This K2 will only hurt you if you try to climb it.

The proven dangerous chemical compound of synthetic marijuana that is sprayed on potpourri and marketed as a legal drug has been outlawed in many states, much of that legislation passing in 2011. Some form of synthetic marijuana, sometimes marketed as incense called “Spice” or “K2″, is outlawed in 38 states now. This drug that was created due to the limit on research allowed on actual marijuana has made thousands sickened nationwide after consuming the substance sold in smoke shops and truck stops in grams with a label on it warning it is not for human consumption.

The latest data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse says that synthetic marijuana is now the number two most frequently used illicit substance among high school seniors behind actual marijuana. The adverse affects reported to hospitals after smoking synthetic marijuana have been seizures, vomiting, anxiety and accelerated heart rate and a handful of deaths have been linked to the substance.

However, the problem with the law is that it cant keep up with science. The state of Virginia made it illegal to sell or possess 10 different compounds that were marketed as the synthetic drug. One of the largest busts in the nation was in Virginia where they confiscated almost a million dollars worth of the product, packaged and ready for sell, but after testing the product, it turns out it didn’t contain one of the banned products listed in state law.

Authorities in other states that have went through the arduous task of outlawing these products have had similar stories. Cases in states where Spice and K2 are illegal have also confiscated products that have outpaced the laws. Authorities in Florida, Indiana, Illinois and Alaska have confiscated legal products they thought they had banned. Savvy Spice manufacturers have been altering their recipes enough to skirt the state bans and are now marketing the latest generations of chemicals as more potent than original formulas.

Web sites are also opening, marketing the new formulas, letting those in restricted states know that new formulas are legal for about $10 to $25 a gram. To those who fought to get the products off the market, it is frustrating to see they are still there. The case in Virginia, where almost 2000 packets of Spice was seized at a tobacco shop near a school in a raid-style fashion, is set to go to court next month. But now that samples have been tested to show only non-restrictive active ingredients, prosecutors aren’t saying whether they will go forward with the case.

External Links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070903554.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/spice-makers-alter-recipes-to-sidestep-state-laws-banning-synthetic-marijuana/2011/11/30/gIQA6gpHNP_story.html

At Least 1 – 1.5 Million Americans are Legal Medical Marijuana Patients

Market for these patients in sixteen states and D.C. estimated at between $2 – $6 billion annually

MAY 31, 2011 - We don’t know his or her name, but somewhere in one of sixteen states and the District of Columbia is America’s 1,000,000th legal medical marijuana patient. We estimate the United States reached the million-patients mark sometime between the beginning of the year to when Arizona began issuing patient registry identification cards online in April 2011.

16 states, the Capitol, and ONE MILLION legal marijuana users.

Between one to one-and-a-half million people are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in the United States, according to data compiled by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates.  Assuming usage of one-half to one gram of cannabis medicine per day per patient and an average retail price of $320 per ounce, these legal consumers represent a $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.

Based on state medical marijuana laws, the amounts of cannabis these legal marijuana users are entitled to possess means there is between 566 – 803 thousand pounds of legal usable cannabis allowed under state law in America.  These patients are allowed to cultivate between 17 – 24 million legal cannabis plants.  There may possibly be more, as California and New Mexico “limits” may be exceeded with doctor’s permission and some California counties explicitly allow greater amounts, so there may be as much as 1 million pounds of state-legal cannabis allowed under state law in America.

Yet after fifteen years, one million patients, and a million pounds of legal marijuana, few if any of the dire predictions by opponents of medical marijuana have come to fruition.  Medical marijuana states like Oregon are experiencing their lowest-ever rates of workplace fatalities, injuries, and accidents.  States like Colorado are experiencing their lowest rates in three decades of fatal crashes per million miles driven.  In medical marijuana states for which we have data (through Michigan in 2008), use by minor teenagers is down in all but Maine and down by at least 10% in states with the greatest proportion of their population using medical cannabis.

Fourteen of the seventeen medical marijuana jurisdictions have mandatory registries while two (California and Colorado) offer optional registries and one (Washington) has no registry system.  Estimating California’s patient numbers is hampered by its registry system being on a county-by-county basis.  California NORML’s Dale Gieringer estimates between 2% – 3% of the state’s population are holding medical marijuana recommendations – meaning possibly over one million medical marijuana patients in California alone.

California’s patient population can be estimated from data from other medical marijuana states where patients are required to register, shown in the table below. The top two of these are Colorado and Montana, which, like California, have a well developed network of cannabis clinics and dispensaries, and which report usage rates of 2.5% and 3.0%, respectively. Other states, where medical marijuana is less developed, report lower rates of 1% and less. However, California is likely to be on the high side because it has the oldest and most liberal law in the nation. Significantly, California is the only state that permits marijuana to be used for any condition for which it provides relief – in particular, psychiatric disorders, such as PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADD, anxiety and depression, which account for some 20%-25% of the total patient population. Adjusting for this, usage in California could be as much as 25% to 33% higher than in Colorado and Montana, which would put it well over 3% of the population (1,125,000).

A 2%+ patient population estimate is supported by data from the Oakland Patient ID Center, which has been issuing patient identification cards to its members since 1996. The OPIDC serves patients from all over the state, but especially the greater Oakland-East Bay area of Northern California, where its cards are honored by law enforcement. As of 2010, the OPIDC had issued ID’s to 19,805 members from five East Bay cities (Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Hayward and Richmond), amounting to 2.4% of the local population.Because the cards were issued over a period of 14 years, they include numerous patients who have lapsed, moved, or deceased. On the other hand, they do not include many other local patients who have current recommendations but never registered with the OPIDC.

We have made a similar estimate for Washington State’s patients, who are the only ones in the nation with no registry system in place (Gov. Gregoire recently signed a bill that initiates a voluntary registry).  With a law very similar to Oregon’s concerning qualifying conditions, applying Oregon’s 1.04% patient population figure gives us about 69,000 patients in Washington. However, Washington State’s larger urban centers (Seattle and Spokane), combined with a more liberal law than Oregon’s regarding who can sign recommendations (osteopaths, naturopaths, and nurse practitioners can recommend in Washington) and the lack of a state registry’s burden to patient compliance with the program suggests a higher estimate of 1.5% – 2% may be appropriate.  Numbers like Colorado’s 2.5% and Montana’s 3% are improbable as Washington lacks the greater patient access to dispensaries seen in those states.

