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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Roseanne Barr announces candidacy for Green Party presidential nomination
2. Texas Councilman says he gets his marijuana and meth from prostitutes
3. Peter Lewis bankrolls Massachusetts medical marijuana bill

Daily Toker Tunes

Irie Wednesday: Brought to you by NorCalPurps in the California Bay Area

• Katchafire – “Meant to Be”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• New study underscores that passing medical marijuana laws does not affect teen use of marijuana

Government at Work

• Rep. Patricia Todd working to pass medical marijuana in Alabama legislature

"I'm FBI Special Agent Leatherface, open up!!!" (credit: CBS Boston)

(CBS) FITCHBURG, Mass. – The FBI accidentally raided the wrong apartment last Thursday, cutting through the apartment door of a central Massachusetts woman and her three-year-old daughter with a chainsaw, in a botched effort to seize guns and drugs.

No. When you send paramilitary urban assault troops into an apartment building to initiate violence with guns and chainsaws and someone innocent is victimized, that is not called a “botched effort,” that is called “collateral damage”.

Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.

“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.

And they said get your dog, so I got her and at the same time I am laying in her urine because she did pee on herself at the same time.”

[The woman] says the agents told her not to move, so, fearing she’d be shot if she did, she stayed put on the floor while her daughter screamed for her in the other room.

This woman is lucky her dog wasn’t shot.  Can you imagine laying in dog piss with an automatic weapon to your head while your toddler screams in terror at the black masked armored soldiers invading through your chainsawed front door?

Mistakes are inevitable in police work and when that work is an armed raid of a civilian home, mistakes cost the lives of cops, citizens, and pets.  This is why this tactic must be an absolute last resort.  We cannot accept this mayhem in the name of stopping people from doing drugs when we know this prohibition never stops people from doing drugs and creates most of the violence people attribute to drugs.

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Massachusetts Supreme Court to hear student 5th Amendment right to remain silent case
2. Maastricht bans tourists from coffee shops
3. Missoula overrides citizen initiative making marijuana the lowest enforcement priority

Daily Toker Tunes

• Roots Monday: Blind Lemon Jefferson – “Easy Rider Blues”

Government at Work

• Ed Docter from Montana Cannabis Industries Association on referendum on SB 423

Radical Rant

• Lessons we can learn from Part I of Ken Burns’ Prohibition documentary on PBS

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. New SB423 restrictions on probationers and medical marijuana leaves Montana woman in intractable pain
2. International Cannabis & Hemp Expo moves out of Cow Palace to downtown Oakland in Oaksterdam
3. Colorado DUID panel cannot determine a per se limit of THC in blood to reliably indicate impairment
4. Massachusetts company completes sequencing of cannabis genome

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Rockin’ Friday: Cannabis Corpse – “Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise”

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide

• INTCHE moves to Oaksterdam
• HIGH TIMES outlast Wall St. Journal in 11-inning softball final, finishes season #1 at 9-1
• Stoner Movie Review: “Our Idiot Brother” with Paul Rudd
• Sebastian Bach’s home destroyed by East Coast flooding

Radical Rant

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Michelle Bachmann ignores medical marijuana states rights question on campaign trail
2. New York woman loses children over marijuana amount so low the prosecutor won’t charge her
3. Massachusetts company maps genetic code of cannabis
4. Oregon State Police denies any special treatment for star football players busted for 118MPH in hot-boxed car

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: Iration – “Turn Around”

Grassroots Activism

• Alison Holcomb from New Approach Washington
• Douglas Hiatt from Sensible Washington

Cannabis Community

• Vivian McPeak, Executive Director of Seattle Hempfest

(CBS News)  A small Massachusetts-based company says it has successfully sequenced a marijuana plant, paving the way for more research into the therapeutic effects of Cannabis – including its potential for treating cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Medicinal Genomics published the raw sequence strings at midnight. The company’s findings have not yet undergone peer review. Medicinal Genomics put the data up on Amazon.com’s EC2 cloud- computing system.The more than 131 billion bases of sequence, which is believed to constitute the largest known gene collection of the Cannabis genomes so far, will be made available to the scientific public sometime this fall.

The breakthrough also raises the possibility that researchers will eventually be able to weed out – no pun intended – the psychoactive effects pot smoking has on people while enhancing the medicinal aspects of Cannabis.

No pun intended?  You mean copywriters at CBS don’t have a thesaurus?  The sentence could have been “…be able to isolate and remove…” but you chose “…weed out…”.

This is that pharmaceuticalization of cannabis we’ve been warning you about.  While it is desirable in some medical cases to remove the psychoactive effect of THC – some people do react badly to it – it is something that should remain a choice, not a requirement of cannabis medicine.  That mild euphoria can be as medicinal for the mental health of people battling disabling conditions and the cannabinoids are for their physical health.

What will be nice about this is finally getting the truth out about different cannabis strains.  Right now I can swab my dog’s cheek and through DNA testing determine his exact breed.  Won’t it be great in the future when you can get a pack of seeds or a clone plant and send in a sample for exact strain testing?  ”My guy said this was a ‘Jack Herer’, but it turned out to be 60% ‘Jack Herer’ and 40% ‘White Widow’!”

