14 Jun 2013

Obama Helps Nip Pot Legalization In Latin America

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President Obama helped prevent a move toward pot legalization by some Latin American leaders.  But will he be as bold against Colorado, Washington state?

Peter Bensinger, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, was one of eight former DEA chiefs who recently spoke out in favor of the federal government needing to nullify Colorado and Washington’s laws legalizing recreational marijuana use.  They said the Obama administration has reacted too slowly and should immediately sue to force the states to rescind the legislation.

For all the political flak that President Obama is receiving for digital surveillance of Americans, he deserves some praise for protecting Americans on another front.  His administration has helped dampen moves by some Latin American leaders to legalize marijuana in the Western Hemisphere.

The Christian Science Monitor

A meeting of the Organization of the American States ended Thursday in Guatemala without the expected “serious” discussion among the 34 nations to legalize pot.  Just last month, an OAS report recommended legalization as one alternative to the current anti-drug approaches.

The report, which called for “flexibility,” came as quite a shock to many in the region.  Polls in most of Latin America, unlike in the United States, show legalization to be unpopular.

Leaders in a few states, such as Uruguay and Guatemala, favor legalization.  Others, such as in Brazil and Peru, decidedly do not.  Yet with two states in the US ( Washington and Colorado ) having legalized recreational use of pot last year, some in Latin America saw an opening to push Mr.  Obama to bend.

Fortunately, his secretary of State, John Kerry, did not accommodate such voices at the OAS assembly.  “These challenges simply defy any simple, one-shot, Band-Aid” approach, he said.  “Drug abuse destroys lives, tears at communities of all of our countries.” Other administration officials have been working for months to squash the region’s legalization efforts.

A few Latin American leaders were more explicit than Mr.  Kerry.  “We need a policy that is anti-crime and not pro-drug,” said Alva Baptiste, St.  Lucia’s foreign minister.  And Nicaragua’s OAS envoy, Denis Moncada, said, “Replacing and weakening the public policies and strategies now in use to combat the hemispheric drug problem would end up creating dangerous voids and jeopardize the security and well-being of our citizens.” Many of the region’s drug experts say countries need to focus on rule of law, addiction treatment, and gang suppression.

Obama does need to be plain about federal intentions toward legalization in the US.  His embattled attorney general, Eric Holder, must uphold federal law by cracking down on the selling of recreational marijuana in Washington and Colorado.  If he doesn’t, the president can hardly complain about states defying aspects of his Affordable Care Act ( “Obamacare” ).

Drug-producing countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Peru that have suffered from a military approach in the struggle against trafficking cannot be faulted for seeking different approaches.  They are right to point to the US, which is the world’s largest consumer of illicit drugs, as a major cause of their woes.  But drug trafficking is also a sign that such countries need fundamental reform to root out corruption and raise social indicators.  Both Mexico and Colombia are well along that path.

The uncertainties of legalizing pot, let alone the moral arguments against government promoting its use, call for Obama to be vigilant against legalization.  He has now done that strongly abroad.  He must do much better at home.

Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2013 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.csmonitor.com/

13 Jun 2013

The Many Different Faces Of Marijuana In America

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On Tuesday, Vermont moved to decriminalize the possession of marijuana for quantities up to an ounce, replacing potential prison time for arrests with fines.

Peter Shumlin, the state’s governor, made a telling distinction between weed and “harder” drugs when he announced the move. “This legislation allows our courts and law enforcement to focus their limited resources more effectively to fight highly addictive opiates such as heroin and prescription drugs that are tearing apart families and communities,” he said.

The idea that weed isn’t that big a deal and that governments need to readjust their priorities is pretty common. There’s little vocal anti-pot government outcry, no temperance movement analog for cannabis. Recent polls have found that a majority of Americans think marijuana should be legalized.

Even our mainstream faces of stoner culture are generally silly, harmless and amiable (Jeff Spicoli, Cheech & Chong, Harold & Kumar, and whatever Snoop is calling himself these days) except when they’re revered and saintly (read: Bob Marley). On TV, there was Weeds, a dramedy about an upper-middle-class widow who starts selling marijuana to make ends meet. Change the drug to something else like heroin or meth, drugs with more sinister reputations, and it becomes something much darker. You’d pretty much have to go all the way back to Reefer Madness to find a widely seen film that portrayed pot as dangerous or threatening. (And the whole reason we all know about that movie is because the concerns at its center are often mocked as kitschy and histrionic.)

