Showing posts with label medical marijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical marijuana. Show all posts
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Truth In Trials Act, Medical Marijuana Protection Bill, Proposed By Bipartisan Group Of Lawmakers
The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing Posted: 07/18/2012
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a bill this week designed to create enhanced legal protections for valid medical marijuana patients prosecuted due to conflicting state and federal laws regarding the legality of the substance.
Under the Truth In Trials Act, sponsored by California Democratic Rep. Sam Farr and co-sponsored by other representatives such as Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), state-licensed medical marijuana users would be given the right to provide an "affirmative defense" in the case of a federal prosecution. This effectively allows them to prove that their actions, while illegal at the federal level, were in fact protected under state law.
"Any person facing prosecution or a proceeding for any marijuana-related offense under any federal law shall have the right to introduce evidence demonstrating that the marijuana-related activities for which the person stands accused were performed in compliance with state law regarding the medical use of marijuana, or that the property which is subject to a proceeding was possessed in compliance with state law regarding the medical use of marijuana," the bill reads.
The legislation also lays out specific language stating that cannabis plants grown legally under state law may not be seized. Under the legislation, marijuana and other property confiscated in the process of a prosecution must also be maintained -- not destroyed -- and returned to the defendant if they are able to prove it was for a use accepted by the state.
The latest version of the Truth In Trials Act comes as federal crackdowns on dispensaries in medical marijuana states continue to surge. Last week, federal officials targeted one of the nation's largest pot shops. The Associated Press reported:
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a bill this week designed to create enhanced legal protections for valid medical marijuana patients prosecuted due to conflicting state and federal laws regarding the legality of the substance.
Under the Truth In Trials Act, sponsored by California Democratic Rep. Sam Farr and co-sponsored by other representatives such as Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), state-licensed medical marijuana users would be given the right to provide an "affirmative defense" in the case of a federal prosecution. This effectively allows them to prove that their actions, while illegal at the federal level, were in fact protected under state law.
"Any person facing prosecution or a proceeding for any marijuana-related offense under any federal law shall have the right to introduce evidence demonstrating that the marijuana-related activities for which the person stands accused were performed in compliance with state law regarding the medical use of marijuana, or that the property which is subject to a proceeding was possessed in compliance with state law regarding the medical use of marijuana," the bill reads.
The legislation also lays out specific language stating that cannabis plants grown legally under state law may not be seized. Under the legislation, marijuana and other property confiscated in the process of a prosecution must also be maintained -- not destroyed -- and returned to the defendant if they are able to prove it was for a use accepted by the state.
The latest version of the Truth In Trials Act comes as federal crackdowns on dispensaries in medical marijuana states continue to surge. Last week, federal officials targeted one of the nation's largest pot shops. The Associated Press reported:
U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag has threatened to seize the Oakland property where Harborside Health Center has operated since 2006, as well as its sister shop in San Jose, executive director and co-founder Steve DeAngelo said Wednesday. His employees found court papers announcing asset forfeiture proceedings against Harborside's landlords taped to the doors at the two locations on Tuesday.Read more relevant text from the bill below:
(a) Any person facing prosecution or a proceeding for any marijuana-related offense under any Federal law shall have the right to introduce evidence demonstrating that the marijuana-related activities for which the person stands accused were performed in compliance with State law regarding the medical use of marijuana, or that the property which is subject to a proceeding was possessed in compliance with State law regarding the medical use of marijuana.
`(b)(1) It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution or proceeding under any Federal law for marijuana-related activities, which the proponent must establish by a preponderance of the evidence, that those activities comply with State law regarding the medical use of marijuana.
`(2) In a prosecution or a proceeding for a marijuana-related offense under any Federal criminal law, should a finder of fact determine, based on State law regarding the medical use of marijuana, that a defendant's marijuana-related activity was performed primarily, but not exclusively, for medical purposes, the defendant may be found guilty of an offense only corresponding to the amount of marijuana determined to be for nonmedical purposes.
`(c) Any property seized in connection with a prosecution or proceeding to which this section applies, with respect to which a person successfully makes a defense under this section, shall be returned to the owner not later than 10 days after the court finds the defense is valid, minus such material necessarily destroyed for testing purposes.
`(d) Any marijuana seized under any Federal law shall be retained and not destroyed pending resolution of any forfeiture claim, if not later than 30 days after seizure the owner of the property notifies the Attorney General, or a duly authorized agent of the Attorney General, that a person with an ownership interest in the property is asserting an affirmative defense for the medical use of marijuana.
`(e) No plant may be seized under any Federal law otherwise permitting such seizure if the plant is being grown or stored pursuant to a recommendation by a physician or an order of a State or municipal agency in accordance with State law regarding the medical use of marijuana.
`(f) In this section, the term State includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and any other territory or possession of the United States.'
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Government-sponsored study destroys DEA’s classification of marijuana
By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
While numerous prior studies have shown marijuana’s usefulness for a host of medical conditions, none have ever gone directly at the DEA’s placement of marijuana atop the schedule of controlled substances. This study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, does precisely that, driving a stake into the heart of America’s continued war on marijuana users by calling the Schedule I placement simply “not accurate” and “not tenable.”
Reacting to the study, Paul Armentano, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told Raw Story that the study clearly proves U.S. drug policy “is neither based upon nor guided by science.”
“In fact, it is hostile to science,” he said. “And despite the Obama Administration’s well publicized 2009 memo stating, ‘Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration,’ there is little to no evidence indicating that the federal government’s ‘See no evil; hear no evil’ approach to cannabis policy is not changing any time soon.”
Schedule I is supposedly reserved for the most inebriating substances that have no medical value, like LSD, ecstasy, peyote and heroin. As the DEA describes it: “Drugs listed in schedule I have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and, therefore, may not be prescribed, administered, or dispensed for medical use. In contrast, drugs listed in schedules II-V have some accepted medical use and may be prescribed, administered, or dispensed for medical use.”
And that’s the problem, the study’s authors portend.
“The classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug as well as the continuing controversy as to whether or not cannabis is of medical value are obstacles to medical progress in this area,” they wrote. “Based on evidence currently available, the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. It is true cannabis has some abuse potential, but its profile more closely resembles drugs in Schedule III (where codeine and dronabinol are listed). The continuing conflict between scientific evidence and political ideology will hopefully be reconciled in a judicious manner.”
They add that their evidence showed marijuana reliably reduced chronic neuropathic pain and muscle spasticity due to multiple sclerosis versus trials where a placebo was used. They also specifically tested marijuana’s effects when smoked, calling the delivery method “rapid and efficient” but noting that vaporization is a better choice because it produces less carbon monoxide.
The study adds that, like all medicines, there are negative side effects associated with marijuana, such as dizziness, fatigue, lightheadedness, muscle weakness and pain and heart palpitations — all of which can pose a risk in some chronic pain patients with co-occurring conditions like cardiovascular disease or substance abuse disorders. However, they call these side effects “dose-related” and “of mild to moderate severity,” adding that they “appear to decline over time, and are reported less frequently in experienced than in naïve users.”
Researchers also noted that “fatal overdose with cannabis alone has not been reported.”
Authors additionally found that marijuana does cause withdrawal symptoms within 12 hours of use, noting the symptoms are mild in experienced users and typically abate within 72 hours. They added that ingesting marijuana “can acutely impair skills required to drive motor vehicles,” but noted that the data on marijuana and traffic accidents is “inconclusive.”
Ultimately, they concluded that more clinical trials are needed to determine which individual components of the marijuana plant are causing the medicinal effects, and whether the plant can be used to treat a host of other ailments.
“Medical marijuana is mostly used for chronic pain, and has enabled countless patients to either reduce or eliminate their pharmaceutical drug regimen,” Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), one of the nation’s leading medical marijuana advocacy groups, told Raw Story. “However, it can also be used for: arthritis, nausea or as an appetite stimulant for people living with HIV/AIDS or cancer, gastrointestinal disorders, and movement disorders (not just for people with multiple sclerosis). That is only a sampling of health conditions for which cannabis has been found helpful in alleviating symptoms. Other health conditions include: [post-traumatic stress disorder], [attention deficit disorder], [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and other mental health conditions, glaucoma, and migraines.”
In hopes of forcing recognition of marijuana’s medical value, ASA sued the federal government last year after a long-running appeal for the reclassification of marijuana was shot down nearly a decade after it was filed. That case should go before the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit later this year.
“The federal government’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” ASA chief counsel Joe Elford said in an advisory. “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.”
“Reform advocates can and should use this study to show their congressional representatives that our country’s leading medical marijuana researchers agree that it should be reclassified,” Hermes added. “…This certainly should also have a bearing on the D.C. Circuit’s deliberations in the appeal of the rescheduling petition denial.”
Medical marijuana is currently legal in just 17 states and Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The 3 Worst Arguments for Legalizing Marijuana
Hey kids, don't make these rookie mistakes!
Mike Riggs | March 23, 2012
When Gallup first asked Americans how they felt about marijuana in 1969, only 12 percent of respondents favored the legalization of weed. That number has increased steadily with each passing decade, and in October 2011, Gallup reported that 50 percent of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, the country’s most popular illicit drug.
The shift in popular opinion reflects not just decades of scientific research showing that marijuana is safer than both alcohol and harder drugs (including many prescription pills and cigarettes), but also the savvy PR efforts of drug reform wonks and activists. When even conservative Christians such as The 700 Club's Pat Robertson are calling for legalizing pot, you know that the war on the War on Drugs is not just winnable, but practically over.
But that doesn't mean all arguments in favor of legalization are equally good, effective, or factual. Here are the three weakest arguments for legalizing marijuana. As you work to convince the shrinking ranks of drug prohibitionists - we're looking at you, Mr. President! - don't make these rookie mistakes when arguing for changing the legal status of cannabis.
