OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – More than three dozen Washington state lawmakers sent a letter to the federal government on Monday, asking for marijuana to be reclassified as a drug that can be prescribed by doctors and filled by pharmacists.

Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule II drug would allow it to be prescribed by doctors and handled by pharmacists. Marijuana is currently classified a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it’s not accepted for medical treatment and can’t be prescribed, administered or dispensed.

In the letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the lawmakers said they supported Gov. Chris Gregoire’s previous request on the issue. Seven Republican lawmakers were among the 42 in both the House and the Senate who signed the letter.

In addition to the letter, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, introduced Senate Joint Memorial 8017 making the same request to reclassify medical marijuana. The joint memorial was scheduled for a hearing in the Health & Long Term Care Committee on Thursday.

Gregoire and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee filed the petition with the DEA last November. Washington and Rhode Island are two of 16 states and the District of Columbia that have laws allowing the medical use of marijuana.

Washington voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998 that gives doctors the right to recommend – but not prescribe – marijuana for people suffering from cancer and other conditions that cause “intractable pain.”

Last year, Gregoire vetoed most of a bill that made major reforms to the state’s medical marijuana law, saying state workers could be prosecuted under federal law the way the measure was written.

A separate bill this year is attempting to provide medical marijuana patients with easier access to the drug. The new proposal would allow local governments to regulate nonprofit patient cooperatives, which could grow up to 99 plants.

Under the latest proposal, nonprofit patient cooperatives would be prohibited in counties with fewer than 200,000 residents – mostly rural areas – unless local jurisdictions enact ordinances allowing them. The cooperatives would be allowed in counties with a population of more than 200,000 unless local jurisdictions opt out through an ordinance.

The plan would create a voluntary registry for patients.

Source

A new poll suggests Canada may have reached the tipping point and a 66-per-cent majority favours legalizing marijuana.

Hallelujah! Finally we might get a sensible public policy discussion in this country about what to do about a relatively benign substance that has been demonized and outlawed for a century yet is as readily available in schoolyards as cigarettes.

The prohibition and a 40-year-long “War on Drugs” have led to pot being more widely accessible, taxpayers considerably poorer, gangs richer and thousands upon thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens branded “criminal.”

Another 50,000 or so Canadians are busted every year for possession; throw in 20,000 or so traffickers and producers and this so-called war is costing us as much as $400 million annually in law enforcement, court and corrections.

Bearing in mind a million dollars a year buys roughly 12 new cops, 14 teachers or public health nurses, ask yourself: Couldn’t all that money be better spent?

The federal Liberal party obviously thinks so – 77 per cent of delegates at the weekend convention voted to legalize the herb, echoing the Senate special committee on illegal drugs (chaired by a Conservative), which 10 years ago urged the government to free the weed. Four decades ago, the LeDain Commission similarly called for an end to the criminal prohibition of cannabis.

Across the country today, more and more people agree.

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Cannabis smokers in Switzerland will soon be allowed to grow up to four marijuana plants each at home to stop them buying drugs on the black market.

In a bizarre twist to the new law, four people sharing a house can grow up to 16 plants – but only if each person tends to their own crop.

The deregulation of Switzerland’s already lax cannabis laws has been agreed by four neighbouring regions in the French-speaking part of the Alpine country.

A spokesman for the Neuchatel region said: ‘We have agreed these new rules to prevent drugs tourism between regions where the rules are different, and to stop them buying it on the streets.

‘But one person can not start growing more than four plants just by claiming they live with other people.

‘In this case, these other people have to actually be cultivating the plants themselves.

‘This means attending to the plant in such a way as to make it grow.’

Swiss daily Le Matin quipped: ‘This basically means that you can grow four more plants for every housemate you have – just as long as they know how to hold a watering can.’

The rules will apply in the cantons of Vaud, Neuchatel, Geneva and Fribourg from January 1 next year.

Read more

A man who got a visit from police after a pizza delivery driver smelled marijuana at his home is getting free pizza from a different restaurant.

Police visited Frederick Smith of Aurora after a Papa John’s International Inc. driver reported he smelled marijuana in the home last week and saw a child there. Smith told KUSA-TV in Denver he’s a registered medical marijuana user. He says police searched his house then left.

Papa John’s has said it stands by its employee.

On Thursday, Denver-based Sexy Pizza said it’s offering Smith one free pizza monthly until Colorado voters decide a proposed 2012 ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. If voters pass it, Sexy Pizza says, it’ll extend the offer for life.

