Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
With 18% of the returns in, the election in Maine is being watched nationwide for its contentious “Question 1″, a vote on whether to reject the state’s recognition of same-sex marriage. It’s too close to call in that race, but most of the other statewide questions seem to be being decided rather strongly.
Currently, “Question 5″, the proposal to create a statewide registry ID card system for medical marijuana patients (a la Oregon) and medical marijuana dispensaries (a la Rhode Island and New Mexico), is winning by a 63% – 37% vote.
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 10:50 am | By: Radical Russ
(Mission Local) The federal government will continue raids on medical marijuana operations in California despite guidelines issued by the Justice Department two weeks ago indicating the contrary.
“I think it’s unfortunate that people have for some reason picked up on this as a change in policy, because it’s really not a change at all,” said Joseph Russoniello, federal prosecutor for the northern district of California, who was appointed in 2007 by then-President George W. Bush.
Asked if federal officials will halt investigation and prosecution of medical marijuana operations in the state, Russoniello said simply, “The short answer is no.”
Russoniello said many dispensaries in San Francisco and around California aren’t really not-for-profit, and he will prosecute any distributor fraudulently operating as a commercial enterprise in violation of state laws.
“By that I mean people who are in it as if they were running a neighborhood candy store instead of running a commune, a collective or a group club that caters only to specific identified persons,” he said.
Asked if federal agents are currently preparing to raid dispensaries suspected of illegal activities, Russoniello declined to comment.
“I cannot affirm or deny the existence of ongoing criminal investigations,” he said.
You know, I was just thinking that President Obama’s approval ratings are still way too high. What he needs to do is have his administration issue a memo that seems to remove the threat of federal raids from lawful dispensaries, and then when people are comfortable about visiting those dispensaries, send in a few DEA agents in body armor to point assault weapons at people in wheelchairs. Think of it as Obama’s “Read my lips; no new taxes” moment a la George Bush Sr. in 1988. A few stunning visuals of jack-booted thugs taking down the neighborhood dispensary in a state where 56% of the voters want not just medical marijuana but outright legalization ought to drop that approval rating a few points, huh?
Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm | By: Radical Russ
In an underhanded move, the Colorado Board of Health will be voting to weaken the medical marijuana law at an “emergency” meeting on Tuesday, November 3 at 10:30am in Denver. At this stealth meeting the Board will be voting to redefine what a “caregiver” is to require such individuals to provide supplementary– and often unnecessary– services beyond simply providing sick patients with medical marijuana.
“This is like requiring my pharmacist to give me a massage or make me a sandwich,” said Dan Pope, muscular dystrophy patient and medical card holder. “I can do those activities myself. I need a caregiver to give me medicine. End of story.”
This meeting, which was announced in a late afternoon email to a small handful of patient advocates, is another example of the state engaging in underhanded tactics in their effort to undermine the medical marijuana law and the will of the Colorado voters. Please help hold them accountable.
Here’s How You Can Help:
(1) Attend the Meeting. This meeting will occur at 10:30am on Tuesday, November 3 in the Snow Room, 1st Floor Building A of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, 4300 Cherry Creek Dr. South, Denver CO.
(2) Call-in to the Meeting. While we strongly prefer that you attend in person, you can also call-in at 1-866-899-5399, conference code *3529725*
(3) Spread the Word. Please tell friends and family to attend the meeting and forward this alert widely!
Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm | By: Radical Russ
For our readers in Maine, don’t forget to get out and vote tomorrow on Question 5. Here’s a summary from Maine Citizens for Patient Rights:
Current law allows a person who has been diagnosed by a physician as suffering from certain medical conditions to possess marijuana for medical use. This initiated bill directs the Department of Health and Human Services to issue registry identification cards to patients who qualify to possess marijuana for medical use and to their designated primary caregivers. It sets limits on the amount of marijuana that may be possessed by qualifying patients and their designated primary caregivers. It allows the establishment of nonprofit dispensaries to provide marijuana to qualifying patients and directs the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a registration certificate to a nonprofit dispensary that meets certain criteria. It changes the description of the medical conditions for which the medical use of marijuana is permitted. It directs the Department of Health and Human Services to establish application and renewal fees sufficient to pay the expenses of implementing and administering the provisions of the initiated bill.
