(METRO VANCOUVER) B.C.’s Prince of Pot has been granted bail and could temporarily be released from jail as early as today as he continues to await extradition to the U.S. to plead guilty to selling marijuana seeds.

Marc Emery has been held at the North Surrey Pre-Trial Centre in Port Coquitlam since turning himself over to authorities on Sept. 28.

He has promised to surrender to U.S. custody within 72 hours after an extradition order is signed, which could happen as soon as Dec. 1, which is the final day for submissions.

CANNABIS CULTURE – A Canadian care home resident with full body paralysis was confined to his bed against his will after his wheelchair was seized by caregivers – all because he smokes medical marijuana to relieve his Multiple Sclerosis.

CHBC news reported yesterday that Nyle Nagy, a Kelowna, British Columbia man who lives at the Brookhaven care home, was forcefully removed from his wheelchair and put in bed for a week after manager Adrien Vaughan objected to his legal use of medical marijuana.

“She sent two men over here to take my wheelchair and tell me that I’ve got to stay in this chair for seven days, as a punishment”, Nagy told the TV crew.

“To get rid of my pain and my spasms, that’s the only two reasons I smoke it” said Nagy, who has a license from the Canadian government to smoke marijuana.

Cannabis Culture has a video interview with the man as well.  This is the stigma even legal users of medical marijuana still face.  Sure, places like Canada, California, Colorado, and others won’t arrest you and lock you up if you’re a legit medical marijuana patient, but medical marijuana laws don’t force employers, hospitals, care facilities, landlords, or the government to accommodate your use of medical marijuana.  You’re perfectly free to use your medical marijuana, so long as you don’t mind homelessness, joblessness, removal from the organ transplant list, and revocation of your pain medications.

Don’t like it?  Well, here, try some liver-killing addictive pharmaceuticals instead.  Yes, I know, they can cause constipation, sexual dysfunction, nausea, lethargy, sleep disturbance, and in severe cases, death, but the good news is that your employers, hospitals, care facilities, landlords, and the government are statutorily forbidden from discriminating against you for using those drugs, or even asking if you use those drugs in most cases, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act.  That’s a federal law, which naturally doesn’t apply to medical marijuana, because as far as the feds are concerned, medical marijuana is an oxymoron.

(Times & Transcript) Pot smokers in Metro Moncton are expressing concern and dismay that the nemesis of the cannabis community, so-called “grit weed,” has made its way to this region.Grit weed is marijuana that has been embedded with tiny bits of glass or silica to add weight. Since pot is most often sold by weight, unscrupulous dope dealers add the glass to bulk up the value of the pot without regard to what inhaling bits of glass can do to smokers’ lungs.

Many cannabis culture magazines and websites have been warning of grit weed for years. However, it is only now showing up on the east coast of Canada. The phenomenon was first reported in Europe three or four years ago, then last year in the northeastern United States and now in Atlantic Canada, from New Brunswick to Newfoundland and all points in between.

The particles are often so tiny, like dust, that smokers might not even notice. The particles are most often silica, which is used to make glass. Inhaling silica can cause silicosis, a chronic lung disease that can make it hard to breathe and can cause non-cancerous lung tumours.

Silicosis is seen among those who work or live among raw silica, which has jagged edges, for instance miners and those who toil in quarries. The form of silica seen most often in pot is not jagged but has rounded edges, almost like microscopic beads, but which isn’t a whole lot better than the raw product.

[G]roups like NORML Canada, which advocates the repeal of marijuana laws, points to grit weed as a strong factor that favours removing the criminal element from pot by making it legal for smokers to grow their own.

Please be careful out there! Inspect your sack! Get yourself a small pocket jeweler’s loupe to magnify the buds when you’re checking out your purchase.

(By the way, the disease the miners get is fully known as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It’s one of those words I learned as a young nerd.)

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Hemp Headlines

1. Double amputee diabetic, evicted for medical marijuana, dies in Vancouver
2. New Mexico’s medical marijuana coordinator quits, questions dispensary practices
3. ROBERT DEWITT: Marijuana legalization is not a bright idea

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Study: regular cannabis smoking may inhibit male orgasm

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• Reggae Wednesday – ‘I Live My Life’ by Kya Bamba

NORML Newsmakers

• 2007 archive interview by Chris Goldstein of Rick Steves, European travel guru, author, and TV host, who will be closing the 2009 NORML National Conference.

(The Province) Marilyn Holsten’s last days on Earth were a living hell, according to her sister, Moira O’Neill.

