Mistaken Raid, Murder of Family Pets All in a Day’s Work for Maryland Cops
One year after a SWAT team shot and killed two Labrador retrievers in a marijuana raid on an innocent small-town mayor’s family, the Prince George’s County, Md., sheriff responsible has announced his department did nothing wrong. [Read more →]
June 22, 2009 33 Comments
MPP’s Rob Kampia on CNN
For those who missed it, here’s the clip of Rob debating marijuana policy with drug war cheerleader David Evans on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″ that Bruce mentioned a couple days ago.
By the way, although these things are always subject to last minute changes, it looks like MPP’s Bruce Mirken will be on CNBC discussing ending marijuana prohibition this evening sometime after 8:30 p.m. EST.
June 18, 2009 5 Comments
Rhode Island to Provide Medical Marijuana Compassion Centers
In a historic first, Rhode Island legislators today made their state the first ever to expand an existing medical marijuana law to allow for state-licensed compassion centers to grow and distribute marijuana to registered patients. Legislators easily overrode the veto issued by Gov. Donald Carcieri with override votes of 67-0 in the House and 35-3 in the Senate.
This marks the second time the Rhode Island Legislature has expanded the medical marijuana law it established in 2006, which indicates the law’s successfulness as well as its popularity. It also marks the third time they had to override the governor’s veto in order to pass a medical marijuana law.
Are you governors out there paying attention?
June 16, 2009 28 Comments
War on Medical Marijuana Patients Continues in San Diego
I’ve recently been corresponding with a medical marijuana patient and Navy veteran, Eugene Davidovich, who was recently arrested in a particularly slimy undercover sting operation. Eugene, a member of a San Diego medical marijuana collective, was contacted by an undercover cop posing as a registered, licensed medical marijuana patient who asked for his help obtaining his medicine.
You can probably guess the rest, but here’s a link to a good comprehensive story on his arrest.
Prosecutors argue that Eugene violated the law in providing medical marijuana to the undercover cop – even though the cop presented him with documentation verifying his status as a licensed medical marijuana patient. They even insinuate that Eugene’s motive was profit and not compassion.
It appears that what’s really happening is that prosecutors are taking advantage of vagaries in California’s medical marijuana law to persecute patients and caregivers who are doing their best to take care of themselves and stay within the law.
Here’s how Eugene put it:
Every attempt made to date by collectives and coops to follow the law in San Diego has resulted in prosecutions or collectives having to operate so deeply underground and under such intense daily fear and pressure, that the potential public benefit they could be bringing to the community and to patients is stifled by this environment of fear.
Eugene has a fight on his hands now. Please visit his Web site and help him out if you can.
June 5, 2009 37 Comments
Pharmacy Board’s Paternalistic Prescription for Iowa Patients
Apparently, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy’s standard of proof for the efficacy and safety of medical marijuana is pretty high. Much higher, than that of, say, the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, which in 1999 concluded, “Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana.”
The board was required by a court order to evaluate the scientific evidence surrounding medical marijuana Monday to determine whether it ought to be reclassified under the state’s controlled substances list. [Read more →]
June 2, 2009 23 Comments
