graphs courtesy of leafly thank you :)
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| Cain laughs at Obama's marijuana policy. |
Many Latinos aren't happy with his lack of immigration reform. After spearheading big-bank bailouts he's not exactly the poster child for the Occupy movement. And forget about marijuana supporters.
They're so pissed off at his Justice Department crackdown on pot dispensaries that they might just embrace the enemy. And Herman Cain be thy name:
While Cain the presidential candidate is pretty far right (he has proposed electrifying the border fence and taxing the working and middle class at a much greater rate with his "9-9-9" plan), he's sympatico with the bud nation, apparently.
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| Cain's cool with it. |
He argues it's a states' rights issue. (And, to be fair, being a pizza magnate would probably make you more sympathetic to many of those late-night delivery clients whose homes seem to always have a skunky smell. Right?).
This is what Cain said a campaign stop in Iowa this week (via MSNBC).
If states want to legalize medical marijuana, I think that's a state's right. Because one of my overriding approaches to looking at all of these issues -- most of them belong at the state, because when you do something federally ... you try to force one-size-fits-all.
And if it's one thing Cain has learned during his years as head of the National Restaurant Association, it's that one size does not fit all! (Pa-dum-pum. Way to apply your life experience to federal policy, Herman).
Anyway, pot supporters are, as they say, cautiously optimistic. Tom Angell, media relations director of the California-based group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition seemed hopeful about Cain, but noted to the Weekly ...
Then again, candidates Bush and Obama said basically the same thing ...[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com/@LAWeeklyNews
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Michigan's medical-marijuana users can't catch a break.
Three major state appeals court decisions have gone against them in the last month. Now, federal authorities have issued an order that licensed medical-marijuana users nationwide can't possess a gun.
That means no hunting, no target shooting, no gun collecting and no guns for personal protection -- even by patients who legally cultivate marijuana crops -- according to a Sept. 21 directive to prosecutors nationwide from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The ban is an insult to Michigan's medical-marijuana community, said Rick Thompson, editor of the Chesterfield Township-based Michigan Medical Marijuana Magazine.
The magazine is sending a letter to the National Rifle Association "to inform them of their potential loss of membership in 17 medical-marijuana states," including Michigan, and to enlist the NRA's help in fighting the ban, Thompson said.
"A lot of people who hunt are very upset," he said Friday.
But medical-marijuana user William Lisowski, 60, a retired Detroit police officer who lives in Sterling Heights, said guns don't belong around marijuana.
"When you mix the two, you're asking for trouble," Lisowski said.
Michigan's medical-marijuana users can be evicted from their apartments at any time under a recent opinion by the state attorney general.
A host of other state restrictions are in place or looming for Michiganders who carry state-issued cards to use cannabis for health reasons.
And this week, a federal firearms memo surfaced that says medical-marijuana users fall under nationwide rules against gun ownership by drug abusers.
The tightening restrictions by law enforcement authorities aims "to stop the wave of acceptance of medical marijuana," Detroit defense attorney and registered patient Matt Abel said Friday.
"And that's a fool's errand because there is no going back," he said. "A lot of the population knows now that marijuana works" to alleviate pain and many medical conditions.
The ban on gun use by medical-marijuana patients nationwide came in a U.S. Department of Justice letter sent Sept. 21 to state and county prosecutors across the country. The directive says: "Any person who uses or is addicted to marijuana, regardless of whether his or her State has passed legislation authorizing marijuana use for medicinal purposes ... is prohibited by Federal law from possessing firearms or ammunition."
The letter merely clarifies federal law that has been in effect since 1968, Justice Department spokesman Drew Wade said Friday from Washington.
"People were going into gun stores (in Michigan and elsewhere) and showing these marijuana cards as proof of residence and ID," Wade said. Firearms retailers "were unclear on what to do. The sate laws said one thing and federal law said another" about whether such individuals could buy firearms and ammunition, he said.
Medical-marijuana users and their attorneys said they were stunned, while law enforcement authorities said the directive made sense.
"This was all news to me," said medical-marijuana user George Rolando, 50, of Ray Township in northern Macomb County.
"I own shotguns that I've hunted with all my life. Now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do," Rolando said, adding, "Why are they trying to make me a criminal?"
Abel, the Detroit defense lawyer, who specializes in medical-marijuana cases, said he did not own guns, so he won't feel the ban's effect personally.
"But it's going to put pressure on Congress to evaluate both the gun laws and the drug laws," Abel said. "It'll be great to get the gun rights people on the same side" as the medical-marijuana users, he said.
The gun ban was welcomed by the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, known for aggressive prosecution of medical-marijuana users accused of abusing the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.
Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper "has been saying from the beginning -- our state laws may not shield a marijuana patient or caregiver from federal violations," Chief Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton said this week.
