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Feds To Legal Medical Marijuana Patients: You Don’t Have Second Amendment Rights. Period.

September 28th, 2011 By: Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director
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The federal government, notably under the current administration, continues to paint itself into a corner politically speaking regarding Mr. Obama’s pre-election promises to ‘fix the problem with medical marijuana’.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) issued a memorandum on September 21 to all gun dealers in the United States for the expressed purpose of informing them that they MUST discriminate against lawful medical cannabis patients and DENY them their Second Amendment right to buy and possess a firearm for hunting and/or personal protection.

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The feds newest ‘clarifying’ memo regarding medical cannabis (proceeding the 2009 Ogden and 2011 Cole memos) is notable because members of NORML’s Legal Committee recently have been successfully challenging local and state law enforcement officials who’ve chosen to discriminate against lawful medical cannabis patients by denying them permits for a concealed weapon.
Why is it OK and does it make any sense at all for lawful medical patients who are prescribed powerful painkillers and sedatives to be able to enjoy their Second Amendment rights and responsibilities, but medical cannabis patients who want to hunt or have self-protection in their homes are overtly discriminated against by our own federal government?
This new ATF memo will provide an interesting test to see if the National Rifle Association really does support citizens’ rights to bear arms.

Tags: ATF, Department of Justice, discrimination, guns, Medical marijuana patients, National Rifle Association, NRA, right to bare arms, Second Amendment

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 4:15 am 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

 

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people in caifornia need to read so you know how to vote .
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/c...le-Marijuana-Bills-Why-Regulate-Better-Repeal

 

Three Million Marijuana Arrests Since 1937: We Reap What We SowSeptember 30th, 2011 By: Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director
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We reap what we sow….
On the verge of a three night PBS documentary series on the abject failure of Alcohol Prohibition (one of the taglines for the documentary is ‘a look back to when a law made America lawless’) an email from a victim of the modern prohibition that has totally failed affirms the obvious: Cannabis Prohibition must end. We must stop arresting, prosecuting, incarcerating ,drug testing, labeling for life and causing great physical, mental and economic harm to citizens who choose to use cannabis for relaxation or as a therapeutic agent.
NORML receives dozens and dozens of emails, letters and phone calls DAILY from citizens experiencing the waste, cruelty and ineffectiveness of Cannabis Prohibition vis-a-vis the criminal justice system. Of course, with over 850,000 cannabis-related arrests per year (with nearly 90% of the arrests for possession-only) there is a never ending reservoir of citizen-government horror stories that the organization can highlight.
Want to know what can happen to you or your children during modern America’s Cannabis Prohibition era if caught with a mere trace of cannabis?
Please find below an extremely well written email received by NORML last night by a young woman in Kentucky who has unfortunately experienced the lancet’s tip of Cannabis Prohibition. I respect her intelligence, moxie and recognition that what her own government did to her was wrong and that the policies have to change to stop what really has become nothing more than citizen abuse by Prohibition-loving law enforcement agencies. Regrettably, elected policy makers continue to not respect the general population’s desire for degrees of cannabis law reforms:
According to most national polling today, approximately 75% of the population favors medical access to cannabis; 73% support decriminalizing; and 45% support legalizing it alcohol.
With clear public support increasing every year for substantive cannabis law reforms, when will politicians start listening more to their bosses—the voting public—than from the Prohibition-loving law enforcement agencies that created Cannabis Prohibition in the 1930s and who today vigorously defend an antiquated policy that causes more harm than good?
Is it not shortsighted to the point of reckless that the producers and consumers of alcohol and tobacco products do not also recognize what kind of hurt from the government is coming down the pike for them too—using the same force of law and legal precedent established to rationalize 74 years of Cannabis Prohibition—once their products enter into the government’s crosshairs of political incorrectness?