Delaware, New Jersey, and D.C.’s programs are not operational yet, so they are not shown in our data table.  Most of the other state’s programs produce reports of patient registry numbers.  With Arizona signing up over 3,600 patients since mid-April, when it’s online-only registration went into effect, Arizona is on track to register over 30,000 patients this year.

Quick Facts about Medical Marijuana States:

• The 1.1 – 1.5 million estimated and registered medical marijuana patients in America are legally entitled to cultivate 17 – 24 million cannabis plants and possess 283 –  402 tons of harvested buds.
• The seventeen jurisdictions with medical marijuana encompass over 90 million Americans and 162 votes in the 2012 Electoral College.
• Patients make up over 3% of the population of Montana, almost 2.5% of Colorado, over 2% of California. and over 1% of Oregon, and Washington.
• After Michigan at 0.76% of population, every other medical marijuana state has less than 3 in 1,000 (0.3%) patients in its population.
• California, Colorado, Washington, Michigan, Oregon, and Montana comprise over 98% of the legal medical marijuana patients in America.
• More than 3 out of four (77% – 83%) of all medical marijuana patients live on the West Coast.
• Rhode Island and Vermont, two states where over 10% of the adult population uses marijuana monthly, have patient populations of 0.29% and 0.05%, respectively.
• Monthly teen use of marijuana is down in every medical marijuana state except Maine.
• Annual highway fatalities are down in every medical marijuana state except Rhode Island.
• Incidents of workplace injuries and illnesses are down in every medical marijuana state.

16 states, the Capitol, and 750,000 legal marijuana users.

We don’t know his or her name, but somewhere in one of sixteen states and the District of Columbia is America’s 750,000th legal medical marijuana patient.  The United States reached the three-quarter-million-patients mark as Arizona began issuing patient registry identification cards online in April 2011.

Fourteen of the seventeen medical marijuana jurisdictions have mandatory registries while two (California and Colorado) offer optional registries and one (Washington) has no registry system.  Delaware, New Jersey, and D.C.’s programs are not operational yet.  Most of the other state’s programs produce reports of patient registry numbers.  With Arizona signing up over 3,600 patients since mid-April, when it’s online-only registration went into effect, the fourteen operational programs have served well over 750,000 legal medical marijuana patients.

Quick Facts about Medical Marijuana States:

The 754,799 estimated and registered medical marijuana patients in America are legally entitled to cultivate 11,200,739 cannabis plants and possess 197.78 tons of harvested buds.

The seventeen jurisdictions with medical marijuana encompass over 90 million Americans and 162 votes in the 2012 Electoral College.

Patients make up over 3% of the population of Montana, almost 2.5% of Colorado, and over 1% of California, Oregon, and Washington.  After Michigan at 0.76% of population, every other medical marijuana state has less than 0.3% patients in its population.

Rhode Island and Vermont, two states where over 10% of the adult population uses marijuana monthly, have patient populations of 0.29% and 0.05%, respectively.

Most importantly, in all of these states, trains still run on time, fewer teenagers are using marijuana, economies still produce goods and services, traffic safety has increased, and hoardes of pot zombies aren’t roaming the streets in search of sttrraaiinns!

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1. Montana prosecutor unable to seat jury for case involving 1/16th ounce of marijuana
2. New Mexico rules that cities, like Farmington, cannot make their own regulations for medical marijuana
3. 36 soldiers in Alaska busted for use of synthetic marijuana
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5. CannaStaff in Colorado becomes nation’s first cannabis staffing agency

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Government at Work

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Radical Rant

• We must stop alienating women from cannabis activism by allowing sexism and objectification at our events

Only one of these goals keeps me out of a jail cell.

Thank you Chris Bennett for your enlightening article rebutting NORML’s articles regarding religious use of cannabis arguments in court and the case of Roger Christie.  You bring up some aspects to the history of religious use and religious use cases that deserve serious consideration.  However, we will stand by our writing because we believe you, and others so deeply and sincerely wedded to your religious use arguments, continue to miss our points: Religious use arguments are not likely to work in court and selling a card that guarantees those arguments will work is a fraud on cannabis consumers.

No reasonable person wants to see Roger Christie being held in jail without bond pending trial on these non-violent marijuana charges.  None of us want to see him imprisoned for his religious use of marijuana.  This debate is about the current state of the law regarding the religious use of marijuana in this country and the best strategy to legalize the religious use of marijuana.  It is not a debate about the legitimacy of anyone’s religious beliefs and to make it so misses the opportunity to discuss how we all best spend our time and money bringing an end to marijuana prohibition so we may all enjoy our human rights to cannabis.

NORML always has and always will support any person’s right to use marijuana for whatever reason they see fit.  God told you to toke?  Great.  Your doctor recommended you toke?  Right on.  There’s a Pink Floyd laser light show tonight?  Fantastic.  NORML doesn’t think you need the permission of a court, king, clinician, or cleric to use cannabis.

But courts and law enforcement don’t agree with NORML. The point we’re making is that if you want to exert your religious right to use cannabis, you’re likely to be praying behind bars sometime soon.  Not that you should be arrested, not that the courts should find against you, but that they likely will and you should be prepared for that.

If you have a church with ganja, person says they believe, you give them ganja, they give church money; hey, we’re fine with all that, though in my neighborhood they used to call that “dealing”.  If you’re providing it at low cost, great, you’re a discount dealer.  We defend dealers all the time, though usually their primary motive is profit, not piety.  The reason marijuana was traded for money is irrelevant to us; we think it should be legal.

So our primary criticism – one you didn’t include in any of your voluminous cut-n-pastes – is with Christie leading people to believe that there already exists now a recognized legal religious right to use cannabis, because there does not.  You may believe there should be.  We believe there should be.  But the Supreme Court doesn’t agree.

