Cannabis

Rebecca Brown says she tried every prescription drug she could find to control the frequent seizures her son suffered because of a severe form of epilepsy.

When nothing worked consistently, and the drugs and special diet caused kidney stones and pancreas problems as side effects, the Oakland County woman turned to medical marijuana.

Now, Cooper Brown, 14, is one of 44 Michigan residents younger than 18 with a medical marijuana card.  His mom says his seizures have dropped off dramatically since he started using it early this year.

But the treatment is controversial.  Marijuana — medical or otherwise – — is illegal at the federal level and some doctors say it shouldn’t be used by adults, let alone children.  A lack of clinical studies means there is uncertainty about its effects on developing brains and nervous systems.

Though still in middle school, Cooper is not the youngest child on the state’s medical marijuana registry.  A 7-year-old, two 9-year-olds, an 11-year-old, and a 13-year-old can also legally possess and consume medical pot in Michigan.

State officials won’t disclose the children’s medical conditions.  They say they don’t know whether the kids smoke the drug or take it some other way, such as in a baked good, a liquid extract called a tincture, or by using a vaporizer.

Parents say they’ve successfully used medical cannabis to treat their kids for Dravet Syndrome, which Cooper has, as well as autism, attention deficit disorder, muscular dystrophy, and the pain and nausea of cancer, among other ailments.

Brown said she would never let Cooper smoke marijuana.  Instead, he eats it in food she prepares for him.

Brown would not identify her supplier but said she searches out cannabis that laboratory tests show is low in THC ( tetrahydrocannabinol ), the compound which provides the marijuana high, but with elevated levels of a lesser-known compound, CBD ( cannabidiol ), which has antiseizure properties.

Brown said in an interview with the Free Press that she might face criticism for going public but hopes she can help even one family lessen the stress and suffering that she and her family have endured.

“This isn’t something we entered into lightly,” Brown said.  “I’ve done a lot of reading and a lot of research.  I have everything tested.

“I am not a pot smoker and never in a million years thought of trying this,” she said.  “But when your child is suffering and you feel desperate, you consider things you may not have before.

“Parents, when their kids are healthy, they take it for granted.”

Doctors’ permission

Brown first had to convince her skeptical husband.  Because Cooper is younger than 18, Michigan law required her to get not one, but two doctors — Cooper’s pediatrician and his neurologist — to sign off on him using it.

Like Michigan, most states that have legalized medical marijuana don’t require users to be at least 18.  Only Delaware, and now Connecticut, which this month became the 17th state to legalize it, have such a requirement, said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

Dr.  Tom George, a practicing physician and former Republican state senator from Kalamazoo who voted against Michigan legalizing medical marijuana in 2008, said there are no absolutes in medicine but an effective prescription treatment is almost always preferable to herbal marijuana.

Michigan, which has more than 130,000 adults on its medical marijuana registry, should amend its law so the drug can be used only for a limited number of specific conditions — not any time a doctor gives the OK — he said.

George, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for governor in 2010, said his concerns are heightened when it comes to use by children, though he’s not sure that should be banned.

“I don’t think we know in growing nervous systems what effects it might have,” George said.

In the case of the Brown family, “I like the fact that he’s not smoking it,” and “it sounds like she’s done her homework,” George said.

“It’s hard to know what to say based on anecdotal cases.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t have a policy on medical cannabis, though it’s working on developing one, officials said.

Nearly three-quarters of Michigan medical marijuana users who are minors are either 16 or 17 years old.  Similar high school-age concentrations of underage users in other states have prompted concerns about students using medical marijuana cards to supply the drug not just to themselves, but to their friends.

It’s a worry even for some proponents of medical pot, such as the Eugene, Ore., man who writes the Weed Blog under the pen name Johnny Green.

“I think it’s kind of unusual that in a part of the country where there’s a high prevalence of abuse of the program, there’s also a high prevalence of teenagers getting their medical marijuana cards,” Green said, in reference to Oregon.

