Debby Moore host weekly "Cannabis Corner", on http://www.BaconRock.com, Tuesdays, 8:00 PM CDT. Debby Moore is CEO of Hemp Industries of Kansas, Director of Research. Debby Moore is listed in the 1998 National Registry of Who's Who in America, and recognized in High Times Magazine as Freedom Fighter of the month August 1994. A long journey toward restoring dignity and honor toward the Cannabis Sativa l. Hemp plant.

CANNABIS CORNER – TRANSCRIPTS: June 16, 2015 – Debby Moore, AKA Hemp Lady, CEO Hemp Industries of Kansas, host broadcast on http://www.BaconRock.com
xxx
Program Sponsors:
Healthy, beautiful skin food: Les Balm - Restoring & Repairing Tissue Cells on Micro-cellar level. Available online at: http://www.lesbalm.com – questions – lesbalmchic@gmail.com

Valentine’s 1123 E. Douglas, Wichita, Kansas (Gorilla on roof of building east of Boutique.) Sells: Les Balm in .05 oz Trial Twist Tube, 2 oz Jar or Tin, & 2.65 oz. Twist Tube.

Green Art Rocks - Available at: http://www.Green Art Rocks.com – also promotes free, other artists work in the Helping Hands Project.

***
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Tue, 09 Jun 2015
Source: Cincinnati Enquirer (OH)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/XZnyMUrR
Copyright: 2015 The Cincinnati Enquirer
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/aeNtfDqb
Website: http://www.cincinnati.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/86
Author: Chris Stock
Note: Chris Stock is a Cincinnati attorney and the principal author
of the ResponsibleOhio amendment.

IGNORE LEGAL POT MISTRUTHS

There are some misperceptions about how marijuana legalization has
rolled out in Colorado, as shown in the op-ed “Legal pot? Look at
Colorado before leaping” (May 15). Anderson Township resident John M.
Kunst Jr., who spends considerable time in Colorado, makes a number
of off-base claims about the situation there since the 2012 passage
of an initiative legalizing marijuana. As principal author of
ResponsibleOhio’s ballot initiative, which if passed by Ohio voters
this fall would legalize marijuana for personal and medicinal, I
offer these point-by-point responses.

Kunst: In Colorado “the black market appears to be thriving because
legal weed is not cheap: $200 an ounce plus sales and huge excise taxes.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: According to priceofweed.com, a
crowd-sourced marijuana pricing site on which a prominent RAND
Corporation study recently relied, the average black market price of
marijuana in Colorado is $218.91 per ounce, higher than the
“expensive” retail price that Kunst claims is driving Colorado buyers
to the black market. Colorado’s black market accounts for just 5
percent of all the marijuana purchased there not enough market share
to be considered “thriving,” especially since marijuana stores have
only been open in Colorado since January.

Kunst: The benefits flowing from marijuana sales into Colorado’s
state coffers “may be short lived as word gets out that you can’t
carry weed back home through the airport.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: There is no evidence that sales of
marijuana in Colorado are decreasing. More than $42.7 million of
marijuana was purchased for personal use in Colorado retail stores
during March, the most recent month for which data are available.
These totals exceeded the previous records set in February ($39.1
million) and January ($36.4 million).

Kunst: In 2014 “out-of-state applications to the University of
Colorado jumped over 30,000.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: It’s difficult to imagine admissions
departments at Ohio’s colleges and universities complaining about
such a sharp increase in applications.

Kunst: “Fearing a disaster, the [Colorado] Legislature and local
governments have gone to great pains to regulate this new industry
from seed to smoke. The regulations are impressive and understandably
burdensome, but there is insufficient manpower to assure compliance.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: Our amendment provides more funding for
enforcement than Colorado’s or any other state’s marijuana
initiative. Fifteen percent of the special taxes the State collects
from growers, product manufacturers, and licensed retail stores will
fund the Ohio Marijuana Control Commission’s enforcement efforts,
ensuring it will have sufficient money to enforce the law and its own
regulations. In addition, it will have only 10 grow facilities to
monitor, versus the more than 1,000 legal grow facilities spread
throughout Colorado. A recent Rand study identified 10 grow sites as
among the best ways to supply marijuana in a legal commercial market.

Kunst: “Edibles have caused tragic adult and children deaths.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: This is a baseless statement, fast
becoming an urban legend. According to 2011 epidemiological study,
“The acute toxicity of cannabis is very low. There are no confirmed
cases of human deaths from cannabis poisoning in the world medical
literature.” A person would have to use over 10,000 times the average
dose to approach a toxic dose.

Kunst: In Colorado, “traditional zoning restrictions are being
amended to allow the establishment of these operations ‘next door’ or
in the neighborhood a plus for the new business but a threat to
property values.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: Our amendment eliminates this risk by (1)
prohibiting marijuana grow facilities and retail marijuana stores
within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, libraries, playgrounds, and
day-care centers, (2) limiting the number of grow facilities to 10
(versus the more than 1,000 currently operating in Colorado), and (3)
requiring approval of all retail marijuana store locations by
neighborhood residents through “local option” elections.

Kunst: “Recently, it has been discovered that unregulated pesticides
and fungicides are winding up in joints and being ingested by smokers.”

ResponsibleOhio’s response: Our amendment limits cultivation of
marijuana for sale in Ohio to 10 heavily regulated producers, whose
grow operations would be subject to state inspections 24/7, and
requires the Marijuana Control Commission to adopt strict regulations
to ensure the safety and reliability of marijuana grown and sold in this state.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Tue, 09 Jun 2015
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/igMSBGsK
Copyright: 2015 The Oregonian
Contact: letters@oregonian.com
Website: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Jeff Mapes

THE OREGON LEGISLATURE’S BIG MARIJUANA PACT: NEGOTIATORS CUT DEAL ON
TAXES, LOCAL BANS

Legislative negotiators have tentatively agreed on a sweeping
marijuana deal that could produce a 20 percent sales tax on
recreational sales of pot.

Under the deal—which is still subject to change—the state could
collect a 17 percent tax while localities could collect up to 3 percent.

The deal to allow local taxes is aimed at ending a standoff with
cities and counties over just how much power they have to prohibit
retail sales of both recreational and medical marijuana.

That issue has tied up legislation that would place new limits on
medical marijuana growers, which is aimed at reducing black-market diversions.

In exchange for giving cities and counties a chance to get some new
tax revenue from legalized marijuana, legislators are able to in
essence put aside the issue of local control. That issue is likely
to be settled either by the courts or by a legislative work group
charged with making a recommendation for the 2016 session.

“We are reaching conclusions on this and I’m very encouraged by the
progress we have made,” said Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland and
co-chair of the Legislature’s marijuana panel. The deal was revealed
in a series of amendments posted on the legislative website Monday afternoon.

Scott Winkels, the chief lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities,
said the tentative deal for a local tax of no more than 3 percent is not ideal.

“But getting the tax on the books, we view that as a victory,” said Winkels.

The 3 percent would be on top of a state sales tax that legislators
on the marijuana committee have been moving toward. It would replace
a harvest tax on marijuana that was contained in the Measure 91
initiative approved by voters last November.

“Our intention in moving from the harvest to point of sale is not to
change the quantity of tax” charged to consumers, said Rep. Ann
Lininger, D-Lake Oswego, the other co-chair of the Joint Committee on
Measure 91 Implementation.

Measure 91 also levied a harvest tax of $35 an ounce on flowers, the
most potent part of marijuana, $10 an ounce for leaves and $5 on
immature plants.

But legislators on the panel instead have moved toward a sales tax,
saying it would be more workable. For one, this would allow medical
marijuana which the state does not plan to tax to be sold at the
same retail location as recreational marijuana.

Legislators are trying to figure out what sales tax rate would
produce the same amount of revenue as a harvest tax. Mazen Malik, an
economist for the Legislative Revenue Office, said 17 percent has
been included in draft legislation as a “reasonable rate,” but no
final determination has been made on whether it is indeed equivalent
to the harvest tax.

Measure 91 also said that only the state could tax recreational sales
of the drug. But some 70 cities approved ordinances before the
November election seeking to create a local pot tax.

Under the proposed deal, any local tax would have to be approved by
voters in a city or county.

A key legal case involving Cave Junction is already testing whether
local governments can prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries,
Winkels said. A state law allowing cities and counties to put a
one-year moratorium on dispensaries expired on May 1 and legislators
have argued over what kind of authority to give localities.

A measure that passed the Senate said localities could prohibit
dispensaries but gave local voters a way to overturn the ban. House
members of the marijuana committee have pushed their own proposal
requiring that any local ban go to voters.

Under Measure 91, only local voters could prohibit recreational
marijuana sales in a specific city or county.

The latest amendments released by the committee also remove language
that would call for a temporary recreational marijuana sales program
starting soon after possession becomes legal on July 1.