This card will be just as effective at preventing your arrest for cannabis as the THC Ministry's ID Card

Mr. Christie sells on his web site a $250 “Sanctuary Kit” and a $50 “Practitioner’s Kit”.  He explains that these kits demonstrate your religious sincerity and that is the key to defending yourself in court and proving your bona fide religious use.  He’s selling “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards.  Nowhere on the pages where these are sold (http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=45, http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=70, and http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=81) does he offer a disclaimer that, yes, indeed, if you’re caught with cannabis, that $50 or $250 card is going to work as well as the Monopoly one and you’re likely going to jail and facing a long expensive court battle.

That’s not to say that some religious users haven’t had charges dismissed or not even filed at all.  But the refusal of police to press charges or the dismissal of cases at criminal court involving small amounts of marijuana isn’t any sort of precedent (which can only be set at the appellate level), it’s more a reflection of an officer’s use of discretion and an overburdened legal system that dismisses such cases whether they are religious use or not.  In some states and cities it is a reflection of NORML’s work to decriminalize or set lowest law enforcement priority that allows the courts and cops that discretion.

People have written to me that Mr. Christie has often given this kit for free, just as he has often given ganja for free.  Great, just like NORML lawyers sometimes help cannabis consumers for free.  But for $250 or for $50 or for $0, he is still misleading cannabis consumers into believing that his magical documents will protect the bearer from law enforcement and it just isn’t so.  Mr. Christie writes (http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=12) (emphasis mine):

“Do you have a THC Ministry id card, yet? They work under ‘arrest conditions’ to help set people free. Zero arrest. Zero court. Zero jail. All good.”

“We have had a total of ZERO negative experiences with those who have used our kit. As far as we know we have a perfect track record and we want to keep it that way, for your benefit and ours.”

I know that number is not “ZERO” because I write these stories all the time, like:

• Trevor Douglass sent $50 to Roger for his card, argued his religious use, lost, was fined $135 + court costs and given 15 hours of community service… in Colorado, where decrim fought for by NORML would have made it just a $100 ticket. (http://stash.norml.org/yet-another-member-of-the-church-of-lighter-wallets-about-to-lose-a-religious-use-marijuana-case)
• Michael Lineker and his United Global Mankind Divine Maintenance and Direction church believed in the holy anointing oil, he explained to an Alaska court.  He got seven days in jail. (http://stash.norml.org/alaska-appeals-court-nixes-religion-defense-in-marijuana-case)
• Steven Swallick got his THC Ministry kit and provided his ministerial defense to a court in Brevard County, Florida.  He’s serving two years in prison now. (http://stash.norml.org/jury-takes-14-minutes-to-convict-self-proclaimed-pot-pastor)
• Dan Quaintence got five years and his wife Mary two-to-three using his Church of Cognizance as a defense in court in New Mexico.  Daniel Hardesty, using the same Church, lost his appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court on his possession misdemeanor.  (http://stash.norml.org/arizona-supreme-court-drug-laws-trump-religious-use-of-marijuana)
• Brenda Shoop told an Alabama court her religious use in the Universal Orthodox Church protected her under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  She served a year and a day in prison. (http://stash.norml.org/judge-dismisses-womans-religious-drug-use-argument)
• Robert George Henry became a member of THC Ministry in 2008 (four months after he was arrested) and that defense got him 9-23 months in prison in Pennsylvania. (http://stash.norml.org/man-claims-religious-use-of-cannabis-court-disagrees)

We don’t dispute that any of these adherents sincerely believed their religion.  We don’t dispute that it is honorable to fight for one’s religious rights.  And please, true believers, stop trying to convince us about 5,000 years of religious use of cannabis because we completely agree with you – we’ve even made Genesis 1:29 and “kaneh bosm” arguments in our own writing (e.g., http://stash.norml.org/minister-of-marijuana-says-its-his-religion-to-use-pot).

Our complaint is solely with leading lambs to slaughter without making them fully aware of the risks they are facing.  Dr. Martin Luther King never told the sincere believers in the sanctity of civil rights that the march on Selma was going to provide them “ZERO negative experiences”; he fully briefed them on the fire hoses, police dogs, and riot batons they’d face in the valley of the shadow of death and urged non-violent resistance.

(For those who think I’m kicking Roger while he’s down, please note the dates on the hyperlinked stories from The Stash Blog, where I made these same points long before Roger’s indictment.)

Chris Bennett then cites my advice that only legalization for all, even healthy atheists like me, will truly protect medical and religious use without undue restrictions.  He then twists that into imagining that I’m telling the movement we never should have fought for medical use laws.

The crucial distinction this suggestion misses is that nobody ever told medical users pre-1996 they wouldn’t go to jail if they bought a $50 card from a guy based on a legal theory that medical use is currently protected by the Constitution.  Instead, NORML, MPP, DPA, ASA, and others all fought to create medical use laws, many of which do provide a legitimate card that will actually protect you from arrest and jail.

In other words, activists got government to recognize medical use rights through initiative and legislative efforts to create new laws.  Mr. Christie is fighting to get government to recognize religious use rights through litigious efforts to interpret existing case law.  This path has already been much litigated and at least in the short run it is a dead end.  We even tried the litigation path to secure medical use rights in rescheduling petitions and lawsuits against the DEA.  Every legal theory attempted to force courts to recognize a cannabis right that would supersede the Controlled Substances Act has failed and the courts keep telling us to go back to Congress and change the laws.  Now we can hope for judges more willing to extend legal protection to new and alternative religions in the future, but for now those arguments will likely continue to be rejected by the courts.

NORML has the support of some of the finest lawyers in the land.  They have explained to us a procedure the courts use in these cases called the Sherbert Test, which are the four criteria to determine if an individual’s right to religious free exercise has been violated by the government. The test is as follows:

For the individual, the court must determine

(1) Whether the person has a claim involving a sincere religious belief, and

(2) Whether the government action is a substantial burden on the person’s ability to act on that belief.

If these two elements are established, then the government must prove

(3) That it is acting in furtherance of a “compelling state interest,” and

(4) That it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion.

