This cute little pot leaf want to be your bud.

ORLANDO, Fla. (Wireless Flash – FlashNews) – Myths about smoking marijuana are being smoked out by adorable digital pot plants.
On Cannabuddies.com, tokers can learn the truth about bud by adopting their very own virtual marijuana leaf as a pet.
The animated leaves are a lot like the Digipets that were popular in the ’90s, with funny faces and cartoon-like voices, only they share valuable information about marijuana.
Creator Rob Mulligan thinks Cannabuddies are a “cute” way of spreading the facts about smoking pot and could “lead the forefront of complete legalization of marijuana.”
Despite their silly appearance, Mulligan isn’t worried about Cannabuddies becoming the gateway toy that introduces children to weed because they don’t blatantly promote sparking up.
He says, “Ultimately it’s just a cute plant. It’s as of you were interacting with a funny tree.”
But if kids do start playing with Cannabuddies Mulligan thinks it can’t hurt since they’ll be getting knowledge they aren’t learning in school.
http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn03100726fn28540.html

Jay Selthofner, a supporter of medicinal use of marijuana and of legalizing the drug, has been inspired to run for office in Wisconsin’s State Assembly for District 41. The inspiration comes in the form of Joey, a child with autism whose mother has successfully treated him with the use of marijuana and the subject of a book: Autism and Marijuana – A mother’s fight to save her son’s life – Joey’s story.
Mr. Selthofner has been working steadily in his community to bring about change for medicinal uses of marijuana and legalizing its use. During this campaign, he first met Meiko, whose son was so severely impacted by autism, she resorted to a “street drug” to help him improve. “What did I have to lose?” she has said. She gives credit to marijuana for turning her son around and “saving his life.”
Mr. Selthofner says, “Being a parent myself, I could not imagine the doctor giving my child a death sentence and then watch the child starve to death. So from death, to a rebirth; development and growth, marijuana was credited as saving this boy’s life.” To be clear, it was not the autism itself that was a death sentence; rather, it was its effects on Joey. Joey could not eat foods that would keep him healthy and thriving. He was wasting away.
While there has been criticism, from the use of using a non-FDA-approved method of treatment to the phrasing chosen (“saving his life”) as it paints a negative view of autism, many parents are beginning to wonder if he or she should not give it a go as well. If a parent chooses this option, he or she should be aware: there are negative effects of this drug for some people. Please speak to a physician before starting any treatment regimen.
Mr. Selthofner says, “We face risks every day in our life. The punishment should not be worse than the crime, to enforce public health issues through the use of criminal law, is not a good idea, fundamentally. Marijuana is not for everyone, medical or recreational, but it certainly is not a crime. Alcohol, tobacco, over the counter and prescription drugs are proven to have a multitude of negative health effects that easily outweigh the effects of cannabis.”
Prior attempts to gain legislation support for marijuana used has failed in Wisconsin. “Major legislation opposition came from ‘slippery slope’ theory that medical would lead to full legalization. I have always been an advocate for full legalization of marijuana and will continue to do so.” But would he settle for just a medicinal use law? “The word ‘settle’ sometimes means something different to each person, but I would most likely vote yes for a medical bill, but keep pursuing reform.”
“A medical only bill does accomplish a great deal: [getting] medicine to those who need it… and [taking] those [individuals] off the battlefield we have come to accept as ‘the war on drugs.’” There is more information about the economic and other benefits to legalizing marijuana and can be found by clicking here
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/nationalbreaking/ci_15609415

SANTA CRUZ — After the last several WAMMFests encountered challenges, organizers of Santa Cruz’s annual medical marijuana awareness event appear to be in for an easier time getting the city’s nod of approval.