Instead, Burdick and Lininger said they expect that contentious issue
to be placed in a separate bill. They are considering a proposal to
allow recreational users to buy a limited quantity of marijuana at
medical marijuana dispensaries starting around Oct. 1.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which is charged under Measure
91, with regulating recreational sales, said it won’t be ready to
allow retailers to open until the last half of 2016. The commission’s
chairman, Rob Patridge, has argued against allowing early sales.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

xxx
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 2015
Source: North Coast Journal (Arcata, CA)
Copyright: 2015 North Coast Journal
Contact: letters@northcoastjournal.com
Website: http://www.northcoastjournal.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2833
Author: Grant Scott-Goforth

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? TM

Bills from our two state representatives lurched forward in the last
couple weeks. Assemblyman Jim Wood’s “Marijuana Watershed Protection
Act,” which would task water boards with developing marijuana
cultivation regulations, was passed by the Assembly and now moves to
the Senate. It was the first medical marijuana related bill to leave
its house this year, narrowly beating out state Senator Mike
McGuire’s “Medical Marijuana Public Safety and Environmental
Protection Act.” (Did they both buy the same bill-naming book?)

McGuire’s bill is further-reaching - “a regulatory framework for the
industry covering the issues of environmental protection and water
regulations, law enforcement, licensing, public health related to
edibles and product testing, to marketing, labeling, taxing,
transporting, zoning, local control and re-sale” - and will now move
to the Assembly.

A recent article in Fortune highlights how investment capital is
beginning to pounce on the fledgling legal marijuana market. The highlights:

There are 300 publicly traded cannabis companies in the U.S. - 10
times the number in existence two years ago.

Forty of those companies raised $95 million in 2014 and the first
quarter of 2015.

ArcView Group, a marijuana investment firm, recently dropped $41
million on 54 marijuana companies.

The company says legal marijuana sales reached $2.7 billion last year.

Privateer Holdings, another investment firm that holds Marley Natural
(the reggae-singer-branded bud company), has raised $82 million since
its inception.

Meanwhile, the likeness of another music great of the ‘60s is set to
grace the packaging of a weed-infused candy bar.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, a Toronto-based company
signed exclusive rights to sell edibles “using the song titles and
bearing the likeness of iconic guitarist Jimi Hendrix.”

Hendrix isn’t exactly a marijuana icon, though, aside from existing
in an era that’s celebrated for the weed by nascent
counter-culturalists. Indeed, Nutritional High’s CEO called Hendrix
one of “maybe five key artists associated with the psychedelic age.”

As the U-T puts it: “The products in question, which will be marketed
under the Edible Experiences banner, include ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Stone
Free’ lines. Both are named after popular songs by Hendrix, neither
of which were about marijuana, but why quibble over technicalities?”

Hendrix’s estate hasn’t exactly been generous with rights to songs.
It famously refused to allow the Andre 3000-led biopic about Hendrix
to use any of the guitarist’s actual songs, though it let Citi Visa
use “Purple Haze” in a commercial last year.

But Nutritional High isn’t worried - apparently the company is
working with Hendrix’s brother, who owns a second company that sells
the rights to Hendrix’s likeness and song titles.

Citing the Bob Marley brand pot, Nutritional High’s CEO told the U-T
it was the “second major signing of an iconic music artist.”
Apparently, he’s not a Willie Nelson fan.

Nelson, as readers know, has his own brand of weed coming out, and
he’s as big a marijuana/counter-culture icon as they come. Not to
mention, he’s the only living musician so far to attach his name to a product.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

xxx
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 2015
Source: Westword (Denver, CO)
Column: Ask a Stoner
Copyright: 2015 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.westword.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.westword.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616
Author: Herbert Fuego

HOW DO I TELL MY FAMILY I SMOKE POT?

Dear Stoner: I’ve been smoking pot for a few years, but in the last
six months I’ve started smoking more as I drink less (I’m 25). My parents have always been against marijuana, but I want to be honest with them if I continue to partake. How should I break the news?
Beaver Cleaver
Dear Beaver: It’s hard to give specific advice, as I’ve never met your parents - but honesty is usually the best policy. If you don’t see yourself ending your cannabis use anytime soon, make sure you educate yourself before starting the discussion. Don’t rant about pot’s ability to fight cancer you don’t have or George Washington’s hemp garden; just tell them why it benefits you. Does it help with anxiety? Pain? Sleep? Maybe talk about an instance in which marijuana made your night better without putting you in danger, as alcohol can. If you have a decent job and keep yourself tidy, that might help their outlook, too. You want to take an unapologetic stance while still being respectful of their questions and concerns.
My dad was almost forced to embrace cannabis after I got a job writing about it, but not everyone is lucky enough to have supportive parents. Some people refuse to change their mind regardless of how much you love them, and some won’t approve of pot no matter how you spin it. If all else fails, slap a Mary’s Medicinals transdermal patch on your dad the next time his back aches and tell him it’s Icy Hot. The results may speak for themselves.
Dear Stoner: I don’t like smoking, but I hate how long edibles take to kick in. Do you know of anything I don’t need to smoke that will still help my achy knees faster?
Liz
Dear Liz: These kinds of questions are best asked at your dispensary; any decent budtender should be able to assist you after hearing the specifics of your ailments. But if you don’t trust salespeople, here are the basics.
Tinctures are a great way to achieve a quick high without putting smoke in your lungs. Extracted with alcohol or vegetable oils, tinctures are high concentrations of THC in liquid form. Put a few drops of marijuana tincture under your tongue and the THC will enter your bloodstream almost immediately. The quick ingestion should give you a tingly body high within ten to fifteen minutes. And this is another good use of Mary’s Medicinals; those transdermal patches contain extracted THC and CBD for pain relief and come in ten-or twenty-milligram dosages, so you can experiment with how much medication you want and where you want it.
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
xxx
Newshawk: Herb Couch
Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jun 2015
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/lBTHgh1B
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Nick Eagland
Page: 3