3. Legalizing Marijuana Will End Cartel Violence in Northern Mexico
The election of Mexican President Felipe Calderon in 2006 ushered in a new era of prohibition-fueled drug violence. Six years and 50,000 drug-war deaths later, the argument that repealing marijuana prohibition could stem the violence in Mexico and along the U.S. border is ubiquitous. The claim was a major selling point for Proposition 19 in California, which would have legalized marijuana and subjected its sale to taxation and regulation, and has been made repeatedly by drug reform advocates in the two years since.
“We have created an illegal marketplace with such mind-boggling profits that no enforcement measures will ever overcome the motivation, resources and determination of the cartels,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Washington Times. Legalizing pot, he added, would deny the cartels “their largest profit center and dramatically reduce not only the role of the United States in their business plans, but also the motivation for waging war along our southern border.”
But there are objections to that claim. In October 2010, the RAND Corporation released a study saying that Mexican cartels derived only 16 percent of their revenue from marijuana. (As pointed out by NORML, that number conflicted with the ONDCP's estimate that 61 percent of cartel revenue comes from marijuana.)
In June 2011, Mexico analyst Sylvia Longmire argued that cartels have diversified to the point that legalizing marijuana might dent their war chests, but it won’t stop them; they’d still make money stealing oil from pipelines, pirating and selling contraband intellectual property, extorting small businesses, bribing politicians, ransoming kidnap victims, manufacturing and moving harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and meth, and trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex workers.
In 2011, David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, emailed me with objections to Longmire’s argument: “Some of the other criminal enterprises that cartels are involved in (enterprises they've been able to enter because of having drug cash and organizations built by drug cash) are less straightforwardly tied to demand, such as kidnapping for ransom, but they have their limits—for all we know they are already doing as much of those things as they think could be sustained, and the more profit they continue to make from drugs, the more money they are going to invest in all kinds of enterprises, both illicit and licit.”
“Will the cartels vanish from the face of the earth because of marijuana legalization?" Borden continued. "Probably not. Would even full legalization of all drugs accomplish that? Unclear.”
That lack of clarity is exactly why marijuana reformers should be careful when promising what legalizing pot can and can’t do for Mexico. The war on drugs has weakened the country’s political institutions, corrupted its military and police forces, and devastated its economy. While pot legalization in the U.S. would allow users to divest from the cartels' brutality, pitching marijuana legalization as anything other than a baby step toward peace and stability in Mexico puts drug reformers on tenuous grounds.
2. Marijuana Should Be Taxed and Regulated Because It Is America’s Largest Cash Crop
In 2006, ABC News reported that with “a value of $35.8 billion, marijuana exceeds the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion).” That number came from a report published by Jon Gettman, director of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis. Gettman arrived at this figure by multiplying the estimated number of metric tons of marijuana cultivated in the U.S. in 2005 (10,000 tons, or 20 million pounds) by a production value of $1,600 per pound.
Drug law reformers claimed Gettman’s report was evidence that eradication and enforcement efforts had failed. In the intervening years, however, the statistic has been used to make the case that taxing and regulating marijuana would solve many of America’s fiscal woes. The former argument is a sound one, the latter is not.
Here’s why: Gettman’s estimate of $1,600 per pound was conservative when compared to law enforcement agencies, which in 2005 cited the street value of marijuana at between $2,000 and $4,000 a pound. Marijuana cultivated in a post-prohibition market, however, would cost a fraction of that.
“To get a sense of the disparity in price between legal and illegal drugs,” Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote in 2007, “compare the production value of marijuana—about $1,600 per pound, by Gettman’s estimate—to the production value of tobacco, a legal psychoactive weed that U.S. farmers sell for less than $2 per pound.”
Let’s go back to 2005, make marijuana legal, and give it an astronomically high production value of $800 per pound, or half of Gettman’s black market estimate: It would have tied with soy beans in 2006 as America’s third largest cash crop, with an average production value of roughly $17 billion. If it had the same production value per pound as tobacco, or $2, its APV in 2005 would have been $44 million; or less than 10 percent of beans, 2005’s 20th most valuable cash crop.
So while pointing to marijuana as America’s largest cash crop is a good indicator of its popularity (and arguably, the safety of its use), it doesn’t follow that taxation and regulation of the drug in a post-prohibition market would be an unlimited boon to government coffers, especially when factoring in the costs of an aggressive regulatory framework.
1.) Marijuana Should Be Legal Because It’s Medicine
There’s no question that marijuana eases pain, stimulates the appetite, reduces nausea, and helps with a slew of other physical and psychological ailments. There is some question, however, as to whether promoting it as medicine is the best political strategy for making it fully available as a recreational drug.
Earlier this year, NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre wrote a searing critique of the medical marijuana strategy.
“If this were the 1920s, advocacy of today's ‘medical’ cannabis industry would sound like a lawyer back then fronting for the legal sellers of ‘prescription’ alcohol during Prohibition. Prescriptive alcohol was a sham then, and the ‘medical’ cannabis industry (not medical cannabis itself) is largely a sham now.”
“Cannabis consumers," he continued, "who NORML represents, want good, affordable cannabis products without having to go through the insult and expense of ‘qualifying’ as a ‘medical’ patient by paying physicians and/or the state for some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. How intellectually honest is all of this?”
One response is that successful medical marijuana ballot initiatives protect people who use marijuana for genuine medical reasons from harassment and imprisonment. But the problems with those laws--such as who counts as a caregiver, and the number of prescriptions given to people who are using it recreationally--don’t reflect well on the political acumen of drug law reformers.
Legislators and regulators are wising up and changing tactics. Because most states that currently have medical marijuana laws make the bulk of their sales to people with chronic pain—the only ailment eligible for medical marijuana that doctors can't test for, and thus the ailment most likely to be cited by recreational users looking for safe access—Washington, D.C. decided to omit chronic pain from its list of ailments that qualify for medical marijuana. In the District, only people with cancer or a terminal illness will be able to get medical pot. In Colorado, where legislators claim only 20 percent of marijuana sales are to people with "legitimate" illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, Crohn's disease, and MS, legislators are looking for ways to limit the number of recommendations doctors can write to the other 80 percent of users.
In short, while medical marijuana laws initially gave more users safe access, anti-pot legislators now seem to know that the best way to limit marijuana sales is to treat it exactly like advocates claim to want: as medicine subject to a strict and invasive regulatory prescription scheme.
When Gallup first asked Americans how they felt about marijuana in 1969, only 12 percent of respondents favored the legalization of weed. That number has increased steadily with each passing decade, and in October 2011, Gallup reported that 50 percent of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, the country’s most popular illicit drug.
The shift in popular opinion reflects not just decades of scientific research showing that marijuana is safer than both alcohol and harder drugs (including many prescription pills and cigarettes), but also the savvy PR efforts of drug reform wonks and activists. When even conservative Christians such as The 700 Club's Pat Robertson are calling for legalizing pot, you know that the war on the War on Drugs is not just winnable, but practically over.
But that doesn't mean all arguments in favor of legalization are equally good, effective, or factual. Here are the three weakest arguments for legalizing marijuana. As you work to convince the shrinking ranks of drug prohibitionists - we're looking at you, Mr. President! - don't make these rookie mistakes when arguing for changing the legal status of cannabis.
3. Legalizing Marijuana Will End Cartel Violence in Northern Mexico
The election of Mexican President Felipe Calderon in 2006 ushered in a new era of prohibition-fueled drug violence. Six years and 50,000 drug-war deaths later, the argument that repealing marijuana prohibition could stem the violence in Mexico and along the U.S. border is ubiquitous. The claim was a major selling point for Proposition 19 in California, which would have legalized marijuana and subjected its sale to taxation and regulation, and has been made repeatedly by drug reform advocates in the two years since.
“We have created an illegal marketplace with such mind-boggling profits that no enforcement measures will ever overcome the motivation, resources and determination of the cartels,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Washington Times. Legalizing pot, he added, would deny the cartels “their largest profit center and dramatically reduce not only the role of the United States in their business plans, but also the motivation for waging war along our southern border.”
But there are objections to that claim. In October 2010, the RAND Corporation released a study saying that Mexican cartels derived only 16 percent of their revenue from marijuana. (As pointed out by NORML, that number conflicted with the ONDCP's estimate that 61 percent of cartel revenue comes from marijuana.)
In June 2011, Mexico analyst Sylvia Longmire argued that cartels have diversified to the point that legalizing marijuana might dent their war chests, but it won’t stop them; they’d still make money stealing oil from pipelines, pirating and selling contraband intellectual property, extorting small businesses, bribing politicians, ransoming kidnap victims, manufacturing and moving harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and meth, and trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex workers.
In 2011, David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, emailed me with objections to Longmire’s argument: “Some of the other criminal enterprises that cartels are involved in (enterprises they've been able to enter because of having drug cash and organizations built by drug cash) are less straightforwardly tied to demand, such as kidnapping for ransom, but they have their limits—for all we know they are already doing as much of those things as they think could be sustained, and the more profit they continue to make from drugs, the more money they are going to invest in all kinds of enterprises, both illicit and licit.”
“Will the cartels vanish from the face of the earth because of marijuana legalization?" Borden continued. "Probably not. Would even full legalization of all drugs accomplish that? Unclear.”
That lack of clarity is exactly why marijuana reformers should be careful when promising what legalizing pot can and can’t do for Mexico. The war on drugs has weakened the country’s political institutions, corrupted its military and police forces, and devastated its economy. While pot legalization in the U.S. would allow users to divest from the cartels' brutality, pitching marijuana legalization as anything other than a baby step toward peace and stability in Mexico puts drug reformers on tenuous grounds.
2. Marijuana Should Be Taxed and Regulated Because It Is America’s Largest Cash Crop
In 2006, ABC News reported that with “a value of $35.8 billion, marijuana exceeds the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion).” That number came from a report published by Jon Gettman, director of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis. Gettman arrived at this figure by multiplying the estimated number of metric tons of marijuana cultivated in the U.S. in 2005 (10,000 tons, or 20 million pounds) by a production value of $1,600 per pound.
