Cannabis News

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]

Actor Tommy Chong is battling prostate cancer, he revealed to CNN’s Don Lemon on Saturday night.

The 74-year-old is best known for his stoner-comedy routine alongside Cheech Marin, as the comedy duo “Cheech and Chong.”

Chong told CNN he was diagnosed about a month ago and that the cancer is currently in a “slow stage one.” He revealed he first noticed symptoms nearly eight years ago during his nine-month sentence at Taft Correctional Institution in California, adding that he believes the prison caused his health to take a turn for the worse.

“The prison is built on toxic waste. I also got gout from the food there,” he told CNN.

The actor and comedian revealed his condition during an interview about his support for decriminalizing marijuana use and sales, so it’s not surprising how he plans on treating his illness.

“I’ve got prostate cancer, and I’m treating it with hemp oil, with cannabis. So [legalizing marijuana] means a lot more to me than just being able to smoke a joint without being arrested,” he explained, adding that he was drug free for nearly three years, during which time he began having health problems. “So I know [the cancer] had nothing to do with cannabis. Cannabis is a cure.”

Chong also explained he quit smoking marijuana about a year ago, so to treat his prostate cancer he ingests hemp oil, but only “at night, so I won’t be woozy all day,” he explained.

Chong and his on-screen partner Cheech Marin are the original stoner duo, best known for their big screen adventure “Up In Smoke,” which was followed by several films detailing their zany antics. A longtime and vocal supporter of legalizing marijuana, Chong has written several books including, “The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint,” and most recently lent his voice to the animated feature “Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil.”

Source: Huffington Post

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/10/tommy-chong-cancer-cheech-chong-star-battling-prostate-cancer_n_1584602.html

Catharine Leach is married and has two boys, age 2 and 8. She has a good job with a federal contractor and smokes pot most every day.

While she worries that her public support for marijuana decriminalization and legalization could cost her a job or bring the police to her door, the 30-year-old Warwick resident said she was tired of feeling like a criminal for using a drug that she said is far less harmful than the glass or wine or can of beer enjoyed by so many others after a long day’s work. Like others around the nation working to relax penalties for possession of pot, she decided to stop hiding and speak out.

“I’m done being afraid,” she said. “People in this country are finally coming around and seeing that putting someone in jail for this doesn’t make sense. It’s just a changing of the time.”

Once consigned to the political fringe, marijuana policy is appearing on legislative agendas around the country thanks to an energized base of supporters and an increasingly open-minded public. Lawmakers from Rhode Island to Colorado are mulling medical marijuana programs, pot dispensaries, decriminalization and even legalization.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now authorize medical marijuana and 14, including neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts, have rolled back criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of pot.

Rhode Island is poised to become the 15th state to decriminalize marijuana possession. The state’s General Assembly passed legislation last week that would eliminate the threat of big fines or even jail time for the possession of an ounce or less of pot. Instead, adults caught with small amounts of marijuana would face a $150 civil fine. Police would confiscate the marijuana, but the incident would not appear on a person’s criminal record.

Minors caught with pot would also have to complete a drug awareness program and community service.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee has said he is inclined to sign the legislation.

One of the bill’s sponsors, state Rep. John Edwards of Tiverton, has introduced similar proposals in past years but the idea always sputtered in committee. Each year, though, he got more co-sponsors, and the bill passed the House this year 50-24. The state Senate passed it 28-6.

Some supporters of decriminalization say they’d like to go even further.

“America’s 50-year war on drugs has been an abysmal failure,” said Rep. John Savage, a retired school principal from East Providence. “Marijuana in this country should be legalized. It should be sold and taxed.”

Opponents warned of dire consequences to the new policy.

“What kind of message are we sending to our youth? We are more worried about soda — for health reasons — than we are about marijuana,” said one opponent, Rhode Island state Rep. John Carnevale a Democrat from Providence.

A survey by Rasmussen last month found that 56 percent of respondents favored legalizing and regulating marijuana. A national Gallup poll last year showed support for legalizing pot had reached 50 percent, up from 46 percent in 2010 and 25 percent in the mid-’90s.

Medical marijuana helped bring marijuana policy into the mainstream back in 1996, when California became the first state to authorize the use of cannabis for medicinal use. Other states followed suit.

“It’s now politically viable to talk about these things,” said Robert Capecchi, legislative analyst with the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports the reduction or elimination of penalties for medical and recreational pot use. “The public understands that there are substances that are far more harmful — alcohol, tobacco — that we regulate. People are realizing just how much money is being wasted on prohibition.”

Colorado and Washington state will hold fall referendums on legalizing marijuana. A ballot question on legalization failed in California in 2010.