CANADA DAY POT FEST DENIED ART GALLERY SITE
NO PERMIT: City Cites Construction in Area
Organizers behind an annual Canada Day pot fest in Vancouver were baffled Tuesday to learn their event may go up in smoke because they can’t have their usual spot.
Cannabis Day protesters have gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery every July 1 for two decades and organizers from Cannabis Culture Headquarters began planning the event as usual months ago, but they were surprised to learn a city staffer said their event, expected to draw more than 10,000, won’t “work for that site on that date” this year.
“We’re not issuing a permit for the event,” said deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston. “There’s going to be construction work happening on the site at the time, so the site actually isn’t available to them. Hopefully they’ll get the message and it won’t proceed.”
Johnston said if organizers go ahead with the event, the city will coordinate with police on a response and take “appropriate action.”
“Organizations that are well-organized in this fashion can’t just set up pop-up markets wherever they want. It’s far beyond a protest, which is what they’ve been saying over the years. That’s not what this is. It’s an organized event like many other events and they need to go by city process,” Johnston said.
But Cannabis Day organizer Jeremiah Vandermeer said that organizers and the city have been hashing out the details for a while and as far as they knew, the event was still on.
“Nobody has informed us from the city at all, so it’s a complete mystery to us,” Vandermeer said. “We have no indication that our event has been superseded by construction. We hope that the city would get in contact with us because we have an open relationship with them and we’ve had a pretty close relationship with them to keep things safe there.”
Vandermeer said a cancellation this late in the planning process would be a safety concern because protesters may still assemble on the grounds whether or not organizers pull the plug. He said that while the city hasn’t issued Cannabis Day an event permit in the past, organizers have received informal letters from the city outlining expectations for the unsanctioned but “constitutionally protected” protest.
In a release sent out May 28, the police urged promoters of large, unsanctioned events such as bike raves and outdoor concerts to work with cops in advance and obtain proper permits to avoid being billed for policing costs. Police said costs for policing the 4/20 pot protest and demonstration on April 20, attended by about 25,000, totalled about $50,000.
? with files from Postmedia News
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
xxx
Newshawk: Herb Couch
Pubdate: Fri, 12 Jun 2015
Source: Metro (Ottawa, CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Metro
Contact: ottawaletters@metronews.ca
Website: http://www.metronews.ca/Ottawa
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4032
Author: Michael Woods
Page: 4
Referenced: Supreme Court Judgment (R. v. Smith):
http://mapinc.org/url/d2dzMbjW
POT USERS APPLAUD NEW RULING
Top Court Has Expanded Ways to Consume the Drug
Local medical marijuana users are applauding a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that expands the ways licensed patients can consume the drug, including one couple who say they no longer need to be looking over their shoulder.
Russell Barth and his wife Christine Lowe are both licensed medical marijuana users. Barth suffers from fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, and Lowe suffers from epilepsy. Both also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Barth said this ruling is a big deal for them because as Lowe’s caregiver, he treats her seizures using a vaping pen and cannabis concentrate oil referred to as “shatter,” or dabbing wax.
It’s the most effective treatment for her seizures because she can inhale a large amount of cannabis at once, he said.
“Having this device and this substance available to us has thwarted countless big seizures,” he said.
Until Thursday’s ruling, federal regulations only allowed medical marijuana users to consume dry marijuana. But now, medical marijuana can legally be consumed in a range of ways - from cannabis-infused cookies and brownies to cooking oils and tea.
He said his wife has five or six seizures a month and he needs to react quickly, even if they’re in a public place like on a bus or at the grocery store.
“The last thing I need during one of those sessions of me trying to bring her back is a security guard or some cop giving me a hard time about it,” he said.
Until Thursday, that was a really big fear of his, he said.
“Now I don’t have to worry about it as much as I did,” he added.
“This reduces a lot of my apprehension going out in public.”
with files from The Canadian Press
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
xxx
Newshawk: Herb Couch
Pubdate: Fri, 12 Jun 2015
Source: Nanaimo Daily News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Nanaimo Daily News
Contact: letters@nanaimodailynews.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1608
Authors: Geordon Omand and Terry Pedwell
Page: A14
Referenced: Supreme Court Judgment (R. v. Smith):
http://mapinc.org/url/d2dzMbjW
COURT REJECTS LIMITS ON WAYS TO USE POT
Ruling Allows Drug to Be Consumed With Range of Methods
A former cannabis club head baker at the centre of a Supreme Court of Canada ruling is both thrilled and relieved after the top court struck down limits on what constitutes legally acceptable medical marijuana products.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that medical marijuana can be legally consumed in a range of ways, from cannabis-infused cookies and brownies to cooking oils and teas.
“I think across the country there will be a lot more smiles and a lot less pain,” said Owen Smith with the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club, whose 2009 arrest was the focus of the decision.
Smith was charged after police found hundreds of pot cookies and cannabis-infused olive and grapeseed oils in his Victoria apartment. He was acquitted at trial and won an appeal.
The outpouring of gratitude since the ruling was handed down has been overwhelming, said Smith. He received a phone call from a mother who used cannabis-infused oil to treat her daughter’s epilepsy.
“She was just overjoyed and in tears about the decision,” he said.
“It’s been emotional, that’s for sure.”
Not only was it a unanimous 7-0 ruling, but the court made a point of attributing the written decision to the entire court - something the justices do when they want to underline a finding.
It was yet another rebuke of the Harper government’s tough-on-crime agenda.
Until now, federal regulations stipulated that authorized users of physician-prescribed cannabis could only consume dried marijuana.
But limiting medical consumption to dried pot infringes on liberty protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the court said.
“The prohibition of non-dried forms of medical marijuana limits liberty and security of the person in a manner that is arbitrary and hence is not in accord with the principles of fundamental justice,” said the written judgement.
The initial trial judge in Smith’s case gave the federal government a year to change the laws around cannabis extracts, but the court said Thursday its ruling takes effect immediately.
Cheryl Rose, whose daughter Hayley takes cannabis for a severe form of epilepsy, said the 22-year-old’s seizures have dropped dramatically.
Under the previous law, Hayley had to take 15 capsules of dried cannabis daily.
Now, she will only have to take one concentrated capsule made with oil.
“Without having extracts available for her, I don’t think we’d be able to keep it up. It’s way too much for a person to consume,” she said. “She’s finally going to fully have her life back.”
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
xxx
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Lee Romney

CULTIVATING RESPECT
A North Coast Proposal Is Aimed at Ensuring That Marijuana Growers
Are Regulated Like Any Other Sector
WILLOW CREEK, Calif. - The parking lot at the golf course began filling by evening - a procession of raised trucks coated in backcountry dust, an aging red Honda with a “Forever Stoked” bumper sticker.
But the 150 or so visitors hadn’t come to this Humboldt County hill town to play a round. They were marijuana growers, seeking to learn how to do the right thing for watersheds increasingly strained by the state’s epic drought.
Pamphlets on best practices to achieve sustainability in the “green rush” and primers on registering water rights covered a table inside the bar.
The event was organized by California Cannabis Voice Humboldt, the 600member affiliate of a statewide political action committee formed last year. The theme: stepping out of the shadows to get regulated.
“I’ve lived my whole life an outlaw, and I’m not going to die an outlaw,” Patrick Murphy, a bearded, 38-year-old cultivator who serves as the group’s co-director of community outreach, told the crowd. “I’m going to die a farmer, a proud farmer, a farmer of cannabis.”
The celebratory pig roast last month, where growers and non-growers mingled with local politicians, comes as a transformation of sorts sweeps cannabis country.
Marijuana cultivation is illegal under federal law and only narrowly permitted under state medical marijuana law. With as many as 30,000 grow sites in the state’s northern counties, selective criminal enforcement has long taken place, and that is not expected to change.
But state regulators and local officials in the Emerald Triangle acknowledge that the old way of doing things - which often paired environmental inspection with criminal enforcement - has not yielded good results. Instilling fear in growers, they say, has done little to encourage them to follow sound environmental practices.
The concerns include silt runoff from poorly maintained roads and stream crossings, improper use of fertilizers and pesticides, illegal water diversions and inadequate water storage.
The new approach comes as drought threatens the endangered Coho salmon and steelhead trout, lawmakers weigh a flurry of proposals to regulate medical marijuana, and the question of legalizing recreational pot use is expected to make it onto the November 2016 ballot.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is poised to adopt a program that would require all marijuana cultivators to register, pay a fee, follow strict environmental guidelines and seek appropriate permits from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Prompted by Gov. Jerry Brown, it is believed to be the first effort of its kind in the nation aimed at ensuring that marijuana growers on private land are treated like any other sector by environmental regulators, regardless of the legality of their crop.
The goal is to bring growers into the fold with collaboration and incentives and not rely solely on enforcement once the damage is done.
Many Humboldt County growers surely will refuse to comply. Some are outsiders from as far afield as Bulgaria who care little for the environment or their neighbors. Others have lived through decades of criminal busts and eradication campaigns and hold fast to their suspicions of government.
But a surprising number of growers are coming aboard, filing for permits with state water and fish and wildlife agencies - and anticipating a day when the black-market dollars that now flood the county will be legitimate.
It’s a day, Murphy imagined for the gathered crowd, when boutique
Humboldt County bud branded as “fish-friendly” will make it to market
? and schools and government programs will be flush with tax revenues from the newly legal sales.

