MJ MOVEMENT VS OBAMA ADMIN SHOWDOWN..

Pot comes to Capitol Hill as U.S. marijuana movement blooms

Published: June 5, 2013

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By Rob Hotakainen — McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — As she prepares to open the Metropolitan Wellness Center above a Popeyes chicken restaurant a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, general manager Vanessa West isn’t worried that her medical marijuana shop will get raided.

West knows she’ll be selling a drug that’s illegal under federal law, even though the District of Columbia city council has approved sales for medical use, but she expects the city to have a tightly run system.

“I was explaining it to a toddler a few weeks ago. It’s like if you’re in grade school and they say it’s OK to chew gum inside the classroom but it’s not in the hallway,” West said. “It just makes no sense.”

Operating in the shadow of Congress, the center – expected to open later this month – will mark one of the boldest moves yet for the nation’s marijuana movement, which is in full bloom this spring. It will be one of three that are expected to be operating soon in the district.

In Illinois, legislators just passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, though it has yet to be signed by the governor. In New Hampshire, the House of

Representatives and the Senate have approved medical marijuana bills, sending the issue to a conference committee. In Vermont, lawmakers voted to decriminalize pot, and the governor plans to sign the measure Thursday. In Colorado, the governor made history last week by signing bills to make his state the first to create a system to tax and regulate marijuana for recreational use.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 18 states, along with the District of Columbia. Two – Colorado and Washington state – have signed off on plans to allow recreational sales. Critics fear that more will follow.

“Medical marijuana has been a Trojan horse, really, for decriminalization and legalization. It’s the slippery slope toward legalization,” said Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman who’s the chairman of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), a national group that opposes legalization.

Kennedy said he regretted ever supporting medical marijuana and that he feared it would lead to more drug abuse among children.

“More kids smoke marijuana than smoke tobacco,” he said. “And the perception is, ‘Well, it’s medical, it must be fine.’ . . . What you end up doing is sending a very dangerous message.”

Opponents of medical marijuana hope to ramp up the anti-legalization message, saying they need to do a better job of reaching state legislators.

“It’s a reflection of the one-sidedness that they’re hearing on this,” said Kevin Sabet, an assistant professor and the director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida, who teamed up with Kennedy to create Project SAM.

Sabet said the dispensary on Capitol Hill was making itself a target for legal action. But he predicted that the Obama administration will take a wait-and-see attitude to assess whether the dispensary fizzles out or begins growing.

“If they get more brazen, I can’t imagine there won’t be any action against them,” Sabet said.

Stuart Taylor, who studied the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Democratic-leaning research center in Washington, said allowing the dispensary would be “totally inconsistent with federal law.”

“It seems as though the administration wants to pretend nothing’s happening, and one way to pretend nothing’s happening is to have marijuana being sold right under their noses in the middle of D.C. and not do anything about it,” he said.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a pro-legalization group in Washington, said allowing the center to operate so close to the Capitol “is with some irony.” But he said the dispensary probably would be fine as long as it complied with conditions set by the District of Columbia’s Health Department.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

West, who once worked at a San Diego dispensary, said she didn’t understand the fuss.

“It’s just odd to me, you know. I feel like it’s not an issue,” she said. She said that anyone who’d lived in California or Colorado knew that marijuana was “just not a big deal.”

“So we’re a little bit behind the times, which is ironic, because D.C. passed this law back in 1998,” she said.

While D.C. residents did pass a medical marijuana initiative nearly 15 years ago, Congress intervened, delaying its start date until 2010.

With only three dispensaries set to open in the District of Columbia, West said the city would run a tightly controlled system, unlike California, where looser rules have resulted in hundreds of raids. She said there was another important distinction: Only D.C. residents who have recommendations from currently licensed doctors may buy marijuana, while California allows doctors who no longer are practicing to make recommendations, which she said made the system much harder to control.

The district’s other two dispensaries will be in the Takoma neighborhood adjacent to Takoma Park, Md., and on North Capitol Street, another location not far from the U.S. Capitol.

Noting his administration’s aggressive stance against medical marijuana in California, West called President Barack Obama “the worst marijuana president in the history of this country.” But she said Obama now had more important things to do than deal with marijuana issues.

