Cannabis News

On Thursday, representatives from Health Advocates Rejecting Marijuana ( HARM ), spoke to an audience at the conference center at Choctaw Casino in Durant about the danger and prevention of marijuana use.  The conference was hosted by the Bryan County Turning point Drug Free Community Coalition and the Wichita Mountains Prevention Network.

The goals of HARM are “to decrease the accessibility/ availability of marijuana-related paraphernalia and to minimize messages that encourage, normalize or trivialize marijuana use” and “to reduce marijuana use by youth, to lessen the problems associated with the accessibility and use of marijuana by youth and to change the perception that marijuana is harmless.”

During the conference, the following five policy campaigns were discussed in-depth: head shop policy, retailers policy, special events and outdoor venues policy, dispensaries policy and media normalization.  John Byrom, co-facilitator of HARM, and Rebecca Hernandez, a policy co-chair, spoke to the audience about marijuana use in San Diego County, California.  In 1996, California passed a law legalizing the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a “written or oral recommendation” from a physician that he or she “would benefit from medical marijuana.”

Byrom said he actively protested the law and has been fighting against marijuana use in California ever since.  Hernandez became involved working against marijuana use when she was employed at a San Diego high school working with at-risk high school students.  She said she saw how drugs and alcohol were negatively affecting their lives and futures.

“We’re losing a whole generation of kids to drug use,” she said.  During the presentation, the team spoke about different initiatives of the organization and how they have worked to stop the prevalence of the glamorization of drug use in society.  They showed pictures of clothing, shoes, belts, bags and other items found in major stores in California.  Pictures and clips of sound and video were also viewed that showed how HARM has been actively fighting marijuana use in San Diego County.

Hernandez said, “We need to stand up to the bully.  We’re going to lose our nation if we let people like that [advocates of marijuana use] move forward and that’s why we’re sharing what’s going on in California with other states.”

Byrom urges residents of Southeastern Oklahoma to take a stand against marijuana use and work to prevent its prevalence in the community.

“You can stop it and that’s what’s great.  You can stop it from growing to the point of California and you can be the prevention.  You have the ability because it hasn’t taken hold here; it’s nothing compared to California.  If you can stop it before it happens, that’s the whole idea of prevention.  ”

According to Gwynn Busby, Wichita Mountains Prevention Network regional coordinator, marijuana use was chosen as a priority issue in Bryan County because of the high rate of admission into treatment with marijuana designated as the drug of choice.  Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s arrest records show 100% of drug arrest for students 18 and over at the university had marijuana included with other drugs that were confiscated.  Slightly over one-third of the Bryan County Court’s cases are related to marijuana charges.  These charges include: possession, intent to sell, cultivate, and paraphernalia.

Source: Durant Daily Democrat (OK)
Copyright: 2012 Durant Daily Democrat.
Contact: http://www.durantdemocrat.com/pages/send_letter_to_editor
Website: http://www.durantdemocrat.com/
Author: Brittany Snapp

Let’s start by stating that driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol is a crime and must be punished. All 50 U.S. states have clear laws prohibiting this activity. But there is one intoxicant that is trickier than the others: marijuana, especially when used for medical purposes.

During the past two years, Colorado and Montana, along with more than a dozen other states, have proposed laws that set a strict threshold for determining when a marijuana user is deemed too impaired to drive. These would consider a concentration of more than 5 nanograms of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana) per milliliter of blood, as hands-down proof of intoxication or impairment.

The result would be an automatic guilty verdict, with all that entails: a temporary loss of driving privileges, fines, lawyer’s fees, possible jail time and greatly increased insurance premiums. By some estimates, a conviction for driving under the influence (DUI) can cost a driver as much as $10,000.

Several states are going further and have either adopted or are considering zero-tolerance laws for THC levels. This means any THC in the blood would result in a conviction.

Here’s the problem with these laws: There are questions about how, and at what level, cannabis use impairs driving ability. For a patient in one of the 17 states where marijuana has been legalized for medicinal use, how are you to know when it’s legal to drive? After consuming marijuana, should you wait 12 hours to drive or one day? When will your THC level be below the 5-nanogram threshold? The answer is complicated.

