Scotty Gray of Southaven thinks marijuana could help with his seizures more than the prescribed medication he's taking now. Jim Ferguson of Nesbit thinks that even when used recreationally, marijuana is less of a threat to the public than what's already available legally. "I'd much rather come across somebody on the road high on pot than drunk." It's hard to gauge how representative their views are of the larger population that will be needed to, first, get a proposal legalizing marijuana in Mississippi on the ballot and, second, get it approved by voters. There's no question, however, that Gray and Ferguson were representative of those who came to Hernando's Gale Center Saturday to hear organizer Kelly Jacobs of DeSoto County explain the process. [continues 332 words]
Scotty Gray of Southaven thinks marijuana could help with his seizures more than the prescribed medication he's taking now. Jim Ferguson of Nesbit thinks that even when used recreationally, marijuana is less of a threat to the public than what's already available legally: "I'd much rather come across somebody on the road high on pot than drunk." It's hard to gauge how representative their views are of the larger population that will be needed to, first, get a proposal legalizing marijuana in Mississippi on the ballot and, second, get it approved by voters. There's no question, however, that Gray and Ferguson were representative of those who came to Hernando's Gale Center Saturday to hear organizer Kelly Jacobs of DeSoto County explain the process. [continues 332 words]
Petition Effort Seeks to Get Issue on 2016 Ballot An effort to legalize marijuana in Mississippi is growing out of DeSoto County, where petition organizer Kelly Jacobs of Hernando is planning a series of town hall meetings this month to explain the proposal. Jacobs'group, Mississippi for Cannabis, filed a petition in September at the Secretary of State's satellite office in Hernando to get the issue on the 2016 general election ballot. The office on Dec. 29 approved the measure for placement on the ballot if, by October, supporters gather 107,216 certified signatures, or a minimum of 21,443 from each of the state's five congressional districts that existed before redistricting reduced the number of districts to the current four. [continues 563 words]
Mississippi For Cannabis Has Received The Ballot Initiative Petition From The Secretary Of State's Office, Meaning The Group Can Now Begin Collecting Signatures. It Needs More Than 106,165 Signatures. Go, go, go sign the petition is the message a group wanting to make weed legal in Mississippi is telling voters after everything has been cleared for the group to begin collecting signatures to try to have an initiative placed on the November 2016 ballot. Mississippi for Cannabis has received the ballot initiative petition from the Secretary of State's office, meaning the group can now begin collecting signatures. [continues 266 words]
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A group has filed a petition seeking a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in Mississippi. Petition organizer Kelly Jacobs said Mississippi for Cannabis hopes to place an initiative on the November 2016 election ballot. Jacobs says the ballot initiative proposal would legalize cannabis for adults to own as much as they wish, to use as they wish, but keep it from minors. [end]
OXFORD, Miss. - Walk along the narrow, brightly lit beige hallway, along the washed-out linoleum floor, around the corner to the imposing steel vault. As a scientist swings open the door, a familiar, overpowering scent wafts out. Inside, marijuana buds are packed into thousands of baggies filed in bankers boxes. Fifty-pound barrels are brimming with dried, ready-to-smoke weed. Freezers are stocked with buckets of potent cannabis extracts. Large metal canisters sit, crammed full of hundreds of perfectly rolled joints. [continues 764 words]
Getting at University's Stockpile Is a Complicated Process for Medical Researchers and Legalization Activists OXFORD, Miss. - Walk along the narrow, brightly lit beige hallway, along the washedout linoleum floor, around the corner to the imposing steel vault. As a scientist swings open the door, a familiar, overpowering scent wafts out. Inside, marijuana buds are packed into thousands of baggies filed in bankers boxes. Fifty-pound barrels are brimming with dried, ready-to-smoke weed. Freezers are stocked with buckets of potent cannabis extracts. Large metal canisters sit, crammed full of hundreds of perfectly rolled joints. [continues 770 words]
The Government's Stockpile of Marijuana for Research Is Impressive, and Controversial OXFORD, Miss. - Walk along the narrow, brightly lighted beige hallway, along the washed-out linoleum floor, around the corner to the imposing steel vault. As a scientist swings open the door, a familiar, overpowering scent wafts out. Inside, marijuana buds are packed into thousands of baggies filed in bankers boxes. Fifty-pound barrels are brimming with dried, ready-to-smoke weed. Freezers are stocked with buckets of potent cannabis extracts. Large metal canisters are crammed full of hundreds of perfectly rolled joints. [continues 1106 words]
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has signed a bill to legalize a marijuana extract to be used as medicine under tightly controlled circumstances. House Bill 1231 becomes law July 1. Republican Bryant says he signed it Thursday, only after Bureau of Narcotics officials assured him the oil can't be used to produce a high. The medicine is used to reduce seizures in children with epilepsy. It would be available by prescription and dispensed through a University of Mississippi Medical Center pharmacy. The medical center would obtain its supply from the University of Mississippi's National Center for Natural Products Research in Oxford. That center grows marijuana for medical research sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Bryant says he opposes any other attempt to legalize marijuana or products from it. [end]
We often hear about wars and conflicts abroad but regrettably pay little attention to a real detrimental war here in the States: the war on drugs. It has been an abysmal failure. Let's list a few failures so eloquently written by Laurence Vance: It has failed to prevent drug abuse. It has failed to keep drugs out of the hands of addicts. It has failed to keep drugs away from teenagers. It has failed to reduce the demand for drugs. It has failed to stop the violence associated with drug trafficking. It has failed to help drug addicts get treatment. It has failed to have an impact on the use or availability of most drugs in the United States. [continues 418 words]
Now that voters in the states of Colorado and Washington have legalized the sale of marijuana in their states, the showdown between these new state laws and current federal law that makes marijuana sales illegal in all states still looms. At least one Mississippi federal district judge and a pioneer in the drug court movement see Colorado and Washington as the first of many states to try to decriminalize marijuana - and he's worried about it. Southern District U.S. Judge Keith Starrett of McComb said in January that he had significant concerns about what is unfolding in Colorado and Washington - and that more states will follow. [continues 475 words]
