Looks like police all around America are becoming aware of two solid, irrefutable, unimpeachable, constant truths:

1) The Law of Supply and Demand.

2) Americans everywhere like to smoke pot.

(Huffington Post) The price of marijuana in California has taken a dip over recent years, and that has motivated some to sell their cash crop out of state. As with most goods and services, pot prices are determined by supply, demand and quality.

A pound of the highest-quality marijuana could bring a grower $2,500 if sold to a dealer in Fresno, but as much as $5,500 to a dealer in Greensboro, N.C., according to the National Drug Intelligence Center, which looked at prices in mid-2010. Interviews with pot growers and others in the industry suggest the California wholesale price is closer to about $1,500 a pound if sold here.

Simone said the farther east you go, the more people are willing to pay. James Benno, director of Nor-Cal NORML, which advocates for marijuana users, doesn’t disagree.

“I’m not going to deny that kind of stuff goes on,” he said. “A lot of people are in this for the money. If you can get $4,000 for a pound in New York and $1,500 here in California, it stands to reason that people who are in this for the money are going to take it where the money’s at.”

The prohibitionists are pointing to the medical marijuana laws in California, Oregon, and Washington as fueling a flood of West Coast Weed that’s washing over their Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern states.  However, as California NORML points out, most of the dispensaries in his state are operating in a “closed loop” of supply and distribution:

“Medical marijuana is a small percentage of the California market,” he said. “The medical marijuana that’s being grown for the dispensaries is generally being done by patients in a fairly closed loop. I’m not going to say there’s no leakage there, but it’s insignificant compared to the enormous amount that’s being produced in non-medical markets.”

He’s right, in a sense, but that can’t be proven or even tested.  Marijuana is fungible.  A person isn’t a “medical marijuana grower” producing “medical marijuana” or a “drug dealer” producing “pot” – cannabis is cannabis.  Dispensary A may indeed only get its medicine from legit medical Grower B, but Grower B may be selling half to Dispensary A and letting half get trucked to Ohio to Dealer X.  Grower B may have acquired some product from illegal Grower Y and added that to his sale to Dispensary A.  There is really no possible way to know how much marijuana in a dispensary or on the street is “medical”.

Morgan Fox of MPP responds to the smuggling claims by pointing out how states need to have “dispensary systems … set up along strict guidelines“, like Maine, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.  New Jersey, Morgan?!?  Where there are six dispensaries in a state of nine million limited to producing three strains of less-than-10% THC?  Where patients aren’t allowed to grow their own plants?  With more systems like that there will be more demand among patients for that real medical-potency marijuana smuggled in from the West Coast.

I think it is foolish to try to pretend that medical marijuana on the West Coast hasn’t both depressed the retail price (“medical” and “recreational”) and contributed to interstate trafficking.  To do so is to ask the public to ignore their own common sense – they understand supply and demand.  If something’s cheap and plentiful here and not so plentiful elsewhere, someone from here will supply that demand there.

Instead, this is the opportunity we must take to pivot the discussion from medical marijuana to marijuana prohibition.  How does a pound cost $4,000 in New York and $1,500 in California?  Prohibition!  The only way to eliminate the smuggling is to make a California pound cost $4,000 or make a New York pound cost $1,500.  Since New York can’t change California’s laws, maybe it should enact its own medical marijuana law.  Nobody’s smuggling New York weed to California, after all.

We must get the public to see that marijuana use is inevitable.  They can think non-medical use is a dirty habit, a poor health choice, a moral failing, but what it is not is a crime.  Marijuana use is inextricably woven into our culture and prohibition merely criminalizes an otherwise peaceful and productive subculture and creates profit motive for smugglers.  Legalize it – nobody’s smuggling California Budweiser to New York, after all.  (They are, however, smuggling Virginia and North Carolina cigarettes to New York, thanks to extreme taxation… a lesson for post-prohibition when we begin taxing cannabis…)

Kathleen Chippi (top right): "(T)his will be (P)rop 19 all over again, and we will help kill it with smiles on our faces."