Chronic Users

Although marijuana is readily detectable in toxicology tests of blood, hair, urine or saliva, what isn’t clear is just how quickly THC passes through the body. We know, for example, that THC may be detected in the blood of occasional users several hours after ingesting. But in some chronic users there may be traces for days after the last use, long after any performance-impairing effects have subsided.

This is a very clear contrast with alcohol. There is a firm understanding of the rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol and there are well-known guidelines on how much time must pass after drinking before one is fit to drive. Tests can easily be administered in roadside stops. Those who fail simple benchmarks of sobriety — not to mention breath tests — are usually convicted or plead guilty.

The research on how marijuana affects driving is far less conclusive, though.

Testing done on drivers under the influence of alcohol often show that drivers display more aggressive behavior behind the wheel, and errors are more pronounced than when sober. The opposite tends to be true when drivers are under the influence of THC; they tend to have heightened awareness — rather than diminished sensitivity as they do after drinking — to their surroundings. As a result, they tend to compensate by driving more cautiously.

A 2007 control study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health reviewed 10 years of U.S. auto-fatality data. Investigators found that U.S. drivers with blood-alcohol levels of 0.05 percent — a level below the national 0.08 percent legal limit — were three times as likely to have been driving unsafely before a fatal crash, compared with individuals who tested positive for marijuana.

What this means is that we need more research before new DUI marijuana laws are enacted. Setting an absolute impairment standard for THC bloodstream levels is premature. And these laws, which target marijuana use and associated medical marijuana patients, are discriminatory.

Pain Killers

I say this at a time when there is an absence of legislation dealing with the use and well-documented abuse of prescription painkillers, which can dangerously impair the judgment needed for safe driving. State legislatures aren’t setting arbitrary and scientifically unproven blood-level standards for these drugs. So why are they focused on marijuana?

Driving while intoxicated must anywhere and everywhere be illegal, whether that impairment is caused by prescription drugs, alcohol purchased at a liquor store or marijuana used on the recommendation of a doctor. Under current standards, someone can be charged with DUI for marijuana use based on roadside sobriety tests and observations by the arresting officer in conjunction with blood samples. Those tests serve their purpose at this point.

But if states are going to turn to strict threshold laws, they should answer this question: Based solely on THC concentrations in blood from marijuana, when is a driver too impaired to drive safely?

Until the evidence is in, it’s hard to see why any state needs to lower the burden of proof necessary to convict someone of a DUI marijuana charge.

Robert Frichtel is managing partner of the Medical Marijuana Business Exchange. The opinions expressed are his own.

Source: Bloomberg.com (USA)
Author: Robert Frichtel
Published: July 1, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Bloomberg L.P.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.bloomberg.com/

According to a U.N. report on global drug use, cannabis was the world’s most widely produced, trafficked, and consumed drug in the world in 2010.

Marijuana boasts somewhere between 119 million and 224 million users in the adult population of the world (18 or older). And there are no signs to indicate the popularity of marijuana will fall anytime soon. Cannabis is consumed in some fashion in all countries, the report says, and it is grown in most. Though the use of the drug is stabilizing in North America, and Oceania, smoking pot is on the rise in West and Central Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia and Central Asia.

In 2010, marijuana use was most prevalent in Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. and Canada came in second, followed by Spain, France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Nigeria, Zambia, and Madagascar were tied for fourth place.

The U.N. report also noted shifts in cultural trends. Some interesting standouts: The European market is moving away from cannabis resin (hashish) and towards the herb, which is more popular in America; cannabis became Afghanistan’s most lucrative cash crop in 2010, replacing heroin; and the marijuana seed market grew immensely from 2008 to 2010, with 100 to 200 brands available online when the report was written.

The U.N. also reported that cannabis is becoming more potent in developed countries. The popularization of hydroponic cultivation, a method that uses mineral nutrient solutions to grow plants in water without soil, means marijuana is a) more likely to be grown indoors and b) stronger than traditionally grown plants.