Today, the City Council will consider lifting a smoking ban at San Lorenzo Park for five hours Sept. 25 to allow authorized pot users to medicate inside open-air tents designed to create privacy. The item is on the council’s consent agenda, indicating that it may not be as controversial as in years past.
“For the city, it’s a matter of course,” Mayor Mike Rotkin said.
The event will run from noon to 5 p.m. Admission to the event is free and open to the public, but if the council OKs temporarily lifting the ban, organizers will allow smoking marijuana only in a separate tent. Medical marijuana identification will be required.
Last year, an oversight kept the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana’s annual request for a smoking exemption from landing on a council agenda in time for the event. Instead, the group put its tent on county property near the usual site. Police issued two citations for smoking on park property but otherwise applauded WAMM for holding the event in a responsible manner.
In 2008, a philosophical divide on the council nearly kept marijuana users from legally participating. Three council members supported lifting the smoking ban but three others were opposed. The tie couldn’t be broken that night because a seventh council member was absent, but a compromise proposed two weeks later called for lifting the ban only for the tented area.
This year’s measure calls for lifting the smoking ban in the entire park, but urges the organizers “to designate a specific enclosed location for medical marijuana treatment.” Councilman Don Lane said he supports the measure because WAMM has acted responsibly in hosting previous events. “They have a good reason for wanting to allow it in just this one instance.”
Valerie Corral, co-founder of WAMM, said volunteers will monitor the park, asking people who are smoking marijuana to show their medical authorization cards so the event doesn’t “turn into hemp-fest.” “It’s just really is to keep the focus on the justices that have been met in our own community and on the state level,” Corral said. “We’re bringing awareness to an ongoing issue, marijuana as medicine, and the kind of marginalization that still occurs for people who are seriously ill.” The past year has seen a lot of movement on the medicinal marijuana front.
In January, WAMM suspended a lawsuit against the federal government on the condition that the Drug Enforcement Agency respect state medical marijuana rules. The DEA raided WAMM’s garden and arrested Corral and her husband, Mike, during a 2002 raid, but the Obama administration announced in October that it would stop prosecuting patients or caregivers in states with medical marijuana provisions. California voters approved medical marijuana in 1996.
Also this year, over the pleas of patients to expand options, the City Council limited medical pot dispensaries in Santa Cruz to the two operating in the Harvey West area. However, the council now allows the pot shops to open seven days a week and grow more of their own supply in-house.

With one hand, Lindsey Bradshaw hoisted his food bag onto his back, arranging the tube that has helped feed him since cancer ravaged his stomach seven years ago. In his other hand, he clutched a small gold bowl of marijuana and a pipe.
He depends on both devices to get through the day.
One of 36,380 patients registered with the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, Bradshaw is a gardener who grows most of his own medical marijuana — one of two options that program participants have. They can also buy from a producer who sells to four or fewer people.
Those options leave people dry if they don’t know a producer and are too sick to grow their own, Bradshaw said.
But that could change, if a ballot measure to create a system of medical marijuana dispensaries passes.
The measure certified for the November ballot July 16, but has not received a ballot number yet. It would establish Oregon as the seventh state to set up a state-regulated dispensary system.
Growth of state-regulated models began popping up across the United States after October 2009, when President Barack Obama loosened enforcement of the federal law on marijuana possession, as long as people comply with their state’s law.
Proponents of dispensaries say they would make access easier for thousands of sick Oregonians, but Oregon police and officials from other states with dispensaries caution that access can spiral out of control, resulting in unregistered dispensaries and illegal users. In Los Angeles, a mess of unregistered and dangerous dispensaries was the result of a “hodge-podge of competing and contrasting laws and ordinances,” from the city, county and state regulating marijuana, said Tony Bell, spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich.
The city placed a moratorium on new dispensaries in November 2007, but hundreds sprung up anyway. In June, the city ordered more than 400 dispensaries to close in an attempt to regain control of the marijuana industry.
In Colorado, Ron Hyman, the state registrar of vital statistics, received less than 5,000 applications for marijuana dispensaries in 2008. Now he gets 1,000 every day.
Colorado placed a one-year ban on new dispensaries and switched to a state-run system meant to reduce customer complaints about quality and cleanliness, Hyman said.
In Oregon, dispensaries would be nonprofits registered with the Department of Health, and have yearly licenses. The department would be in charge of monitoring and inspections.