Remember all the fun we had in 2010 with the “Stoners Against Legalization”?  These were a loose collection of starry-eyed idealists, anti-authority anarchists, and unscrupulous medical marijuana business owners who believed that keeping healthy people out of jail for using pot would end the gravy train they’re enjoying from their current medical marijuana laws.  I dubbed them the “I Gots Mine” crowd and unleashed a torrent of blogging fury to call them out and expose them as the enemies of legalization they are.

Well, get ready for Round Two.  An unprecedented coalition of pro-legalization groups, including Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation, Sensible Colorado, National NORML, Colorado NORML, and Mile High NORML, filed eight ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in Colorado.  From those eight they will see which pass muster from the Secretary of State’s office, which gets the best official ballot title, and which poll with the best chance of winning.

However, one group, Cannabis Therapy Institute (the folks that brought you Miguel Lopez making a scene at the Capitol that killed a patient-friendly amendment… and then blamed the legislator who submitted it!) is fuming mad that they weren’t given the chance to vet the language before submission.  Here are some of the reasons why CTI thinks we should continue to lock up people who are too healthy to be a part of their marijuana club:

Ironically, Denver conservative cannabis group SAFER has always espoused the belief that marijuana should be treated like alcohol. But the MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER (MDSS) initiative treats cannabis much stricter than alcohol. By limiting cannabis consumers to one ounce at a time, unlike alcohol with no limits, the MDSS initiative will ensure greater scrutiny on cannabis consumers than any alcohol consumer ever had.

“Conservative cannabis group SAFER”?  Wow, I’ll have to check with National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, and The Christian Science Monitor so they can write articles on their conservative brethren.  Oh, and FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, all those AM talkers on right-wing radio, they’re all big fans of SAFER and marijuana legalization.

So let’s get this straight: because a legalization initiative might limit you to purchase and possession of an ounce, instead of allowing you to buy as much as you want and possess as much as you want, you’d prefer that healthy Coloradoans continue to be arrested, jailed, and saddled with a lifetime criminal record?  If your input is “We ought to be able to have all the marijuana we want!” and you seriously think that will pass in a state that rejected one ounce legalization by a 59% vote in 2006, I’m not surprised if you weren’t consulted.  

The MDSS Initiative would also allow for and set Constitutional standards for driving discrimination, employment discrimination, and tenant discrimination of marijuana users. The MDSS Initiative makes “Driving Under the Influence of Marijuana” a new Constitutional crime, completely wiping away victories scored by patient advocates to kill a THC/DUI bill in the state legislature this year.

News flash: Driving under the influence of marijuana is a crime in Colorado NOW.  Here is the scary language in Section 6 of the initiatives CTI is scaremongering:

6. Employers, Driving, Minors and Control of Property.

(A) Nothing in this section is intended to require an employer to permit or accommodate the use, consumption, possession, transfer, display, transportation, sale or growing of marijuana in the workplace or to affect the ability of employers to have policies restricting the use of marijuana by employees.

So… employers can continue to do to cannabis consumers what they do NOW, but at least those consumers won’t be arrested and jailed for cannabis use.  And those consumers would have a better case to fight discrimination against cannabis use since it will be legal.  CTI would prefer an initiative that forbids employer discrimination and without it, those healthy cannabis consumers should continue to be locked up.  Despite the fact that Prop 19 had that kind of anti-discrimination language and it was cited as a major reason the business community opposed it.

(B) Nothing in this section is intended to allow driving under the influence of marijuana or driving while impaired by marijuana or to supersede statutory laws related to driving under the influence of marijuana or driving while impaired by marijuana, nor shall this section prevent the state from enacting and imposing penalties for driving under the influence of or while impaired by marijuana.

So… the cops can still bust you under the DUID laws that exist NOW.  Now read carefully, do you see any of that THC/DUI language CTI mentioned they killed?  No?  CTI would prefer an initiative that protects cannabis consumers from driving discrimination and without it, healthy cannabis consumers ought to still be locked up even when they’re not driving.

