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• Colorado Legalization Effort Comes up 2400 Valid Signatures Short
• Washington State Bill Asking Government To Reclassify Marijuana Moves Forward
• Ballot Measures Competing for Funds from Big Backers
• Firefighters Mistake Butane Hash Oil Extraction Equipment for Pipe Bomb
• “Fast and Furious” Program Sparks Lawsuit and House Hearing for the Attorney General

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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

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1. I-502 makes the Washington ballot, would legalize marijuana
2. Mexican drought affecting marijuana crops
3. Hawaiian legislature may take chronic pain out of medical marijuana
4. New Hampshire legalization bill
5. Vermont may limit patients to 1,000 total

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Roots Monday: Brought to you by “Radical” Russ

• Bessie Smith – “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)”

Grassroots Activism

• Glen Schwarz from Arkansas NORML

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• President Obama, “Legalize It” Times Nine – Stop Ignoring Us!

Live Free or Die indeed!

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 read the full text of HB 1705 here.  You can watch clips from the hearing here.

Please contact your House member today and urge him or her to support HB 1705. If your House member sits on the House Criminal Justice Committee, then it is especially important that he or she hears from you.

HB 1075 would:

• Allow personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana;
• Create a system of cultivation wholesalers and marijuana retailers;
• Create a $45 / ounce excise tax and 19% retail tax;
• Ban marijuana advertising, person-to-person sales, users under 21, public use, etc.

Sounds like “legalization-er” to me!

THIS QUOTE by Newt Gingrich is A HOAX: “See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality… That's why you get to go to jail and I don't.”... even if it accurately sums up his beliefs!

(Huffington Post) During a town hall-style appearance in Concord, the former House Speaker said he had no interest in exploring drug decriminalization, arguing that such efforts haven’t worked in Europe.

The Netherlands = 30 years of soft drug tolerance.  Adult and youth use rates of hard and soft drugs are half that in the United States.  Portugal = 10 years of decriminalization of all drugs.  Adult hard drug addiction has fallen in half.  Drug use statistics in Portugal are generally “below the European average and much lower than its only European neighbour, Spain,” according to the European drug agency that studied the decriminalization.

Pushed a bit later on the incarceration rate related to petty drug crimes, Gingrich responded, “I think the best thing is to get young people not to do drugs and then you won’t be dealing with criminals that you just described.”

Remember, Mr. Gingrich, you were just one drug bust away from being “Newt the Drug Criminal” yourself.  Remember this 8/8/1996 Wall Street Journal interview?*

Mr. Gingrich initially answered the drug question in 1987, saying that 19 years earlier, in 1968, he smoked marijuana at a party and “never went back and revisited it.”

“That’s not true,” says Larry Bowie, a friend during Mr. Gingrich’s days as a West Georgia College professor. “I know for a fact that he sat and smoked with me” in about 1973. “He didn’t like the way it made him feel.”

Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, Tony Blankley, says the speaker denies Mr. Bowie’s allegation. But the more important point, Mr. Blankley adds, is that Mr. Gingrich “has said publicly many times that he tried marijuana when he was in college. He thinks it’s wrong for people to have done so and wants to make it clear that he thinks it’s a mistake.”

Gee, Newt, do you think you should have been imprisoned, fined, arrested, or even harassed by the government for your youthful marijuana use?

A third resident of the “live free or die” state argued that the founding fathers had been far more lenient about marijuana than the current political class. “I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly discouraged you from growing marijuana and their techniques with dealing with it would have been rather more violent than our current government,” Gingrich replied.

Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House introduced a bill called the “Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996“.  It would have enacted a death penalty for anyone caught smuggling two or more ounces of marijuana into the United States.  Yes, two ounces, not the 67 tons you currently need to qualify for the death penalty**.  So, what, does he figure the Founders would have executed pot smokers on sight?

The fact is that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and many other Founding Fathers and their contemporaries were hemp farmers.  Far from discouraging its cultivation, the early presidents demanded its cultivation:

“Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere!” – George Washington

“We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.” – John Adams

“Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.” – Thomas Jefferson

Now I’m sure Gingrich would complain that they were growing an industrial crop of hemp, not a drug crop of marijuana.  However, it isn’t as if the Founders were strangers to intoxication.  John Adams famously had a pint of strong beer every morning.  Many colonists enjoyed beer and rum and cider to excess.  Benjamin Franklin wrote at length about drunkards.  And based on the Federalist Papers and The Bill of Rights, it would be hard to believe that the Founders would have thought the proper exercise of state power was to prevent citizens from getting wasted.

