members of congress to introduce historic legistation on june 23

Everyone in texas . When you vote in 2012 vote out representative lamar smith from texas . He wants to stop the legalization bill from even being heard . So vote his ass out . And calls his office and tell him you will vote him out if he does'nt support the bill in congress . Google his name and get his email address and phone number to his office .

 

Federal Government Reaffirms ‘Flat Earth’ Position Regarding Medical Cannabis

Ending Federal Prohibition Update: Sign Our Petition to Representatives Smith and Upton

July 9th, 2011 By: Erik Altieri, NORML Communications Coordinator
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It has been a few weeks since a bipartisan coalition of legislators introduced HR 2306, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011, into the House of Representatives. This legislation would prohibit the federal government from prosecuting adults who use or possess personal use amounts of marijuana by removing the plant and its primary psychoactive constituent, THC, from the five schedules of the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Similar to the ending of alcohol prohibition, the federal government would get out of the business of arresting responsible marijuana smokers and allow states to set their own policies.
HR 2306 was assigned to both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill currently sits in legislative purgatory and how long it will stay there is entirely dependent on two men. The chairmen of these two committees have thus far refused to schedule the bill for a hearing. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has made it clear he has no intentions of hearing the bill. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has yet to take a strong public stance.
Stand up for states’ rights and civil liberties by joining NORML in telling these two elected officials that we believe HR 2306 is sound public policy that deserves discussion.
Click here to sign our petition and tell Representatives Smith and Upton to schedule HR 2306 for a hearing!
In better news, we are pleased to announce that HR 2306 now has a new co-sponsor! Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) has contacted Barney Frank’s office and declared his intention to co-sponsor this legislation. He explained his support in a letter to a constituent:

Thank you for contacting me about repealing the federal laws prohibiting the possession of marijuana. I appreciate you taking the time to write, and I welcome this opportunity to respond.
I have contacted Representative Barney Frank’s office and requested to be added as a co-sponsor of H.R. 2306, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011. I share your concern about the problems associated with marijuana in regards to enforcing drug laws, creating a black market for illegal drugs, and punishing drug users who need treatment. Federal law enforcement should concentrate its efforts on measures that truly protect the public, and I do not believe that prosecuting those found in possession of small amounts of marijuana should be a federal priority.
Law enforcement agents are forced to operate under scarce resources and I believe it is irresponsible to spend those resources prosecuting the personal use of marijuana. Far more pressing problems demand attention. I think marijuana use for non-medical reasons is a bad idea, and I would discourage anyone from using it, but I don’t believe making it a crime has been a useful or just policy.
If you are interested in following a particular piece of legislation through the legislative process, the website hosted by the Library of Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov is extremely helpful. It provides a wealth of information about legislation under consideration in the current Congress as well as bills introduced in earlier sessions. The site is called Thomas to honor President Thomas Jefferson and his belief in public access to the workings of government.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I welcome your views, and look forward to hearing from you in the future.
Source
​

You can keep up to date on HR 2306 by visiting its Facebook page. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to visit NORML’s Take Action Center and contact your elected officials and encourage them to support HR 2306.

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please don't talk about smoking so they want close the thread .

 

Home » Drug War Chronicle » Issue #692
ALERT: Keep the Promise, President Obama

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by David Borden, July 10, 2011, 09:40pm, (Issue #692)Posted in:

• Action Alert
• Executive Branch
• Medical Marijuana

In March 2008, candidate Obama promised not to use Dept. of Justice resources to block state medical marijuana laws. But President Obama has broken that promise:

• The Obama DOJ is raiding marijuana dispensaries at twice the rate the Bush DOJ did.
• US Attorneys have sent misleading, threatening letters to state legislatures considering dispensary laws.
• A DOJ memo sent late last month, claiming to "clarify" an earlier memo that supported states rights to medical marijuana, in fact backtracked on it. While the federal government is not targeting patients themselves, they are making it more difficult for them to obtain marijuana legally and safely.

