Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Thursday called for ending the federal ban on hemp production in recognition of Hemp History Week.
“In my view, keeping the ban on growing hemp makes about as much sense as instituting a ban on portobello mushrooms,” Wyden, who introduced a hemp legalization bill earlier this year, said on the Senate floor. “There’s no reason to outlaw a product that’s perfectly safe because of what it’s related to.”
Wyden showed senators a basket filled with products made in Oregon using industrial hemp, including protein powder derived from hemp seeds, hemp butter, hemp-based skin care products, and wood deck finish. Because of the U.S. hemp ban, raw material for those products has to be imported from countries that allow hemp cultivation.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/ron-wyden-hemp-senate_n_7515424.html

By Samantha Clark, Santa Cruz Sentinel

 
Since 1993, low-income people with serious illnesses have gotten free or low-cost medicinal pot at the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz.
Not only beloved and respected as a model collective, WAMM is also the oldest operating.
But now WAMM faces financial troubles that could close its doors, and it’s turning to the community for help by launching an Indiegogo fundraiser Tuesday to raise $150,000.
WAMM is seeking $1.5 million to buy the private property where members have grown their own marijuana to provide on a sliding scale for more than two decades. The collective also started offering high end products like waxes and oils and is expanding its staff so more people can join.
“It’s a reasonable goal. It won’t buy the land, but it will buy us some time,” said Valerie Corral, who cofounded WAMM with her then-husband Mike Corral. She also coauthored Prop 215, which made California the first state to legalize medical marijuana for patients with a doctor’s recommendation.
The Corrals let WAMM use their property for awhile before renting it to the nonprofit, but they split up more than a decade ago, so the land needs to be divvied up.
“This is not a failure of WAMM’s social model,” Valerie Corral said. “Maybe WAMM is too dependent on the generosity of Mike and me, but perhaps now is the time that we may see the same generosity from others.”
After a car accident left her burdened with seizures in 1973, they started growing marijuana in their own garden. Once the seizures faded, they shared the cannabis with cancer patients they knew.
Nestled deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the garden now provides medicine to WAMM’s nearly 900 members, some 75 percent of whom have terminal or other serious illnesses such as cancer, epilepsy, and HIV and AIDS. Hung next to the garden gate, a sign that reads “Love grows here” welcomes volunteer members who do everything from digging holes to trimming buds.
 
Full Article:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20150511/santa-cruz-collective-wamm-fundraising-to-buy-cannabis-garden-site/1
 
 

Jeff Mapes | The Oregonian/OregonLive

This Google Earth view of the Murphy Creek Road area south of Grants Pass shows a new hemp farm in the lower left of the photo that has attracted the ire of nearby medical marijuana growers.
 
Depending on who’s talking, a 20-acre hemp farm about 10 miles south of Grants Pass is either the harbinger of a new industry that could help save rural Oregon – or an existential threat to local marijuana farmers just as they’re anticipating boom times.
Hemp, the non-intoxicating version of cannabis sativa, has long been a big part of the marijuana culture, celebrated for its wide variety of uses and status as a fellow victim of federal prohibition.
But now that both hemp and marijuana are coming out of the legal shadows in Oregon, they’re suddenly in conflict – and state legislators may be about to side with the much more well-established marijuana industry.
Lawmakers are considering a bill that would temporarily halt hemp production and force that farm near Grants Pass to yank its plants out of the ground, albeit with compensation from the state. The bill would also put stricter controls on hemp in areas of the state – such as southern Oregon – where marijuana farms are plentiful.
Marijuana growers say they worry that pollen from hemp farms could wreak damage on prized female cannabis flowers, cross-pollinating them and producing a seedy crop with weaker THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the substance responsible for marijuana’s high.
“Any hemp industry that produces pollen around here is going to destroy the value” of the highly bred local marijuana crop, says Cedar Grey, a medical marijuana grower and president of the Oregon Sungrown Growers Guild.
 
Full Article:
http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2015/06/after_marijuana_growers_compla.html

Justin Kander

CATHY WAS DIAGNOSED WITH ALS IN 1986.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is one of the most degenerative motor neuron diseases in existence. Most people with ALS die within three to five years after symptom onset, and the disease often progresses very rapidly. Bob Strider wants others to know this prognosis is not written in stone, and cannabis can be a truly effective option for many ALS patients.