In addition to “6 Awesome Pro-Marijuana Ads” Rigo14 has sent me another image featuring Kid Cudi.

Check out his site here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.

Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it’s done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 1½ years if it’s in a rental or poses a safety risk.

The omnibus legislation imposes one-year mandatory minimums for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality. All three of these offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium-sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else’s land.

A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.

The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a kid without using a weapon.

Read more @ The Province

A bold petition is shaping up in California, spearheaded by a group of renowned activists who support recreational use of cannabis. Their challenge is to acquire a whopping 504,706 signatures by December 19. Accomplishing this will allow their Regulate Marijuana Like Wine initiative to be placed on the June or November ballots in 2012.

Proponents compare marijuana prohibition to alcohol prohibition, and hope to see them meet the same ultimate demise. Prominent activist and former candidate for Governor, Steve Kubby, touts the economical boon California could receive with legalization. He points out that the plan will impose “a sales tax on the biggest crop in the state.”

It is no secret that California is in dire need of an economical boon, having the second highest unemployment ratein the nation. Taxation of cannabis is a convincing argument in the face of pouring precious resources into ineffective interdiction policies. California also faces emigration issues, with citizens fleeing to places like Texas, in hopes of cheaper living, and employment opportunities.  The widely predicted tourism boost from legalization could give much needed revenue to the state, and would hopefully provide job growth and opportunities within the state.

Opponents are worried that legalizing the drug would result in social backlash, namely higher addiction addiction, drugged drivers and the usual tug-of-war with federal authorities.  However, supporters point to studies that suggest overall cannabis use will not show any dramatic shift after legalization.  As such, it is unlikely that the social complications will transpire. It is true, however, that at this time the federal government is not looking to change their policy regarding federal drug enforcement. With any luck, that will change naturally, with the myriad political events that will transpire in the next few years.

Kubby, who has been a long-time Californian activist and helped write the 1996 law that legalized medical marijuana in the state, recognizes the failure of the infamous Proposition 19. A major issue that haunted Prop. 19 was the seemingly convoluted way marijuana would have been regulated at the local levels. The new proposal seeks legalization “within a [statewide] regulated model.” It would be a simple, streamlined process, that would hopefully avoid costing valuable resources in the smaller arenas.

Supporters are also optimistic about the timing on this attempt. Since it will be coinciding with a presidential election, voter turnout should be much higher. Ideally, this will shift the voting demographic to the left, as younger, more liberal voters are statistically more likely to attend. The timing of this attempt is even more crucial, as states get desperate for revenue. All across the nation states are raising fines and fees to deal with budget shortages. Economic promise may play a key role in securing voter enthusiasm.

California has long been a fierce battleground for marijuana activism. If recreational use is deemed legal by the state, it would put an enormous burden on federal agencies to police the area. It could be a political stronghold for nationwide success, and a potential tipping point in the public perception of marijuana. In the meantime, it is up to individual activists to chisel away at the plague of prohibition, and help realize this goal.

By: Marijuana News

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Support US House Bill HR 2306.

As reported a week ago, The first Congressional marijuana legalization bill is now in Congress — please support it!

H.R. 2306, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, would remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act and limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or interstate smuggling. States would be able to legalize and regulate marijuana, or to continue to prohibit it, as they individually choose.

Please use this web form to contact your US Representative and your two US Senators in support of this historic bill. Please follow-up by calling their offices too — if you don’t know their numbers (or aren’t sure who they are), you can reach them by calling the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will introduce “bi-partisan legislation tomorrow ending the federal war on marijuana and letting states legalize, regulate, tax, and control marijuana without federal interference,” according to a press release from the Marijuana Policy Project that just hit my inbox. More from that email:

Other co-sponsors include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal. The legislation is the first bill ever introduced in Congress to end federal marijuana prohibition.

Rep. Frank’s legislation would end state/federal conflicts over marijuana policy, reprioritize federal resources, and provide more room for states to do what is best for their own citizens.

I called Morgan Fox at MPP to ask about the chances that this bill will get any serious debate time in the House (a fair question, considering that it has only one Republican supporter at the moment). “It’s definitely going to get a serious debate, probably more in the media than on the floor of the House,” Fox told me. “But I think it needs to be debated on the floor.”

What does MPP see as obstacles?

“Someone in the prohibitionist camp could hold it up as long as they wanted, but the slew of opinion pieces that came out last week calling for the end of the failed drug war will give this momentum,” Fox said.