Drug law reformers claimed Gettman’s report was evidence that eradication and enforcement efforts had failed. In the intervening years, however, the statistic has been used to make the case that taxing and regulating marijuana would solve many of America’s fiscal woes. The former argument is a sound one, the latter is not.
Here’s why: Gettman’s estimate of $1,600 per pound was conservative when compared to law enforcement agencies, which in 2005 cited the street value of marijuana at between $2,000 and $4,000 a pound. Marijuana cultivated in a post-prohibition market, however, would cost a fraction of that.
“To get a sense of the disparity in price between legal and illegal drugs,” Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote in 2007, “compare the production value of marijuana—about $1,600 per pound, by Gettman’s estimate—to the production value of tobacco, a legal psychoactive weed that U.S. farmers sell for less than $2 per pound.”
Let’s go back to 2005, make marijuana legal, and give it an astronomically high production value of $800 per pound, or half of Gettman’s black market estimate: It would have tied with soy beans in 2006 as America’s third largest cash crop, with an average production value of roughly $17 billion. If it had the same production value per pound as tobacco, or $2, its APV in 2005 would have been $44 million; or less than 10 percent of beans, 2005’s 20th most valuable cash crop.
So while pointing to marijuana as America’s largest cash crop is a good indicator of its popularity (and arguably, the safety of its use), it doesn’t follow that taxation and regulation of the drug in a post-prohibition market would be an unlimited boon to government coffers, especially when factoring in the costs of an aggressive regulatory framework.
1.) Marijuana Should Be Legal Because It’s Medicine
There’s no question that marijuana eases pain, stimulates the appetite, reduces nausea, and helps with a slew of other physical and psychological ailments. There is some question, however, as to whether promoting it as medicine is the best political strategy for making it fully available as a recreational drug.
Earlier this year, NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre wrote a searing critique of the medical marijuana strategy.
“If this were the 1920s, advocacy of today's ‘medical’ cannabis industry would sound like a lawyer back then fronting for the legal sellers of ‘prescription’ alcohol during Prohibition. Prescriptive alcohol was a sham then, and the ‘medical’ cannabis industry (not medical cannabis itself) is largely a sham now.”
“Cannabis consumers," he continued, "who NORML represents, want good, affordable cannabis products without having to go through the insult and expense of ‘qualifying’ as a ‘medical’ patient by paying physicians and/or the state for some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. How intellectually honest is all of this?”
One response is that successful medical marijuana ballot initiatives protect people who use marijuana for genuine medical reasons from harassment and imprisonment. But the problems with those laws--such as who counts as a caregiver, and the number of prescriptions given to people who are using it recreationally--don’t reflect well on the political acumen of drug law reformers.
Legislators and regulators are wising up and changing tactics. Because most states that currently have medical marijuana laws make the bulk of their sales to people with chronic pain—the only ailment eligible for medical marijuana that doctors can't test for, and thus the ailment most likely to be cited by recreational users looking for safe access—Washington, D.C. decided to omit chronic pain from its list of ailments that qualify for medical marijuana. In the District, only people with cancer or a terminal illness will be able to get medical pot. In Colorado, where legislators claim only 20 percent of marijuana sales are to people with "legitimate" illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, Crohn's disease, and MS, legislators are looking for ways to limit the number of recommendations doctors can write to the other 80 percent of users.
In short, while medical marijuana laws initially gave more users safe access, anti-pot legislators now seem to know that the best way to limit marijuana sales is to treat it exactly like advocates claim to want: as medicine subject to a strict and invasive regulatory prescription scheme.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Corporation Aims To Co-Opt Medical Marijuana, Make Billions
I thought cannabis had no medicinal value whatsoever, according to the FDA...--jef
+++
By Steve Elliott
Monday, February 27, 2012
Health Freedom Alliance
Crushed Beneath the Medicine Wheel
By Kassy Fatooh
In a scheme they think capable of making billions, a US corporation not only plans to market a delivery system for medicinal cannabis, but also hopes to cut out small time farmers and private growers by introducing prohibitive protocols through state health departments.
In the course of following the medical story of myalgic encephalomyelitis, I've learned things I wish I didn't know about the big business of medicine, about government agencies charged with public health, and about Big Pharma's vendetta against alternative healing practices.
Our pain is their payday. Today's story is one of cold avarice.
The corporation is called MMDS: Medical Marijuana Delivery Systems LLC, marketing its medical cannabis delivery system through its "Medicine Wheel" subsidiary. They hold this patent for the Tetracan transdermal patch: like Nicoderm, but it delivers cannabinoids instead of nicotine.
"We don't know for sure," he said, "but a very reasonable possibility is that THC may actually interfere with the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."Nevertheless, MMDS is pushing the benefits of their transdermal patch as a healthier alternative to smoking, via its "Medicine Wheel Project."
Here is their business plan [PDF].
Page through it and you'll see some amazing things, like, yes, here are the billions, on page 12:
TOTAL GROSS REVENUE: $2,843,540,662Now, to make even more money by paying less than the usual costs of launching a pharmaceutical product, they're cleverly trying to play both sides of the game with government agencies, avoiding FDA requirements by representing the patch as an alternative therapy...
The TETRACAN™ Patch does not require U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval because it will be marketed as a holistic therapy in the same manner as Medical Marijuana is marketed and sold through Medical Marijuana Dispensaries across the United States. (Plan, page 7)...while simultaneously acting to keep marijuana's status different from any herb like basil that anybody could grow in their garden, or even a medicinal herb which patients could be licensed to grow, as it is now in Medical Marijuana states: MMDS plans to manipulate the law to further their monopoly beyond the patented patch and into growing rights. The Plan states, on lucky page 13,
"There are no Rules, Regulations or Protocols governing the manner in which Medical Marijuana is cultivated, harvested or processed in any of the Medical Marijuana States or the District of Columbia."Emphasis added because I'm aghast at the blatant intent to influence state health departments to serve corporate ends.
The Medicine Wheel Project LLC, an associate company of MMDS, plans to introduce Growing Protocols to State Health Departments as it begins to organize the Medical Marijuana Industry under one umbrella organization.
So that's where politics play a role. Remember the name Jim Alekson, from above? He's the principal in the patch company, and heads up many intriguingly related business ventures.
Here he is playing politics with a friendly article. Touting the jobs to be created by the medical marijuana industry, Medicine Wheel has been blogging up the UK cannabis movement, engaging in friendly chats on a UK forum, and Alekson got his blog reposted on the official website of single-issue, pro-cannabis UK political party CLEAR (formerly Cannabis Law Reform)
CLEAR leader Peter Reynolds appeared on the scene only recently, taking over the party with a massive vote of nearly 40 members, and changing its name and direction, while censoring and even ousting anyone who questioned his policies. More on that story can be read here and here.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, it could prove interesting to delve into the names and natures of politicians and perhaps tribal leaders supporting Alekson's scheme. Medicine Wheel is an interesting name for the project, with its mellow, First Nations overtones. But this Kimosabe Connection isn't the only business headed by Alekson. His interest in things tribal appears to extend beyond image, or even medicine. Spinning the wheels to make some deals...
For example, it's also about real estate develoment of tribal lands ...
...within the scope of his broader real estate goals as the Alekson Group ...
...plus, a huge contract to provide electricity to tribal lands ...
....within the broader scope of Energy Pointe Partners, which is yet another Alekson company...
...and if it's not enough of a monopoly to own a piece of politics, a patent, growing rights, land and energy, there are also the industrial scale hydroponic greenhouses mentioned on Alekson's profile at LinkedIn.
A friend suggested that all this might be empty scheming with no money behind it, but it seems from Alekson's creds on pages 40-49 of his stock offering that he really is accustomed to running with the big boys.
Let me repeat the big numbers quoted for the transdermal patch trade alone:
TOTAL GROSS REVENUE: $2,843,540,662Add real estate, greenhouse construction, energy supply and a growing monopoly, and potential profits are plenty motivation for all the behind-the-scenes political manipulation implied in corporate documents, and more.
None of this vast corporate empire is in the best interest of patients, of course, who typically suffer from the doings of Big Pharma --- not even Big Pharma in Alternative Medicine clothing is actually helpful to medical cannabis patients.
As it currently stands in a Medical Marijuana state like my own, patients can buy, carry and use medicinal cannabis and cultivate it for their own use, and it can also be grown by licensed farmers with an agreement to supply it only to licensed dispensaries. Patients here can obtain high quality, organic cannabis in a variety of strains specifically developed with high levels of the compounds that best address their specific pain, inflammation or other health issues, from a safe, state-licensed dispensary; or simply grow their own.
Everyone from the patients who require those varied strains to the growers who developed the strains, to the general public which is asked to criminalize actions because they run counter to corporate profit, everyone stands to lose, if Medicine Wheel gains its ends. Cannabis helps so many conditions from cancer to MS to Alzheimer's, plus is enjoyed by recreational users with far less danger than alcohol or cigarettes.
The battle against prohibition doesn't end with legally-grown medicinal cannabis, and it can only be set back further by interference from a multi-billion dollar patent medicine show. The ultimate objective of cannabis campaigning is to get cannabis beyond the medicine cabinet and into the mainstream as a healthy alternative to dangerous substances used socially and for relaxation, such as alcohol and cigarettes.
This could cost a lot of corporations a lot of money, but think what it would save taxpayers by abolishing the prosecution of all cannabis users. Some 20 million American citizens have been convicted of marijuana offenses since 1937. In 2005, alone, 800,000 Americans were arrested on pot charges, costing taxpayers over a billion dollars.
Now, whose pockets do we want to put a billion dollars into? Jim Alekson's, or the taxpayers'? And whom do we wish to see benefit from the health-giving properties of cannabis? Patients, or profiteers? We need to be vigilant, lest AgriCannaBusiness squeeze small farmers out of one more market, and lest patients be denied the right to grow our own few plants for personal use.
Note: since I first drafted this blog post, news has come out in Canada that shows the collusion of governments and corporations to keep cannabis profitable, as it's currently playing out in interpretation and enforcement of Canadian law:
Health Canada is now in the process of consulting with the marijuana community to reorganize the program, and has proposed eliminating personal production licences and setting up a system of large-scale commercial growers. Established medical marijuana dispensaries were not mentioned in the government's new plans.
