Well, I guess that is too much water. via Reddit

The legalization of marijuana and medical marijuana laws is a divisive subject that plays along political, spiritual and cultural lines. Here is some of the recent news involving medical marijuana:

• “Pot Like Wine” – Attitudes towards legalizing pot in the United States are changing. As of April 2012, 12 states have pending bills to legalize the use of medical marijuana and five more are pushing legislation for the regulated use of recreational marijuana: California, Colorado, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington. These bills, such as California’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Wine” and Colorado’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” would make marijuana a taxable item sold to those 21 years of age and older, with a penalty for selling pot to minors. Missouri’s bill even proposes the legalization of growing plots up to 10 feet by 10 feet in size.
• Demographic Support – The majority of the bills are expected to pass, with the California, Colorado, and Oregon bills receiving overwhelming support. The fate of the Washington initiative is less certain, a between more conservative Spokane and pot-friendly Seattle. Overall, men, young adults and liberals are more in favor of legalizing pot than conservatives, senior citizens and women. Some of the biggest detractors of the legalization initiatives, however, are medical marijuana dispensaries. The dispensaries are afraid of losing business if marijuana can be legally obtained elsewhere.
• Those in Favor – The legalization of marijuana would be a boon to those looking to earn social work degrees, as well as those who are denied medical marijuana cards. Legislation would legalize medical marijuana for people under 21 who would benefit from it usage. A recent Angus Reid poll shows that the majority of Americans are in agreement that legalizing pot would do more good than harm. In the poll, 55 percent favor legalization, while only 40 percent are against.
• Legislation Process – The key to legalizing pot is mobilization and support. California’s petition gathered 10,000 signatures in just two weeks. Pro-pot America is actively trying to pass pro-pot legislation. For those interested in learning more about the legislative process or even obtaining an online JD degree, educating yourself about the system is a powerful way to help end prohibition.

Sources

Denver Westword Blogs (2012)

StoptheDrugWar.org (2011)

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Federal agents are carrying out an investigation at Oaksterdam University in Oakland this morning, Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman Arlette Lee said.

So true.

Top 10 most popular strains according to WeedMaps. Thanks to one of our readers for sending this to us! The image is after the jump.

Breathe easy, tokers. Smoking marijuana in moderate amounts may not be so bad for your lungs, after all.

A new study, published in last month’s Journal of the American Medical Association, tested the lung function of over 5,000 young adults between 18 and 30. After 20 years of testing, researchers found some buzzworthy results: regular marijuana smokers (defined by up to a joint a day for seven years) had no discernable impairment in lung activity from non-smokers.

In fact, researchers were surprised to find marijuana smokers performed slightly better than both smokers and non-smokers on the lung performance test. Why? The most likely explanation seems to be that the act of inhaling marijuana—holding each puff in for as long as possible—is a lot like a pulmonary function test, giving marijuana smokers an edge over their cigarette smoking counterparts.

For most of human existence, cannabis has been considered a medicine. Queen Victoria used it to alleviate her menstrual cramps. Extracts were prescribed by doctors and available at every pharmacy in the U.S. According to Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, attitudes toward cannabis only shifted when Americans began to notice and object to its use by immigrants around the turn of the 20th century. Said Schlosser in a PBS interview:

“What’s interesting is if you look at origins of the marijuana prohibition in this country, it coincides with a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment. . . really since the early years of this century, the war on marijuana has been much more a war on the sort of people who smoke it, be they Mexicans or blacks or jazz musicians or beatniks or hippies or hip-hop artists. It’s really been a war on nonconformists and the laws against marijuana have been used as a way of reasserting what are seen as traditional American values.”

Attitudes are changing, however. Sixteen states now offer medicinal weed legally for patients, and the number is growing. More students are now smoking marijuana than binge drinking or smoking cigarettes. Weed-friendly communities like Oaksterdam, unthinkable a decade or two ago, are sprouting up and campaigning to have marijuana revenue regulated and taxed like alcohol.

As marijuana enters the mainstream, studies like the one published in JAMA might dispel false assertions about the plant’s deleterious health hazards and promote its medicinal benefits. According to Dr. Donald P. Tashkin, a marijuana researcher at UCLA medical school, THC is known to have anti-inflammatory properties, which may prevent lung irritation from developing into the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that frequently devastates the lungs of tobacco smokers. Since inhaling the unfiltered smoke of a combusted marijuana plant isn’t exactly the best delivery system for this panacea, he suggests that those who want to unlock its chemical potential find lower impact ways to get high.

“The smoke in marijuana contains thousands of ingredients, many of which are toxic and noxious and have the potential, at least, to cause airway injury,” said Tashkin in TIME. “In an ideal world, it would be preferable to take it in another form.” Vaporizer, anyone?

Source

Sent to us by: Medical Billing and Coding Guide

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – More than three dozen Washington state lawmakers sent a letter to the federal government on Monday, asking for marijuana to be reclassified as a drug that can be prescribed by doctors and filled by pharmacists.

Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule II drug would allow it to be prescribed by doctors and handled by pharmacists. Marijuana is currently classified a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it’s not accepted for medical treatment and can’t be prescribed, administered or dispensed.

In the letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the lawmakers said they supported Gov. Chris Gregoire’s previous request on the issue. Seven Republican lawmakers were among the 42 in both the House and the Senate who signed the letter.

In addition to the letter, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, introduced Senate Joint Memorial 8017 making the same request to reclassify medical marijuana. The joint memorial was scheduled for a hearing in the Health & Long Term Care Committee on Thursday.

Gregoire and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee filed the petition with the DEA last November. Washington and Rhode Island are two of 16 states and the District of Columbia that have laws allowing the medical use of marijuana.

Washington voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998 that gives doctors the right to recommend – but not prescribe – marijuana for people suffering from cancer and other conditions that cause “intractable pain.”

Last year, Gregoire vetoed most of a bill that made major reforms to the state’s medical marijuana law, saying state workers could be prosecuted under federal law the way the measure was written.

A separate bill this year is attempting to provide medical marijuana patients with easier access to the drug. The new proposal would allow local governments to regulate nonprofit patient cooperatives, which could grow up to 99 plants.

Under the latest proposal, nonprofit patient cooperatives would be prohibited in counties with fewer than 200,000 residents – mostly rural areas – unless local jurisdictions enact ordinances allowing them. The cooperatives would be allowed in counties with a population of more than 200,000 unless local jurisdictions opt out through an ordinance.

The plan would create a voluntary registry for patients.

Source

A new poll suggests Canada may have reached the tipping point and a 66-per-cent majority favours legalizing marijuana.

Hallelujah! Finally we might get a sensible public policy discussion in this country about what to do about a relatively benign substance that has been demonized and outlawed for a century yet is as readily available in schoolyards as cigarettes.

The prohibition and a 40-year-long “War on Drugs” have led to pot being more widely accessible, taxpayers considerably poorer, gangs richer and thousands upon thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens branded “criminal.”

Another 50,000 or so Canadians are busted every year for possession; throw in 20,000 or so traffickers and producers and this so-called war is costing us as much as $400 million annually in law enforcement, court and corrections.

Bearing in mind a million dollars a year buys roughly 12 new cops, 14 teachers or public health nurses, ask yourself: Couldn’t all that money be better spent?

The federal Liberal party obviously thinks so – 77 per cent of delegates at the weekend convention voted to legalize the herb, echoing the Senate special committee on illegal drugs (chaired by a Conservative), which 10 years ago urged the government to free the weed. Four decades ago, the LeDain Commission similarly called for an end to the criminal prohibition of cannabis.

Across the country today, more and more people agree.

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Happy Holidays from I Love Weed!

There are VERY many uses for cannabis.

Cannabis smokers in Switzerland will soon be allowed to grow up to four marijuana plants each at home to stop them buying drugs on the black market.

In a bizarre twist to the new law, four people sharing a house can grow up to 16 plants – but only if each person tends to their own crop.

The deregulation of Switzerland’s already lax cannabis laws has been agreed by four neighbouring regions in the French-speaking part of the Alpine country.

A spokesman for the Neuchatel region said: ‘We have agreed these new rules to prevent drugs tourism between regions where the rules are different, and to stop them buying it on the streets.

‘But one person can not start growing more than four plants just by claiming they live with other people.

‘In this case, these other people have to actually be cultivating the plants themselves.

‘This means attending to the plant in such a way as to make it grow.’

Swiss daily Le Matin quipped: ‘This basically means that you can grow four more plants for every housemate you have – just as long as they know how to hold a watering can.’

The rules will apply in the cantons of Vaud, Neuchatel, Geneva and Fribourg from January 1 next year.

Read more

via reddit

Happy Halloween! Hope you all have a good night

A man who got a visit from police after a pizza delivery driver smelled marijuana at his home is getting free pizza from a different restaurant.

Police visited Frederick Smith of Aurora after a Papa John’s International Inc. driver reported he smelled marijuana in the home last week and saw a child there. Smith told KUSA-TV in Denver he’s a registered medical marijuana user. He says police searched his house then left.

Papa John’s has said it stands by its employee.

On Thursday, Denver-based Sexy Pizza said it’s offering Smith one free pizza monthly until Colorado voters decide a proposed 2012 ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. If voters pass it, Sexy Pizza says, it’ll extend the offer for life.

This is how you pack bowls with style.  Created by reddit user Apollyphelion

In addition to “6 Awesome Pro-Marijuana Ads” Rigo14 has sent me another image featuring Kid Cudi.

Check out his site here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.

Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it’s done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 1½ years if it’s in a rental or poses a safety risk.

The omnibus legislation imposes one-year mandatory minimums for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality. All three of these offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium-sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else’s land.

A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.

The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a kid without using a weapon.

Read more @ The Province