But beware of marijuana imitations. Or imitations of any drug, really. New chemically engineered substances are popping up all across the world (see bath salts), and weed is no exception to the trend. Synthetic cannabinoids that emulate the effects of weed but contain uncontrolled products have been detected since 2008 in herbal smoking blends.

Source: Time Magazine (US)
Author: Eliana Dockterman
Published: June 29, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Time Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.time.com/time/

A push to regulate California’s medical marijuana industry amid heightened federal scrutiny of cannabis producers and sellers has fizzled due to a lack of support in the state Senate.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano called off a scheduled Senate committee vote on his medical marijuana regulation legislation Monday, acknowledging that he was short on votes to advance ahead of a July deadline. “Certainly in counting noses, the noses weren’t there even in committee,” the San Francisco Democrat said.

Supporters of Assembly Bill 2312 say the state’s 16-year-old medical marijuana laws need to be updated to protect legitimate growers, sellers and users in the wake of raids and increased scrutiny from federal authorities. Scores of dispensaries have shut down and at least 100 municipalities have acted to restrict their presence in light of the federal crackdown.

But Monday’s decision virtually kills chances for a resolution this year. Legislation protecting some distributors from prosecution died on the Senate floor earlier this year and a drive to qualify a medical marijuana regulation initiative for the ballot failed to attract the money needed to succeed.

Ammiano said the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee has agreed to hold hearings on the issue and draft a report after this year’s legislative session is over. He said the decision gives supporters “breathing room” to continue working on issues with the bill without the added political complication of an upcoming general election.

“Even though there’s always a sense of disappointment – where for many people there’s an immediacy here – I think particularly when it comes to the Legislature, this extra time will be more beneficial,” he said.

The bill, which squeaked out of the state Assembly earlier this month on a vote of 41-28, would create a state Bureau of Medical Marijuana Enforcement to issue licenses and provide oversight for many aspects of the medical marijuana industry. It would also allow local governments to tax marijuana products.

Critics said the bill lacked detail and put too much power in the hands of the newly created panel of political appointees. Law enforcement associations opposed to the bill complained in a letter that the measure was “really a giant permission slip for medical marijuana stores to operate in a virtual unfettered manner.”

Ammiano, who is termed out in 2014, said he hopes to return with another measure on the topic when the Legislature starts its new session in January.

Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Sacramento Bee
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Author: Torey Van Oot

You know federal drug policy is bankrupt when the chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration is reluctant to acknowledge even a simple fact that any eighth-grader could confirm.

“Opiates are far more addictive than marijuana,” Congressman Jared Polis said last week. “That is a fact.”

Yet this particular fact is one that the Democrat was able to extract from DEA administrator Michele Leonhart only after a stunning interrogation in which she acted as if he were demanding she choose between Hitler and Stalin on a scale of evil.

The relevant exchange began at a congressional hearing on the DEA’s priorities when Polis asked Leonhart if crack cocaine (not an opiate, obviously) were more dangerous for a user than marijuana.

Leonhart: “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.”

Polis: “Is methamphetamine worse for somebody’s health than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “I don’t think any illegal drug …”

Polis: “Is heroin worse for someone’s health than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “Again, all the … .”

Polis: “Yes, no, or I don’t know. I mean, if you don’t know, you can look this up. … I am asking you a very straightforward question.”

Leonhart: “All illegal drugs are bad.”

Polis: “Does that mean you don’t know?”

Leonhart: “Heroin causes an addiction. … It causes many problems. It’s very hard to kick.”

Polis: “So does that mean that the health impact of heroin is worse than marijuana … ?”

Leonhart:

“I think you’re asking a subjective question … .”

Polis: “I’m just asking you as an expert in the subject area … .”

Leonhart: “And I’m answering as a police officer and as a DEA agent that these drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, because they are addictive, because they do hurt a person’s health.”

Polis: “So is heroin more addictive than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “Generally, the properties of heroin, yes, are more addictive.”

At last.

“We have an agency that can’t even acknowledge basic scientific facts,” Polis told me later. Indeed, its officials seem to believe that drawing distinctions between marijuana and other outlawed drugs is tantamount to encouraging pot’s use — as if intellectual honesty would thrust the agency into the drug legalization camp.

