The Justice Department recently announced that it is resuming the "equitable sharing" part of its civil asset forfeiture program, thus ending one of the major criminal justice reform victories of the Obama administration. Civil asset forfeiture is a legal tool by which police officers can seize and sell private property without a convicting the owner of any crime, and equitable sharing is a process by which state and local police can circumvent state restrictions on civil asset forfeiture and take property under the color of federal law. [continues 472 words]
As a Colorado voter who helped end cannabis prohibition in my state, I've observed the current laws work as planned, protecting responsible adults who choose to use the extremely popular, God-given plant. Every subsequent poll indicates Colorado voters continue to support it, and there's every reason to believe Michigan voters will end the discrimination and continue supporting it in the future. By any measure cannabis is safer than alcohol, and it's less addictive than coffee. In over 5,000 years of documented use, it has not killed one person, while cigarettes kill over 1,000 Americans daily. That's safety on a Biblical scale. A sane or moral argument to continue caging or punishing responsible adults who use cannabis doesn't exist. Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
As Michigan considers marijuana, ("Michigan voters would OK legal pot, poll says," March 28), it is important to understand the impact on public health, especially the health of teens. The debate over legalization may be confusing and contributes to the perception that marijuana is harmless. Research shows otherwise. For example, one in six teens who start early will become addicted to marijuana, a statistic that rises to 25-50 percent with daily use. Legal-pot states are beginning to see the effect. Colorado, for example, now leads the nation in past-month marijuana use by young people. [continues 66 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]
The first time Brandy Zink lobbied in Congress for medical marijuana, she wasn't taken very seriously. But that was in 2000, long before the dam burst on the bud. "Capitol Hill is very intimidating with those big stone buildings; you can hear every step you take echo down the halls," says Zink, a then-fledgling lobbyist in her early 20s. "At first it was very difficult to get an appointment with a representative. We'd be received politely, but there would be no follow-up. They would make jokes like asking, 'Do you have any samples?' or 'Are you high right now?' We were not taken seriously." [continues 1091 words]
Lansing - The Michigan Senate voted Thursday to place a hard cap on the 180-day signature collection window for statewide ballot proposals, a move that may snuff out a rule change sought by a pro-marijuana legalization group. The legislation, now headed to the state House of Representatives, would eliminate a part of state election law allowing petitioners to challenge the presumption that signatures are "stale and void" if they are collected outside a 180-day period. The Republican-led Senate approved the bill in a 26-10 vote, mostly along party lines. [continues 479 words]
While many citizens accept regulations when they seem reasonable, "95 percent" of cannabis (marijuana) dispensaries being affected by new regulations do not seem reasonable. It's another achievement of government-subsidized discrimination in a country where the prevalence of discrimination is undeniable. And make no mistake: Bigots orchestrated cannabis prohibition from the beginning as an act of racism, greed, and control. Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
The Elite Detroit medical marijuana provisioning center is located in a former car dealership on Woodward not far north of Seven Mile Road. There is a tall cyclone fence surrounding the entire facility, including a spacious parking lot. Customers can only enter and exit the lot from Woodward; there's no way to go directly into the neighborhood from there. The self-contained little compound would seem to be the perfect place for the security conscious set. A littler farther south, on the other side of Seven Mile, the Miles Green Acres provisioning center sits in a former ice cream shop. Fortuitously, it's next door to the Dutch Girl Donuts store. There's some convenience there: Stock up on weed and stock up on doughnuts. [continues 945 words]
Lansing - Regulating and taxing the medical marijuana industry could generate up to $63 million a year for the state and local governments, according to a new economic analysis. It's a conservative estimate, said Gary Wolfram, director of economics at Hillsdale College and a former deputy state treasurer for taxation and economic policy. He released the calculations Monday on a legislative package approved last year by the state House but not yet taken up by the Senate. "This is going to generate revenue - probably a lot of revenue," Wolfram said Monday on a conference call organized by the Michigan Cannabis Development Association, which commissioned the report. [continues 476 words]
Last spring Michigan was popping with a potential of three different initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana statewide. Today it looks like the last initiative standing is the MILegalize effort. "I think that our approach represents the centrist position and is capable of being a reasonable and comfortable policy for the majority," says Jamie Lowell of MI Legalize. "It's not something that's super prohibitive and only allows a few to participate in this new emerging market. We kind of find ourselves with the most appealing, sensitive and grounded approach." [continues 1277 words]
I've sometimes wondered what the cannabis lounge of the future will be like when cannabis connoisseurs don't have to sneak around and keep their pleasure on the down low. Will it have the typical bar and lounge look? Will it look like a coffeehouse? Will it have a psychedelic feel? Will there be overstuffed chairs providing something soft and comfortable for customers to settle back into? Will there be ferns at the windows while patrons sip chai? I've been to a place in Holland where there was a guy selling hash from a table in the back of a regular bar but never saw any place that was specifically catering to a specific cannabis atmosphere. [continues 1201 words]