—— Forwarded Message
From: Brittany M.
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:42:03 -0400
To: <norml@norml.org>
Subject: PLEASE READ! Why I Support NORML!
Hello, fellow good-doers. Since recently discovering NORML via internet research, I have become elated to realize that there is a group of serious people ready to make serious change regarding marijuana laws. I am a citizen of Elliott County, Kentucky-an extremely small town in northeaster KY. I believe that an abundance of citizens stand to gain a whole lot from your organization, if they can all be made aware of its existence. Kentucky’s ridiculous marijuana laws have caused me so much turmoil and pain that I couldn’t resist contacting you PERSONALLY to tell you my story.
I am seventeen years old now, but not in high school. It’s not because I’m lazy or a drop-out, but because I graduated two years early, as a sophomore. Not only have I always maintained straight-A’s, but I was accepted into Morehead State University at only sixteen years of age! I had everyone’s support, and I was far beyond excited to finally be academically challenged. My life had done a complete 180 at this point, because it wasn’t too long prior that I was in shambles…
I suffer from anxiety and major depression. When I was thirteen, I attempted suicide and began my journey into the world of psychiatric “help”. I was medicated with Zoloft, Trazadone, and at least five other anti-anxiety/antidepressants that I can’t recall the names of. Some of them made my hair fall out, while others caused me to sweat and shake uncontrollably. All of them required a two-week period of adjustment upon starting, during which I would vomit more than I care to speak of. Nowadays, I am prescribed to take two Prozac capsules every single day, and I may very well have to take them for the rest of my living days. But, admittedly, marijuana helped me overcome the side effects that were crippling me. My first day on campus, in January of 2011, was the best I’ve had. For the first time in a long time, I felt normal. I went to class, I met a boy, and everyone wanted to be my friend. The next day, it was time for me to move into my dorm room. I arrived well before my classes would begin, but I would never make it to class that day. An anonymous tip had been called in to the campus police department that I was a “pot head”. I had a debilitating anxiety attack while I watched three uniformed police officers tear through all of my belongings, throwing them aside as if they were garbage, and never once asking me, “What is wrong?”, or, “What are these medications for?”. Minutes later I was whisked away, bad-mouthed by the Dean of Students (who had just been commending me on my ACT score of 30), and told that I was to leave and could not return until the Fall of 2013, a whole year after my original class, who I had long since surpassed, would graduate and move on.
In August, after months and months of torture-seeing everyone else being happy and college-bound-and being tied up in Kentucky’s legal system, I had my final court date. I was administered a supervised drug test, for which I passed all but THC, and sentenced to 7 days in Boyd Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Ashland, KY I am fully aware that it is meant to be a punishment and not a vacation, but the facility was filthy and very poorly maintained. I witnessed two staff members mocking a much younger boy who was obviously mentally handicapped. I was forced to drink from a glass that had insects and dirt festering in the bottom. On top of all of this, my mother was provided with paperwork stating that I was to be placed on a mandatory orientation that would last for 48 hours, which I was unaware of until I came home. However, within the facility, we were told that orientation was no less than four days.
I rested very well on night number four, having finally spoken to my family. However, the next day I awoke to a brand-spanking-new, and very rigorous exercise regimen, introduced to us by a male employee who I was seeing on this day for the very first time. During this regimen, I had an anxiety attack and everyone was asked to return to their cells while I was left to the floor, gasping for air and being closely watched, but otherwise unattended. We ate our breakfast in the festering cesspool of a cafeteria, and then a female worker led us, not to our block, but to the gymnasium for more exercise. Sometime during this activity, I began to feel weak, and weird. Something totally foreign came over me, and I was scared. I raised my hand, and waited to be called on, as was protocol, and quickly informed the staff member that I thought something was really wrong. She simply replied that if I were to vomit, I would be cleaning it myself, and told me to run six laps for speaking out. I’m not completely clear about what happened after that, other than that I hit the concrete floor, hard.
I awoke much later, in a daze, and projectile vomiting ensued. I was loaded into an ambulance, accompanied by the female worker who continuously asked me if I had medical insurance. I was far too shaken, scared, and sick to pay her much attention at the time. Here I was puking into a bag that the ambulance attendant provided me, and she wanted to know about my insurance policy? I was whisked out of the ambulance and into the ER, with shackles around my feet. All I could think about was my mother, and so I asked if she had been called. She had not. I noted a nearby clock on the wall of my hospital room read 9:45. I was scanned, poked, prodded, and MRI-ed for what felt like an eternity, until they finally informed me that I had suffered an acute heart attack and may also have mitral valve prolapse (MVP), a heart condition that caused me synocopal episodes, and that I would need to be back the next day for more tests.
Still too weak to walk, I was wheeled in a wheelchair to the front door, where BOTH the female and male staff members from BRJDC were waiting with big smiles and a bag of fast food for me. Still, they were curious about my insurance My family has zero income, and so I explained to them that I have a medical card provided to me by the state. We pulled back into the facility, and I was put in a holding cell instead of my regular room. I tossed and turned and listened to muffled voices from behind the door, until finally an unfamiliar staff member came to me with a box of my clothes, and announced to me that I was going home.
I ran to my mother and hugged her. I was seeing sunshine for the first time in five or six days. It felt like a miracle. In the car, I saw that it was 3:15. I asked my mother why she didn’t come to the hospital, and she told me that she had only just been called, and rushed right over. She had no idea what had happened to me. Our brief reunion was devastated in the following weeks with doctors and tests, hospitals and neurologists, who finally put me on two new medicines that I will, once again, most likely have to be on for the rest of my life.
BUT MY QUESTION TO YOU IS THIS…how much marijuana was I arrested with that caused me all this turmoil? Back in January, back on campus, back in the campus PD…they weighed the crumpled cellophane from my pocket and the digital scale read 0.2 grams.
My college career, my mental stability, and above all else, my health, have been irreversibly damaged. I feel as though NORML can make sure that nothing like this happens to anyone in a situation similar to mine ever again. I wouldn’t wish this travesty on any mother and daughter, and I know that you would not either.
Thank you for listening,
Brittany M.
​