Come legalization, he added, that might just keep big money interests from squeezing out thousands of Humboldt pot farmers known for the quality product they have long produced.
“It’s time for us to show the rest of the community who we are,” Murphy said. “We’re your friends, we’re your neighbors and, given the chance, we can be the best contributing members of this community.”
A coordinated deal
The drought has added urgency to the regulatory push.
Research by the state Fish and Wildlife Department released in March found that demand by marijuana-growing operations, estimated in gallons needed per plant, had overwhelmed available water supplies in three of four watersheds in Humboldt County. Streams had run dry, placing certain threatened fish and amphibians at risk.
“We already are exceeding the capacity of our fisheries and a big, big piece of that is drought,” said Scott Greacen, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Eel River. “But it’s only in drought that you see what the limits of the watershed are. We’re there. Big time.”
Complaints about grows began to surge five years ago, said Matt St. John, executive officer of the North Coast water board. Inspections along with demands for corrective action and penalties followed. Fish and Wildlife was doing the same. But the problem demanded a broader, coordinated solution.
Brown took interest, and a pilot project was born, going into effect last summer. The Legislature has funded it through June 2017, though the Marijuana Watershed Protection Act written by Assemblyman Jim Wood (DHealdsburg) would expand it and make it permanent.
It calls on the agencies to work together, educate growers and coordinate enforcement actions that focus on bringing cultivators into environmental compliance.
The centerpiece is the sweeping regulatory program now under consideration by the water board. A vote is scheduled for August.
“I think we’re all aware that this is something completely different than anything we have ever done before,” board member William Massey said at a recent meeting. “We don’t care if it’s pot or pineapples [being grown]. It’s what it does to water quality.”
In addition to registering and meeting water-quality standards, growers would have to store enough water in the winter to last from May 15 through Oct. 31, when they would be barred from tapping streams.
The Fish and Wildlife Department, meanwhile, already has seen a jump in requests for permits as they participate in joint enforcement actions with water board counterparts.
Of 14 sites visited in January in the Eel River watershed’s Sproul Creek, which has run dry the last two years, 90% of those targeted have since applied, said Scott Bauer, a senior environmental scientist for the Fish and Wildlife Department.
“Last year we could count them on one hand,” Bauer said. “This year there are constant calls.”
Growing compliance
Key to the program’s success are outside watershed experts and civil engineers who are authorized to serve as intermediaries, crafting water resource protection plans and carrying out needed mitigation.
Including them, St. John said, puts more “eyes on the ground,” and far more growers are likely to comply if they don’t have to invite government inspectors onto their land.
Praj White, 42, is a civil engineer who grew up in Humboldt’s hills and watched the weed industry bloom with “hippie redneck open farms,” burrow underground during years of heavy enforcement, and now begin to “unfold back into the daylight.”
The clients he visits have ranged from “fairly compliant,” he said, to newcomers who “rented a bulldozer, found some area best suited to sun” and proceeded to violate a host of stream and wildlife protection regulations.
On a recent day, White met an old-time grower in the Van Duzen watershed. Two of his neighbors also showed up wanting evaluations and by midday “two other trucks came and joined us.”
Greacen worried that the growers willing to comply represent “only a fraction of the real industry,” and that agencies will never raise the needed dollars through fees to properly enforce the myriad sites.
The environmental advocate is proposing that the water board cap all but the smallest tier of grows by watershed, compelling cultivators to work together to “fix the stuff you have collectively wrecked” before granting additional permits.
But White believes that if a certified “salmon safe” product can be tracked from farm to a legal marketplace, the good actors will begin to turn in the bad.
More than two years ago, Murphy invited environmental regulators onto his land to line up permits for an operation that would defy stereotypes of growers as “eco-terrorists” - one with roads that don’t crumble into streams and enough stored water to get through drought-stricken summers.
The duo has since been working to craft a county cannabis land use ordinance for parcels larger than five acres. In April, their group hosted State Board of Equalization members Fiona Ma and George Runner - who together represent 53 of California’s 58 counties - to talk taxation.
“We’re craving not just regulation but aboveground benefits like crop insurance, legal routes of sale, tax ID numbers,” Murphy said.
Out of the shadows
At the Willow Creek event, cultivators used to hiding behind locked gates chatted with watershed experts about how to build up their soil to prevent nutrient leaching, properly store rainwater and protect juvenile salmon.
“It’s fascinating and terrifying,” said Terra Joy Carver, 31, who heads the grower group’s women’s alliance and until a few months ago had never told a stranger what she did for a living. “Yet Colorado and Washington are about to tell us how to do this, and take away our whole heritage. If we don’t stand up for who we are, we will lose it, and it’s not just our livelihood, it’s our entire community.”
Carver has persuaded 150 women to sign on and is organizing training on business plans, branding and marketing. In April, she helped build the California Cannabis Voice Humboldt float for the Yes We Cann! parade at Humboldt’s Cannifest - in blazing green.
It was, she said, “like our pride parade.”
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Veronica Rocha

DID COP SNEAK A POT TREAT?
A video that appears to show a Santa Ana police officer eating a marijuana-laced edible after a raid on a pot shop has prompted a police department investigation.
The video shows at least half a dozen officers entering the Sky High Holistic dispensary May 26 with guns drawn, forcing customers to the ground. The footage was released this week by an attorney representing the manager of the dispensary.
Police can be seen on the video removing security cameras and playing darts. One of the officers is shown examining what looks like an edible before tossing it into his mouth and flashing a thumbs-up.
Marla James, the dispensary’s patient manager for the day, said she’s not certain the officer ate a potlaced treat, but that it looked a lot like a 420 bar or a Bhang Chocolate bar - a potent marijuana sweet. The officer, she said, had left the dispensary’s edibles room, which is stocked with marijuana-infused treats.
If any of the officers are found to have consumed marijuana or otherwise to have acted inappropriately, they could be disciplined or terminated.
James, a legally blind amputee who uses a wheelchair, accused the police of causing $180,000 worth of damage to the dispensary during the raid.
The video shows one of the officers asking a female colleague, “Did you punch that one-legged guerita?”
The officer replies, “I was about to kick her in her ... nub.”
James, a vocal medical marijuana patient activist, said she was forced to sign off on a misdemeanor citation for operating a dispensary, even though she told the same female officer she couldn’t read the ticket.
“It makes me really sad because I have always respected the police,” she said. “What was done to me shouldn’t be done to anybody else.”
The raid was part of a search warrant obtained by Santa Ana police, who were investigating the marijuana dispensary for operating illegally in the city, Police Chief Carlos Rojas said. James said the marijuana was operating legally and would remain open.
But Rojas said the dispensary was not permitted and that a cease-and-desist order had been sent.
Police haven’t seen the full, unedited video but have requested a
copy. The video came from a hidden camera in the dispensary.

The edited video, Rojas said, raises concern. “Our expectation for officers is that they act professionally at all time,” he said.
Rojas said he has pushed for a rapid internal affairs investigation. If any wrongdoing occurred, the officers will be held accountable, he said. But so far, he said “it doesn’t appear to be what people are assuming it is.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to the officers to indict them based on an edited video,” he said.
Rojas said it’s not uncommon for officers to eat their own snacks while they are at the scene of a lengthy investigation. Still, he said the officers would be tested for drugs.
“We will ensure that all investigative protocols are followed to ensure that no officer ingested any marijuana,” he said.
James said she plans to file a federal lawsuit next week.
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MEDICAL POT RESEARCHERS CONVENE

Medical marijuana researchers funded by the state will convene Saturday at National Jewish Health to discuss what they know so far about pot as medical therapy.
The symposium meets from 8 a.m. to noon with presentations on the safety and effectiveness of marijuana treatment for a range of medical conditions, including chronic pain, insomnia, epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder and irritable bowel syndrome.
The symposium, accredited for continuing medical education for health professionals, will also offer presentations from patients on their perspectives. It ends with an interactive panel discussion and questions and answers.
National Jewish Health, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Cannabis Outreach and Education Health Foundation are sponsors.
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/uoSeAs1E
Copyright: 2015 The Oregonian
Contact: letters@oregonian.com
Website: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Jeff Mapes

LEGISLATIVE DEAL EASES WAY TO MARIJUANA SALES BANS IN ALMOST ALL OF
EASTERN OREGON
A sweeping bill to regulate the burgeoning marijuana industry in Oregon is back on track after legislators agreed to make it easier to ban retail pot sales in almost all of the state’s eastern counties.
Leaders of the marijuana committee agreed to give a powerful eastern Oregon lawmaker language that would allow local governments in his region of the state to ban medical and recreational marijuana shops without voter approval.
Rep. Ann Lininger, D-Lake Oswego and co-chair of the House-Senate marijuana committee, said Friday that the compromise “is not my top choice,” but she said it was necessary to prevent the entire legislative package from falling apart.
The new legislative language proposed for House Bill 3400 would allow local governments to ban pot sales in counties where at least 55 percent of voters opposed the Measure 91 marijuana legalization measure in 2014.
As it happens, 15 counties had that level of opposition—and all of them are east of the Cascades. Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, who earlier this week demanded that local governments get an easier path to banning marijuana sales, represents all or part of eight of those counties.
Ferrioli was traveling Friday and could not be reached for comment. But his spokeswoman, Caitie Butler, said the Republican leader had indeed signed on to the deal.
“Barring a catastrophe, I think they’ll be moving forward with it,” she said.
Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, the other co-chair of the marijuana committee, said it makes sense to let elected officials prevent legal sales in areas where there is clearly strong opposition to the drug.
“It allows cities and counties to ban them but not lock it in stone,” said Burdick, arguing that elected officials could more easily change course down the road than if their voters supported a ban. She compared it to the post-Prohibition era when many localities around the country continued to ban the sale of alcohol. Gradually, the number of dry counties dwindled as the culture changed.
Burdick noted that cities and counties in other areas in the state could also ban marijuana sales under the legislative agreement—if they get approval from their voters. Voters in those 15 eastern Oregon counties could also overturn a pot ban by collecting the signatures needed to take the issue to the ballot.
With an apparent deal in hand, Burdick said she now hopes to move the marijuana measure out of committee early next week. The panel also wants to move ahead quickly on a bill that would levy a sales tax on recreational marijuana sales instead of the per-ounce harvest tax included in Measure 91.
At this point, House Bill 2041 calls for a 17 percent state sales tax and a provision allowing localities to add an additional 3 percent tax.
The issue of local control over marijuana has been a difficult one for legislators. More than 140 cities and 26 counties blocked medical marijuana sales after the Legislature allowed a one-year moratorium that expired May 1. Many local governments are continuing to ban these dispensaries or adopt stringent requirements that make them impractical.
Measure 91 says that only voters can ban the sale of marijuana in a city or county. But city and county lobbyists argue that language won’t stand up in court, in large part because the measure tries to force local governments to accept a business that is illegal under federal law. Retail sales for recreational marijuana may not start until late next year, although possession will become legal July 1.
“That (federal illegality) puts a different layer on things,” said Burdick, adding that it helped drive her to accept disparate rules in different parts of the state.
Burdick also said that Anthony Johnson, the chief sponsor of Measure 91, was involved in negotiations over the latest compromise and played a role in setting the 55 percent threshold.
Seven counties voted against Measure 91 with less than 55 percent voting no. Douglas County was less than one-half of 1 percent below the threshold.
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2015 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Clarence Williams and Peter Hermann

