Much like New Jersey, Washington DC also passed a medical marijuana law, but is having challenges to put the program into place.

Yesterday the DC City Council approved some emergency legislation to restrict how much marijuana for medical use will be allowed in each of the city’s eight wards. The council was getting pressure from Northeast Residents who feared that Ward 5 would have the concentration of large indoor marijuana growing operations. After some public debate in the meeting last night, the council decided to put a cap on the number of cultivation centers that would be allowed to be in any one ward up to six. Those cultivation centers would be allowed to grow up to 95 plants each.

Only 10 cultivations centers can open city-wide. They will not be allowed to be withing 300 feet of a school or recreation center and the Office of Zoning has now added that they will only be allowed in areas that are designed for light manufacturing. It is these restrictions that are driving applicants to want to base growing operations in the city’s 5th Ward, historically the center of the city’s industrial base.

The city has received 28 applications for a medical marijuana cultivation center and out of those, 26 of the applicants want to establish a business in Ward 5. So far, seven of those have gotten favorable recommendations from the Department of Health, and it just so happens that six of those are in Ward 5. That area of the city has seen a recent boom in adult entertainment businesses, and even a waste transfer station and to residents, they say a dumping ground because of the zoning issues in all the other parts of the city.

Ward 5 activists were at the meeting and supported the emergency legislation. More restrictive  measures were voted down when one council member stood up and said that these layers and layers of restrictions would make medical marijuana too difficult to obtain. One compromise that was voted on in the final minutes of the meeting last night was to dictate that only one medical marijuana distribution could exist in any ward with more than five cultivations centers, a compromise with Ward 5 neighborhood advisory members, although they said they wanted none.

Medical providers say the neighborhoods concerns are overblown, and will find they are not the same kind of business as a strip club or liquor store. But as Washington DC moves slowly and cautiously forward to implement their program (it was actually voted on in 1998, and enacted finally in May of 2010), some wonder if any distribution or cultivation centers will ever open in the Federal Government’s back yard. It seems that dispensaries and cultivations centers have been trying the patience of the Feds as they crack down in medical marijuana states like Colorado and California. It will be interesting to see how they treat dispensaries operating a short trip away from the DEA headquarters.

External Links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-council-approves-limits-on-medical-marijuana-growth/2012/01/17/gIQAxLNa6P_story.html

For the first time since 1937, lawmakers have introduced a bill into the House of Representatives to end federal marijuana prohibition. Over the past 70+ years, the federal criminalization of marijuana has:

1) Failed to reduce the public’s demand for or access to cannabis.

2) Imposed enormous fiscal and human costs upon the American people.

3) Promoted disrespect for the law.

4) Reinforced ethnic and generational divides between the public and law enforcement.

After seven decades of failure, it is time for an alternative approach. Use the form below to contact your elected officals and encourage them to stand up for state’s rights and personal freedoms by co-sponsoring HR 2306: The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011.

The rest is here:
Tell Your Representatives to Co-Sponsor HR 2306: The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011

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4. Michigan judge decides that the entire medical marijuana law is unconstitutional

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This report from the FOX News affiliate in Washington, DC, also played on my local FOX affiliate’s news here in Portland last night:

(MyFOXDC) WASHINGTON – An 86-year-old D.C. man got a surprise visit earlier this month. Robert Smith heard someone banging on his apartment door on Randolph Street on the evening of March 4. But before he could unlock it, a group of D.C. Police officers battered the door down and knocked Smith onto the floor.

Smith said officers quickly realized they had the wrong apartment and called for an ambulance. Doctors treated Smith for contusions to his head and back.

FOX 5 viewed the search warrant which stated police were looking for marijuana, drug paraphernalia and anything related to drug trafficking.

Cops break down door of your apartment looking for weed? It's not "one in a million", Mr. Smith.

I get so sick of reporting these stories.  At least this time it wasn’t reported as a “botched drug raid” or a “drug raid gone awry”.  It wasn’t even a drug raid; it was a marijuana raid.

I also get tired of the framing that terrorizing a citizen in their own home was just a mistake because they had the wrong address.  What is it about smoking pot that makes your home the right address for state-sponsored terrorism?

Let’s dispense with the stock answer: duh, it’s illegal!  OK, you got me, pot smoking in your own home is illegal.  Can you explain then what about pot smoking in your own home justifies the breaking down of doors, the shooting of pets, the terrorizing of children, the killing of innocents, and here, the abuse of an elderly veteran?  It’s not like you have to rush in to prevent the flushing of large amounts of illegal vegetable matter; it doesn’t exactly flush well.