 

World’s Largest Drug Policy Reform Conference One Month Away

Make Marijuana Legal For Medical Purposes: Help Put Marijuana Reschedule Petition Before President Obama

October 4th, 2011 By: Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director
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In 1972 NORML filed the first major lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to change the legal status of cannabis from schedule I to schedule II. Would this make cannabis legal for an adult to purchase and use like alcohol and tobacco products?
No.
All the organization was seeking was an acknowledgement that cannabis had been badly mis-scheduled as a dangerous and highly addictive drug with no accepted medical value. The organization argued in one of the longest (and strangest) legal cases in US history, NORML vs. DEA (1972-1994), that cannabis is a safe, non-toxic herbal medicine that should be within the ambit of choices for a physician to recommend to a sick, dying or sense-threatened medical patient.
In the late 1990s a coalition of cannabis reform groups refiled a petition to reschedule, which was rejected this past summer by the DEA (see below).
Please review and sign a new petition asking President Obama to once and for all listen to the many numerous DEA administrative law judges that have previously ruled in the reformers’ favor and all of the clear science published that cannabis is in fact a medicinal product of great worth, providing maximum safety with minimal unwanted side effects and at relatively little cost for the consumer.

“Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality…Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death…In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity…In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume…Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” – DEA administrative law judge, Francis Young, NORML vs. DEA (1988)

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About 3,000 more signatures are needed by October 23 to meet the necessary threshold. I’ve been told that the White House may raise the threshold soon to qualify petitions for Presidential review from 5,000 to 25,000. Undeterred-in-the-slightest, I’m totally confident that the NORML community will generate in excess of 25,000 signatures in support for this important and long-suffering cannabis re-scheduling for medical purposes.
Please sign the cannabis rescheduling petition here.

Medical Marijuana Advocates Sue Federal Government Over Rescheduling Delay
MONDAY, 23 MAY 2011 11:34
WASHINGTON–(ENEWSPF)–May 23 – A Coalition of advocacy groups and patients filed suit in the DC Circuit Court today to compel the Obama administration to answer a 9-year-old petition to reclassify medical marijuana. The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) has never received an answer to its 2002 petition, despite a formal recommendation in 2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the final arbiter in the rescheduling process. As recently as July 2010, the DEA issued a 54-page “Position on Marijuana,” but failed to even mention the pending CRC petition. Plaintiffs in the case include the CRC, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Patients Out of Time, as well as individually named patients, one of whom is listed on the CRC petition but died in 2005.
“The federal government’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel of ASA and lead counsel on the writ. “It is far past time for the government to answer our rescheduling petition, but unfortunately we’ve been forced to go to court in order to get resolution.” The writ of mandamus filed today accuses the government of unreasonable delay in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. A previous cannabis (marijuana) rescheduling petition filed in 1972 went unanswered for 22 years before being denied.
The writ argues that cannabis is not a dangerous drug and that ample evidence of its therapeutic value exists based on scientific studies in the US and around the world. “Despite numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies establishing that marijuana is effective” in treating numerous medical conditions, the government “continues to deprive seriously ill persons of this needed, and often life-saving therapy by maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance.” The writ calls out the government for unlawfully failing to answer the petition despite an Inter-Agency Advisory issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 and “almost five years after receiving a 41-page memorandum from HHS stating its scientific evaluation and recommendations.”
The two largest physician groups in the country — the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians — have both called on the federal government to review marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, added cannabis to its website earlier this year as a Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) and recognized that, “Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years prior to its current status as an illegal substance.”
Medical marijuana has now been decriminalized in 16 states and the District of Columbia, and has an 80% approval rating among Americans according to several polls. In a 1988 ruling on a prior rescheduling petition, the DEA’s own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young recommended in favor of reclassification stating that, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”
A formal rejection of the CRC petition would enable the group to challenge in court the government’s assertion that marijuana has no medical value. “Adhering to outdated public policy that ignores science has created a war zone for doctors and their patients who are seeking use cannabis therapeutics,” said Steph Sherer, Executive Director of ASA and a plaintiff in the writ. Jon Gettman, who filed the rescheduling petition on behalf of the CRC added that, “The Obama Administration’s refusal to act on this petition is an irresponsible stalling tactic.”
A synthetic form of THC, the main chemical ingredient in the cannabis plant, is currently classified Schedule III for its use in a prescribed pill trademarked as Marinol®. The pill goes off-patent this year and companies vying to sell generic versions are petitioning the government to also reclassify the more economical, naturally-derived THC (from the plant) to Schedule III. The rescheduling process involves federal agencies such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, HHS, and DEA. On average, it takes 6 months from HHS review to final action, whereas it’s been nearly 5 years since HHS issued its recommendation on the CRC petition, more than twice as long as any other rescheduling petition reviewed since 2002.
Further information:
CRC rescheduling petition
2006 HHS recommendation
2010 DEA Position on Marijuana
Writ filed today
Backgrounder on rescheduling
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Tags: Controlled Substances Act, CSA, DEA, medical marijuana, President Obama, re-scheduling