Mona Lynch, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who studies the criminal justice system, says that stereotypes of marijuana usage in popular culture don’t come across as very threatening. “There’s not a lot of uproar around marijuana [as] a crushing problem,” she says.

But this image of weed use as benign recreation or banal nuisance doesn’t square with another great fact of American life — the War on Drugs. And more and more, that War on Drugs means marijuana.

Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project, says that 10 years ago, marijuana possession arrests made up 37 percent of all drug arrests. And now? “Half of all drug arrests are now marijuana-related,” he says — and 9 in 10 of those are for possession.

The focus of the continuing law enforcement battle on marijuana lands disproportionately on people of color. The ACLU crunched some Justice Department numbers on drug arrests, and released a much-discussed report last week on their findings. The upshot: African-Americans are four times as likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana than whites, even though blacks and whites consume weed at about the same rate.

For blacks — and black men in particular — marijuana is a gateway drug into the criminal justice system.

“The thing that was shocking about the report was the pervasiveness, that this [disparity in arrests] is happening everywhere,” Lynch tells me. “It’s happening in small towns, big towns, urban and rural.”

Both Edwards and Lynch say that part of the reason marijuana is getting more attention from law enforcement agencies is that police departments are being subsidized with lots of federal dollars to stop drugs, but the crack epidemic has since waned. “Institutions don’t like to shrink,” Lynch says. “It’s actually a reverse kind of pattern — drug arrests are going up [even] as crime drops.”

At the same time that marijuana’s become a more central focus of the War on Drugs, there are plenty of business types who are already making their plans for selling marijuana after, uh, all the smoke clears. They’re trying to give pot an altogether new face: as a widely available commercial product backed by big business. No one knows what that market might even look like quite yet, but it could be incredibly lucrative.

Might you be able to cop some weed at your supermarket behind the counter with cigarettes? Would your favorite coffee shop start selling some “extra special” lattes? What about an over-the-counter headache medicine packaged in a box with a little green leaf in the corner?

Seriously — it might not be that far-fetched.

Don Pellicer, a company that hopes to open marijuana stores in Washington and Colorado, is looking for investors. Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, was a guest speaker at a Don Pellicer event last week, and has said that he would grow marijuana if weren’t against the law. “Once it’s legitimate and legal, sure, I could do it,” he told reporters. “I’m a farmer. Producers of all types can participate.” (Fox, it’s worth noting, used to run Coca-Cola in Mexico, and its sales jumped by 50 percent during his tenure.)

There are already vending machine companies working on cannabis-dispensing kiosks for retail stores for the people who don’t want the hassle of humoring those talky connoisseur types. “The way we see it, when you walk into a shop, you don’t need the expert or aficionado to help with selection,” says the head of one such vending company. “The people who are using this in the recreational space — they know what they want, and they don’t want to hear the whole spiel every time.”

And there are all the industrial, non-psychoactive applications. Hemp fiber, which is especially strong, is already used in all sorts of textiles. One researcher told writer Doug Fine that a decade after weed became legal, a domestic hemp industry would sprout up in the United States to the tune of $50 billion a year — which would outpace the estimates of what smokable reefer would bring in.

“When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip,” Fine wrote.

So now we have to reconcile the many different faces of marijuana — a jokey, pop-culture staple, a continuing fascination of law enforcement agencies whose attentions fall disproportionately on people of color, and the potential cash crop of a bright, green future.

Which of these will give way? Or will any of them?

Source: National Public Radio (US)
Author: Gene Demby
Published: June 12, 2013
Copyright: 2013 National Public Radio
Website: http://www.npr.org/
Contact: http://www.npr.org/contact/

12 Jun 2013

Bill Maher on The Greening of America

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It’s a brave new pothead world. Until fairly recently, even a year ago, I would not have guessed that we would be at the place we are now – with 18 states legalizing medical marijuana and, according to one recent poll, a whopping 85 percent of the nation supporting medical use. For all our political rancor, it turns out, what ultimately unites us is pot. Weed is one of the few things that both hillbillies and hippies like. Rappers smoke pot, and country artists smoke pot. There’s just as much pot on Willie Nelson’s tour bus as there is on Snoop Dogg’s tour bus. Marijuana is bridging the red and blue divide and becoming a purple issue.

For those who worry that we will become a nation that sits on the couch eating Cheetos all day, relax. Smoking pot does not equal laziness. Weed was something I could always justify because it excited my brain. Some people it puts to sleep, others it turns paranoid. Some it makes creative, and we’re the lucky ones, because if it has done any damage to us, at least we have a receipt. I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from pot. Including smoke more pot.