While Paul’s status as a declared presidential candidate should help with media pick-up, Frank is leading the press teleconference tomorrow, and Paul’s not even on the call.

Previous Frank-Paul partnerships include a 2010 op-ed to reduce military spending and a marijuana decriminalization bill introduced in the House in 2009. In the intervening two years, Arizona and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and the Connecticut legislature has moved to decriminalize it. Now former U.S. Attorney John McKay and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes are organizing to completely legalize marijuana in Washington State. The time is ripe.

Source

Deputy District Attorney Jeff Greeson holds up a jar of marijuana obtained from defendant Joel Castle’s hotel room ore than a year ago. Castle, left, was ultimately found guilty of possession and sale of marijuana. He chose nine months in prison rather than three years’ probation.​

A California medical marijuana patient said he prefers being behind bars to being told he can’t use cannabis. Joel Castle is going to prison for nine months rather than spending the next three years on probation, because a condition of the probation a judge offered him was that he quit smoking pot.Castle, the former Chico Cannabis Club operator who was found guilty last month of two felonies associated with a guitar-for-pot trade in January 2010, was sentenced earlier this month, reports Meredith J. Graham at the Chico News Review.Judge Robert Glusman at first offered Castle three years’ probation. But the medical marijuana patient refused, and was sentenced instead to two years, eight months in state prison.”It was the first time I really spoke my mind to that judge,” Castle said.

Castle ended up being ejected from the courtroom during his sentencing, never a good sign.

Source (Toke of the Town)

The Bulldog, Amsterdam

The Dutch government on Friday said it would start banning tourists from buying cannabis from “coffee shops” and impose restrictions on Dutch customers by the end of the year.

The Netherlands is well known for having one of Europe’s most liberal soft drug policies that has made its cannabis shops a popular tourist attraction, particularly in Amsterdam.

Backed by the far-right party of anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders, the coalition government that came into power last year announced plans to curb drug tourism as part of a nationwide program to promote health and fight crime.

“In order to tackle the nuisance and criminality associated with coffee shops and drug trafficking, the open-door policy of coffee shops will end,” the Dutch health and justice ministers wrote in a letter to the country’s parliament on Friday.

Under the new rules, only Dutch residents will be able to sign up as members of cannabis shops.

Dutch customers will have to sign up for at least a year’s membership and each shop would be expected to have only up to 1,500 members, a justice ministry spokesman said.

The policy will roll out in the southern provinces of Limburg, Noord Brabant and Zeeland by the end of the year and the rest of the country next year, the spokesman said.

Amsterdam, home to about 220 coffee shops, is already in the process of closing some in its red light district. Some officials have resisted the measures, saying they will push the soft drug trade underground.

Some Dutch border towns including Maastricht and Terneuzen have already restricted the sale of marijuana to foreigners.

Conservative Stephen Harper could win a majority government with as little as 34% of the vote on May 2. We must ensure this does not happen, or S-10, and mandatory minimums like it, will be law in 100 days. The most important thing you can do is VOTE on May 2!

WhyProhibition.ca is finalizing its list of strategic votes and will be releasing that with the latest poll information this weekend.

Why so late?

The NDP, led by Jack Layton, has been on an historic and unprecedented rise in the last few days, overtaking the Liberals for 2nd place nationally, and within 5% of the Conservatives as of Friday. Depending on how the votes split riding by riding, this could potentially yield a Conservative majority government but could also result in an NDP minority government. The outcome will likely be decided by who turns out to vote.

The NDP under Jack Layton has been the most positive party in the House of Commons on marijuana law reform and medical marijuana, and is truly a friend to our community. Jack Layton is a man we have personally met with many times, and he has always been honest, open and very friendly. He understands the failures of prohibition, and is not afraid to talk about them.

Beyond Prohibition Foundation and WhyProhibition.ca have no doubt that an NDP government would be the best electoral outcome for our community and would represent the best chance for cannabis law reform in Canadian history.

The Conservatives have spent this campaign using a strategy called “micro-targeting” which involves focusing on specific areas in specific ridings to get a majority government with the lowest percentage of popular vote, possibly as low as 34%.

We must ensure that Stephen Harper can not micro-target his way to victory.

By voting strategically, we can not only stop Stephen Harper from obtaining a majority, but could potentially usher in the a government ready to make substantial change to Canada’s marijuana laws.

Please, for our country, for our friends and for our future, get out and VOTE on May 2.