D.C. SHIFTS ITS AIM TO BIG DRUG SUPPLIERS
Residents’ Responses Range From Praise to Skepticism
Citing disappearing open-air drug markets and new ways narcotics are being sold, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier says she wants her detectives to concentrate on suppliers and not streetcorner busts that have long been a staple of policing across the country. The strategy shift, outlined at a community meeting Thursday, will eliminate most of the plainclothes operations police have used for decades to target outdoor drug sales, magnets for drive-by shootings and other violence. Coming at a tense moment in the nation’s relations between police and the public, it could also ease confrontations involving officers not immediately identifiable as law enforcement. It is an admission that some tactics - which were viewed by some critics as heavyhanded even when the crack epidemic sparked record numbers of homicides - no longer make sense amid a decline in fatal shootings and the availability of synthetic narcotics sold over the Internet, through social media and in convenience stores. “Our main goal is the supply,” Lanier told about three dozen residents at the community forum in Northeast Washington. “We don’t want to focus police efforts on just people who are addicted. We want to be focusing on the people who are bringing the stuff in.” In an interview, she added: “Our criminal environment is changing rapidly. We have to keep up.” The plan would eliminate District vice squads - each with about 20 detectives and supervisors - and shift higher-level investigations to the centralized Narcotics and Special Investigations Division.
Police will continue undercover operations, but as much as possible, Lanier wants police to be identifiable when making arrests.
The changes are resulting in praise from experts pushing for innovation in policing, guarded optimism among activists who have complained about aggressive police tactics and skepticism from the head of the union representing the District’s rank-and-file officers.
Although D.C. police have escaped the controversies and tumult other cities have experienced after the deaths of black men at the hands of law enforcement - such as in Baltimore, Cleveland, New York and Ferguson, Mo., - critics have complained that in the District, plainclothes officers jump from unmarked cars to roust suspected people, innocent and not, on street corners. Lanier has said specialized “jump out” squads have not been used in some time. She has previously said that in some cases, officers are responding to 911 calls or searching for particular suspects. Residents may also see officers from other agencies, she has said.
Monica Hopkins-Maxwell, executive director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties-Union-whose staff has said D.C. officers are too aggressive in poor, high-crime neighborhoods-called Lanier’s changes a “good first step.”
“It is a very clear message that the strategies employed by the MPD have not been effective, whether it has to do with the changing nature of crime, of drugs or the community response,” Hopkins-Maxwell said.
But Delroy Burton, chairman of the union that represents the District’s officers, said there could be a negative effect on neighborhoods. The changes mean that police district commanders “won’t have as many options to deal with minor drug problems” that don’t merit attention from the larger squad focused on the city.
Lanier said she wants to focus on drugs that pose major public-safety threats.
Police say they believe that PCP, club drugs such as MDMA (also known as ecstasy or Molly) and other synthetic drugs are the latest problems and require new approaches. The Internet is used in the supply line for many of those drugs. Heroin also has caused concern because of a high number of overdoses nationwide.
Authorities in the Washington area have traced PCP from the West Coast, club drugs like MDMA to local bathtub labs and synthetic drugs from as far away as China, Lanier said. Police have been able to seize large quantities of synthetic drugs in recent years, including 137 kilos in 2013, 120 kilos in 2014 and, so far this year, 25 kilos.
Marijuana, although still illegal to sell, is legal to possess in the District and use in small quantities, and police have largely stopped targeting the drug.
Police say that in the early 2000s, they identified 210 open-air drug markets in the District. Today, few operate in the open, Lanier said. Homicides have also decreased. The District recorded annual killings in the 300s and 400s during the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s, when crack was rampant. Those numbers are now in the low 100s.
“The criminal enterprise has changed. The criminals have gone high-tech, so our methods have got to go high-tech, too,” Lanier said.
The chief has hinted at the department’s changes during community meetings and before the D.C. Council, and other cities have taken similar approaches. Among the first was High Point, N.C., a city of about 110,000 outside Greensboro, which created its Drug-Market Initiative.
Police there identified drug markets and arrested the handful of dealers with the most significant records. They told others to change or face jail time and then started working with residents to address the smaller, quality-of-life crimes. “Like every other police department, we would do a zero-tolerance sting or a street sweep,” said Capt. Tim Ellenberger, who runs High Point’s major crimes division.
“While those operations seemed on the face of it productive, they clogged the justice system, felonized people not driving the violence and angered the people who lived there. . . . We weren’t making anything better.”
Now, Ellenberger said, “we target the people responsible for the violence surrounding a drug market. It’s fairer to the residents. It’s smarter policing.”
John DeCarlo, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former police chief in Branford, Conn., said that “focused deterrence works better than a general war on drugs.”
The retired 34-year police veteran said “the whole face of drug markets has changed. . . . On the dark Web, you can buy and have delivered to your house just about any drug you can think of. It’s child’s play.”
Reducing confrontations between police and residents who often feel under siege will have added benefits, DeCarlo said.
Lanier has made no secret that the changes are, in part, to help improve relations with the community, saying she is “committed to a strategy that focuses on less crime and less arrests.”
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Newshawk: Herb Couch
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Gertie Pool
Page: A16

DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP
Re: ‘Outraged’ By The Supreme Court, June 12. Are the justices of the
Supreme Court of Canada stepping over their judicial limitations? Never before in the history of Canada has any of them been able to declare any drug safe for medicinal purposes without the formal authorization to market or distribute a medicine without a notice of compliance issued by Health Canada. The court’s recent approval of the marijuana drug sales without the approval of Health Canada is a strange phenomenon indeed. It strikes me more like a democratic dictatorship then anything else. Is there anyone who holds these judges accountable and how? One can only wonder just who runs the country - the government or the Supreme Court judges.
Gertie Pool, Abbotsford, B.C.
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Newshawk: chip
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Jun 2015
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Harvey Silverglate
Note: Mr. Silverglate, a Boston criminal-defense and civil-liberties litigator, is the author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent” (Encounter, second edition 2011).
When Treating Pain Brings A Criminal Indictment
Lessons from the recent acquittal of a doctor and nurse-practitioner accused of overprescribing drugs.
Federal drug-enforcement officials have made it a serious felony for doctors to overprescribe painkillers or, as the applicable law states, to prescribe controlled substances “other than for a legitimate medical purpose and in the usual course of professional practice.” But the line between legitimate and illegitimate prescription - as drawn by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Justice Department - is far from clear. This puts physicians in great legal jeopardy, and too often leaves their patients to suffer needless agony.
Last month a federal jury in Boston acquitted pain-relief specialist Dr. Joseph Zolot and his nurse-practitioner Lisa Pliner of overprescribing oxycodone, methadone and fentanyl. This prosecution shows why drug warriors need either to clarify the currently indecipherable line between treating pain and unlawfully feeding drug addicts’ habits, or get out of the business of policing and terrorizing physicians. Unfortunately, the government uses legal ambiguity for tactical advantage and will not readily clarify the lines it expects doctors to follow at their peril.
Dr. Zolot and Ms. Pliner were indicted in 2011 for their treatment of six patients between 2004 and 2006. They faced lengthy, consecutive sentences of up to 20 years for each count if convicted. Prosecutors alleged that the two providers recklessly dispensed narcotic painkillers without legitimate medical purpose and were, in effect, dealing. The two pleaded not guilty, maintaining that their prescription practices were proper, and that they were not responsible for their patients’ subsequent abuses. The jurors unanimously agreed.
The jury’s rebuke is not likely to end the harassment of physicians who specialize in pain management. Drug warriors collect the scalps of doctors whom they accuse of violating the laws; they have no concern in aiding in the relief of patients’ suffering.
In August 2004, after repeated urging, the DEA finally released guidance for the administration of narcotic analgesics. Its pamphlet, produced in cooperation with the medical community, was titled “Prescription Pain Medications: Frequently Asked Questions and Answers for Health Care Professionals and Law Enforcement Personnel.” Even if physicians disagreed with the line between legitimate medical practice and criminal over-prescription, at least they had notice of where the government drew the line.
But the DEA’s support of the guidelines was withdrawn less than two months after they were posted on the government’s website. And so doctors were left with no official guidance about how much OxyContin is enough to relieve their patients’ pain, and how much could land them in prison.
The DEA’s retraction coincided with the federal prosecution of Virginia pain physician Dr. William Hurwitz, who was eventually convicted. The timing struck many observers as suspicious - did prosecutors realize that Dr. Hurwitz’s lawyers could claim that his prescribing practices conformed to its guidelines? The DEA has refused to explain why it withdrew its support, and the agency has issued no further guidance.
The prosecutions of Drs. Hurwitz and Zolot, nurse Pliner and others have ramifications that extend beyond the medical professionals unlucky enough to be caught in the DEA’s web. Doctors are increasingly afraid to prescribe certain drugs to patients who might seriously need them.
According to a 2005 survey conducted by USA Today, ABC and Stanford University Medical Center, only half of chronic pain sufferers, including cancer patients, report that their doctors are adequately relieving their pain. “It’s a criminalization of medicine,” Ms. Pliner told one Boston reporter after the trial, adding that she was afraid, at least for now, to work as a nurse practitioner.
Dr. Zolot’s lawyer, Howard Cooper, released a statement from his client saying that he hoped that other doctors “oewill realize that they should not be intimidated by the federal government in prescribing pain medication to their patients who are suffering in chronic pain.”
Yet Dr. Zolot’s acquittal should not give the medical community much comfort. It is probably an aberration, attributable to the Boston prosecutors’ failure to “flip” a witness. The government failed to convince nurse practitioner Pliner to testify against her boss in exchange for favorable treatment. Ms. Pliner believed that Dr. Zolot was a conscientious and caring doctor and that neither of them had done anything wrong.
Experienced criminal-defense lawyers have endless stories of their clients being offered favorable deals, even immunity from prosecution, if they would provide incriminating testimony against higher-ups. The problem, as Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitzoften told his criminal-law students, is that this practice teaches witnesses “not only to sing, but also to compose.”
Defense attorneys in the 1980s and ‘90s argued that offers of deals encouraged perjury and constituted obstruction of justice. These claims met with brief success in some federal district courts but were overturned at the appellate level, and the practice quickly resumed.
One lawyer in the Zolot case attributed the two defendants’ sticking together to the fact that the two shared a special kinship: They were Soviet refuseniks who came to America as political refugees and met in this country:. “Both have a healthy mistrust of the government.”
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jun 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Robert Sharpe
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v15/n312/a01.html