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm | By: Radical Russ
DENVER (CBS4) ? A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time for a Colorado sheriff’s department but the sheriff says he’s working with the best information he’s allowed to use.
Summit County Sheriff John Minor says the problem is a lack of clear state rules on medical marijuana. The bust that went wrong used up several days of police work, but he says it was the best they could do with the information they had available. It turned out the growing operation was legal.
“We follow the law, but when the law is so ambiguous, it’s difficult,” Minor said. “Six or seven out of the last 10 in the last 6 months have all been legitimate operations.”
It’s been a perfect storm for law enforcement. Growers don’t have to register with the state, so officers don’t know what they are investigating until after they obtain a search warrant.
I think this story could’ve just begun and ended with “A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time.” When at least 60% of your criminal investigations aren’t criminals, you know you’ve got a big problem. It used to be so easy for police: see marijuana, bust people, end of story. Now they have to go through the trouble of determining whether that grower is lawfully providing medicine for sick people, or breaking the law by providing it to healthy people.
It’s funny to me how Colorado police are freaking out about the explosion of dispensaries in Colorado, the inability to bust the plethora of Colorado grows because so many are legal, and the massive increase in registered medical marijuana cardholders. So, in essence, your problems are businessmen who used to sell pot now want to do so legally, people that grow pot now want to do so legally, and people who use pot now want to do so legally. In what other public policy arena aside from marijuana are law enforcement frustrated by more people who want to obey the law?
Maybe the people of Colorado can convince their law enforcement that the problem isn’t that the limited legalization of marijuana for medical purposes creates gray areas in the law that non-medical users can exploit with impunity. The problem is that medical marijuana is too limited to protect the majority of marijuana consumers who simply want to enjoy marijuana legally and not go to jail. The problem isn’t that medical marijuana wastes police resources, it’s that busting people for marijuana wastes police resources.
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Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 9:05 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Denver Post) Demand for medical marijuana in Colorado has grown so fast in the past few months that it has outstripped the production of legal “grow” operations and is now probably being supplied by international drug cartels, say some local sheriffs and agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Dispensaries are popping up like mushrooms,” said DEA special agent-in-charge Jeffrey Sweetin. “Now we have thousands of 20- to 25-year-olds carrying cards. And the cartels are getting rich off this law.”
Once again, our medically-trained law enforcement officers are able on casual visual inspection alone to determine that young adults do not suffer from cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, cachexia; severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, or persistent muscle spasms. You know, we could just end this health care crisis and cut costs drastically by just having our police handle all medical screening from now on. Why bother with expensive scanners and tests when a DEA agent can just look at a 23-year-old woman and know she doesn’t have endometriosis, epilepsy, or an eating disorder?
Legal grow operations linked to dispensaries are limited to six cannabis plants each.
By contrast, most of the street pot comes from big, outdoor grows, such as the three operations — within a 5-mile radius of Chatfield Reservoir — busted by DEA officials last summer. Sweetin said one grow had 14,000 plants that averaged 5 to 6 feet tall.
He said the average illegal indoor grow is 100 to 200 plants averaging 3 feet tall.
“The numbers don’t seem to add up to me,” [said Sheriff Bill Masters of San Miguel County.] “It seems difficult to supply people with the number of plants allowed. My suspicions are that marijuana might be coming from other growers.”
“Supply (of marijuana) is not directly addressed in (state law), and we think it’s one of the areas that could lead to criminal elements being involved,” said Longmont city attorney Eugene Mei, noting that the city is seeking a 90-day moratorium on new dispensaries.
Let’s see, your demand from legal users is outpacing your supply from legal growers, a situation you deduce is sending profits to illegal growers. Well, the way I see it, there are two ways to address this problem:
Reduce the demand from legal users, or
Increase the supply from legal growers.
#1 is a fool’s errand we call the War on Drugs. Restricting the number of people able to get a medical marijuana card isn’t going to stop a medical user (or a recreational one, for that matter,) from going to the black market to score some cannabis. The people who have cards now were most likely using marijuana prior to having a card anyway, so the legal growers, even if they aren’t supplying the whole market, are taking a cut from the whole market that didn’t exist before.