Even if you get compassionate medical cannabis laws passed, the governments and corporations collude to make it impossible to grow your own or operate small growing operations that serve local dispensaries.
The result: cannabis is just more Agribusiness and Big Pharma.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Why is the Obama Administration Suddenly Fixated on Stomping out Medical Pot?
At the same time public support for marijuana legalization reached record highs, Obama shifted from one time medicinal cannabis sympathizer to White House weed-whacker.
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on February 8, 2012
Broken promises are nothing new in Washington, DC. Yet even by the Beltway’s jaded standards, President Obama’s role reversal from one time medicinal cannabis sympathizer to White House weed-whacker is remarkable.
Indeed, the man who once pledged on the campaign trail that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” has – since taking the Presidential oaths of office – done virtually everything in his administration’s power to do precisely that. Yet he's taken these steps at the very time that a record number of Americans, including 57 percent of democrats and a whopping 69 percent of self-described liberals, endorse doing just the opposite.
Nonetheless, in recent months, the Obama administration – via a virtual alphabet soup of federal agencies – has launched an unprecedented series of attacks against medical cannabis patients, providers, and in some cases even their advocates.
To review:
The Justice Department isn’t the only agency directly involved in the administration’s medical pot crackdown. Also over the past six months:
Most recently, and perhaps most egregiously, the DEA acknowledged that it was investigating a Montana state lawmaker for potentially conspiring to violate federal anti-marijuana laws. The lawmaker, Rep. Diane Sands – a Democrat from Billings, Montana – served as the chairwoman of a 2011 interim legislative committee that sought to enact statewide regulations governing the production and distribution of medical pot, which has been legal in the state since 2004. "Can you say McCarthy?” she told The Missoulian newspaper. “This sounds like stuff from the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. So once you talk about medical marijuana in reasonable terms, you're on some sort of list of possible conspirators. … It's ridiculous, of course, but it's also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject."
So has the Obama administration collectively lost its mind when it comes to the subject of medical cannabis? That certainly seems to be the case. But the bigger question still remains: Why now?
Speculation among reformers and the general public is widespread. Many activists contend that the administration's about face is due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which they surmise may be hoping to eliminate competition in the marketplace for their own forthcoming, soon-to-be FDA-approved cannabis-based drug.
Others believe that Obama’s crackdown is a Machiavellian attempt on the part of the President and his advisors to appeal to independent, conservative-leaning swing voters during an election year.
Still others argue that the recent attacks have little to do with President Obama at all. Instead, they believe the efforts of the DEA, DOJ, and other federal agencies are being coordinated primarily by drug war hawks within the administration, many of whom are holdovers from the George W. Bush regime, such as DEA administrator Michele Leonhart. Adding weight to this claim are recent statements from US Attorney Andre Birotte, who acknowledged that the DOJ’s recent activities were led by the federal prosecutors themselves and were not instigated by either President Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder – both of which are engaged in their own personal battles for political survival and, as a result, are unlikely to expend even a shred of political capital to halt the efforts of the administration’s more ardent drug warriors.
There may be a grain of truth in all of the above theories. But perhaps the greatest underlying motivator for the administration’s sudden and severe crackdown on medical marijuana providers and patients is its desire to preserve America’s longstanding criminalization of cannabis for everyone else. There is little doubt that the rapid rise of the medical marijuana industry and the legal commerce inherent to it is arguably the single biggest threat to federal cannabis prohibition. Just look at the poll numbers. According to Gallup, in 1996 – when California became the first state to allow for the legally sanctioned use of cannabis therapy – only 25 percent of Americans backed legalizing marijuana for all adults. (Seventy-three percent of respondents at that time said they opposed the idea.) Fast forward to 2011. Today, a record high 50 percent of Americans support legalizing the plant outright and only 46 percent of respondents oppose doing so. It’s this rapid rise in the public’s support for overall legalization that no doubt has the Obama administration, and the majority of America’s elected officials, running scared.
While the passage and enactment of statewide medical marijuana laws – 16 states and the District of Columbia now have laws recognizing marijuana’s therapeutic use on the books – is not solely driving the public’s shift in support for broader legalization, it is arguably a major factor. Why? The answer is simple. Tens of millions of Americans residing in these states are learning, first hand, that they can coexist with marijuana being legal! And that is the lesson the federal government fears most.
In states like California and Colorado, voters have largely become accustomed to the reality that there can be safe, secure, well-run businesses that deliver consistent, reliable, tested cannabis products. They have come to understand that well-regulated cannabis dispensaries can revitalize sagging economies, provide jobs, and contribute taxes to budget-starved localities. Most importantly, the public in these states and others are finally realizing that all the years of scaremongering by the government about what would happen if marijuana were legal, even for sick people, was nothing but hysterical propaganda. As a result, a majority of American voters are now for the first time asking their federal officials: ‘Why we don’t just legalize marijuana for everyone in a similarly responsible manner?’
That is a question the President remains unable and unwilling to answer. And the administration appears willing to go to any lengths to avoid it.
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on February 8, 2012
Broken promises are nothing new in Washington, DC. Yet even by the Beltway’s jaded standards, President Obama’s role reversal from one time medicinal cannabis sympathizer to White House weed-whacker is remarkable.
Indeed, the man who once pledged on the campaign trail that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” has – since taking the Presidential oaths of office – done virtually everything in his administration’s power to do precisely that. Yet he's taken these steps at the very time that a record number of Americans, including 57 percent of democrats and a whopping 69 percent of self-described liberals, endorse doing just the opposite.
Nonetheless, in recent months, the Obama administration – via a virtual alphabet soup of federal agencies – has launched an unprecedented series of attacks against medical cannabis patients, providers, and in some cases even their advocates.
To review:
-- Deputy Attorney General James Cole, along with the four US Attorneys from California, has ramped up federal efforts to close or displace several hundreds of medical cannabis providers in California. Their tactics have included: raiding specific dispensaries and prosecuting their owners; filing civil forfeiture proceedings against landlords who rent their property to medical marijuana providers; threatening to federally prosecute newspapers and radio stations who accept ad revenue from medical cannabis operations; and, most recently, intimidating local lawmakers who have either enacted or are publicly supportive of cannabis oversight regulations. Speaking with radio station KQED San Francisco last month, Tommy LaNier – Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Marijuana Initiative – boasted about the administration’s efforts to strong-arm local officials, stating "[We] have ... advised those places where they're trying to regulate marijuana -- which is illegal under the Control Substances Act -- (that) they cannot do that.”
-- In Colorado, United States Attorney John Walsh has sent letters to owners of dozens of the Centennial State’s medical cannabis facilities stating, "Action will be taken to seize and forfeit their property" if they do not cease their operations. Unlike similarly targeted dispensaries in California, the operations on Walsh’s hit list are explicitly licensed by the state and thus fully compliant with state law – a fact that Walsh’s letters readily acknowledge but appear content to ignore. "This ... constitutes formal notice that action will be taken to seize and forfeit (your) property if you do not cause the sale and/or distribution of marijuana and marijuana-infused substances at (this) location to be discontinued,” they state. “[T]he Department of Justice has the authority to enforce federal law even when such activities may be permitted under state law.” Ironically, the Justice Department’s letters arrived just weeks after US Attorney General Eric Holder publicly told (read: lied to) Colorado Congressman Jared Polis, an ardent supporter of the medicinal cannabis industry, that that the federal government would only target medical cannabis operators that "use marijuana in a way that's not consistent with the state statute."
-- But the Obama Justice Department isn’t only sending letters to cannabis dispensaries owners and their landlords. Last year, the DOJ also mailed letters to numerous state lawmakers, including the Governors of Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as they were debating legislation to allow for the licensed distribution of medical cannabis. The letters threatened federal prosecution for those involved with said efforts – including, in some cases, state civil servants – if the measures went forward. As a result, most didn’t.
The Justice Department isn’t the only agency directly involved in the administration’s medical pot crackdown. Also over the past six months:
-- The IRS has assessed crippling penalties on tax-paying medical cannabis facilities in California by denying these operations from filing standard expense deductions;
-- The Department of Treasury has strong-armed local banks and other financial institutions into closing their accounts with medicinal marijuana operators. In Colorado, where the state’s estimated 700 licensed cannabis dispensaries are routinely subjected to state audits, there no longer remains even a single bank willing to openly do business with med-pot operators.
-- The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has sternly warned firearms dealers not to sell guns to medical cannabis consumers, and stated that patients who otherwise legally possess firearms are in violation of federal law and may face criminal prosecution;
-- In July, the Drug Enforcement Administration rejected a nine-year-old administrative petition that called for hearings regarding the federal rescheduling of marijuana for medical use, ignoring extensive scientific evidence of its medical efficacy. “[T]here are no adequate and well-controlled studies proving (marijuana's) efficacy; the drug is not accepted by qualified experts,” the agency alleged. “At this time, the known risks of marijuana use have not been shown to be outweighed by specific benefits in well-controlled clinical trials that scientifically evaluate safety and efficacy.”
-- This fall, the National Institute on Drug Abuse rejected an FDA-approved protocol to allow for clinical research assessing the use of cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress disorder; a spokesperson for the agency conceded, “We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”
-- The DEA has reduced the total number of federally qualified investigators licensed to study plant marijuana in humans to 14 nationwide.
Most recently, and perhaps most egregiously, the DEA acknowledged that it was investigating a Montana state lawmaker for potentially conspiring to violate federal anti-marijuana laws. The lawmaker, Rep. Diane Sands – a Democrat from Billings, Montana – served as the chairwoman of a 2011 interim legislative committee that sought to enact statewide regulations governing the production and distribution of medical pot, which has been legal in the state since 2004. "Can you say McCarthy?” she told The Missoulian newspaper. “This sounds like stuff from the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. So once you talk about medical marijuana in reasonable terms, you're on some sort of list of possible conspirators. … It's ridiculous, of course, but it's also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject."
