In the 60s hippies fled to the backwoods of northern California to grow pot. There they have been joined by growers of ‘medical marijuana’ – available with a doctor’s recommendation – as well as by Mexican drug cartels. With cannabis now its largest cash crop, the state will soon vote on whether to legalise it fully – and even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is thinking the enormous tax revenues might just solve his budget deficit…

Jim Hill in his greenhouse where he and his wife Trelanie grow medical marijuana. Photograph: Sarah Baldik for the Observer

‘When I see that, it’s like looking at a shed full of cows. I see a whole lot of work,” says Jim Hill, opening the little gate into his humid greenhouse in which a forest of marijuana grows, and from which a pungent, heady scent exudes at gale force. Not work as in hard labour, emphasises Hill – though there is a bit of that – but expertise growing some of the most potent weed on the planet.

Nearby there are vineyards and horses graze the sun-stroked farmland, but this verdant hillside near the town of Potter Valley in northern California lies in an area called the Emerald Triangle: three counties bordered by mountains to the east and the Pacific to the west that connect the lyrical terrain north of San Francisco with the wilderness of the Oregon state line. This breathtakingly beautiful corner of earth is the marijuana capital of the western hemisphere thanks to three conspiring factors: its perfect climate; the pervading culture; and topography – this is a maze of mountain dirt roads, locked access gates, isolated villages, secluded slopes and wooded glades, far from prying eyes.

Jim Hill, however, is a respectable figure – neither old stoner nor criminal – and he is not afraid to show off his working practices. “You’re just going to have to smell of weed for the rest of the week,” he jokes as we clamber through his greenhouse. “Squeeze this,” he enthuses, “take a sniff, feel the nice, rich oily texture…”

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n347.a02.html

Newshawk: A Reformer’s Guide to Direct Democracy www.drugsense.org/caip#take
Pubdate: Thu, 6 May 2010
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Page: Front Page, top of page, continued on page 4A
Webpage: http://mapinc.org/url/gLAwqk7h
Copyright: 2010 Detroit Free Press
Contact: http://www.freep.com/article/99999999/opinion04/50926009
Author: Bill Laitner, Free Press Staff Writer
Cited: Coalition for a Safer Detroit http://www.saferdetroit.net/

DETROITERS MAY VOTE ON LEGAL MARIJUANA

Proposal Heads for Spot on Nov. Ballot

A Detroiter who helped lead the drive to allow medical marijuana in Michigan is pushing for something bound to be equally controversial: legalizing pot in the city of Detroit.

“You’ve done a great job,” meeting the detailed filing requirements, City Clerk Janice Winfrey said Wednesday as Tim Beck handed over more than 6,100 petition signatures.

Beck, 58, spent five weeks overseeing the collection of many more than the 3,700 signatures needed to get Detroit’s November ballot to include his proposal. It would legalize possession of up to 1 ounce of pot on private property by adults 21 and older.

City officials must certify the petition signatures in the next 10 days, and then the City Council has 30 days to pass the proposal or send it to voters this fall, Elections Director Daniel Baxter said.

“We’re quite sure we’re in conformity with state law and the city charter,” said Beck, a veteran of successful drives to approve medical marijuana in five Michigan cities and ultimately statewide.

If his proposal passes, Detroit would follow Denver in legalizing possession of pot.

“It’s a good year for this because it’s also on the ballot in California,” said Beck, a medical marijuana user. California voters this fall could vote to treat marijuana like alcohol.

Continues:  http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n340.a07.html

Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Webpage: http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=1419870
Copyright: 2010 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Author: Robert Speer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Bryan+Epis

Back in the Slammer

EFFORT TO FREE BRYAN EPIS CONTINUES

For a time Bryan Epis was a hero among medical-marijuana activists. Now he’s more like a martyr to the cause.

That’s because, after an epic legal battle lasting since his arrest for marijuana cultivation nearly 13 years ago, in June 1997, the Chico man is now back in prison, ordered in February to serve out his original 10-year sentence. More precisely, he’s in the Sacramento County Jail, waiting transfer to a state prison.

To his longtime girlfriend, Monica Focht, and his 16-year-old daughter, Ashley, it seems terribly unfair that, at a time when anyone can go online and find the addresses of hundreds of collectives and dispensaries selling marijuana up and down the state, he’s in custody facing several more years of confinement for growing medical marijuana.

And they’re at a loss to understand why he’s being held in the notoriously grungy county jail. He’d been on probation and bail for more than five years and never missed a court date, so he clearly wasn’t a flight risk. Why, they wonder, wasn’t he just ordered to report directly to federal prison, as most nonviolent federal offenders are, rather than put in jail?