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Cannabis and the Law, NORML Executive Director, Strategies for Reform, medical cannabis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a trackback from your own site.


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i shared the petition!

 

thankyou eljaybee , you are priceless .

 

WELL THIS SHOULD PISS OFF ANYONE WITH COMPASSION .

President Obama


The Federal Government ‘Ardently Supports’ Medical Marijuana Research?! Who Knew?

October 5th, 2011 By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
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Last month we shared with you a letter from Tennessee Congressman Steven Cohen — co-sponsor of HR 2306: The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011 — to Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, which called upon the Obama administration to support changing cannabis’ status as a schedule I prohibited drug and to respect the laws of states that have legalized it for its medical utility.
“We should not deny the thousands of Americans who rely on the benefits that marijuana provides,” Cohen wrote. “There is no evidence that marijuana has the same addictive qualities or damaging consequences as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine and should not be treated as such.”
On Monday, October 3, Drug Czar Kerlikowske responded to Rep. Cohen. In his reply, summarized here, Kerlikowske alleged that the Congressman’s concerns regarding the federal scheduling of cannabis are unwarranted because, “We ardently support research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine.”
Kerlikowske added, “In fact, the federal government is the largest source of funding for research into the potential therapeutic benefits of marijuana, and every valid request for the use of marijuana for research has been approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
Really? So how does the Drug Czar explain this headline — from Saturday’s edition of The Washington Post?

Marijuana study of traumatized veterans stuck in regulatory limbo
Getting pot on the street is easy. Just ask the 17 million Americans who smoked the federally illegal drug in 2010.
Obtaining weed from the government? That’s a lot harder.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its kind study to test whether marijuana can ease the nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks common in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But now another branch of the federal government has stymied the study. The Health and Human Services Department is refusing to sell government-grown marijuana to the nonprofit group proposing the research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
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That’s right, the Drug Czar is claiming that the federal government ‘ardently supports’ medical marijuana research just days after the US government formally denied a request for an FDA-approved clinical trial to assess cannabis’ therapeutic safety and efficacy.
Wait, it gets worse. The ugly truth is that the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that oversees 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, is on record stating that its institutional policy is to reject any and all medical marijuana research. “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use,” a NIDA spokesperson told The New York Times in 2010. “We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”
For once a government agency was telling the truth regarding cannabis. NIDA categorically does not support such research — despite the Obama administration in 2010 publicly issuing its “Scientific Integrity” memorandum stating, “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration.”
That is why an online search of ongoing FDA-approved clinical trials using the keyword “cannabinoids” yields only six studies (two of which have already been completed) worldwide involving subjects’ use of actual cannabis despite hundreds of favorable preclinical and observational studies clearly demonstrating its benefit.
Just how blatant is Kerlikowske’s latest lie? Consider this. According to the White House’s 2011 National Drug Control Strategy, released in July, only fourteen researchers in the United States are legally permitted to conduct research assessing the effect of inhaled cannabis in human subjects. That’s right, only fourteen! And even among this absurdly limited group of investigators, most are involved in research to assess the drug’s “abuse potential, physical/psychological effects, [and] adverse effects.” So says the White House.
Ardent support for medical marijuana research? Please Gil, don’t make us laugh.

