Cannabis News

[Baron23]

Montgomery to appeal ruling on Arizona medical marijuana law
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery says he’ll ask the Arizona Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that the state’s medical marijuana law is constitutional in requiring counties to approve reasonable zoning regulations.

The Court of Appeals’ ruling Tuesday rejected Montgomery’s argument that the state medical marijuana law is pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act, a federal law that still makes marijuana illegal.

The case in the appeal decided by the appeals court started with a legal dispute over whether Maricopa County officials had to approve zoning for a medical marijuana dispensary in Sun City.

Montgomery reacted to the latest ruling by saying that allowing Arizona’s medical marijuana program to stand despite the federal law undermines federalism and the “fundamental principle of the rule of law.”

This guy is a total dick

 

[lwien]

This guy is a total dick

So is their sheriff.

 

[Fat Freddy]

Sounds like a real AZ! (yuck, yuck....couldn't help myself!)

 

[waxdab23]

Michael Floyd is in for it.

 

[macbill]

Branding Humboldt: Cannabis market seeks to cash in region’s recognition
http://www.times-standard.com/article/NJ/20161217/NEWS/161219828
... [T]he cannabis industry has wasted no time in taking advantage of Humboldt County’s recognition as a cannabis cultivation center and using it as a branding tool — even if the product isn’t from the area.

“There’s a Humboldt dispensary in Colorado,” Humboldt County cannabis cultivator and True Humboldt brand operations manager Chrystal Ortiz said. “... There are people using our history and cultural experience and background as a brand.”

But after the passage of new marijuana laws in California over the past two years, Humboldt County marijuana will now have nearly the same protection from misbranding as a Napa wine.

 

[macbill]

Marijuana use and schizophrenia: New evidence suggests link

Recent research suggests that not only are people who are prone to schizophrenia more likely to try cannabis, but that cannabis may also increase the risk of developing symptoms.

Studies show that cannabis use is more common among people with psychosis than in the general population, and that it may also increase the risk of psychotic symptoms.

 

[cybrguy]

Yeah, well, I'm absolutely sure that they have causation down here. After all, there is NO chance that people who have mental and emotional maladies would EVER try to self medicate to deal with their symptoms. For example, no people with mental conditions drink, right? So why might they look for some other kind of help?

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Cannabis is a cure for mental illness, but I will certainly state that in MY OWN LIFE cannabis reduces stress and makes day to day like easier to cope with. And while not a good replacement for therapy, it is certainly a help for many emotional difficulties.

 

[grokit]

While cannabis use is indeed useful for day-to-day medication, like many medicines you can get into a rut with it that may impede progress in the bigger picture. But at least it's more fun than the others.

It's much safer too

 

[howie105]

Who do I trust more to build an acceptable market, the people I know already or the same local, state and federal bureaucrats and their enforcers that have been suppressing pot and ruining lives for decades?

 

[Amoreena]

... in MY OWN LIFE cannabis reduces stress and makes day to day like easier to cope with. ...

This ^^

 

[Baron23]

A ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for long-awaited medical marijuana program


y Fenit Nirappil December 26 at 4:10 PM

Medical marijuana could finally become a reality next year in Maryland, one of the states slowest to make the drug available for purchase after legalizing sales.

In 2016, regulators awarded long-awaited licenses to grow, process and sell cannabis while grappling with fallout from those shut out of the potentially lucrative industry. Now selected businesses are racing to set up facilities and pass final inspections so the first seeds can be planted and flowers can hit the shelves by the end of 2017, four years after lawmakers legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes.

“For many of us who have been along this journey for a long time, that we have seen licenses issued is a light at the end of the tunnel for patient access,” said Darrell Carrington, a medical marijuana lobbyist who leads the Maryland Cannabis Industry Association.
(cont)

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Maryland state government has the uncanny ability to fuck up even wiping their collective asses much less stand up a program. They say that the patient registry will be open in first calendar quarter of 2017, but they have been saying stuff like that for almost four years. We will see.

 

[macbill]

The voters have spoken on marijuana. Trump ought to listen.