And they’re still trying to get him set free. Money is a big problem. Epis and his family have spent more than $200,000 on his defense, and his current lawyer wants cash on the barrelhead. He is preparing a habeas corpus writ and also a pardon petition to be sent to President Obama; his current fee is $35,000.

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n340.a06.html

Pubdate: Wed, 5 May 2010
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2010 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Author: Lena H. Sun, Washington Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis – Medicinal – U.S.)

D.C. COUNCIL APPROVES MEDICAL MARIJUANA, POSING CHALLENGES FOR DOCTORS

For doctors such as Pradeep Chopra, long accustomed to prescribing
carefully tested medications by the exact milligram, medical marijuana
presents a particular conundrum.

On Tuesday, the D.C. Council gave final approval to a bill
establishing a legal medical marijuana program. If Congress signs off,
District doctors — like their counterparts in 14 states, including
Rhode Island, where Chopra works — will be allowed to add pot to the
therapies they can recommend to certain patients, who will then eat
it, smoke it or vaporize it until they decide they are, well, high
enough.

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n340.a05.html

Pubdate: Wed, 5 May 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Author: John Hoeffel
Referenced: The list of dispensaries notified http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2010-05/53619517.pdf
Referenced: An example letter http://www.mapinc.org/images/LAletter.jpg
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis – California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis – Medicinal – U.S.)

CITY GIVES NOTICE TO POT STORES

L.A. Sends Letters to 439 Dispensaries Giving Operators Until June 7 to Shut Down

Los Angeles city prosecutors began notifying 439 medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday that they must shut down by June 7, when the city’s ordinance to regulate the stores takes effect. It’s the first step in what could be a lengthy and expensive legal battle to regain control over pot sales.

The letters, which were sent to both dispensary operators and property owners, warn that violations of the city’s laws are a misdemeanor and could lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Collectives that stay open after the deadline could also face civil penalties of $2,500 a day.

“We’re hopeful that the fact that we’ve given them more than 30 days to comply that a significant number of them will cease operating,” said Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney who has handled most of the efforts to close dispensaries.

Continues:  http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n340.a02.html

Newshawk: NY Patients First http://www.nypatientsfirst.org/
Pubdate: Tue, 4 May 2010
Source: Metroland (Albany, NY)
Page: Feature cover article
Copyright: 2010 Lou Communications, Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Author: Ali Hibbs
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis – Medicinal – U.S.)

HIGH MINDED

With Advocates Energized and the Tide of Public and Scientific Opinion Turning in Their Favor, New York State Considers Legislation to Legalize Medical Marijuana

It was snowing on the evening of March 9, 2001, as Dave Lawson was driving his band’s GM Astro to a gig in Vermont. Carrying the instruments and one other band member, Lawson was going a cautious 40 miles in Troy when another vehicle pulled into the intersection directly in front of him. Unable to stop on the slick road, Lawson says that he hit the car on the passenger side. Everything that happened directly after that is fuzzy. Mostly what Lawson remembers are the years of rehabilitation and persistent pain that followed.

“The bass guitar came flying up from the back of the vehicle. It hit the back of my head, fractured my skull and forced my face into the steering wheel so that, at the point of impact, I hit at 120 mph. The bone that separates the eye from the temple basically disintegrated. I fractured my sternum, both clavicles, C5 and C6 in my spine and all of my ribs,” Lawson said. “My left arm came out of the socket and went back in the wrong way. I should have died.”

The accident, which was found to be the other driver’s fault, left Lawson with some brain damage and chronic pain caused by damage to his nerves.

“I could barely talk,” he recalls. “I felt like I was relearning the language. I had to think about making my limbs move. I had to think about what I actually had to do to get out of bed.” The painkillers he was given did little to dull the worst pain, according to Lawson, but they did dull his mental faculties so that communication and recovery became even more difficult. “Aspirin is it. That’s as much pain medication as I can take, otherwise it’s like I’ve taken a rufee,” he says, referring to the notorious date-rape drug.

The pain was still debilitating seven months after his accident when, “all of the sudden, one day I had a flash,” Lawson says. He remembered a day about a year earlier when he had been helping to make marijuana brownies for a friend who had skin cancer and used the cannabis plant to deal with the side effects of his treatment. As he handled the mixture of marijuana and butter that went into the batch, his hands went numb. Lawson, who has arthritis from decades of playing the guitar, suddenly felt no pain. “I think there’s a reason that I had that memory when I did.” He pauses. “And I’m glad that I did.”

“At the time, I happened to have some [cannabis-infused] oil that had been given to me. I put some on my shoulder and for the first time in seven months, I felt relief.”