Tags: Drug Czar, Gil Kerlikowske, hr 2306, medical cannabis, NIDA, Obama, research, Steve Cohen, The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 1:44 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.


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Arg!!! so frustrating

 

IF CANNABIS IS ILLEGAL UNDER FEDERAL LAW . THEN WHY DOES THE IRS WANT OVER 2+ MILLION FROM ONE . THEY PAID 2 MILLION TO THE STATE . IF THEY TAKE THE MONEY . DOES IT MEAN CANNABIS IS LEGAL . DAMN SORRY FOR THE CAPITOL LETTERS .

http://cannabisculture.com/v2/conte...al-Cannabis-Club-Owes-IRS-Millions-Back-Taxes

 

houston astos baseball play arrested in florida for a small amount of marijuana . THEY SEIZED HIS LAND ROVER TO SELL . WHO'S THE CRIMINAL ?

http://cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/10/06/MLB-Player-Arrested-Marijuana-Peanut-Butter-Cups

 

big bad mean feds are going to arrest you if you go out of the country and smoke some cannabis .

Congress Set to Escalate War on Drugs, Despite Decades of Failure and Unaffordable Price Tag

By Drug Policy Alliance - Thursday, October 6 2011 Tags:

• Headline News
• congress
• DRUG WAR
• international
• politics
• prohibition
• USA

Bills being voted on in House Judiciary Committee tomorrow would criminalize new drugs, subject more Americans to mandatory minimum sentencing, and make it a crime to commit a drug offense in another country even if the offense is legal in that country.
Federal legislation that would criminalize possession and sales of chemical compounds found in products such as "K2," "Spice," and "bath salts" will be voted on in the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow and is expected to pass. It has already passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, so the next step would be the full House. Similar legislation is sailing through the Senate.
The Judiciary Committee is also considering legislation tomorrow that makes it a federal crime to plan to commit a drug offense in another country that would be illegal if it was actually committed in the U.S. – even if the offense is actually legal in the other country.
Both bills would subject more Americans to mandatory minimum sentencing and increase prison expenses that taxpayers have to pay -- at a time when members of Congress are cutting drug education, treatment and prevention citing the need to reduce federal expenses.
"Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, it hasn't worked for marijuana, and it's not going to work for synthetic drugs," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Policymakers have two choices – continue with prohibition and hand more drugs over to organized crime to profit from and fill U.S. jails with even more non-violent offenders, or regulate these drugs to protect both public health and safety. Instead of continuing to do what doesn't work, policymakers should try something new for once."

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Provoked by extensive media coverage of several tragic events involving young people who allegedly consumed a synthetic drug, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have passed laws criminalizing synthetic drugs. In November 2010, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), acting in accordance with its emergency scheduling authority, temporarily added several chemical compounds found in synthetic marijuana products into Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Federal lawmakers are now weighing whether to permanently place many of the chemical compounds found in synthetic drug products under Schedule I. Drug policy reform advocates point out that prohibiting a substance creates a lucrative illicit market that benefits organized crime, and that a more safe and effective approach would be to strictly regulate these drugs so that the federal government can control potency and establish age controls to keep the drugs out of the hands of young people.
In 2009, advocates persuaded legislators in Maryland to pass legislation that regulates and taxes Salvia, another drug that many states have criminalized in recent years.
A second bill under consideration would authorize U.S. criminal prosecution of anyone in the U.S. suspected of conspiring with one or more persons, or aiding or abetting one or more persons, to commit at any place outside the United States an act that would constitute a violation of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act if committed within the United States. These penalties apply even if the controlled substance is legal or semi-legal under some circumstances in the other country. An American treatment provider working with doctors in England, Denmark, Germany, or Switzerland to provide heroin-assisted treatment and sterile syringes to heroin users in those countries could face arrest. So could an otherwise law-abiding American planning with some friends to use marijuana in the Netherlands while on vacation there.
Even when applied against drug traffickers, the conspiracy will would likely perpetuate injustice. Under U.S. drug conspiracy laws a person can be found guilty even when there are no drugs or other physical evidence involved. The uncorroborated word of someone pointing fingers to get a reduced sentence is all it takes. Moreover anyone convicted of being part of a drug conspiracy is punished not for the offense they actually committed but for all the offenses committed by members in the conspiracy. This has led to very low-level, impoverished, first-time offenders receiving mandatory minimum sentences that are decades long. Conspiracy laws drive the so-called "girlfriend problem" whereby too many women are sentenced to harsh sentences for the crimes of their abusive partners.
"The war on drugs has proven time and time again to be a war on families and communities, especially communities of color," said Piper. "The U.S. can't incarcerate its way out of its drug problems and should stop trying. The only way out of the drug war mess is to start treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue."
"Even as legislators increasingly embrace drug policy reforms, the knee-jerk criminalization of these drugs demonstrates that elected officials still tend to prohibit first, and ask questions later," said Grant Smith, federal policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Outright criminalization would only drive the demand for these drugs to the black market, which provides no age restrictions or other regulatory controls. Product labeling requirements, as well as marketing, branding and retail display restrictions, are proven to reduce youth access to tobacco products and impulse tobacco purchases among adults. This approach is working for tobacco, a far more harmful drug that has contributed to more deaths than alcohol and illicit drugs combined. As a result of education initiatives and age restrictions, tobacco use has declined dramatically over time despite its legality for adults