Unfortunately, point (3)’s “compelling state interest” is prohibiting the general public from using cannabis as laid out in the Controlled Substances Act.  The courts realize that if point (1)’s “sincere religious belief” is only “God wants me to smoke herb”, then there would suddenly be about 26 million sincere religious believers in the United States and that point (3)’s “compelling state interest” would be impossible to enforce.

This is the moment where believers bring up established precedent on use of ayahuasca and peyote by certain religions.  The differences are that a) very few people use peyote or ayahuasca non-religiously, b) the people who do use it infrequently, c) the religions that hold them sacred have traditions and ceremony and theology that don’t deal with the sacraments (i.e. their religion is more than just “let’s do hallucinogens”), d) the members of their church are easily identifiable, so e) letting the believers use hallucinogens isn’t going to substantially burden the compelling state interest of preventing hallucinogen use by non-believers.

In other words, the minute courts decide ganja churches can’t be busted for cannabis, nobody can be busted for cannabis.  Your sacrament is too popular with non-believers.

Another test used by the courts is the Lemon Test.  This test is as follows:

(1) The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;

(2) The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;

(3) The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

In the case of cannabis churches, the government’s ban passes (1) in that there is a secular purpose for banning cannabis use and passes (2) because banning cannabis does not promote or inhibit religion (Rastas can believe and preach all they like about the “Tree of Life”, they just can’t grow or use it) and passes (3) because banning cannabis isn’t an “excessive entanglement” (nothing else about the religion is being banned.)

(The “Lemon Sherbert” test, on the other hand, has nothing to do with religious cannabis use, but does make for a tasty snack on a summer day.)

Next Mr. Bennett criticizes my “full disclosure” saying that my atheism “puts [Russ] completely outside of this realm,” referring to the First Amendment.  He says it “is not supposed to be about one religion’s right over another’s – it is supposed to be about the freedom of all religions,” which is a common belief among the religious that dismisses atheism from the same protections they enjoy.  In fact, the First Amendment also provides a freedom from religion and holds that sincere personal non-theistic beliefs enjoy the same protection as religious beliefs (see United States v. Seeger, 1965).

If the conscientious objectors to the Vietnam draft in Seeger need not believe in God to invoke personal beliefs against murder as reason not to be jailed for draft dodging, then Chris Bennett should support my opinion that I need not have belief in God to invoke personal beliefs for using cannabis as reason not to be jailed for it, just as I support the opinion of the religious that their use of sacrament doesn’t deserve punishment.  But once again, our opinions don’t mean squat to the cops, the courts, and the guy with the $50-$250 Get Out Of Jail Free card who’s doing time.

(By the way, I find it interesting that Mr. Bennett attacks my atheism and ignores my Mormon background.  Many members of my ancestors’ church used the same “it’s our sincere religious belief” and “First Amendment!” and “it has 5,000 years of historical tradition in multiple religions” theories to defend the practice of polygamy.  Assuming it is polygamy consisting of multiple consenting non-coerced adults, shouldn’t that be as much a religious right as the right to cannabis sacrament?)

Chris Bennett brings up the famous Guam Rasta case, without noting that it was not the First Amendment that was cited in support of the court’s opinion, it was Guam’s Organic Act, which gives Guam greater protection for religion than the US Constitution.  It should also be noted that the prosecutor in the Guam case failed to present Guam’s compelling interest in banning cannabis and that had he done so, the court may not have been able to issue such a favorable opinion.  Mr. Bennett also brings up a Rasta winning a religious use case in Italy.  Fantastic, if you think that my statement “no court in the land is going to recognize a religion’s right to use cannabis” referred to “the planet” as “the land” and not as “the states of the United States” as was clearly the context of my argument.

Then Chris Bennett expends a whole lot of ink trying to paint our explanation of the government’s opinion and the current state of court decisions as NORML’s opinion.  Our opinion, for the 150^th time it seems, is similar to Terrence McKenna’s:

If the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.

We see cannabis use as a human right, not merely a religious right.  No government has the right to prevent you from using cannabis for whatever purpose and reason you choose, so long as you don’t harm others.  Our beliefs say that Roger, Chris, and I can all use cannabis because we want to.  Roger and Chris seem to believe that I should only get to use cannabis if I renounce my atheism, or at the very least, consider cannabis to be sacred.

What we’re trying to explain is how the courts have decided these cases and what some lawyers have told us they’d need to see in a case before trying to defend it as religious (the “black Rasta” quotes aren’t mine; they are me quoting a lawyer I know who defends many cannabis cases and who is certified to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court).  We’re trying to make the point that pursuit of the litigation strategy that defines cannabis use as protected sacrament is a fool’s errand not because it’s foolish to fight for your rights but because that particular strategy has already been tried every which way and has already failed.

Now, naturally, the people with sincere belief who are prosecuted have every right to try to make that argument stick and we really do hope our analysis is faulty and Roger sets a precedent that allows people to claim a religious use arguments (because we know a few lawyers who will then take that precedent and make it available to all users, even atheists).  But we at NORML do not need to be throwing our supporters’ donations at a strategy we believe is doomed to fail, especially when we have legislative strategies that, when they succeed, protect all the users of cannabis: medical, spiritual, and recreational.

Indeed, in our support of California’s Prop 19, we attempted to change the laws so that everyone’s right to personal use and cultivation of cannabis is recognized, regardless of religion.  We helped get the greatest level of support for legalization in a statewide initiative ever, with 46.1% of California voters agreeing with our belief in personal cannabis rights for all.  Maybe Mr. Bennett considers that another NORML “failure” since it didn’t pass, but we see the steadily increasing public opinion support for legalization (up to 46% from 12% in the early 1970s when we began) and the increasing percentages supporting statewide legalization measures (up from California’s 1972 Prop 19 which got 33.5%) to be success.

What Allen and I were trying to say to the religious use community is that your best path to recognition of religious rights is not through litigating the courts to jettison precedent and decide for a favorable First Amendment / RFRA decision, but through legislating personal marijuana use rights for all people, even atheists and heathens.  We’re not saying you’re wrong; we’re saying the courts say you’re wrong.  But as Mr. Bennett’s article and the various responses to it from religious users have proven, it is nigh impossible for true believers to separate an criticism of one religious user’s legal tactics and commercial advertising from an attack on religious use itself… especially when it’s an atheist behind the keyboard.