* * *
Speculation among reformers and the general public is widespread. Many activists contend that the administration's about face is due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which they surmise may be hoping to eliminate competition in the marketplace for their own forthcoming, soon-to-be FDA-approved cannabis-based drug.
Others believe that Obama’s crackdown is a Machiavellian attempt on the part of the President and his advisors to appeal to independent, conservative-leaning swing voters during an election year.
Still others argue that the recent attacks have little to do with President Obama at all. Instead, they believe the efforts of the DEA, DOJ, and other federal agencies are being coordinated primarily by drug war hawks within the administration, many of whom are holdovers from the George W. Bush regime, such as DEA administrator Michele Leonhart. Adding weight to this claim are recent statements from US Attorney Andre Birotte, who acknowledged that the DOJ’s recent activities were led by the federal prosecutors themselves and were not instigated by either President Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder – both of which are engaged in their own personal battles for political survival and, as a result, are unlikely to expend even a shred of political capital to halt the efforts of the administration’s more ardent drug warriors.
There may be a grain of truth in all of the above theories. But perhaps the greatest underlying motivator for the administration’s sudden and severe crackdown on medical marijuana providers and patients is its desire to preserve America’s longstanding criminalization of cannabis for everyone else. There is little doubt that the rapid rise of the medical marijuana industry and the legal commerce inherent to it is arguably the single biggest threat to federal cannabis prohibition. Just look at the poll numbers. According to Gallup, in 1996 – when California became the first state to allow for the legally sanctioned use of cannabis therapy – only 25 percent of Americans backed legalizing marijuana for all adults. (Seventy-three percent of respondents at that time said they opposed the idea.) Fast forward to 2011. Today, a record high 50 percent of Americans support legalizing the plant outright and only 46 percent of respondents oppose doing so. It’s this rapid rise in the public’s support for overall legalization that no doubt has the Obama administration, and the majority of America’s elected officials, running scared.
While the passage and enactment of statewide medical marijuana laws – 16 states and the District of Columbia now have laws recognizing marijuana’s therapeutic use on the books – is not solely driving the public’s shift in support for broader legalization, it is arguably a major factor. Why? The answer is simple. Tens of millions of Americans residing in these states are learning, first hand, that they can coexist with marijuana being legal! And that is the lesson the federal government fears most.
In states like California and Colorado, voters have largely become accustomed to the reality that there can be safe, secure, well-run businesses that deliver consistent, reliable, tested cannabis products. They have come to understand that well-regulated cannabis dispensaries can revitalize sagging economies, provide jobs, and contribute taxes to budget-starved localities. Most importantly, the public in these states and others are finally realizing that all the years of scaremongering by the government about what would happen if marijuana were legal, even for sick people, was nothing but hysterical propaganda. As a result, a majority of American voters are now for the first time asking their federal officials: ‘Why we don’t just legalize marijuana for everyone in a similarly responsible manner?’
That is a question the President remains unable and unwilling to answer. And the administration appears willing to go to any lengths to avoid it.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana
In the past few months, the Obama Administration has defrauded
medical cannabis advocates by launching a full scale, ‘shock and awe’
attack against dispensaries in California. The legal actions constitute a
complete reversal of the position Attorney General Holder had stated he
would follow. The operation has been shameful and disgraceful,
warranting censure, but it is not the focus of this article.
There are many responsible persons in the anti-prohibition movement who have suggested ‘regulation by medicalization’ was a false panacea from its inception. Flaws in the California system have allowed critics to expose that access to marijuana has not been legitimately reserved for those who are ill, but transparently available to anyone who wanted to get high, but that too, is not the focus of this article.
The reality is that the California system may not be a sham, but it is shamelessly flawed. Reformers need to own up to it. We can’t further a blatant lie and be true to ourselves.
I am entirely grateful that California has paved the way in leading the country to a path of legalization. I proudly hold a dual residency between California and Florida, and show my medical card from Cali to envious compatriots in Fort Lauderdale all the time. But I acquired my last card for fifty bucks by walking into a mobile RV that was parked at a metered spot adjacent to a medical marijuana festival, without ever documenting my medical history to a physician.
If you go to the doctor for an exam, you should at least have to pull your pants down, get your genitalia squeezed, and be asked to cough. I earned my card with a year of chemotherapy and cancer, but my partner got one too, and he is a fit 25-year-old college graduate, whose worst ailment in life has been an extended case of athlete’s foot.
I believe that the medical cannabis card is a ticket to freedom I should already have had. That is why I have fought in this movement for forty years, from the days Stuart Mott held parties for us in Washington, D.C., when Ramsey Clark was Attorney General. That was a time, I think, when some of us thought marijuana would be legal by 1980. We know in our hearts that the hand was never theirs to give and the arm is rightfully ours. I should not have to tell my government in 2012 that I want a license to use a medicine that kept me alive when I had cancer in 1999; that I used comfortably as a college student in 1969.
I am supportive of each and every person who wants to use marijuana medicinally or recreationally. The point I raise for your consideration is that many honorable reformers who wholeheartedly believed in unfettered legalization may have unintentionally compromised their principles when they enthusiastically endorsed medical marijuana initiatives.
By submitting to a regulatory authority supervising the dispensation of marijuana in a controlled environment, we did not stand our ground and insist that responsible adults be allowed to freely acquire cannabis without restrictions, regardless of whether they were ill or not. We instead accepted what the government gave us, because decent and honorable reformers saw the medical programs achieving two goals.
First, they were fulfilling a legitimate need while being responsive to a demanding public. We wanted cannabis accessible medically, and we grasped for it, at any price or cost.
Second, these noble experiments were excellent stepping-stones that we all hoped would logistically facilitate knocking the government out of the marijuana regulation business entirely. We chose medical because it was expedient and would push the needle our way.
Now we can all have our medical cards, but look at the hand we have dealt ourselves. Instead of using marijuana privately in our homes, we have told the government where they can find us. That is pretty ironic in and of itself, isn’t it?
Sadly, the reality now is that the process of medical regulation by state agencies is threatened by increased federal law enforcement. Worse, everyone is blaming the permissive flaws in the California system for creating stringent controls in their own.
This does not mean the cause was a mistake or the goals were not honorable. It means we may have to explore alternative avenues and new roads. California dispensaries were raided last month, Colorado ones this week. What does this tell you?
As I write this morning, there are proposals before the Los Angeles City Council to authorize a ban on medical dispensaries. Have we all sold our clients a bill of goods? Have we encouraged them to open up clinics and comply with state licensing laws only to see the cities shut them down while the federal government seizes their properties corporately and prosecutes them individually? What did Edison say: “Is this what God hath wrought?” Is this what we intended when we began the fight to allow patients to acquire marijuana medicinally?
Many in our movement saw this day coming years ago. Articles in the NY Times dating back to 2004 warned about the abuses inherent in California’s pioneering medical marijuana program. Shrewd reformers at the local and national level knew that these defects would eventually lead to a law enforcement backlash, which could potentially undermine the ability of patients to get their medicine. Sadly, we face that today from a hypocritical Obama administration. We can say we are surprised this particular president reversed his course. We cannot say we are surprised that this day has come.
Whether it is the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Drug Policy Alliance, or the Marijuana Policy Project, or Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, we have all had in common the goal of ending prohibition. None of us have ever named our group ‘The National Organization for the Administration of Sensible State Regulated Medical Marijuana.’
Last month’s ABA Health Lawyer Newsletter, published a marvelous article entitled ‘The Cannabis Conundrum: Medication vs. Regulation.” Basically, it said we are dealing with an ideological dance between adversaries seeking to expand access to marijuana versus those seeking to control it. The article by Moira Gibbons reached a conclusion that:
Why should we require any free citizen, patients included, to have to explain to a doctor why they are responsibly consuming a natural herb they should otherwise be free to use as they wish anyway?
Why should we embrace a system, where we know in advance, some people are going to use a ruse to get their medicine? It has contributed to the very consequences we are dealing with today.
With the federal government targeting dispensaries, seizing properties, arresting the sick and innocent, we need to be legally on the offensive, nationally unified, and morally outraged.
Americans need to author their own drug policy, and not abdicate that right to physicians, the pharmaceutical lobby, or the government. Thomas Szasz was prophetic when he warned we were blinding ourselves by asking the government to adopt a “more rational policy.”
When we debate methods of regulation, supervision, or control of cannabis, we can easily become divided. When we advocate for responsible adult access and a corollary end to prohibition, we are united. There is a rational solution. All free Americans should be brothers and sisters in arms in a global struggle against prohibition.
Nearly one million Americans a year are still arrested and prosecuted for the use and possession of cannabis, whether it is medicinally or recreationally. If we end the injustices of prosecution for the possession of marijuana for any reason, we will not need to debate- for any reason- whether it should be medicalized and regulated; it will be free and unfettered. A civil liberty is a civil liberty regardless of why you exercise that right.
There are many responsible persons in the anti-prohibition movement who have suggested ‘regulation by medicalization’ was a false panacea from its inception. Flaws in the California system have allowed critics to expose that access to marijuana has not been legitimately reserved for those who are ill, but transparently available to anyone who wanted to get high, but that too, is not the focus of this article.
The reality is that the California system may not be a sham, but it is shamelessly flawed. Reformers need to own up to it. We can’t further a blatant lie and be true to ourselves.
I am entirely grateful that California has paved the way in leading the country to a path of legalization. I proudly hold a dual residency between California and Florida, and show my medical card from Cali to envious compatriots in Fort Lauderdale all the time. But I acquired my last card for fifty bucks by walking into a mobile RV that was parked at a metered spot adjacent to a medical marijuana festival, without ever documenting my medical history to a physician.
If you go to the doctor for an exam, you should at least have to pull your pants down, get your genitalia squeezed, and be asked to cough. I earned my card with a year of chemotherapy and cancer, but my partner got one too, and he is a fit 25-year-old college graduate, whose worst ailment in life has been an extended case of athlete’s foot.