Source

Today in R v. Mernagh the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found the entire regulatory scheme governing medical marijuana (the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations) to be invalid. As a result sections 4 (prohibiting possession) and 7 (prohibiting production) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act were stricken. The government has been given 90 days to fill the legislative void or it will become legal to possess and produce marijuana.

The basis for the decision was that the government’s controversial decision making allopathic physicians the only gatekeepers to patient access created a scheme that was too restrictive and made it too difficult for Canadians to lawfully acquire the medicine. In the Court’s words “…it is long past time for the government to provide the medical access to marihuana that was directed by the Parker court over ten years ago…” Parker was a 2000 decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal that gave rise to the MMAR scheme.

“Complaints about the doctor-as-gatekeeper role, from patients and physicians, have been a constant feature of this flawed system,” said Kirk Tousaw, the Foundation’s Executive Director and a BC lawyer that successfully argued R v. Beren, in which the BC Supreme Court found certain supply-side aspects of the scheme to violate the Charter. “This decision represents a huge step forward for critically and chronically ill Canadians that want to access this safe and effective medicine without being turned into criminals for doing so.”

Jacob Hunter, the Foundation’s Policy Director and an authorized medical cannabis consumer, also hailed the decision: “I know how hard it has been to find a supportive physician. There are a million medical cannabis consumers in Canada and, in ten years, less than 10,000 have been able to become legal. That just isn’t right.”

The Foundation urges the upcoming new government of Canada to work with patients, producers and distributors of medical cannabis over the next 90 days to craft a legislative model that works. “Who knows,” speculated Tousaw, “the government could always choose not to re-legislate, as did with the abortions laws after the Morgentaler decision, and finally put an end to the harms being caused by marijuana prohibition. ”

The Foundation congratulates Mr. Mernagh and counsel Paul Lewin for their outstanding efforts and salutes all those that assisted in the case.

Source

MONTPELIER — Here’s what Shayne Lynn envisions somewhere in Chittenden County: an office as non-descript as a doctor’s office or a pharmacy from which he would sell marijuana to those with qualifying medical conditions.

There’d be a waiting room. Clients would be seen by appointment only. There’d be security. He might also offer clients yoga, acupuncture and Reiki. He’d probably grow the marijuana somewhere else, at an indoor facility.

Lynn could become one of the first people to run such an operation in Vermont if proposed legislation the Senate is expected to consider this week passes.

Lynn, a 40-year-old professional photographer who lives in Burlington, said he believes in marijuana’s medicinal value for those who suffer from chronic pain and he thinks it’s wrong that such people have nowhere legal to buy the relief.

“People having to go out and buy it on a corner from someone — it’s not right,” Lynn said. “I see this as an opportunity to run a successful, local, nonprofit business which would provide medical respectability to the current and future patients on the registry. It would open a more honest, serious dialogue about the benefits of cannabis.”

Medical marijuana has been legal in Vermont since 2004, for those with qualifying illnesses — including cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis — who sign up for the state’s registry. The 2004 law allows patients to grow their own marijuana, but advocates say many find that a daunting task, leaving them with the prospect of making illegal deals for street dope.

The state’s medical marijuana registry specifies, “The Marijuana Registry is neither a source for marijuana nor can the Registry provide information to patients on how to obtain marijuana.”

The answer, advocates say, is to legalize a small number of medical marijuana dispensaries — nonprofit operations that would grow marijuana and sell it to those on the medical marijuana registry.

“They have a right to have this symptom-relief medication, yet we’ve given them no ability to get it in a legal manner in which the product is safe,” said Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, chairwoman of the Senate Government Operations Committee that passed the bill the Senate will consider this week.

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I’m not sure if you are aware but Canada is going to have an election for a new prime minister in just over a month. This is huge for us because we’ve had quite a few ineffective parliaments in the past few years. If we can get a majority government in that isn’t Stephen Harper’s conservative party, we have a great chance for our country to be the first in North America to legalize fully. I believe it is going to be a strong part of his competitions campaigns. I made this inforgraphic type image to shell out some key information and to remind Canadian stoners to vote!

-Joel

Thanks for sending this in Joel! And for our Canadian readers, make sure to get out and vote!

Read more for the full infographic!

For decades, endorphins have hogged the credit for producing “runner’s high,” that fleeting sense of euphoria and calm that many people report experiencing after prolonged exercise. Who among us, after an especially satisfying workout, hasn’t thought, “ah, my endorphins are kicking in.” Endorphins are the world’s sole celebrity peptide.