Dear Mr. ——-,

Thank you for contacting me to express your opinion regarding H.R. 2835, the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act. I appreciate having the benefit of your thoughts.

On June 11, 2009, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced H.R. 2835 to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The bill would further exempt authorized patients and medical marijuana providers who are acting in accordance with state laws from federal prosecution.

Currently, marijuana and its derivatives are classified under Schedule I of the CSA, the most restrictive of five categories. Schedule I substances are defined as drugs with a high potential for abuse that have no recognized medicinal value. Other Schedule I substances include heroin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, and psilocybin. Schedule II substances are defined as drugs with a high potential for abuse with recognized medical uses, such as opium, cocaine, and amphetamine.

The preliminary evidence suggests that certain components of marijuana may be beneficial to individuals suffering from a variety of ailments. The evidence in this area, however, is far from conclusive. Should conclusive evidence surface, however, the prudent thing to do would be to consider allowing a doctor to prescribe a drug that synthetically reproduces the beneficial components. This is not what the referendums in California or Arizona permitted. These referendums only permitted a caregiver, who does not have to be a licensed physician, to merely suggest that the patient begin using marijuana for the consumption to be legal. Given this, I would not support the extension of the language of either of these referendums on a national level.

However, as you may know, Alaska voters approved a ballot measure in 1998 allowing medical marijuana use. Under state law, medical marijuana patients must register with the state and can only do so with a doctor’s note asserting the person has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition that medical marijuana could help. The patient can register up to two qualified caregivers who would also be exempt from prosecution for marijuana possession in approved circumstances. The law prohibits medical marijuana use in public and in a way that endangers anyone else. An October 2009 decision by the Department of Justice will allow Alaskans to use marijuana for medicinal purposes without fear of prosecution.

Once again, thank you for expressing your views on this issue. If you
haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to sign up for my
e-newsletter at http://donyoung.house.gov/IMA/issue_subscribe.htm . This will allow me to provide you with updates on this and other important issues. If I can be of any assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

DON YOUNG
Congressman for All Alaska

I guess while I was on vacation somebody asked Tina Fey what she thought about marijuana…

Sarah Palin Calls Marijuana ‘Minimal Problem‘

“Well, if we’re talking about pot, I’m not for the legalization of pot,” Palin said. “Because I think that would just encourage especially our young people to think that it’s OK to go ahead and use it and I’m not an advocate for that.”

Unlike now, where we tell our young people that pot use is not OK by arresting and locking up adults.

“However I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts. And If somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country,” Palin said.

Except that we’re not really going to arrest or lock up any adults for smoking pot, because when they are in their house smoking and not harming anyone, our cops have better things to do.

Got it?  It’s critically important to keep marijuana criminal to dissuade youth, but it is also a low priority and, relatively speaking, a minimal problem.  We absolutely cannot stop arresting adults for weed, or the children suffer, but we’re not going to go out of our way to arrest any adults for weed, because it’s not appropriate for law enforcement.

Coming from anyone else this level of cognitive dissonance would blow my mind, but this is the woman who considered “what newspapers do you read?” to be a “gotcha” question, so nothing surprises me from her.

Oh, and how is the effort to discourage young people from using cannabis going?  Well, they find it easier to get a hold of than alcohol, 41% of high school seniors have tried it, 1 in 4 seniors says they can procure cannabis within an hour, and more than 1 in 10 young adults aged 18-25 use cannabis twice a week of more.

How’s that discouragey-young-peopley thing workin’ out for ya?  *wink*

Palin has previously admitted to smoking marijuana, but did so at a time when it was legal to do so in Alaska.

The Alaska Supreme Court made it legal to possess small amounts of marijuana in a 1975 decision, but it was then recriminalized by Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in 2006.  [Which was found unconstitutional and Alaskans still enjoy the privacy right to up to one ounce of marijuana in their homes.]

“I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled,” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006.

So what is this “minimal problem” that adult use of marijuana causes?  That it leads to delusions of grandeur among former beauty queens who quit their only elected office?

I guess it is a problem so minimal that we’ve seen five of the last eight major party candidates for president (Clinton, Gore, Bush, Kerry, Obama) and five of the last eight vice presidential candidates (Quayle, Gore, Kemp, Edwards, Palin) admit to having used marijuana.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Hash Bash and Colorado Cannabis Convention both report thousands in attendance at first events of the festival season
2. Philadelphia District Attorney changing policy to no longer arrest for personal marijuana possession, police spokesman disagrees
3. Los Angeles anti-medmj District Attorney Steve Cooley announces plans to run for state Attorney General

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

• Roots Monday: Some X 6 Band – “420 Stomp”

This Month in NORML with Executive Director Allen St. Pierre

• Updates on marijuana legislation in the states
• Explanation of Alaskan privacy rulings regarding possession of marijuana

Radical Rant

• Part One of the DEA’s Top Ten “Facts” About Marijuana Legalization

Left there hanging on the vine, though, are the other nine “facts” the DEA are presenting, a la David Letterman (but not as funny), in something we’re calling the…

“These here, Paul, from our own government, from somewhere deep in Dick Cheney’s secret bunker, the Top Ten Facts About Legalization from the DEA…”

Fact 1: We have made significant progress in fighting drug use and drug trafficking in America. Now is not the time to abandon our efforts.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the fight against drugs cannot be won. However, overall drug use is down by more than a third in the last twenty years, while cocaine use has dropped by an astounding 70 percent. Ninety-five percent of Americans do not use drugs. This is success by any standards.

Actually, two out of three Americans use drugs if you include alcohol and one out of ten Americans use cannabis (National Survey on Drug Use & Health 2008) every year, so I’m not sure how you can say 95% of Americans do not use drugs.  If we were to include prescription and over-the-counter drug use, I’m sure something close to 95% of Americans actually use drugs.