Legalization is another one of those issues, like gay marriage, that drives the Tea Bag people crazy. That Leave It to Beaver black-and-white 1950s image that Mitt Romney fit into so well is going away, and one big reason is marijuana. Bill Clinton once said, “If you look back on the Sixties and think there was more good than harm, you’re probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you’re probably a Republican.” Well, for those people who loved the Fifties, pot played a huge role in the cultural revolution that they detest.

The Next Seven States to Legalize Pot: http://www.cannabisnews.org/the-next-seven-states-to-legalize-pot/2012/12/20/

Republicans have always been an uneasy alliance of Jesus freaks, gun nuts, generic obese suburbanites and the super-rich, but what binds them is this idea that life was perfect in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1958. As soon as President Obama was elected, this visual of a black guy who liked smoking pot walking into the White House was too much. Whenever you hear them say, “I want my country back” – from what? Did Blackmanistan invade us? They may want it back, but that America is gone forever.

Of course, there’s a big economic incentive to legalizing marijuana. More than a decade ago, there was a county in Georgia where the people fired the sheriff because he was busting pot farmers. The crop was their lifeblood, so they got rid of the hardass and elected a sheriff who pledged to look the other way. That’s the kind of sea change that’s happening in America right now. If 40 years of abject failure of the War on Drugs has taught us anything, it’s that the customer base is large, strong and loyal. So as in everything, money talks. And money is there to be made. There’s no going back. We’ve reached the tipping point, legal marijuana is here to stay – it’s just a matter of how fast it will happen across the country.

This story is from the June 20th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

Newshawk: John Tyler
Source: Rolling Stone (US)
Author: Bill Maher
Published: June 10, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.rollingstone.com/

10 Jun 2013

Five Myths About Legalizing Marijuana

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With 16 states having decriminalized or legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.

1. If pot is legal, more people will use it.

As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life. Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,” nearly every hand shot up.

In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fell from 2002 to 2006, after all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.

As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009 found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.

2. Law enforcement officials oppose legalization.

It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1 trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, two-thirds of federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.

But law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.

Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changes. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped permit, inspect and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.”

3. Getting high would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.

I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the variety you smoke.

In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.

Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that “within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.

Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to grow hemp for biomass energy.

4. Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential. “We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,” says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt, Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.

When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip.

As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned. It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.

5. In the heartland, legalization is a political nonstarter.

President Obama, in an interview last December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing Colorado and Washington.

In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for legalization than voted for Obama.

In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois, 63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it. Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.

I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang cartels in business.”

Doug Fine is the author of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant from farm to patient.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Doug Fine
Published: June 7, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Washington Post Company
Contact: [email protected]

8 Jun 2013

It’s Time To End Failed War On Marijuana

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Marijuana has become the drug of choice for police departments nationwide — a trend that is playing out with serious consequences here in Brown County.

According to a new report released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, police have turned much of their zeal for fighting the failed War on Drugs toward the enforcement of marijuana laws in communities across Wisconsin and the country.

In 2010, cops in Wisconsin busted someone for having marijuana once every 28 minutes. The majority of these arrests are happening in communities of color. Despite roughly comparable usage rates, blacks in Wisconsin are nearly six times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.

These racial disparities are particularly bad in Brown County. Compared to other Wisconsin counties with more than 300,000 residents, in 2010 Brown had the third-highest rate of racial disparity for marijuana possession arrests.

Black people in Brown County are more than seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for the same offense — even though blacks constitute only 2.2 percent of Brown County’s population.

And across Wisconsin, these disparities are only getting worse. Between 2001 and 2010, racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests soared more than 150 percent. Only two other states in the nation had higher increases during this period.

The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws in Wisconsin needlessly ensnares thousands of people in the criminal justice system, crowds our jails, diverts precious police resources away from focusing on serious crimes, and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars. In 2010 alone, Wisconsin blew as much as $73.1 million enforcing marijuana laws.

Legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana in Wisconsin would end racially biased enforcement. Taxing and regulating marijuana would also save millions of dollars currently spent on enforcement while raising millions more in revenue, which could be invested in community and public health programs, including drug treatment.

Barring legalization, state legislators should work with law enforcement to de-penalize marijuana possession by removing all civil and criminal penalties. Low-level marijuana possession should be decriminalized to a civil offense, and prosecutors should focus on more serious offenses.

