n Monday The MC3 told Mayor Chuck Reed and the entire city of San Jose just how dangerous a proposed cannabis ordinance will be to the entire community.
The ordinance was drafted by City Attorney Richard Doyle.
City Attorney snubs San Jose Cannabis Collectives Coalition MC3
Mayor Chuck Reed and San Jose City Council
City of San Jose
200 E. Santa Clara Street
San Jose, Ca 95113
RE: June 22 Medicinal Cannibis Ordinance MC3
Dear Mayor Reed;
The Medicinal Cannabis Collective Coalition (MC3) consists of 14 collectives in San Jose who subscribe to a set of self-imposed best practices operating standards, including a commitment to being civically-engaged good neighbors. (See attached.)
MC3 has been working closely with staff from the City Manager’s office and the Planning and Finance Departments on the ordinance slated for consideration at your June 22 meeting. While we do not agree on all issues, we maintain a productive ongoing dialog. By contrast, the City Attorney’s office has refused to meet or talk with us throughout the past few months of otherwise helpful discussions.
This has created a situation where an ordinance with reasonable regulations has not, and we fear, will not emerge within the current time frame. At this juncture, the more prudent approach would be to continue the hearing on June 22 to the August 3 date. This would effectively provide additional time for staff to work with us and other interested parties on the ordinance.
We appreciate all the work that you, the Council and city staff are doing in moving this important issue forward on a priority basis – despite other pressing workload issues. We feel that we have some basis for creating a compromise of sensible regulations that will work for patients, neighbors, and the City on a win-win-win basis. There are, however, some areas of disagreement (most, we believe, stemming from the City Attorney’s misinterpretations of state law and general lack of policy common sense). We outline some of these below.
City Attorney: No cash sales; barter & trade only.
Cash sales are permitted under state law. Health and Safety Code 11362.775, and the State Board of Equalization’s determination that collectives must obtain a Seller’s Permit, immunizes collectives from legal sanction for sales. You should also have the City Attorney review People v. Urziceanu (2005) 132 Cal. Ap. 4th 747, 785, which formed the basis for Senate Bill 420 (The ‘Medical Marijuana Program Act’). It conclusively states sales by collectives are legal.
City Attorney: Each patient is restricted to membership in only one collective.
This is bad policy for at least four reasons. First, this is an unconstitutional infringement on a patient’s right to associate. (Imagine being told that you can only visit one church, or only join one civic group!) Second, it severely restricts competition—which is the lifeblood of service quality. Third, it limits patient access to the widest possible variety of different medicinal strains and products. And fourth, it violates patient privacy by forcing them to needlessly reveal their individual private medical associations. This will result in a decline in quality, variety, and supply of medicine, which ultimately reduces the efficacy of the patient’s medical treatment.
City Attorney: Collectives may serve San Jose residents only.
This is an unconstitutional infringement on a patient’s right to associate. Unnecessarily restricting the memberships of the collectives hinders the collectives’ ability to serve the medical needs of its membership: it reduces the variety of medicinal strains and products by restricting access to medicine on an irrational and arbitrary geographical basis while also infringing on a patients’ right to associate freely.
City Attorney: 1000’ proximity restrictions to a variety of “sensitive” uses including residential zones.
There is no reasonable or empirical evidence to support such restrictive proximity limits on well-regulated and managed collectives. On the contrary, police chiefs in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco openly admit that collectives do not generate inordinate calls for service. Such severe restrictions actually boomerang and hamper the city’s own power to regulate. Overly restrictive limits inhibit the city’s power and flexibility to locate collectives appropriately and result in only a few unreasonable locations being “legal,” or effectively creating a defacto ban on collectives.
City Attorney: Collectives may locate only in Commercial Zones.
Industrial Zones should be included also. Collectives, as well as the city, need flexibility to find locations that are suitable for patients to access while causing minimal impact on neighbors. Commercial zones are a natural fit for the retail distribution of medicinal cannabis. And Industrial zones make sense also for they are often less populated, and thus able to absorb ancillary increases in traffic that collectives might generate. They are usually more physically isolated from sensitive uses. Further, Industrial zones usually have greater parking capacity. NOTE: Collectives do not represent a use conversion as Industrial zones permit some retail (and production) uses, unlike residential which is prohibited in Industrial zones and should be discouraged.
City Attorney: Permits must be awarded by random lottery… with a limit of 10 collectives for a city of 1+ million people.
A random lottery is the exact opposite of any intelligent approach to regulation. Collectives should be regulated like any other legal use: either by market forces, or by land use (CUP) regulations, or by special use permits. But they should be regulated rationally and not through a random process that might very well close the most professional and easily accessible collectives while allowing others to stay open regardless of track record or ability. And imagine the litigation (and expense to the city) if an established collective that has been operating in a legal and professional manner gets the proverbial “ping pong ball #11.”
City Attorney: All collectives must cultivate all medicine on-site.
On-site cultivation is not appropriate in most situations. This demonstrates the internal inconsistencies in the City Attorney’s position and indicates that their draft proposal is not intended to be workable. On the one hand, collectives would be limited to Commercial zones only. On the other, on-site production is to be required. Centralized, efficient-scale cultivation of medicinal cannabis is not appropriate in such zones. Imagine running a small farm inside a retail health food store to supply all your produce – obviously not an appropriate mix of uses. Even city staff recognizes that cultivation is most appropriate in Industrial zones. This creates an illogical circle: Retail collectives must be in Commercial Zones, but they must cultivate, and they can only do so in Industrial Zones where they cannot locate. Therefore, collectives cannot exist. This is cynical at worst, and nonsensical at best.
City Attorney: Patient’s personal data and records must be given to the city.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) passed in 1996, a patient’s privacy, which includes records and personal information, is inviolate! The HIPPA Privacy Rule applies to all forms of an individuals’ protected health information, whether electronic, written, or oral. The City Attorney’s solution? Circumvent patient privacy laws by requiring the collectives to secure the patient’s permission upfront via release language to be added to membership forms. No mention of what the city’s sanctions will be if the patient refuses.
Once again, we feel very strongly that there is ample opportunity to compromise and work collaboratively to ensure that the best interests of patients and the community at large are given every due consideration.
We invite you to tour one of our member facilities so that you can see first-hand how safe and sensible our operations are versus the stereotypes we have had to overcome regarding medicinal cannabis patients and the collectives themselves.
Staff and some council members have already toured and found the experience very informative. Please contact me at your earliest opportunity to arrange a tour before the June 22nd (or more prudently, August 3rd) meeting so that we can all continue this discussion from an informed perspective.
Yours very truly,
Paul Stewart, MC 3 Director of Public Policy