But we weren’t talking about “legalizing drugs”, we’re talking about regulation of cannabis.  Whether cocaine or other drug use has risen or fallen is beside the point.  Fierce marijuana criminalization laws haven’t stopped the United States from leading the world in lifetime marijuana use and open tolerance of cannabis coffeehouses in The Netherlands haven’t moved the Dutch from having half the lifetime use rates and one-third the young teen (<=15) use rates of cannabis as Americans.  Portugal has decriminalized drugs to a large extent and the international community calls it “a resounding success”.  Singapore and Indonesia have some of the harshest anti-cannabis laws in the world, and yet they still have to keep executing the smugglers who won’t stop bringing it in to the country.  We can’t even keep drugs out of our SuperMax federal prisons; what makes the DEA think it can succeed in keeping drugs out of free adult hands?

Lifetime cannabis use = 31% in 1988 to 41% in 2008

Drug use rates have very little to do with drug laws.  And even the DEA’s claim that drug use is down a third in twenty years is suspect.  If we define “drug use” as the lifetime rates that have been tracked by the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health over the past twenty years (1988-2008), then cannabis use has risen dramatically in the past twenty years, from 31% to 41% of the population aged 12 and older who have tried cannabis.

Lifetime crack use = more than double; heroin use = almost double; hallucinogen use = almost double; coke, meth, and inhalants = all increased >20%

In fact, when you take a look at the lifetime use of illegal drugs (cocaine, crack, meth, heroin, hallucinogens, and inhalants), you find that all those figures have risen over the past twenty years, too.

Annual alcohol consumption = steady; annual cigarette consumption = 38% in 1988 to 28% in 2008

The most interesting figures appear when you look at lifetime, annual, and monthly use of the legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.  Alcohol use has remained steady but declining, while cigarette use has plummeted.

What this all tells us is:

• People that want to use substances will;
• Maintaining prohibition over marijuana and drugs hasn’t stopped anyone; in fact use has risen;
• Regulating dangerous and addictive drugs like alcohol and tobacco hasn’t encouraged greater use; in fact use has decreased.

Fact 2: A balanced approach of prevention, enforcement, and treatment is the key in the fight against drugs.

A successful drug policy must apply a balanced approach of prevention, enforcement and treatment. All three aspects are crucial. For those who end up hooked on drugs, there are innovative programs, like Drug Treatment Courts, that offer non-violent users the option of seeking treatment. Drug Treatment Courts provide court supervision, unlike voluntary treatment centers.

Almost twice as much of your tax money goes to trying to arrest you for drugs as trying to help you quit them

That’s a nice sentiment, but it is not how the government actually prosecutes the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs.  49.8% of all drug arrests are for marijuana violations, with 89% of those marijuana arrests made for possession alone.  The “balanced approach” in President Obama’s FY 2011 Budget makes the DEA the fat kid on the see-saw, with $9.9 billion appropriated for law enforcement and interdiction vs. $5.6 billion appropriated for treatment and prevention.

Fact 3: Illegal drugs are illegal because they are harmful.

There is a growing misconception that some illegal drugs can be taken safely. For example, savvy drug dealers have learned how to market drugs like Ecstasy to youth. Some in the Legalization Lobby even claim such drugs have medical value, despite the lack of conclusive scientific evidence.

Once again, I haven’t seen any movement on the West Coast to put legalization of MDMA on the ballot; we’re talking about regulating marijuana.

Remember, this is a graph on a logarithmic scale. Cannabis is actually 2,000 times safer than alcohol.

However there is a way of measuring how safe a particular substance is to ingest; it’s called a “therapeutic index“.  It’s the ratio of “ED-50″, that is, a  minimum dose that will have the desired effect in 50% of test subjects, to the “LD-50″, which is the size of a lethal dose that will kill 50% of test subjects.  For example, half the people who cop a buzz on a “dose” of alcohol – whatever amount that is – will die if they drink ten times that amount.  That’s a “therapeutic index” of 1:10.

When measured by therapeutic index, most “illegal” drugs are technically safer than alcohol and cannabis is the safest of all with a therapeutic index that’s practically immeasurable.  Cannabis is so non-toxic that it’s ratio is estimated to be 1:20,000 to 1:40,000.  The DEA’s Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young concluded it would take a man smoking 1,500 lbs. of cannabis in 15 minutes to die of an overdose.

Fact 4: Smoked marijuana is not scientifically approved medicine. Marinol, the legal version of medical marijuana, is approved by science.

According to the Institute of Medicine, there is no future in smoked marijuana as medicine. However, the prescription drug Marinol—a legal and safe version of medical marijuana which isolates the active ingredient of THC—has been studied and approved by the Food & Drug Administration as safe medicine. The difference is that you have to get a prescription for Marinol from a licensed physician. You can’t buy it on a street corner, and you don’t smoke it.

"The DEA's doing research like it's 1999..."

Nice of the DEA to reference the 1999 Institute of Medicine report.  That was the report that concluded, as every report on the subject has, that marijuana use “does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse.”

That report also noted that only 9% of marijuana users develop “dependence”, compared to 15% for alcohol, 17% for cocaine, 23% for heroin, and 32% for tobacco.

It also noted that “A distinctive marijuana and THC withdrawal syndrome has been identified, but it is mild and subtle compared with the profound physical syndrome of alcohol or heroin withdrawal,” which can cause seizures, hallucinations, and severe cravings.  According to the report, “the symptoms of marijuana withdrawal include restlessness, irritability, mild agitation, insomnia, sleep EEG disturbance, nausea, and cramping.”

So if sometime later in the Top Ten list the DEA wants you to believe that legalization of marijuana will lead to increased addiction, remember that they were the ones using this report to argue against the medical efficacy of smoked marijuana.

However, it is interesting that the DEA makes no mention of the 2009 statement by the American Medical Association which concluded “Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis…. To the extent that rescheduling marijuana out of Schedule I will benefit this effort [to develop cannabinoid medicines], such a move can be supported.

It’s also interesting how the DEA never mentions vaporization, tinctures, and edibles, which have been proven to eliminate the major harm of cannabis use – smoking.

And I never tire of the DEA that warns us about the super-potent Schedule I “Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed” that approaches average THC potencies of 10% with maximums in the 30% range, then turns around and tells us how Schedule III 100% potent Marinol is so safe and effective.