Brown County police departments can take action by reforming policing practices, including ending racial profiling, unconstitutional stops, frisks, searches, and programs that create incentives for officers to make low-level drug arrests.

This is an issue of racial justice, fiscal responsibility and common sense. What’s happening in Brown County, all over Wisconsin and across the nation proves that it’s time to end the failed War on Marijuana.

Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette (WI)
Copyright: 2013 Green Bay Press-Gazette
Website: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/
Author: Chris Ahmuty

6 Jun 2013

Democrats Promote Bills to Loosen Restrictions on Marijuana Industry

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During a press conference on Wednesday, Democratic congressmen from Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and California announced that they will push for legislation to loosen the restrictions on state-legal marijuana businesses.

The five representatives sponsoring reforms hope to ease the burden for businesses in the cannabis industry by allowing them to file for federal tax deductions, open bank accounts, and operate without fear of property or forfeiture claims. They plan to introduce three bills — the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act, the States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act, and an amendment to the IRS code relating to state-legal marijuana sales — and will seek to attach these measures to other legislation moving through Congress.

“These are relatively minor technical adjustments,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, “and in times past, things like this would find their way to be part of larger pieces of legislation.” The Hill reported that the sponsors believe the bills have “little chance at moving on their own,” but that they may make it to the president’s desk if they are included in, say, the broader farm bill being debated before Congress.

The Democratic representatives were joined by businessmen involved in the sale of legalized marijuana for the announcement. Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association told the press, “We are asking to be taxed. We are one of the only industries in the country coming to D.C. asking, ‘Tax us, but tax us fairly.’”

Supporters of the legislation claim that it will help end the dangerous “cash only” nature of state-legal marijuana businesses as well as solving conflicts between state and federal laws on the issue.

Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350273/democrats-promote-bills-loosen-restrictions-marijuana-industry-lindsey-grudnicki#comments

Source: National Review Online

Author: Lindsey Grudnicki

5 Jun 2013

Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests

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Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.

This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around eight times as likely to be arrested. During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the same portion as in 2010.

Advocates for the legalization of marijuana have criticized the Obama administration for having vocally opposed state legalization efforts and for taking a more aggressive approach than the Bush administration in closing medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting their owners in some states, especially Montana and California.

The new data, however, offers a more nuanced picture of marijuana enforcement on the state level. Drawn from police records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report is the most comprehensive review of marijuana arrests by race and by county and is part of a report being released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. Much of the data was also independently reviewed for The New York Times by researchers at Stanford University.

“We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased manner,” said Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Criminal Law Reform Project and the lead author of the report.

During President Obama’s first three years in office, the arrest rate for marijuana possession was about 5 percent higher than the average rate under President George W. Bush. And in 2011, marijuana use grew to about 7 percent, up from 6 percent in 2002 among Americans who said that they had used the drug in the past 30 days. Also, a majority of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in March supported legalizing marijuana.

Though there has been a shift in state laws and in popular attitudes about the drug, black and white Americans have experienced the change very differently.

“It’s pretty clear that law enforcement practices are not keeping pace with public opinion and state policies,” said Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She added that 13 states have in recent years passed or expanded laws decriminalizing marijuana use and that 18 states now allow it for medicinal use.

In the past year, Colorado and Washington State have legalized marijuana, leaving the Justice Department to decide how to respond to those laws because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The cost of drug enforcement has grown steadily over the past decade. In 2010, states spent an estimated $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws, a 30 percent increase from 10 years earlier. The increase came as many states, faced with budget shortfalls, were saving money by using alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. During the same period, arrests for most other types of crime steadily dropped.

Researchers said the growing racial disparities in marijuana arrests were especially striking because they were so consistent even across counties with large or small minority populations.

The A.C.L.U. report said that one possible reason that the racial disparity in arrests remained despite shifting state policies toward the drug is that police practices are slow to change. Federal programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program continue to provide incentives for racial profiling, the report said, by including arrest numbers in its performance measures when distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to local law enforcement each year.

Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that police departments, partly driven by a desire to increase their drug arrest statistics, can concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods to meet numerical goals, focusing on low-level offenses that are easier, quicker and cheaper than investigating serious felony crimes.

“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Professor Goff said.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Blacks Are Singled Out For Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests.

Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Ian Urbina
Published: June 4, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/

2 Jun 2013

Bloomberg: MMJ One Of The Greatest Hoaxes

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks arguments for legalizing medical marijuana are half-baked. “Medical, my foot,” Bloomberg– who has admitted to enjoying smoking weed when he was younger– told John Gambling during his weekly radio show.