Yet you can, of course, make a perfectly good argument against legalizing marijuana and at the same time admit that you’d be far more alarmed if you found your 17-year-old experimenting with heroin, cocaine or meth than with pot — however much you deplore all teenage drug use.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Heroin is particularly addictive because it enters the brain so rapidly. … Cardiac function slows. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death.”

Surely our blunderbuss DEA should be able to admit that whatever the downsides of marijuana, overdose deaths are not among them.

True, pot’s proponents have a pronounced tendency to dismiss its perils, particularly for the young. But the DEA easily outdoes them for un-nuanced answers, such as Leonhart’s empty mantra that “all illegal drugs are bad.”

Maybe this explains why the last two DEA agents in charge of the Denver office have taken such clumsy public stances against Colorado’s medical marijuana law, with the current chief agent saying she’d refuse to live in a city with dispensaries.

Does that mean she’ll have to leave the state if voters approve a measure on this fall’s ballot decriminalizing the drug?

The DEA is an important federal agency. It would be helpful if it weren’t staffed by propagandists.

Source: Denver Post (CO)
Published: June 24, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Contact: [email protected]

Marijuana use among teens has been on the rise for some time–it’s become more popular than smoking cigarettes in recent years–but a provocative new study shows that legalizing pot for medical purposes doesn’t increase the chance that teens will abuse it or certain other drugs.

“There is anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is finding its way into the hands of teenagers, but there’s no statistical evidence that legalization increases the probability of use,” Daniel I. Rees, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Denver who worked on the study, said in a written statement.

Rees and his team looked at nationally representative data from high school students from 1993 through 2009–medical marijuana was legal in 13 states during that time–and found that legalization didn’t affect marijuana use at school. According to study co-author Benjamine Hansen, assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon, the data showed the opposite: There was often an inverse relationship between legalization and marijuana use.

What’s more, the researchers found no evidence that medical marijuana legalization led to an increase alcohol or cocaine use.

“This result is important given that the federal government has recently intensified its efforts to close medical marijuana dispensaries,” Hansen said in the statement.

The news adds another layer to the ongoing debate over whether medical marijuana should be legalized in more states. Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 17 states.

Just last month, a judge suffering from cancer wrote a New York Times op-ed in favor of legalization for medical reasons in New York state, confessing that he sometimes smokes before meals to relieve nausea and pain resulting from his illness and the medicines used to treat it.

In December, a study out of Rhode Island found that legalization of the drug did not lead to an increase in illegal use among teens.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that marijuana use has become too blase of a subject, even among parents, and such attitudes on the drug have led to an increase in use among young people.

As recently as December, R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, tied the increase in teen marijuana use to the drug’s legalization for medical purposes, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We know that any substance that is legally available is more widely used,” Kerlikowske told the paper.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Katherine Bindley
Published: June 19, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Monday night motion to support Stop the Violence BC campaign sparks heated debate; Mayor Dooley says he will ‘go to the wall’ to keep it from happening

Emotions ran high Monday night as Nelson city council debated a resolution that asked the mayor to write a letter in support of the Stop the Violence BC campaign.

“I believe it will have a negative impact on our community,” said Mayor John Dooley.  “The domestic market is only supporting a small portion of organized crime.  The drugs that are being grown in British Columbia are being sold to the United States in exchange for cocaine that is being brought back to be sold to the youth in this community and the children in our schoolyards.  I sit on the police board, I see the evidence and I can not put this community in that position.”

Stop the Violence BC is a coalition of academics, past and present law enforcement members and the general public.  Guided by scientific evidence this educational campaign is calling for “a strict regulatory framework aimed at limiting use while also starving organized crime of the profits they reap as a result of prohibition.”

Councillor Donna Macdonald introduced the issue to council late last month after receiving an email from a resident.

Before Macdonald could introduce her recommendation on Monday, Councillor Robin Cherbo brought forward his own which asked that the topic of regulation and taxation of marijuana be referred to the Union of BC Municipalities for analysis and research.