Though “smoking pot” is a 20th century thing and “medicinal cannabis” was well-known and much-used in the 19th century, there isn’t much record on 18th century American use of cannabis as a recreational substance.  We do have these quotes, however:

“The artificial preparation of hemp, from Silesia, is really a curiosity.” – George Washington (referring to hashish, used only as a drug)

“…began to separate the male from the female (hemp) plants,” – George Washington’s farm diary (one reason to separate males from females to get more potent buds)

By the 19th century, presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and Franklin Pierce were either known to have smoked hashish (Monroe) or smoked cannabis with their troops in wartime (Pierce wrote that smoking marijuana in the Mexican-American War was ”about the only good thing” about that war.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

* By the way, the WSJ Hilary Stout interview of Newt Gingrich is cited all over the web for this quote: “See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality… That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”  It’s a hoax.  There are enough true Newt marijuana quotes without killing our credibility repeating this one.  See also Abraham Lincoln’s “Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” (Hohner didn’t open for business until two years after the alleged quote.)  And Lincoln’s “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” was a fake posted by a Georgia “wet” leader to win the “negro” vote.)  And Jefferson’s “Some of my finest hours have been spent sitting on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” is also unable to be attributed to any of Jefferson’s writings or speeches.

** You did know that the United States is one of the eight countries that has execution for marijuana importers and sellers, right?  We’re in league with those bastions of freedom Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Singapore, and China.  Sure, we haven’t done it yet and it is probably unconstitutional, but it is on the books and at least one California dispensary owner claims he’s eligible for three death sentences.

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1. Study finds lower traffic fatalities, less alcohol use, in medical marijuana states
2. Washington and Rhode Island governors petition federal government to reschedule cannabis
3. Dispensaries in California closing in wake of US Attorneys Crackdown
4. Radley Balko on the rise of paramilitary SWAT raids in American policing

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Roots Monday: Brought to you by “Radical” Russ

• The Tallbrothers – “Smokin’ What We Want for Christmas”

Cannabis Conversations

• Terry Franklin from the Freedom Bus Caravan, planning protests at New Hampshire primary campaign rallies

Radical Rant

• “The Danger of Dabs” article elicits controversy over portrayals of hash oil

New Hampshire voters need to call or write their members of the state senate and urge them to pass this bill.  We’re close to having half of the country with MMJ laws.  If that happens and we have a few states legalize, we will have a good shot at Federal Decriminalization!

nashuatelegraph New Hampshire would become the 16th state to allow chronically ill patients to legally use marijuana under legislation the House of Representatives adopted Wednesday.

In a surprise move, opponents chose not to debate the measure (HB 442) and passed the bill on a sense of the House vote that is not individually recorded, 221-96.  Two years ago, Gov. John Lynch vetoed a similar bill, noting law enforcement’s opposition and his view that it did not properly restrict dispensing of the drug.

Supporters insist the measure is the most tightly written version in the country.  Patients could receive up to 2 ounces of marijuana from three to five state-regulated dispensaries where it would be safely grown.

Assistant Attorney General Karin Eckel said efforts to control nonmedical, recreational use in other states have failed.

Health and Human Services administrator John Wallace said the bill could cost $200,000 to start and $75,000 a year for the state to regulate these dispensing outlets.

The bill faces an uncertain fate in the state Senate, where even some Republican supporters confide it’s going to be difficult to pass.

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Hemp Headlines

1. HB 5073 would add many amendments to the Washington State medical marijuana law
2. Oregon man claims being forbidden to use medical marijuana while on probation is “cruel and unusual punishment”
3. TSA employee in Buffalo arrested on charges of aiding marijuana smugglers through airport
4. Holy festival in Nepal becoming known for the cannabis consumption of adherents

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• Groovin’ Thursday: The Dirtball – “Overdose”

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Government at Work

• Attorney Michael Cutler on New Hampshire hearings on medical marijuana bill

concord monitor Liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans are finding common cause in supporting a House bill that would legalize medical marijuana.

“This is a bill whose message has been heard loud and clear,” said bill sponsor Rep. Evalyn Merrick, a Lancaster Democrat. “I sense we’ll have a good deal of support on both sides of the aisle.”

The Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a bill allowing medical marijuana in 2009, but Democratic Gov. John Lynch vetoed it. The House overrode the veto, but the Senate came up two votes short.

State Sen. Jim Forsythe, a Strafford Republican and former chairman of the state Republican Liberty Caucus, said the challenge for libertarian-leaning Republicans will be to convince more socially conservative party members that allowing medical marijuana fits with conservative values.

“Conservatives traditionally oppose Obamacare because they want government out of doctor patient relationships, and medical marijuana helps satisfy that,” Forsythe said. “We believe in minimal regulation, and this helps toward that.”

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.

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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.

Legislation that seeks to legalize the physician-supervised use of medical marijuana has been reintroduced in the New Hampshire Legislature.

Similar legislation passed both the House and the Senate in 2009, but was vetoed by Governor Lynch.

While NORML finds aspects of HB 442 unduly restrictive, particularly its exclusion of home cultivation, its passage will ensure that authorized medical marijuana patients will no longer have to fear arrest or prosecution from state law enforcement.

It would also bring public policy in line with public sentiment. According to a recent Mason-Dixon research poll, 71 percent of New Hampshire voters support “changing the law in New Hampshire to allow seriously and terminally ill patients to use and grow medical marijuana for personal use if their doctors recommend it.”

House Bill 442 has been referred to the House Committee on Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs and is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, March 1st at 10:00 am. Full text of the measure is available here.

You also contact your House member about HB 442 by entering your zip code below.

Read the rest here:
New Hampshire Legislature Considers Regulating Medical Marijuana