Associated Press - 11-7-09

SEBASTOPOL, CA -- A surge in medical marijuana in California has left communities trying to regulate or ban the drug. This wine country town has welcomed a dispensary as a strong source of tax revenue during the recession.

GREELEY, Colo. — Health and law enforcement officials around the nation are scrambling to figure out how to regulate medical marijuana now that the federal government has decided it will no longer prosecute legal users or providers.

For years, since the first medical marijuana laws were passed in the mid-1990s, many local and state governments could be confident, if not complacent, knowing that marijuana would be kept in check because it remained illegal under federal law, and that hard-nosed federal prosecutors were not about to forget it.

Californian, Mexican search and destroy

ORLEANS, CALIF. -- W hat does a tough Mexican army major barking orders in the outlaw hills of the Sierra Madre have in common with the laconic sheriff detective from the north woods of California who puts a marijuana sticker on his truck as a joke?

They are both professional weed-whackers committed to the cause -- the hard, dirty, difficult destruction of marijuana out in the fields, plant by plant. Mexico has the largest marijuana eradication operation in the world, followed by the United States. It is a downright Sisyphean task.

By Eoin O'Carroll | 10.10.09 - Christian Science Monitor

Large marijuana plots hidden deep in California’s public lands have illegally diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water, compounding shortages caused by the state’s ongoing drought.

Medical marijuana is giving activists a chance to show how a legitimized pot business can work. Is the end of prohibition upon us?

By Daniel Engber Posted Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009, at 3:39 PM ET - Slate.com

At the time, Mom's question caught me by surprise: "Have you ever tried marijuana?" she asked, sloshing her coffee around in a mug as we stood together in the kitchen. My mind went blank. Could this be the fabled "drug talk" that parents are supposed to give to their teenage children? If so, why was I getting it at 30?

Gresham group calls for tighter regulation

By Taryn Luna

The Gresham Outlook, Sep 2, 2009, Updated Sep 3, 2009

From health teachers preaching about marijuana being a gateway drug to anti-drug commercials depicting stoned motorists colliding with cycling children, Oregonians, like all Americans, have heard the ills of smoking marijuana or adding it to their brownies.

But when it comes to using marijuana for medicinal purposes, the issue becomes a little more cloudy.

Since the passage of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act in 1998, the number of Oregonians with medical marijuana cards has soared to more than 20,000.

LA Times - 8-30-09

Cannabis is moving into the mainstream, with fashion, films, TV and politicians acknowledging it's here to stay.

By Adam Tschorn

August 30, 2009

In June, an estimated 25,000 people attended the inaugural THC Expo hemp and art show in downtown Los Angeles, an event that pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy -- including a $22,400 payment directly to the city of Los Angeles for use of its convention center.

In State That's Shown Leniency, Advocates Push Legalization for Some Cases

Although far smaller in scale, a California-style approach of going easy on medical-use pot smokers has been wafting through the Montgomery County courthouse.

By Fred Gardner, O'Shaughnessy's . Posted August 28, 2009.

Alternet.com

New research shows here seems to be something in pot that actually undermines cancer, instead of causing it. -- and the media are doing their best to ignore it.

Editor's Note: There is a groundswell of attention in the news to marijuana's role in causing and preventing various types of cancers. Last week, AlterNet published an article from the Marijuana Policy Project about a new study finding that pot smokers have a lower risk of head and neck cancers than people who don’t smoke pot. Earlier this year, the corporate media pounced on a study suggesting that men who had been using marijuana at least once per week and who had started smoking pot prior to age 18 had an elevated risk of testicular cancer known as nonseminoma, which makes up fewer than half of one percent of all cancer cases among men.

Head, neck and testicular cancers are of course quite serious ailments to deal with, but what about cancer of the most obvious organ at risk with pot smoking, the lungs? Where's the science on that? The article below by Fred Gardner, editor of the medical marijuana research quarterly journal O'Shaughnessy's, shares the results of a major medical study the media completely ignored, and his conclusions are quite blunt on the matter: Smoking pot doesn't cause lung cancer. In fact, the study found that cigarette smokers who also smoked marijuana were at a lower risk of contracting lung cancer than tobacco-only smokers.