Fact 5: Drug control spending is a minor portion of the U.S. budget. Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction, government spending on drug control is minimal.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the United States has wasted billions of dollars in its anti-drug efforts. But for those kids saved from drug addiction, this is hardly wasted dollars. Moreover, our fight against drug abuse and addiction is an ongoing struggle that should be treated like any other social problem. Would we give up on education or poverty simply because we haven’t eliminated all problems? Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction—whether in taxpayer dollars or in pain and suffering—government spending on drug control is minimal.

The "Legalization Lobby's" budget, in green, vs. the DEA's budget, in red. What's that, you don't see much green? Yeah, neither do we!

Finally, something sort or true from the DEA: “Drug control spending is a minor portion of the U.S. budget.”  At $15.5 billion compared to the overall fiscal year budget of $3.7 trillion, they’re right.  The entire drug war budget doesn’t even equal  the single “Military Construction” line ($16.9 B) in the Pentagon’s $548 billion budget.

But then they pivot that fact to the falsehood that saving money on law enforcement and making money in tax revenues by regulating marijuana markets would not match the gross expenses we’d suffer from our kids becoming slaves to drug addiction.  Never mind that they just ignored the previous point from the 1999 IOM Report about the gateway theory – what they are telling you is that legal marijuana users will cost society more than it saves and earns from taxation.

Canadian study of costs per substance user per year

To bolster this point, drug warriors like to point out that “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco only bring in a fraction of money compared to the measurable social costs of alcoholism and tobacco cancers.  It’s another example of starting from a fact and pivoting to a falsehood.  Alcohol and tobacco cost society a lot of money because (a) they’re addictive (see 1999 IOM Report above) and (b) they can kill you (see therapeutic index above).  A Canadian study on the annual health costs of one tobacco, alcohol, or cannabis user were $800, $165, and $20, respectively, while the enforcement costs on tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis per user were $0, $153, and $328, respectively.  In essence, Canada is spending $328 per toker to save $20 in health care costs!  Those numbers must be worse in America.

But set aside the numbers for a moment and just use some common sense.  If cannabis users cause such a great social harm that they are a cost burden to society, we are costing society right now.  It’s not as if nobody smokes pot now and suddenly legalization on the West Coast will create a country full of 22 million pot smokers imposing a new burden on society.  I’ve broken down this cost argument before, but basically whatever we cost now (some number far less than alcohol or tobacco, certainly), we’d cost less once you’ve made some tax revenue off of us.  The California Board of Equalization estimates $1.4 billion in revenues from legalization, so there would have to be $1.4 billion-worth of new pot smokers recruited and old tokers puffing more for this theory to make any sense at all.  If California doubled its current 2.3 million tokers after legalization, those 2.3 million new tokers would have to cost the state $608 each to eat up the tax revenues.

For comparison’s sake, according to the UC San Francisco Institute on Health and Aging, alcohol abuse costs California $17.8 billion and kills 13,000 Californians annually.  The NSDUH State Reports tell us that 62.5% of Californians 18 and older use alcohol, which works out to 17.1 million drinkers.  That division works out to a drinker costing California $1,041 each.

So in order to swallow this whopper, we need to believe that a legalized toker will cost California 60% as much as a legal drinker, when the studies show that in Canada a legalized toker would cost about 6% as much as a legal drinker.

Fact 6: Legalization of drugs will lead to increased use and increased levels of addiction. Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably.

Legalization has been tried before—and failed miserably. Alaska’s experiment with Legalization in the 1970s led to the state’s teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska’s residents to vote to re-criminalize marijuana in 1990.

Again, see Allen St. Pierre’s deconstruction of the Alaska story, and remember that the same DEA that cited the 1999 IOM Report above that said marijuana use doesn’t lead to hard drug addiction is now telling you West Coast legalization of cannabis will lead to increased addiction.

When we look at the experience of thirteen states that have decriminalized marijuana and the fourteen states that have legalized medical use of marijuana, we find the DEA’s theory blown to bits.  In fact, that same 1999 IOM Report cited by the DEA above even concluded, “In sum, there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use.”

Fact 7: Crime, violence, and drug use go hand-in-hand.

Crime, violence and drug use go hand in hand. Six times as many homicides are committed by people under the influence of drugs, as by those who are looking for money to buy drugs. Most drug crimes aren’t committed by people trying to pay for drugs; they’re committed by people on drugs.

60% of the revenue for Mexican murderers comes from marijuana prohibition

Drugs, drugs, drugs… what does this have to do with cannabis?  The notion of a cannabis user deprived of weed and jonesing so bad he commits a crime to get the money for weed is ridiculous and the idea that cannabis users are driven to crime by the effects of cannabis is ludicrous.  Every study (like this one) that looks at violence and marijuana finds that cannabis use tends to inhibit violence by its users.

The only violence commonly attributed to marijuana is directly caused by its prohibition.  Mexican drug syndicates are not murdering 18,000 people over a three year span to protect their breweries, vineyards, beer and wine trucks, and hops and tobacco crops.  The only crime commonly attributed to marijuana use is the plundering of munchies from the fridge.

Fact 8: Alcohol has caused significant health, social, and crime problems in this country, and legalized drugs would only make the situation worse.

The Legalization Lobby claims drugs are no more dangerous than alcohol. But drunk driving is one of the primary killers of Americans. Do we want our bus drivers, nurses, and airline pilots to be able to take drugs one evening, and operate freely at work the next day? Do we want to add to the destruction by making drugged driving another primary killer?

No, I actually claim that cannabis is far safer than alcohol, see the therapeutic index data above.  This is another talking point that pivots from a fact (drunk driving is a serious problem) to a falsehood (the implied threat that legalization of cannabis would lead to more highway fatalities).

Nobody's suggesting you hot-box your ride and see how well you do on the test... but you will out-perform a drinker.

First of all, the US Dept. of Transportation fact sheet on cannabis states, “Effects from smoking cannabis products are felt within minutes and reach their peak in 10-30 minutes. Typical marijuana smokers experience a high that lasts approximately 2 hours.”  So if the bus driver, nurse, and airline pilot want to smoke a joint before bed and drive, nurse, or fly me the next day, I’m not at all worried; no more so than if they decide to have a glass of wine the night before work.