Portland, OR — Oregon became the latest state and the first in many years to officially reclassify marijuana from its status as a dangerous drug with no medical value. The Oregon Board of Pharmacy (BOP) voted 4-1 today to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. The Oregon BOP decision comes after many months of deliberation and input from the public. The Oregon legislature passed SB 728 in August 2009, which directed the BOP to reclassify marijuana to Schedule II, III, IV or V. Although Oregon and 13 other states have adopted medical marijuana laws, marijuana has officially remained a Schedule I substance according to the federal government, and most states defer to that federal status.
“This latest decision by a state public health and drug regulatory body to reclassify marijuana as medicine should send a clear message to the federal government,” said Caren Woodson, Director of Government Affairs with Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana patient advocacy organization. “The reclassification of marijuana at the federal level is long overdue and certainly ripe for consideration.”
Under the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970, the federal government placed marijuana in a Schedule I classification, with a high potential for abuse and no medical value. Several attempts have since been made to reclassify marijuana at the federal level. A petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, is the latest attempt and currently pending before the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently made its recommendations to the DEA, the final agency to review the petition. Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, who still must be confirmed by the Senate, is the final remaining arbiter as to the rescheduling petition’s fate.
“DEA Administrator Leonhart has a less than impressive record on medical marijuana,” continued Woodson. “But, with the changing political winds on this issue, the Obama Administration has a chance to do the right thing for the hundreds of thousands of sick Americans that benefit from medical marijuana.”
Although only four states — Alaska, Iowa, Montana, and Tennessee — and the District of Columbia have classified marijuana as a therapeutic substance, there appears to be a trend to change that. In addition to today’s decision, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy recommended in February that its legislature reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II, thereby recognizing its medical use. While such moves are more symbolic than practical, especially in medical marijuana states like Oregon, it does tend to reinforce the argument that marijuana has medical value. By law, the Oregon BOP has until June 30th to implement the new rules.

