Where there's money, novelty and potential fame, people want in. For some, though, actually getting into Colorado's burgeoning cannabis industry is more difficult than for others. Take the experience of Taneesha Melvin, a 28-year-old Colorado Springs native. This spring, she says, she left her job at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in search of new employment. As a medical marijuana patient herself, Melvin figured her knowledge of strains, experience volunteering at a local dab lounge and service background positioned her well to be a budtender at one of the city's 133 dispensaries. So she dropped $150 on a background check and other licensing fees and set out on the job hunt. [continues 628 words]
Coalition Will Use Big Portion of $2 Million to Target California's Ballot Measure to Legalize Cannabis. SACRAMENTO - Facing well-financed campaigns to legalize recreational pot, a national coalition that includes former Rep. Patrick Kennedy has raised more than $2 million to fight initiatives in five states this year, including a November ballot measure in California. The money is being put up by the political arm of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-legalization group founded by Kennedy; David Frum, a senior editor of the Atlantic; and Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy advisor to the Obama administration. [continues 574 words]
Sizing up the legal use of marijuana I recently completed a C.M.A. survey on the legalization of cannabis (marijuana) for recreational use. I would like to share my responses with you. It's hard to argue against the responsible use of a plant product, which has been around for thousands of years and has been used as a social and personal lubricant since time immemorial. Mankind has always sought respite from the stresses of daily life through chemicals, and often we have turned to psychoactive plants. Relief has included meditation, exercise, religion, collegial organizations, psychotherapy, and illicit psychoactive drugs such as cocaine, heroin and LSD, licit drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, as well as the consumption of fine foods. [continues 387 words]
It is not an opiate problem. Neither is it a cannabis, meth, tobacco, alcohol, nor addiction problem. It is a prohibition problem. We slog ahead, making steady progress on tobacco, milder progress on alcohol. Progress is possible because these substances are not treated as criminal. Imagine the attendance at AA meetings if alcohol were criminal. Legalize it all. Provide truthful education and treatment on demand. It would be far less expensive in both dollars and blood. The drug prohibition is a hangover from our racist past and should be cast off for its immoral roots and proven futility. - - Jay Bergstrom, Forest Ranch [end]
Oakland's new medical cannabis laws, intended to right the perceived wrongs of the U.S. war on drugs, are the focus of a fierce political fight at City Hall. Although the City Council voted unanimously to approve the laws in May - creating a permit system that will bring Oakland in line with new requirements for regulating the state's multibillion-dollar cannabis industry - several council members say the system they created is not a done deal. The main sticking point is a provision that reserves half the city's medical cannabis permits for residents who were jailed on marijuana convictions in Oakland within the past decade, or who have lived for at least two years within six police beats in East Oakland where pot arrests were concentrated in 2013. To obtain one of these "equity permits," an applicant must own at least a 50 percent stake in the proposed business. [continues 1026 words]
(AP) - Apparently unconstitutional portions of Ohio's medical marijuana law, which set aside a percentage of the state's pot licenses for minorities, were spotted during legislative debate but left in the bill to gain needed votes, a key lawmaker says. State Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, said legally prickly provisions exposed by The Associated Press in June may require changes. The law takes effect Sept. 8, at which point a new panel will begin laying out a blueprint for how the new industry will work. [continues 254 words]
The Bay Area's major cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, are rewriting their medical cannabis laws in response to state legislation passed last fall. The rewrites - and the headaches they've brought - are a warm-up for what might happen if California voters chose to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults in November. There are many new aspects to the state medical marijuana regulations, and state agencies will issue further guidelines for cities by January. In the meantime, cities are left to balance a wide range of competing concerns around medical marijuana - from racial equity measures to neighborhood zoning complaints. [continues 363 words]
As a 29 year-old bi-racial male raised in both the inner-city and suburbs of Worcester, having Black, White, and Latino family members and friends who responsibly consume marijuana, I repeatedly experienced and witnessed the disproportionate enforcement of marijuana laws in a racially biased manner. Despite virtually identical usage rates among whites and non-whites, research has consistently found that punitive marijuana laws disproportionately target non-white citizens. A recent study from the ACLU found that in 2010 - even after Massachusetts had decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana - black citizens in Massachusetts were four times more likely to be charged for marijuana possession than whites. [continues 99 words]
This week's Republican National Convention was marked by the appearance of 100 naked women holding mirrors, a photography project by Spencer Tunick. Tunick has positioned the naked bodies of people in 70 different photoshoots across the world. In a statement prior to the RNC, Tunick said, "By holding mirrors, we hope to suggest that women are a reflection and embodiment of nature, the sun, the sky and the land." I mention Tunick's project not just to explain to the Journal's beleaguered I.T. team what the heck is going on with my browser history (for those not afraid of rippling, dimpled white flesh and ungroomed pubic thatches, Tunick's photos are actually pretty amazing) but to juxtapose this political statement against one rolling (sorry) toward Philadelphia next week: a 51-foot joint to be held aloft by cannabis lovers outside the Democratic National Convention. [continues 461 words]
I recently read with interest an article by Mike McFeely , (a WDAY host and Forum columnist) entitled "Medical marijuana a needed debate in North Dakota." At the end of his article he stated that North Dakota backers of medical marijuana would be wise to do some storytelling. Shortly before marijuana was banned by The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, new technologies were developed that made hemp a potential competitor with the newly-founded synthetic fiber and plastics industries. Hemp's potential for producing paper also posed a threat to the timber industry. Evidence suggests that commercial interests having much to lose from hemp competition helped propagate reefer madness hysteria, and used their influence to lobby for marijuana prohibition. [continues 223 words]
