Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 6:56 pm | By: Radical Russ
[UPDATE: Sorry, test over. It only took us a half hour to find out how bad my connection sounded. However, it was with this cheapo headset I use for Skype. I will be back tomorrow early with the full pro setup to see if it will pass. If not, we'll be back at the home studio. Thanks everyone who helped us test. -- "R"R]
For extra good measure to test the wireless, I’m also streaming the gamecast of my beloved Boise State Broncos. So don’t be surprised if I suddenly yell “Touchdown!”
Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm | By: Amanda
Thank you for contacting me to share your support for legalizing marijuana. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
I have given much thought to this matter over the years. I do not support the decriminalization if marijuana or any other controlled substance. I have been open to considering changes to the Controlled Substance Act which would permit the dispensing of tetrahydrocannabinols (THC) to assist individuals in chronic pain or with other medical conditions, and I have been supportive of research to do just that. I believe this position strikes a careful balance between Oregonians’ decision to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes while maintaining control over a substance which I believe is ultimately harmful to our society.
Over the years, I have been called upon to vote on measures that would affect the legal status of marijuana. One such vote was on an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill of 2007, popularly called the Hinchey Amendment. This amendment would have prohibited the federal government from prosecuting individuals who use marijuana for medicinal purposes in states where such use is legal under state law, including Oregon. Not only do such federal actions apply to Oregonians’ decision to allow limited medicinal use of this drug, they may also have an impact on Oregon’s death with dignity law, which I strongly support. I have done my best to make sure Congress does not trample on Oregonians’ rights. For this reason, while I remain concerned with the potential for abuse in the distribution of this controlled substance, I did vote for the Hinchey Amendment. However, the amendment failed by a vote of 165-262. I maintain my support for this effort and will vote for such an amendment again should it be offered.
While you and I may disagree on the overarching matter of marijuana legalization, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me and I will keep them in mind when considering future legislation.
Again, thank you for contacting me. Should you have further questions or comments, please call my Oregon office at 503-326-2901 or 800-422-4003. If you would like to receive my email newsletter, visit www.house.gov/wu to sign up.
Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 9:25 am | By: Radical Russ
(NBC Miami) When you think of the world’s most prolific pot smokers, certain names come to mind: Snoop, Cheech and Chong, Willie Nelson.
How about Irvin Rosenfeld?
The 56-year-old Fort Lauderdale stockbroker will put his name among the greats when he sets a world record tomorrow for weed consumption while lighting up his 115,000th joint.
One of the few people I know can smoke me under a table - Irv Rosenfeld at NORML CON 2006
The best part is that it’s all legal.
Rosenfeld’s pot has been provided by the government since 1982, when he became a patient in the Federal Drug Administration’s Investigational New Drug Program. Grown on a farm on the campus of the University of Mississippi, the weed is delivered to a local pharmacy where Rosenfeld gets it by the bushel.
Rosenfeld suffers from a rare bone disorder called multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses, which causes severe pain, alleviated by a healthy dose of ganja.
He’s been getting 300 joints every 25 days for the past 27 years, and said he smokes between 10 and 12 per day.
The sad thing for Irv is that the ganja the feds grow for him is the schwaggiest of the schwag. This is the marijuana grown by Dr. ElSohly in Mississippi and it’s about 4%-5% THC. They don’t bother to manicure the bud much before grinding, so the joints contain stems and leaves and the occasional seed. So don’t be too surprised when he tells you that smoking it doesn’t get him high.
I’ve also had the pleasure of knowing another of the four remaining IND patients, Elvy Musikka. She has the benefit of being both a federal medical marijuana patient and an Oregon state medical marijuana patient. She can tell you better than anyone the difference between federal schwag and Oregon’s finest, and the race isn’t even close.
What’s really disturbing is that the government set up this “Investigational New Drug Program” in 1978 and to this date they haven’t done a bit of investigation. Irv, Elvy and the other two patients have never been surveyed or studied by our government to determine how these decades of medical marijuana use have affected the humans using it. It might make you think our government never really wanted people to know how effective medical cannabis can be, huh?
It’s two hours of live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, NORML SHOW LIVE features a recap of the week’s top stories in medical marijuana, consumer cannabis, and industrial hemp; interviews with the top cannabis activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, and comedians; and your calls live at 347-994-1810.
Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 2:21 pm | By: Radical Russ
(The Romeo Observer) Members of the Northwest Zero Tolerance Coalition learned that new marijuana laws are leading to strains on law enforcement.
Assistant Prosecutor Bill Dailey of the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office spoke to the coalition about some of the drug use problems he has seen in the county, mainly with medical marijuana.
He said he is concerned it will be more readily available to students due to people owning medical marijuana cards that grow their own plants.
“I think there is going to be more marijuana available to our young people and I think that it’s because there is now a lawful way for it to be out in the stream of commerce,” he said. “The same thing has happened with Vicodin and OxyCotin pills.”
I think if medical marijuana were as toxic, addictive, and laden with side effects as Vicodin and OxyContin, that statement would scare me more. Or if I didn’t know that in the medical marijuana states that have been at it long enough to collect data, fewer teens are using marijuana and their use rates are declining faster than the national average.
“Not to offend anybody, (but) in my opinion, it’s pretty amorphous criteria to get a card,” Dailey said. “There are people I know who have got a card for asthma, which is kind of surprising.”
I don't think Georgine would be offended; I think she'd see it as a teachable moment.
Well, you wouldn’t be surprised if you met Georgine DiMaria or any one of the dozens of medical marijuana patients I’ve met who use cannabis to treat asthma. THC is a bronchodialator – it opens up the breathing passages – and other cannabinoids work as anti-spasmodics.
