Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 11:44 am | By: Radical Russ
(Santa Barbara Noozhawk) Santa Barbara residents showed up in force once again for an Ordinance Committee meeting Tuesday regarding the city’s marijuana dispensaries.
During 90 minutes of public comment, residents discussed ideas for revising the city ordinance, as well as opinions on the existence of dispensaries in Santa Barbara.
Misusing marijuana is a big concern among residents, but there isn’t much information available on how big a role dispensaries play in recreational and underage marijuana use.
I doubt dispensaries have more of a role in underage consumption than do the teenage marijuana dealers in every school in the country. The dispensaries at least require a check for state ID. As for the recreational use, the dispensaries require a doctor’s recommendation, so that point needs to be taken up with doctors, not dispensaries that are following the law.
Besides, just what the hell is “misuse of marijuana” anyway? If you have a headache and you smoke pot and you feel good, is that medicinal or recreational? Now let’s say you don’t have a headache and you just smoke pot to feel good, is that misuse? Somehow, it is only OK to smoke pot to feel good if you felt bad before smoking it? Why do we have such a puritanical need to make sure people aren’t experiencing joy without first feeling pain?
The use of medicinal marijuana isn’t recognized in the public school system, and police have both formally and informally cited many students for possession or use on campus, according to Armando Martel of the Santa Barbara Police Department.
The Santa Barbara School Districts have reported 178 suspensions from controlled substances, most from marijuana.
Superintendent Brian Sarvis told the committee Tuesday that one student told him the substance was so easy to get that it may as well be in the school vending machines, adding that Martel doesn’t think those cases have been traced back to dispensaries.
Before dispensaries, around 85% of high school seniors say marijuana is easy or fairly easy to get. Most can get it within the day, many within the hour. After the dispensaries, around 85% of high school seniors still say it is easy to acquire. Medical marijuana has nothing to do with teen access; teen access is rampant because of marijuana prohibition.
David Hughes spoke on behalf of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara and said the group requests a prohibition of dispensaries near residential zones and special-needs facilities, such as sober-living complexes.
State law bans smoking medical marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school, recreation center or youth center. Although dispensaries don’t allow smoking or consuming on-site, there’s an anomaly in enforcement if the locations are within that 1,000-foot boundary — as many are, he said.
Residents also have expressed concern with dispensaries near residential areas, especially the pending dispensary at Paseo Chapala.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve read about the public’s concern about marijuana dispensaries in their neighborhoods, especially around schools. What amuses me is that the public seems so much less concerned about liquor stores in these same areas. The following maps show you bits of Santa Barbara, California. I’ve mapped out the location of schools and given you a 1000′ radius from them so you can see how many liquor stores and pharmacies are within that area. I mapped 34 liquor stores in my Googling, only the ones with Santa Barbara addresses, and I decided not to show grocery stores, where in California you can buy many spirits that would only be in liquor stores in other states.
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David in San Diego: “I cannot grow inside however, I can grow on my balcony. My balcony is un covered and has full sun for half of the day. It is never dark…city lights do not allow me to have a night cycle. So…is an auto flowering strain my only option????”
Jens in Montana: “I am really interested in using LED’s over the HPS systems, is this a good idea? I know the cost for a good LED setup is expensive right now, but I figure with the lower energy consumption and less heat, it would be worth it.”
Matt in Oklahoma: “I just bought a homebox portable growhouse online. My question is on lighting. Various websites have different philosophies when it comes to proper lighting procedures during the plant development phases. From what I can tell, they seem to agree on that you use a CFL during the veg stage, then you switch to a HPS lighting system right before it flowers. However, I am only growing two plants, only one at a time (use dried flowers while the other plant is growing cycle). What will be the proper wattage setup for a small grow during the various phases?”
Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 12:07 pm | By: Radical Russ
(LA Weekly) There has been an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken in Palms, slumping sadly these past few months on the corner of Exposition Blvd. and Hughes Ave. What, locals wondered, would replace it? A new burger joint? A Peruvian rotisserie chicken stand? It turns out that the KFC has been replaced by… a KFC. In this instance, though, the KFC stands for “Kind For Cures”, and while they do sell things that are edible, you can’t buy them, or even ask about them, without a prescription.