Please write to President Obama to express your concern and disappointment over his broken promise. The future of medical marijuana depends on people like you across the country speaking up and putting pressure on the president to keep his promise to respect state medical marijuana laws -- so please use our web site to send President Obama a letter today. When you're done, please use our tell-a-friend form to spread the word. You can call the White House Comment Line on the phone too, at (202) 456-1111 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (202) 456-1111 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, to make an even greater impact.

Thank you for taking a stand. Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org for news and commentary about all aspects of the drug war. Click here for our medical marijuana archive page, or here for our medical marijuana RSS feed.


Washington, DC United States

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Obama is a POS

 

sign the letter . don't be afraid to tell them what you think . it's not against the law to say what you think . OB is a ass for lying to us . he wanted the soldiers to pay their own insuriance . what a ass he is . and you look at him smiling . looks like a posium that's been eating a cow pie and smiling at you . if he would'nt lie then we would be pissed instead of being really pissed . obamacare what a joke . it had a bill in it that if you are pulled over and smoke 25 days ago and it's still in your system your impaired and will be charged .

 

Marijuana Advocates Sue Feds After DEA Rejects Weed as Medicine

By Courtney Hutchison, ABC News - Tuesday, July 12 2011 Tags:

• Activism
• Headline News
• Federal Law
• government
• Health
• MEDICAL MARIJUANA
• OBAMA
• state law

Without medical marijuana, Scott Rozman swears, he wouldn't be alive today.
At 30, Rozman was the youngest documented case of teratoma and angiosarcoma, a rare and aggressive cancer that his doctors treated in the middle of his chest with equally aggressive rounds of chemotherapy. The chemo was so intense that he would throw up 40 to 50 times a day during treatment, unable to keep any food down. He lost 60 pounds during the first two months alone, making him potentially too weak to finish out his treatment
"The doctors thought I was a dead man," Rozman, now 46 and a life coach in Guttenberg, N.J., said.
But then Mary Jane came into his life.
As a last-ditch effort, his doctors prescribed him marijuana because of its purported ability to stave off chemotherapy nausea. Not only was he able to keep food down again, the marijuana calmed him and helped him cope psychologically with the harrowing experience of the chemotherapy sessions. Weed had done for Rozman what no traditional anti-nausea medication could.
The Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), however, would beg to differ.
Although 16 states recognize marijuana as a drug with important medicinal properties, the DEA has shot down a petition to reclassify marijuana as such, citing that it has "no accepted medical use." The result is that marijuana will remain within the strictest categorization of restricted substances, alongside heroin and LSD.