(C) Nothing in this section is intended to permit the transfer of marijuana, with or without remuneration, to a person younger than twenty-one years of age or to allow a person younger than twenty-one years of age to purchase, possess, use, transport, grow, or consume marijuana.

To their credit, at least CTI (to my knowledge) isn’t bellyaching about this paragraph.  My personal preference would be an age of 18 but I’m politically wise enough to know that nothing under 21 has a shot in hell of passing.

(D) Nothing in this section shall prohibit a person, employer, school, hospital, detention facility, corporation or any other entity who occupies, owns or controls a property from prohibiting or otherwise regulating the possession, consumption, use, display, transfer, distribution, sale, transportation, or growing of marijuana on or in that property.

So… your landlord, boss, etc. can still prevent you from possessing and using marijuana on their property like they can NOW.  CTI would prefer an initiative that allows you to take your marijuana into any public space and without it, healthy cannabis consumers should still be locked up if caught with marijuana in their private spaces.

Back to CTI.  Another of their complaints is that taxes would be collected on marijuana sales and would go to the big bad gub’mint!

Some of the 8 versions of the MDSS Initiative reportedly also allow a 15% excise tax, which will create more funding for the Department of Revenue marijuana police force. The MMED already has a budget larger than the entire Colorado Bureau of Investigation, all funded by the medical marijuana industry. Do we really want to be handing over a 15% per ounce extra tax to buy more handcuffs?

Handcuffs for all those cannabis consumers who will not be arrested for buying, selling, and possessing one ounce of legal marijuana?  So let’s be clear; CTI thinks if marijuana is legalized, no money should go toward the enforcement of those laws.

And let’s make one provision of the initiative perfectly clear: It specifically and directly does not affect Colorado’s medical marijuana laws:

7. Medical marijuana provisions unaffected. Nothing in this section shall be construed:

(A) To limit any privileges or rights of a medical marijuana patient, primary caregiver, or licensed entity as provided in section 14 of article XVIII and the Colorado Medical Marijuana Code;

So if you’re healthy, you get an ounce away from the home, three mature and three immature plants in the home and all the marijuana produced on the premises (a.k.a. “a shit-ton of marijuana”):

3. Personal Use of Marijuana. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the following acts are not unlawful and shall not be an offense under Colorado law or the law of any locality within Colorado or be a basis for seizure or forfeiture of assets under Colorado law for persons twenty-one years of age or older:

(A) Possessing, using, displaying, purchasing, or transporting marijuana accessories or one ounce or less of marijuana.

(B) Possessing, growing, processing, or transporting no more than six marijuana plants, with three or fewer being mature, flowering plants, and possession of the marijuana produced by the plants on the premises where the plants were grown, provided that the growing takes place in an enclosed, locked space, is not conducted openly or publicly, and is not made available for sale.

(C) Transfer of one ounce or less of marijuana without remuneration to a person who is twenty-one years of age or older.

And if you’re sick or disabled you can still get your card and have your three plus three plants, two ounces away from the home, and the new legalization allowance of all the processed marijuana at your grow site, and you still have an affirmative defense for more.  But because some of the taxes might buy handcuffs, according to CTI, the healthy people should be arrested and locked up for even one plant.

Beyond complaints with the language, CTI adjusts the tinfoil hat and offers explanations why this out-of-state cabal (whose Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente are Coloradoans) went ahead with legalization initiatives without the CTI’s blessing:

This unilateral move by MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER cast doubts that any cannabis law reform ballot initiative in Colorado would be successful. These conservative groups seem to want to duplicate the strategy of dividing and ignoring the progressive grassroots, as MPP/DPA did in their medical marijuana campaigns of 1997/98 nationwide.

“These conservative groups” that WON their medical marijuana campaigns in 1997/98, you mean?  That helped to WIN the medical marijuana law in Colorado?  CTI keeps trying to paint this as some sort of “conservative” vs. “progressive” argument and in the very next sentence, shred any credibility one might have of their understanding of those ideological terms:

Many people don’t know that billionaire currency manipulator George Soros funded Amendment 20 in 1997/98 through the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), headed by Rob Kampia in DC, and the Open Society Institute, headed by Ethan Nadelmann. Nadelmann now works with the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York and California, but also funded by Soros…

Yes, George Soros, the man demonized by conservatives from Glenn Beck to George Will as the liberal billionaire scourge trying to legalize drugs , is CTI’s conservative boogey man.