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. More details emerge in the death of an 18-year-old Florida teen in jail for 2 grams of pot
2. Alabama medical marijuana bill sponsored by GOP Christian Conservative legislator
3. Study shows kids raised in grow houses show no difference than those raised without them
4. 66-year-old grandmother detained at Canadian border when traces of heroin are found in a motor oil ontainer

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Live at Fire in the Canyon festival with Phil from Taxidermy Records, with music by Ceschi

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide

Radical Rant

• Massachusetts medmj proposal leads further into the Box Canyon

Massachusetts is one of the few states on the east side of our country that has the power of citizen initiative petitioning to create laws and constitutional amendments.  (See the I & R Institute for all the details.)  In 2008, Massachusetts passed a decriminalization initiative with a 2:1 majority.  It is clear residents of the Bay State support sweeping reforms in marijuana policy.

So why are some Massachusetts residents proposing a medical marijuana petition that follows New Jersey, DC, and Arizona further down into the Box Canyon of Medical Marijuana?  This petition has two major areas of concern to me:

(C) “Debilitating medical condition” shall mean:

Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and other conditions as determined in writing by a qualifying patient’s physician.

No chronic pain?  No severe nausea?  Here are the two conditions that most medical marijuana patients cite in getting their cards in other states.  They are also two conditions for which we have the most peer-reviewed documented research proving cannabis’ efficacy in relief.  By contrast, while we have plenty of anecdotal reports of cannabis’ effictiveness in treating Crohn’s, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s), and Parkinson’s, we don’t have a single clinical trial to prove it.

So why are pain and nausea missing?  I believe drafters of this language are afraid of the “too many patients = abuse” frame successfully built by our opponents who put sarcasm quotes around “chronic pain”.  Years of opponents pointing to California dispensaries and young-man-heavy registries dominated by chronic pain in other states have created a meme that “chronic pain = faking to get a card to get high”.

The problem is that by not including chronic pain, we tacitly approve their frame.  We have the trump cards – scientific trials and studies – that make chronic pain one of the easiest medical marijuana qualifying conditions to defend.  We have the smarts to know it’s not that a bunch of young dudes fake chronic pain to get cards; it’s that there is a lot of chronic pain sufferers in this country.  Sixteen thousand TONS of aspirin are consumed in this country every year.  Two billion dollars per year are spent on over-the-counter pain relievers.  One hundred sixteen million Americans suffer from chronic pain, one in five say pain regularly disrupts their sleep, one in four report experiencing longer-than-a-day pain, and one in eight have had pain disrupt their work productivity every pay period.

(C) In the first year after the effective date, the Department shall issue registrations for up to thirty-five non-profit medical marijuana treatment centers, provided that at least one treatment center shall be located in each county, and not more than five shall be located in any one county.

Section 11. Hardship Cultivation Registrations.

The Department shall issue a cultivation registration to a qualifying patient whose access to a medical treatment center is limited by verified financial hardship, a physical incapacity to access reasonable transportation, or the lack of a treatment center within a reasonable distance of the patient’s residence.

So like Arizona: no home cultivation unless you live far enough away from a dispensary.  This seems to be the direction medical marijuana is evolving on the Eastern seaboard, locking patients into purchasing marijuana at prohibition prices when they could grow their own at far lower cost.  At least they included a provision to allow the poorest patients to grow their own… but if you’re that poor, how do you afford the grow equipment to get started?

Another provision Massachusetts should worry about:

Section 8. Department to define presumptive 60-day supply for qualifying patients.

Within 120 days of the effective date of this law, the department shall issue regulations defining the quantity of marijuana that could reasonably be presumed to be a sixty-day supply for qualifying patients, based on the best available evidence. This presumption as to quantity may be overcome with evidence of a particular qualifying patient’s appropriate medical use.

“60 Day Supply” was the original wording of the Washington medical marijuana law and that led to a whole bunch of problems.  Eventually, the state researched the “best available evidence” and discovered patients needed 70 ounces for 60 days.  Gov. Gregoire freaked out and the proposal was whittled down to 35 ounces.  Then once it made it through the legislature, it was whittled down again to match Oregon’s 24 ounces.

Anybody want to bet that Massachusetts will determine “60 Day Supply” works out to something between 1-to-6 ounces?  At least there is that California/New Mexico caveat that a patient can have more if there exists evidence he or she needs more, but that’s just one more hoop the most severely sick and disabled patients have to jump through.

Still, it’s not a measure I could oppose, but I worry our opponents are going to keep pushing back and restrict further the medical marijuana laws.  Ironically, they’ll be using the same tactic – “you can’t let the cancer patients suffer, can you?” – that we used to pass medical marijuana in the first place.

A 45 year-old Oregon woman has told police that raided her home last week that she has been sending pounds of marijuana to Boston. Elizabeth Saul from Grants Pass Oregon, a town in the Southern part of the state, admitted to police that she shipped marijuana to Boston in rented freight containers full of old furniture and made $300 dollars profit on each pound. She told them she has made about $125,000 this year from selling Oregon weed to the East Coast.

Originally posted here:
Oregon Marijuana Makes It’s Way to Boston

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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. DEA raids at least five dispensaries in Spokane, Washington
2. The ACLU takes up the appeal of Joseph Casias, the Wal-Mart worker fired for medical marijuana use
3. Today marks the 100-year anniversary of the nation’s first statewide pot ban in Massachusetts

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Rockin’ Friday: Double Jack – “Free”

NORML Newsmakers

• Kevin Oliver from Washington NORML recorded live yesterday at the THC Pharmacy being raided by DEA
• Steph Sherer from Americans for Safe Access