GOVERNMENT’S POT DECEPTION
Re “What happened to the pot stigma?,” Opinion, June12

Seth Leibsohn and former U.S. drug czar William J. Bennett give the “marijuana lobby” far too much credit for the growing support for marijuana law reform.
It’s really simple: Most young adults have personally tried marijuana. In doing so, they could not help but realize that our government has been lying about marijuana for decades. Marijuana is not nearly as dangerous (or exciting) as government propaganda suggests.
The so-called marijuana lobby is a recent development resulting from successful state ballot initiatives to tax and regulate marijuana. Legal businesses that pay taxes and take profits away from violent drug cartels are the end result.
It’s personal experience that has led a majority of Americans to rightly conclude that marijuana is safer than alcohol and does not merit a criminal justice response.
Robert Sharpe
Washington The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jun 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Amina Khan

SYNTHETIC CANNABINOID DATA POINT TO HIGH RISK
Poison control centers report a surge in calls, prompting a new push for tighter regulation.
Synthetic cannabinoids have been marketed as safe, legal, herbal alternatives to marijuana, but the data from U.S. poison control centers say otherwise.
Poison center calls linked to synthetic cannabinoids surged roughly fourfold in just the first few months of 2015, according to a report from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The sudden rise shows that tighter regulation of such substances is sorely needed, according to the authors of the CD Creport.
“Multiple other recent outbreaks suggest a need for greater public health surveillance and awareness, targeted public health messaging and enhanced efforts to remove these products from the market,” the researchers, led by CDC epidemiologist Royal Law, wrote in the center’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Synthetic cannabinoids (whose aliases include synthetic marijuana, Spice, K2 and Black Mamba) are made by spraying synthetic psychoactive chemicals on to plant matter, which can then be smoked or consumed.
Because the producers of the psychoactive chemicals can continually tweak their formulas, it can be hard for government regulators to keep up.
The researchers analyzed the numbers from the National Poison Data System, which tracks the monthly calls to all U.S. poison centers. The number of calls in April had shot up to 1,501, a 330% increase from the 349 calls made in January.
From January to May, poison centers received 3,572calls linked to synthetic cannabinoid use, a 229% jump from the 1,085 calls received during the same period in 2014.
A total of 626 calls reported that the synthetic cannabinoids had been used with multiple substances; the top two were alcohol (144) and plant-based marijuana (103).
Negative effects seemed to hit older users harder; those in their 30s and older than 40 were more likely than those ages 10 to 19 to suffer “severe” outcomes, the authors wrote. The median age of users was 26.
Among the commonly reported health effects: agitation (1,262), rapid heart rate (1,035) and vomiting (585).
And for the 2,961 with a reported medical outcome, 335 (11.3%) suffered either highly dangerous or potentially deadly effects; 15 deaths were reported, up from five during the same period in 2014.
“The increasing number of synthetic cannabinoid variants available, higher toxicity of new variants, and the potentially increased use as indicated by calls to poison centers might suggest that synthetic cannabinoids pose an emerging public health threat,” the study authors wrote.
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jun 2015
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/HbmBzLb0
Copyright: 2015 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Lizzie Johnson

GET BAKED SALE OFFERS MARIJUANA MUNCHIES
More than 25 local cannabis businesses hosted a bake sale Saturday, complete with “medical” marijuana-laced munchies.
The first Get Baked Sale, held at the SOMAStreat Food Park on 11th
Street, included food trucks and booths lined with all sorts of wares
? including Doritos, Chilean empanadas, ice cream sandwiches, pancakes and macaroons - for holders of medical marijuana cards to sample. The event featured cooking demonstrations and food-pairings with marijuana edibles. The pointy green leaves symbolic of the plant were rife on clothing, posters and stickers.

“This is truly the crumbling of an archaic symbol,” said Steve Medina, stirring cannabis sugar into a cup of coffee. “As the walls and legal limits have come down, the cannabis market has blossomed. It’s liberating.”
The sale comes as marijuana advocates move toward legalizing recreational use of the drug with a ballot initiative planned for November. But possession of marijuana is still a federal crime, and even in California, it is only legal for medical purposes. Otherwise, possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana is an infraction, and larger amounts are considered a misdemeanor, accompanied by up to six months of jail time. But the legal ramifications of hosting a potentially illegal event didn’t perturb event organizer Morgan Kelly.
“Everyone came prepared, and the planning went smoothly,” Kelly said, noting that there were no police officers at the event. “We knew the laws, followed them completely and had permission from the (city) health department. Only card-holders can purchase products, so we made sure to have two doctors on site for those who did not have” a medical marijuana card.
Tucked behind a transparent shower curtain, doctor Vanessa Niles did medical evaluations and approved on-the-spot cards. The line for her booth snaked around the corner. According to the evaluation form, people suffering from any number of maladies, including HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, severe nausea, arthritis and “any other chronic or persistent medical symptom,” could receive a card.
“People are not interested in getting high,” Niles said. “They want pain relief. It’s the idea that cannabis can be a special medication for disease. I give a dosage, and I will even draw a picture of a cookie so they know what portion to take.”
Keith Lucero, 58, from West Portal, said cannabis helps manage his arthritis pain. His opinion of marijuana as medicine was influenced by his father’s slow demise from cancer in the ‘90s.
“This is just the beginning,” Lucero said, eating a chocolate chip cannabis pancake. “It would have been nice to have these products for my dad all those years ago. Many people think this is just a recreational drug, but it’s not. It’s a medicine, too.”
Local cannabis business owners echoed the sentiment. Many of the products sold were labeled by the symptoms it would relieve, the amount of cannabis it contained and a suggested serving size.
Kim Geraghty, who started Madame Munchery in January 2014, said labeling and testing is the secret to a medically sound product.
“Seeing it treated as a legitimate product is so awesome,” she said. “We want to be legal and transparent, which is why we have all of our macaroons’ potency lab tested. It’s a beautiful thing, not some sketchy back-alley thing. It really has an important impact on people’s lives.”
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Newshawk: Herb Couch
Pubdate: Fri, 12 Jun 2015
Source: Guelph Mercury (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Metroland Media Group Ltd.
Contact: editor@guelphmercury.com
Website: http://www.guelphmercury.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1418
Page: A3

PRIVATE MARIJUANA LOUNGE CEASES OPERATIONS
GUELPH - A private marijuana smoking club that opened in downtown Guelph in the spring has quietly ceased its operations.
DLR 420 Vapour Lounge, at 51 Macdonell St., opened in April, amid much discussion, as the city’s first club where both recreational and medicinal pot could be smoked.
The lounge was considered a private club where patrons paid a $5 fee to be a member, allowing them to smoke their own marijuana. It did not sell marijuana and there was no alcohol.
Owner Tony Veder declined to comment about the development when contacted on Thursday.
When it first opened, Veder told the Mercury DLR 420 Vapour Lounge was “a place for myself and people like me, who have medical prescriptions, to hang out and smoke marijuana.”
He hoped to model it after popular pot cafes in Holland where marijuana is smoked in a coffee shop atmosphere.
Veder rented pipes and vaporizers to people for use at the club.
Among the rules originally posted at the location, no tobacco products or tobacco vapour products were allowed and guests had to be at least 18 years old.
The city commented at the time that there was no bylaw that would regulate such a business.
Signage on street-front windows at the location suggest the site may became the address of a clothing retailing business.
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MAP posted-by: Matt
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jun 2015
Source: Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Press Democrat
Contact: letters@pressdemocrat.com
Website: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/348
Author: Robert Digitale