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n339.a08.html

Pubdate: Tue, 4 May 2010
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Page: 1A, Front Page
Copyright: 2010 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://www.sacbee.com/2006/09/07/19629/submit-letters-to-the-editor.html
Author: Peter Hecht
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Richard+Lee

MAN BEHIND CALIFORNIA POT INITIATIVE’S A FORCE IN ‘OAKSTERDAM’

For much of his life, Richard Lee needed neither liberation nor a cause.

The Oakland medical pot entrepreneur, who spent $1.3 million to qualify this November’s initiative to make recreational pot use legal in California, once lived for thundering his Harley-Davidson motorcycle down Texas highways.

His father, Bob Lee, said his son used to ride to a Houston airport, climb into an ultralight airplane and soar above the rice fields, “playing tag with the seagulls.”

Lee’s close friend Kurt Calivoda, with whom he worked in a Houston stage lighting business, remembers a wiry, athletic man “who could climb on anything.”

No more.

Lee, 47, was paralyzed in a fall 20 years ago. Today, he’s emerged as the unlikely protagonist in a marijuana legalization push that is changing California’s cultural and political landscape.

He now surges forward in a wheelchair, pumping hard in fingerless gloves through an Oakland business district dubbed “Oaksterdam.” He is credited with reviving the area with a medical pot network born from California’s 1996 initiative legalizing medical marijuana use.

Combined, he said, his Oaksterdam University marijuana trade school, a medical marijuana dispensary, coffee shops and other businesses generate $5 million a year.

This unassuming man is mobbed by fans and well-wishers at medical cannabis conferences and trade shows. Some hail him as a landmark figure fighting to decriminalize marijuana and end the drug war.

“He said what Oakland needs and California needs is legal pot,” said Ed Rosenthal, a marijuana advocate, author and horticulturist who was targeted by federal pot raids. “And he did something about it.

“This guy took his hard-earned money, and an eighth of an ounce by an eighth of an ounce, changed history.”

Continued: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n338.a08.html

Pubdate: Tue, 4 May 2010
Source: Orange County Register, The (CA)
Copyright: 2010 The Orange County Register
Contact: [email protected]
Authors: Erika I. Ritchie and Ellyn Pak
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Orange+County
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis – Medicinal – U.S.)

JUDGE REJECTS EFFORT TO KEEP POT SITES OPEN

SANTA ANA – A federal judge has rejected a request by four Orange County medical marijuana patients for a temporary injunction preventing Lake Forest and Costa Mesa from shutting down marijuana dispensaries in their cities.

The four patients – Marla James, Wayne Washington, James Armatrout and Charles Daniel – argued through their attorney Matthew Pappas that the Americans with Disabilities Act gave disabled people a federally protected right to use medical marijuana if such use is legal under state law and done with appropriate supervision.

The four were asking the court to temporarily prevent the cities from taking any further action against medical marijuana collectives; bar the cities from violating the rights of qualified people under the ADA; award damages for past actions in violation of the ADA; and award attorneys’ fees.

Pappas argued his clients would suffer irreparable harm absent a preliminary injunction against the cities.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Guilford’s, however, ruled in favor of the cities.

In his judgment filed Friday, he concluded: “At this stage, the court agrees with defendants. Marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act, and under that Act, it currently has no medical purpose.”

Pappas said he is reviewing the ruling and considering options. “We’ll certainly consider appealing the to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,” he said.

Continued:  http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n338.a02.html

Newshawk: Please Write a LTE www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides
Pubdate: Tue, 4 May 2010
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A01, Front Page
Copyright: 2010 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Authors: Paul Schwartzman and Annys Shin, Washington Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis – Popular)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis – Medicinal – U.S.)

D.C. SET TO VOTE ON LEGALIZING MARIJUANA, ALREADY A WIDELY USED DRUG

Just after 11 one morning last week, two men and two women, all in their early 20s, sat on a basketball court behind Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington and filled an empty cigar with marijuana — their first hit of the day.

Also that day, at a picnic table by the Oxon Run stream, east of the Anacostia River, five men played dominoes and passed a joint.

And at an Adams Morgan park, as dog walkers and bicyclists wandered by, a 23-year-old man in a Pittsburgh Pirates cap rolled a thick joint using cherry-flavored paper. “This is hitting nice,” he said moments later, forecasting that he would smoke five or six more before day’s end.

The D.C. Council is set to vote Tuesday on legalizing medical marijuana, thereby allowing the chronically ill — including those with HIV, glaucoma or cancer — to buy pot from dispensaries in Washington.

Yet marijuana is already ubiquitous in many parts of the city, as demonstrated by federal surveys showing that Washingtonians’ fondness for weed is among the strongest in the country — and growing.

The popular image of the nation’s capital leans toward the straight and narrow, a town of over-achieving, button-down bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists. But meander through any neighborhood from Congress Heights to Friendship Heights, and Washingtonians across race and class lines can be found lighting up.

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n337/a09.html