Then we have to remember that if cannabis smokers are driving, they are driving now.  If pot smoking were such a threat on our roadways we’d have seen the bodies pile up by now.  Numerous studies have confirmed what we all know:

• Drivers under the influence of cannabis tend to follow less closely to the vehicle in front of them;
• Drivers tend to decrease speed following cannabis inhalation;
• Drivers with blood alcohol levels of 0.05% were three times as likely to have engaged in unsafe driving activities prior to a fatal crash as compared to individuals who tested positive for marijuana;
• Drivers with low levels of alcohol present in their blood (below 0.05%) experienced a greater elevated risk as compared to drivers who tested positive for high concentrations of cannabis (above 5ng/ml).

In other words, even the highest cannabis-using driver is less dangerous than an alcohol-buzzed driver who is still below the per se impairment limits (0.08%) for alcohol.

Fact 9: Europe’s more liberal drug policies are not the right model for America.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the “European Model” of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America.

Compared to Americans, Dutch teenagers use marijuana at half the rates, even though it is sold openly in coffeehouses

The Dutch began their policy of cannabis tolerance in 1976.  According to the 2008 EMCDDA National Report for The Netherlands, lifetime prevalence of heroin use was 0.3% in 1997 and 0.2% in 2001.  I looked all over the DEA’s website and press releases for 2001 looking for them to claim that Dutch cannabis tolerance has led to a one-third decrease in heroin use, but I never found it.  Prevalence of heroin use in 2005 was reported to be 0.6%, which would be triple the 2001 figure, but only double the 1997 figure.

But once again, the DEA cited the 1999 IOM Report above that tells us smoking pot doesn’t lead to heroin addiction, so I’m not sure what the DEA’s point is.  It also doesn’t help their case that their heroin use rates are less than half of American heroin use rates (1.52% lifetime prevalence).

Fact 10: Most non-violent drug users get treatment, not jail time.

The Legalization Lobby claims that America’s prisons are filling up with users. Truth is, only about 5 percent of inmates in federal prison are there because of simple possession. Most drug criminals are in jail—even on possession charges—because they have plea-bargained down from major trafficking offences or more violent drug crimes.

"The fact is that finding a first-time. non-violent offender in prison for marijuana is like finding a unicorn." -- John Walters, former drug czar, on the 11,200 Marijuana Unicorns in a cage right now.

Oh, only 1 out of 20 of the 2.3 million people we imprison are there for simple possession?  My math tells me that’s 115,000 Americans in a cage for their personal use of drugs.  The Sentencing Project determined that 11,200 of those Americans are in a cage for simple marijuana possession alone.  Of course, this is just federal prison we’re talking about, when most marijuana users are processed through city and county jails and housed in state prisons.

Another bit of falsehood pivoted to from these imprisonment facts is that pronouncement that most “drug criminals” are plea-bargaining down from more serious charges.  Often those are “intent to distribute” charges filed when a cannabis user makes the mistake of keeping separate strains in separate bags (multiple bags in the eyes of the law means you must be selling), “conspiracy” charges filed against cannabis users who “go in” with other cannabis users to split the cost of expensive cannabis, and “manufacture” charges filed when a cannabis user grows his own instead of participating in the black market.

But whether people are serving a day, 29 years, or 93 years for marijuana charges is irrelevant; it is the the arrest for marijuana possession itself that causes the harms to the user irrespective of any stay in a jail cell:

• If you’re convicted or enter a plea, you’ll be on probation and mandatory Urinalysis Tests will be performed.
• A conviction could impact child custody issues in family court.
• An arrest for Possession with Intent to Distribute or an arrest for the Manufacture of plants may result in the State attempting to Forfeit your home, your car, your cash and other assets which they can do even if charges are later dismissed or you are acquitted at trial! This heinous law is know as “Asset Forfeiture”.
• A conviction can impact Federally insured student loans
• A felony conviction deprives you of the right to vote
• A felony conviction deprives you of the right to possess firearms
• A conviction can get you tossed out of government subsidized housing
• A conviction can impair your ability to obtain food stamps and other welfare benefits
• Your ability to ever adopt children will be jeopardized
• You will be denied entry into Canada and possibly other countries
• A misdemeanor conviction remains on your record and available to the public for three years before it can be expunged, which may have an impact on current or future employment
• A felony conviction remains on your record and available to the public for five years before it can be expunged, which may have an impact on current or future employment.

The DEA is terrified because there is a legitimate shot for the voters to legalize marijuana use, manufacture, and sales in one, possibly two, and maybe even three West Coast states this year.  If this bit of reefer madness is the best counter they have to offer, I really like our chances!

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Hemp Headlines

1. American citizens among the dead in latest violence in Juárez
2. Rhode Island Senate committee approves decriminalization
3. Lance Mackie wins record fourth straight Alaskan Iditarod dog sled race
4. Stupid Stoner Stories: Bong hit at red light earns Canadian man attention of police van idling next to him

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Johnny Reeferseed & the High Rollers

• Irie St. Patrick’s Day: Paddyrasta – “40 Shades of Green”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Why does marijuana make you cough? Why, if related to THC, does THC make you cough?
• Why does cannabis makes sex feel better?
• Is it true that pot, in general, will help cancer patients with nausea or is it dependent on the strain? Sometimes I get sicker, depending on what I smoke…
• What is your thought on Rick Simpson, and the results of people put marijuana on cancerous tumors that show major improvement on curing the cancer?
• I have chronic knee pain and my dad is a doctor. He wants to give me tons of pharma drugs, but they make me feel like a zombie. How do I convince him that the herb is better?
• Can cannabis be used to treat cyatic nerve pain associated w/ degenerative discs? Also can cannabis be used to treat anxiety/OCD /depression (I list these disorders together because they are all present)?
• Why do you think the government is ignoring the AMA’s call to reschedule Cannabis?
• Which is better for ingestion, butane extraction or isopropyl alcohol, when one prepares hash oil?

Reefer Madness!

• Christian Science Monitor’s Reefer Madness Redux