Green, 31, who would not give his real name and said he uses medical cannabis to treat his tendinitis, said minors should face stricter controls than adults in getting medical marijuana cards.  He said he likes the fact that Michigan, unlike Oregon and most other states, requires not one, but two doctors’ signatures.

Farmington Hills attorney Robert Mullen, spokesman for the Michigan chapter of the National Patients Rights Association, which favors testing requirements and improved controls over medical marijuana, said he also favors Michigan’s two-doctor requirement.

Long-term effects

As for concerns about the long-term effects of medical cannabis on young patients, “there’s a cost-benefit analysis to any form of treatment,” Mullen said.

Prescription drugs also can have long-term adverse effects, and “here’s someone who’s run the full gamut of Western medicine and it’s not working, so she’s trying something that’s an organic treatment,” he said.

Though Cooper is small for his age and is in a special education class when he attends school, he is at the high end of the spectrum for youngsters with Dravet Syndrome.  He likes to play video games, cook and hang out with friends, and he has verbal skills that many with the same condition lack.

Rebecca Brown said she decided to try medical cannabis for her son after she saw a YouTube video about Jason David of Modesto, Calif., who said he believes the drug saved the life of his son Jayden, 5, who also has Dravet Syndrome and only recently began speaking a few words.

“My son had a seizure every day of his life,” David said in a telephone interview.  “He was crying in pain every day.” Since he started giving the boy an oral tincture of high-CBD cannabis, “he’s been doing amazing,” and “now he can go a week without having one and when he does, it’s not nearly as severe.”

Brown said she takes Cooper’s medical cannabis to Iron Labs LLC in Walled Lake where it’s tested not just for CBD content but for herbicides and other harmful impurities.

She said she’s concerned about continuity of supply because high-CBD cannabis was hard to find in Michigan and it would be illegal for her to import it from another state.

“One day a few weeks ago I didn’t give him any medicine and that day he had five seizures,” said Brown, who uses Facebook to reach out to other moms with sick kids.

“To me, it’s not a drug issue, it’s a compassion issue,” Brown said.

Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2012 Detroit Free Press
Contact: http://www.freep.com/article/99999999/opinion04/50926009
Website: http://www.freep.com/
Author: Paul Egan

A forthcoming biography on President Obama is making headlines, with new details about the president smoking marijuana with his teenage friends in Hawaii.

David Maraniss’ book, Barack Obama: The Story, describes Obama as a marijuana enthusiast: “When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!’ and took an extra hit,” Maraniss writes. Maraniss also describes Obama’s technique of “roof hits” while hot-boxing cars. “When the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling,” he writes. Obama has been less than shy about his drug use in the past, writing about the topic in Dreams from My Father, “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it,” he writes in the memoir.

While Obama’s term began with great promise for drug policy reformers, in the past two years it has been difficult to distin­guish Obama’s drug policies from those of his White House predecessors. Although President Obama has acknowledged that legalization is “an entirely legitimate topic for debate” — the first time a sitting president has made such a statement — his administra­tion has made a string of increasingly disappointing moves over the last year. Half of all U.S. drug arrests are for marijuana — more than 850,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2010 alone, 88 percent for mere possession.

Barack Obama won a lot of hearts and minds some years ago when he talked so openly and frankly about his youthful marijuana use. That contrasted refreshingly with Bill Clinton’s hemming and hawing about not having inhaled, much less George Bush’s refusal to even acknowledge what old friends revealed about his marijuana use.

But the president has been losing lots of hearts and minds, especially those of young voters, with his striking silence on marijuana issues since he became president — apart from providing lame excuses for the federal government’s aggressive undermining of state medical marijuana laws.

Most disappointing is his failure to say a word as president about the fact that half of all drug arrests each year are for nothing more than possessing a small amount of marijuana, which is something Barack Obama did lots of in his younger days, or to offer any critical comments about the stunning racial disproportionality in marijuana arrests around the country.