“There is no medical. This is one of the great hoaxes of all time,” he said, suggesting legalizing medical pot would just make it easier for recreational users to light up.

“The bottom line is, I’m told marijuana is much stronger today than it was 20, 30 years ago,” he continued, according to The New York Post. “That’s one problem. No 2, drug dealers have families to feed. If they can’t sell marijuana, they’ll sell something else. And the something else will be something worse.

The push to legalize this is wrongheaded.”

State Senator Diane Savino, who’s co-sponsoring a bill to legalize medical marijuana in New York, thinks otherwise.

“We’re talking about people with terminal illnesses, seizure disorders,” she told The Post. “We’re not talking about recreational use.”

Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, Associate Member of the New York Academy of Medicine and Vice-Chair of NY Physicians for Compassionate Care, also disapproved of Bloomberg’s comments.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s statement that medical marijuana is a hoax is tantamount to saying that the moon landing was faked,” he said in a statement. “Marijuana, given in oral and inhaled forms, has been shown in large, gold-standard, double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trials conducted at major medical centers to relieve pain and muscle spasm, and stimulate appetite and weight gain in patients with wasting syndromes.”

Earlier this week, the New York Assembly passed a marijuana decriminalization bill.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Published: May 31, 2013
Copyright: 2013 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

1 Jun 2013

Former Microsoft Manager Has Big Ideas About Pot

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Former Microsoft manager Jamen Shively wants to create the first national brand of retail marijuana and to open pot trade with Mexico. Shively plans to announce that and more in a Thursday news conference he says will feature Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico. “Let’s go big or go home,” Shively said. “We’re going to mint more millionaires than Microsoft with this business.”

He’s acquiring medical-marijuana dispensaries in Washington and Colorado, he said, and plans to become the leader in both the medical and adult-recreational pot markets. He sees the marijuana market as the only one of its size in which there does not exist a single established brand.

He and Fox plan to announce a proposal for regulating the trade of marijuana between the two countries, he said.

Some details of the trade agreement remain to be worked out, such as how to get around international rules forbidding legal pot, Shively admitted.

“I don’t know how exactly that would be done, but I know it’s been done in other industries,” he said.

Alison Holcomb, primary author of the state’s legal-marijuana law, said Shively faces a huge obstacle in the federal government’s prohibition of marijuana.

“Having a national chain of marijuana-based companies is not only explicitly counter to the existing prohibition, but also counter to the government’s expressed concern about business growing too large,” said Holcomb, drug-policy director for the ACLU of Washington.

But Shively, 45, likened the federal prohibition to the Berlin Wall and said it’s crumbling, with fewer defenders every day.

He also said he’s created a way to shield investors from federal regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And, he contends a venture this size is too big to operate recklessly and take risks — such as diverting legal pot to black markets — that the federal government is most concerned about.

“What we’re all about is making it extremely professional and having the highest quality and efficiencies,” he said.

What if the feds were to come after him?

Shively paraphrased Obi-Wan Kenobi. “He said ‘Darth, if you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’”

If she were Shively’s attorney, Holcomb said, she’d advise him to read the so-called Cole memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice. It “explicitly mentioned a concern with operations involving thousands of plants and millions of dollars” and is evidence of the federal concern with big pot businesses.

Shively, though, seems undeterred. He has become almost evangelical about pot and its benefits, particularly for medical patients, such as his father who has prostate cancer.

“I’ve just fallen in love with the plant,” he said. “Especially in the medical realm I’ve gone from entrepreneur to advocate to activist, seriously.”

Shively worked at Microsoft six years, he said, and had the title of corporate strategy manager. He said he’s been smoking pot for a year and a half.

Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Author: Bob Young, Seattle Times Staff Reporter
Published: May 29, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Seattle Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/

31 May 2013

Finding a Place for Medical Marijuana

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The legalization of medical marijuana is prompting cities and towns across the region to consider zoning restrictions to limit where dispensaries may open. With state regulations in effect as of Friday, and the dispensary application process scheduled by the state for this summer and fall, many communities are feeling time is short to regulate what some see as an unwelcome neighbor.

Milford passed zoning restrictions last week; Framingham and Natick are looking at working together on zoning that could allow dispensaries on Route 9 in the neighboring towns; and Newton, amid several inquiries from prospective dispensary operators, is reviewing its zoning bylaw to see whether it is adequate for dealing with the new state law.