The ban came just as one of Michigan's best-known advocates for medical marijuana and legalizing pot -- Adam Brook, 43, of Royal Oak -- faces a prison term on firearms charges. Although the federal directive did not affect Brook's case -- he was prosecuted under state laws because he possessed guns without a permit -- his case points to the legal problems that can stem from mixing firearms possession with medical-marijuana use, even when the defendant is a state-registered patient as Brook was, his attorney, Jerome Sabbota, said.
Brook was "pushing the envelope" by possessing medical marijuana while keeping unregistered guns in his home, Sabbota said.
Brook was known for the last two decades as the organizer of the annual Hash Bash, a gathering of marijuana smokers that attracts about 5,000 people each April to the University of Michigan campus.
He's also the scion of the defunct Cadillac Luggage family business that occupied the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit for decades.
Brook walks with a cane and said he uses marijuana to ease back pain caused by degenerative disc disease. Brook is to be sentenced Friday after he pleaded guilty to two concealed weapons violations and pleaded no contest to two counts of possessing marijuana with intent to deliver.
"This is all political," Brook said this week. Prosecutors of medical-marijuana patients "make you look like a dope dealer, which is not what I am," he said.
Contact Bill Laitner: 586-826-7264 or blaitner@freepress.com
(CNN) -- Coffee shops in the Dutch city of Maastricht have banned foreign tourists, except those from Germany and Belgium, from entering their premises from Saturday, according to the local association of coffee shops.
Coffee shops in the Netherlands are places where customers can legally buy and consume cannabis.
"We have put in place a 'neighbouring country' criteria," Marc Josemans, president of the Society of United Coffeeshops and owner of the Easy Going coffee shop, told CNN.
"This is a form of self-regulation. It is not a law, there will be no judge, this was just the only choice we had."
Legalize pot, decrease crime? The move comes after Maastricht's city council decided that something had to be done about the 2.2 million visitors that come to the city every year, according to Josemans.
"The visitors put a lot of pressure on the city when they come here and make it very busy on our narrow streets. So the city said that something had to be done about the traffic and nuisance," he said.
"But the biggest nuisance isn't the number of coffee shops or the clients, but the illegal drug runners that can be quite aggressive and start fights and rob the tourists."
All visitors to Maastricht's coffee shops -- some 6,000 a day, almost three-quarters of whom are foreign, according to Josemans -- already have to show their passports and their information is then kept for 48 hours.
Now only those with a Dutch, German or Belgian passport will be allowed in.
"A number of people will leave disappointed, and we are not very proud of refusing entry to visitors who have come to our shops for the last 28 years and never caused a problem," said Josemans, who has himself used cannabis for 35 years.
"The question now will be if they instead buy from the illegal drug runners here or if they buy illegally in their own countries."
Nobody from Maastricht city council was available for comment Saturday.
A spokeswoman for Maastricht police told CNN that the police were not a party to the ban and that it is not illegal for foreign tourists to enter the city's coffee shops.
The spokeswoman, who is not named in line with department policy, said police would not carry out any identity checks to enforce the ban. "We will just go about our normal business and carry out our duties where needed," she said.
At spokeswoman at the tourist office for Maastricht, which lies near the Belgian border, said it was not aware of the new rules.
The Society of United Coffeeshops decided on the ban in July but it only came into effect October 1.
The organization is also working on a plan to move seven of the city's 14 coffee shops to the outskirts, where foreign tourists can then go and buy hash and marijuana, Josemans said.
"But the first relocation won't happen until June 2013, so we had to put this ban in place now, and we could then change it again once we've completed the relocation.
"At these new sites, the parking (areas) will have direct access to the coffee shops, so the drug runners can't approach the clients as they walk to the coffee shop."
Josemans also says the Dutch government wants the coffee shops to operate on a smaller scale and is planning to impose a nationwide ban on anyone who doesn't hold a Dutch passport buying cannabis.
"They want to put this 'weed pass' in place from January 1 next year, but we are strongly against this."
A press release on the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice website from May this year says coffee shops will become private clubs where only adult Dutch citizens can become members.
"The Cabinet expects that closure of coffee shops to foreign drugs tourists will ensure that they no longer travel to the Netherlands to purchase and consume cannabis. After all, many of them can use the illegal markets available in their immediate surroundings," the press release says.
The statement does not give a date for the implementation of the new measures.
CNN's calls to the Dutch justice ministry were not immediately returned.
But Josemans says cannabis supply is not only a Dutch problem.
"This is also the responsibility of the other European governments; nobody is taking responsibility for those millions of customers who want to buy cannabis for their own use," he said.
"It is time to get their heads out of the sand to get a decent drugs policy in place to address this problem."
Elvy Musikka, 72, who suffers from glaucoma, shows the canister holding marijuana cigarettes she regularly receives from the U.S. Government in Eugene, Ore., Sept. 27, 2011. (AP)
EUGENE, Oregon - Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.
She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.