Roughly twice as many people are arrested for marijuana possession now as were arrested in the early 1980s, even though the number of people consuming marijuana is no greater now than then. If police had been as keen on making marijuana arrests back then, it’s quite possible that a young man named Barry Obama would have landed up with a criminal record — and even more likely that he would not have his current job.

With 50 percent of Americans — and 57 percent of Democrats — now in favor of legalizing marijuana use, according to Gallup’s most recent poll, President Obama needs to come clean once again about marijuana — but this time he needs to speak not of his own youthful use but rather of the harmful consequences of today’s punitive marijuana policies for young Americans today.

Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org)

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Ethan Nadelmann
Published: May 25, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Technological advancements have given today’s teenagers access to a lot of things their parents could hardly envision at that age: The Internet.  iPads.  And marijuana many times more powerful than what people smoked in the 1970s.

The rise in marijuana use among teens, as documented by recent national surveys, comes as particularly alarming to health advocates because marijuana is more potent than ever before, experts say.  That means the pot youth are smoking today carries a greater risk of harm than what their parents might have experienced a generation ago.

“The people who are growing marijuana have improved their techniques,” Stephen Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership at Drugfree.org, said in phone interview.  “Nobody’s cleaning seeds out of marijuana on a record album like they used to do in the old days.”

Counter-drug investigators say the trend is increasingly evident in North Carolina too, as clandestine domestic producers perfect their techniques and harness science to genetically engineer their yields.

Growing marijuana indoors, a common practice among domestic cultivators, allows producers to manipulate temperatures, carbon dioxide levels and other environmental elements.  That degree of control, coupled with the selective breeding of more powerful cannabis strains, enables the production of highly potent plants.

“They cross strains like they’re breeding dogs,” said Special Agent Gregory Peckinpaugh, domestic cannabis eradication suppression coordinator for the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Atlanta field division, which covers North Carolina.  As a result, he said, “the quality of marijuana both indoors and out domestically has gone up exponentially.”

Marijuana potency, determined by the amount of the active chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, measured in a given sample, has been on a steady climb over the last three decades.

In 1976, an analysis of DEA seizures found an average THC content of between a half and 1 percent.  In 2011, that figure was nearing 12 percent, with some samples containing THC levels above 20 and 30 percent, said Mahmoud ElSohly, director of the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project, which conducted the analyses.

Because long-term marijuana users develop tolerance for the drug, ElSohly said the stakes were higher for young people whose bodies are unaccustomed to high-grade marijuana’s powerful effects.

“They end up with psychosis, psychological problems, panic disorder, things of that nature, because their body is not used to that material,” ElSohly said.

The prevalence of potent marijuana has led to concerns among health advocates because the number of teens using the drug has increased in recent years.  A survey released in May by the Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation found that one in 10 teens had smoked marijuana at least 20 times in the previous month, an 80 percent increase over 2008.

Marijuana production is big business, a fact authorities ascribe to high profit margins, easy access to equipment and information and lower penalties in comparison to getting caught trafficking drugs like heroin or cocaine.  High quality marijuana can sell for between $4,000 and $6,000 per pound, compared to about $1,000 or less for the weak varieties imported from Mexico, authorities said.

The bigger domestic grow operations are elaborate setups, complete with timers, fans, rows of lights and ventilation systems designed to hide the tell-tale aroma from neighbors.  The attention to detail, as well as the dedication that some growers show, tending to their plants seven days a week like a religion, can marvel authorities.

The science behind the practice has produced a shadowy subculture of rogue horticulturists concerned about whether product quality will affect their reputation.

Sgt.  Will Richards, an investigator with the Wilmington Police Department’s Narcotics Enforcement Unit, said the city has seen operations where producers stagger their growing schedules so they yield a harvest every few weeks, and thus a steady stream of income.  “It’s extremely intricate,” Richards said.

Seasoned investigators have learned to distinguish at a glance enhanced marijuana from what they refer to as “brick weed,” so called because traffickers compress it to sneak as much as possible across the border.