SONOMA COUNTY MARIJUANA GROWERS URGED TO FORM UNITED FRONT
Sonoma County marijuana growers came together Sunday near Sebastopol to talk about how their industry can come out of the shadows, flex some political muscle and position itself for a day when its product becomes legalized for all adults.
About 200 people gathered at the Sebastopol Grange for the first fundraiser of the newly formed Sonoma County Growers Alliance.
Speakers exhorted listeners to get involved in both lobbying the Legislature and in electing local officials who are sympathetic to their industry. They pointed to the wine industry, the county’s top legal crop, as a model to follow in developing a high-quality cachet and in influencing both state and local politics.
The message, said Craig Litwin, a former Sebastopol mayor, should be, “We’re here. We’re participating. We have money and we’re not going away.”
Litwin, a founder of Citizens for Responsible Access, a pro-marijuana political action committee, said the flip side to getting recognized as legitimate businesses is that growers won’t be able to flaut environmental regulations by planting pot directly along creeks or diverting stream water need for endangered fish. “I’m sorry, those days are gone,” he said.
California voters in 1996 passed an initiative allowing marijuana use for medical purposes. But federal law doesn’t recognize such use, and until recently federal officials have taken an aggressive stance toward pot cultivation and sales.
Many present Sunday are looking ahead to 2016 for a possible state ballot initiative that would legalize recreational use of the drug, as has been done in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon. Speakers at Sunday’s event said that in the event such a measure passes, laws should be in place to make sure that the small growers who now form the industry will be able to compete against large companies that may try to enter the market.
Sebastopol Councilman Robert Jacob, the owner of two Peace in Medicine marijuana dispensaries in the county, said the time has come for the growers and related businesses to “come out of the closet and say who we are.” By forming alliances, he said, “that’s how we effect change.”
Speakers noted some growers still fear prosecution. Tawnie Logan, the alliance’s executive director, joked that growers had told her they would be wearing fake mustaches and dark glasses Sunday.
And talk Sunday acknowledged the shadowy nature that still surrounds pot cultivation. One panel’s advice on operating a business in a “changing landscape”: If you haven’t been reporting your revenues to the IRS, go first to an attorney so he can hire an accountant who then will be immune from testifying against you under attorney-client privilege.
In a brief interview, Logan acknowledged that for 15 years she helped in the cultivation of cannabis in the county. Through the alliance, which is still awaiting its official federal designation as a nonprofit, she plans to provide regular gatherings to educate growers about key issues. The alliance also will provide a platform to “help influence our economic future.”
Sunday’s speakers included Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, who was credited with not only taking the first marijuana bill to the Assembly agriculture committee but also winning its passage by the committee and the entire body. The legislation is now being considered by the state Senate.
Wood said the county’s marijuana growers appeared “three steps behind” those north of here.
He expressed surprise to find so many of the region’s growers backing his efforts to place themselves under government oversight. Even so, he expected that like other business people, in a few years they would be asking him, “Dammit, what is with all these regulations?”
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jun 2015
Source: Bismarck Tribune (ND)
Copyright: 2015 Associated Press
Contact: http://www.bismarcktribune.com/forms/letters.php
Website: http://www.bismarcktribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/47
Author: James MacPherson,Associated Press

DAKOTAS TRIBAL LEADERS PITCHING POT AS ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
(AP) - Marijuana companies in California and Colorado have tabbed prominent American Indian leaders from the Dakotas to help prod tribes across the nation into the pot business.
Tex Hall, the former chairman of the oil-rich Three Affiliated Tribes, and Robert Shepherd, former chairman of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe in northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota, are trying to recruit and assist tribes in producing high-grade marijuana products.
“Those who want to get in early are the ones who will really succeed,” said Shepherd, the tribal relations officer for Denver-based Monarch America Inc.
With 566 federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States, the potential revenue for marijuana businesses is big, even though many native leaders remain skeptical, Shepherd said. Elders especially are wary.
“It’s hard to deny the medical properties in cannabis,” Shepherd said. “But the federal government has done a good job of portraying it as a horrible drug. There is going to be a huge educational period for tribes.”
The prospect of pot on tribal land is made possible by a U.S. Justice Department decision in December that allows Indian tribes, which are considered sovereign nations, to grow and sell marijuana on their lands as long as they follow the same federal conditions laid out for states that have legalized the drug.
Hall, the former chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes in the heart of North Dakota’s booming oil patch, and Tim Wright, president of Redding, California-based Wright Family Organics LLC, announced this month that they have formed a partnership to “provide cultivation, manufacturing, dispensing, processing, testing and regulatory support” for tribes interested in marijuana businesses on reservations.
Hall “has the power of influence, he is a wonderful leader and a wonderful spokesperson,” Wright said.
Hall did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment.
“Throughout my career, I have fought for advancement and sovereignty of Indian tribes,” Hall said in a statement. “And a lot of that time was focused on economic development because that is what our people need and deserve.”
Hall is a three-time chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes on the
Fort Berthold Reservation, which accounts for about a third of the
1.1 million barrels of oil produced daily in North Dakota. He was defeated in the tribal primary last year, after increased criticism from tribal members over his personal business dealings, alleged conflicts of interests, how his administration spent money earned from oil and a lack of transparency in government.

Money from the marijuana enterprises - which backers believe could dwarf tribal gambling revenue in time-can be funneled back to the tribes to address shrinking federal grant dollars, much of which is needed for substance abuse programs in Indian Country, Shepherd said.
Wright and Shepherd said their companies have yet to ink any deals with tribes.
A few other Native Americans also are attempting to get tribes into the marijuana business, but Shepherd said he and Hall are likely the only ones who have held national-level posts with Indian organizations. Shepherd is a former secretary of the National Congress of American Indians and Hall has served two terms as president of the group that bills itself as the “oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization.”
Wright said his company is focusing on tribes in 23 states that have laws allowing medical marijuana. In those states, he also sees medical marijuana clinics to help native and non-natives deal with various maladies, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Pot remains illegal in all forms in the Dakotas.
Sam Deloria, board chairman of the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said he knows of no tribes that have successfully started a marijuana business on tribal land.
Most tribal leaders are split over whether the idea is “marketing tribal sovereignty” or “marketing a vice,” said Deloria, member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.
“Nobody has put together a package yet to get that money without a downside,” he said. “In a way I’m proud tribes are thinking about this but I hope everybody has moral concerns. If I were a tribal chairman, I wouldn’t do it. It might mean losing the next election.”
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jun 2015
Source: Garden City Telegram (KS)
Copyright: 2015 The Garden City Telegram
Contact: thebuzz@gctelegram.com
Website: http://www.gctelegram.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1476
Author: Angie Haflich