He said that the offices don’t want to bug people who are lawfully following the program. He said that part of him wonders why the state didn’t just totally legalize it so there could be quality control and regulation instead of the current “middle ground.”
That part of you would be called the “logical” part, Mr. Prosecutor. Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that refrain from law enforcement. “Just legalize it,” one cop told me, “either it’s illegal for everybody or it’s legal for everybody, but this in-between some-legal some-not shit is impossible for us to deal with.”
We’re working on it. In the meantime, the way you folks in law enforcement have gone about scaring the hell out of people regarding marijuana for the past seventy years has made it very difficult for us to just legalize it. Only people’s compassion for the desperately sick and disabled people suffering with pain has allowed us even this tiny bit of marijuana regulation for a small subset of its users. So if the slow process from prohibition to regulation temporarily makes your jobs a bit more difficult, excuse me if hundreds of thousands of marijuana patients and twenty million marijuana arrestees don’t shed a tear.
(DEA) Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana
Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?
…The American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a Schedule I controlled substance.
And now today when you go to that same link…
Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?
And the AMA reference is gone. Congrats to the folks at LEAP who spearheaded the campaign to harass the DEA about it. (Though if you want to believe it was the fast response of the loyal frontline battle grunts in the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugsâ„¢ known as “Stashers” that provided the “bump” that put the DEA over the edge, well, I’m not going to disabuse you of that notion. Whatever keeps you writing to your government is fine with me.)
But the rest of the document needs some serious fixing, too…
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 10:25 am | By: Radical Russ
SAN DIEGO (10 News) — A judge ruled the identity of a deputy district attorney who has admitted to being a member of a marijuana collective must be released, 10News reported.
On Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney James Pitts confirmed his membership in the now defunct Amsterdam Alternative Care. The collective was one of several shut down after being raided last September.
San Diego resident and Navy veteran Jovan Jackson is being charged with several counts involving possession of medical marijuana and the sale of medical marijuana. If found guilty, Jackson could spend several years in prison.
San Diego defense attorney Gretchen von Helms said it’s easy to see why Jackson’s defense wants to call Pitts as a defense witness.
“If the defense attorney can say, ‘Look, my client’s just doing what your deputy DA’s are doing,’ how in the heck do you prosecute someone like this? That’s a great strategy for the defense attorney,” said von Helms. “What you want to show is that all sorts of normal people utilize medical marijuana. They do so as lawfully as they can.”
Ms. District Attorney Dumanis, even your own deputy DA agrees with Prop 215 and uses medical marijuana in accordance with the law! Will you do the sensible thing and call off your crusade against medical marijuana, or will you do the petty thing and fire your deputy district attorney? Either way it works out well for us. Obviously we’d be thrilled with ending the crusade, but even if she fires Pitts, she opens San Diego up to a lawsuit from a bitter former deputy DA.
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 5:02 pm | By: Radical Russ
(The Snitch) Ignoring the advice of anti-pot City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, two Los Angeles City Council committees yesterday rejected a proposed ban on sales of medical marijuana.
Anti-pot zealots within L.A. city government had coordinated an 18-month assault on the dispensaries, with headline-grabbing pronouncements from media hogs Trutanich and Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley dominating coverage of the issue in recent weeks.
Both Trutanich and Cooley have been widely quoted in the press as claiming that most of the dispensaries are operating in violation of state law. Cooley’s recent declaration that “approximately zero” of the dispensaries were operating legally sent chills and outrage through the medical marijuana community, seeming to echo San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ statement that there are “no such things” as legal dispensaries.
Council members on both committees wrestled with the idea of ignoring the opinion of the city’s top prosecutor. But after four hours of a contentious and heated hearing, council members had heard more than enough.
A crowd of about 400 people filled the main council chamber for the hearing, with the proceedings often becoming raucous. Most of the speakers were medical marijuana supporters, along with a sprinkling of community activists and conservatives who supported the ban.
Marijuana supporters argued that dispensaries should be regulated, not banned, with a reduction in the number of shops and a crackdown on operations that become a public nuisance.
You cannot stuff this genie back into the bottle, Mr. City Attorney and Mr. District Attorney. The people of Los Angeles like their clean, reliable, diverse selections of cannabis and aren’t going to go back to hiding in shadows and purchasing on a black market. The economy has grown accustomed to the sales taxes and foot traffic the dispensaries generate. Technically legal or not, the dispensaries exist, the people are using them, and they are in many cases improving the neighborhoods where they reside. Instead of tilting at windmills because they don’t personally like cannabis and its users, the city and county should work with medical marijuana activists to come up with sensible regulations that everyone can live with.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
RevRayGreen: I was like 14/15 back then..old fuckng school sht
RevRayGreen: @MH.....white x's, yellow jackts,BB's.then it became just caffeine pills
SneakerPimp: im diggen yesterdays stash daily toker tunes segment awesome
WakeUpDead: Just got done with yesterdays stash and now the new one is up, very cool.
SneakerPimp: ah fresh stashieness
SneakerPimp: nice pic there mr ruben
Missippi Hippy: black beauties - got 'em by the pharm sealed 1000 in the 80s
Adam: Kieth Stroup told me that he has new book coming out, it will cover the time periods after High in America was published.
Adam: I recommend that you all read High in America: The True Story Behind NORML and the Politics of Marijuana.
Read it FREE online HERE
http://tinyurl.com/cxzc3h
slash5city: ah the mid 80's spof ..the summers of 3d weed.... head down to the smoking area at school buy a 2$ pin joint or two from the one dealer then [...]
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