OXFORD, Miss. - The only reason 73-year-old Elvy Musikka still has her sight, she says, is she's been smoking pot for 30 years. "In 1975, my doctor told me if I didn't start using marijuana, I'd go blind," said Musikka. "Shortly thereafter I found out that, indeed, it was the only thing that would help me with my glaucoma." Musikka is one of four people still enrolled in the federal government's Investigational New Drug program, which allows a small number of patients to use medical marijuana grown at the University of Mississippi. The program stopped accepting new participants in 1992. Those already in the program are allowed to continue receiving their prescriptions. At its peak, the program provided pot for 30 patients. [continues 709 words]
STARKVILLE - After a recent column on the election results that made marijuana use and possession legal in two U. S. states, a thoughtful reader responded with a dissenting view. My column pointed out that now that voters in the states of Colorado and Washington have approved legalizing the sale of marijuana in their states, there is the inevitable showdown between these new state laws and current federal law that makes marijuana sales illegal in all states. The laws passed in Colorado and Washington allow the recreational use of marijuana and require that the states set up a bureaucracy to license, regulate and tax those sales. That regulatory system is expected to be very similar to the bureaucracies that exist in states to license, regulate and tax the sales of liquor, wine and beer. The reader wrote: "The federal government has no authority to regulate marijuana, and certainly none to ban it. It occurred to me recently that it took an amendment to the Constitution to ban alcohol, and the stroke of a pen to ban marijuana. What changed in the Constitution in the meantime? Nothing. [continues 377 words]
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon criticized the Department of Corrections as "more than any other agency detrimental to circuit courts" during his speech Wednesday at The Neshoba County Fair. He lamented the Legislature had given the department "unbridled authority" over inmates. Gordon said that while he and Circuit Judge Vernon Cotten have over the past decade sentenced drug and burglary offenders to 587 years in prison, only 180 years of those sentences have been served. He said Corrections claims judges cannot revoke probation for the commission of another crime and sentencing rules apply to judges, but Corrections can release prisoners as it determines best. [continues 202 words]
YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Marc Emery has 10 suggestions for improving life in British Columbia: 1. Eliminate the provincial income tax, lowering it to zero in thirds over three years. 2. Abolish the RCMP in the province. Establish a modest-sized provincial police force answerable to the provincial solicitor-general and attorney-general. B.C. will need far fewer cops and jails once you eliminate the illegal drug markets. 3. Base MLA selection based on a combination of preferential voting (first, second and third choices, etc., on each ballot) or a first-past-the-post system combined with proportional representation. [continues 183 words]
Prefers Ron Paul: Jailed activist is a fan of Ayn Rand and rational capitalism YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Jailed marijuana activist Marc Emery is all over the map politically. A founding member of the Marijuana Party of Canada, he's moved his support between the B.C. and federal NDP, the federal and provincial Greens and federal Liberals over the years. But Emery says that's because so few of our leaders, including Premier Christy Clark, NDP Leader Adrian Dix or Green Party Leader Jane Sterk, are inspirational in any way. [continues 581 words]
A Province Exclusive - Vancouver Marijuana Activist Marc Emery Still Has Two Years To Serve In A U.S. Jail, But He Isn't Singing The Prison Blues Because He Believes He's Fast Being Vindicated For His Stand On Marijuana YAZOO CITY, Miss. - Vancouver cannabis crusader Marc Emery may be facing two more frustrating years behind bars in the Deep South of the United States. But he's more confident than ever he's winning the war on drug prohibition. The Prince of Pot believes the drug legalization campaign he's waged for more than 30 years is already over at the "intellectual" level. And it's only a matter of time before marijuana and other recreational drugs are sold in stores in Canada and the U.S. - and taxed and regulated just like liquor and cigarettes. [continues 1235 words]
If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said. And the president's son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called "War on Drugs" than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more likely than a Trayvon Bush to be imprisoned on drug charges. This is not because he would be 57 times more likely to commit a drug crime. To the contrary, white men commit the vast majority of the nation's drug crimes, but black men do the vast majority of the nation's drug time. It is a nakedly racial disparity that should leave the "Justice" Department embarrassed to call itself by that name. [continues 501 words]
A big ditto to Wayne Parker's Letter to the Editor on Wednesday about the ludicrousness of imprisoning people for using medical marijuana. Jerry Withem is serving time for this offense. My sister takes prescription marijuana to treat her chemosymptom of nausea -- she is not incarcerated. This is the epitome of hypocrisy and an egregiously unjust scenario. But to take this one step further, why not just legalize all marijuana -- period? It's been said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Case in point: Prohibition was declared a monumental failure, yet here we are repeating history. You can walk into a store and buy alcohol or cigarettes (either of which can cause of death or disability, but if you buy marijuana you are a criminal. Studies show pot to be less addictive and less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. (Sure, the drug companies wouldn't like the loss of revenue due to Marinol being off the market, but too bad.) [continues 120 words]
A Mississippi legislator recently introduced a bill that would legalize the use of medical marijuana in the state. The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Deborah Dawkins from Harrison County in January and has managed to stay afloat despite heavy opposition. Medical marijuana is currently prohibited by federal law, and it's classified as a schedule I drug. Despite this, the Drug Enforcement Administration, charged with enforcing federal drug laws, usually does not interfere with medical marijuana patients and their caregivers, according to Americans for Safe Access. [continues 539 words]
Inside Mississippi