So where does the president-elect stand on pot? He has said he supports individuals’ right to use medical marijuana “100%,” which is good news for the 29 states that allow medicinal use of pot. As for adult recreational use, which Californians approved through Proposition 64, it’s hard to say what he believes because his statements have been all over the map, shifting from audience to audience.

 

[Tranquility]

Nevada breach.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/nevada...s-of-medical-marijuana-dispensary-applicants/

Nevada's state government website has leaked the personal data on over 11,700 applicants for dispensing medical marijuana in the state.

Each application, eight pages in length, includes the person's full name, home address, citizenship, and even their weight and height, race, and eye and hair color. The applications also include the applicant's citizenship, their driving license number (where applicable), and social security number.​

 

[Baron23]

Nevada breach.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/nevada...s-of-medical-marijuana-dispensary-applicants/

Nevada's state government website has leaked the personal data on over 11,700 applicants for dispensing medical marijuana in the state.

Each application, eight pages in length, includes the person's full name, home address, citizenship, and even their weight and height, race, and eye and hair color. The applications also include the applicant's citizenship, their driving license number (where applicable), and social security number.​

Christ....and people wonder why we hold Government bureaucracies in utter contempt. Seems like NV is in a race to the bottom with MD.....but their taxes are lower than mine. sigh

 

[Tranquility]

Christ....and people wonder why we hold Government bureaucracies in utter contempt. Seems like NV is in a race to the bottom with MD.....but their taxes are lower than mine. sigh

I had to get a number from the IRS to practice in front of it. (PTIN) A lot of personal information went into the required federal application including all personal contact information. Some genius decided to do a FIOA request for all the information and the government fulfilled it. All contact data for all with numbers was put out publicly.

Guess how long it took for my email inbox to explode with spam from anyone who thinks I need a calculator?

 

[CarolKing]

What I'm imagining in some of these newly voted legal states (medical too) for cannabis the laws are still a bit blurry sorta speak. I see folks taking the initiative and starting to sell products and cannabis products like at farmers markets.

I was just thinking about the farmers markets I miss. Some of you need to do something like that where you live. Different laws for different areas so you would have to see what would be somewhat legal for your area.

WA state medical laws weren't written very well back in 1998 so there were a lot of gray areas. You can take advantage when they aren't clear with the law.

When I think back about how much money I saved on medical it makes me want the old days back. I just found some 1/4 oz left of some Banana Kush I bought for $100 an oz. it was still fresh in a canning jar from June, no boveda pack either. It was in a box.

Some of the cannabis from the shops are on the dry side. I'm trying not to buy cannabis dated from last summer.

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

Masshole legislators in Massachusetts.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...may-delayed/StlB04ayOcNl8RksKmMwkJ/story.html

The injustices seem to be totally acceptable to the government when it only hurts its cannabis-using, second-class citizens. So fucking sad.

 

[Baron23]

What happened in Washington state after voters legalized recreational marijuana

The nation's first recreational marijuana shop opened nearly three years ago in Colorado. Since then, a growing body of research has shown that the availability of recreational marijuana — in Colorado and elsewhere — is having little to no effect on teens' propensity to smoke weed.

That's the conclusion, at least, of the official statistics out of Colorado through 2015. It's what federal data shows nationwide through this year. And it's also backed up by other federal surveys of drug use in the states where marijuana is legal.

The data on this point has been consistent enough that longtime skeptics of the merits of marijuana legalization, like Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, are expressing surprise at the findings. “We had predicted based on the changes in legalization, culture in the U.S. as well as decreasing perceptions among teenagers that marijuana was harmful that [accessibility and use] would go up,” Volkow told U.S. News and World Report earlier this month. “But it hasn’t gone up.”

However, a study out Tuesday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics flies somewhat in the face of the new conventional marijuana wisdom. Examining marijuana use among high school students in Washington state two years before and after the vote to legalize in 2012, it finds that rates of marijuana use increased by about 3 percent among 8th- and 10th-graders over that period (cont)

If you read the full article, it would appear that these researches have no idea why there are some significant outliers in their data....well, they come up with some self-serving stuff but they really have no clue.

 

[CarolKing]

I remember taking drug and alcohol surveys when I was in high school. Nobody even told the truth. Now that cannabis is legal they probably felt more comfortable telling the truth. Even though the surveys are anonymous I was a paranoid kid. Maybe that was just me.