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"As a doctor and medical researcher, I find the DEA's decision unfortunate," said Dr. Igor Grant, a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California-San Diego. "It looks like they underplayed what positive information there is in the literature about marijuana. This policy is guided more by certain kinds of beliefs in the dangers of marijuana, at the expense of advance of medical knowledge for patients."
The DEA's refusal, laid out in a June 21 letter from DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart to the organizations who filed the petition back in 2002, marks yet another bump in the road for patients, doctors and activists fighting for improved access to what they deem a vitally therapeutic medication.
"The statement 'it has no accepted medical use' is simply wrong as a statement of fact," said Rob MacCoun, psychologist and professor of Law and Public Policy at University of California Berkeley Law School. "There is now considerable evidence showing medical benefits, at or exceeding standards of evidence for many other pharmaceuticals. Prescribing physicians in over a dozen states clearly see an accepted medical value for their patients."
Americans for Safe Access, one of the organizations petitioning the DEA, already has plans to appeal the decision, taking the federal government to court, and if necessary, the Supreme Court, in order to argue for the medicinal value of marijuana.
"Frankly, we're ready to go head to head with the Obama administration on this issue," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access. "We have science on our side and we're hopeful the court will see it that way."
Calls made to the DEA for comment were not returned.
Why Reclassify?
The original petition sent to the DEA in 2002 called for reclassifying marijuana into schedule III, IV, or V, all of which would acknowledge its potential for medical use and place its threat as a potentially harmful and/or addictive substance as less severe than class I and II drugs such as heroine, cocaine, amphetamines and morphine.
Such a change means that marijuana would remain a controlled substance, but that its use in medical contexts would not be considered illegal under federal law, as is the case now.
It would also make it easier for studies on marijuana's medicinal properties to take place. Grant of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research said that even with federal compliance with his research on medicinal marijuana, each study takes at least a year to even garner approval because of all the regulatory red tape surrounding use of a schedule I drug in trials.
Berkeley's MacCoun said, "Schedule I is a barrier to research and to physician practice. Under federal law, it precludes physician prescriptions, putting state and federal laws in conflict for [those] states that have legalized medical marijuana."
War on Medicinal Marijuana?
The DEA's decision comes on the coattails of another move by the Department of Justice to reinforce federal restrictions on marijuana. U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole released a memo June 29 that reaffirms the department of justice's right and intention to prosecute large-scale medical marijuana cultivation operations and dispensaries even in states where they are operating in compliance with state laws.
The Cole memo purportedly "clarifies" the landmark memo written in 2009 by then Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, which suggested that the DOJ would not bother to prosecute those involved in state-sanctioned medicinal marijuana distribution.
Cole's clarification puts everyone from growers to pro-medicinal marijuana public officials within the DOJ's sights for prosecution. Only patients with prescriptions escape possible legal action from the government.
This regulatory dance emerges because the states that allow medicinal marijuana are in conflict with the federal drug laws that criminalize possession of marijuana, regardless of its intended use and these federal laws trump those of the states.
Obama campaigned with the promise not to interfere with states' rights in this area, so the Cole memo has been seen by marijuana advocates as the administration's backpedalling in response to the rapid proliferation of cannabis providers and distributors cropping up in recent years.
"The government's position is very clear," Hermes said. "The number of raids on medical marijuana distributors is staggering, far beyond what the Bush administration was doing. And because the federal government won't acknowledge marijuana as a medicinal substance, those arrested have absolutely no defense they can bring in federal court."
Hermes said be believes the "whole point" of the Cole memo was to create a "culture of fear" among growers, distributors, and patients.
Mitch Woolhiser, 43, happens to be all three. Diagnosed with seizure disorder in 1995, the medicinal marijuana distributor from Edgewater, Colo., got his prescription after reading studies suggesting that marijuana has anti-seizure properties.
He was able to wean himself slowly off the seizure meds that were straining his liver and today, years later, is seizure free. Now he provides medicinal-grade marijuana for at least 100 regular customers in the Denver area.
"The Ogden memo kind of opened the floodgates here in Colorado and that's what brought people into the industry of distributing marijuana, including me," he said. "It's very regulated, we do lab tests for THC levels [the major active compound in cannabis] and that makes everything more regulated for the patients.
"But if you go after the distributors, you're really just hurting the patients," he said. "You're taking away their ability to safely and conveniently get their medicine, and instead pushing them to buy it on the street."
- Article from ABC News.


Related

• Feds Threaten State Dispensaries Nationwide
• Marijuana Legalization Supporters Fire Back at Attorney General Holder
• ACLU to Holder: Tell Feds to Back off Medical Pot

 

please remember no talking about smoking . we don't want them to close the thread .

 

« Philadelphia: City Saves Millions By Ceasing Criminal Marijuana Prosecutions

Latest White House Drug Strategy Report Affirms Our Government Has Virtually No Interest In Actually Studying Marijuana

July 12th, 2011 By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
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The White House yesterday, with little fanfare, issued its annual (and long overdue) 2011 National Drug Control Strategy report.
As usual, the White House’s official justification for the ongoing multigenerational drug war was light on facts and heavy on rhetoric, particularly as it pertained to the federal government’s fixation with criminalizing cannabis. Here are just a few examples (all of which are excerpted from a section of the report, entitled ironically enough, ‘The Facts About Marijuana‘) of your government on pot.