No, what this is really a “divide” between is the rational, educated, politically mature adults and the people who have their hearts in the right place but their brains in vapor-lock by thinking a majority of the voting public is ready to treat marijuana like tomatoes.  In politics, you don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  If there is an opportunity to prevent the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of cannabis consumers and you are publicly opposing it, you are my enemy as much as the prohibitionists who will be voting along with you against reform.

The real fun Stoners Against Legalization tirades take place in the comments:

Kathleen Chippi in reply to Enough CTI

I’m sick of you f’ing know nothings–I’m starting to believe your cops infiltrating to cause problems.

No matter because enough people appreciate and respect CTI and ACT and other local groups that this will be prop 19 all over again, and we will help kill it with smiles on our faces. It is better to have NOTHING different rather than have shit language screw with patients, caregivers and voters in general for years to come…we have heard the “we can fix it later”  and we know that means nothing will be fixed.  They also promised to fix A20 13 years ago and they have done nothing.

This language and any language will fail as the national groups have split the vote and were not even in 2012.

You read it right: she and her allies will kill legalization with a smile on their faces. That’s something you’d expect a drug czar or a narc to say, huh?

Kathleen Chippi in reply to Paul

Paul Armentino?  The NORML nazi?  Come on Pual where is the evidence of things I have done to hold up the ‘industry’?  Love to see something other than personal attacks.

Yeah, you Nazi, enough with the personal attacks.

Robert in reply to Paul

If this is Paul Armentano, we know about your organization and its commitment to legalization; your President said NORML did not care about legalization in West Virginia and that it is too easy to get cannabis in California — you aren’t national and you aren’t for legalizing cannabis either.  Asking WW to exclude us from about the only media forum where the grassroots of Colorado can speak is a fascist impulse.

You keep using this word “fascist”.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

By the way, it wasn’t Paul Armentano.  Oddly enough, Paul has a little too much on his plate reviewing thousands of medical and scientific studies on cannabis to engage people who violate Godwin’s Law on WestWord comments sections.

Corey Donahue in reply to Paul

[W]hy are you supporting language in our Constitution when you reside out of state Paul?  And why are you supporting language that is called “legalization” but only up to 6 plants and 1 oz, which would make it illegal over 6 plants or an oz?

Seriously, this is the level of political reason and basic logic the Stoners Against Legalization possess.  If you make it legal to have six plants (and ALL the cannabis you harvest from them) and an ounce (outside the home), that’s not legalization because people with 30 grams and seven plants could be prosecuted.  Which leads me to believe if it was twelve plants and a pound or a hundred plants and a pickup truck load, those wouldn’t be legalization either, because people above those limits could still be busted.

High Country Caregiver

The legal 1 oz laws are total garbage.  The same laws got passed in Breckenridge and they mean nothing.  An initiative like this is not legalization, and I will never be fooled into voting for fools trying to make fools of us pot heads just trying to get high and have fun.  Anything shy of making cannabis as legal as tomatoes is just further prohibition and should be voted down.

If marijuana can’t be grown by anyone, anywhere, bought and sold in farmer’s markets, available to children (kids can have tomatoes), and grown in unsecured backyard gardens, then adults over 21 who possess less than an ounce and grow six plants at home should continue to be arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated.  (HCG, you need nobody’s help to look the fool.)

What all these detractors misunderstand is the word “legalization”.  What they want is “deregulation” – they’re looking for no regulations, as in “treat it like tomatoes”.  Sorry, folks, legalization requires regulation and marijuana is never going to be treated like tomatoes.  For one, tomatoes do not get you high.  Nobody is worried about their kids sneaking tomatoes from your garden.  Nobody is concerned with how many tomatoes you’ve eaten before you drive a car.  Nobody’s worried about people overeating tomatoes and how they may behave in public afterward.