***

Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

by Fred Gardner

One in three Americans will be afflicted with cancer, we are told by the government (as if it’s our immutable fate and somehow acceptable). Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. and lung cancer the leading killer among cancers.

You’d think it would have been very big news in June 2005 when UCLA medical school professor Donald Tashkin reported that components of marijuana smoke -- although they damage cells in respiratory tissue -- somehow prevent them from becoming malignant. In other words, something in marijuana exerts an anti-cancer effect!

State panel concludes that cannabis causes cancer. But the research is still young, and the industry seems undeterred.

By Paula Lehman - 8-26-09 - East Bay Express

Walk into Coffeeshop Blue Sky in downtown Oakland and breathe in the intoxicating aroma of the year's finest herb. Then notice that the walls are plastered with contradictory information. A government-issued sign warns that marijuana, when inhaled, has been found by the state of California to cause cancer. But other signs tout legalization and call attention to a UCLA study that disputes the state's findings. A sticker from Oaksterdam University says further information on the subject is available. This is what California dispensaries could look like a year from now.

From Findlaw.com 

Among the many creative ideas to redress California's budgetary plight are proposals (including at least one that is currently pending in the legislature) to legalize, and then regulate and tax, recreational marijuana use. In this column, I explain that whether or not legalizing marijuana is a decent idea (a topic on which I don't know enough to express a view), legalization wouldn't generate any significant state tax receipts for the foreseeable future.

New Jersey is taking the lead. Will we follow?

Last week I bellied up in my local dive and bumped into "Barry," a pothead and occasional dealer who lives in my neighborhood.

"Dude, can I just tell you what a moron I am?" he said, as he waved a few bucks in the air trying to get the barmaid's attention. "Really. Even when I try to do the right thing, it just gets all messed up."

Americans have historical amnesia of a general variety, but the blackout is particularly acute when it comes to what our grandparents, and their grandparents, did to get high. Forty years after Woodstock, the nation is taking a fresh look at its twisted relationship with drugs and insobriety. But we're doing so without drawing lessons from the centuries of experience we have with inebriation and the effort to control it. Five widespread myths must be dispensed with if America ever plans on sobering up and making rational drug policy.

The Government Says a Pill Called Marinol Offers the Same Benefits as Medical Marijuana. Is it True?

CBS)  "Medical marijuana," the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says, "already exists."

They don't just mean in California. A pill known as Marinol has been legal and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use with a prescription anywhere in America since 1985.

It's active ingredient? Dronabinol, better known as THC, the primary psychoactive element of the cannabis plant.

"Marinol provides standardized THC concentrations, does not contain the other 400 uncharacterized substances found in smoked marijuana, such as carcinogens or fungal spores, and is not associated with the quick high of smoked marijuana," said Neil Hirsch, a spokesman for Marinol manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals.

CBS)  There is talk in California of what you could call a radical idea for the cash-poor state to raise money. It's controversial, but proponents say the plan could smoke out more than a billion dollars for the state, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

It is an unusual commercial: taxpayers demanding a new tax. It's an offer by marijuana users to help the state's battered budget.

"We're marijuana consumers. We want to pay our fair share."

It's estimated that $14 billion worth of marijuana is sold illegally in the state. Making it legal and taxing it at $50 dollars an ounce would bring in approximately $1.4 billion a year. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has been pushing the idea.

Backers serve up a timely batch of arguments, but their latest reasons are half-baked.

from the May 22, 2009 edition

The American movement to legalize marijuana for regular use is on a roll. Or at least its backers say it is.

They point to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said in early May that it's now time to debate legalizing marijuana – though he's personally against it. Indeed, a legislative push is on in his state (and several others, such as Massachusetts and Nevada) to treat this "soft" drug like alcohol – to tax and regulate its sale, and set an age restriction on buyers.

 Cancer Warnings Fire up some in pot world

CARCINOGENS ARE IN CANNABIS - BUT DRUG"S TIES TO DISEASE DISPUTED

by Marcus Wholsend Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -It might take Californians a puff or two to get their heads around an apparent contradiction recently enshrined in state law. The same marijuana smoke that doctors can recommend to ease cancer patients' suffering must soon come with a warning saying it causes the disease.