“[C]onfusing messages being conveyed by the entertainment industry, media, proponents of ‘medical’ marijuana, and political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana use is harmless and aim to establish commercial access to the drug. This significantly diminishes efforts to keep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from addiction.”
“Marijuana and other illicit drugs are addictive and unsafe. … The science, though still evolving in terms of long-term consequences, is clear: marijuana use is harmful. Independent from the so called ‘gateway effect’ — marijuana on its own is associated with addiction, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects.”
“The Administration steadfastly opposes drug legalization. Legalization runs counter to a public health approach to drug control because it would increase the availability of drugs, reduce their price, undermine prevention activities, hinder recovery support efforts, and pose a significant health and safety risk to all Americans, especially our youth.”
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You get the idea.
Of course, none of these allegations represent anything new for this (or previous) administrations, and NORML has responded in detail to most of the Drug Czar’s claims previously. I did, however, take notice of this particular paragraph in the report, which appears under the title ‘Medical’ Marijuana.’

“In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has approved 109 researchers to perform bona fide research with marijuana, marijuana extracts, and marijuana derivatives such as cannabidiol and cannabinol. Studies include evaluation of abuse potential, physical/psychological effects, adverse effects, therapeutic potential, and detection. Fourteen researchers are approved to conduct research with smoked marijuana on human subjects.”
​

Only in an environment of absolute criminal prohibition can the administration imply, with a straight face, that allowing a grand total of 14 legally permitted scientists to study a substance consumed by tens of millions of Americans for therapeutic and/or recreational purposes is somehow to be construed as ‘progress.’ That total doesn’t even legally allow for one scientist per medical marijuana state to actively assess how cannabis is impacting that state’s patient population.
Moreover, this acknowledgment comes from the very same administration that on Friday flat out rejected the notion of even allowing hearings on the question of marijuana’s schedule I classification because, in their opinion, “there are no adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy.” Of course, with only a dozen or so scientists in the whole county even permitted to interact with pot and humans can there be any wonder why such studies aren’t more prevalent?
(By the way, remember the results last year of the series of FDA-approved ‘gold standard’ clinical trials assessing the safety and efficacy of inhaled cannabis in severely ill patients? Apparently neither does the DEA. Nor are they aware of these ‘well-controlled’ studies of medical cannabis. Or these.)
Interestingly, according to the DEA’s 2010 white paper on cannabis (no longer online), last year there were a total of 18 scientists licensed by the government to work with marijuana in a clinical setting. Perhaps next year there will only be ten. If the DEA and NIDA have there way perhaps by 2013 there will be zero.
As for the other 95 US scientists legally authorized by the federal government to assess the efficacy of ‘marijuana extracts and marijuana derivatives’ in animals, most of them were here last week — at the annual meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. But even these ‘chosen few’ acknowledge that there work has next to no influence on the very administration that authorizes it.

Marijuana Researchers Meet At Pheasant Run
Researchers from around the world studying the effects of marijuana and exploring possible medical uses meet each year to compare notes and share their findings
About 250 scientists from around the world have gathered this weekend at Pheasant Run Resort sitting through seminars titled “Endocannabinoid Signaling in Periimplantation Biology,” and “Cannabinoids and HIV Pathogenicity,” to name a few, for the 21st Annual Symposium of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.
ICRS members meet once a year to compare notes on research studying how cannabinoids, compounds from the cannabis plant (more commonly known as marijuana) or from the brain called endocannabinoids, affect the body and how it functions.
While most attendees are scientists, many are graduate students or training scientists as well as physicians interested in learning how these chemicals might be useful in treating human disease.
“We are all around the world working on our own projects,” said Cecilia Hillard, ICRS executive director, professor of pharmacology and director of the Neuroscience Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
“That’s why it’s so wonderful for us to get together once a year so we can really share things that we learn,” she said.
For example, she said someone may be studying how bone is formed, and she is studying how the brain works.
“I learn a lot by learning how the bone is formed, and they learn about how neurons work,” Hillard said. “It’s really a lot of what we call a ‘cross-fertilization’ of ideas.”
While the society is not political, Hillard says the type of research that is done on the controversial topic of medical and personal use of marijuana is nonetheless important.
“We’re carrying out scientific investigations trying to understand what these molecules do,” Hillard said. “What we try to contribute to the debate is the reality.”
She said scientific investigation is done in a very neutral way, trying to understand what these molecules do.
“The mass appeal is, ‘is there a good use for this in the treatment of human disease?’” Hillard said. “Most of us really have a passion for looking at these molecules because there is a lot of potential for treatment of human disease.”
The findings of this research are published in scientific journals so that the information is available to anyone. She said sometimes “you have no idea the impact your work is having.” Hillard said part of the mission of the ICRS is to educate the public.
“I wish the politicians would (look at the data) but I don’t think they do,” she said.
​

Tags: DEA, Drug Czar, ICRS, Kerlikowske, National Drug Control Strategy Report, NIDA, Obama, ONDCP

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 3:40 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a trackback from your own site

 

http://cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/07/13/Challenging-DEAs-War-Medical-Marijuana please watch this .

