After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked. “In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske told The [...]
California’s current budget gap may be large at $20 billion, but it is not unique, and the outcome will be closely watched. The National Governors Association says the recession will not end in some states until 2012. As California moves closer to a vote on legalizing marijuana, which most states banned in the 1930s, the [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged California, Economy, Hemp, Legalization, Marijuana, Massachusetts, Medical Marijuana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, State Budgets, Virginia, Washington
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Activists estimate that California could earn 1.5 billion dollars in excise taxes, and save another billion dollars currently spent on law enforcement and prisons by legalizing cannabis. They also point to earnings for marijuana-linked businesses. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in California estimated the total economic impact of such a move [...]
As of last week, nearly 21,000 Michiganders had applied to be approved medical marijuana patients or caregivers, the Department of Community Health said. As a temporary card, a copy of the application can “serve as a valid registry identification” if the actual card isn’t available after 20 days, the state’s Web site says. But dozens [...]
Far from being a war between hippies and police, the fight to legalize marijuana in California centers on whether decriminalizing and taxing cannabis can help fill the state’s fiscal hole. Using the drug for medical purposes has been legal for 14 years in the western state. But a new initiative that will appear on the [...]
You will have noticed that this is not, at heart, a drugs story. It’s a money story. More and more young professional Britons are turning to cannabis cultivation as a profit-making venture. They are teachers, lawyers, designers, property developers and plumbers. They should be thriving in the legitimate success of their careers but, somehow, they [...]
Lawsuits from 14 states challenging the constitutionality of the new national healthcare law face an uphill battle, largely due to a far-reaching Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that upheld federal restrictions on home-grown marijuana in California. At issue in that case — just like in the upcoming challenges to the healthcare overhaul — was the [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Congress, Conservatives, Constitution, Courts, Healthcare, Law, Lawsuits, Reform, Regulation, SCOTUS
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
It’s official. Tax Cannabis 2010, the most far-reaching state effort ever, which would legalize the consumption of cannabis for all adults over 21 — and would finally take the industry that serves those consumers out of a legal gray area — will qualify for the November mid-term ballot later today. The Tax Cannabis campaign gathered [...]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Among the cartels many sources of profit, illegal sales of cannabis account for the majority of their funds at roughly 60 percent, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. While debate over how best to fight the increasingly powerful criminal groups continues to wage within the U.S., many Mexican officials have arrived to the conclusion [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Ciudad Juarez, DEA, Drug Cartels, Drug Policy, El Paso, Law, Marijuana, Mexico, Preventable Deaths, Reform, Texas, War on Drugs
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Neither the administration nor Congress is ready for a serious dialogue on ending marijuana prohibition, though. Congress is even stymied when it comes to medical marijuana — many elected officials still insist they can’t spend their political capital on it. With support for medical marijuana at 81 percent, one has to wonder — just how [...]
It’s the “catch-22″ that has plagued medical marijuana advocates and patients for decades. Lawmakers and health regulators demand clinical studies on the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis, but the federal agency in charge of such research bars these investigations from ever taking place. But it took until now for the federal government to finally [...]
The medical marijuana debate among American voters is over. Eight in 10 Americans — 81% overall — support allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. That’s up from just 69% in 1997, the last time the two firms asked that question, and from 75% in 2003, according to Gallup. via [...]
Seattle’s new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney. City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed. In [...]
Gov. Jon Corzine tonight signed a measure making New Jersey the 14th state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, part of a flurry of bills the Democrat penned in his last full day on the job. via N.J. medical marijuana law signed by Gov. Corzine | New Jersey Real-Time News – – NJ.com.
The “war”, declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Bolivia, CIA, Coca, Colombia, Corruption, Decriminalization, Drug Trafficking, Ecuador, Latin America, Mexico, Richard Nixon, South America, Venezuela, War on Drugs
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The N.J. Legislature on Monday approved a bill that would make the state the 14th to allow chronically ill patients access to marijuana for medical reasons. Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine supports the legislation and could sign it before leaving office next week, making it law. The bill allows patients with ailments such as cancer, AIDS [...]
Monday, December 28, 2009
Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb. “In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we’ve ever [...]
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The medical marijuana debate is gathering steam in California, as two disparate engines are catapulting headlong down parallel paths that appear destined to collide in the distance. The impending collision could chart the future course on legalization of marijuana in America. In just the past year, California has seen a proliferation of “pot doc” clinics [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
With a philosophy seemingly diametrically opposed to that of elected law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, the attorney general of Colorado, John Suthers (a Republican), has advised the governor of that state that medical marijuana sales should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (and not tax- exempt like pharmaceuticals are, as medical cannabis [...]
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Political expediency “rules the roost” over scientific advice, one of the three latest government drug advisers to resign has told BBC News. Dr Simon Campbell quit the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs on Monday, over the sacking of chief drugs adviser Professor David Nutt. [...] He told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “When [...]
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Med Grow Cannabis College, located in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, is set to graduate its first class of students later this month. Its co-founder and president, Nick Tennant, the 24-year-old son of a General Motors Corp. employee, said he sees a significant opportunity to teach standards and safety in an industry that can eventually [...]
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
DENVER — A judge overturned tight restrictions Tuesday on Colorado medical marijuana providers, saying state health officials had ignored the needs of patients and violated open meetings laws while imposing the rules. The ruling by Denver District Judge Larry Naves means medical marijuana providers can continue supplying the drug to registered users without having to [...]
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
For years, one of the main arrows in the quiver of anti-pot zealots in arguing against medical marijuana (along with the federal pot prohibition, recently blunted by the Obama Administration) has been “But the American Medical Association says pot has no medical value.” As of today, that’s no longer true. In a move considered historic [...]
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Professor David Nutt didn’t play the game. As the chief drug policy advisor in the British Government, an unspoken part of his job description was to help maintain a public fiction about marijuana – or cannabis, as it is known in the U.K. and other parts of the world. Specifically, he was expected to further the misperception [...]
The current system of placing illegal drugs into one of three classes – A, B or C – depending on their legal status, has long been criticised by medical authorities concerned that it is based on arbitrary considerations rather than evidence-based science. [...] They studied 20 drugs in total, including legal as well as illegal [...]
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