#2, however, takes a direct bite out of the drug gangs’ pocketbook. You don’t want Mexican marijuana in Colorado dispensaries? Then let more Coloradans grow more Rocky Mountain marijuana!
Finally, if they think we’re buying schwaggy Mexican brick weed – the main product of the Mexican drug gangs – at Colorado dispensaries, they have never experienced the Colorado I know.
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 12:55 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Law.com) If police departments want to line their budgets with drug money, they’d better do it right, according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a ruling Tuesday, Judge Richard Clifton ordered the feds to return nearly $200,000 to a Los Angeles medical cannabis collective. Local police raided the place in 2005, and the seized funds became subject to asset forfeiture proceedings. Clifton found that under the Fourth Amendment, a faulty warrant means the police can’t keep the money.
What happened on Wilshire Boulevard in Tuesday’s case wasn’t by plan. A Los Angeles cop responded to complaints of pot smoking on the street and quickly traced it to the United Medical Caregivers Clinic, according to the opinion. Even though the dispensary operators brandished paperwork authorizing them to operate under state medical marijuana laws, the police secured a search warrant and busted the place.
The money was turned over to the feds for a forfeiture action, with the city in line to receive 80 percent of the loot, according to the opinion. However, the state judge who signed the search warrant hadn’t been told the club operated as a medical dispensary. Given that, Clifton applied a relatively straightforward analysis to conclude that declarations submitted by one club operator in the state proceeding could not then be used in the federal forefeiture action, thus dooming the seizure.
“We are particularly concerned by the possibility that the LAPD might stand to profit from unlawful activity,” Clifton wrote.
Some things in America should not be for-profit enterprises, like policing and prisons. In so many of these dispensary raids there are no charges filed against the operators, but the property is all destroyed and the cops seize and keep the cash. Learn more about the unfair and unjust nature of civil forfeiture by visiting Forfeiture Endangers American Rights at fear.org.
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 12:26 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Los Angeles Times) With its moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries declared unlawful, the Los Angeles City Council is now poised to act quickly on a strict ordinance that it has struggled with fitfully for more than two years.
On Tuesday, the city attorney’s office delivered a draft that some members want the council to take up within a week. The sudden acceleration stems from a Superior Court ruling Monday that left the city unable to enforce its ban and derailed its four-month-old drive to shut down new dispensaries.
Under the latest proposal, most dispensaries would be required to close immediately and could not apply to reopen for six months. The 186 dispensaries that registered with the city when it passed its moratorium in 2007 would be allowed to remain open for six months, but then would have to meet the ordinance’s requirements.
You’re going to immediately shutter some 600+ medical marijuana storefronts? The illegal marijuana dealers of the Los Angeles Basin couldn’t have asked for a better windfall. The Mexican drug gangs sure have to like this change of events. What, you didn’t think the Los Angelenos who have been keeping those storefronts in business were just going to stop smoking pot, did you?
The ordinance could effectively outlaw most dispensaries in the city by prohibiting sales of medical marijuana. Both City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley maintain that state law does not allow over-the-counter sales, though they say collectives owned by the members are allowed to recoup their expenses. Dispensary operators say the sales, usually in 1/8 -ounce increments, are meant to cover their operating costs.
The ordinance requires collectives to keep records on members and suppliers and to make them available to police, which operators fear could leave them vulnerable to federal prosecution even though the Justice Department on Monday formally told its prosecutors not to pursue medical marijuana users and dispensaries that follow state law.
The draft ordinance also adds a provision that requires collectives to notify council members and neighborhood councils of their plans to open, and another that bars anyone who was convicted of a felony within the previous 10 years or who is on parole or probation from managing a collective.
So, like, if you were growing medical marijuana for patients and providing it to them in a collective way, like, say, Eddy Lepp, and the feds prosecute you and make you a felon, then you, one of the most experienced people for the job, are not eligible.
In addition, the ordinance would limit the number of dispensaries by requiring them to be at least 1,000 feet from schools, parks, libraries, religious institutions, child care facilities, youth centers, hospitals, medical facilities, substance abuse rehabilitation centers and other collectives.