BANDA TURNS HERSELF IN AS ATTORNEY AND SUPPORTERS SPEAK OUT
As she approached the Finney County Sheriff’s Office Monday, Shona Banda, the local medicinal marijuana advocate who gained national attention after the state took custody of her son, was surrounded by supporters, including Jennifer Winn, the Republican candidate who challenged Gov. Sam Brownback in last August’s primary.
Banda, accompanied by her attorney Sarah Swain and several others, turned herself in at the Law Enforcement Center at 2 p.m. Monday. Several local media outlets gathered outside along with other supporters.
Banda was charged June 5 with endangering a child, distribution or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of school property, unlawful manufacture of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Three of the charges are felonies and Banda faces a potential sentence of 11 to 17 years.
Following her client’s surrender, Swain held a press conference where she fielded questions about the case, Banda’s health, and the status of the child-in-need-of-care custody case involving her 11-year-old son.
Swain believes the combination of charges, because of their respective severity levels, could land Banda in jail for more than 30 years if she is convicted and sentenced.
“If she is sent to prison and does not have access to the treatment that she was using that cured her of her Crohn’s disease and allowed her to live a somewhat normal life, it’s absolutely the equivalent of her being sentenced to death,” Swain said.
Banda became a well-known local figure for her use of cannabis oil in treating Crohn’s disease and authored a book on the subject titled, ‘Live Free or Die.’ She has also appeared in YouTube videos and in online articles on www.naturalnews.com, sharing her knowledge of and belief in the medicinal benefits of cannabis oil.
Swain said Banda’s health has been deteriorating without cannabis oil, citing a dramatic weight loss and a need for oral surgery to address mouth infections that were held at bay when she used cannabis oil.
“So her health is not good. And I think it will only continue to deteriorate as this case drags on and as we take the time necessary to really fight it and fully litigate all of these issues,” Swain said.
Swain had no information about the status of Banda’s son’s case because Banda is being represented by a different attorney on that matter. She said Banda’s son is still in state custody.
Swain also said Kansas should stop classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug like cocaine and methamphetamines.
Schedule 1 drugs are drugs classified as having no medicinal benefits, Swain said, adding that it is been well-established that marijuana has been found to be effective in treating cancer, Crohn’s disease and seizures.
“The fact that this country continues the war on drugs, which is really just a war on families and a war on the poor, is absolutely ridiculous,” Swain said.
Swain said her goal is to not just change the way Banda is treated in Garden City, but to take the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary to change the way marijuana is categorized.
Jennifer Winn, the Republican candidate who lost the Republican primary to Gov. Sam Brownback last August, traveled from Wichita to show her support for Banda.
“I’m hoping that Sarah, alongside Shona - and once the facts are truly all presented - that we can actually challenge the constitutionality of this prohibition in its entirety,” Winn said.
Christopher Burley, Care2 Senior Campaigns Manager, traveled from Colorado to support Banda.
Care2 is an online petition set up by friends of Banda’s, Jessica and Terri Boone, urging local law enforcement and DCF officials to waive charges against Banda and return her son.
“These messages have been been sent electronically already to no response from the Finney County prosecutor. The Department of Children and Families have not responded to these public comments,” Burley said, adding that it had also been forwarded to Gov. Brownback’s office, but that there had been no response.
Banda posted $50,000 bond on Monday. Swain credited a gofundme account, a fundraising website established on behalf of Banda, for helping to raise money for the bond.
“And I would encourage people to continue to show their support of her by continuing to donate to the gofundme,” Swain said.
According to Swain, Banda’s first appearance is scheduled at 8:30 a.m. this morning at the Law Enforcement Center.
Swain expects to have access to all police reports and discovery materials after Banda’s first appearance.
“I will be able to start reviewing all of that and formulating my strategy for defending her in court,” Swain said.
The drug investigation involving Banda and her son resulted from comments Banda’s son made during a drug education program held March 24 at his school, Bernadine Sitts Intermediate Center, that led to the Department of Children and Families and Garden City Police Department being contacted.
According to police, the boy said his mother and other adults were avid drug users and that there was a lot of drug use occurring in his residence. That led police to suspect drugs were present in the home.
Officers and DCF officials went to Banda’s home the same day and Banda initially denied them consent to search the residence.
After getting a search warrant, police found 1.25 pounds of marijuana in plant, oil, joint, gel and capsule form and drug paraphernalia in the home. Officers also found a lab used for manufacturing cannabis oil.
All of the items were within reach of the child, police said, prompting law enforcement and DCF officials to remove the boy from the home.
Banda’s son initially was placed in the custody of his father, who is separated from Banda. He was later put into protective custody on April 16. District Magistrate Judge Richard Hodson put a gag order on any and all proceedings in the child-in-need-of-care case.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Tue, 16 Jun 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Nigel Duara

LEGAL POT LAWS DON’T COVER WORKERS
A Colorado Court Rules That Businesses Can Fire Employees WHO Use Marijuana During Their Off-Time.
The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that businesses can fire employees who use marijuana during their off-time, including those with a legal prescription for medical pot.
In a case that has been closely watched by employers in some states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal or recreational use, the Colorado court found that Dish Network lawfully fired a quadriplegic employee and medical marijuana user who failed a drug test. Customer service representative Brandon Coats, 35, used marijuana in his offtime to deal with painful muscle spasms.
The court ruled that the federal prohibition on pot makes the drug unlawful despite Colorado’s approval of its use for medicinal purposes. The ruling, while not binding in other states, adds to a series of court losses by medical marijuana patients who lost their jobs after using pot.
Coats sued after he was fired on June 7, 2010, alleging wrongful termination. He argued that marijuana was made “lawful” for the purposes of employment law when Colorado voters legalized it for medicinal use in 2000. Voters legalized it for recreational use in 2012.
A trial court dismissed Coats’ suit, saying the state’s legalization of medical marijuana only provides a defense against criminal prosecution, and does not make the use of marijuana a “lawful activity” that is protected against employment discrimination.
When the case went to the Colorado Court of Appeals, justices differed with the trial court’s reasoning, but still found that Coats was rightfully terminated because marijuana is prohibited by federal law.
The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with that reasoning, voting 6 to 0 with one abstention.
“Nothing in the language of the [employment] statute limits the term ‘ lawful’ to state law,” wrote Justice Allison H. Eid. “Instead, the term is used in its general, unrestricted sense, indicating that a ‘lawful’ activity is that which complies with applicable law, including state and federal law.”
Coats said in a statement that the decision was a setback for him personally, but advanced the cause of medical marijuana patients in the workplace.
“If we’re making marijuana legal for medical purposes, we need to address issues that come along with it such as employment,” Coats said. “Hopefully views on medical marijuana - like the ones in my specific case - will change soon.”
Dish Network did not reply to multiple phone inquiries.
Colorado Atty. Gen. Cynthia Coffman, whose office filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of Dish Network, lauded the decision because it gave employers complete control over drug use in the workplace.
“Not every business will opt for zero tolerance,” Coffman said Monday, “but it is important that the latitude now exists to craft a policy that fits the individual workplace.”
The federal Americans With Disabilities Act is meant to protect employees from discrimination based on a medical condition. But the ADA doesn’t protect employees from losing their jobs after testing positive for marijuana because the drug is still listed next to heroin, LSD and Ecstasy on the federal government’s list of Schedule I drugs, its most dangerous category.
Despite the state’s relaxed view on pot, the Colorado Constitution states that employers don’t have to amend their policies to accommodate employees’ marijuana use.
In some other states, employment protection is built into the marijuana law. Such employment protection statutes often serve to dissuade employers from taking action against medical marijuana patients, keeping the matter out of court, said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocate of legalization.
Patients in Rhode Island, for instance, may not be denied school enrollment, housing or employment because they are medical marijuana cardholders.
“The issue has only been litigated in some medical marijuana states, so it’s not clear which ones might ultimately be found to protect patients from employment discrimination,” O’Keefe said.
Arizona, Delaware and Minnesota offer the strongest protections for medical marijuana patients, she said, adding that the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision could serve as guidance in other states.
“For those states with similar language, it could have an impact,” she said.
The California Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that employers may fire workers who test positive for marijuana, finding that the state law protections don’t extend to employment.
Leland Berger, an Oregon attorney who helped underwrite that state’s marijuana legalization law, said he and other drafters of the pot measure deliberately left out employment protection for political reasons. “It never would have passed otherwise,” Berger said.
Berger said he advised his clients that the law was limited in what it protected: forfeiture, arrest and prosecution, but not the right to employment.
Even in states where employment protections exist, there is no guarantee that employees fired for marijuana use will prevail in court.
Joseph Casias of Battle Creek, Mich., was using marijuana for the pain associated with an inoperable brain tumor. When he twisted his knee at his job at Wal-Mart, he was ordered to take a drug test. Casias told his manager about his marijuana use, but was fired days later, per company policy.
He sued, and lost, in court for the same reason Coats lost his job - the federal ban on marijuana trumped state law.
“The case and many others like it highlight the gray areas and legal fixes needed in Colorado and other states that have reformed their marijuana laws,” the pro-marijuana Drug Policy Alliance said in a statement Monday. “Any rights bestowed upon civilians by state law fall far short of fully protecting medical marijuana patients and legal adult users of marijuana.”
In addition to Colorado, recreational pot use is legal in Washington state and Alaska and will be legal in Oregon on July 15.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Tue, 16 Jun 2015
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2015 Associated Press
Contact:
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154

TEENS’ USE UNALTERED BY LEGAL MEDICAL POT
NEW YORK (AP) - Medical marijuana laws don’t trigger an increase in teen pot smoking, a new study concludes.
Some opponents of medical marijuana have said that legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana could send a message to young people that smoking pot is no big deal, ultimately encouraging them to experiment with marijuana and harder drugs. Pot smoking by teens has been increasing, but the new study suggests that medical marijuana laws are not the reason.
The research showed no significant increase in 21 states with medical marijuana laws.
“Our findings provide the strongest evidence to date that marijuana use by teenagers does not increase after a state legalizes medical marijuana,” lead author Deborah Hasin, a researcher at Columbia University in New York, said in a statement.
The study, published online Monday by the journal Lancet Psychiatry, is based on an ongoing government-funded survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders that asks about marijuana use in the previous month. The researchers reviewed responses from more than 1 million students in 48 states, from 1991 through 2014.
They found that marijuana use tended to already be higher in states that went on to adopt medical marijuana laws. But they did not see an additional spike after the law was passed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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