 

thanks for keeping this updated!

 

well your welcome eljaybee . you know my mom was was 1 month away from being 75 . she would ask me if this helps like it does me for other people . why is it illegal . and it much safer than kids getting in a car and driving while drunk . she would say if they're old enough to fight for this country . there old enough to do something safer . and she seen what vietnam did to the soldiers . they drank alot to cope with the thing they saw .

 

Marijuana should be the very last of our worries here in America how about the fact that were in debt up to our eyes with China and they were talking about the proposition for hallogen light bulbs today.....lol seriously....or the fact that we keep firing teachers to teach our children.......and doctors to save them ye keep worrying about something that is less harmful then alcohol and cigarettes and put our economy on the backburner.... dont get me started

 

Everybody has their own fight.
Wether it be the dogs, marijuana, health care, war, your religion, missing children, stem cell research and disease research, etc. Everybody has their own fight that effects them in some way or another. The economy may not be very high on every persons priority list because maybe they cannot function properly in every day life. Ever been sick and thought how much you take being healthy for granted and just wished to be well again? Some people need this to be well again without being labeled as criminals. It's not my fight, but I could understand... I would care about my health and something that has an immediate impact on my life and well being than I would a bunch of numbers that our grandkids grandkids are going to inherit. To each their own, neither are my fight though.

 

well venom , it is your fight . you pay taxes to arrest more people than any other crime for smoking alittle cannabis . then you help pay 28-40 a years to keep them housed . that depends on state or federal . you pay big having the police chase down pot smokers and not robbers and rapest and murders . because they're more harder to find . you will pay 1 day if 1 of your loved ones gets cancer and you can't get them any . when the cancer goes to the brain which it will . you want be able to talk to them in their last days . they can't talk much . but alittlle cannabis , as much as 3 puffs can get them to concentrate enough to talk . and the death shakes they will stop if you get them cannabis every 3 hours . but only 3-5 puffs . so is it your fight .

 

Nice MMJ doc yall might like:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/175938/high-the-true-tale-of-american-marijuana

Marijuana should be America's fight. It can heal our sick, our depressed, our forests, our polluted air, and our wallets...

 

if you go to college and take history . you will see the bible was writen on hemp paper . the american flag was mde from hemp . the 13 colonies was out in the middle of no where and the had to have hemp . they used it as medicine . to make clothes and food and tents . they payed taxes with hemp . they were made to grow hemp . on we will just make it illegal . damn this country needed hemp but now it needs oil .

 

"grass the healer of the nations "" "we smoked the herb ,the herb was good " @ my bible j

 

Imagine there's no Drug Czar. It isn't hard to do ...

For more than 20 years, the federal government has spent lavishly on its own Ministry of Drug Propaganda with virtually nothing to show for it. Our illustrious Drug Czars have crisscrossed the country spreading lies and misinformation while pouring more than a billion taxpayer dollars into an Anti-Drug Media Campaign sinkhole.

But U.S. Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have a great idea: Defund the Drug Czar's office entirely! And they are introducing an amendment to do just that in the next few days.

The Marijuana Policy Project, which for years has taken on the Drug Czar's office directly through formal complaints at the state and federal levels and through lobbying to decrease funding for the Media Campaign, fully supports this amendment and hopes you do too.

If you want to see the Drug Czar and his gross exaggerations about marijuana tossed out of the executive branch for good, please take a moment to urge your U.S. representative to support the Polis-Paul amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill. We have pre-written e-mails all set to go.

Thanks in advance for taking action.

Sincerely,

 

just ckick on prewritten emails all set to go . at the bottom .