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• Washington State Bill Asking Government To Reclassify Marijuana Moves Forward
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• Lionize – “Superczar”

Legislative Update with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• ALABAMA: The Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act (HB 25) which seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients, has been marked for reintroduction in the Alabama Legislature for the session starting on February 7th. It is currently assigned to the House Committee on Health. A separate medical cannabis bill, House Bill 66, has also been prefiled in the House and is also before to the House Committee on Health, while a third measure that seeks to reduce penalties on adult cannabis possession is anticipated to be introduced shortly. You can learn more about these efforts via NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here.
• INDIANA: Senate lawmakers heard testimony on Tuesday, January 24, in favor of legislation, SB 347, to decriminalize marijuana possession penalties in Indiana. Lawmakers on Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal, and Civil Matters did not vote on the measure. Therefore, there is still time for constituents to contact their Senate members and encourage them to support marijuana law reform. You can do so via NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here. A separate House measure, HB 1370, that seeks to legalize the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, is pending before the House Committee on Public Policy.
• KANSAS: House Bill 2330, which seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients, was heard by the House Committee on Health and Human Services on Tuesday, January 24th. You can read media coverage of the hearing here and here. You can track the progress of this measure and contact your state elected officials regarding HB 2330here.
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: Members of the House Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony on Thursday, January 25, in favor of House Bill 1705, which seeks to allow adults age 21 or over to use marijuana legally in their home. The measure also seeks to establish a regulated cannabis market governing the wholesale production and sale of marijuana. Non-commercial transactions involving less than one ounce of cannabis would not be subject to state taxation or regulation under the measure. You can watch clips from the hearing here and you can contact your elected officials in support of the measure here.
• The House Criminal Justice Committee is also scheduled to hear testimony this Thursday in favor of separate legislation, HB 1526, which seeks reduce the penalties on minor marijuana possession offenses (up to one ounce) from a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine to a nominal monetary penalty of no more than $100.00. To contact your House representative regarding HB 1526, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here.
• VIRGINIA: Legislation seeking to establish a joint study committee to investigate the fiscal impact of regulating the production and sale of marijuana to adults 21 and over is anticipated to be heard by the Virginia House Committee on Rules as soon as this Thursday. You can read NORML’s published op/eds in support of this measure here and here. To learn more aboutHouse Joint Resolution 140, please visit Virginia NORML or contact your state officials here.

NORML Newsmakers

• Mark Pedersen from Sensible Missouri and Show-Me Cannabis Regulation

Reefer madness is alive and well in Kansas.  The Weed Blog picked up on a story out of Topeka, Kansas, where the legislature held a hearing to discuss medical marijuana.  Supporters outnumbered opponents by a long shot.

Dramatic testimony was given by a son whose mother died from the FDA-approved prescription arthritis drug Humira.  Esau Freeman of Wichita read a two-page list of Humira’s known side effects and asked, “I’m here to ask you if we can do better. If patients in Kansas deserve the legal right to access safe and more natural medicine. I’m asking you as responsible and caring legislators of this great state of Kansas to investigate the evidence of medical marijuana with an unbiased and open mind.”

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Eric Voth, the chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, claimed that the state of Oregon has mostly stopped pre-employment drug screenings after medical marijuana passed in 1998 because “they had no usable work force.”  Also during testimony, Voth claimed that in California, more prescriptions (recommendations) are filled on Friday afternoons by those under 25 than at any other time by any other group.  ”It’s a scam, it’s not a prescription,” Voth said.

Rep. Trimmer noted that few of the people testifying offered much in the way of scientific citation for cannabis’ proven medicinal benefits.  ”Do we have any evidence on either side from sources like the National Cancer Institute, the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Opthamological Association Journal?” Trimmer asked. “I would hope that we have something in the medical profession that tells us whether these things work or not. I like to base policy on sound research.”

OK, then…

National Cancer Institute:  The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Although few relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients in the United States who recommend medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.

American Medical Association:  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.

New England Journal of Medicine:  Federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medical use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to treat. The government should change marijuana’s status from that of a Schedule I drug … to that of a Schedule II drug … and regulate it accordingly.