“In every state where it’s legal medically and the program is done right, the feds don’t intervene,” she said.

West said she wouldn’t know exactly when the center would open until she got the green light from the city, once all her paperwork was in order.

The walls have fresh gray paint on them. The display jars are lined up in a glass case, but they’re still empty as she awaits the first delivery of cannabis from the city’s licensed cultivators.

She’s eager for her first customers.

“We need to teach them how to pick the best strain and how to pick the best way to ingest it,” she said. “Do you want to smoke it? Do you want to eat it? Are you going to roll a joint? Art you going to vaporize it? Are you going to put on your skin?”

The center will sell many different strains of marijuana, along with edibles, concentrates, dried cannabis and pot-laced drinks. Customers will be able to find paraphernalia, too.

“Anything that you see at a head shop, we can sell,” West said.

fuck Project SAM people... thx for sharing the info Dingofriar!

link?

Email: rhotakainen@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @HotakainenRob if any one want to support cover story.

The Smart Approach to Marijuana should be to legalise it rather than oppose it...

Thanks for stoping in Ladies-n-gents.. Just posting few articles up trying to get the vibe back that seems to be fading each other day. Been a long 3 footed race and 2 steps forward and 1 step back BS against the Lady Jane and just getting little tired of "HOPE" while being forshadowed by draconian Haters & dead beat Politics. Karma and Que to those who has it coming to them & deserve it.

The real issue is not whether the Feds open/ close the doors in DC but more importantly if the owner will be arrested while depositing thier tax payments filing. Having to hire a big Ass armored truck service like Loomis and deliver in person to actually collect the MJ Tax Stamp Documents that is still being classified as an Schedule 1 drug.

Here's to holding yet another breath with Lady Hope!

Seems as though OUR neighbors Down South is geting tired of empty compromises also...

NEWS ANALYSIS In Americas, Resistance to Legal Marijuana

María Ángela Holguín, Colombian foreign minister, at a meeting of an Americas bloc. LUIS SOTO / ASSOCIATED PRESS

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD June 6, 2013

ANTIGUA, Guatemala —Whatever noisy hints Latin America has been making about a defiant march toward legalizing marijuana, the summit meeting of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers that ended Thursday revealed how rocky that path would be —and how many nations remained reluctant to join it.

The meeting, the annual General Assembly session of the Organization of American States, followed a report by the organization that called for “flexible approaches” in drug policy and included a headline-grabbing suggestion that the legalization of marijuana be seriously discussed.

Even before the report, Uruguay moved toward a state-regulated marijuana market. Guatemala has talked approvingly of the idea. And the president of Colombia has said marijuana should be legalized worldwide, though his country would not take the first step.

So how quickly will pot shops open throughout the region?Not very.

The frustration with current drug policy —with its high costs, death tolls in the tens of thousands across the Americas and persistent heavy flow of narcotics —is very real. Consensus on what to do about it, however, is much harder to come by. Diplomats here even tussled behind the scenes on how to follow up on the report and how further talks should be conducted.

The focus on the crack in the door for legalization has obscured the fact that several countries in the thick of the problem, and not just the United States, are cool to the idea or reject it outright as any solution to the violence or as a way to control consumption.

Brazil has opposed legalization of any drug, and its antidrug chief was fired two years ago after comments perceived as a softened stance on drug users.

The head of Peru’s antidrug agency told reporters after the O.A.S. report came out that it rejected legalization and was already overwhelmed with trying to treat the growing number of drug consumers there.

Mexico, too, has rejected wholesale legalization, even though former President Vicente Fox expressed his support this week for marijuana legalization and said he would even become a marijuana farmer.

One of the more blunt antilegalization voices here came from Nicaragua. Denis Moncada, ambassador to the organization, told the gathering, “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.”

Public opinion polls in the region, which trends conservative on social issues, generally show disapproval for the idea and, unlike the United States, few countries have an older generation that is comfortable with the drug and might advocate for it.

“In the United States, public opinion leads politicians and not the other way around,” said John Walsh, a drug policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America who follows the region closely. “In Latin America, it is going to be a ways before that happens.”

Still, he said, the drug report went further than expected by breaking a taboo of not even discussing legalization, though it rejected talk on liberalizing laws against more powerful drugs like cocaine. Over all, he said, the report could give countries leverage to challenge hardened American positions.