In frail health, the almost-blind, diabetic double-amputee was ordered evicted from her apartment because of her need to smoke marijuana to control her pain.

Holsten, 48, died earlier this month from a heart attack.

“For a whole year, it went on. It was an unbelievable way to treat someone in her health,” said O’Neill.

Holsten lived in a building operated by Anavets Senior Citizens Housing Society in the 900-block East 8th Avenue in Vancouver.

Many of her neighbours told her they did not smell marijuana coming from her apartment, her sister said. But, even though Holsten eventually obtained legal permission to smoke marijuana to deal with excruciating phantom pains, Anavets sought her eviction because of the smell of pot.

“It was a witch hunt,” said O’Neill, who said her sister had to move from her fifth-floor apartment to a ground-floor suite two years ago, after her first leg amputation, for her own safety.

“They knew she smoked marijuana before she moved down to the other suite,” said O’Neill.

“She was in the hospital most of the time, with her amputation — she was gone five days a week, in dialysis six hours a day.”

Holsten fought her eviction at a B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch arbitration hearing in June, but lost.

The night before she died, Holsten visited her older sister.

“We resolved that she was going to stay with me in my small one-bedroom apartment,” said O’Neill.

“She couldn’t take opiates, they made her totally unable to function. Morphine made her throw up, and she was a diabetic, so she had to eat all the time.”

Holsten made every effort to contain the smell from her marijuana use from her neighbors.  She originally did not have a doctor’s recommendation to use medical marijuana, so in her original eviction notice, the administrator, Mary McLeod, wrote “Marijuana use is still against the law and … [as] part of your tenancy agreement, you agreed you would not participate in illegal activities.”

She then signed an agreement that she would only medicate outdoors, but the center gave her another eviction notice after someone smelled marijuana in the public areas of the building.

Then Marc & Jodie Emery of Cannabis Culture magazine donated to her a Volcano vaporizer to help alleviate the problem.  However, the arbitration hearings would hear none of that and had her evicted anyway – a double amputee who pledged to only vaporize, exhaling outdoors even, her legally recommended herbal remedy for excruciating phantom pains.

I understand that some people do not like the smell of cannabis and to be fair, we should respect their rights, too.  However, will the Anavets center evict their residents for cooking that awful-smelling kimchi, sauerkraut, or menudo?  Are residents allowed to smoke cigarettes (I have a call in to the Anavets center asking just that question)?  Can residents keep pets, even smelly kitties who miss the litter box?  Can residents douse themselves with heavy amounts of perfume or cologne?  Something tells me that residents are allowed to create all sorts of offensive smells in public areas… just not the skunky sweet smell of burning cannabis.

CANNABIS CULTURE – A diabetic double-amputee who was evicted from her apartment for smoking medical marijuana has died. Protest Marilyn Holsten’s mistreatment: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2009 from 12-6pm at the Anavets Senior Citizens Housing Society building at 951 8th Ave E, Vancouver.

This is Weedy Wednesdays, the bustling weekly stand-up night at the pot-friendly lounge, Vapor Central – just one of the growing number of weed dens between College and Bloor Sts. that make up the community affectionately known as Yongesterdam. Much like the others, Vapor Central dodges marijuana laws by not actually providing patrons with the substance, and also avoids smoking laws that only target tobacco, its management claims.

Over the next 60 minutes, more than 150 people will pack into the tiny club for an hour of lewd and crude humour as they sit back and get stoned out of their minds – a testament to both the seemingly perfect marriage of weed and comedy and to the (promotional) buzz the show has created amongst comedians and stoners alike.

For the first six months, [says host Bryan O'Gorman], they were lucky to draw 20 people a week. But as word of mouth spread, more and more comedians started asking to perform, and a growing audience was soon to follow. “Now we’re at the point where we’re turning away 20 to 40 people a week,” he says from behind his dark brown aviator glasses.

(MixxCelebrity) Britney Spears halted her show in Vancouver last night after just three songs because it was too smokey in the arena. The singer who is currently on the road supporting her ‘Circus’ album, walked off stage and remained backstage for over 20 minutes while an announcer told the crowd the show would not continue if people in the audience continued to smoke weed and cigarettes.

The announcer told the crowd it was “unsafe” for Spears and her dancers to continue to perform in that environment, reports Perez Hilton.

A statement released to the gossip site said: “We want to apologize to all the fans who attended our Vancouver show tonight for the brief pause in Britney’s set. Crew members above the stage became ill due to a ventilation issue.”