American Academy of Ophthalmology:  …no scientific evidence has been found that demonstrates increased benefits and/or diminished risks of marijuana use to treat glaucoma compared with the wide variety of pharmaceutical agents now available. [This lady would beg to differ...]

The chairwoman, Rep. Brenda Landwehr, wasn’t buying any of the testimony from patients who told how cannabis had helped them medically.  ”I think that, if there was a huge benefit for those folks, the FDA would have already stepped in,” Landwehr said.

So once again we have opponents of medical cannabis use retreating to the tautological safety of the FDA excuse:

1. Cannabis is not a medicine because it is not FDA approved;
2. The FDA can’t study cannabis, because it is in Schedule I;
3. Cannabis is in Schedule I because it is not a medicine.
4. Return to Point 1.

The fact is the FDA can never approve cannabis as a medicine because that would be like asking you to define exactly what a dog looks like.  The FDA is set up to evaluate the beneficial and harmful effects of a certain amount of an exact molecule given consistently to test subjects.  The FDA can – and has – evaluated THC molecules in synthetic form and approved their medical benefits.

But evaluating whole plant cannabis involves too many variables, just as defining a dog runs the gamut from chihuahua and pug to St. Bernard and greyhound.  Sure, they all have four legs, tails, two eyes, etc., but some are short, tall, thick, thin, long snouts, flat faces, fast, slow, friendly, aggressive, and so on.  A dog that would serve well for an elderly woman in a city apartment might not work for a middle-aged man who likes hunting ducks.

The same applies to cannabis.  Even different buds picked from the same plant can have variance in their constituent cannabinoids.  Varieties that work great for aiding my creativity might not be beneficial for treating my co-host’s chronic pain.  One grower may cultivate that variety I like with better results.  Some days, I may want a different variety that eases my stress.

The main point is this: FDA approval of cannabis is unnecessary.  The whole point of the FDA’s creation was to protect us from the patent medicine manufacturers of the early 20th Century that were selling us “snake oil” of dubious value, elixirs that were sometimes harmful to health.  It continues to evaluate the new patent medicines devised by the chemistry of man to ensure their safety and efficacy.  Cannabis has 5,000 years of history of safe, effective use in humans.  It is not a new chemical substance whose effects and dangers are unknown; it is a plant as old as history.  Retreating to the FDA excuse or claiming there’s not enough scientific research is the last resort of the frustrated prohibitionist.

Kansas lawmakers will not debate House Bill 2330, the Kansas Cannabis Compassion & Care Act, this legislative session. The measure sought to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients and was similar to a proposal considered in the 2010 legislative session.

House Bill 2330 would have helped ensure that medical marijuana patients in Kansas would no longer have to fear arrest or prosecution from state law enforcement. As introduced, this act would have allow qualified patients diagnosed with a “debilitating medical condition” to possess up to 12 cannabis plants (not including as many as 12 seedlings) and/or 6 ounces of marijuana for therapeutic purposes.

The House Committee on Health and Human Service failed to act on the measure before the deadline to do so, essentially killing the bill for this year. NORML would like to thank the hundreds of activists who contacted their representatives in support of HB 2330.  It is our hope to see similar legislation introduced next session.

Thank you for your support of NORML and our efforts to enact medical marijuana reform in Kansas.

See more here:
Kansas Lawmakers Fail to Act on Medical Marijuana Legislation

New Jersey - The (No Medical Marijuana) Garden State - coming soon to a state near you!

In 2010, New Jersey passed the first medical marijuana law that did not allow the patient to grow their own low-cost medicine, instead requiring them to pay street prices for cannabis sold through dispensaries.

The District of Columbia followed suit when setting up their rules, despite the fact that the initiative that passed by 69% back in 1998 allowed an “exemption for cultivation [which] shall apply only to marijuana specifically grown to provide a medical supply for a patient.”

Marijuana Policy Project then wrote Arizona’s new law which forbids home cultivation if the patient lives within 25 miles of a dispensary.  The reasoning given was that the dispensaries would need to be guaranteed a clientele in order to remain viable.