i don't know about anyone else . but this sounds crazy to me .

 

they actually did it . you better vote LAMAR SMITH out off office texas . this is crazy and this goverment is going to do bad things . they want tax money from disparies . so why are'nt they being charged with a crime ?



U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill

By Radley Balko, The Huffington Post - Friday, October 7 2011 Tags:

• Headline News
• DRUG WAR
• international
• politics
• prohibition
• USA

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) -- even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they're carried out.
The new law, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the CSA, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication.
"Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country's drug laws. "The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you're there wouldn't be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime."
The law could also potentially affect academics and medical professionals. For example, a U.S. doctor who works with overseas doctors or government officials on needle exchange programs could be subject to criminal prosecution. A U.S. resident who advises someone in another country on how to grow marijuana or how to run a medical marijuana dispensary would also be in violation of the new law, even if medical marijuana is legal in the country where the recipient of the advice resides. If interpreted broadly enough, a prosecutor could possibly even charge doctors, academics and policymakers from contributing their expertise to additional experiments like the drug decriminalization project Portugal, which has successfully reduced drug crime, addiction and overdose deaths.

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The Controlled Substances Act also regulates the distribution of prescription drugs, so something as simple as emailing a friend vacationing in Tiajuana some suggestions on where to buy prescription medication over the counter could subject a U.S. resident to criminal prosecution. "It could even be something like advising them where to buy cold medicine overseas that they'd have to show I.D. to get here in the U.S.," Piper says.
Civil libertarian attorney and author Harvey Silverglate says the bill raises several concerns. "Just when you think you can't get any more cynical, a bill like this comes along. I mean, it just sounds like an abomination. First, there's no intuitive reason for an American to think that planning an activity that's perfectly legal in another country would have any effect on America," Silverglate says. "So we're getting further away from the common law tradition that laws should be intuitive, and should include a mens rea component. Second, this is just an act of shameless cultural and legal imperialism. It's just outrageous."
Conspiracy laws in general are problematic when applied to the drug war. They give prosecutors extraordinary discretion to charge minor players, such as girlfriends or young siblings, with the crimes committed by major drug distributors. They're also easier convictions to win, and can allow prosecutors to navigate around restrictions like statutes of limitations, so long as the old offense can be loosely linked to a newer one. The Smith bill would expand those powers. Under the Amsterdam wedding scenario, anyone who participated in the planning of the wedding with knowledge of the planned pot purchase would be guilty of conspiracy, even if their particular role was limited to buying flowers or booking the hotel.
The law is a reaction to a 2007 case in which the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals threw out the convictions of two men who planned the transfer of cocaine from a Colombian drug cartel to a Saudi prince for distribution in Europe. Though the men planned the transaction from Miami, the court found that because the cocaine never reached the U.S. and was never intended to reach the U.S., the men hadn't committed any crime against the United States.
But the Smith bill goes farther than necessary to address that outcome in that case. "They could have limited this law to prohibiting the planning of activities that are illegal in the countries where they take place," Piper says. "That would have allowed them to convict the guys in the Miami case. There was an amendment proposed to do that and it was voted down on party lines. They intentionally made sure the bill includes activities that legal in other countries. Which means this is an attempt to apply U.S. law all over the globe."
It wouldn't be the first time. Over the last several years, a number of executives from online gambling companies have been arrested in U.S. airports and charged with felony violations of U.S. gambling, racketeering and money laundering laws, even though the executives were citizens of and the companies were incorporated in countries where online gambling is legal.
Last May, one U.S. citizen saw how the police can apply in reverse. Joe Gordon, a native of Thailand who has lived in America for 30 years, was arrested while visiting his native country for violating Thailand's lèse-majesté law, which bans criticism of the Thai royal family. Gordon had posted a link on his blog to a biography of Thailand's king that has been banned in Thailand.
In recent years, officials have also attempted to impose U.S. white collar crime policies on other countries as well, such as pressuring Switzerland to soften it's privacy laws to help American officials to catch tax cheats and money launderers.
But Silverglate says the Smith bill breaks new ground. "I'm horrified by the pressure on Switzerland, and that's probably the libertarian in me, but at least there you have an argument that there's an American interest at stake. Here, I don't see any interest other than to a desire to impose our moral and cultural preferences on the rest of the world."