The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and her physician, the troopers handed her back the card — and her pot.
CBSNews.com special report: Marijuana Nation
For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.
Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs — maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.
Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.
At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.
The government has only continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said.
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.
They "won't acknowledge the fact that I do not have even one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."
Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.
Marijuana was legal for much of U.S. history and was recognized as a medicine in 1850. Opposition to it began to gather and, by 1936, 48 states had passed laws regulating pot, fearing it could lead to addiction.
Anti-marijuana literature and films, like the infamous "Reefer Madness," helped fan those fears. Eventually, pot was classified among the most harmful of drugs, meaning it had no usefulness and a high potential for addiction.
In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C. with marijuana because of his glaucoma — no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.
Elvy Musikka smokes a marijuana cigarette, one of many she regularly receives from the U.S. Government, at her home in Eugene, Ore., Sept. 27, 2011.
(Credit: AP)Eventually, the government created its program as part of a compromise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were a series of petitions from people like Musikka (seen at left) to join the program.
President George H.W. Bush's administration, getting tough on crime and drugs, stopped accepting new patients in 1992. Many of the patients who had qualified had AIDS, and they were dying.
The AP asked the agency that administers the program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for documents showing how much marijuana has been sent to patients since the first patient in 1976.
The agency supplied full data for 2005-2011, which showed that during that period the federal government distributed more than 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana to patients.
Agency officials said records related to the program before 2005 had been destroyed, but were able to provide scattered records for a couple of years in the early 2000s.
The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.
All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the operation, said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S. Among the studies are the pharmaceutical uses for synthetic mimics of pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC.
ElSohly said the four patients are getting pot with about 3 percent THC. He said 3 percent is about the range patients have preferred in blind tests.
The label on the side of Elvy Musikka's canister of government-issued marijuana cigarettes.
(Credit: AP)
The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints.
With Musikka living in Oregon, she is entitled to more legal pot than anyone in the nation because she's also enrolled in the state's medical marijuana program. Neither Iowa nor Florida has approved marijuana as a medicine, so the federal pot is the only legal access to the drug for the other three patients.
The three other people in the program range in ages and doses of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.
All four have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement. They're rock stars at pro-marijuana conferences, sought-after speakers and recognizable celebrities in the movement.
Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.
Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn't believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn't find it, Rosenfeld said.
So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: "It's working."
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The Glendale City Council approved a total ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in the city Tuesday night.
The ban is slated to take effect Sept. 9, about two weeks before an existing moratorium prohibiting dispensaries from opening expires, the Glendale News Press reported.
Current zoning codes have so far kept marijuana dispensaries at bay, but city officials, citing growing interest from collectives, have sought stronger language to keep them out.
Glendale's ordinance uses the zoning code to ban businesses that engage in any activity that violates federal, state or local laws from operating in any zone. The ordinance identifies medical marijuana dispensaries as being banned in all zones.
Los Angeles passed an ordinance last year limiting the number of dispensaries to 70, exempting those in the city before 2007.
A lawsuit against the city of Anaheim challenging its ban on dispensaries awaits a ruling this month in Orange County Superior Court, which medical marijuana experts say could set a precedent. Glendale officials have said they were confident that their ban is on firm legal footing.
There's a budding movement urging cannabis growers to ask themselves: How green is your grass?
A recent energy-use report authored by one California scientist and a Humboldt County-based group are taking a sharp look at the carbon footprint of industrial-scale indoor cannabis growing. An ordinance in Boulder requires medical-cannabis dispensaries to pay carbon offset fees. All of them are concerned about the environmental impacts as the medical cannabis industry grows ever larger.
But first, a quick history lesson in indoor growing: A few decades ago, a bunch of hippies trekked off to the rural lands of Humboldt County, Calif., to create idyllic, off-the-grid communities. When their kids got old enough to drive, growing cannabis and selling marijuana became the way to pay for gas. But as the CAMP raids started up in the 1980s, growers had to move their operations indoors. Elaborate lighting systems were created to maximize growth cycles. Fuel had to be trucked over miles of dirt roads to run the generators that kept the operations going.
Today, as sixteen U.S. states have approved medical cannabis, it's becoming easier for entrepreneurs to set up elaborate energy-sucking cannabis nurseries. And all that indoor cannabis comes with high energy costs.
In April, energy and environmental systems analyst Evan Mills released his report "Energy Up in Smoke," which examined the energy usage and carbon footprint of indoor cannabis growing operations. (While Mills is a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, his website emphasizes that the report was conducted independently and on his own time.)
Consulting with an indoor growing expert, Mills crunched the numbers for running all those high-intensity lights, pumps, dehumidifiers, heating and irrigation systems, plus the electric gadgets that control them.
The report finds that nationwide, "indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. Homes." All related CO2 production, including transportation, equals that of 3 million cars.
- Read the entire article at AlterNet.
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