Download audio file (Halo-makes-dispensaries-viable-MPP-Andrew-Mey.mp3)

So imagine you’re a 70-year-old glaucoma patient in Phoenix living on SSI.  A friend donates to you a small closet grow and you’re producing a few ounces for yourself at about $12.50/ounce.  Next month, an entrepreneur applies for and is approved to open a dispensary 18 miles away from your rent-subsidized apartment.  Your choices are to move seven miles farther away on your fixed SSI income and keep growing or to sell your grow equipment and start buying those $300 ounces at the dispensary that you can only get to after a lengthy bus ride.  Don’t worry, nobody on the bus or at the stop in your bad neighborhood will smell the ounces of weed on you as you bring them home every couple of weeks (you’re not allowed to stock up – two ounces per fortnight only).  Because we want to be sure a place that sells marijuana in a storefront doesn’t go out of business, since marijuana is such hard commodity to market.

We at NORML had warned that continued focus on medical without an eye toward full legalization would eventually lead to a “box canyon” where opponents say, “Oh, you want medical marijuana?  All right, we’ll make it medical. You don’t grow your own Vicodin, do you?” and begin to eliminate home growing provisions, the only protection cannabis consumers have against government and/or corporate overpricing, strain degradation, and pharmaceuticalization of cannabis into pills, sprays, and inhalers that will make possession of raw plant material by patients just as criminal as it is now for non-patients.

Two current medical marijuana states, New Mexico and Montana, face efforts to outright repeal medical marijuana.  Two current medical marijuana states, Arizona and New Jersey, don’t allow for home cultivation.  Now, New Hampshire, Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, and New York have medical marijuana proposals that forbid home grows and require street-price dispensary shopping.  Proposals in Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia would be similar to the current thirteen medical marijuana states that allow registered home cultivation.

NORML supports all these proposals, because what kind of pro-marijuana organization could oppose protecting patients from arrest for marijuana possession, even if they had to buy it at a dispensary?  At least the dispensary is clean and safe and reliable and tested and secure compared to the streets.  But we remind all supporters of medical marijuana that only through legalization for the healthy will you ever get reasonable prices, peace of mind, and avoid the eventual box canyon the DEA and FDA want to steer you into.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Rep. Clel Baudler of Iowa unrepentant after ethics charges dropped for lying about illness to get California medical marijuana card
2. Kansas lawmaker introduces medical marijuana legislation
3. Wyoming legislature considers bill making already illegal medical marijuana illegal
4. Washington state could earn $300 million in tax revenue from marijuana legalization

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Radical Rant

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• Latino outreach is crucial in ending War on Drugs

(KSNT) TOPEKA, Kansas – Wichita Democratic Representative Gail Finney is taking the fight over legalizing medical marijuana to the State Capitol, but will her urgent efforts stall like they did last legislative session? It appears now that the bill is dead upon arrival because of what Finney calls a game of politics.

This year, Finney says she’s having a hard time even getting it on the agenda to discuss. The committee chair cited timing issues and low support.

“This one here came in either at the end of last week or the first part of this week,” she said. “The last opportunity for any hearing would be Monday, which means I wouldn’t even have the time to work a bill.”

Finney’s revised bill now refers to “cannabis”’ and not “marijuana” and creates tighter regulations with an Oversight Compassion Board and allows the marijuana to be taxed.

Please take the time to visit our Take Action center and send your email to the legislature to support medical marijuana in Kansas.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Seattle Hempfest suing city of Seattle for permit
2. New York and Kansas introduce medical marijuana bills
3. Washington man faces prosecution on the weight of cannabis infused cooking oil

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Grassroots Activism

• Pam Lichty from Drug Policy Forum Hawaii on decrim and medical marijuana

Radical Rant

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• Obama’s All Hat No Cattle Drug Control Budget

House Bill 2330, the Kansas Cannabis Compassion & Care Act, has been reintroduced in the Kansas Legislature and referred to the House Committee on Health and Human Services. The measure seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients and is similar to a proposal considered in the 2010 legislative session.

House Bill 2330 will help to ensure that medical marijuana patients in Kansas will no longer have to fear arrest or prosecution from state law enforcement. As introduced, this act would allow qualified patients diagnosed with a “debilitating medical condition” to possess up to 12 cannabis plants (not including as many as 12 seedlings) and/or 6 ounces of marijuana for therapeutic purposes. The measure seeks to establish not-for-profit “compassion centers” to provide medical marijuana for patients in a safe, above-ground environment.

