AND medical marijuana doctors make house calls?

The ACLU is fast becoming a powerful friend of the marijuana legalization movement.

hawaiinewsnow The American Civil Liberties Union says Hawaii’s government has answered its demand to change “heavy-handed” medical marijuana policies.

The ACLU of Hawaii announced Tuesday that the Department of Public Safety will no longer prohibit physicians who prescribe marijuana from performing house calls.

The group also said the state is ending its practice of requiring physicians to register locations where they see patients and discuss marijuana.

ACLU senior staff attorney Daniel Gluck said in a statement that marijuana should be treated the same as other prescription drugs.

He said physicians who recommend medical marijuana may do so at any location, even if it isn’t registered with the Department of Public Safety.

We won't go after state-legal medical marijuana. No, wait, I meant, we WILL.

The Obama administration has appeared to have flip flopped on it’s position on Medical Marijuana.  Let’s see if he responds.

mlive.com The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the Obama administration to clarify its policy on medical marijuana following apparent inconsistencies in recent months. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the ACLU sought assurance the government would keep its promise not to arrest and prosecute workers who are complying with the law in states where medical marijuana is legal.

Any use of marijuana is prohibited under federal law. In 2008, Michigan voted to legalize medical marijuana, joining more than a dozen other states. In 2009, the Obama administration said it would not seek to arrest and prosecute users and suppliers who were operating within state law.

However, the administration appears to have changed its position. Recent warning letters from U.S. attorneys are prompting some states to reconsider medical marijuana policies. An Associated Press report quotes one such letter (emphasis added):

We maintain the authority to enforce (federal law) vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law.

(L-R) NORML Founder Keith Stroup, CA Assem. Tom Ammiano, NORML Advisory Board Member Rick Steves at NORML CON 2009 San Francisco

(The Olympian) A legislative ethics panel has thrown out a complaint against state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles and others who invited international travel adviser Rick Steves to talk in October at the Capitol about topics that included marijuana.

Steves, who supports decriminalizing marijuana possession, says travel can help people learn about how other cultures address social problems, which can help in the creation of better public policies related to health care, drug laws and other issues.

About $50 of public money was spent on posters publicizing the talk, and Steves gave out copies of a travel book he wrote, the ethics board found.

Not all lawmakers escaped sanctions stemming from complaints brought by activist Rob Kavanaugh of Lacey. The American Civil Liberties Union, which supports decriminalizing marijuana, provided free lunches at the event, and lawmakers who ate the lunches must give back a portion of their “per diem” spending allowance to the state.

It amounts to $18 each for two senators and a Senate staffer and $9.50 each for five representatives.

Rob Kavanaugh is on the case!  $83.50 of the public’s money will not be frivolously expended to reimburse lawmakers for a free lunch meeting with a travel writer purchased by the ACLU.  We no longer have to fear that the ethics of Washington lawmakers will be compromised by getting a free sandwich from the Bill of Rights advocacy organization.

If I had known that buying them a sandwich was all it takes to shift lawmaker’s views on marijuana legalization, I would have sent them each a six-foot sub years ago.

First, do no harm...

(Change.org) Last week President Obama quietly announced that he would nominate Michele Leonhart to lead the Drug Enforcement Agency. Ms. Leonhart, who was appointed and promoted by George W. Bush, oversaw the Bush administration’s tactic of raiding the homes of desperately ill individual medical marijuana patients in California.

Ms. Leonhart also has a record of adamantly fighting against allowing scientific research of the potential medicinal value of marijuana. Ignoring the ruling of a federal judge, Ms. Leonhart single-handedly blocked applications from respected university researchers studying medical marijuana.

Tell your Senator not to confirm Ms. Leonhart.

We need a DEA leader who understands the potential value of medical marijuana — not a Bush-era holdover who thought raiding the homes of cancer patients was a good idea.

Surf over to Change.org and sign the petition (click the big medical marijuana caduceus on the left).  We may not be able to stop Leonhart’s appointment, but we don’t have to be silent about it.  You’ll make an even bigger impression if you write, call, or fax your senator, and if you have the means to do so, visit them in person.  (While you’re at it, check out our state and federal Action Alerts at NORML.)

The illegality of marijuana makes our constituency much less powerful politically than our numbers should merit.  There are 4.3 million people in the National Rifle Association (NRA).  There are 1 million people in the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).  There are a half a million people in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  Their political power means Washington never succeeds in restricting gun rights, abortion rights, and free speech rights.

There are 22 million people who will smoke marijuana this year.  That’s about equal to total number of adult African-Americans in America.  12.5 million of us will partake at least once a month.  That’s about equal to the total number of adult Asian-Americans in America.  There are 3.5 million people who will smoke marijuana daily this year.  That’s about equal to the total number of adult Mormons in America.  Can you imagine appointing to the head of a federal law enforcement agency a person who believed we should arrest all black or Asian or Mormon people?

