The AP reports,

A medical marijuana dispensary at South Lake Tahoe has reopened, three months after shutting down following a raid by federal agents.

Patient to Patient Collective last week reopened next to its previous location, and plans to offer a full line of marijuana products to eligible patients.

Federal agents seized about 10 pounds of processed marijuana and a small amount of cash during January’s raid, but no arrests were made.

This is akin to the turtle poking his head out of his shell to look around and see if that little boy is going to try and cut it off again. In this metaphor, the little boy, Attorney General Eric Holder, promised not to target medical dispensaries, with provisions, and we are all waiting to see if he keeps his promise. With one exception, there have not been any further raids on dispensaries by federal troops.

But, therein lies the problem. The prohibition continues to fuel the black market, and the government has their finger on the grenade pin 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At any time, the government can pull the pin and blow up every life involved in the legitimate cannabis industry in every medical marijuana state and people are scared.

[Therein lies another problem: the feds will only bust dispensaries that break state law, but the feds, not the state, get to decide if you broke state law.  There are no state charges filed for breaking that state law, whatever it was, only federal charges.  When you're facing federal charges in a federal court, you're not allowed to mention that you were following a state medical marijuana law. -- "R"R]

People are legitimately afraid of the federal government, and there are no protections for them. With only a small handful of congressional leaders willing to champion the cause, the entire House of Representatives have become a sniveling group of cowards afraid to lead their country because they believe their constituent support may suffer.

Contact your elected representative and let them know if they support medical marijuana laws then you will support them. They need to know who their support base is, then get active and get involved.

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(CBS) So far, there hasn’t been much negative reaction to the photo showing Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking what appeared to be marijuana. 

A few years ago, it might have ruined his career, but so far it hasn’t — perhaps a sign of changing attitudes.

The seeming lack of outrage… may reflect America’s changing attitudes towards marijuana – an estimated $30 billion dollar industry in the United States alone.

While a majority of Americans still oppose the legalization of marijuana use, a new CBS News poll shows a big swing in opinion in recent years.

Twenty-seven percent supported legalization in 1979; 41 percent support it today.

Understand that when you get “41% support legalization”, that’s over 2 out of 5 people when asked, “Should marijuana be legalized” who will say “yes.”  That’s without any explanation of how, where, when, or for whom it will be legalized, so that includes the spectrum from “fine-only possession, jail for sales, cultivation, and trafficking” to “pre-rolled joints at the convenience store”.

When you change the question to actually define what you mean by “legalization”, the numbers rise.  In a 2001 Zogby poll, ten weeks after 9/11, we found:

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Olympic great Michael Phelps has acknowledged ”regrettable” behavior and ”bad judgment” after a photo in a British newspaper showed him smoking marijuana.

In a statement released to The Associated Press, the swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games conceded the authenticity of the exclusive picture published Sunday by the tabloid News of the World.

Phelps said: ”I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”

via Phelps Apologizes for Marijuana Use – NYTimes.com.

Youthful and inappropriate.  Childish things, as our president might say.  ”It will not happen again.”  Not to get all Clintonian on you, Mike, but does “it” refer to “smoking marijuana” or does “it” refer to “photos surfacing in newspapers showing you smoking marijuana”?

I’ll never understand the mindset that accepts as rational the idea that these world class athletes – Michael Phelps, Ricky Williams, Ross Rebagliati, those Russian sumo, etc. - can dedicate their entire lives to eating right, working out, honing their bodies and minds to the pinnacle of their sport, but should they wish to relax and unwind, they’re forced to ingest a hard liquid drug that has noticably deleterious effects on health and athletic ability (Max McGee notwithstanding) rather than a mild herb that doesn’t seem to  have affected their abilities whatsoever.

Even more perplexing is the notion that, in the name of “sports medicine”, these athletes are accustomed to taking all manner of narcotic pain killers and other pharmaceutical cocktails that aid performance or mitigate injury, but are addicting (Brett Favre, *cough*,) and wreak havoc on the liver and kidneys, yet if we catch them smoking weed we have to mete out severe punishment (Santonio Holmes, notwithstanding).

As I look at the coverage on Huffington Post (admittedly, a liberal website) almost all comments are “it’s well past time to legalize it” and “so what” and “didn’t hurt Phelps’ performance any”.  Oh, an Obama brother pot bust and an eight-time gold medalist bong photo following ten days of growing drumbeat over President Obama’s non-response to the Tahoe Raid… somebody really did get me a swell birthday present!

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The House Minority Leader, John Boehner, was interviewed from the “Digg Dialogg” segment on CNN.com and, of course, the first question asked by the public to a politician is once again about marijuana legalization (question appears at about 3:20 on the video):


Uh… so which is it, Rep. Boehner? Do you support “states making their own laws” or not? Out of one side of your mouth you seem to be saying you support states’ rights to determine their own laws, out of the other side you seem to be saying the federal government is correct in squashing state laws that legalize medical marijuana?

And it’s a bit disingenuous to say the  American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association don’t think cannabis is medicinal. They have an issue with the smoking of cannabis.  Both believe there is enough medicinal promise in cannabinoids that they have endorsed more research into it.

American Cancer Society
“[California Senate Bill] 535 focuses on medical marijuana research. [The] American Cancer Society … supports S.B. 535 because it is consistent with our long-held position of supporting research of any agent or technique for which there may be evidence of a therapeutic advantage.”
Reference: letter from ACS to California State Senator John Vasconcellos (July 24, 1997)

American Medical Association
“The AMA recommend that adequate and well-controlled studies of smoked marijuana be conducted in patients who have serious conditions for which preclinical, anecdotal, or controlled evidence suggests possible efficacy in including AIDS wasting syndrome, sever acute or delayed emesis induced by chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, dystonia, and neuropathic pain.”
Reference: Council on Scientific Affairs Report #10: Medical Marijuana

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Change.org – Ideas for Changing America: Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana

I looked over at the sidebar widget and saw that our Change.org Idea for Legalization dropped to 1,074 votes!  What?!?  It was at over 8,800 last I checked!

Then I surfed over.  Don’t panic, all is well.  We’re at 10,749 votes, still the top-rated idea.  The problem is they didn’t program their Flash widget to handle five digits – too many votes.  We’ve overwhelmed them with “V10K”!

Surf over to Change.org and let’s push it up to “V20K” by the deadline, which is this Thursday @ 5:00PM Eastern.

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