LA Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Being Phased Out
July 2nd, 2009 by Rick
On Monday, a City Council committee of Los Angeles advised to deny the moratorium exemptions to 28 medical marijuana dispensaries within the city. Lawyers for the dispensaries complained:
- Notices for the committee meeting came over the weekend or some didn’t even receive a notice.
- Speakers had merely minutes to plead their case.
- Council members seemed to have their minds already made up, in agreement with shutting the dispensaries down.
Graham Berry, a lawyer representing ten dispensaries, said:
I thought the hearings were a farce and a sham.
Planning Committee chairman, Ed Reyes commented:
What you see here today is the conclusion of a long process. [...] The assertion that this is a sham is false.
Councilmen Ed Reyes and Jose Huizar explained the process, pointing out that:
- It was a hearing, not a debate.
- Under state law 72 hours’ notice is needed to place topics on a schedule.
- Hardship exemptions were “carefully reviewed”.
According to Reyes he had to constantly ask speakers to keep within their given time.
Obama Continues His Policy of “Change”
June 24th, 2009 by RickOn Monday, President Obama, signed the country’s toughest anti-smoking law, in another attempt to keep the children “safe” from a designated adult product and habit.
The bill would give free reign for the Food and Drug Administration to:
- Regulate what goes into tobacco products (candy and fruit flavored blunt wraps?)
- Publicize the ingredients (all 3000+ of them)
- Prohibit marketing campaigns receptive toward children
Obama spoke from experience about the risk of teens smoking:
I know. I was one of these teenagers. [...] And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time.
So many studies have come out that should have caused this drug to be banned a long time ago. The tobacco industry however has become such a big business that the federal government seemed to ignore as it danced to it’s corporate fiddle.
Kush Should Be Punished More Severely, Rep. Says
June 16th, 2009 by Russ
Try as they might, our country’s legislative bodies cannot seem to get on the same page. The very same week that legislator Barney Frank introduces a bill to protect medical marijuana dispensaries from undue and unjust prosecution, someone on the other side of the aisle wants to increase legal penalties on certain strains of it.
Illinois’ 10th District Representative, Mark Kirk, thinks it would be a wise idea to single out “kush” dealing and make it punishable by up to 25 years for a first offense. For the uninitiated, kush isn’t a new chemical weapon or a secret Satanic doctrine that causes its members to engage in deplorable acts. It’s simply a species of weed that contains 5-10% more THC than your typical, regular marijuana strain.
In the press circulating around Kirk’s new proposal, there doesn’t seem to be very many arguments for imposing such draconian penalties. A sheriff from Kirk’s home turf (Lake County, IL) offered this rationale:
They are more dangerous behind the wheel of a vehicle. It’s not a good idea to have people that messed up.
Well that certainly makes zero sense. Isn’t that the reason why laws treating drunkenness from weak spirits and hard liquor are completely different? I mean, could you imagine if the same people with access to beer (5% alcohol) were allowed to access Bacardi 151 (75% alcohol)? It would be total anarchy in a world like that. Heh.
Hang on a moment… My intern here is telling me that we actually have no laws that distinguish beer from wine or from hard alcohol. No law distinguishes 5% alcohol by volume from 75%. In fact, we allow adults to use these substances responsibly, regardless of the volume they consume at all. And it’s only when they demonstrate a lack of responsibility (like getting behind the wheel, or making life difficult for someone else) that we see fit to punish them at all.
To be fair, we have yet to reach the real crux of the Kirk team’s argument for this new standard. To quote Lake County Sheriff, Mark Currand, once more:
When you amplify the strength of it, you are increasing the harm to the system.
Well I, for one, would like to thank Representative Mark Kirk (who can be conveniently reached at 202-225-4835) and his intrepid staff for taking a pre-emptive strike against that vile kush-weed before it inevitably ruins our society and systems at large.
The Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act
January 20th, 2009 by Perry
Alan St. Pierre Norm Kent (of NORML) has written a great post examining Florida’s increasingly harsh penalties aimed at marijuana growers.
One of the major changes was reducing the amount of pot plants needed to receive a second-degree felony from 300 to 25 – regardless of whether they’re seedlings or adults. Second-degree felonies can get you 15 years in federal prison, that’s just crazy.
In a strongly-worded press release, Attorney General Bill McCollum excoriated the grow community for the dangers it poses to “protecting our children and our communities from the devastation of illegal drugs.”
The press release makes a few other apocryphal claims meant more to scare than to inform, like making it sound as though marijuana is frequently traded pound-for-pound for cocaine, and that marijuana has 15 times more potency than it used to.
Unfortunately, no one from the press corps challenged these scare tactic statements or questioned the need for such a drastic change in sentence dispensation. With all its increased potency, marijuana still killed fewer people than bumblebees last year.
Jump over to NORML and read the whole article, it’s a good one, and covers not just the facts about Florida’s law changes but also tells stories about the everyday people that are being hurt by them.