I believe that the medical cannabis card is a ticket to freedom I should already have had. That is why I have fought in this movement for forty years, from the days Stuart Mott held parties for us in Washington, D.C., when Ramsey Clark was Attorney General. That was a time, I think, when some of us thought marijuana would be legal by 1980. We know in our hearts that the hand was never theirs to give and the arm is rightfully ours. I should not have to tell my government in 2012 that I want a license to use a medicine that kept me alive when I had cancer in 1999; that I used comfortably as a college student in 1969.
I am supportive of each and every person who wants to use marijuana medicinally or recreationally. The point I raise for your consideration is that many honorable reformers who wholeheartedly believed in unfettered legalization may have unintentionally compromised their principles when they enthusiastically endorsed medical marijuana initiatives.
By submitting to a regulatory authority supervising the dispensation of marijuana in a controlled environment, we did not stand our ground and insist that responsible adults be allowed to freely acquire cannabis without restrictions, regardless of whether they were ill or not. We instead accepted what the government gave us, because decent and honorable reformers saw the medical programs achieving two goals.
First, they were fulfilling a legitimate need while being responsive to a demanding public. We wanted cannabis accessible medically, and we grasped for it, at any price or cost.
Second, these noble experiments were excellent stepping-stones that we all hoped would logistically facilitate knocking the government out of the marijuana regulation business entirely. We chose medical because it was expedient and would push the needle our way.
Now we can all have our medical cards, but look at the hand we have dealt ourselves. Instead of using marijuana privately in our homes, we have told the government where they can find us. That is pretty ironic in and of itself, isn’t it?
Sadly, the reality now is that the process of medical regulation by state agencies is threatened by increased federal law enforcement. Worse, everyone is blaming the permissive flaws in the California system for creating stringent controls in their own.
This does not mean the cause was a mistake or the goals were not honorable. It means we may have to explore alternative avenues and new roads. California dispensaries were raided last month, Colorado ones this week. What does this tell you?
As I write this morning, there are proposals before the Los Angeles City Council to authorize a ban on medical dispensaries. Have we all sold our clients a bill of goods? Have we encouraged them to open up clinics and comply with state licensing laws only to see the cities shut them down while the federal government seizes their properties corporately and prosecutes them individually? What did Edison say: “Is this what God hath wrought?” Is this what we intended when we began the fight to allow patients to acquire marijuana medicinally?
Many in our movement saw this day coming years ago. Articles in the NY Times dating back to 2004 warned about the abuses inherent in California’s pioneering medical marijuana program. Shrewd reformers at the local and national level knew that these defects would eventually lead to a law enforcement backlash, which could potentially undermine the ability of patients to get their medicine. Sadly, we face that today from a hypocritical Obama administration. We can say we are surprised this particular president reversed his course. We cannot say we are surprised that this day has come.
Whether it is the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Drug Policy Alliance, or the Marijuana Policy Project, or Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, we have all had in common the goal of ending prohibition. None of us have ever named our group ‘The National Organization for the Administration of Sensible State Regulated Medical Marijuana.’
Last month’s ABA Health Lawyer Newsletter, published a marvelous article entitled ‘The Cannabis Conundrum: Medication vs. Regulation.” Basically, it said we are dealing with an ideological dance between adversaries seeking to expand access to marijuana versus those seeking to control it. The article by Moira Gibbons reached a conclusion that:
“the ability to satisfy all stakeholders in the medical marijuana juggernaut seems largely illusory… but as traditional medications fail patients who have serious or debilitating illnesses, and no other viable treatment options are available, providing access to marijuana for medical purposes is humane and arguably a form of public health protection.”In March of 1997, Thomas Szasz, the noted civil libertarian, writing in Liberty Magazine, warned us about the dangers of creating a therapeutic state. Here are his exact words:
“Drug prohibitionists were alarmed last November, when voters in Arizona and California endorsed the referendums permitting the use of marijuana for “medical purposes.” Opponents of drug prohibition ought to be even more alarmed: The advocates of medical marijuana have embraced a tactic that retards the repeal of drug prohibition and reinforces the moral legitimacy of prevailing drug policies.”Medical marijuana does not now, nor ever has, equaled freedom. “Anyone committed to individual liberty must reject medical marijuana as counterfeit compassion,” wrote Sheldon Richman, a former senior editor at the Cato Institute two years ago.
Why should we require any free citizen, patients included, to have to explain to a doctor why they are responsibly consuming a natural herb they should otherwise be free to use as they wish anyway?
Why should we embrace a system, where we know in advance, some people are going to use a ruse to get their medicine? It has contributed to the very consequences we are dealing with today.
With the federal government targeting dispensaries, seizing properties, arresting the sick and innocent, we need to be legally on the offensive, nationally unified, and morally outraged.
Americans need to author their own drug policy, and not abdicate that right to physicians, the pharmaceutical lobby, or the government. Thomas Szasz was prophetic when he warned we were blinding ourselves by asking the government to adopt a “more rational policy.”
When we debate methods of regulation, supervision, or control of cannabis, we can easily become divided. When we advocate for responsible adult access and a corollary end to prohibition, we are united. There is a rational solution. All free Americans should be brothers and sisters in arms in a global struggle against prohibition.
Nearly one million Americans a year are still arrested and prosecuted for the use and possession of cannabis, whether it is medicinally or recreationally. If we end the injustices of prosecution for the possession of marijuana for any reason, we will not need to debate- for any reason- whether it should be medicalized and regulated; it will be free and unfettered. A civil liberty is a civil liberty regardless of why you exercise that right.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Feds crack down on Colorado medical pot dispensaries
(Ah, a multiple state broken campaign promise from Obama.--jef)
DENVER (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in Colorado launched a crackdown on Thursday against nearly two dozen medical marijuana dispensaries located within 1,000 feet of schools, giving the proprietors 45 days to cease operations or face civil and criminal penalties.
U.S. Attorney John Walsh issued the ultimatum in letters to 23 dispensaries and landlords he said were in violation of federal and state law, a statement from the U.S. Justice Department said.
The move makes Colorado the latest battleground pitting federal prosecutors against storefront distributors of pot in states that have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes.
“When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not have anticipated that their vote would be used to justify large marijuana stores located within blocks of our schools,” Walsh said.
He cited a 2011 memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole that allows individual federal prosecutors to “exercise their discretion to handle marijuana trafficking matters.”
The Colorado move followed an announcement in October by federal prosecutors in California that they were mounting a crackdown against medical pot dispensaries they said were fronts for large-scale, for-profit drug trafficking.
Last March, federal agents also raided greenhouses and dispensaries in 13 cities in Montana cited by authorities as operating illegally under the guise of that state’s medical marijuana law.
A month later, U.S. attorneys in Washington state issued a legal opinion threatening to prosecute not only dispensary owners and growers but state officials who would have enforced a proposed state licensing system for medical marijuana.
Washington Governor Christine Gregoire cited that warning in her decision to veto a bill to establish a new regulatory system for state-sanctioned suppliers of medicinal cannabis.
A total of 16 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some sort of legalized medical-marijuana statutes, according to the National Drug Policy Alliance. But cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law, a point Walsh underscored in his letter to Colorado dispensary operators.
“The dispensary is operating in violation of federal law, and the Department of Justice has the authority to enforce the federal law … even when such activities may be permitted under state law,” the letter said.
Walsh did not identify any of the letter’s recipients, except to say the businesses were located throughout the state.
Denver lawyer Robert Corry, who represents clients charged with marijuana offenses, said in recent testimony before the Denver City Council that “there should be no arbitrary distance limits” for legal marijuana businesses.
“There is no documented case of any child ever purchasing or obtaining medical marijuana from a dispensary,” he said.
Nevertheless, Walsh said law enforcement will be on the lookout for other violators, and offenders could be subject to asset seizure and property forfeitures.
“Those who do not comply will be subject to potential criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions,” Walsh said. “Because the stores are operating within 1,000 feet of a school, enhanced penalties apply under federal law.”
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Cannabis Treatment Threatens Deadly Painkiller Industry
Anthony Gucciardi - 01.10.12
Pharmaceutical painkillers are now responsible for more deaths in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined.
These pharmaceuticals are responsible for more than 15,000 deaths conservatively in 2008 alone. With no sign of slowing down, the painkiller industry is becoming wildly popular among Americans — as a result, so is the high rate of painkiller abuse.
Classified as dangerous by the U.S. government, cannabis (even in THC-free form, or free of psychoactive effects) has been identified as a powerful pain reliever in more than 80 peer-reviewed studies.
You may be aware of the fact that marijuana is usually quite high in THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the compound responsible for the psychoactive effect of cannabis.
In contrast, it is also low in CBD (cannabidiol) content. Both THC and CBD are known as cannabinoids, however, which interacts with your body in a very unique way.
In fact, cannabinoids are key when it comes to pain relief. While this information alone is enough to shatter the traditional beliefs on government marijuana regulation, the relationship between CBD and THC is even more revealing.
What you may not be familiar with is how CBD has been shown to block the effect of THC in the nervous system. This allows for marijuana to be used with little or no psychoactive effects. Hemp, on the other hand, is high in CBD and low in THC. This is due to the fact that it is bred to maximize its fiber, seeds, and oil. Of course these key properties are what it is most commonly used for.
Trials Indicate Cannabis as an Effective Treatment for Chronic Pain
In a 2011 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, researchers examined the effects of cannabinoids on chronic pain and proper sleep. What they found in their trials challenges federal government claims that cannabis has ‘no accepted medical use’. The researchers conducted 18 trials using cannabinoids in the treatment of chronic pain, and found that cannabinoids demonstrated a significant painkilling effect as well as noticeable improvements in sleep in 15 of trials. Compared, to placebo, the cannabinoids were extremely effective.
Most importantly, there were no adverse effects.
Another study, performed in 2002, reached similar conclusions. Finding cannabis to aid in pain relief as well as quality of sleep, researchers from the McGill University Health Centre stated in summary that cannabis can be used as an effective way of improving pain, mood, and sleep in some patients with chronic pain.