In addition to more marijuana cultivators setting up shop in North Carolina, the softening of laws in other states has led to greater supply for all, authorities say.

California, where quasi-legal grow houses have sprung up in recent years, has become a leading source of marijuana for markets in Southeastern North Carolina.  Authorities in Arizona recently intercepted a vehicle leaving California carrying 20 pounds of high-grade product destined for Wilmington, police said.

Some believe Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s grinding war against the cartels there has boosted prices for drugs shipped transnationally, giving homegrown marijuana producers a chance to capture more market share even though the price of their product runs higher than their Mexican counterparts.

Lt.  J.A.  LeBlanc, an investigator with the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office’s Vice and Narcotics Unit, said users have become choosey with the quality of marijuana they consume, refusing to even buy the drug unless it meets a high standard.

“Now, you have an entire generation who reads “‘High Times’ and considers themselves marijuana connoisseurs,” he said, referencing a niche publication geared toward users and growers.

Source: Star-News (Wilmington, NC)
Copyright: 2012 Wilmington Morning Star
Contact: http://www.starnewsonline.com/section/submit01
Website: http://www.starnewsonline.com/
Author: Brian Freskos

The proliferation of dispensary-style medical marijuana operations in Oregon concerns the state’s new U.S. Attorney, but she said she’s unwilling to devote much time or money to prosecuting a criminal activity that’s low on her list of priorities.

U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall said the number of dispensaries in Oregon has been growing. Her office estimates the state hosts at least 100, most of which are in the Portland metro area.

In 2010, Marshall’s predecessor joined his counterparts in other medical marijuana states by sending warning letters to operations it felt were the most egregious offenders of the state’s medical marijuana law, threatening them — or their landlords — with civil asset forfeiture if they didn’t close shop.

The problem, Marshall said, is that Oregon’s medical marijuana law was passed without any enforcement power or extra money for local agencies to crack down on the worst actors.

“I don’t know that the law itself is the problem, so much as the lack of oversight in terms of the medical marijuana grows and distribution,” Marshall said Friday. “When you look at it, you’ve (had) a handful of prosecutions and you’ve got over 100 dispensaries, there’s no oversight.

“They passed this law, and there’s no additional resources or funding mechanisms for law enforcement.”

Medical marijuana took center stage in Oregon politics last week when it emerged as a flashpoint in the Democratic primary for state attorney general.

Former interim U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton had criticized the state program as a ”train wreck,” mobilizing marijuana advocates to lobby against him.

It’s impossible to tell whether the issue played a role in Holton’s loss to retired judge Ellen Rosenblum, but it accounted for at least one-quarter of Rosenblum’s fundraising.

Marshall said she wouldn’t use the words ”train wreck” to describe Oregon’s law.

“I’m not here to say this law is good or bad or to suggest future legislation or future policy direction,“ said Marshall, who took office in October. ”People say, ‘You’re the U.S. attorney, are you going to go after medical marijuana?’ No I’m not. I don’t care about medical marijuana.“

The state’s law, passed in 1998, allows patients to possess 24 ounces of marijuana.

In 2010, Oregon voters rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized California-style dispensaries. Cannabis club owners say their properties aren’t dispensaries but havens for cannabis users to obtain and use the medicine they would otherwise have to grow themselves, have grown for them or buy on the black market. They say marijuana available at cannabis clubs often comes from authorized growers who donate it.

To Marshall, the threat isn’t from cancer patients growing plants in their window boxes for personal consumption. Rather, it’s drug trafficking operations that move bales of marijuana from Oregon and California’s fertile growing climate to the East Coast, where it retails for $5,000 per pound.

“Pounds and pounds and pounds of marijuana are being shipped out of Oregon, not to sick people needing cards but to drug dealers who are selling it, who are laundering money, who are evading taxes,” she said, “and it’s dangerous business.”