 

damn mad and did'nt check my spelling it's dispenaries .

 

« Federal Government Announces Escalation Of Its War On Cannabis

Feds Keep Fooling Around With Medical Marijuana: Full Cannabis Legalization or Bust!

October 8th, 2011 By: Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director
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It’s getting ugly and NORML needs your help now more than ever to stand up for the rights of responsible adults cannabis consumers. The Administration that promised to base drug policy on science and respect state marijuana laws is ignoring medical facts, the needs of patients, and the economic benefits that regulated dispensaries bring to medical cannabis-friendly states.
There is no way to sugar coat the terrible past two weeks we’ve had at the hands of Prohibition-loving federal and state governments.
Yesterday, the four U.S. Attorneys from California–along with their respective counterparts here in Washington D.C. from the DEA and IRS–declared that a statewide crackdown against large-scale medical cannabis cultivators and sellers with national implications is currently underway.
Question: Will U.S. Attorneys in the other fifteen states and D.C. with medical cannabis laws pursue similarly aggressive enforcement?
But wait! There’s more. Much more.

• Earlier this week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a long-awaited $2.5 million ruling against a major medical cannabis dispensary in California. Citing an obscure part of the US tax code meant to target drug cartels, the federal agency is barring dispensaries, even those licensed under state law, from taking any business-related tax deductions and is seeking millions in dollars in back taxes.
  This adverse ruling has the very real potential to stop the regulated sale of cannabis currently underway in California, Colorado, Maine and New Mexico; and planned in Arizona, Montana, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C
  
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) issued a heavy-handed one-page memo to every gun and ammunition dealer nationwide informing them that they must, by law, deny sales to lawful patients who possess a physician’s recommendation to use medical cannabis–many of whom posses state-issues medical cannabis ID cards–effectively denying their Second Amendment rights to have a gun to hunt or for personal safety.
• Federal regulators cracked down on banks in Colorado, California and Michigan that had previously conduct business with medical cannabis dispensaries, forbidding these financial institutions from allowing cash deposits or processing credit/debit cards from state or locally approved canna-businesses.
• U.S. Attorneys in California sent warnings to local dispensaries in San Francisco, San Diego, and elsewhere warning that locally compliant facilities still may be subject to federal prosecution for violating federal ‘drug free school zones’ legislation — leaving these facilities with no choice but to either move or close.
• Also, federal attorneys in California have sent hundreds of legal warnings to the landlords of properties that rent to medical cannabis businesses (retail, delivery, cultivation and testing) warning that their properties and assets are subject to swift civil forfeiture proceedings, and that they themselves may be subject to decades in prison. Is it likely that federal attorneys do the same in Colorado, New Mexico and Maine; and to the numerous gray area dispensaries in Oregon and Washington?
• Rhode Island’s governor Lincoln Chafee pulled the plug on the state’s nascent medical cannabis dispensary program, despite it having been previously approved 102 – 3 by the state legislature. Why? Governor Chafee cites recent memos from the Department of Justice threatening to federally prosecute employees involved in the state-licensed production or distribution of cannabis.
• Michigan courts, the legislature and the state’s Attorney General are steadily dissembling the state’s medical cannabis program, despite the law having passed with 63 percent public approval.