The United States, despite the states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes, has not budged on its position. Yet some Latin American leaders have said the move by those states undercuts the federal government’s argument for seizing and criminalizing the drug.

Speaking here Wednesday on his first Latin America trip as chief diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry said he was open to dialogue but defended American policy. He called it comprehensive, balanced between reducing demand, which he said had decreased by 40 percent in recent years, and increasing treatment, yet not letting up on seizing drug loads and making arrests.

He suggested that those pushing legalization were seeking a panacea. “These challenges simply defy any simple, one-shot, Band-Aid” approach, Mr. Kerry told the assembly. “Drug abuse destroys lives, tears at communities of all of our countries.”

The United States was among the countries that agreed to keep up the dialogue but behind the scenes scoffed at another foreign-minister-level discussion on drugs, which is now planned for April of next year to provide further guidance on new strategies. The given reasons were the cost of another such meeting while the O.A.S. budget was under scrutiny and worries that politics intruded on such high-level discussions.

But diplomats pushing for the meeting wondered if the United States was trying to squelch debate. “They talk about dialogue, so let’s keep having it,” said one involved in the discussions.

If widespread legalization is not on the horizon, what is?

Several countries, including big, drug-producing nations like Mexico and Peru, have already decriminalized possession or use of small amounts of illicit drugs. The United States has argued that it has effectively gone this route through the use of drug courts, which steer nonviolent drug offenders to treatment programs instead of prisons.

In the end, analysts said countries would probably do what they had always done, go their own route in accordance with what their public, and domestic politics, demand.

“No one thinks a new policy is going to be simple,” said Daniel Wilkinson, managing director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, which this week urged the decriminalization of drugs for private use. “But that serious debate looking for alternatives has to really happen.”

Mike McDonald contributed reporting.

GLOVES GOTTA COME OFF... While alittle closer to home few other states are experiencing de ja vue of walking over thee own dicks/ tits....

Florida lawmakers made it clear this session that they are not interested in legalizing marijuana.A bill to allow medical marijuana never got a hearing,and the stateenacted a new ban on certain smoking pipesto furthercrack down on illegal marijuanause.

But recent polling shows Florida citizens are seeing through the haze. In a survey of 600 likelyFloridavoterstaken earlierthisyear,70percentsaid they would likely vote to legalizemedical marijuanathrough a constitutional amendment on the 2014 ballot. And 58 percent of those voters said they would definitely vote “yes.”

Given thesefindings, Floridacouldbenext in lineto allow medical marijuana, following 18 other states and the District of Columbia. Already this year, Illinois lawmakers just sent a bill to legalizemedical marijuana to the governor, and the New Hampshire Senatepasseda medical marijuana bill last week. Massachusetts voters approved medical marijuana in 2012.

Advocates in Florida attempting to bring the question to voters next year could get a boost from a growing constituency of baby boomers in favor of medical marijuana.Supportisgrowing among thesevoters who came of age at a time when drug experimentation was more open, and now, might be more likely to consider it for medical reasons.

In Florida, about 27 percent of the population fallsinto the45-64age range, which is nearly identical to the national average of about26percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Florida outpaces the national average in the number of residents ages 65 and older.

More and more, these people are interested in trying medical marijuana as an alternative to prescriptions for aliments including pain and sleeplessness, said Robert Platshorn, a medical marijuana activist who organizes The SilverTour, a Florida-based roadshow educating seniors about medical marijuana, and host of a nationally-aired infomercial called, “Should Grandma Smoke Pot?”.

Nationally, 77 percent of boomers said that marijuana has legitimate medical uses, according to a March 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center. In that same survey, half of all boomers said they support legalized recreational marijuana.

“It’s a natural shift in some ways, in terms of seniors,” said Ben Pollara, campaign manager for the Florida medical marijuanaballot initiative. For baby boomers, “if they didn’t smoke when they were younger, they know some who did,” he said.

Politicalcalculus

The Republican-dominated political establishment in Florida remainsfirmly entrenched against any change in the state marijuana laws. Nearly 800 marijuana growing operations were shut down in the state in 2012, according to records from the state Department of Agriculture.