Voters didn’t know what they would get when they approved the law in 1998, Marshall said. They approved six plants per patient, believing the yields would be sufficient for personal consumption, she said.

“People weren’t thinking about the plants that we saw pulled out of the ground in Southern Oregon that produced 10 pounds of manicured, smokable marijuana bud,” Marshall said. “These people are master gardeners.

“I wish I could grow tomatoes like that.”

Source: Statesman Journal (OR)
Author: Nigel Duara
Published: May 21, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Statesman Journal
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/

Three and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

My survival has demanded an enormous price, including months of chemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery. For about a year, my cancer disappeared, only to return. About a month ago, I started a new and even more debilitating course of treatment. Every other week, after receiving an IV booster of chemotherapy drugs that takes three hours, I wear a pump that slowly injects more of the drugs over the next 48 hours.

Nausea and pain are constant companions. One struggles to eat enough to stave off the dramatic weight loss that is part of this disease. Eating, one of the great pleasures of life, has now become a daily battle, with each forkful a small victory. Every drug prescribed to treat one problem leads to one or two more drugs to offset its side effects. Pain medication leads to loss of appetite and constipation. Anti-nausea medication raises glucose levels, a serious problem for me with my pancreas so compromised. Sleep, which might bring respite from the miseries of the day, becomes increasingly elusive.

Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy.

Sixteen states already permit the legitimate clinical use of marijuana, including our neighbor New Jersey, and Connecticut is on the cusp of becoming No. 17. The New York State Legislature is now debating a bill to recognize marijuana as an effective and legitimate medicinal substance and establish a lawful framework for its use. The Assembly has passed such bills before, but they went nowhere in the State Senate. This year I hope that the outcome will be different. Cancer is a nonpartisan disease, so ubiquitous that it’s impossible to imagine that there are legislators whose families have not also been touched by this scourge. It is to help all who have been affected by cancer, and those who will come after, that I now speak.

Given my position as a sitting judge still hearing cases, well-meaning friends question the wisdom of my coming out on this issue. But I recognize that fellow cancer sufferers may be unable, for a host of reasons, to give voice to our plight. It is another heartbreaking aporia in the world of cancer that the one drug that gives relief without deleterious side effects remains classified as a narcotic with no medicinal value.

Because criminalizing an effective medical technique affects the fair administration of justice, I feel obliged to speak out as both a judge and a cancer patient suffering with a fatal disease. I implore the governor and the Legislature of New York, always considered a leader among states, to join the forward and humane thinking of 16 other states and pass the medical marijuana bill this year. Medical science has not yet found a cure, but it is barbaric to deny us access to one substance that has proved to ameliorate our suffering.

Gustin L. Reichbach is a justice of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on May 17, 2012, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: A Judge’s Plea for Pot.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Gustin L. Reichbach
Published: May 17, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

Medical marijuana advocates have a message for Democratic leaders and federal prosecutors with an eye on political office: Don’t mess with pot. Pushing back against a federal effort to stem the proliferation of medical marijuana operations, one of the nation’s largest drug policy groups claimed credit Wednesday for the defeat of a former federal prosecutor who was the early favorite to win the Democratic primary for Oregon attorney general.

As interim U.S. attorney, Dwight Holton called Oregon’s medical marijuana law a “train wreck” and oversaw efforts to crack down on medical marijuana clubs and grow operations that he said were fronts for illegal marijuana sales. Federal prosecutors have led similar crackdowns in other states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal use.

“Drug war rhetoric and tactics will not be tolerated,” said Jill Harris, managing director for the campaign arm of Drug Policy Alliance.

Retired state appeals court judge Ellen Rosenblum said she’d make marijuana enforcement a low priority. She easily defeated Holton with the help of Harris’ group and its allies, which chipped in at least a quarter of Rosenblum’s total campaign cash.

“What we’re hoping, and what we assume, is that any U.S. attorney who’s thinking of running for statewide office in a Democratic Primary anywhere in the country is going to think twice now before adopting a highly aggressive posture toward the medical marijuana law,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director Drug Policy Alliance and its campaign branch, Drug Policy Action.