Maybe kids are choosing to use cannabis over alcohol? That would be a better choice if they are going to use a substance. I did read the article. Were the surveys the same? I was curious about that with WA and CO. It sounds like it was the same as the state's previous survey.

The results could be scewed. Some folks in high office were against legal cannabis. Maybe they want the system to fail and appear to be a bad thing? I'm just thinking out loud and question the results.

Our legal cannabis systems are not exactly the same.

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

I edited my last comments because I don't want to stir a political debate.

I am so frustrated by the constant battle that cannabis always needs to endure. Some day it will be mainstream. I only hope I live long enough to witness it.

 

[Silat]

Court Rules Medical Cannabis Users Cannot Be Charged With DUI


From the article:
The Arizona Court of Appeals last week ruled that the state’s medical cannabis patients who have been charged with a DUI may contest the charges against them, forcing law enforcement officials to prove henceforth that those found with THC in their systems were too impaired to operate a vehicle.

The ruling stems from the 2013 arrest of an Arizona man named Nadir Ishak, in the city of Mesa. Ishak was arrested after an officer noticed his car drift into another lane and reported to have found Ishak to have bloodshot and watery eyes.
Ishak was later charged and convicted of driving with cannabis in his system. He was not convicted of a second charge, which was a DUI.
During his subsequent conviction, Ishak was denied the opportunity to present evidence that he was registered in Arizona as a medical cannabis patient.

The state first passed a law in 2010 allowing for the use of medical cannabis. Later, in 2015, the state Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dobson v. McClennen that medical cannabis was not necessarily grounds to charge patients with DUIs.

The issue of driving under the influence of cannabis is problematic, and not just because cannabis is used as medicine by thousands of patients nationwide.

The effects of cannabis are such that it is difficult to determine how people under the influence of the substance may be affected at a given time, given both how long it stays in the bloodstream and the different ways in which it is processed amongst different people.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acknowledges the issue, saying on its website,

It is difficult to establish a relationship between a person’s THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects… It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone, and currently impossible to predict specific effects based on THC-COOH concentrations.

Fast forward to this week and the Arizona Court of Appeals tossed out Ishak’s DUI conviction.

The court’s opinion – authored by presiding Judge Diane M. Johnsen – first points out that, under the state’s medical cannabis act, a patient having any amount of cannabis in their system does not automatically impair their driving abilities.

The opinion goes on to state that the state law does not include any provision stating a level at which a patient may reasonably be considered intoxicated by cannabis.

Therefore, the opinion concludes, it is reasonable for medical patients who believe that they have been unfairly charged with a DUI to be able to challenge the charge.

[A]n authorized medical marijuana user charged with violatint [the law] may establish the affirmative defense… by showing a preponderance of the evidence that the marijuana metabolite concentration in his or her system was insufficient to cause him to be impaired at the time he or she operated or was in actual physical control of a motor vehicle.

The opinion states that the defendant may successfully fight the charge by presenting evidence that they were not impaired and by cross-examining the officer that arrested them, the forensic scientists who have been called by the State.
END OF LINE...

 

[Baron23]

The global experiment of marijuana legalization

In 2016, more countries legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes.
Marijuana, or cannabis, is "the most widely cultivated, produced, trafficked and consumed drug worldwide," according to the World Drug Report, but its legality has long been a topic of debate worldwide.
In the US, Maine recently confirmed legalized recreational marijuana use, joining seven other states and the District of Columbia. Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half of US states (cont)

Why a skirmish over pot legalization in Massachusetts is making some progressives paranoid

n November, Massachusetts voters decided to make recreational marijuana legal, allowing it to be bought and sold in stores by January 2018. But this week, state lawmakers quietly voted to delay the sale date by at least six months.

The delay has outraged some marijuana-legalization advocates, less so because they'll have to wait a few months to buy pot and more so because they feel the legislature is trying to subvert the will of the people by fundamentally changing what they voted for. A similar skirmish is happening in Maine over the minimum wage, and progressives in both states are worried that their opponents are trying to delay or even reverse their remarkable success via ballot initiatives.