In a dense urban environment like Los Angeles, I doubt there are very many properties that aren’t within 1,000 feet from one of those institutions. Can we at least open dispensaries next to liquor stores; I always seem to see them within 1,000 feet of those institutions.
The ordinance also would restrict the dispensaries’ operations. They could be open only between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. They could have no more than 5 pounds of marijuana or 100 plants on hand, and marijuana could not be consumed on site. They also would not be allowed to sell or manufacture edible marijuana products.
I don’t think Carmen Trutanich and Steve Cooley have ever seen Star Wars: A New Hope. Like Darth Vader battling Obi-Wan Kenobi in a lightsaber duel, they don’t realize that killing the Jedi master only makes him a stronger agent of The Force. For over a decade now, people in Los Angeles have grown accustomed to buying quality marijuana in many varieties and forms from business establishments. They have seen a hint on the promised land and will not appreciate returning to the “call my guy and wait and hope and take whatever weed I can get” world.
This action by the LA City Council will backfire in the worst way possible in their eyes: it will galvanize the majority that already believes marijuana should be legal for all and taxed with distribution through regulated business outlets. There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. Californians have seen semi-legalized marijuana and they like it.
bullbog: Hawkeyes you had a good run...this toke is for you.
Track Snack: Mornin Stashers! Tokin on the Mean Green Martian for breakfast.
MrSpof: Maybe Dr Mitch could comment on the efficacy of reasonable amount of weed like that consumed (smoked) quickly mitigating migraine effects. I know the lowering of blood pressure would be [...]
MrSpof: Had the onset of a migraine yesterday. Immediately took 8 , moist cool washcloth on eyes, heating pad on neck and upper back, turned off lights. Migraine gone in [...]
MrSpof: As you personal non-accredited doctor, I advise the rest of you to smoke/vape/eat heavily
slash5city: frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
MrSpof: Risen and roasted How the hell are you?
RevRayGreen: always Fidget......always.
Adam: Maybe in WA, judges are starting to think about the true cost of a Drug charge...
Adam: Tim Lincecum, pitcher for the San Francisco Giants will pea to a paraphernalia charge/ Possession charges DROPPED
Adam: Add some cottage cheese to your pancake batter, replace the maple with a fruit syrup! f-ing killer, YES I was stoned...
Fidget Truittelli: Good morning from beautiful Arizona! I hope you all have a happy, fun day. Remember to 'pay-it' forward. Do something nice for someone.
BenJaMin: Go NORML!!!
BenJaMin: Russ Is Tha BEst! :smokin:
SneakerPimp: oh there it is thanx russ
SneakerPimp: so whats up with today stash?
RevRayGreen: Barney Frank Present When Partner Arrested for pot-- http://bit.ly/1XpM2R
RevRayGreen: KMK 11/17/09 VAL AIR ballroom DSM
bullbog: that's crazy. I had a NORML black t-shirt on. It was hell of a show
RevRayGreen: dude I was probably 4-5 seats from you then
bullbog: 4th row center. I wish I was closer.
RevRayGreen: were in in the orchestra pit 4th row? or 4th row center, that's where I was bu slightly to the right
RevRayGreen: our show ______v'''''''
RevRayGreen: catch our chow tomorrow online Carl'sCannabis Corner
www.macswordlive.com 12-2 PM you can go there now and find archived shows
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Maine: Voters To Decide Next Week On Medical Marijuana Expansion Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters To Decide Next Week On Eliminating Pot Penalties; California: Lawmakers Hold Historic Hearing On Marijuana Legalization; New Hampshire: Senate Fails To Override Medical Marijuana Veto. […]
Gallup: Majority Of West Coast Voters Back Marijuana Legalization; Pot Arrests Responsible For Majority Of Marijuana Treatment Referrals; DOJ To Federal Prosecutors: Do Not Focus Resources On Medical Marijuana. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Maine voters choosing to approve registry cards and medical marijuana dispensaries
With 18% of the returns in, the election in Maine is being watched nationwide for its contentious “Question 1″, a vote on whether to reject the state’s recognition of same-sex marriage. It’s too close to call in that race, but most of the other statewide questions seem to be being decided rather strongly.
frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
and roasted 
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