Recently an old family friend got in contact with me because she has cancer and wanted to use cannabis to alleviate the side effects of her chemotherapy. She got her card from the state and had gone to provisioning center in Detroit to buy some items. She didn't want to smoke or get high so she bought edibles. She called me to figure out if she'd got the right stuff. Personally I thought that she had bought a little too much of the wrong stuff. She had bought a bunch of CBD-infused articles that she'd been told would bring her down from the THC oil that she'd purchased. [continues 1359 words]
Apparently there is a third marijuana legalization petition that has been given the thumbs up by Michigan election officials - and it's not the investor-backed plan from the Michigan Responsibility Council that made some waves last year. This new one comes from a group calling itself MichICan and its petition is called Abrogate Prohibition in Michigan 2016. This particular effort has been running under the radar for a short while but its plan is pretty much the most radical of all proposals so far. It calls for the legalization of marijuana without restrictions of any kind. In the words of the petition: "The agricultural, personal, recreational, medicinal, commercial, and industrial use of cannabis in any form shall be a lawful activity." [continues 1276 words]
Local doctors are not writing any pain medicine prescriptions when they find the patient is using medical marijuana. This is why we have a local heroin epidemic. Medical marijuana serves as a pain medicine, but does not cover all pain. Why are these doctors/hospitals willing to write multiple scripts for powerful pain pills, but stop writing any scripts for pain pills when they learn of the patient's medical marijuana use? Doctors, please help patients: write one script for pain pills to cover the horrific pain (some of these people are dying), and let medical marijuana get them through the rest. Or this problem will get worse. Beverly Hynes Lansing [end]
There is little doubt in my mind that marijuana - cannabis, weed, pot, ganja, skunk, bud, herb, sticky icky, mota (in Mexico), le shit (in France), whatever you want to call it - is on the road to legalization. There are a lot of reasons for that. One of them is the changes taking place around the world. In Italy the army has been given the task of growing medical marijuana because the cost of imported medical marijuana is too high and government officials want to bring the price down. Israel has a well-developed medical marijuana system, and much of what we are learning about the plant is coming from research there. Uruguay has legalized recreational marijuana and other South American countries - Argentina, Brazil - are considering it. Canada's Liberal Party, which won recent elections, is moving forward quickly on legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Jamaica, possibly the central beacon of marijuana use worldwide due to Rastafarians and reggae music, has come around on medical use. [continues 1272 words]
It's been pretty well documented that the War on Drugs is in large part a war on black people (read Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow). New allegations from Dothan, Alabama, could be revealing one of the most insidious cases ever to come to light. The Henry County Report (HCR), a police watchdog blog, recently ran a piece that had some of the most salacious allegations one can find: crooked cops in a secret club, cover-ups, evidence planting, and young African-American men systematically victimized by the police. [continues 1353 words]
In a recent Higher Ground column, Larry Gabriel wrote about why people should sign MILegalize petition to end Michigan's cannabis prohibition ("Make the right choice: Support MILegalize,"Nov. 25). Reader Stan White wrote in to offer his endorsement: As a Colorado resident and longtime cannabis (marijuana) activist, I support the Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee and the MILegalize movement ending cannabis prohibition in Michigan. It's important for voters to realize and avoid controversial opportunities, the likes of which have fractured the cannabis movement in Ohio and California that failed. With MILegalize, I'm confident that just like in Colorado, every subsequent poll will show Michigan citizens continue supporting the end of cannabis prohibition. Stan White Dillon, Colorado [end]
I favor the MILegalize petition. Please visit its website and contribute to its campaign fund. Michigan is a right-to-farm state. If your land is suitable and you raise crops according to state standards, you may compete in the state's open market. I'd say legalize marijuana but don't corporatize it. Never interfere with patients' rights to grow their own. And tell the police to take a hike. They are addicted to profiting from Michigan's antiquated, unconstitutional forfeiture law. Their reps have repeatedly hijacked lawmakers' votes to fine tune the MMMA by showing up en masse and playing "tough cop" in legislators' offices just before a vote. [continues 257 words]
We're heading into the final rounds of the petition drives to legalize recreational marijuana here in Michigan. The MILegalize petition drive is expected to round things up by the end of December. The competing petition circulated by the Michigan Cannabis Coalition (MCC) is expected to finish up in January. In case you were wondering, the MILegalize petition is clearly the one you should support and the law you should vote for when the time comes. The MILegalize campaign comes from the Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee, which is mainly made up of the activists who have been fighting to change the marijuana laws in Michigan for many years. These are the people who have stood with the many municipal initiatives to legalize marijuana in cities across the state. These are the people who have rallied to support those who have been unjustly prosecuted in spite of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA). They have fundraised, and stood on the state Capitol steps, and lobbied in the legislature. Michigan NORML, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and the Michigan Green Party have endorsed MILegalize. [continues 1208 words]