"No legislature has inserted themselves in such a way as to extend timelines," said Jim Borghesani, director of communications for the Massachusetts campaign to legalize marijuana. "It's direct democracy by the voters, whether you like it or not."

Massachusetts state lawmakers passed the bill in an informal session Wednesday with just a handful of lawmakers present. Lawmakers told the Boston Globe they wanted more time to set up the bureaucracy around the selling of marijuana. But legalization advocates note that Massachusetts's timeline to legalize marijuana matches up with other states that allow it.

That the legislature is involved at all in setting up a timeline is especially frustrating to advocates, since the whole point of ballot initiatives is to go around the legislative body. And in a nation dominated by Republican legislatures (Massachusetts's is one of a handful controlled by Democrats), going around legislatures is something progressives have had a lot of success with in recent year (cont.)

Somebody needs to sue these MA legislative assholes.

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

Somebody needs to sue these MA legislative assholes.

Agreed. Right now it seems like there is a lot of progressives saying they are upset, but no one is turning up the heat. My main concern with Mass. was the sneaky way it was handled. This was purposely planned and carried out in an underhanded fashion. They knew if it was publicized that this vote would occur, someone would step in and vote no, stopping the process. So it was done in hint, hint, wink ,wink fashion. They do need to be sued or some type of legislative review to hold their feet to the fire. Other prohibitionists are watching. The suits probably wouldn't amount to anything because I'm sure they have the law on their side, but perhaps other legislators will think twice before pulling these stunts that undo the will of the voters. Right now, it was accepted as business as usual.

In fact, there is an article somewhere where the prohibitionists in Maine want to push legislators to adopt their own moratorium of several years. So people have already seen what happened in Mass. and are saying, well they were able to do it, so can we. So if anti-legalization loses in the polls, then they can convince legislation to "moratorium the fuck out of the new law " so that it never goes into effect. If you can pass one 6 month moratorium, then you can also pass 2 or 3 or 8 more moratoriums. There are a lot of sneaky shitheads out there trying to stop this at all costs.

Unless we go on the offensive, they will begin to find a way. Another vulgar point is how the anti-legalization groups are exploiting children. Their claim is that they are fighting the laws because they worry about the children. I guess they believe that street dealers are more selective as to who they sell to versus state regulated dispensaries. The truth is that many of these people are lobbyists for big pharma, big alcohol, etc. They claim it is about safety, but in fact it is all about money. It is so fucking disgusting.

No one seems to care that parents may have 6 packs of hard root beer with colorful labels sitting in their unsupervised refrigerators. There will be no moratorium on Anheusier- Busch.

 

[Tranquility]

Somebody needs to sue these MA legislative assholes.

There is a bit of a problem on this point. It's called standing. A particularized harm to an individual that gives the right to have your case be heard in the courts. Generally, the only one who could sue on a matter like this would be the top enforcement officer in the state.

An example had to do with the complex history of same sex marriage in my state. At the end, there was a state Supreme Court decision saying an initiative keeping marriage between a man and a woman was constitutional. (There are two decisions at the state supreme court and this is the second and operative one.) A federal judge found the initiative's statute unconstitutional. The good officers of the state with the power (Governor and Attorney General) decided they would not appeal.

Who can appeal?

After much folderol and detour, the supreme Supreme Court found the state's sponsors of the initiative did not have standing when the State's officers did not act in the State's stead.

In other words, a lawsuit is probably not going to end the lack of motivation on the part of MA's legislature. Not only would the members be immune from suit, but also it will have to be a state officer with the power to prosecute any suit. I assume they will make the same choice of the legislature for whatever reason. There seems no way to force them to act here. This is a political question. Those who are thwarting the will of the people need be removed from office by a vote.​

 

[cybrguy]

So is their sheriff.

The good news is, he is outta work very soon.

To be honest, I am a little surprised he wasn't nominated for AG. That would have been completely in keeping with his other nominations. Tho, as long as there was a segregationist bigot available I suppose he was good enough...

The important question for this thread, however, is what will Sessions push regarding cannabis? His comments, like the one about the KKK, would surely suggest he wants to fuck with it...