Legalizing medical marijuana is also staunchly opposedby theFloridaMedical Association and the current governor, Republican Rick Scott, the former chief executiveof a nationalfor-profit healthcare company.

The advocacy group, United for Care, is leading the effort to get a constitutional amendment on the 2014 Florida ballot. The campaign has been active since 2009, but received a $150,000 cash windfall from two Democratic donors in March. The first $50,000 came from BarbaraStiefel, a top Democraticfundraiser basedin Coral Gables, just south of Miami.

Orlando-area personal injury lawyerand Democratic fundraiser John Morgan gave the other $100,000, inspired to bankroll the 2014 ballot campaign after seeing how his father, suffering from cancer and emphysema, was helped by marijuanain hisfinal days.

“This will cost me quite a bit of money in proportion to what I have,” Morgan said in an interview with Orlando Weekly, “but if it happens, I see it as political philanthropy —that through politics, a whole lot of good could be done for a whole lot of people for a whole lot of time.”

Working on the ballot

Putting a constitutional amendment on Florida’s ballot might seem simple—after all, the 2012 ballot had 11 proposed amendments on it. But the process is “a long hard slog,” Platshorn said.

Platshorn remembers speaking to South Florida lawmakers two years ago, and when he told them he was advocating changing marijuana laws,“all 14 heads of the people on the dais went down and they didn’t make any eye contact.”

The Florida campaign is off to a somewhat slow start. Supporters need 683,149 valid signatures by Feb. 1, 2014, and they don’t yet have a petition to circulate. They expect to have one in June, based on the Arizona and Massachusetts medical marijuanasystems.Both of thosepassedthrough ballot initiatives, but allowed the stateto settherulesand regulationsfordispensing medical marijuana.

“We are trying not to do what California did,” which opened the floodgates to medical marijuanawith no stateregulation,Pollarasaid.“Wewant to make medical marijuanalegal and available, but not passde-factomarijuana legalization.”

Even if they get all the signatures they need, constitutional amendments require a 60 percent majority vote to pass. Plus,getting messaging out to almost 20 million Floridians requires ads in 10 media markets, said Damien Filer, a veteran of the Florida initiativeprocess.

In stateswith smallerpopulations,suchasMassachusetts, successful medical marijuanacampaignscost about$1million in 2012,according to theNational Institute on Money in State Politics. In Arkansas, the only other southern state to consider medical marijuana,a failed campaign therein 2012cost supporters $1.5 million.

If it passes, a tightly regulated medical marijuana program like Florida is attempting shouldn’t have to worry about federal intervention, said Stuart Taylor, Jr., a senior fellow attheBrookingsInstitution, at a forum earlier this year. “The stateswherefederal enforcement officersarecracking down aretheones where…there’s not very effective regulation,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty chaotic in California. In other states, such as New Mexico and perhaps Colorado… the federal government has not been cracking down.”

“Where state regulation seems to be working reasonably well, they’ve left it alone,” he said.

Haters always working on yet another failed system...

Drug abuse prevention advocates fear marijuana legalization

Posted: Friday, June 7, 2013 6:32 pm

0 comments

BRADENTON - The push to make marijuana legal could appear on the ballot in 2014. Advocates for legal marijuana have mastered the marketing – and gotten the money – to change people's perceptions of pot, and that leaves people who work against drug abuse struggling to blunt a rising tide in favor of blunts.

“I think the proponents of marijuana have been really brilliant at how they have framed marijuana,” says Sharon Kramer, Executive Director of the Manatee County Substance Abuse Coalition. Instead of potheads, they show you Cathy Jordan, the Parrish woman with Lou Gehrig's Disease who says that smoking pot has kept her alive.

And it has worked. 19 states plus the District of Columbia allow marijuana for medical use, and two others – Washington State and Colorado – have approved use for anyone over 21. “It makes me sad, it makes me scared, again the perception of harm is going down,” says Jessica Spencer, who leads the Manatee County Youth Commission. She and Kramer see what they believe is a growing danger.

“We're going to suggest that smoking marijuana is medical?” Kramer asks. “I would suggest that it's a hoax.”

But a recent poll suggests that 70% of people in Florida support so-called medical marijuana." The Cathy Jordan bill went nowhere in the legislature this year. But a group backed by prominent attorney John Morgan aims to get the nearly 800,000 petition signatures needed to put the issue on the ballot. And when voters see people like Cathy Jordan, Kramer says, it's hard for them to hear the facts.