There are many forms of the cannabis plant, many without mind-altering properties, many of which can be utilized without adverse reactions, as detailed in the peer-reviewed research. It is also quite clear that the painkiller industry simply cannot continue to wreak havoc on the lives of many, and a natural alternative must soon emerge to prevent another 15,000 plus deaths this year.
Why is the federal government refusing to admit the medicinal properties of cannabis and the unique ability of this substance to curb pain, insomnia, and impaired mood? This is only one example of how the government decides what is and what is not good for your health.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Colorado asks DEA to recognize marijuana’s medical value
By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The state of Colorado has become the third in the
nation to formally ask the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to reclassify
marijuana in such a manner that would recognize its potential for
medical value, similar to drugs like morphine and cocaine.
The letter, sent just before Christmas by Colorado’s Department of Revenue, was required by a law passed in 2010 that set up a state regulatory framework for medical marijuana. The law required the state to petition the DEA for reclassification of the drug before Jan. 1, 2012.
Current federal prohibitions mean “[there] is a lack of certainty necessary to provide safe access for patients with serious medical conditions,” director Barbara Brohl wrote.
The state became the first in the nation earlier this year to begin licensing businesses that sell marijuana and products containing the drug, a move that potentially puts them at odds with federal officials.
The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has made a practice of not prosecuting medical marijuana patients in states where the drug has been approved, but it still considers distributors to be fair game for arrest.
Colorado also allows people who’ve been given a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana to grow their own plants inside their home.
The governors of Rhode Island and Washington have also petitioned the DEA to change marijuana’s classification from Schedule I to Schedule II, more commonly reserved for addictive drugs that have clearly defined medical uses.
Marijuana is known to be helpful to cancer patients grappling with nausea from chemotherapy, AIDS patients with wasting syndrome and people with chronic pain. It also has been shown to reduce the size of certain brain and breast tumors.
Many pharmaceutical companies are also seeking patents on cannabis-based drugs that aim to solve dozens of different medical problems, including a drug that can kill cancerous tumors.
The Obama White House, as well, has admitted that “individual components of the cannabis plant” have at least “some” medical value, but the DEA remains steadfast in opposing any reclassification of the substance.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The letter, sent just before Christmas by Colorado’s Department of Revenue, was required by a law passed in 2010 that set up a state regulatory framework for medical marijuana. The law required the state to petition the DEA for reclassification of the drug before Jan. 1, 2012.
Current federal prohibitions mean “[there] is a lack of certainty necessary to provide safe access for patients with serious medical conditions,” director Barbara Brohl wrote.
The state became the first in the nation earlier this year to begin licensing businesses that sell marijuana and products containing the drug, a move that potentially puts them at odds with federal officials.
The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has made a practice of not prosecuting medical marijuana patients in states where the drug has been approved, but it still considers distributors to be fair game for arrest.
Colorado also allows people who’ve been given a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana to grow their own plants inside their home.
The governors of Rhode Island and Washington have also petitioned the DEA to change marijuana’s classification from Schedule I to Schedule II, more commonly reserved for addictive drugs that have clearly defined medical uses.
Marijuana is known to be helpful to cancer patients grappling with nausea from chemotherapy, AIDS patients with wasting syndrome and people with chronic pain. It also has been shown to reduce the size of certain brain and breast tumors.
Many pharmaceutical companies are also seeking patents on cannabis-based drugs that aim to solve dozens of different medical problems, including a drug that can kill cancerous tumors.
The Obama White House, as well, has admitted that “individual components of the cannabis plant” have at least “some” medical value, but the DEA remains steadfast in opposing any reclassification of the substance.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Obama's Puzzling Marijuana Policy (2 articles)
Monday, December 19, 2011 by The Seattle Times
by Neal Peirce
WASHINGTON — "Dance with the One that Brought You" is the title of a well-known song.
But the Urban Dictionary offers a deeper meaning: "The principle that someone should pay proper fealty to those who have gone out of their way to look after them."
Barack Obama should pay attention. In 2008, young voters were enthused and turned out for him by the millions.
But now? The campus/youth enthusiasm factor has declined sharply. The deficiency seriously imperils Obama's re-election effort.
There's one issue, though, that might reignite youthful enthusiasm. That issue is marijuana — partly its medical use, but especially Americans' right to recreational use free of potential arrest and possible prison time.
Today's grim reality is that police continue to arrest youth for marijuana possession by the hundreds of thousands. But each arrest is a red flag of danger, threatening life prospects for a young man or woman suddenly saddled with a permanent "drug arrest" record that's easily located by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies and banks.
Small wonder then that 62 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 29) now favor legalizing marijuana, as a Gallup poll reported.
And it's not just youth these days. Gallup this year found 50 percent nationwide support for legalizing marijuana use — the most ever, up from a measly 12 percent in 1969 to 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009.
A ballot measure to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana received 46.5 percent of the vote in California last year. Parallel measures are likely to be on the 2012 ballots in Colorado and Washington. Odd political bedfellows — Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas — recently introduced a legalization bill and now have 19 co-sponsors. Paul even gets applause advocating legalization in Republican presidential debates.
But what about President Obama? In 2004 he endorsed marijuana decriminalization. He was candid about his early pot use and in 2006 told a group of magazine editors: "When I was a kid, I inhaled, frequently." By his run for president in 2008, he was slipping away from decriminalization but at least talked of a "public health" approach, emphasizing drug treatment instead of prison, giving drug-reform advocates hope for a new day in national policy.
But Obama as president has been a clear disappointment to reform forces. In White House-initiated electronic town halls, respondents — heavily weighted to original Obama supporters — have repeatedly put marijuana at the top of their issue lists. But the White House has either laughed off or provided dismissive retorts.
Obama's Drug Policy Office claims the drug war is over, replaced by a focus on shrinking demand, "innovative, compassionate and evidence-based drug policies." But Obama has not once singled out marijuana — a substance arguably far less harmful to the human body than alcohol — for special consideration. Nor has he spoken to the harm to youth caused by 800,000 yearly arrests. Or moved to stem the billions of dollars a year spent on marijuana-related arrests.
This is clearly not the "change" Obama's enthusiastic supporters of 2008 expected. And it's deeply ironic. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance notes that if local police departments had been enforcing marijuana laws as harshly in the early 1980s as many do today, "there's a good chance a young Columbia student named Barack Obama could have been picked up — and not be in the White House today."
Nadelmann suggests that both the White House Drug Policy Office and the Justice Department enforcement divisions have been "co-opted" by holdover appointees deeply invested in anti-marijuana rhetoric and "let's just bust them" drug enforcement.
Facing the 2012 election, Obama is not likely to advocate, suddenly, marijuana decriminalization. But he could announce that it's time for a serious national dialogue on the issue, and that it will be a hallmark of his second term. He could express his dismay that 800,000 people, mostly young (and heavily black and Hispanic), are being arrested each year for marijuana possession — even as 50 percent of Americans favor legalization. He could focus on the massive costs of enforcement, the deep social costs of imprisonment. Let all America, youth included, join in the debate, he could urge.
A new openness to marijuana reform could help to reignite, on campuses and among high numbers of young people, the hope for "change" that really means something. Perhaps even prospects for the president's own re-election.
Obama's Attack on Medical Marijuana Wins Endorsement from Crazy Person
Last month, I questioned an absurd claim from the White House that President Obama has been "clear and consistent" in his approach to medical marijuana, rather than erratic and hostile. The facts of the matter are so plain that it feels silly to even debate it further, but this quote from anti-marijuana zealot and youth drug testing cheerleader David Evans of the Drug-Free Schools Coalition got my attention:
A little heads up to Obama's re-election team: when both sides of the medical marijuana debate are in agreement that you've launched some kind of major crackdown, you do not get to pretend that there was no crackdown.
The tough question facing candidate Obama will be why he took no action to prevent egregious violations of his campaign promises on this issue, not whether such events ever occurred. A consensus exists in the press and the public that Obama backed away rather blatantly from his widely-understood assurance that state medical marijuana programs wouldn't face an existential threat from the federal government under his watch. Those threats emerged from numerous agencies this year and have scarcely been acknowledged by the White House, let alone addressed to anyone's satisfaction.
Rather than endeavoring to further duck or distract us, the president needs to say something smart about this. He'll have to do better than saying it's "a poor use of resources to bust pot patients," because the propriety of arresting sick people and their caregivers is not a question that ought to hinge on the availability of funds with which to do so. It would also be a poor use of resources to kick glaucoma patients down the stairs, but that isn't the reason we don't do it.
It's time for the president to admit that medical marijuana is a actually a good thing, that we're lucky to have this helpful option available for those who need it, and that people like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are at odds with 80% of Americans when they dare to suggest otherwise.
by Neal Peirce
WASHINGTON — "Dance with the One that Brought You" is the title of a well-known song.
But the Urban Dictionary offers a deeper meaning: "The principle that someone should pay proper fealty to those who have gone out of their way to look after them."
Barack Obama should pay attention. In 2008, young voters were enthused and turned out for him by the millions.
But now? The campus/youth enthusiasm factor has declined sharply. The deficiency seriously imperils Obama's re-election effort.
There's one issue, though, that might reignite youthful enthusiasm. That issue is marijuana — partly its medical use, but especially Americans' right to recreational use free of potential arrest and possible prison time.
Today's grim reality is that police continue to arrest youth for marijuana possession by the hundreds of thousands. But each arrest is a red flag of danger, threatening life prospects for a young man or woman suddenly saddled with a permanent "drug arrest" record that's easily located by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies and banks.
Small wonder then that 62 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 29) now favor legalizing marijuana, as a Gallup poll reported.
And it's not just youth these days. Gallup this year found 50 percent nationwide support for legalizing marijuana use — the most ever, up from a measly 12 percent in 1969 to 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009.
A ballot measure to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana received 46.5 percent of the vote in California last year. Parallel measures are likely to be on the 2012 ballots in Colorado and Washington. Odd political bedfellows — Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas — recently introduced a legalization bill and now have 19 co-sponsors. Paul even gets applause advocating legalization in Republican presidential debates.