Cherbo stated that if council referred the issue to the Union of BC Municipalities, “Nelson would not be acting in isolation.”

Dooley said he would not sign a letter in support of the campaign and said he would “go to the wall” in opposition of it.

“This resolution should never have come forward in this manner,” said Dooley.  “This is the wrong way to bring this forward.”

The resolution introduced by Cherbo was called into question and defeated when councillors Deb Kozak, Paula Kiss, Candace Batycki and Macdonald voted against.

Kozak, who voted in support of the original motion put forward by Macdonald, said she had interpreted the resolution differently than Dooley.

“When we talk about prohibition and we talk about stopping the violence, when alcohol was regulated it did stop a lot of the violence,” said Kozak.  “The gang warfare over alcohol ended.  There was discussion and people needed to introduce it to be discussed…  I don’t believe it lessens the safety of our community.  I can’t agree with you there.”

When the original motion introduced by Macdonald was called to question, Kiss, Batycki, Kozak and Macdonald voted in favour, while Dooley, Cherbo and Councillor Bob Adams voted against.

“The reason that we are in this position today with the violence, gang control and the special THC marijuana that we’re seeing out on the market today, is that prohibition brought us all these problems,” said Kiss in response to comments by Cherbo.  “The problems are 100 per cent because of prohibition, so both of you [Cherbo and Dooley] have made a convincing case against prohibition.  I am saying please let us be leaders in starting this discussion about coming up with a system that is better.”

Both Dooley and Cherbo said Nelson should not act on this issue in isolation.

“We’re not doing this in isolation,” said Kiss in response.  “We’re being progressive leaders.”

Dooley said he is showing leadership as far as what the community wants.

“We are showing leadership.  We’re saying we want the full information package to make an informed decision,” he said.  “This is a decision promoted by one group.  I’ve outlined for myself a number of questions.  I can’t in good conscience support it without my concerns being addressed.”

Although eight mayors have signed letters in support of the Stop the Violence BC campaign, Dooley said all mayors would not sign the letter.

“At the end of the day they are the guys that call the shots,” said Dooley.  “It’s not the police chief that is retired or Ujjal Dosanjh that is no longer running for politics or Larry Campbell that is now a senator living high off the hog in Ottawa, those guys have been down the road, they are not looking to be elected again.  It’s the people in these chairs.”

Dooley mentioned that Holland has recently introduced legislation to address the country’s reputation for “drug tourism.”

“Their reputation has gone in the tank due to this,” said Dooley.  “Is that what we want for our community? I don’t think so.  And guess what, I’ll say this once again I’ll go to the wall on this…  in three years, I’ll go to the wall.  People have stood up at Central School before on that platform and they have been defeated.”

It was suggested by city manager Kevin Cormack that council amend the motion so that instead of having the mayor write a letter in support that the letter come from council.

Macdonald introduced a new motion at the end of the meeting that the original motion be deferred until the first meeting after the Union of BC Municipalities convention.

“We’re sort of at this ugly stalemate and if it would make people feel better to go to the UBCM and see what is said there, I’m happy to wait.  I still support this resolution, but in the interest of good relations I’m happy to wait until after UBCM.  As much as I would like us to show leadership, apparently that’s not going to happen.”

The motion was passed with Kiss, Batycki, Kozak and Macdonald voting in support.  Dooley, Cherbo and Adams voted against.

The Union of BC Municipalities convention is scheduled for September 24 to 28.

Source: Nelson Star (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 Black Press
Website: http://www.bclocalnews.com/kootenay_rockies/nelsonstar/
Author: Megan Cole

The Plant Is a Raw Material, Not Pot, Head of Soap Company Says

David Bronner locked himself in a metal cage Monday outside the White House with a stash of hemp plants and equipment, hoping to make enough hemp oil to spread on a piece of French bread.

Bronner, president and chief executive of Dr.  Bronner’s Magic Soaps, never got to finish the oil-pressing process or to have his usual breakfast.

D.C.  police and firefighters used a chain saw to cut open the steel cage door and arrest him.  Bronner was charged with possession of marijuana and blocking passage.