"Counter-culture" activists for NORML (L-R) Keith Stroup, Assem. Tom Ammiano, PBS Host Rick Steves... crazy hippies!

From time to time on blogs I read a complaint about NORML, like this one:

NORML hasn’t accomplish­ed anything since the disco era!  They haven’t done a damn thing in the last 30 years!  Paul A is the only good thing NORML has going; aside from him, this movement wouldn’t even notice if NORML ceased existing.

I will concur that Paul Armentano is an MVP All-Star in marijuana law reform.  You cannot find a person better educated on the science of marijuana.

But to conclude Paul is the “only good thing NORML has going” is to disparage the incredible work being done by hundreds of grassroots activists working in the NORML chapter network.  To wit:

More "counter-culture" activists with NORML

Chris Goldstein, Anne Davis, & NORML NJ – instrumental in negotiations with New Jersey lawmakers to bring about Gov. Corzine’s signature on the law making it the nation’s 15th medical marijuana state.

Derek Rosenzweig & PhillyNORML – uncovered and published research on Philadelphia’s racial bias in marijuana enforcement leading to a change in policy to end arrests of low level marijuana consumers in the city.

Another couple of "hippies"

Michigan NORML and MassCann/NORML laid the groundwork for 2008′s medical marijuana and decriminalization, respectively, in Michigan and Massachusetts by passing numerous municipal measures in support of marijuana.

Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML led negotiations with lawmakers to set medical marijuana limits to 24 ounces and 24 plants, the highest statewide statutory limits in the nation (along with Washington State).

The "grass" in "grassroots" - so counter-culture!

Dale Gieringer, Bill Panzer, and California NORML helped co-author Prop 215 in California, worked for the clarifications found in SB420, worked with Assem. Ammiano to produce the first legalization bill in decades, helped shepherd the latest California decrim measure to Schwarzenegger’s desk, and are organizing with Prop 19′s leaders for a new legalization initiative in 2012.

Kandice Hawes and Orange County NORML held the nation’s first medical marijuana conference specifically for seniors… across the street from Disneyland!

No wonder "normal" people won't join... look at these two!

Mary Mackenzie (apologies for the original name misspell – I sure know what that’s like!), AZ4NORML, and Phoenix NORML were the foot soldiers gathering the signatures that got MPP’s Arizona Prop 203 on the ballot.

Kelly Maddy, Joplin NORML, Dan Viets, Missouri NORML, all worked in Missouri to pass lowest-law-enforcement and other municipal initiatives.

These guys have done nothing since the disco era...

Ben Masel, Gary Storck, Madison NORML all have lobbied intensively for the Jackie Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, moving it farther along in the legislative process every year.

Colorado NORML, Mile High NORML, have worked with SAFER on their initiatives, gathering signatures that lead to Denver’s legalization and other low-priority initiatives.

Obviously too tie-dyed and love-beaded to make any difference

Isaias Valdez and Idaho NORML are beginning the grassroots education and activism in one of the most anti-marijuana states in the nation; the state currently has a medical marijuana bill in the legislature and the group is following up with a citizen’s initiative.

John & Heather Masterson in Montana NORML, battling to mitigate the perception of abuse of medical marijuana created by unethical “ganjapreneurs” and most recenlty providing live coverage of the DEA raids in Montana.

Sure, they're doctors... but they're "pot" doctors!

Then there are the hundreds of attorneys who make up the NORML Legal Committee, who have donated thousands of hours of pro bono time helping average cannabis consumers avoid jail and retain voting rights, also working on new laws.  For example:

Jeff Blackburn, who kept an AIDS patient out of a Texas prison with an affirmative defense that a jury agreed with in only 11 minutes of deliberation.  The patients’ original public defender only offered a plea deal that would have meant six months of drug testing that would’ve left the patient without his medicine, wasting away.

And that whole "boobs and buds" issue turns women off to the cause...

Doug Hiatt, who fought for the life of Hep C patient Tim Garon, denied a liver transplant because his legal medical marijuana use in Washington State made him a “drug addict” in the eyes of the hospital.  Hiatt is now behind the Sensible Washington effort to fully legalize by citizen initiative.