Jeremiah McKay knocks on the first door in a quiet neighborhood off Southeast Powell Boulevard, near the eastern edge of Portland, during the 10 a.m. lull. Families had rushed to work and school, but plenty of retirees and stay-home parents remained.
He’s wearing a sports shirt and khaki pants, trying to avoid the formal sales look he’d donned for seven years.
He’s not selling anymore. He’s collecting.
Over the past two and a half months, McKay has traversed neighborhoods in Portland, Beaverton, Gresham and Hillsboro, clipboard in hand, gathering petition signatures for one initiative about political redistricting and another that would allow the use of deadly force to protect property, a measure proponents call the “Castle Doctrine” initiative.
McKay is one of many signature gatherers recently hired as campaigns race to meet the July 2 deadline to get initiatives on the November ballot.
Petitioners face more restrictions this year than ever before. While some say the changes keep the system clean, others say the new rules hinder the citizen power of the initiative process, which originated in Oregon in 1902.
The most recent law bans people convicted of fraud, identity theft or forgery in the past five years from petitioning, and fines chief petitioners up to $10,000 if a campaign worker commits signature fraud. Campaigns are also required to turn in their signature sheets monthly, instead of all at once in July.
Regulations are necessary to ensure voters of the integrity of the initiative process, which is “a critical part of Oregon political culture,” says Don Hamilton, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kate Brown. Brown sponsored the new law in 2009.
Since 2002, three new laws have been passed that tighten regulations on initiatives. The impact of the laws is still uncertain, Hamilton says, but “I think it remains a simple and painless process to gain the ballot legally.”
John Sajo, who has worked with marijuana reform initiatives since 1982, disagrees. Over time, he says he’s watched the “burdensome” rules limiting petitioners stack up.
“They’ve almost squeezed the life out of the initiative process.”
Legislative red tape, limitations on places people can collect signatures and numerous audits are difficult on grass-roots campaigns, Sajo says. Big money initiatives will soon be the only ones to get on the ballot, he adds.
The Coalition for Patient Rights 2010, the committee behind the medical marijuana dispensary initiative, has garnered $30,209 in contributions. The two initiatives McKay is working with have gotten more donations. The Defend Your Castle Committee has received $78,371, and the Balanced and Fair Representation Committee, which runs the redistricting initiative, has gotten $471,839.
Meanwhile, the Oregonians for Water, Parks and Wildlife campaign to continue lottery funding for state parks, has gotten more than $1 million.
The medical marijuana dispensary initiative is a “perfect test” of whether the process is still fair, Sajo says. If the initiative doesn’t make the ballot, he says, it will not be from a lack of public support, but because the group does not have “billionaires backing us.”
Hamilton says the process should be easier for smaller budget campaigns, which allows people to access and print online initiative sheets and mail them in. Currently, the majority of campaign donations go toward paying on-the-street petitioners.
The way petitioners are paid changed in 2002, when it moved from a per signature model to an hourly rate in an effort to reduce fraud.
But incentives to get more signatures remain, says Joe Lehr, who works for the medical marijuana initiative and an initiative requiring voter approval for changes to gas taxes and fees.
On a bright afternoon, Lehr works alongside five fellow petitioners on the sidewalk in front of the Trader Joe’s on Southeast Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. Focused in his pursuit, he asks each customer if they are registered Oregon voters.
Lehr has been collecting signatures for two years, and gets paid $11 per hour. But it’s understood that you should get a certain number of names each hour, he says, and there are temporary pay increases for getting more signatures.
The medical marijuana campaign looks likely to make the ballot. The statutory initiative needs 82,769 verified signatures, and has turned in 115,404.
The “Castle Doctrine” turned in more than 60,000 signatures and the redistricting initiative more than 62,000.
Many groups will continue to collect names to make sure they have enough.
Turning in signatures monthly is meant to reduce fraud and minimize the usual July rush to count all the ballots.
But it adds “a new wrinkle” that may not benefit voters, says Travis Diskin, the general manager of VOTE Oregon LLC, where McKay works. The law generates “voter intimidation,” because it is easier for organizations opposing a petition to get the names of people who signed it, Diskin says.
There have not been any requests for copies of signatures this year, Hamilton says, and there has been only one complaint to the Oregon secretary of state’s office of someone contacted by an opponent of a petition in the past five years.
For petitioners, who are the public face of the initiatives, hearing from opposition is far more common.
McKay says he’s mainly received criticism from people “who are real liberal or not into guns.” If he gets the chance to explain the initiatives nine times out of 10 the person will sign, he says. On an average day he gets 150 signatures.
His advice to the new employees that he trains every week is to “always keep a positive attitude and keep on pushing. Sometimes it’ll be hard and sometimes it will be a cakewalk.”
McKay says he “sincerely enjoys” getting to meet new people and persuading them to sign. He has become one of Vote Oregon’s best petitioners, Diskin says.
Despite changes to the initiative process, petitioners like McKay aren’t going anywhere soon, Diskin says. Even new law allowing people to access signature sheets online and mail them in “will never replace the face-to-face contact of a petitioner.”