Endorphins first gained notoriety in exercise back in the 1980s when researchers discovered increased blood levels of the substance after prolonged workouts. (Endorphins, for those who know the word but not the molecules’ actual function, are the body’s home-brewed opiates, with receptors and actions much like those of pain-relieving morphine.) Endorphins, however, are composed of relatively large molecules, “which are unable to pass the blood-brain barrier,” said Matthew Hill, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in New York. Finding endorphins in the bloodstream after exercise could not, in other words, constitute proof that the substance was having an effect on the mind. So researchers started to look for other candidates to help explain runner’s high. Now an emerging field of neuroscience indicates that an altogether-different neurochemical system within the body and brain, the endocannabinoid system, may be more responsible for that feeling.

In a groundbreaking 2003 experiment, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that 50 minutes of hard running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bicycle significantly increased blood levels of endocannabinoid molecules in a group of college students. The endocannabinoid system was first mapped some years before that, when scientists set out to determine just how cannabis, a k a marijuana, acts upon the body. They found that a widespread group of receptors, clustered in the brain but also found elsewhere in the body, allow the active ingredient in marijuana to bind to the nervous system and set off reactions that reduce pain and anxiety and produce a floaty, free-form sense of well-being. Even more intriguing, the researchers found that with the right stimuli, the body creates its own cannabinoids (the endocannabinoids). These cannabinoids are composed of molecules known as lipids, which are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so cannabinoids found in the blood after exercise could be affecting the brain.

Since that 2003 study, a flurry of research has been teasing out the role that endocannabinoids play in the body’s reaction to exercise. In some of Dr. Hill’s work, for instance, rats treated with a drug that blocked their endocannabinoid receptors did not experience the increase in new brain cells that usually accompanies running, suggesting that a well-functioning endocannabinoid system may be required for cognitive improvements from exercise. Other researchers have found that endocannabinoids may be what nudge us to tolerate or enjoy exercise in the first place. In an experiment published last year, groups of mice were assigned either to run on wheels or sip a sweetened drink. Running and slurping sugar previously were identified as pleasurable behaviors in animals. Now the researchers saw that both activities lit up and sensitized portions of the animals’ endocannabinoid systems, intimating that the endocannabinoid connection may lend both exercise and dessert their appeal.

But perhaps the most telling experiment was published last year by researchers in France who had bred mice with no functioning endocannabinoid receptors. Mice usually love to run, but the genetically modified animals, given free access to running wheels, ran about half as much as usual. Although the full intricacies of the endocannabinoid system’s role in motivating and rewarding exercise is not yet understood, it seems obvious, the researchers say, that the cannabinoid-deprived mice were not getting some necessary internal message. Typically, the endocannabinoid system “is well known to impact onto central reward networks,” the authors write. Without it, exercise seemed to provide less buzz, and the animals didn’t indulge as much.

Whether this accumulating new science establishes, or ever can establish, definitively, that endocannabinoids are behind runner’s high, is uncertain. As Francis Chaouloff, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France and lead author of the genetically modified mouse study, pointed out in an e-mail, rodents, although fine models for studying endocannabinoid action, “do not fill questionnaires to express their feelings related to running,” and runners’ high is a subjective human experience. Still, endocannabinoids are a more persuasive candidate, especially given the overlap between the high associated with marijuana use and descriptions of the euphoria associated with strenuous exercise. One recent review article described them: “pure happiness, elation, a feeling of unity with one’s self and/or nature, endless peacefulness,” and “inner harmony.” Ahhhh.

Source.

Public support for marijuana legalization continues its upward trend and has “never been higher,” according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The poll had support for marijuana legalization at 45%, up four points from the same poll a year earlier.

Half of respondents (50%) still opposed legalizing pot, but that number is down two points from last year and continues a two-decade long trend of declining opposition. In 1990, 81% opposed legalization; by 2000, that number had declined to 63%, and has continued to drop since then.

The upward trend line for legalization and the downward one opposing legalization are nearing the convergence point, and support for legalization will soon surpass opposition, if current trends continue.

Pro-legalization sentiment was strongest among 18-to-29-year-olds (54%), Democrats (53%), and people with some college education (50%). Among liberal Democrats, support rose to 66%.

Keeping marijuana illegal got the strongest support from Republicans (67%) and people over 65 (66%), and women (54%). Men were evenly divided on the issue.

The new Pew poll is in line with other polls in recent years showing a steady increase in support for marijuana legalization, but that we’re not quite there yet nationally. Still, we are getting tantalizingly close. You can review our archive of Chronicle articles about polls here.

- Article originally published at www.StopTheDrugWar.org