• Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Missouri ballot measures proposed to legalize marijuana

    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Posted: Tuesday, November 8, 2011

    JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. • Advocates can begin collecting signatures for two proposed Missouri ballot measures that would legalize marijuana.

    The secretary of state’s office said Monday the initiative petitions have been approved for circulation to get them on the 2012 ballot.

    One proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to legalize cannabis for people 21 and older, allow doctors to recommend use of medicinal marijuana and release prison inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses related to cannabis. It would also allow the Legislature to enact a marijuana tax of up to $100 per pound.

    The second proposal is similar but would enact a state law instead of amending the Missouri Constitution.

    http://bit.ly/vvkkwV

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Hemp Activists and “Truthers” Unite

    Posted by Camron Wiltshire on November 5, 2011

    HempVia the Bob Tuskin Radio Show:

    After 11 years, the Florida Hemp Fest is back with a new twist.

    Dennis “Murli” Watkins, who served four months of jail time for orchestrating a “doobie toss” at the event in 1994, is bringing back what used to be an annual celebration of marijuana and a protest for its legalization. —Gainesville Sun

    Murli just so happens to be a supporter of the “truth.” When we were contacted by him to set up a table and to give a talk on various topics such as the Federal Reserve, fluoride, and 9/11 we gladly accepted.

    Watkins said this year’s edition will touch on other, even more controversial issues than legalizing pot. “Hemp has been cultivated for thousands of years. Here it is almost 2012, and we’re still fighting this same stupid battle,” he said. “9/11 was an inside job and they’re worried about someone smoking a doobie. They’ve got to get their priorities in order.” Watkins said there will be a “9/11 truth booth” set up at the event, which will be held on the city’s Bo Diddley Community Plaza downtown. —Gainesville Sun

    Lets be blunt, no pun intended, The hemp/cannabis movement has always gone hand in hand with the type of information we cover on a daily basis.

    While you obviously do not have to get high to “wake up,” I think that it is pretty well documented that the powers that shouldn’t be do not like marijuana for many different reasons, namely the fact that it may inspire thinking outside the box.

    http://www.disinfo.com/2011/11/hemp-activists-and-truthers-unite/

  • Cannabis & Hemp

    Juicing fresh cannabis

    Leaf introduces Dr. William Courtney and Kristen Peskuski of Cannabis International; along with the people involved in researching, promoting, regulating and benefiting from raw cannabis.

    Dr. Courtney is a physician and researcher from Mendocino, California, who gives medical marijuana approvals to qualified patients in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Kristen Peskuski is a researcher and patient who put her systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, interstitial cystitis, and numerous other conditions into remission juicing fresh cannabis.

    They help make sense of the science behind patient’s recoveries from a diverse range of medical conditions. Attorneys, physicians, law enforcement, medical care providers, patients and their families discuss their experiences with medical cannabis. They specifically focus on juicing fresh cannabis, which is non-psychoactive and contains medical properties 200-400 times stronger than traditional, heated cannabis.

    Patients have reported success with osteo and rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disorders, cancer and many other conditions using this unique therapy.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Calgary addicts no longer given crack pipes

    CBC News Aug 19, 2011

    Alberta health officials will no longer hand out free crack pipes to addicts in Calgary.

    For three years Alberta Health Services [AHS] has been quietly handing out clean crack pipes to drug users on the street through a mobile van program called Safeworks.

    Continues: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/08/19/calgary-crack-pipes-street-health.html

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Softer pot laws saved Philadelphia $2 million in 2010

    By David Ferguson
    Saturday, July 9th, 2011

    The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office estimates that it saved the city two million dollars in revenue through a new program designed to deal with individuals arrested with less than 30 grams (slightly more than one ounce) of marijuana.

    According to The Philadelphia Daily News, new sentencing guidelines have meant that the city no longer has to foot the bill for court-appointed defense attorneys, prosecutorial fees, lab tests, or overtime wages paid to police officers who appear in court. Additionally, says the article, legal personnel at all levels are freed up to concentrate on more serious crimes.

    Thousands of cases have been diverted to through Philadelphia’s so-called Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program, which is designed to process marijuana users quickly through the system and leave them with a clean record. The effort might have been doomed to failure had it not received the support of law enforcement personnel, who say that efforts to take marijuana off the streets use up resources and do little to dent the supply available to users.