“What we’re doing is actually taking some time to internally review the regulations, since they still just came out, and we have not made any specific plans to alter the usual zoning requirements for new businesses, but we are looking into it,” said Dori Zaleznik, Newton’s commissioner of health and human services.

Massachusetts voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana via statewide ballot in November. The measure calls for a maximum of 35 nonprofit dispensaries across the state, with at least one and not more than five in each of the state’s 14 counties.MAS

Communities cannot ban dispensaries but can impose zoning laws that restrict their location, according to a March 13 ruling from Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Many municipalities have already passed or are considering a moratorium — typically lasting from six months to a year — on permits for a dispensary to buy time for reviewing their zoning regulations.

Milford decided it did not need a moratorium and went straight to zoning changes, approved by Town Meeting on May 20.

The amendment, which must still pass muster with the attorney general’s office, allows dispensaries in two of the town’s three industrial districts as long as they are not within 200 feet of a residential zone, school, place of worship, park, playground, or youth center.

The limitation translates into about 1,000 acres along Fortune Boulevard and Maple and Beaver streets available as the site of a dispensary, according to Larry Dunkin, Milford’s town planner.

Natick has already passed a moratorium, and Framingham’s Town Meeting was considering one this week.

Both communities are looking at allowing dispensaries along some part of Route 9.

Robert Halpin, Framingham’s town manager, said the moratorium would give his community some time to get a better sense of the regulations and how they are being implemented.

“I think there’s a discussion to be had with Natick,” he said. “We can talk about Route 9 and other approaches.”

Natick Town Administrator Martha White said it makes sense to work with Framingham on a shared approach.

“Since we share Route 9, and that may well be the area that’s zoned for these facilities, we want to be sure to keep each other’s communities informed and to work it out together, so we’re not negatively impacting each other,” she said.

Although many municipalities in the area see a moratorium as a first step before evaluating their zoning options, Newton is not sure that one is necessary.

“So at this point, we don’t believe we’ll need a moratorium, but we don’t know as we go through the review what we’ll end up doing,” said Zaleznik.

When the city gets inquiries, she said, staff are telling prospective dispensary operators that they should get through the first phase of the state’s two-phase application process before they look for a location in Newton.

“And hopefully by then, we will have figured out our approach,” said Zaleznik.

Despite the local moves to limit dispensaries, which by law are supposed to cultivate their own marijuana to fill prescriptions for the drug, prospective proprietors are not put off, said Bruce Bedrick, CEO of Kind Clinics and MEDBOX, based in West Hollywood, Calif.

“We’re used to that — it’s all part of the process,” said Bedrick, who serves as a consultant for the application process and also markets his technology to keep marijuana supplies secure. “People have to get comfortable with the use. Once people realize it’s just average everyday people trying to pick up medicine, I think in a few years we’ll all look back and laugh at this.”

Bedrick, whose local office is in Natick, would not say exactly how many clients he has or where they are looking to locate a dispensary, but he suggested interest is healthy, with “not many spots left” on his client roster that will max out at 35.

He praised the state Department of Public Health, and said generally the new regulations are solid.

“It’s actually great for our clients because we’re all about transparency and regulation and safety and security,” he said. “The only thing we feel is cumbersome is the verification of $500,000.” He was referring to the minimum amount that applicants must have in escrow as part of the new regulations.

Adam Fine, a lawyer with a Colorado-based firm, Vicente Sederberg LLC, that opened offices in Boston and Needham in connection with last fall’s legalization vote, also applauded the state for creating a strong regulatory environment that balances patient needs with public safety concerns.

“I think overall people are very pleased with the comprehensive nature of the regulations and the fact the Department of Public Health took a measured, thoughtful approach,” he said.

Like Bedrick, Fine could not say which towns and cities are being eyed for dispensaries, but he did say Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties seem to be garnering the most interest.

“The anecdotal information I’m getting is the most populous areas make the most sense because there will be more patients to serve,” he said.

Locally, one of the biggest issues that dispensaries will face might have nothing to do with zoning or moratoriums, but rather finding space to lease, he said. Part of his firm’s role is to help educate landlords, Fine said.

“Finding a location that is going to be able to house these dispensaries can be a challenge,” he said. “There are landlords that . . . until it’s completely legal under federal law, they don’t want to be a part of it.”

Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Author: Lisa Kocian, Globe Staff
Published: May 29, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/

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