But what about President Obama? In 2004 he endorsed marijuana decriminalization. He was candid about his early pot use and in 2006 told a group of magazine editors: "When I was a kid, I inhaled, frequently." By his run for president in 2008, he was slipping away from decriminalization but at least talked of a "public health" approach, emphasizing drug treatment instead of prison, giving drug-reform advocates hope for a new day in national policy.
But Obama as president has been a clear disappointment to reform forces. In White House-initiated electronic town halls, respondents — heavily weighted to original Obama supporters — have repeatedly put marijuana at the top of their issue lists. But the White House has either laughed off or provided dismissive retorts.
Obama's Drug Policy Office claims the drug war is over, replaced by a focus on shrinking demand, "innovative, compassionate and evidence-based drug policies." But Obama has not once singled out marijuana — a substance arguably far less harmful to the human body than alcohol — for special consideration. Nor has he spoken to the harm to youth caused by 800,000 yearly arrests. Or moved to stem the billions of dollars a year spent on marijuana-related arrests.
This is clearly not the "change" Obama's enthusiastic supporters of 2008 expected. And it's deeply ironic. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance notes that if local police departments had been enforcing marijuana laws as harshly in the early 1980s as many do today, "there's a good chance a young Columbia student named Barack Obama could have been picked up — and not be in the White House today."
Nadelmann suggests that both the White House Drug Policy Office and the Justice Department enforcement divisions have been "co-opted" by holdover appointees deeply invested in anti-marijuana rhetoric and "let's just bust them" drug enforcement.
Facing the 2012 election, Obama is not likely to advocate, suddenly, marijuana decriminalization. But he could announce that it's time for a serious national dialogue on the issue, and that it will be a hallmark of his second term. He could express his dismay that 800,000 people, mostly young (and heavily black and Hispanic), are being arrested each year for marijuana possession — even as 50 percent of Americans favor legalization. He could focus on the massive costs of enforcement, the deep social costs of imprisonment. Let all America, youth included, join in the debate, he could urge.
A new openness to marijuana reform could help to reignite, on campuses and among high numbers of young people, the hope for "change" that really means something. Perhaps even prospects for the president's own re-election.
******
Obama's Attack on Medical Marijuana Wins Endorsement from Crazy Person
Last month, I questioned an absurd claim from the White House that President Obama has been "clear and consistent" in his approach to medical marijuana, rather than erratic and hostile. The facts of the matter are so plain that it feels silly to even debate it further, but this quote from anti-marijuana zealot and youth drug testing cheerleader David Evans of the Drug-Free Schools Coalition got my attention:
"The Obama administration’s recent crackdown on growers and sellers of medical marijuana is totally justified. The federal government is trying to protect vulnerable people from the use of marijuana as medicine, since the drug is not proved safe or effective."It's really pretty hard for the Obama administration to claim they're not suddenly cracking down on medical marijuana when the president is getting praised by David Evans for protecting patients from themselves and their doctors. This is the guy you don't want complimenting you in public when you're busy trying to convince everyone else that your drug policy isn't a draconian death march.
A little heads up to Obama's re-election team: when both sides of the medical marijuana debate are in agreement that you've launched some kind of major crackdown, you do not get to pretend that there was no crackdown.
The tough question facing candidate Obama will be why he took no action to prevent egregious violations of his campaign promises on this issue, not whether such events ever occurred. A consensus exists in the press and the public that Obama backed away rather blatantly from his widely-understood assurance that state medical marijuana programs wouldn't face an existential threat from the federal government under his watch. Those threats emerged from numerous agencies this year and have scarcely been acknowledged by the White House, let alone addressed to anyone's satisfaction.
Rather than endeavoring to further duck or distract us, the president needs to say something smart about this. He'll have to do better than saying it's "a poor use of resources to bust pot patients," because the propriety of arresting sick people and their caregivers is not a question that ought to hinge on the availability of funds with which to do so. It would also be a poor use of resources to kick glaucoma patients down the stairs, but that isn't the reason we don't do it.
It's time for the president to admit that medical marijuana is a actually a good thing, that we're lucky to have this helpful option available for those who need it, and that people like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are at odds with 80% of Americans when they dare to suggest otherwise.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Obama Is Attacking the Perfectly Legal Medical Marijuana Industry
With storefront dispensaries popping up across the country, the Obama Administration is fighting the burgeoning industry.
By Ted Cox, AlterNet
At the moment 16 states and Washington DC have legalized medical cannabis, providing safe access to patients, creating thousands of jobs and pumping millions of dollars in tax revenue into struggling state and local economies. Some of those state and local governments are working with their medical cannabis providers to adopt common-sense regulations and to cut down the potential for abuse -- with varying degrees of success.
But under the federal Controlled Substance Act, cannabis is a Schedule I substance -- right along with heroin, ecstasy and LSD -- and still illegal. The feds are concerned that medical cannabis is making its way onto the black market, that dispensaries are generating obscene profits and that cannabis providers are targeting children in ads.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum in October 2009 saying the Justice Department was unlikely to go after cannabis patients, but that "prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the department." But recent months have seen a strong push-back by the federal government. With storefront dispensaries popping up across the country, and medical cannabis expected to grow to a $1.7 billion industry, here are four ways the federal government is fighting the burgeoning industry.
By Ted Cox, AlterNet
Posted on October 27, 2011
At the moment 16 states and Washington DC have legalized medical cannabis, providing safe access to patients, creating thousands of jobs and pumping millions of dollars in tax revenue into struggling state and local economies. Some of those state and local governments are working with their medical cannabis providers to adopt common-sense regulations and to cut down the potential for abuse -- with varying degrees of success.
But under the federal Controlled Substance Act, cannabis is a Schedule I substance -- right along with heroin, ecstasy and LSD -- and still illegal. The feds are concerned that medical cannabis is making its way onto the black market, that dispensaries are generating obscene profits and that cannabis providers are targeting children in ads.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum in October 2009 saying the Justice Department was unlikely to go after cannabis patients, but that "prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the department." But recent months have seen a strong push-back by the federal government. With storefront dispensaries popping up across the country, and medical cannabis expected to grow to a $1.7 billion industry, here are four ways the federal government is fighting the burgeoning industry.
1) Land seizure
The big announcement that has everyone hunkered down is that U.S. attorneys in California have threatened to seize land that is rented or leased to dispensaries.
Four U.S. attorneys have already sent letters threatening to seize land leased to cannabis clubs. Letters have so far gone out to landlords in Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego and Marin, giving them 45 days to kick out any medical marijuana operations. The feds seem to be targeting larger clubs and those operating within 1,000 feet of schools.
"Marijuana stores operating in proximity to schools, parks and other areas where children are present send the wrong message to those in our society who are the most impressionable," said Melinda Haag, attorney general for the Northern District of California. "In addition, the huge profits generated by these stores, and the value of their inventory, present a danger that the stores will become a magnet for crime, which jeopardizes the safety of nearby children."
The crackdown was the result of local officials asking the feds to step in after pot clubs fought back against attempts to shut them down. Eviction notices were sent to eight Lake Forest dispensaries and feds froze $130,000 in assets of the landlord who leased to them.
The tactic has had a chilling effect on the industry, even in jurisdictions where no eviction notices have been reported. In San Jose, some dispensaries have seen up to half of their business drop in the two weeks since the announcement.
2) Ads
Just days after feds announced the crackdown on California landowners, Laura Duffy, one of the four California U.S. attorneys, said she would next go after radio stations and newspapers that run ads for cannabis dispensaries "as part of the enforcement efforts in Southern California." Federal law prohibits advertising illegal substances.
"I'm not just seeing print advertising," Duffy is quoted as saying in California Watch. "I'm actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It's gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate – one has to wonder what kind of message we're sending to our children – it's against the law."
Newspaper ad revenue has crashed with the tanking economy, forcing papers to lay off reporters. Cannabis ads have proved a lifeline for struggling newspapers, especially alternative newsweeklies. But even some mainstream dailies like the Sacramento Bee have started running cannabis ads.
So far, alt weeklies in the San Diego area that run cannabis ads for years have not received any warnings from the U.S. attorney office. Other California U.S. attorneys didn't say whether they would follow Duffy's lead.
3) Bank services
Cannabis dispensary owners say they're having trouble obtaining bank and credit card services and federal authorities in Northern California have ordered banks to spy on transactions of cannabis club accounts.
When it came to finding a bank, Denver-area Alpine Herbal Wellness owner Sue Harank told news service Thomson Reuters, "It was a nightmare."
Big banks like Bank of America were initially eager to provide services for cannabis dispensaries, but a warning from the DEA said banks could be open to legal liability for those services.
Under pressure from the DEA, banks are shutting down any accounts associated with medical cannabis dispensaries, making difficult for dispensaries to pay employees and payroll taxes, or to provide credit card processing equipment for transactions.
Earlier this year, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that federal banking regulators would require banks on the Northern California coast to monitor accounts for medical cannabis because the area had been designated a "high-risk area" for money laundering, especially from those in the medical marijuana business.
4) IRS
In October, the IRS told Oakland, Calif.-based dispensary Harborside Health Center it owed $2.5 million in back taxes for 2007 and 2008 -- $2 million more than the dispensary had paid. The tax bill could shut down Harborside.
Because federal law prohibits cannabis dispensaries, the IRS said Harborside couldn't take standard deductions for payroll, workers' comp, rent and other business expenses. Federal tax code 280-E keeps "drug trafficking organizations" from deducting those expenses.
The IRS will also audit Harborside's 2009 and 2010 tax returns. At least a dozen California dispensaries are also being audited, according to a California attorney representing them.
A similar decision was handed to Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax in March, with owner Lynette Shaw saying they now owed "millions and millions."
"This is not an effort to tax us. We're happy to pay our taxes," Harborside executive director Steve DeAngelo told the San Francisco Chronicle. "This is an effort to shut us down."
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