* * * *​

There are only two things to say after reading such an alarming list of recent setbacks to ending Cannabis Prohibition:

1. Rather than pour millions of dollars and human energy into creating a legally and politically contentious policy that allows some cannabis consumers who can obtain a physician’s recommendation to be immune from state (but not federal) prosecution during a time of general Cannabis Prohibition, all cannabis consumers, patients, cultivators and sellers and their families should focus their full attention and resources to once and for all legalizing cannabis for all responsible adult consumers.
2. Make a donation to NORML now, join a local NORML chapter (there are nearly 200 of them nationwide!) today or purchase a NORML-related product and show the country that you support ending Cannabis Prohibition in our lifetime.

​

Everyone at NORML has known that 2012 was going to be the busiest year in our 40-year civil rights efforts to legalize marijuana.
…However, with the Obama Administration’s new and aggressive assertion of federal primacy over states and cities that have crafted superior, public-endorsed, free market-oriented public policies, we’re now assured long and difficult political and legal battles in the coming year with a federal government that still does not ‘get it’ regarding the public’s desire to retire the 74-year-old Cannabis Prohibition right next to the last ‘great social experiment’, Alcohol Prohibition.
Anticipating yesterday’s federal actions in California, members of the NORML Legal Committee (NLC), a nationwide network of over 600 lawyers, is already organizing and poised to challenge federal and state governments who seek to kill patients’ access to medical cannabis and to defend citizens egregiously charged by their own government for law violations.
If you watched the three-part PBS series this week on Alcohol Prohibition, it is impossible not to draw similarities to the absurdity of alcohol’s prohibition to that of the ongoing, heavy-handed criminalization of cannabis, and that ultimately only politically organized citizens came to end the federal government’s folly by putting sufficient legal and political pressure on their elected policymakers.
Our generation must do the same to end our nation’s long-suffering Cannabis Prohibition.
Get (More) Active. Donate now. Be NORML. Every contribution helps.
Thanks for caring and sharing,
Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML
Washington, DC
director@norml.org

 

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...es-industrial-hemp-pregnant-inmate-bills.html

The latest on California politics and government

October 9, 2011

Jerry Brown vetoes industrial hemp, pregnant inmate bills

Gov. Jerry Brown today vetoed legislation that would have permitted the cultivation of industrial hemp in California, though the Democratic governor didn't seem happy about it.

Senate Bill 676, by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have created an eight-year, pilot program for the cultivation of industrial hemp in Imperial, Kern, Kings and San Joaquin counties.
In a veto message, Brown said federal law considers industrial hemp to be a regulated, controlled substance, and that failure to obtain a federal permit would subject California farmers to federal prosecution.
"Although I am not signing this measure, I do support a change in federal law," Brown said in a veto message. "Products made from hemp - clothes, food, and bath products - are legally sold in California every day. It is absurd that hemp is being imported into the state, but our farmers cannot grow it."
Brown also vetoed Assembly Bill 568, by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, which would have prohibited prison guards from shackling pregnant inmates unless necessary.
"At first blush, I was inclined to sign this bill because it certainly seems inappropriate to shackle a pregnant inmate unless absolutely necessary," Brown said in a veto message. "However, the language of this measure goes too far, prohibiting not only shackling, but also the use of handcuffs or restraints of any kind except under ill-defined circumstances."


Categories: Bills (2011-2012 session) , Gov. Jerry Brown




Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...hemp-pregnant-inmate-bills.html#ixzz1aPFoP77V​

 

Know Your Rights



by Ed Rosenthal - Tuesday, October 11 2011
Tags:

• civil rights
• Ed Rosenthal
• police
• USA

Recently I discovered this video footage that I feel obligated to share with my fellow citizens.
This is a video of routine traffic stop. At the start of the video the police officer approaches the car to inform the driver that his license had come back clear and that he would not be writing him a red light ticket. The officer proceeds to bring up a previous minor marijuana collar and asks the driver if he can search his car. When the driver responds “Not without a warrant, it is here that the officer loses it.
Note however: despite the despicable and childish language hurled by the police officer he had no choice but to get in his car and drive away. You are not subject to unreasonable search! If an officer does not have probable cause, you do not have to consent to a search of property or person. If you are ever unsure of your rights do the right thing and ASK FOR A LAWYER! Don’t let anyone with or without a badge to take away your rights!

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here's the video . it did'nt come out for some reason . this will shock you .
http://cannabisculture.com/v2/node/28642

 

support up . http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...r-legalizing-pot-hits-all-time-high?GT1=43001

 

please go to should cannabis be legal thread and watch some vidoes . i put some very good info there . and the damn hempconcrete house man do it want to build 1 .