“Less than five percent are using it for any medical condition like HIV/AIDS or cancer,” Kramer says. Yes, the state would make tax revenue from pot, but Kramer notes that the state makes money from

alcohol and tobacco taxes, too, but it's only a tiny fraction of the cost to society in heath care, crime and substance abuse treatment.

Monday, Kramer, Spencer, and other drug abuse prevention specialists from across the region meet in St. Petersburg to look for ways to get their message out in the face of what they expect to be a big advertising campaign in favor of legalizing marijuana in Florida

Quote: Noting his administration’s aggressive stance against medical marijuana in California, West called President Barack Obama “the worst marijuana president in the history of this country.” But she said Obama now had more important things to do than deal with marijuana issues.



WRONG. NOTHING is more important than the cannabis issue. This isn't an issue about a plant. This is a serious issue with freedom in this country. If he was a good man and a good president he would come out and end this war NOW and he's got the power to change it right now yet he doesn't. This is HUMAN RIGHTS. NOTHING is more important than FREEDOM.


Almost 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana since 1992. That's more than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington DC and Wyoming combined.
REFERENCE. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States (1993-2000). Table: Arrest for Drug Abuse Violations. U.S. Department of Justice: Washington, DC. I'm sure in the last 13 years many more than 5 million have had their lives negatively impacted and/or arrested because of these evil laws. Anyone know todays figure?

Now forgive me but I remember being told that we are not bankrupting the country while supporting this gigantic military which has some troops in over 100 countries is keeping us free?

These people think FREE is merely another 4 letter word. Bastards each and every one of them.

Why hasn't john morgan come out in support of Bob Platshorn who IS doing something? Bob's a couple grand short on the fundraising for the seniors and students in washington dc and morgan is nowehere to be found. This is the guy who claims he'll write a check for 3 1/2 million. Can't support another Floridian, a genuine activist for a few g's? How about one of those 30 second infomercials instead of focusing on lawsuits, how about supporting the Silver Tour or, how's that petition coming?

This all stinks. Florida stinks.

Tudo said:

Almost 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana since 1992. That's more than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington DC and Wyoming combined.
REFERENCE. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States (1993-2000). Table: Arrest for Drug Abuse Violations. U.S. Department of Justice: Washington, DC. I'm sure in the last 13 years many more than 5 million have had their lives negatively impacted and/or arrested because of these evil laws. Anyone know todays figure?

Click to expand...

I found these figures in NORML's annual press releases. For the period 2001 - 2011, 8,754,474 people were arrested for marijuana. I did not find a figure for 2012, it may be buried in the FBI Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2012. It would be interesting to see that number because the number of arrests declined in 2011 to its lowest point since 2003.

2001 - 723,627
2002 - 697,082
2003 - 755,187
2004 - 771,608
2005 - 786,545
2006 - 829,625
2007 - 872,721
2008 - 847,864
2009 - 858,408
2010 - 853,838
2011 - 757,969

So call it 14 Million.

14 Million human beings who have in some way been negatively impacted in a country that has troops in over 100 countries forcing all it's population to pay for it whether it's right or wrong, whether they agree or disagree, often makes claims to have a higher moral and otherwise standard in the world and in fact considers us "superior" and "superpower" and while it's sticking guns in peoples faces around the globe, dropping bombs on poor countries helping alleged enemies to violently overthrow governments, many in the name of this "one true G-d" ( no fakers here! Only over there! ). 14 Million human beings have in one way or another "experienced law enforcement", being told to sit, stand, speak, etc, and in many cases, I presume millions, stripped them of other Constitutional rights after already stripping away the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and after a "felon" is added to ones name for as little as an oz of weed in some places, they strip the person of his right to arm and defend him/herself .

Who supports this type of behavior? Who supports this regime? Really?

I'm sorry if I'm off and running here. I'm working on saturday, trying to keep getting up and moving around, weather is verrry humid and rainy and I'm in a lot of pain and just the thought of some of this shit makes me angry. Sometimes it's like living in between dimensions, can't even be honest with my doctor. What kind of place is this.

^^HELL,where i live.....

welcome to the club!
Lg