Let’s not forget the national staff (like me) who constantly educate, advocate, interview, debate, advertise, litigate, lobby, and keep the conversation on marijuana legalization moving forward.

No wonder nobody wants to legalize pot - look at these people!

I’ve already written way too much for a comment and that is just reviewing my own memory of NORML Activism within the four years I’ve worked for NORML.  And remember, aside from the lawyers (sometimes), NONE of these activists made a single dime for performing these heroic acts.

As far as I’m concerned, all of the groups involved in marijuana law reform have an important role to play.  It’s like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard – we have different jobs and different specializations in service of the same goal.  Sure, we have internecine grudges and rivalries.  Just as jarheads goad sailors, just as grunts tease flyboys, drug war reform groups may also grouse about each other, but when the rubber hits the road, we’re all fighting for the good ol’ U S of A.

For me personally, there are some important differences.  DPA is about drug policy – they think drug prohibition sucks.  MPP is about marijuana policy – they think marijuana prohibition sucks.  SAFER is about offering choice – they think alcohol sucks compared to marijuana.  ASA is about medical marijuana – they are silent on healthy people’s use.  LEAP is about cops’ expression of drug war failure – they think drug prohibition sucks.

NORML, of all the groups, is the one that doesn’t just think marijuana prohibition sucks, but that cannabis use is a positive.  We’re not just anti-prohibition, we’re pro-cannabis!

Finally, to the disparagement of the counter-culture you believe NORML represents: in actuality, most of our NORML Affiliate and Chapter leaders are far from what anyone would consider “hippie”.  Anne Davis, head of NORML NJ, is a successful attorney and mother of two.  Tonya Davis, head of Central Ohio NORML, is a disabled patient in a wheelchair.  Clif Deuvall, head of NORML of Waco Texas, is a disabled veteran.  Isaias Valdez, head of Idaho NORML, is a clean-cut college student.  I can’t speak to what you may have seen from NORML in the 1980′s or 90′s, but I know since my involvement I have never met a better representative group of average cannabis consumers.  In my tenure, we have instituted sixty new state, local, and college affiliates, so it seems to me plenty of people are eager to organize under the NORML banner.

There is a drug reform group for everyone.  I don’t care what acronym you want to associate with so long as you’re on this side of the battle over prohibition.  But to dismiss and disparage NORML’s role in the war is to vilify the most committed activists in the battle – the ones not doing it for some billionaire’s largess.  If you think someone might not support ending prohibition because someone in a NORML T-shirt might have long hair, piercings, or tattoos, then you aren’t very good at illustrating the need to end the drug war.

Russ Belville

NORML Outreach Coordinator

P.S. If you really want to know what is going on in grassroots reform, check out the podcasts from all around the nation and even England at The NORML Network – http://live.norml.org

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-11-23.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Los Angeles & Orange Counties considering dispensary bans
2. Former MPP California director heading National Cannabis Industry Association
3. New Mexico patient loses rent subsidy for medical marijuana use
4. Indoor grow house goes up in flames in Los Angeles
5. Frenchman grows 12 pot plants for ducks, gets fine
6. Study: Smoking pot before age 16 harms brain’s executive functioning
7. What’s pot got to do with it? Toddler’s fall blamed on marijuana-smoking mom

Daily Toker Tunes

• Symphony of Science: A Wave of Reason
• Electric Tuesday: Blaze – “Elevation”

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• Jodie Emery speaks of her husband Marc Emery’s transfer to a Georgia prison

Cannabis Community

• Finnish protesters light up on the steps of Parliament to demand marijuana legalization

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Russ adds: With all the hype around California's Prop 19 and my personal interest in Oregon's Measure 74, I've been lagging on posting information on the two other states that have marijuana law reform on the ballot this November.  In South Dakota and Arizona, citizens will be voting on medical marijuana laws, and both are likely to pass.  With those states, plus the existing Western medical marijuana states, plus Canada's medical marijuana program, we'll only need to add Nebraska in order to have Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming completely surrounded!  ;-)  ]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shortly after concluding the NORML National Conference, our own Keith Stroup and Rick Steves made the trip up I-5, joined by MPP’s Rob Kampia and DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann, for a seminar presented by the ACLU of Washington’s Alison Holcomb entitled, “The Future of Marijuana in Washington State”.