WHILE the latest research on cannabis confirms anecdotes that weed slows and even removes Alzheimer's, the dagga couple of SA still have a long fight to change the illegal status of the drug in South Africa. On their non-profit organisation website, Fields of Green for All, the infamous dagga couple, Julian Stobbs and Myrtle Clarke, said their case will finally come to court on July 31, 2017. And after all their effort to get there, the Pretoria high court will have to escalate the questions raised on the constitutionality of being arrested for possessing dagga to the Constitutional Court. The couple have also sued seven South African government departments on charges of enacting unlawful laws. [continues 831 words]
Cops and Prosecutors Are Embracing a Radical Idea: Not Filing Drug Possession Cases HERE'S THE DEAL: People are using drugs in this city, despite decades of law enforcement's best efforts. That fight has landed thousands of people in jail and prison-far too many of them people of color. It's created hardships for Portlanders who need jobs and a place to stay, but find that a criminal record has closed the door to those things. It's led to tensions between police and communities of color that are playing out-vividly, tragically-every day around the country. [continues 1255 words]
Slowly but surely, marijuana prohibition is ending. Legalization can help undo the racist impact of the war on this widely used drug - but it could also help perpetuate injustice. Four states and the District of Columbia have passed measures to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use, and many more allow use for medical purposes. Those numbers will almost certainly grow this year, with my home state of California likely leading the way. But state governments, as well as the burgeoning legal marijuana industry, need to get this right. [continues 429 words]
What to Watch for in the Question 2 Campaign August 28, 1953: California Attorney General Edmund (Pat) Brown announced that the fight against marijuana was "showing marked results." Voters have become accustomed to seeing and hearing the truth shaved in political campaigns. Yet it often comes in a subjective form. Yes, Candidate A is misrepresenting Candidate B about Issue C, but it's done in a way that it hangs from the edge of truth by the fingernails and no one can actually say it was a case of lying. That word is rarely used in political campaigns. [continues 2823 words]
Mark Davis: Those Pushing for This Don't Know What It Does to Neighborhoods Looks like this is my year for congratulating the Dallas City Council, although I do not pretend that the horseshoe is bending toward my worldview. First they found a way to reject the absurdity that there was a First Amendment obligation to host a porn convention on city property. Now, at least for the moment, they are resisting widespread urgings to loosen marijuana laws. As some state-level experiments plod forward with outright pot legalization, the Dallas issue involved ratcheting pot-possession penalties down from a jailable offense to a mere ticket. [continues 581 words]
The Liberal government is making a hash of marijuana legalization by embarking on a needless consultation exercise led by a task force of well-meaning volunteers. Four U.S. states made cannabis legal in 2012 and others are vocally following suit. Canada, which has had a legal medical scheme for more than 15 years, has had calls for legalization for half a century. The 1969 Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, set up by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's dad, recommended after three years' study that the country decriminalize cannabis. [continues 675 words]
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one part of the American people to affirm the political bands which connect them to the other parts, and to assume within the nation, the connected and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of their fellow citizens requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to affirm their connection. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among us, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and, if they choose the path of alteration, to abandon old and institute new legislation, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing the powers of government in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that legislation long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to repudiate the integral connection among Americans, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such legislation, and to provide new Guards for their future security. - Such has been the patient sufferance of African Americans; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to advocate the end of Prohibition. The history of the present War on Drugs is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having as a direct consequence the severing of the connection between African Americans and the rest of the American polity. [continues 755 words]
As a society, I ask you: "Do you want a welfare system where money is spent on food for families or illegal drugs pushed by predators?" The crystal meth wave responsibly reported by this newspaper and so alarming to all thinking people is swamping our emergency responders. Like all illegal drug flows, it is powered by cash. And this is where our welfare system fails our vulnerable Australians. We have always tried to limit the debilitating drugs, destroying generations of children, by attacking the supply. Our current police and welfare structure can only address the symptoms, not the cause of social disadvantage. [continues 1044 words]
Federal Liberals' legalization effort stinks of unfocused busy work The Liberal government is making a hash of marijuana legalization by embarking on a needless consultation exercise led by a task force of well-meaning volunteers. Four U.S. states made cannabis legal in 2012 and others are vocally following suit. Canada, which has had a legal medical scheme for more than 15 years, has had calls for legalization for half a century. The 1969 Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, set up by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's dad, recommended after three years' study that the country decriminalize cannabis. [continues 674 words]
The World Health Organization defines addiction or dependency as a complex health condition that often requires long-term treatment and care. Sadly, that is the case with Indonesia's policy on drug crimes. To address the global problem of drugs, world leaders and activists gathered on April 19-21 at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in New York. Most countries represented moved from criminalization to decriminalization for personal possession or use. Some opted to regulate drug markets for certain types of drugs, mostly marijuana. Almost all delegates from the EU, Latin America, UN organizations and the special rapporteurs against torture and the right to health agreed to abolish the death penalty for drug offenders. [continues 608 words]