Rosenblum downplayed the role of the marijuana vote in her victory in a brief interview following her victory Tuesday night. With most votes counted, she defeated Holton 64 percent to 36 percent.

“There’s lots of issues that played into my victory, and that may well be one of them,” Rosenblum said of the surprising emergence of medical marijuana as a defining issue.

About 55,000 people are registered marijuana users in Oregon.

Sixteen states allow people with a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana, an issue that has long been a source of tension with the federal government. Federal officials have said some state medical marijuana laws are being used as cover to grow and sell pot for the black market. Law enforcement agencies have cracked down on some pot growers, dispensaries and clubs in several states, including California, Colorado and Oregon.

Campaign finance records show Rosenblum raised $600,000 through May 9, including $80,000 from Drug Policy Action and $70,000 from John Sperling, Chairman of Apollo Group Inc., who has financed medical marijuana campaigns nationally. Oregon has no caps on campaign contributions.

Citizens for Sensible Law Enforcement, a local organization working on a ballot measure to legalize marijuana, spent another $40,000 to boost Rosenblum, much of it on radio ads attacking Holton over marijuana.

“We’re glad to have played a role in her victory,” said Bob Wolfe, one of the organization’s directors. “But I do think Dwight’s defeat is directly related to his stance on marijuana.”

Holton declined to comment. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Published: May 17, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Associated Press

Smoking medical marijuana could help relieve some symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a small new study suggests. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found that people with MS who smoked cannabis had decreased pain and muscle tightness, called spasticity. However, the researchers warned that smoking the cannabis also led to problems with focus and attention.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, included 30 people — 63 percent of them women — with an average age of 50. More than half the participants needed aids for walking, and 20 percent of them were in wheelchairs. Some of the study participants were randomly assigned to have the cannabis, while others received a placebo.

At the end of the study, researchers found that people who smoked the cannabis had lower numbers on a spasticity scale, as well as a 50 percent decrease in pain scores.

But researchers found that the people who smoked the cannabis had decreased cognitive functioning, in that they scored lower on a test that measured their focus. This effect was only seen for a short term.

“Smoked cannabis was superior to placebo in symptom and pain reduction in participants with treatment-resistant spasticity,” researchers wrote in the study. “Future studies should examine whether different doses can result in similar beneficial effects with less cognitive impact.”

Just last year, a study in the journal Neurology also showed that multiple sclerosis patients who smoked medical marijuana have a doubled risk of developing cognitive impairments.

“Whatever benefits patients feel they might be getting from smoking marijuana might come at the cost of further cognitive compromise,” the researcher of that study, Dr. Anthony Feinstein, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Toronto, told WebMD.

Marijuana use is currently legal for medical purposes in 16 states and Washington, D.C., the New York Times reported.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the brain and spinal cord, according to the National Institutes of Health. It occurs when the myelin sheath, which is responsible for protecting nerve fibers, is damaged, causing symptoms of cognitive problems, muscle weakness, disturbed vision, strange touch sensations and balance and coordination problems.

While there’s no cure for the condition, current treatments for multiple sclerosis attacks include taking drugs called corticosteroids and undergoing plasma exchange (where blood cells and plasma are mechanically separated), according to the Mayo Clinic. Other drugs and even physical therapy can help reduce symptoms or even slow the disease down.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Published: May 14, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Johnnie Scott Rice has held a lot of titles in her life: director of constituent services, advisory neighborhood commissioner, D.C. Council candidate. But there is one title she covets that has eluded her: District pot dealer.

Rice, 71, is part of the Green House, a self-proclaimed “group of old ladies,” that the city recently turned down for a license to sell medical marijuana. Three other rejected applicants, including a Bethesda eye doctor and a competitive bass fisherman, have gone to court in the past week to contest the city’s decision, said Ted O. Gest, spokesman for the D.C. Office of Attorney General.