Dispensaries would prevent illness from mold or insects, which can occur when inexperienced users attempt to grow their own marijuana, Bradshaw said. Licensed patients who want to continue to grow their own medical marijuana could still do so.
Dispensaries could also offer different strains of marijuana with properties best suited to patients’ symptoms, commonly severe pain or muscle spasms.
For Bradshaw, getting to select certain strains would be helpful, he said. The 62-year-old lost his spleen, a kidney, part of his stomach, colon and pancreas to Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He takes various drugs to deal with the pain, but said opiates like oxycodone leave him in a haze.
Proponents of the initiative, like Bradshaw, say putting the state in charge would keep dispensaries safe.
But Sgt. Erik Fisher  of the Oregon police Drug Enforcement Section said that wouldn’t make a difference. If dispensaries appear in Oregon, honest patients would soon be in the minority, Fisher said. All you have to do is look at California where the dispensaries opened the door for more abuse, he said.
If someone purchased $40 in medical marijuana at an Oregon dispensary, “what’s to prevent them from sticking that…in a FedEx package, sending it to New York and making $600?
“It’ll make it easier to skirt the law,” he said. “You make it more available to patients, you make more available to criminals.”
Dispensaries are an obvious location for crime, Bell said, and can endanger the public. “Communities just don’t want them in their areas.”
John Sajo, who helped draft the ballot initiative, agreed that medical marijuana stores in California are “little more than gangs with storefronts.” Oregon would be different, he said, because the measure on the ballot eliminates most of the gray areas that caused issues in California.
The average patient in Oregon is also “older, sicker and poorer,” than many of the California patients who are in their 20s, Sajo said.
Bradshaw said he’s one of those patients, and his marijuana usage is not provoking crime. “Me smoking in my living room doesn’t have anything to do with a school three blocks away. What, I’m going to run down and say, ‘Hey girl, want to smoke pot?’ No.”
The measure restricts where dispensaries can open — they must be 1,000 feet away from schools and residential neighborhoods. It does not limit the number of dispensaries that can open.
Advocates say the dispensaries would bring much-needed revenue to the state. Dispensaries would make between $10 million and $40 million in the first year, Sajo predicted.
Producers would have to pay a $1,000 fee and distributors a $2,000 fee to cover program-operating costs, and would give 10 percent of their revenue back to the state. The health department could pick where to allocate the funds.
The department has not analyzed possible impacts of the initiative or planned how they would regulate dispensaries, said Dr. Grant Higginson, the state public health officer who worked with the explanatory statement of the initiative for the ballot.
The Oregon Medical Marijuana Program currently registers cardholders and their caregivers — it has nothing to do with inspections or regulations. If the initiative were to pass, he said, it would transform the program.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/07/medical_marijuana_dispensaries.html

Hey, watch this unbelievable video of firedoglake‘s Jane Hamsher hurling marijuana legalization like a hand grenade into the middle of the immigration debate:
…and everyone just nods in stunned agreement. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sure haven’t seen much coverage of marijuana policy on MSNBC recently, if ever. Is it necessary to tell them you’ll be discussing immigration in order to get some airtime for legalization on the most left-leaning cable news network?
It’s time to stop labeling marijuana reform as a liberal issue when FOX News has two pundits talking about it constantly, and MSNBC’s got nothing to say.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2010/jul/22/jane_hamsher_talks_marijuana_leg

Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–July 23, 2010. The authorized use of medical marijuana by veterans should not be penalized by federal administrators or defined as ‘illegal drug use,’ according to a July letter issued by the US Department of Veteran Affairs, Under Secretary of Health.
The letter, from Under Secretary Robert Petzel, M.D. to Michael Krawitz, administrator for the group Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, states that a patient’s use of medical cannabis is not sufficient cause to deny him or her access to prescribed pain medications in a Veterans Affairs facility.
It states: “If a Veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the Veteran from receiving opioids for pain management in a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facility. … Standard pain management agreements should draw a clear distinction between the use of illegal drugs, and legal medical marijuana.”
It continues: “The Veteran would need to inform his provider of the use of medical marijuana, and of any other non-VA prescribed medications he or she is taking to ensure that all medications, including opioids, are prescribed in a safe manner. … The provider will take the use of medical marijuana into account in all prescribing decisions, just as the provider would for any other medication. This is a case-by-case decision, based upon the provider’s judgment, and the needs of the patient.”
Krawitz had contacted the agency after hearing several complaints from veterans who had been denied treatment at VA facilities because of their state-authorized use of medical cannabis.
http://www.enewspf.com/index.php/latest-news/health-and-fitness/17743-veteran-administration-clarifies-medical-marijuana-practices-

Mother: Marijuana Helps Son Cope with Severe OCD

(ABC News) Last year, 12-year-old Ryan Mendoza’s obsessive compulsive disorder became so bad, his mother said, that his triggers — the wind and spotting the number “6″ — would drive him to have crippling and violent meltdowns.
When Ryan Mendoza first was diagnosed with pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infections, or PANDAS, a rare auto-immune disorder that causes severe OCD, Judy Mendoza never imagined she would rely on medicinal marijuana for her son’s well-being.
Shortly after Ryan’s first dose of medical marijuana, the boy already was showing improvement, his mother wrote on her Web site, M-Squared, which stands for Mama to Mama. He had been refusing to go to the beach for more than a year, terrified a tsunami would hit, Mendoza wrote. But the day after he took the medicinal marijuana for the first time, the family went to the beach and, like any ordinary 12-year-old, Ryan allowed his family to bury him up to his face in sand, his mother wrote.

This story will be featured on tonight’s ABC news program, “20/20” Friday at 10 p.m. ET.
Mieko Hester-Perez is featured on the report.  She is the mother we interviewed regarding her use of medical marijuana to treat her son’s severe autism.  Dr. Lester Grinspoon also contributes; he’s the acknowledged pioneer of medical marijuana from Harvard who found success treating his son’s leukemia chemotherapy symptoms with cannabis, also a frequent guest on our show.
I have to chuckle when I read stories like these describing the use of this “controversial” medicine that hasn’t been subject to the “gold standard” double-blind placebo-controlled studies by the FDA.  (You know, those studies that brought us such safe and effective drugs as thalidomide, fen phen, and Vioxx.)  Cannabis has been used medicinally for over 5,000 years and never caused a single overdose death, yet it is a controversial scary treatment for kids compared to the Ritalin and other heavy pharmaceuticals with nasty side effects that we regularly push on these kids.  Because, you know, the FDA has tested them.
Well, most of them.  I mean, drugs get tested on adults regularly, but a large portion of them are never tested on children, even though doctors are regularly prescribing them to children.  But don’t take my word for it; ask the FDA:

[M]ost marketed products that are mostly used in adults have not been studied in children—even though they may be used by doctors to treat children.
There has been improvement in this area in regard to prescription drugs. As of 2008, an estimated 50 to 60 percent of prescription drugs used to treat children have been studied in some part of the pediatric population.

Or if you’re a glass-half-empty reader, you might interpret that as “we don’t really know what the hell these drugs will do to children 40 to 50 percent of the time.”  But God forbid we give those kids a cannabis cookie!

ScienceDaily (July 23, 2010) — A University of Minnesota Medical School research team led by Kalpna Gupta, Ph.D., has discovered that cannibinoids offer a novel approach to ease the chronic and acute pain caused by sickle cell disease (SCD).

