Watch the full episode. See more MontanaPBS Presents.
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We unequivocally support removing marijuana growing operations from the Mendocino National Forest and all other public lands. We consider this a no-brainer. However, it is our obligation as elected officials to do more than simply line up behind what’s popular. We also consider it our duty to define solutions to long-standing problems.
The point we made at the Board of Supervisors meeting of August 2 was that illegal growing on public lands will not end until the federal laws are changed. We did not criticize Sheriff Allman’s efforts, not did we criticize the other jurisdictions – county, state, and federal – – that participated in Full Court Press.
This is a time when government must spend its dollars wisely. It is our shared opinion that the war on drugs is not a wise expenditure. The horrors of the Prohibition era ended shortly after President Roosevelt lifted the ban on alcohol. Interestingly, that’s also when our local alcohol industry began its steady ascent. We believe that ending marijuana prohibition would have a similar beneficial effect.
John Pinches, Supervisor, District Three, Laytonville
Dan Hamburg, Supervisor, District Five, Ukiah
MAP posted-by: Jay BergstromPubdate: Wed, 17 Aug 2011
Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA)
Contact: [email protected]
Copyright: 2011 Anderson Valley Advertiser
Website: http://www.theava.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667
Authors: John Pinches and Dan Hamburg
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The 22nd Annual Masscann/NORML Boston Freedom Rally, September 17, 2011, High Noon, Boston Common
The Boston Freedom Rally is an annual event in Boston, Massachusetts. Held on the third Saturday in September, it is traditionally the second largest annual gathering demanding marijuana law reform in the United States, after the Seattle Hempfest. It is organized by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MASS CANN), the Massachusetts state affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws also known as MASS CANN/NORML.
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The crime rate is down but police forces are growing. We’re poorer as a result, but not necessarily any safer.
by Ken MacQueen, and Patricia Treble
This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied with a thank you card, wrote her name and return address on the envelope and, in a decision certain to haunt her for years to come, enclosed four grams of her homegrown marijuana, enough for perhaps four cigarettes. On an April morning some days later she returned to the post office to pick up another package. Moments later, police pulled her over, handcuffed her, put her in a cruiser and hauled her off to the police station.
It made quite a spectacle, says the 41-year-old mother of four, who suffers from colitis and is one of more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients registered with Health Canada. “It was embarrassing,” she says. “I was still in my pyjamas.” She emerged four hours later with a trafficking charge for giving away those four grams.
Her charge is part of a recent marked increase in arrests for cannabis offences. Cannabis arrests jumped 13 per cent in 2010 to 75,126. Of those, almost 57,000 were for simple possession, a 14 per cent jump from the year before. (The statistics reflect cases where the arrest was the most serious charge a person faced, not the thousands more where a pot charge was tacked onto a string of more serious crimes.) The cannabis arrest rate is an anomaly at a time when the overall crime rate in 2010 fell to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.
Ironically, Cartwright’s legal predicament may be linked to that falling crime rate, which comes at a time when policing costs are climbing relentlessly and the number of sworn officers in Canada is at its highest level in almost 30 years. It may simply be that with less overall crime, police have the time, staffing and inclination to focus on minor drug arrests. The vast majority of those arrested are younger than 24, and mostly male, if past findings hold true. And the majority of those arrests are for pot possession, “the low-lying fruit,” as Dalhousie University criminologist Christopher Murphy puts it.
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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.
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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
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Re: “Drugs: Illegal for a reason,” Daily News editorial, July 21.
What absolute claptrap! Drugs are indeed prohibited “for a reason” but to argue that drugs are banned because of the harm they do makes no sense whatsoever.
Nearly all the harm done to users and non-users alike by illegal drugs is because the drugs are prohibited. Thousands were poisoned by adulterated booze during prohibition and thousands more are dying today because of adulterated drugs, an aspect of government policy my wife and I became well-acquainted with when our 19-year-old son, Peter, died shortly after ingesting some street heroin in 1993. Drug prohibition encourages crime, too, as was shown when Al Capone rose to power after alcohol was banned.
Let us never forget also that drug prohibition is racist in origin. It began almost a century ago when the drugs used by certain non-white minorities ( blacks, Chinese, Mexicans ) were banned ostensibly to protect virtuous, white, Christian women from being seduced by these minorities.
Drug laws are an ideal vehicle for social control because they can be applied in an arbitrary manner. Middle class white swingers can indulge their pleasures with impunity. Drug laws apply only to certain social groups: the poor, the coloured, the young, the unemployed, those on the street. Today, the police are happy to make use of this racist legislation to control and harass those whose lifestyle, haircut or skin colour offends them.
The best way to reduce the harm and heartbreak of illegal drugs is to end drug prohibition. Let’s legalize all drugs, remove the propaganda and the police from the equation and have the drugs manufactured by knowledgeable, competent organizations that will supply cheap, quality tested drugs of known purity and potency and that, in order to avoid legal liability, will impart factual drug information to us and to our children.
ALAN RANDELL
Victoria
Powered by MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.
Pubdate: Tue, 09 Aug 2011
Source: Kamloops Daily News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2011 Kamloops Daily News
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/679
Author: Alan Randell
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n484/a03.html?1205 -
Seattle Hempfest is held the third weekend in August each year. The next Seattle Hempfest is August 19-20-21, 2011,.
It’s open to the public on Friday from 12 noon to 8 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm. Admission to Seattle Hempfest is free.
The event spans three Seattle waterfront parks: Centennial Park, formerly Elliott Bay Park (North Entrance), Myrtle Edwards Park, and Olympic Sculpture Park (South Entrance).
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