Many of those turned down have said the selection process is confusing and opaque. They contend the D.C. Health Department did not provide clear explanations for its decisions — an accusation city officials deny.

Rice and her partners, who include a former lingerie store owner and a social worker, are disappointed, although they have decided not to pursue legal action. For nearly a year, the women have used their retirement savings to lease a dispensary location in Shaw, hoping to provide medical marijuana to people with glaucoma, AIDS, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. They want to know exactly where they fell short in their months-long application bid.

“We don’t want to waste their time or our time,” Rice said. “It’s confusing even to us.”

The health department, which is overseeing the roll-out of the medical marijuana program, relied on a panel of experts to score each application.

The agency told one applicant that much of the proposal was “adequate” but denied it. It dinged at least three of the unsuccessful applicants for not providing a sample label even though the application didn’t require one.

Rice’s group asked to see its scores through a request under the District of Columbia Freedom of Information Act. But the agency refused to release the scores or other material that would shed light on the panel’s decision-making process, arguing that a final announcement has not yet been made, and that such documents contain trade secrets. The scores are also part of confidential deliberations by government officials that the city is not legally obligated to disclose, said health department spokeswoman Najma Roberts.

That explanation troubles the applicants that were turned away.

“I don’t understand why this is so secretive, especially for something so high profile,” said Tom Lindenfeld, a local political consultant working with Compassion Centers, which is affiliated with an established dispensary operator in California.

The two other groups that have filed appeals are the Health Company, which is led by Michael Duplessie, a Bethesda ophthalmologist, and the Free World Remedy, lead by Jonathan Marlow, a competitive bass fisherman from Northern Virginia whose mother suffers from multiple sclerosis.

The legal challenges are the latest wrinkle in a selection process marred by glitches from the start.

Since passing a medical marijuana law in 2010, the District has taken a go-slow approach in an effort to avoid some of the mistakes that have been made in other jurisdictions, such as Colorado and California, where critics say medical marijuana has become little more than legalized drug dealing.

The District’s regulations are among the toughest in the country, with strict limits on how many plants can be grown, how much the dispensaries can charge and who can buy it. Only people with certain chronic conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma qualify; they are allowed two ounces in a 30-day period with a doctor’s recommendation.

The city began accepting applications last year for licenses to operate up to 10 cultivation centers and five dispensaries. There were problems almost immediately. Some who had planned on applying were scared off by having to sign a statement saying they understood growing and selling marijuana was still illegal under federal law.

The health department initially rejected some applicants for minor errors, such as leaving off e-mail addresses, then later let them back in. Officials also rejected Duplessie’s application to operate a cultivation center because it was 90 minutes late — even though an evacuation of the agency’s offices was partly to blame.

The agency was supposed to announce the dispensary licensees earlier this spring but pushed the date back to June, forcing some of the applicants, including Rice’s group, to spend additional money to continue leasing space.

Last month the health department last month informed the 17 aspiring pot retailers which of them were still in the running. Only four made it through, and they must win approval from their local advisory neighborhood commissions.

The four that made it: Herbal Alternatives, which is looking to open a dispensary near 20th and M streets NW; Metropolitan Wellness Center Corporation, which is eyeing a location along Barracks Row on Capitol Hill by a fast-food restaurant and a tattoo parlor; Takoma Wellness Center, which plans to open near the Takoma Metro Station; and VentureForth LLC, which has a site by O and North Capitol streets NW.

So far, many of the groups that the city has tapped to grow and to sell medical marijuana have mainly been established pot dispensaries and cultivators from other parts of the country, including Abatin Wellness Center of Sacramento, the brainchild of former talk-show host Montel Williams.

Local officials, including D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At Large), had hoped for more local representation. The local players who have made the cut for either a dispensary or cultivation license are retired Takoma Park rabbi Jeffrey Kahn and his wife, Stephanie; lawyer Edward Grandis, executive director of the Dupont Circle Merchants and Professionals Association; financier Corey Barnette; and Capitol Hill liquor store owners Rick and Jon Genderson.