Bronner, whose Californiabased company uses hemp oil in its soap products, pleaded with President Obama – via microphone – to allow hemp harvesting in the United States.

Bronner was moved to protest after a recent 28,000-signature petition asking for hemp legalization didn’t get the response he wanted, according to his spokesman, Ryan Fletcher.

The protest began at 8 a.m., when Bronner and his caged trailer were dropped off on H Street NW next to Lafayette Square.  Park police and Secret Service members joined D.C.  police and fire officials, who worked for a couple of hours to open the cage.

Bronner had designed the trailer so it could not easily be broken into or towed away by police, Fletcher said.

Atop the trailer was a sign that read, “DEAR MR.  PRESIDENT.  LET U.S.  FARMERS GROW HEMP!”

Bronner’s actions prompted police to shut down traffic around 16th and H streets at about 10:30 a.m.

U.S.  drug law defines hemp as a controlled substance, the same as marijuana, making the plants inside Bronner’s trailer illegal.  Live hemp seeds may not be imported into the country, and hemp may not be grown.  However, hemp-derived food, textiles and other products may be imported or produced in the United States from non-living hemp material.

Bronner says that lab tests confirm the THC level in his hemp plants is less than 0.3 percent, the international standard for industrial hemp.  THC is the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana, where it is much more concentrated.

“We import roughly $100,000 a year of hemp oil from Canada,” Fletcher said.  “He’s doing this action in part because he wants to be able to source that hemp oil from American farmers, rather than exporting his dollars to Canada.”

Last week, Sen.  Ron Wyden ( D-Ore.  ) introduced a measure that would label hemp as an agricultural crop.  The amendment was backed by Sen.  Rand Paul ( R-Ky.  ).

Monday’s protest was not Bronner’s first action to promote hemp cultivation in the United States.  In 2009, Bronner and others planted hemp seeds on the front lawn of the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum and Visitors Center in Arlington.  They were arrested and charged with trespassing.

Bronner’s grandfather, E.H.  Bronner, founded Dr.  Bronner’s Magic Soap in 1948.  The company produces some of the top-selling organic soaps in the country.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2012 The Washington Post Company
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

A Colorado committee formed to defeat a marijuana issue on the November ballot has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to weigh in with his opposition.

Amendment 64 would allow adults statewide to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana for recreational use.

The measure is opposed by a citizens group called Smart Colorado, which is represented by the Denver law firm of Holland & Hart.

In a letter to Holder, Smart Colorado attorney Jon Anderson noted that Colorado’s ballot measure “parallels” a California measure, Proposition 19, that voters there defeated in 2010.

The Department of Justice “aggressively” opposed that measure, Anderson said, and Smart Colorado wants the department to do the same in Colorado.

“As you know, Colorado has the most expansive medical marijuana industry in the country,” he wrote Holder. “To further expand their drug profits, this industry will invest enormous sums of money to erase all state restrictions on growing, transporting, and selling marijuana in Colorado. It is critical that Colorado voters understand the serious legal and policy implications of passing such a dangerous law.”

The letter surprised Mason Tvert, the leader of pro-Amendment 64 groups.

“This seems like a politically tone-deaf request in light of the recent Rasmussen poll showing 61 percent of likely voters in Colorado support regulating marijuana like alcohol,” he said. “Whoever is asking the Obama administration to oppose Amendment 64 must be secretly rooting for Mitt Romney to be elected president in November.”

Five campaign committees supporting Amendment 64 have collected close to $2 million in money and in-kind donations to try to ensure its passage, according to filings with Colorado secretary of state. Tvert’s group is the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.

He was critical of Smart Colorado, describing it as a “small group of law-enforcement officials” who want the federal government to “interfere with Colorado’s business.”

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who helped organize the opposition group, said it is a “broad-based coalition of individuals concerned with our children’s health.”

Read more: AG Eric Holder urged to oppose Colorado marijuana ballot issue – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_20843643/#ixzz1xoQmWMu2
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Source: Denver Post (CO)
Author: Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post
Published: June 13, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Contact: [email protected]