There have been marijuana dispensaries popping up all over Southern California of late, but this one is slightly different. Rather than tearing the whole thing down and starting from scratch, the proprietors of this alternative KFC decided to incorporate the design of the previous tenants. They have removed the official Kentucky Fried Chicken logo, but the rest of the building remains mostly intact.
Click on the link and you can see a picture of the building. Frankly, it could use some landscaping and something to cover the hole where the Colonel’s face used to be. And wouldn’t it be cool if you could get fried chicken at the dispensary? Somebody open a dispensary in a Popeye’s so I can get those crackbeans and some chronic!
(I call their green beans “crackbeans”, because they are so addictive I think they are made with crack. Popeye’s green beans are on my fast food top five list along with Taco John’s bean burritos with the green hot sauce, Jack in the Box sausage breakfast burritos, In-N-Out Double Doubles, and Dairy Queen combination Chocolate X-treme + Heath Bar Blizzards. Wrong, unhealthy, and sinful, I know, but so vewy vewy good…)
Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 11:53 am | By: Radical Russ
(Spokesman-Review) More than a thousand medical marijuana patients have purchased the drug at a small dispensary on Northwest Boulevard in Spokane in the nearly five months it’s been open.
Business is booming, and Scott Q. Shupe, co-owner of the dispensary, intended to keep it that way when he set out for Oregon with thousands of dollars and a lead on several pounds of marijuana.
Shupe, 54, was driving back from Bend, Ore., on Friday afternoon when an Oregon State Police trooper pulled him over for crossing the centerline.
That trooper found 4 pounds of marijuana and more than $18,000 in Shupe’s 1993 Chevrolet Cavalier station wagon – supplies destined for his dispensary, he said.
Shupe’s status as a medical marijuana patient in Washington didn’t matter. Oregon doesn’t recognize medical marijuana permits from other states.
Even if it did, patients and caregivers are limited to 1.5 pounds at time.
And even if the limits weren’t breached, Oregon’s law does not allow the selling of marijuana, even between registered patients and their registered growers within the state, much less to an out-of-state dispensary owner.
I want patients to get access to their medicine, which is why I support full legalization of marijuana for all adults. Scott Shupe should be able to buy cannabis from a Washington farmer or an Oregon farmer or any American farmer. Scott Shupe should be able to sell it to any adult American (and foreign tourists, too!)
But the way we’ve been corralled in the medical marijuana box canyon, stories like this are bound to hit the news. Our opponents claim the medical marijuana programs are widely abused, a front for greedy drug dealers. So some states craft language that forbid cannabis commerce and deny interstate recognition of medical marijuana permits. Then you’ve got thousands of patients with demand and few with supply and inevitably some guy gets pulled over with cash and pounds of weed crossing state lines trying to fulfill that demand. Then our opponents say, “See, we told you so!”
I am so worried about a pendulum swing back away from medical marijuana. I can see the next few states writing even more restrictive language. I can see activists losing the battles to keep business and law enforcement from hacking away at existing state medical marijuana laws. I can see pharmaceutical science creating dose-regulated, non-psychoactive cannabinoid drugs and our opponents demand that “crude plant material” be made illegal once again in medical marijuana states because of the “abuse” and because now the sick and dying have a “safer” alternative.
While the pendulum still swings toward freedom, we must follow through and see that it reaches full legalization for all adults.
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 4:49 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Santa Fe Reporter) New Mexico’s Medical Cannabis Program coordinator has resigned and, due to budget constraints and a hiring freeze, the state Department of Health has not refilled the position yet.
Melissa Milam, who had served as the program’s administrator since the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act went into effect in 2007, left the position in mid-July.Milam cites the recent birth of her daughter as one reason for leaving her position. Another is she hopes to form a nonprofit to produce and dispense medical cannabis.
So far, 540 patients have received licenses, but only one nonprofit—Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine—has been approved. As a result, the majority of patients can only acquire cannabis through illicit means.
This is part of Milam’s motivation to form a nonprofit.