Yet probably only 1 out of 100 daily marijuana smokers belong to a political cannabis reform organization like NORML.  It’s no wonder Washington laughs at us.  You cannot hide in the closet anymore if you expect to no longer be treated as a criminal.  Join NORML Today!

ROBBINSVILLE, N.C. — Teachers in this small rural town’s school district are awaiting a state appeals court ruling to see whether they’ll be required to submit to random tests for drugs and alcohol.

Graham County, N.C., which has fewer than 1,200 students, is one of a small group of school districts in the nation attempting to establish random drug tests of teachers and other employees.

The district would be among the “very, very few” to randomly test teachers, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Adam Wolf says.

School districts in at least four Kentucky counties — Knott, Montgomery, Letcher and Floyd — do random testing, the Kentucky Education Association’s Tim Southern said.

Teachers in Kanawha County, W.Va., came close to being subjected to such testing, but three days before its Jan. 1 start, a federal district court stopped it. The idea is also on hold in Hawaii, awaiting a state board’s ruling.

“It would be in our view a waste of money, because there is no problem that a drug-testing program can address,” said Michael Simpson, assistant general counsel with the National Education Association.

In North Carolina, a lawsuit by the state teachers’ association prevented a 2007 start for random drug testing in Graham County schools.

Former county school board chairman Mitch Colvard says he saw a worsening local drug problem in his job as a paramedic. He pushed for the policy in 2006.

“I think when I put my kids in their hands, they lose their rights,” Colvard says. “My rights are more important.”

via USATODAY.com.

Mr. Colvard, what right of yours is it that we’re protecting with random teacher drug testing?  Your right to invade the bodily integrity of your children’s instructor?

First of all, you must acknowledge that random urine screening is not an exact science.  There are medications and conditions that can create a false positive test.  There are adulterants and supplements that can create a false negative test.  Most drug screening doesn’t bother to detect those who abuse alcohol.  Most of all, urine screening disproportionately detects those who use cannabis over those who use meth, cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens, as those substances flush out of the system within a couple of days.  

So if your goal is to insure your children are never in a classroom with a drug-addled teacher, then random drug testing is not a good method to achieve that goal.  The tests wouldn’t catch a drunk teacher or a teacher stoned on Vicodin, and those teachers who would fail for meth, cocaine, heroin, or hallucinogens should be so easily detected by observation that a test is unnecessary.  Truly the random drug test exists solely to catch marijuana smokers because without it, there is no obvious signs of marijuana use to detect.

So if the problem then is teachers who use marijuana teaching your children, but in practice you can’t determine their past marijuana use by simple observation, what exactly is it that you’re intending to protect your children from?  What harm from marijuana is going to befall your children when the harm from marijuana to the instructor is so slight you have to confiscate his urine to even determine if he uses marijuana?

Here’s an idea: why don’t you take the money you were going to spend on getting hard-working underpaid teachers to pee in a cup and spend it instead on, oh I don’t know, up-to-date history books, pencils, globes, microscopes, paper, and some teaching assistants?  Unless you think your kids are more interested in the metabolites in the teacher’s pee than the lessons in the teacher’s head.

San Diego County filed papers this week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to erase California’s medical marijuana law, arguing that federal prohibitions outlawing the substance supersede California’s law allowing sick people to use it.

County officials sued the state in 2006, arguing that federal law that makes marijuana illegal should trump the 1996 passage of state Proposition 215, which legalized it for patients to use with a prescription. Patients who use marijuana say it helps them treat chronic pain.

In July, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal handed medical marijuana users a victory when it rejected the county’s contention that the state law flies in the face of federal pot prohibitions. The appellate court found that the purpose of the federal law “is to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practices.”

In October, the California Supreme Court rejected the county’s request that it review the ruling. That left the county with the option of asking the nation’s highest court to step in.

San Diego Deputy County Counsel Tom Bunton said the U.S. Supreme Court might decide by June if it will take the case.

The county’s filing was met with a thumbs down but no surprise from Adam Wolf, the lead attorney for medical marijuana patients opposed to the challenge. Wolf on Friday called the county’s request “a waste” of taxpayers’ money.

Wolf, with the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the San Diego chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. NORML is a defendant in the county’s suit.

via REGION: County asks U.S. Supreme Court to erase state’s medical marijuana law : North County Times – Californian 01-17-2009.

How weird is it that the people of California came up with medical marijuana, the people of California voted for medical marijuana, the California legislature has amended medical marijuana, and the California courts have supported medical marijuana, but since five county supervisors in one county don’t like medical marijuana they want five judges in Washington DC to declare the will of the people null and void?