Cannabis Lowest Law Enforcement Priority
On the day the UK’s House of Lords voiced its support for a new initiative from the UNODC to encourage a more pragmatic approach to the nations drug laws, the Mayor of Hailey in central Idaho North America, has announced that cannabis on private premises will become law enforcements lowest priority.
Mayor Davis told the Hailey City Council the decision to make pot smoking on private property the lowest police priority wasn’t easy, but it represents something that “works for those on both sides of this issue.”

By Katherine Tandy Brown

Between 1800 and 1850, the frontier town of Lexington experienced unprecedented growth and became known as the “Athens of the West.” During that time, many notable historians, politicians, businessmen and horsemen found homes in the Bluegrass.
The Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau is now offering the opportunity to tour four of these beautifully restored historic houses for only $15. (The usual admission ranges from $7 to $9 per home.)
“So many people came through Central Kentucky as the United States was becoming a nation,” said Niki Heichelbech, communications manager for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau. “These homes truly recreate what life was like in 1800s Lexington.”
Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate
Arguably one of the greatest statesmen ever, Henry Clay served the public for 46 years, as a senator, speaker of the House of Representatives, secretary of state and three-time presidential candidate. In 1806, “the Great Compromiser” built a Federal-style home with wings designed by Benjamin Latrobe, architect of the nation’s capitol. Half a century later, Clay’s son rebuilt the 18-room mansion, which was completely restored in the early 1990s.
Today, the estate’s nearly 17 acres of wooded grounds includes the Italianate-style house museum, six outbuildings constructed during Clay’s lifetime, an 18th century-style walled garden, tanbark walking paths and a cozy outdoor café.
Hunt-Morgan House
Another handsomely restored Federal-style structure has graced a corner of antebellum Gratz Park since 1814. Originally named Hopemont, the Hunt-Morgan House was built by John Wesley Hunt, the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies, and became home to two famous descendants: Civil War General John Hunt Morgan and the state’s first Nobel Prize recipient, Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, “the father of modern genetics.”
Despite its amazing legacy, the structure barely escaped a 1955 date with a wrecking ball.
“Saving the Hunt-Morgan House was the impetus for the founding of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation,” said Julie Good, the organization’s executive director. “The home has such rich history.”
A second-floor Civil War Museum is partially maintained by the Morgan’s Men Association, originally formed by soldiers serving under the Rebel general and their descendants.
Mary Todd Lincoln House
Our country’s president during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, witnessed slavery firsthand while visiting his wife’s family in Lexington at what is today the Mary Todd Lincoln House on West Main Street, where the Todds lived from 1832 until 1849.
Completed in 1806, the two-story Georgian dwelling boasts 14 rooms filled with period furniture, family portraits and furnishings from the Todd and Lincoln families.
Waveland State Historic Site
In 1847, Joseph Bryan, great nephew of Daniel Boone, built a gorgeous Greek Revival mansion, naming it Waveland, for the farm’s fields of gently waving hemp and grains. Here, the cream of Lexington society, including Henry Clay, gathered to admire and wager on fine horses.
“A lot of people are not aware that Waveland was once the center of the horse industry in Fayette County,” said Ron Bryant, site director and descendant of Joseph Bryan. “On its original 2,000 acres, the Bryans built two tracks, one a private family track and the other public, where both blooded trotting horses and flat Thoroughbred runners competed.”
Though the property is now but 15 acres, well-versed guides in hoop skirts recreate history for visitors in the distinguished red-brick home that is filled with original family treasures, a heritage garden and outbuildings that include an icehouse, smokehouse, 200-year-old log cabin and elaborate, two-story slave quarters.
“Waveland is the epitome of an antebellum Kentucky plantation,” Bryant said. “The house has a homey feel yet still has that dignity. It looks like the South.”

