One of the last singles by the late Merle Haggard was a fun little tune he sang with his old crony, Willie Nelson, and younger country star, Jamey Johnson, called "It's All Going to Pot." With obvious glee radiating from their weathered voices, Hag and his pals sang, "It's all going to pot / Whether we like it or not. ..." Yep, it looks like they do smoke marijuana in Muskogee after all. Willie's been a leading advocate for marijuana legalization for decades now, but some who heard that song (released on April 20, 2015 . 4-20, get it, get it?) were surprised to hear Merle singing it. After all, he first rose to national fame in the late '60s when "Okie from Muskogee" captured the hearts of President Richard Nixon's Silent Majority and was hailed as a troubadour of the right. Those who have actually followed his career realize that Haggard's stance on drugs softened not long after that hit and that his politics were all over the place (one of several reasons I loved him so much). [continues 488 words]
Regarding your editorial, "Bringing textiles, old and new, to Massachusetts" (April 5), I write to point out, legislatures and bureaucrats may define hemp as cannabis having only trace amounts of THC, but nature does not. A plant that produces trace amounts of THC crossed with a plant that produces enough THC to be entheogenic produces viable offspring, because they are the same species, cannabis. In his book, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs, Isaac Campos notes that sixteenth and seventeenth century cannabis brought to the new world by the Spanish "found its way into local medical-religious practice." Its genetics must have been programmed to produce enough THC to be entheogenic. Due to reefer madness plant scientists are unable to grow test plots to determine if cannabis programmed to produce more than trace amounts produce more or better fiber, hurd and seed. Georgetown, Mass. [end]
Second Group Gets Go-Ahead to Gather Signatures for Ballot. COLUMBUS - A second grassroots group got the go-ahead on Thursday to circulate petitions to put a medical marijuana question before voters in November while lawmakers released more details of their plan. The Ohio Ballot Board certified the "Medicinal Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Amendment," clearing the way for GrassrootsOhioans to collect 305,591 valid voter signatures by July 6 to qualify for the November ballot. Another group, Ohioans for Medical Marijuana, is already in the field collecting signatures to get its proposed constitutional amendment on the fall ballot. [continues 213 words]
Last Thursday evening, I chaired the first meeting of the newly formed Vermont chapter of Women Grow. For those who are not familiar with Women Grow, it is perhaps the fastest-growing organization in the cannabis industry and was profiled in a Newsweek magazine cover story from September 2015 that gives an overview of women taking over the billion-dollar cannabis industry. Frustrations in the room were being shared that Vermonters are not able at this time to consume, grow and build businesses around the cannabis industry, except for the rare few. [continues 536 words]
Trudeau promised to make marijuana legal. Where's that at? Instead of "Hump Day" on April 20, thousands of Canadians will celebrate "Hemp Day" through the annual 4/20 protest against pot prohibition. With the Trudeau Liberals committed to legalizing cannabis, spirits should be high. But the fact remains that unless you're a licensed medical user, if you possess or share marijuana at the protest, you're breaking the law. Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief who's the government's point man on the file as parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, made that crystal clear in a recent CBC interview. [continues 1689 words]
The topic of marijuana got a serious scientific treatment Wednesday at the University of California San Diego, where researchers outlined the latest evidence about the drug. The federal government estimates that 22.2 million Americans use cannabis today, an increase of about 4.4 million since 2002. The rise comes amid a growing medical marijuana movement that has culminated with full legalization in Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. California could join those ranks in November if the state's voters approve marijuana for recreational use. [continues 821 words]
The Iconic Stoner Chats With Us About Detroit, Cancer, and Donald Trump It's a Friday morning, and Tommy Chong is about to ride up John R in a replica of The Love Machine, the 1964 Chevy Impala from Up in Smoke. He has one hand on the chain link steering wheel and what Cheech Marin might call a Led Zeppelin-sized joint in the other. When asked if he wants to blaze, though, the most iconic of stoners declines. "It's still Michigan," he says. [continues 1307 words]
The Family Trees dispensary near Seven Mile and Plainview sits within eyeshot of a vacant liquor store and small storefront church, which are less than 1,000 feet away. As of April 1, that means Family Trees is breaking the law. While the business has provided marijuana to patients at the location for two years without incident, owner Reginald Venoy, like many of Detroit's dispensary operators, faces an uncertain future. Will the police kick down his door and seize his marijuana and assets? Or will he answer a knock at the door to find he's being served? Or will nothing happen? [continues 1492 words]
PUEBLO, Colo. - In the heart of territory run by the gang Los Carnales East Side Dukes - on a corner known as the Devil's Triangle - - a 14-year-old who describes himself as a "baby gangster" explained why he was trying to escape the crew. "I really didn't want to end up six feet under," said Esai Torres, who joined the Dukes at 12, beating up rivals and following in the footsteps of his father, a leader on the streets. [continues 1159 words]