    In the year since the policy has gone into effect, police say that they’ve noticed no discernible change in the city’s quality of life.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/09/softer-pot-laws-saved-philadelphia-2-million-in-2010/

     

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Snitch Site For Marijuana Informers Backfires In Utah

    The state made it easy with a website with helpful links to assist its deputized citizenry in identifying marijuana and signs of grow operations, reports Greg Campbell at dscriber.

    “Did you know marijuana is being illegally grown in Utah?” the site, with a keen grasp of the obvious, ominously warns. “Have you ever been hiking or camping and seen what looks like an illegal marijuana growing operation? We have created this website to make it easier for people to report this illegal activity, so we can crack down and keep these illegal drugs out of our state and off our streets.”

    Yeah, it seemed like a great idea. That is, until NORML posted a story about Utah’s misguided efforts. Within 24 hours, pot-friendly visitors flooded the site with fake tips.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Medicinal Cannabis and its Impact on Human Health – Documentary

    In this myth shattering, information packed documentary, learn from physicians and leading researchers about medicinal cannabis and its demonstrated effects on human health.

    This game-changing movie presents the most comprehensive synopsis to date of the real science surrounding the world’s most controversial plant.

    Medicinal Cannabis and its Impact on Human Health – Documentary

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The Wire producer: War on drugs is ‘a war on the underclass’

    By Eric W. Dolan
    Thursday, March 10th, 2011 — 7:04 pm

    David Simon, the creator and executive producer of HBO’s The Wire, said the war on drugs had devolved into a war on the underclass after actress Felicia Pearson was arrested in Baltimore on drug charges.

    Thirty-year-old Pearson had served a prison sentence for murder before join the cast of The Wire, an television drama series about inner-city life in Baltimore that premiered in 2002 and ended five seasons later in 2008.

    Pearson and over sixty others were arrested on Thursday as part of a five-month investigation by the DEA and Baltimore police, The Baltimore Sun [1] reported.

    “In places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral,” Simon told Slate [2].

    “Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers,” he continued. “But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter.”

    In an essay published by TIME [3]magazine in 2008, Simon and other writers for The Wire said the war on drugs caused more harm to society than the drugs it sought to eliminate.

    “What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has,” they wrote. “And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass… All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.”

    The writers called on juries deliberating on non-violent violations of drug laws to acquit despite the evidence, a legal tactic known as jury nullification.

    Although jury nullification may seem like a far-fetched tactic to stop the drug war, in December 2010 potential jurors refused to convict a Montana man for having a 1/16 of an ounce of marijuana regardless of the evidence.

    “I think it’s going to become increasingly difficult to seat a jury in marijuana cases, at least the ones involving a small amount,” District Judge Dusty Deschamps said at the time. He later decided he could not seat a jury and the prosecutor and defense attorney worked out a plea bargain.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net - International

    ‘High’ holy men downed by Nepal cannabis ban

    Mohideen Mifthah

    KATHMANDU, March 2, 2011

    (AFP) – Police in Nepal on Wednesday cracked down on the sale of cannabis at a major religious festival where the drug is smoked legally by thousands of long-haired holy men to honour a Hindu god, an official said.

    Marijuana is illegal in Nepal, but under an ancient legal loophole authorities allow holy men — known as sadhus — to smoke it during a night of often wild celebrations in honour of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

    Thousands of pilgrims travel to the sprawling Pashupatinath temple complex in Kathmandu every year from all over Nepal and India to mark the occasion, which is known as Shivaratri.

    At one time the government even used to provide marijuana for the occasion, but authorities said they decided to enforce a ban on holy men selling the drug because of complaints they were dealing to local people.

    “The holy men are free to use the drugs for themselves. But they can’t sell it to others,” said Narottam Vaidhya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust, which looks after the temple complex.

    “Not all the sadhus are holy men and some come with bad intentions. Our aim is to prevent people from posing as holy men in order to break the law,” he told AFP.

    Vaidhya said armed police, some of them in plain clothes, had been deployed to the area to look out for anyone breaking the law ahead of Wednesday’s celebrations.

    “As of today, we have arrested seven sadhus for selling drugs,” he added.

    Sadhus, who renounce all worldly possessions and usually live in caves or temples, have been coming to Kathmandu for hundreds of years to celebrate the festival.

    They mark it by smoking cannabis because Hindu mythology suggests Shiva himself enjoyed the drug.

    Shivaratri is a public holiday in India and Nepal, where all government offices and schools are shut for the day.

    Huge camps are set up to accommodate the visiting sadhus, many of whom arrive weeks ahead of the celebrations.