Production staff were reportedly worried that crew working high up would become dizzy from the smoke.

Spears herself then issued an anti-marijuana message at the end of her show, telling the audience: “Thanks Vancouver. You were wonderful. Drive safe. Don’t smoke weed!”

I’m still trying to understand weed smokers at a Britney Spears concert.  I thought marijuana smoking was supposed to improve one’s appreciation of music.

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Hemp Headlines

1. The Importance of Permitting Consumers the Right to Cultivate Marijuana for Personal Use
2. FDA recommends lowering dosages of acetominophen, “the leading cause of liver failure”
3. Congress lifts “Barr Amendments” forbidding DC from medical marijuana and decriminalization
4. Annual Ontario Hempfest festivities will cease this year due to police harassment

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• A look at the human relationship with cannabis throughout history

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• 2009 AMMA Best Reggae Song – ‘Cassava’ by Andrew Mystic aka ‘PZ’

NORML Newsmakers

• Former Guatemalan boys national and George Washington University swimmer Juan Bocanegra, on cannabis use, athletics, and training for the Ironman Triathlon

Ontario Provincial Police have harshed the Hempfest buzz once too often, say event organizers who plan to make this year’s celebration of medicinal marijuana the region’s last.

In recent years, the four-day event has been the focus of what organizer Rob Waddell contends is unwarranted police presence, with RIDE checks that focus on “interrogation,” and hindering access, rather than weeding out impaired drivers.

“It’s the harassment of people travelling to and from the festival. The constitution and Charter of Rights guarantee us the right to gather peacefully and demonstrate against unjust laws, which we’re doing,” said Waddell.

“The police keep interfering with our people and the right to gather.”

Waddell said the vehicle infractions and questioning of vehicle occupants are “petty things,”meant to interfere with a staunchly pro-marijuana event, and questioned why OPP have been accompanied by law enforcement from the U. S.

This year’s Aug. 27-30 gathering will be called Hempfest: The End of An Era.

via End of an era: annual Hempfest festivities will cease this year – The Sault Star – Ontario, CA .

Here’s something fun you can do next year if nobody else takes over and keeps this hempfest alive: count parked cars in bar parking lots that weekend and note how many people leave in them.  Because all those cars in bar parking lots are the cars of designated drivers, right?  That means you have to have at least two people per car; at least one sober one and the other who may or may not be sober.

Don’t count the employees’ cars.  We don’t expect them to be drunk.  Just the patrons who leave and their cars.  If you divide the people by the cars and come up with less than 2, we can pretty much guarantee somebody’s driving after drinking.  Maybe they were drinking Sprite.  Maybe they stopped drinking beer a couple hours before they left.  Maybe their blood alcohol content is only .04 and they will drive fairly well.  But don’t you think we should have a squad car from the Ontario Provincial Police parked out by that bar just in case?

Now let’s count up how many bars there are in province of Ontario.  I’m not going to bother to look it up, but I’ll hazard a wild-ass guess that it is a number greater than the number of Ontario Provincial Police squad cars.  Suffice to say that even if we parked every squad car near a bar’s parking lot, there would be plenty of bars without one.  Whatever that number is times whatever that car-to-patron ratio tells us suggests to me that there are a whole lot of people driving drunk, we know where they are, and we’re not doing much about it.

Why does the police vigilance against hemp festivals in the name of protecting the public from impaired drivers on one summer weekend not seem to apply every weekend to places where we know drunks park their cars?

METRO VANCOUVER — Surrey saw an 80.9 per cent decrease in the number of residential marijuana growing operations between 2004 and 2008, a new study shows.

The study also showed that Surrey’s drop is far more dramatic than in other communities in the Lower Mainland or B.C.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said she’s “pleasantly surprised” with the latest numbers, which she anticipated would have been around 65 per cent.

She attributed Surrey’s success to the city’s innovative electrical and fire safety inspection initiative that started in 2005, as well as the efforts of the Surrey RCMP green team, bylaws department, BC Hydro programs, and other crime-fighting initiatives under the city’s crime reduction strategy program.

“This research supports the work that we’ve been doing and confirms that we can succeed in deterring the grow-op industry from establishing itself in our cities,” Watts said. “This gives us increased confidence that we can make our streets safer and improve the lives of our residents through innovative measures that address crime through collaborative efforts.”

via Surrey records huge drop in marijuana growing operations: study .

I think this news is mistitled.  It should read “Surrey forces marijuana growing operations elsewhere” or “Surrey growers learn how to better evade detection”.