It Appears That Only One Flavor of Legalization Will Make the Ballot This November, and It Might Have a Strange Ally. For those wondering what's going to happen with the crowded field of proposals to legalize cannabis in California this year, look no further than an independent source of information with boots on the ground: paid signature-gatherers. Thousands of these mercenaries have fanned out across the Golden State this April, earning an estimated $2.50 per signature to help place pot legalization on the ballot. [continues 774 words]
A Liberal Senate forum held earlier this year signified the Trudeau government taking its first tentative steps down the road to legalization. Yet, many questions remain unanswered as the government contemplates a homegrown solution. Can I smoke it now? The government ultimately is the only body with the power to put laws on moratorium, but Karla O'Regan, a St. Thomas University criminology professor, said some police forces might already be inclined to turn a blind eye to marijuana possession related offences. [continues 855 words]
There were moments Monday, March 21, when the anti-cannabis fervor expressed by Willits Mayor Bruce Burton and his two good-old-boy sidekicks on the Willits City Council was reminiscent of "Reefer Madness," the 1930s propaganda film aimed at stirring up public sentiment in favor of the 1937 federal prohibition of marijuana. That ban continues today. The council's five members, three of whom relied heavily on the belief that cannabis has harmed generations of Willits children, weighed in at a special council meeting on the merits of an outright ban of all marijuana use, cultivation and commerce within city limits. [continues 816 words]
The biggest news in Pennsylvania involving marijuana is the new law authorizing its use as medicine, which was long overdue. But a bill also is pending in the Legislature that would authorize something involving the plant that is even more overdue. It would allow farmers to grow industrial hemp. The plant is a form of marijuana that does not contain THC, the chemical that makes pot either high-inducing or therapeutic. But hemp is incredibly versatile otherwise. Around the world, it is grown in more than 30 countries and used in more than 25,000 products. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States imported about $600 million worth of hemp in 2013. [continues 117 words]
If our nearsighted legislators had approved the sale of marijuana, we would have tons of new revenue. If they even had the brains to allow cultivation of hemp, that could create more income. And if our governor would raise taxes, that would help. Of course, if the state had invested in clean energy years ago instead of relying so much on fossil fuel sales, we wouldn't be in such a pickle. Tracy Neal Santa Fe [end]
The FDA's New Rules for CBD Are Confused-and Confusing IT'S BEEN A HELL of a month in the canna world. It started on March 15, when the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) shocked a room full of 500-plus cannabis-business owners at an Oregon Cannabis Association meeting. Suddenly, making and selling extracts was illegal. That seems to be all sorted out-see my colleague Vince Sliwoski's Ask a Pot Lawyer column. But as soon as the dust settled on that, Facebook and other stellar sources of dependable and non-alarmist information began exploding with the news that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had "outlawed" cannabidiol (CBD). [continues 624 words]
I HAVE yet to read the texts recommended by Clifford Schaffer in his letter "Drug laws not helping" on March 15, but otherwise I agree wholeheartedly with his views. Richard Nixon, under immense pressure following the US disaster in Vietnam and the looming Watergate affair, desperately needed a rallying cry to divert the public's attention and a "war on drugs" fitted the bill perfectly. It also put the blame for the thousands of returning heroin-addicted GIs wholly on the drug itself and not on their horrific wartime experiences. [continues 787 words]
March 31 marks a new day in Detroit for medical marijuana. It's the last day for Medical Marijuana Caregiver Centers to apply for a license to operate in the city. Before this, provisioning centers multiplied in a gray area of the law where they weren't exactly legal but were tolerated. That's an outgrowth of how Michigan's medical marijuana law played out when the courts ruled patients can have marijuana but didn't allow for venues to sell it. It's right in line with the weird machinations prohibitionists have always gone through to keep people away from the weed. [continues 1143 words]
A new survey of state residents likely to vote this fall found that a clear 53% majority of Michiganders would just say yes to legalizing and taxing marijuana. The survey's result was no surprise to groups hoping to gather 253,000 signatures in Michigan to get a marijuana measure on November ballots. "Support for legalizing marijuana continues to increase here at a rate of at least 2% per year - that's what we've been tracking in Michigan, and it seems to be roughly the same across the country," said Detroit lawyer Matt Abel, a long-time supporter of legal pot. [continues 884 words]
New Rules in 2 States Could Attract Major Outside Investors. SEATTLE - When the legal pot industry began to boom in Washington state, big-money investors predicted the cannabis trade in the Northwest would soon be the darling of corporate America. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox appeared at a Seattle news conference in 2013 along with pot entrepreneur Jamen Shively, who laid out plans to create the first national brand of marijuana and promised Big Tobacco-like growth. "Yes," he said, "we are Big Marijuana." [continues 1123 words]