“The program has been slammed so hard, but I really am proud of it,” Milam tells SFR. “I want to make it better and that’s why I’m interested in taking care of patients on the nonprofit side. I feel like I’ve done all I can do for them on the government side.”
While proud of the structure of the program, Milam says she is disappointed in the practices exhibited by the single licensed producer.
For one thing, Milam says, SFINM’s prices are comparable to what would be paid on the street. More disturbing, she says, are reports that SFINM requires patients to meet delivery drivers in parking lots in order to obtain their medication.
“Asking people to meet you in a parking lot, I mean, how is that any different from a drug deal?” Milam says.
Las Vegas, NM-based cancer patient and medical cannabis license-holder Robert Jones tells SFR he agrees with Milam’s evaluation of SFINM.“They said it’s going to cost $400 an ounce and they won’t be delivering to Las Vegas, so you’d have to meet them somewhere else,” Jones says. “I’m not capable of driving to Santa Fe and I can’t afford $400.”
Dispensaries exist in California, Colorado, Washington, Rhode Island, and New Mexico, operating collectives, co-ops, and in the case of the latter two states, state-licensed non-profits. Dispensary supporters often proclaim they are providing safe access to patients to acquire medicine without dealing with the dangerous and unpredictable black market. For that, they should be commended.
However, if you can’t afford $400/ounce for plant material that costs $1-$2 to produce outdoors or $10-$20 to produce indoors when grown in volume, it doesn’t matter if it’s sold by the Santa Fe dispensary or Sam the weed dealer in the park, you have no access to medicine.
To be fair, the dispensaries’ economics are dictated by the black market. They can’t sell marijuana at less than street value, or buyers will sell it on the street for profit. They can’t buy the marijuana at less than street value, or the sellers won’t sell to the dispensaries when they can make more on the street. The notion that more dispensaries will lead to more competition is also ludicrous, not only based on the evidence of 600+ Los Angeles dispensaries not leading to a reduction in price there, but also because no matter how many dispensaries and patients there are, there are ten to twenty times that many black market buyers and sellers.
Only when marijuana is fully legal; when all sellers are in open competition; when all buyers can avoid high prices by growing their own; when all growers are able to grow huge outdoor fields; only then will patients truly have safe and affordable access to medicine.
Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Providence Journal) PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Department of Health is moving forward with plans to create the state’s first medical marijuana clinic where patients who use the drug for medicinal purposes can legally purchase it.Compassion centers are to be operated as independent nonprofit entities overseen by boards or principal officers, to be regulated by the Health Department, much like a hospital or a nursing home. The state will not play a role in the day-to-day operations, but it will check to ensure that protocol is followed.
Centers must have “a fully operational security alarm system” with marijuana to be stored in locked areas within the clinics, according to the regulations. If clinics elect to grow marijuana at a second site, that location too must be equipped with proper security.
Staff and board members may not have felony drug convictions and must undergo background checks to be conducted by the attorney general’s office. They must also participate in training sessions at the facility.
This will make four states in which the buying and selling of marijuana is allowed by the state. Rhode Island and New Mexico have “compassion center” language with state controls and a very limited number, while California and Colorado both tolerate the fast-growing number of dispensaries operated in those states.
As I looked through the comments I noticed one that asserted that the Rhode Island compassion center would be broken into “all the time”. This is where the prohibition of marijuana for the healthy endangers the access for the sick. Dispensaries and compassion centers get robbed because of the great profit in prohibition and massive demand from non-medical users with no other access. Then the public gets stories on their news about the violence associated with a dispensary or compassion center and attributes that to allowing medical access, rather than where it belongs, on the prohibition.
Medical marijuana is a wonderful step, but it’s just a step. We must legalize marijuana for all its users or patients will always suffer from high prices, restricted access, and the danger of theft and violence.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 11:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Summit Daily News) BOULDER — Boulder County Caregivers offers 16 glass jars of marijuana with names like Skinny Pineapple and Early Pearl Maui, priced at $375 to $420 an ounce. There are marijuana capsules and snacks made with cannabis butter, such as rice crispy treats.