Deep roots in the city were a big part of the pitch that Rice, a third-generation Washingtonian, made at community gatherings in Shaw, where their dispensary was to be located, on the same block as social service agency Bread for the City.

Rice grew up in Trinidad, the daughter of a bricklayer, and has been a longtime fixture on the D.C. political scene. She has run for office, worked as an aide to Catania and served as an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 7 for 10 years. She is also an insulin-dependent diabetic, has glaucoma and can no longer drive at night. Not long after the D.C. Council made medical marijuana legal, she heard from friends in California that cannabis could help people with glaucoma.

“It made me think about this,” she said. “If this medicine can improve these conditions in me, why not?”

Unbeknownst to her, Francine Levinson, 61, was also thinking about applying for a license. Levinson has started businesses before. She got into banking after she discovered she couldn’t get a loan without her husband or her father signing for her. She became a founding member of the First Women’s Bank of Maryland. Levinson later ran a lingerie store for nine years. She and Rice have been friends for years, but they didn’t tell each other right away about their interest in pursuing a medical marijuana dispensary license.

“Everybody was so timid about it,” Rice said.

After a mutual friend clued both of the them in, the two decided to partner up and even considered naming the business, “Frankie and Johnnie,” a reference to the classic song, until Levinson’s daughter, Stephanie Mantelmacher, 46, said, “no one is going to know what that means.” Seeing that her input might come in handy, Mantelmacher, a former executive with XM Satellite Radio, joined the group. Leigh A. Slaughter, 58, a lawyer and real estate agent, and former Whitman-Walker Clinic official Patricia Hawkins, 71, filled out the team.

If the city opens up the process again, Rice said, they would consider making another attempt. Until then, they can only imagine what might have been.

The people who will be coming to buy medical marijuana “don’t want to see some young kids selling dope,” she said. “Most of the clientele is going to look like us. We are the face of the users of medical marijuana.”

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Annys Shin
Published: May 9, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

The Crown on Monday urged Ontario’s Court of Appeal to overturn a controversial ruling that struck down the federal legislation governing access to medical marijuana.

The case centres on Toronto marijuana activist Matthew Mernagh, who launched a constitutional challenge after being charged with producing marijuana illegally. The trial judge accepted Mernagh’s position that the federal Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) constitute an unfair barrier for sick people, and struck down both the MMAR and sections of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act banning marijuana production and possession. That ruling is on hold pending the outcome of the federal government’s appeal.

Before three Appeal Court judges Monday, Crown attorney Croft Michaelson rejected the trial judge’s findings as “extravagant and wholly unsupported by the record.”

Michaelson said Justice Donald Taliano made numerous errors in finding that Canadian doctors have engaged in a “massive boycott” of the medical marijuana program, leaving many needy patients with nowhere to turn.

“You cannot say on this record that the majority of physicians in Canada are opposed to the MMAR . . . It’s mere speculation,” Michaelson said, citing an insufficient evidentiary basis for the judge’s conclusions.

A large number of Mernagh’s supporters turned out for the court hearing, one hoisting a Canadian flag emblazoned with a cannabis leaf in place of the traditional Maple Leaf.

The hearing was slated to resume Monday afternoon.

A bill legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has passed the Connecticut Senate. The state joins 16 others and the District of Columbia in enacting such legislation.

State senators voted 21-to-13 in favor of the measure early Saturday, after nearly 10 hours of debate dominated by bill opponent Republican Sen. Toni Boucher.

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has said he supports the measure, is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The bill moves away from the largely criticized precedent set in California, proposing a complex regulated system of cultivation, dispensing and licensing.

The Connecticut bill outlines specific diseases that would be treated under the drug. It requires a recommendation from an individual’s physician and establishes a system of licensing for patients, caregivers and growers.

Source: HuffPost News

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/05/medical-marijuana-connecticut_n_1483670.html