Using a mouse model of SCD, Gupta and University of Minnesota colleagues studied the pain mechanisms by observing animals that exhibited both musculoskeletal pain and temperature sensitivity, symptoms similarly experienced by humans with SCD. The team compared two classifications of drugs in their ability to manage pain sensed by the animals, the traditionally prescribed classification of drugs, opioids, with a new therapeutic approach, cannabinoids, a synthetic compound based on marijuana derivatives. Currently, the only approved treatment for management of severe pain in SCD is opioids.
Using confocal miscroscopy, a precise type of laser scanning that allowed the researchers to observe the nerve pathways of the animals, Gupta and her colleagues were able to study structural changes in the neural pathways that are activated when the animal is sensing pain. When comparing the effects that each classification of drug had on the animal’s level of pain, Gupta discovered that both opioids and cannibinoids equally lessened the amount of pain the animals sensed. However, researchers were able to use much smaller doses of cannibinoids to achieve the same level of pain relief. Moreover, because researchers injected the cannibinoids directly into the body in such low doses, unwanted side effects that result from higher doses of the drug reacting in the brain were minimized.
“This paper provides proof that we can use other classifications of drugs to treat pain in patients with sickle cell disease,” Gupta said. “Cannibinoids offer great promise in the treatment of chronic and acute pain, and they’re effective in much lower amounts than opioids — the only currently approved treatment for this disease.”
Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disorder that affects the red blood cells in the body making them become sickle-, or crescent-shaped. The crescent shape of the cells makes it difficult for them to pass through the small blood vessels in the body, forming blocks that lessen the flow of blood. The decreased blood flow often causes a variety of other serious health complications, including stroke and damage to vital organs including the lungs, spleen, kidneys, and liver.
The disease causes a constant level of chronic pain in patients, including cold and hot temperature sensitivity, and additional episodes of sharp, severe pain known as crises. Pain in SCD is described to be more intense than labor pain. The pain starts early in a patient’s life, often during infancy, and increases in severity with age. There is no known cure, and the best treatment option for most patients with SCD is pain management. To date, the only approved classification of drugs for pain management and treatment of SCD is opioids (narcotics), the category of drugs that includes morphine. Opioids have long been used to manage the pain of patients with a variety of diseases, and the ill effects of the drugs are well known.
Particularly of concern for SCD patients is that opioids often negatively affect a patient’s blood vessels and kidneys, two plaguing elements of the disease itself. In addition, patients with this disease need to take very high doses of opioids to sense any pain relief. Gupta and her team discovered that this is because the receptors required for the binding and action of morphine to provide pain relief are decreased in animals with SCD.
Gupta collaborated with Donald Simone, Ph.D., Robert Hebbel, M.D., and Marna Ericson, Ph.D., leaders in cannabinoid research on pain, sickle cell disease, and nerve imaging, respectively.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100722121225.htm

A worker at the San Francisco Medical Cannabis Clinic prepares packets of marijuana buds for sale in San Francisco.

EUGENE, Ore. – Oregon voters will decide in November if the state should have dispensaries to sell medical marijuana.
Supporters of the idea gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot.
Alice Ivany, who lives near Newport, was one of the chief petitioners for the initiative. She said marijuana has totally improved the quality of her life. “It works for pain like no other medication out there,” she said.
It will be up to voters to decide if Oregon’s medical marijuana act should be expanded. Ivany said the original law in Oregon didn’t go far enough.
“As wonderful as the original act is, it still was fatally flawed in that it did not allow safe, legal access for patients to obtain medical cannabis,” she said.
She believes a regulated medical marijuana supply, sold in dispensaries, will be much safer for Oregonians. “Not only are you exposed to dangerous people but you don’t know exactly what you’re getting,” she said. “The medicine could be tainted with other drugs.”
Oregonians right now are required to grow their own marijuana or have to find someone to do it for them. They are also limited to 6 mature plants and 24 ounces of marijuana. If voters approve the ballot measure in November, patients could buy their pot at a dispensary or continue to grow their own – as long as they have a license.
The new law would allow dispensaries to have 24 plants and 96 ounces of marijuana, and the state would regulate sales. The dispensaries could not be located within 1,000 feet of a school or in a residential area.
If voters say no, the state’s medical marijuana law will stay as it is. This is not the first time the issue has been up for a vote in Oregon. Voters rejected a measure to set up dispensaries back in 2004.
http://www.kval.com/news/local/99072744.html