GUAM – Senator Rory Respicio introduced a bill to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Bill no. 420 also establishes “compassionate health care centers” to grow, process and distribute marijuana by prescription only.
The bill allows patients to grow up to three marijuana plants and to carry a maximum of three ounces of marijuana as long as they have doctors prescription for marijuana use.
If Respicio’s bill becomes law, patients who would qualify for marijuana use include those with cancer, HIV, AIDS, any chronic or debilitating disease, or for any treatment which causes cachexia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures and severe or persistent muscle spasms.
Respicio sent a letter to all his colleague asking for their support for his measure.

Have you heard that truth before? – It’s something you will understand if you read any further.  You see, science is a truth conspiracy. It’s a testing of reality and standing your ground when you find evidence.
In some ways, being American means confronting untruths. To voice “our” truth through language, to create a new set and setting, we turned to the founders and a collection of essays known as The Federalist Papers.
During 1787 and 1788, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote 85 essays in support of the US Constitution. They used the pen name “Publius” in honor of a famed Roman republican – someone they saw as a defender of liberty.
We became “Publius” for the same purpose: to make our sum greater than our individual parts. In doing so, we have created a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We began releasing the essays online in 2009 and will conclude this fall. The essays will then be available in book form as The Cannabis Papers: a citizen’s guide to cannabinoids.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
The so-called drug war is becoming better known as a war on citizens – a civil war. It has been a war with two distinct federal laws. The first was the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, which was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1966. Into this vacuum was sucked Nixon’s contribution to 21st century drug policy: the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. This law contains the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law making herbal cannabinoids Schedule 1. This means in Bizarro World that herbal cannabinoids have no medical value.
Here we are in 2010 still living under Nixon’s law. That is our history: our tomorrow is much different. That’s because the tide has turned – and it’s a scientific tide. The endocannabinoid system (ECS) and the science surrounding this remarkable biological modulator, have transformed the battlefield and the logic of the CSA. This is no longer a civil war: it has morphed into a war between science and ignorance.
Science is the language of Publius. As Madison, Hamilton and Jay detailed the workings of the US Constitution, piece-by-piece and Article-by-Article, we have given the same care and effort to describing the role of cannabinoids and the ECS in our bodies. We found that cannabinoids shared a strong characteristic from the founding period: the similarity is found in the famous phrase summing up the basic rights of free people – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It is no secret that many people think that there is a Life-giving quality to cannabis use. That is where we began – the anecdotal and lived cannabinoid experience. Since the 1970s, cannabis use has been defined by practice – some combination of the medical/patient model and the recreational/liberty model. We are describing something new – the idea that cannabinoids are necessary to life. The cannabis war will no longer be about use and ideology – about who is sick enough or free enough or responsible enough. What is new today is the science of cannabinoids – and you’ll find it more than compelling and often mind-blowing.
Liberty provides its own arguments. The war on cannabis users has compromised our liberty. It has been this way for so long that many of us don’t even recognize the unintended consequences placed on our collective liberty by cannabinoid prohibition – the collateral damage caused by the war. As this changes, as this prohibition comes to a close, we can look forward to a better culture – one with fewer invasions of privacy, fewer arrests, fewer imprisonments – and more human choices for relaxation, more affordable wellness/health care, more tax revenues, and, dare we say it – happier citizens. The days of Reefer Madness, when it was believed that marijuana smoking created homicidal maniacs, are behind us. The days of spaced-out tokesters are behind us. Clearer perceptions about cannabis are emerging. Someone like Montel Williams is the new face of the cannabis patient – a former Marine and successful talk show host who maintains his health through the use of cannabinoids while living with Multiple Sclerosis. Or even beyond any medical perception, someone like Rick Steves – a successful writer and host of travel shows on television and radio. Or even beyond celebrity – perhaps someone like you?
That brings us to Happiness. – Each individual citizen has their own definition of what makes them happy. Notice that the goal is not the “right to be happy” but the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit is intrinsically related to freedom of choice – the right to pursue one’s happiness without infringing upon another’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to understand this is a legal problem – but it is also more than a legal problem. What we have, and what most of us have been born into, is a system that makes the pursuit of happiness a legal problem – one to be policed. This is a relatively new phenomenon. Americans have not always thought the pursuit of happiness was something best handled by the courts. At one time we believed in the “right to be let alone.” In 1928, nine years before cannabis prohibition began, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote of our constitutional right to be let alone in the case of Olmstead v. U.S.:

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

The war on cannabis has been an assault on the right to be let alone. This means it is also an attack on the conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. In fact, federal cannabinoid prohibition has contributed to a net loss of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – making its end clear.
One more thing: like the phrase Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, we, Publius, have many forms – many selves, if you will. In reading the essays in The Cannabis Papers (TCP), you will find that we speak in many voices. That is because there are many voices to be heard.
Allied voices in the cannabinoid truth conspiracy
Publius considers pharmaceutical companies to be kindred spirits and not the enemy. Why? – Because in their hypotheses cannabinoids are good. They assume that a healthy body needs a healthy ECS. They are also science-based and therefore an ally in the war against ignorance.
Tom Brock, a researcher for the pharmaceutical company Cayman Chemical, speaks like an ally. In a 2009 marketing essay titled Cannabinoids: to the Neurons and Beyond, he writes highly of cannabinoids and what they are capable of doing. He asks us to imagine the blessings of healthy cannabinoid receptors:

Imagine what could be achieved if signaling through these receptors could be controlled: happy, slim, and healthy people who remember that they’re pain-free.

Here is a representative of the pharmaceutical industry writing like a flower-child and friend of Publius. Amazing! If Cayman Chemical understands the potential of the ECS, then they are not our opposition, and in many ways they know more about cannabinoids than most cannabis consumers.
As mentioned above, Publius chose the familiar revolutionary phrase from the founding – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – to frame this new debate. If we debate cannabinoids and the ECS with the prohibitionists, we always win. They can’t speak this language, the language of cannabinoid science. Like the founding phase of our country, this one involves changing the way we look at an issue. The founders had to deal with how to frame federal power: we have to deal with how to reframe federal power. Thus our objective is Nixon’s law – the 1970 Controlled Substances Act – which is factual wrong.
The error is that herbal cannabinoids are presumed guilty of having no medicinal value – while Marinol and Cesamet, two synthetic cannabinoids, get pharmaceutical passes. From the perspective of cannabinoids and the ECS, this is nonsense.
Here’s why: beyond holding a patent on a medicinal property of cannabinoids, US patent #6630507, a search of the government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, Pub Med, shows that a revolution has taken place in the field of science. No longer are they looking at the evils of marijuana: the field as a whole has moved to a new understanding of cannabinoids and the ECS. Here are a few specific examples from TCP to support the idea that the endocannabinoid system is necessary to human health; the research is easily found on Pub Med:

1. Retrograde signaling

From TCP #4 DSI for dummies: getting to know cannabinoid history

DSI stands for – Depolarized-induced Suppression of Inhibition. This is one of the ways cells talk back to each other. This form of communication is the chemical process called “retrograde signaling.” In 2004, a Scientific American article titled “The Brain’s Own Marijuana,” put it this way – “endogenous cannabinoids participate in retrograde signaling, a previously unknown form of communication in the brain.” The phrase “previously unknown” explains a lot. That is why most Americans don’t know anything about DSI, retrograde signaling, or the ECS.

1. Anticancer

From TCP #5 Astrocytes and cannabinoids: reaching for the stars

2010 research in Cancer Investigation shows that THC “inhibited [cancer] cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and induced cell apoptosis.” Cell “apoptosis” is when a cell dies – like a cancer cell. By activating the cannabinoid receptor on the cancer cell, THC is able to tell it to die. Also, this isn’t new; the same thing was found in 1975. See “Anticancer activity of cannabinoids,” in the journal of the National Cancer Institute.

2010: S Leelawat, et al, The dual effects of delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol on cholangiocarcinoma cells: anti-invasion activity at low concentration and apoptosis induction at high induction, Cancer Investigation, May 2010:28(4):357-63.

1975: AE Munson, et al, Anticancer activity of cannabinoids, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, September 1975:55(3):597-602.

1. Neurogenesis

From TCP #10 “Cannabinoids” succeed where “marijuana” fails:

Research shows that the CB2 receptor “may assist in the treatment of neuropathologies by increasing neurogenesis.” This means cannabinoids support the growth of new brain cells. JR Rivers and JC Ashton, The development of cannabinoid CB2 receptor agonists for the treatment of central neuropathies, Central Nervous System Agents in Medicinal Chemistry, March 2010:10(1):47-64.