Beating your wife in your own home is illegal, but unless police have a report that the assault is happening right now, or unless the wife decides to press charges (she doesn’t, usually), the cops will knock on the door and politely ask the husband to step outside (in some states, he will be arrested on the domestic abuse call alone, since she won’t press charges).

The retired federal government worker has lived alone in the same apartment for more than 30 years and said police never offered an apology for the mistaken raid.

Again, not a “mistaken raid”.  There was no mistake about what the police intended to do: burst into a citizen’s home on nothing more than the suspicion that somebody may have been smoking and selling pot, find that somebody and physically abuse them into subservience and compliance, trash the home by tearing apart any conceivable place where pot may be found, and confiscate any cash and valuables for the profit of the police force.  The only “mistake” was knocking down the wrong door.  This wasn’t a “mistaken raid”, it was a “raid at the wrong address”.

So sadly, the piece they showed here in Portland featured the WWII veteran saying his experience was “one in a million”.  No, sorry, your experience was just one out of the 100-150 citizens who were terrorized by police just that day and every day in America.

When people think of the benefits of legalizing cannabis, they usually think of taxes and permitting as revenue sources.  If you look at the big picture, there will thousands of industries and suppliers that will catch the trickle down benefits of state legalization and federal decriminalization.  The Legalization Train Rolls On.

washington post Montgomery Blair Sibley may be best known as the lawyer who defended the D.C. Madam, the infamous escort service owner who claimed to attend to the needs of Washington’s elite.

Sibley has a new focus these days, one that’s luring a rabbi, a waitress, a State Department technician and a gaggle of other fledgling entrepreneurs: growing marijuana and selling it to sick people in the nation’s capital.

He and his partners have divined a logo (“Rx” over a pot plant) and a company name (the Medicinal Marijuana Company of America) and have found a New York Avenue warehouse at which they hope to grow enough pot to make a profit in the first year.

But the District is only part of Sibley’s grand plan, which is to turn his growing operation into a national chain as ubiquitous as, say, McDonald’s. “I want to be the Ray Kroc of medical marijuana,” Sibley said, referring to the man behind the golden arches.

[Russ adds:  Now that, in my mind, is part of the problem with the medical-only marijuana push.  Who would brag about becoming the McDonald's of insulin?  If you want to be the Ray Kroc of marijuana, great, but bringing in frames of fast-food half-billionaires, especially as society's frame on fast-food is increasingly turned toward portraying it as an industry that's killing America and poisoning the environment, is not helpful when contrasted against the idea that these laws are an act of compassion undertaken to altruistically to benefit the frailest sick and dying patients...]

(FOX News) Newly sworn members of the House reading aloud the country’s founding document on Thursday didn’t recite every verse and article of the document because Republicans decided that the obsolete parts can be skipped since they’ve been superseded by amendment.

For instance, lawmakers did not read the 18th Amendment, which imposed prohibition on liquor in 1919. However, they did read the 21st Amendment, which repealed prohibition in 1933 and is still in force.

Republicans also left out the part about counting slaves and Native Americans as three-fifths of a person.

The Constitution does not have any deleted portions, merely amended portions.  To not read the archaic portions of the document is to not learn from the mistakes and misjudgments of our past.  It is an insult to all the activists who fought for civil rights to not recognize this country was founded by men who believed only white male landowners should be allowed to vote.

Not reading the 18th Amendment is also an insult, both to those who worked so hard to bring about the 21st Amendment and to our historical remembrance of the folly of prohibition.  The 18th marks the first time the Constitution was used to restrict freedom and to take away rights from the people.  The 21st is the only time an amendment has ever been repealed.  The fact that both had to happen regarding government’s prohibition of alcohol but no amendments have been required to prohibit cannabis and other drugs shows how twisted the interpretation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause has become.

Howard Arenstein, a well-known CBS Radio News correspondent and his wife, Israeli newspaper journalist Orly Katz were arrested back on October 1st for growing marijuana in their backyard. An anonymous tip led police to their house where along with 11 mature plants in the backyard, they found some bagged and ready to distribute, according to the police report, implying that the Arenstiens were dealing the marijuana

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CBS Radio Corespondent Gets a Break

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Howard Arenstein

Award-winning CBS radio news reporter and Radio Bureau Manager, Howard Arenstein was arrested for growing marijuana with intent to distribute. Arenstein, along with his wife were arrested in DC on Saturday.

More here: Award Winning CBS News Correspondent Arrested for Growing Marijuana

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