Full Article:

http://illegallyhealed.com/keeping-als-at-bay-with-cannabis/

Full Article:

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2015/06/03/u-s-house-votes-to-protect-state-level-marijunana.html

Posted By: Irina Slav

 
Scientists from Washington State University have suggested that smoking cannabis may have a beneficial effect with regard to the avoidance of intestinal parasite infections, which could explain why the drug has such a long history of recreational use. In a press release by the university, lead researcher Ed Hagen from WSU Vancouver is quoted as saying that it is possible for humans to have developed a taste for the toxic plant not for purely recreational reasons but as a prophylactic against intestinal parasites. The basis for this hypothesis comes from the fact that the body reacts to toxic substances not just through the heightened feeling of pleasure. Toxins also provoke a feeling of nausea and can be lethal to parasites.
Hagen studied the Aka hunter-gatherer community that lives in the Central African Republic and, like the few other remaining such communities, provides valuable insight into human evolution. Archaeologists, anthropologists and scientists often study such communities as a means of gathering insights into early hunter-gatherer societies. It is of course a highly speculative way of studying the past, but it is considered a means of observing human societies detached from modern, westernised traditions and practices.
What Hagen and his team found was that 70% of men in the Aka tribe regularly smoked cannabis. As much as 95% of all Aka men were also infected with helminths (intestinal parasitic worms), but those who smoked cannabis had a lower rate of infection. They were all treated with an antihelminthic drug and after 12 months the researchers found that the rate of secondary helminth infection among the pot smokers was significantly lower than in the rest of the Aka men. What’s more, an earlier study by Hagen found that even those Aka men who smoked a lot of tobacco had a lower rate of helminth infection.
 
Full Article:
http://www.newhistorian.com/medical-marijuana-smoking-linked-to-parasite-prevention/3936/

By Mary Beth Quirk

 
Santa Claus already has a jolly reputation and soon more of the North Pole’s citizens may earn a jolly reputation of their own, after the city voted to reject a measure that would’ve put the kibosh on medical marijuana dispensaries.
While it’s not exactly “the” North Pole, the Christmas-themed community of North Pole does exist in Alaska, and as such, it has a city council that votes on things like allowing a pot store to open in the Christmas-themed community.
 
Full Article:
http://consumerist.com/2015/06/02/north-pole-rejects-proposed-ban-on-marijuana-sales/

 
The week of June 1st- 7th is a great time for all plant-based eaters and whole foods lovers out there to celebrate—it’s Hemp History Week! Hemp seeds are the epitome of the perfect protein-rich seed, containing all essential amino acids, but that’s not all. Hemp seeds are also one of the most abundant sources of dietary iron, magnesium, and omega-3 fats in a plant-based diet, all in a very small serving. They’re mild, nutty, so easy to use, and to beat all, hemp is also one of the most sustainable plants out there.
 
Full Article:
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/hemp-recipes/

Robert W. Wood

 
Welcome to the First Church of Cannabis Inc., approved by Indiana’s Secretary of State under its controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Even bigger that state law approval, the church has even been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. Tea Party conservatives evidently had a lot more trouble with their tax exemption applications. The stated intent of the upstart church is “to start a church based on love and understanding with compassion for all.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/06/01/irs-approves-first-church-of-cannabis-whats-next-for-marijuana/

BY HEATHER HOPE, NEWS 9

 
OKLAHOMA CITY –
Oklahomans pushing for a stronger medical marijuana initiative rallied at the State Capitol on Saturday.
Organizers said although they made some strides in the past year, it’s still not enough for patients who they said really need help.
All smiles now, little Jaqie Warrior looks like any happy two-year-old. But it hasn’t always been this way.
“She can hold her head up she can hold things now she had lost all of her development, my baby was on the brink of death every day,” said Brittany Hardy Warrior.
Suffering from severe epilepsy, Jaqie’s mother tried every medication.
“Injections, diets, everything, nothing worked for my daughter, she was having over 200 seizures a day.”
That’s until a doctor recommended Jaqie go to Colorado to take cannabis, and in a year, her seizures dropped by 99 percent.
 
Full Article:
http://www.news9.com/story/29198917/oklahomans-rally-for-medical-marijuana-initiative