See also I Galve-Roperh, et al., The endocannabinoid system and neurogenesis in health and disease, Neuroscientist, April 2007:13(2):109-14.

In the forthcoming section Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness sections we work from more traditional cannabis reform ground. Topics include the 1972 Shaffer Commission, the arrests, getting high, healing, race, drug testing, economics and happiness – all through the science of cannabinoids and the ECS. Acknowledgement of the fundamental role of the ECS in human health – and other mammals we are fond of like dogs and cats and cows and pigs – makes the idea of arresting 800,000 citizens for exercising their ECS with an herbal cannabinoid absurd.
The essays on Liberty and Happiness take truths like “all human beings – in fact all mammals – use cannabinoids” and offers suggestions on how this will effect reform in the immediate future. Simply stated, cannabinoids and the ECS modulate other systems within the human body – and that fact alone represents a revolution in how we think about cannabinoids.
And it’s political! Meaning we need more than clarity. We already have clarity on Pub Med, our government’s science website. We need political focus. – And that focus is clearly Nixon’s law.
There is another important factor. We have a President who won an election based on the idea of change. The President of the United States is referred to by the acronym “POTUS” (www.potus.com). The political response to finding the 1937 law unconstitutional was led by POTUS 37 (Nixon) and is the CSA. Today, with POTUS 44 (Obama) in charge, it’s time to put Nixon’s law in its place. Based on the scientific evidence, it’s clear to Publius that POTUS 44 should end Nixon’s legacy.
And yes, it’s about the arrests. Arresting citizens for self-medicating with herbal cannabinoids, given the scientific tsunami of good news, is politically untenable. Cannabis arrests went from just under 400,000 to nearly 750,000 by the last year of POTUS 42 (Clinton). That is nearly five million citizens arrested for cannabis violations under POTUS 42.
During POTUS 43 (Bush), annual cannabis arrests remained at the 750,000 level through 2006. In 2007 and 2008 arrests topped 800,000. That is over six million citizens arrested for cannabis under POTUS 43.
Now to the POTUS 44 – Will the legacy of Obama’s administration be more arrests given that cannabinoids are proving to be one of nature’s best-kept secrets? – Or will POTUS 44 end the madness of arresting millions of fellow citizens for possessing herbal cannabinoids? –
The essays in The Cannabis Papers support ending this madness. A search of cannabinoids on Pub Med reveals a world of scientific data supporting cannabinoids as medicine. That’s because the ECS is necessary to life. This is a fact of biology and part of the truth conspiracy. Nixon’s law is a legacy of lies, cruelty and ignorance. – What will Obama’s legacy be?

Even though our world seems to get a little more desolate by the day, there are certain things that bring comfort to our aching hearts. Like finding plants thriving under the toughest of urban conditions. Like, in Union Square, where the tireless folks at Gothamist noticed the distinctive fan-like sprigs of a familiar-looking plant (not that we’re implying anything), and quickly sent photos off to an editor at High Times, who confirmed that the leaves were illicit, but not the fancy kind: “These aren’t the expensive seeds we talk about in the magazine, but seeds people find in their pot and toss.”
(Incidentally, the website WeBeHigh points out that the North end of Union Square Park “always has people smoking/selling there. some of the people there will try and hustle you for your money, but if your smart, you can get pretty good shit there.”)
Just days before the Union Square discovery, City Room writer Ava Chin had a totally take-me-back-to-that-Dead-Concert pot-sperience while foraging in Ditmas Park with a friend — without actually smoking anything, allegedly or otherwise. Some tidbits from her adventure:

One whiff of the distinctive sweet, heavy odor, and suddenly I was transported to the last outdoor concert I’d attended — some long-weekend affair in New Jersey where I was surrounded by marijuana smoke and slow talkers.How I could have missed this fine young cannabis plant is beyond me. It was so pretty, with those deeply grooved, perfectly pointed serrated leaves, that an artist could have used it as a model for a hemp flag.

Fine young cannabis, indeed. Keep your eyes peeled, friends. If you see anything that looks green and smokable, and inexplicably takes you back to that special time you wigged on the Slip ‘n’ Slide at a Jimmy Buffett show, let us know. We’re happy to exchange notes.
But what does it mean that we’re being overgrown with weed?
[JDoll]