Since Righthaven Inc. may be watching, I’m not going to blockquote any of this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ).  According to the report, Nevadans for Sensible Marijuana Laws, the group that put marijuana legalization on the ballot in 2002 and 2006, has lost their funding from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) for the current drive to put legalization on the ballot in 2012.

Mike Meno from MPP told the LVRJ that they have had to cut back on their funding of various groups.  With the polling in Nevada showing only 42% support for legalization, Nevada is one place where they have cut back.  MPP itself is suffering from reduced funding, due to cutbacks in funding by its majority donor, Progressive Insurance’s Peter Lewis, following the sex scandal and three-month leave-of-absence of its founder and still Executive Director, Rob Kampia.

It isn’t as if Nevada was fertile ground for legalization in 2002 and 2006, however.  The 2002 initiative failed with only 39% of the vote and the 2006 initiative lost with 44%.  Nevada Secretary of State’s spokesperson Pam Miller’s asserts that “Volunteers have certainly accomplished this feat [gotten legalization initiatives on the ballot] in the past, so we’ll just see what happens,” but the past two efforts made the ballot thanks to $6 to $10 million of MPP money paying professional signature gatherers.

So if we are to legalize in Nevada, it is up to us.  Big money, out-of-state legalization efforts with their sensibly named front groups are not going to liberate Nevada’s cannabis consumers.  It will be the in-state grassroots organizers volunteering to secure their own freedom that make the difference for 2012.

You can join the grassroots organizations that are working to end Nevada marijuana prohibition.  Contact Northern Nevada NORML in the Reno area or Las Vegas NORML (email monalisa ‘at’ embarqmail ‘dot’ com, website coming soon) to get involved today!

Medical marijuana is now legal in the District after the Democrat-controlled Congress declined to overrule a D.C Council bill that allows the city to set up as many as eight dispensaries where chronically ill patients can purchase the drug.

Although the bill has now cleared Congress, patients will likely have to wait at least several months before they can obtain the drug from a city-sanctioned dispensary.

The law allows patients with cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and other chronic ailments can possess up to four ounces of the drug.

Patients will not be allowed to grow their own marijuana, but licensed companies will be able to sell the drug to people who first obtain a doctor’s prescription.

via D.C. Wire – Medical marijuana now legal.

After a dozen years of Congressional obstruction, the will of 69% of the voters who passed Washington DC Initiative 59 shall be implemented.

Well, kinda…

(Initiative 59) Sec. 5 (a)  Any District law prohibiting the possession of marijuana or cultivation of marijuana shall not apply to a medical patient, or to a medical patient’s primary caregivers, when a medical or primary caregiver possesses or cultivates marijuana for the medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation of a licensed physician.  The exemption for cultivation shall apply only to marijuana specifically grown to provide a medical supply for a patient, and not to any marijuana grown for any other purpose.  In determining a quantity of marijuana that constitutes a medical supply, this act shall be interpreted to assure that any medical patient protected by the act shall have access to a sufficient quantity of marijuana to assure that they can maintain their medical supply without any interruption in their treatment or depletion of their medical supply of marijuana.