This month, Connecticut’s governor signed legislation to allow medical marijuana there. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed cutting the penalty for public possession of small amounts of pot.

Liberal state policies on marijuana have run into conflict with federal prohibition. Federal authorities have shut down more than 40 dispensaries this year in Colorado, even though they complied with state and local law. In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee blocked three dispensaries from opening last year after the state’s top federal prosecutor warned they could be prosecuted. Chafee and lawmakers then rewrote the dispensary law to restrict the amount of marijuana dispensaries may have on hand.

Robert DuPont, who served as the nation’s drug czar under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said Americans should be wary of a slippery slope to legalization. While marijuana may not cause the life-threatening problems associated with heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine, it’s far from harmless.

“It is a major drug of abuse,” he said. “People ask me what the most dangerous drug is, and I say marijuana. Other drugs have serious consequences that are easy to recognize. Marijuana saps people’s motivation, their direction. It’s a drug that makes people stupid and lazy. That’s in a way more dangerous.”

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Published: June 10, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Associated Press

Medical marijuana dispensaries would seem to be natural targets for criminals. According to a leading theory of criminology, pot dispensaries have several key attributes that put them at risk:

– They sell a product (marijuana) that is attractive to criminals.

– They usually operate on a cash-only basis (a cash stash also tends to attract would-be thieves).

– The clients of marijuana clinics carry cash (in order to purchase their medicine).

– Many clients are frail due to their medical conditions and may not be able to fight off attackers.

In Europe, “hash clubs” and other drug dispensaries have developed a reputation as being “a breeding ground for criminal networks,” according to a new study by two UCLA researchers. And some recent headlines indicate that U.S. pot dispensaries may be on track to follow suit. A 2009 white paper from the California Police Chiefs Assn. made a pretty good case that they would:

“Marijuana dispensaries are commonly large money-making enterprises that will sell marijuana to most anyone. … While the dispensaries will claim to receive only donations, no marijuana will change hands without an exchange of money. These operations have been tied to organized criminal gangs, foster large grow operations, and are often multi-million-dollar profit centers. Because they are repositories of valuable marijuana crops and large amounts of cash, several operators of dispensaries have been attacked and murdered by armed robbers both at their storefronts and homes, and such places have been regularly burglarized.”

The pair of researchers from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs decided to see whether clinics in California (one of 17 states that has legalized medical marijuana, along with the District of Columbia) fit the European profile.

Nancy Kepple and Bridget Freisthler focused on Sacramento, where dispensaries operated for six years before local regulatory policies were put in place in 2010. The researchers mapped all 40 clinics in the city, figuring out whether they were in neighborhoods with many single-parent households, families living in poverty, vacant housing units, a high proportion of young men, easy access to a freeway on-ramp and other characteristics associated with crime.

Then they plugged in crime data from 2009 to see if there were any relationships between robberies, thefts and other acts of vice and the presence of drug dispensaries.

The models the researchers came up with confirmed that factors such as unemployment, commercial zoning and a high proportion of young adults were indeed associated with higher crime rates. But the number of marijuana clinics in a neighborhood had nothing to do with any of it, they found.

Writing up their results in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, however, the researchers didn’t seem to be persuaded by their own results. They noted that one possibility is that “the density of medical marijuana dispensaries may not be associated with neighborhood-level crime rates,” but they also theorized that the relationship “is likely more complex” than could be measured with the available data.

To make a convincing case that pot dispensaries really don’t contribute to crime, the outlets would need to be tracked in more cities for a longer period of time, they wrote.

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Author: Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times
Published: June 7, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.latimes.com/

Wading into the debate over stop-and-frisk police tactics, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to ask legislators on Monday for a change in New York State law that would drastically reduce the number of people who could be arrested for marijuana possession as a result of police stops.

The governor will call for the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view, administration officials said. Advocates of such a change say the offense has ensnared tens of thousands of young black and Latino men who are stopped by the New York City police for other reasons but after being instructed to empty their pockets, find themselves charged with a crime.

Reducing the impact of the Bloomberg administration’s stop-and-frisk policy has been a top priority of lawmakers from minority neighborhoods, who have urged Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, to pay more attention to the needs of their communities. The lawmakers argue that young men found with small amounts of marijuana are being needlessly funneled into the criminal justice system and have difficulty finding jobs as a result.

By deciding to get involved in the biggest law enforcement issue roiling New York City, Mr. Cuomo is again inserting himself into the affairs of the city in a way that has been welcomed by some and resented by others. He previously brokered the resolution of a dispute over legalizing street hails of livery cabs, and he ordered the city to stop requiring that food stamp applicants be fingerprinted.

In this case, the governor would be acting against the wishes of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and in spite of a September directive from the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, who instructed officers not to arrest people who take small amounts of marijuana out of their pockets or bags after being stopped by the police.

The Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group critical of the Police Department’s marijuana arrest policies, found that only a modest decline in the arrests followed Mr. Kelly’s memorandum.

Though the governor’s legislation does not address the high number of stops by the police, it would take aim at what many black and Hispanic lawmakers as well as advocacy groups say has been one of the most damaging results of the aggressive police tactics: arrest records for young people who have small amounts of marijuana in their pockets.

“For individuals who have any kind of a record, even a minuscule one, the obstacles are enormous to employment and to education,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “When it’s really a huge number of kids in the community who go through this, and all have the same story, the impact is just devastating.”

The police in New York City made 50,684 arrests last year for possession of a small amount of marijuana, more than for any other offense, according to an analysis of state data by Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College. The arrests continued — one in seven arrests made in the city was for low-level marijuana possession — even as Commissioner Kelly issued his directive.

Mr. Bloomberg has opposed ending arrests for the possession of small amounts of marijuana. His administration has argued that the arrests serve to reduce more serious crime by deterring drug dealing and the violence that can accompany the drug trade. A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment Sunday.

Mr. Cuomo plans to announce his support for the change at a news conference at the Capitol. While his push comes late in the year’s legislative session, which is scheduled to end June 21, the governor has been successful in his first 17 months in office at focusing attention on a limited number of legislative priorities and persuading lawmakers to address them quickly.

“This proposal will bring long overdue consistency and fairness to New York State’s Penal Law and save thousands of New Yorkers, particularly minority youth, from the unnecessary and life-altering trauma of a criminal arrest and, in some cases, prosecution,” an administration official said in an e-mail.

It would also save law enforcement “countless man-hours wasted” on arrests and prosecutions “for what is clearly only a minor offense,” the official added.

Officials in the Cuomo administration said the marijuana-possession arrests were problematic in part because they subjected New Yorkers, many of them young, to the process of being booked, retaining a lawyer and carrying the stigma of having been arrested. And they argued that the arrests were harming the relationship between the police and young people.

More than a dozen states have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, including Connecticut last year and California the year before. In New York, the Legislature in 1977 reduced the penalty for possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana to a violation, which carries a maximum fine of $100 for first-time offenders.

But it remains a misdemeanor if the marijuana is in public view or is being smoked in public, and lawmakers and drug-reform advocates have argued that the misdemeanor charge is often unfairly applied to suspects who did not have marijuana in public view until the police stopped them and told them to empty their pockets.

“Now it’s in public view,” Professor Levine said. “If you go by the police reports, all around New York City, there are people standing around with their palms outstretched with a bit of marijuana in them.”

From 2002 to 2011, New York City recorded 400,000 low-level marijuana arrests, according to his analysis. That represented more arrests than under Mr. Bloomberg’s three predecessors put together — a period of 24 years. Most of those arrested have been young black and Hispanic men, and most had no prior criminal convictions.

Mr. Cuomo’s action comes after a number of state legislators and City Council members, many of them representing neighborhoods with large minority populations, have sought ways to force change at the Police Department.

In Albany, some lawmakers have proposed legislation that would prevent police officers from stopping people based only on their race or ethnicity, and that would create an inspector general to oversee the Police Department.

And Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of Brooklyn, and State Senator Mark J. Grisanti, Republican of Buffalo, have pressed a bill to end low-level marijuana arrests.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would reduce the penalty for the possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana in public view to a violation.

It would continue to classify public marijuana smoking as a misdemeanor, unlike the bill proposed by Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Grisanti, which would decriminalize it.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Seeks Cut In Frisk Arrests.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Thomas Kaplan
Published: June 4, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

Connecticut on Friday became the 17th U.S. state to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

The state’s Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law legislation allowing licensed physicians to certify an adult patient’s use of marijuana for medical purposes, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

The new law puts in place restrictions to prevent the kind of abuse that has plagued some of the 16 other states and the District of Columbia where pot is legal for medical use.

“For years, we’ve heard from so many patients with chronic diseases who undergo treatments like chemotherapy or radiation and are denied the palliative benefits that medical marijuana would provide,” Governor Malloy said.

“With careful regulation and safeguards, this law will allow a doctor and a patient to decide what is in that patient’s best interest,” he said.

Under the bill, patients and their caregivers must register with the Department of Consumer Protection. In addition, a doctor must certify there is a medical need for marijuana to be dispensed, including such debilitating conditions as cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis or epilepsy.

Finally, only a pharmacist with a special license can dispense medical marijuana, according to the new law.

Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Andrew Hay

Source: Reuters (Wire)
Author: Mary Ellen Clark
Published: June 1, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Thomson Reuters

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/