Russian palladium today is trading at $250 – $262 per ounce. It is the softest of the platinum group metals and is used in things like catalytic converters, cell phones, and computers. It is a fairly rare material which must be laboriously mined underground. Somehow this valuable useful rare earth metal costs less for the men and machinery to dig up, smelt, process, pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
I can get a wholesale ounce of Spanish Saffron today for $89.95 wholesale, which sells for a suggested $129.95 retail. Saffron is the individual threads of the saffron flower which must be hand-picked. It grows mostly in Iran and Spain and each flower produces only three threads. It takes 75,000 flowers to produce a pound. Somehow, this valuable useful rare flower costs less for the men to harvest, handpick tiny threads from each individual flower, dry and vacuum pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
One of the rarest and most expensive cognacs in the world is France’s Remy Martin Cognac Black Pearl Louis XIII. It is made from a 100-year-old fruit brandy and aged in a single barrel that is several centuries old. It sells for $28,000 for a 1.75l bottle, or about $464 per ounce. Somehow, this valuable rare historical luxury liquor costs just a little more for the men to ferment, bottle, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
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California NORML Coordinator and NORML Board’s Dale Gieringer on Oakland’s new medical marijuana tax and the explosive growth of the Los Angeles dispensary scene.
Mile High NORML’s Scott Greene on starting a brand new NORML chapter and having to staff a booth on three days’ notice at Red Rocks for the Blazed and Confused Tour.
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Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 3:20 pm | By: Legalize-SaveLives
Didn’t have a link for this so I’m passing on the entire message:
The Los Angeles City Council has scheduled 28 medical marijuana hardship exemption application hearings for their Tuesday July 14, 2009 meeting.
Council will be hearing the 28 applications that appeared before the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee on June 29, 2009. The PLUM Committee denied all 28 applications and has recommended that council do the same.
The term hearing is actually a misnomer in this case as City Council is not required to debate or take any further comment on any of these 28 applications since public hearings have already been held on these items (The PLUM Committee hearing was the public hearing on these items).
Normally if people come down to the Council meeting and fill out a speaker card for a specific item that has already had a public hearing the Council President will usually ask that that item be called as “special” and additional comment may be allowed. But again, the Council is not required to take any further comments on these items even if people fill out speaker cards and request time to speak.
Just part of the kangaroo court that these hearings have been up until this point. When someone challenges the rulings in these hearings in court down the road (and someone will) is when it will get interesting and people will then have an opportunity to speak.
The meeting begins at 10:00 AM Tuesday July 14, 2009 at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.
You can listen live via telephone: COUNCILPHONE, A dial-up system which allows the public to listen to live coverage of the Los Angeles City Public Meetings from any phone. The numbers may be used from any location, not just in Los Angeles. Dial up and listen in. Use any of these 4 numbers- (213) 621-CITY, (310) 547-CITY, (310) 471-CITY or (818) 904-9450.
[These "hardship exemptions" are the loophole that has led to the explosion in dispensaries in LA county, so that there are now over 1,000, even after the county put a moratorium on more dispensaries. This is no fault of the people trying to open the dispensaries, rather the inevitable result of lax regulation and oversight, Attorney General Holder's pledge to end DEA raids, and entrepreneurial spirit. The problem for the movement, however, is now the floodgates are open for the unscrupulous dispensary owners to make the genuine compassionate collectives look bad, right in the middle of the 2nd-largest media market in the United States. I believe in patient access as much as anyone, but 1,000 dispensaries in one county, even in a county of 10,000,000 where only a minority of those folks are medical card holders, seems a bit much even to me. --"R"R]
RevRayGreen: MASS TWEET THIS -@ChuckGrassley Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer sadness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
RevRayGreen: @ChuckGrassley http://bit.ly/55Ejsi Truth is Chuck you follow Nixon's CSA full of reefer madness. btw Chuck, Marijuana is not a drug.
SneakerPimp: one last thing Puff puff pass to any one who wants it
SneakerPimp: i wanna here about the imminent MiniSpof sounds like time for some
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
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. […]
Santa Barbara mulls limits on medical marijuana dispensaries
sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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