, who supports the legalization of medical marijuana. “You know, it’s got medical purposes. Alcohol is more dangerous, you know. We’ve got drugs more dangerous. This has got a medical benefit.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2013/7/20/manatee_couple_conti.html

Michael Pollitt
 
Euro MP and Norfolk farmer Stuart Agnew has urged home officer ministers to boost home-grown hemp production.
While visiting the Halesworth factory, he was told that Whitehall officials insist that farmers must pay £580 for a licence to grow the crop.
Mr Agnew, who is UKIP’s member of the European parliament’s agriculture committee, wrote to home office minister Theresa May to ask her to scrap an “unnecessary” tax on hemp growers.
Her home office rule was “restricting the opportunity for a UK industry to compete with others of a similar nature elsewhere in the EU.”
“Hemp is a minority crop on arable land in the UK that provides an excellent break crop for weed control and yet requires no pesticides whatsoever to be applied during its growing period,” wrote Mr Agnew, who is a former chairman of Norfolk National Farmers’ Union and a free-range egg producer.
 
Full Article:
http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/farming-news/euro_mp_calls_for_end_to_hemp_tax_for_farmers_1_2287631

BY CHRIS WELLER

By Thomas Barrabi

Sunil Kumar Aggarwal

Associate Member of the New York Academy of Medicine, Senior Resident Physician at Large Academic Medical Center in New York City

 
When I was in the graduate school portion of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Washington in the Department of Geography, I had an opportunity to work with an intrepid defense attorney by the name of Douglas Hiatt, who brought me face-to-face with major health and human rights cases of persecuted, ill and disabled patients who were caught up in the federal-state conflict on medical marijuana. While the story I share below is from 2005, and was covered by the AP wire, it seems it is only in this age of majority support for ending the federal war on marijuana, when there is still doubt being expressed about the severity of marijuana prohibition enforcement, that people may be able to read and appreciate the full medical details of the following case. I did try to submit the write-up below to medical journals several years ago, but it seems like they were not yet willing to listen. Please lend me your ears and consider the consequences of a federal health policy built on denial of scientific fact of the medical utility of herbal cannabis. The pictures below are courtesy of John Brecher, independent photojournalist. I use the term “prison extraction” in the spirit of Dr. Paul Farmer, who used this term to describe in medical terms his efforts to free from jail local Haitian healthworkers who were swept up in politically motivated crackdowns.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunil-kumar-aggarwal/medical-marijuana-patient_b_3619067.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m7KnNUBKJ8