Gosh, that seems to me like that 69% of the voters didn’t vote for “Patients will not be allowed to grow their own marijuana”.  Looks like they voted not only to let patients grow their own, but they can keep as much as necessary to never run out!  In fact, the voters of DC approved a medical marijuana law that is far more liberal than California’s Prop 215, including such gems as:

• It has the California-style leniency on trusting doctors to recommend marijuana for almost anything if they believe it is useful (“other serious or chronic illnesses for which the recommending physician reasonably believes that marijuana has demonstrated utility.”
• You could argue the act might protect patients from being fired (or “sanctioned”) for medical marijuana use (“in so far as they comply with this act, are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.”)
• District residents can open non-profit dispensaries with explicit right to sell (“Residents of the District of Columbia may organize and operate not-for-profit corporations for the purpose of cultivating, purchasing, and distributing marijuana”) – that doesn’t sound like “licensed companies”, as in “the District decides who can be a dispensary.”  Sounds like the People decide.
• The District Health Director has to come up with a way to get medical marijuana to residents on Medicaid (“provide for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients enrolled in Medicaid or a Ryan White CARE Act funded program who are in medical need, who desire to add marijuana to their health care regimen”)

So how did “patients can grow as much as they need and residents can open dispensaries” turn into “patients get to buy four ounces from a city-licensed dispensary?”  To summarize, in the highest-ever vote in support of medical marijuana, 69%, back in 1998 when only California had it, the District of Columbia passed a medical marijuana bill more liberal than California’s. But in 2010, they get a law only slightly less restrictive than New Jersey’s.

But hey, they don’t even get a vote in Congress, so why should we bother with what the people of DC want, anyway?

PHOENIX — For the fourth time, Arizonans will decide in November whether people with certain ailments should be able to legally use marijuana.

The Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Tuesday that backers of the latest medical marijuana initiative had enough valid signatures on their petitions to be on the ballot. That makes it the first voter-sought measure to qualify.

So far there is no organized opposition. But the record is mixed on how state voters feel about the issue.

Arizonans have approved a similar measure — twice. But that never took effect because of the way it was worded.

The problem with Arizona’s law right now is that it allowed doctors to prescribe any Schedule I substance – including marijuana – but the federal government controls the right of doctors to prescribe controlled substances.  If an Arizona doctor prescribes marijuana, the feds will revoke his license to prescribe anything.  Thus, no doctors have ever prescribed medical marijuana.  The other states learned from this and made their medical marijuana laws specifically require only a “recommendation”, not a “prescription”.

Funny how one little word can keep Arizona’s medical marijuana patients without their medicine for fourteen years.

This new version, if approved, would allow doctors to recommend that patients with certain conditions use marijuana. That recommendation would entitle the patient to a card from the Arizona Department of Health Services allowing them to purchase up to 2½ ounces of marijuana every two weeks from a state-regulated nonprofit dispensary.

Those living at least 25 miles from one of those sites would be entitled to grow their own.

via Medical marijuana headed back to ballot in ArizonaMedical marijuana on ballot for fourth time, marijuana, medical, measure – News – YumaSun.

Or, if you read that the other way, those living within 25 miles of a dispensary are NOT ALLOWED to grow their own, but MUST purchase it from the dispensary.  This is so the dispensaries can be “viable”… after all, it is so difficult to stay in business when you’re selling marijuana.

Don’t take my sarcastic word for it  - hear it from the Arizona MPP Campaign Director, Andrew Myers, discussing the need for this “halo” that encompasses all the patients within 25 miles of the dispensary, who won’t be able to grow their own and must purchase from only that particular dispensary:

Download audio file (MPP Andrew Meyers – Halo makes dispensaries viable.mp3)

Regardless, it is important that the initiative pass so sick and disabled people are no longer prosecuted for their medical use.  But this “halo” requirement is an unnecessary hurdle to force patients to clear.  Many patients are on fixed incomes and should not be denied the right to cultivate their own medicine simply because they must live in assisted housing in a city, where dispensaries are likely to be plentiful.  A medical cannabis consumer should not be locked in to one supplier based on his or her geographic location.  Why should a patient in the boonies outside Flagstaff be allowed to cultivate his or her own cannabis at substantially lower cost while a patient in a group home in Phoenix is forced to pay $10-$15/gram dispensary prices?

It’s my personal hope that this initiative passes and then angry urban patients realized they’re getting ripped off compared to their rural counterparts.  I also hope the dispensaries discover they can’t fulfill their mission as well when they’re limited to only the customers within their 25 mile radius.  Then I hope both groups come together to fight to extend the right of home grow back to all patients, even the ones in cities.