According to a 2010 statewide poll of Kansas voters, nearly 60 percent of respondents support this measure.

Currently, fifteen states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington – and the District of Columbia have enacted laws protecting medical marijuana patients from state prosecution. Patients in these states enjoy legal protections to use medicinal marijuana under a doctor’s supervision; seriously ill citizens in Kansas deserve this same protection.

Please take two minutes of your time today to contact your state House member and tell him or her to support medical marijuana. If your Representative sits on the House Committee on Health and Human Service then it is especially important that he or she hears from you. For your convenience, a prewritten letter will be sent to your representative when you enter your zip code below.

Thank you for your support of NORML and our efforts to enact medical marijuana reform in Kansas.

Continue reading here:
House Lawmakers Reintroduce Kansas Cannabis Compassion & Care Act

The substance that is marketed as a “synthetic marijuana” under names like K2 and Spice have finally caught the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The chemicals that make up K2 and other products marketed as an “incense” not for human consumption is smoked, like marijuana, but it is actually a combination of herbs that is sprayed with a chemical compound

Read the original here:
DEA Goes After “Fake” Marijuana, Moves to Ban Popular “Spice”

(El Paso Times) EL PASO — Mexican federal police said Saturday that they arrested a second man in connection with the recent birthday party massacre in Juárez in which gunmen killed 16 people, including 11 teenagers.

Federal officials said the team of shooters were tipped off that people at the birthday party were members of a rival gang known as Artistas Asesinos (Artists Assassins), who reportedly work for the Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán drug cartel from Sinaloa.

The shooters were informed that the party would be at 10:30 p.m. Around that time, 16 gunmen arrived, some armed with AK-47s and AR-15 assault rifles, to shoot the partygoers, and sealed off the 1300 block of Villas del Portal.

Officials said some of the victims were gang members, but most were identified as students and athletes.

The attackers initially did not mean to kill some women and children. Arzate Meléndez said at a news conference Saturday that Ramírez said “que dispararan a todos parejo,” which roughly translates to “shoot everyone.”

In total, 16 died and 12 were wounded. The youngest killed was a 13-year-old girl; the oldest was 42.

Stop and think about this.  This massacre occurred just over the border from El Paso, Texas.  Imagine chaperoning your teenage son’s or daughter’s birthday party.  Picture gunmen with assault rifles bursting in, spraying your home with gunfire.  Try to comprehend the horror of trying to escape, trying to help your child, and finding every escape route blocked by more gunmen.

28% of young people will use marijuana this year; 11% will use twice a week or more.

You may think that Juárez is far away and that you and your children have nothing to do with rival drug gang warfare, so this doesn’t affect you.  But so long as there exists a War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs, there is the chance you can get caught up in the crossfire.  These Mexican gangs are controlling marijuana trafficking in 230 American cities.  28% of all young people aged 18-25 will use marijuana this year; 11% will use more than twice a week.  Those young people are going to get their marijuana from someone.  Will it be a dealer for a Mexican gang from Sinaloa or Juárez?  Could there be a misunderstanding that leads to gunmen attacking your college-aged child’s party in Peoria, Pocatello, or Portland?

Plus you must remember that both sides fighting the War on Marijuana are well armed and that sometimes, police make mistakes, too.  Mistakes on search warrants for drug raids killed 64-year-old John Adams of Lebanon, Tennessee; 46-year-old Willie Heard of Osawatomie, Kansas; 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston of Atlanta, Georgia; 45-year-old Israel Mena of Denver, Colorado; 44-year-old Cheryl Noel of Dunkalk, Maryland; 65-year-old Mario Paz of Compton, California; and 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda of Modesto, California were all shot by police who were serving warrants on locations that either turned out to be wrong addresses or turned out to find no drugs whatsoever.

The only sensible way to protect our children from the horrors of prohibition-related drug trafficking violence is to take the market away from the criminals and give it to responsible law-abiding businesspeople.  After all, when is the last time you hear of teenagers getting caught in the crossfire of Al Capone’s gang warring over moonshine distribution?