While states like Michigan, New Mexico and Rhode Island have recipriocity for out-of-state medical cannabis patients, to date NORML was not aware of a AUSA recognizing such (though, on occasion, we’ve seen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) not act upon medical cannabis patients caught with small amounts of their medicine). This may well be another change under the current Obama administration as both the Clinton and Bush 2.0 administrations prosecuted state authorized medical cannabis patients caught up in federal arrests.
PRESS RELEASE – AUGUST 2, 2009 – FROM JOHN MCCALL, ATTORNEY
On June 30, 2009 in the Federal District Court of New Mexico, Assistant US Attorney John Anderson agreed, on the record, to Honor the Medical Marijuana Recommendation of Charles Smith of Shasta Lake, California. Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Lorenzo Garcia further agreed to accept the State’s proposed recommendation of a Conditional Discharge upon provision of Mr. Smith’s Medical Marijuana Recommendation to the US Attorney’s office. This historic moment occurred during the federal Government’s prosecution of cases related to the Annual Rainbow Gathering that occurs in different states around the country and involves a large Federal Law Enforcement presence. The cases were prosecuted as civil collateral forfeitures and the records have been transferred to the Central Violations Bureau for the Federal Government. Five Medical marijuana recommendations were honored including those from Wyoming, California, Hawaii and Washington State. This is the first time in modern history, in which it is known that the US Attorney and the Federal District Court agreed to accept medical marijuana recommendations and licenses in order to dismiss marijuana possession charges.
This historic series of events followed the filing of a law suit by Bryan Krumm of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use in New Mexico Federal District Court in 2008. During those proceedings members of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use were able to speak to Justice Department representatives about the statements in March of 2009 by Eric Holder, US Attorney General, that medical marijuana would no longer be prosecuted. After this conversation in May of 2009, Attorney General Holder came to New Mexico in June of 2009 and again gave a public presentation on the matter stating that legally established medical marijuana distribution operations and legally sanctioned medical marijuana users (all under state laws), would not be prosecuted by the Federal Government. During the proceedings it was revealed that the AUSA’s prosecuting the cases in New Mexico told Defendants that they were not returning the medicine and that they would be prosecuted if they were caught with Marijuana in the National Forest again. During discussions with the US Attorney and his Assistants at the Court, long time Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Judy Rosenstein discovered that the US Attorney for New Mexico, Gregory J. Fouratt, was not involved in that decision to impose conditions on the Defendants.
Contact Attorney John McCall for more information on this case. Charles Smith has given permission for this information to be released to the public and is available, somewhere in the woods around Shasta Lake, if you want to find him and talk to him about his experience.
You can go to Youtube Lisa Law for video of the Rainbow Gathering and Law Enforcement activities.
While the government contract to date has been pro forma–the University of Mississippi/Oxford has won the contract every year since the late 1960s and MAPS’ and Prof. Lyle Craker’s successful lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to effectively break Ol’ Miss’ monopoly on cultivating cannabis for research and approximately five Compassionate IND patients, and allow the University of Massachusetts/Amherst to cultivate research and therapeutic grade cannabis, is being appealed by DEA–competition can only help science, and the free market place of ideas and research.
Production, Analysis, & Distribution of Cannabis & Marijuana Cigarettes
Solicitation Number: N01DA-10-7773
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: National Institutes of Health
Location: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Synopsis:
Added: Aug 05, 2009 9:03 am
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to (1) grow, harvest, analyze, store and distribute GMP grade cannabis (marijuana) on large and small scales; (2) extract cannabis to obtain purified phytocannabinoids including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC), analyze, and store; (3) prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products; and (4) distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products for research and other Government programs upon NIDA authorization.
Offerors must possess suitable and secure DEA approved outdoor and indoor growing facilities, research laboratory with appropriate analytical instruments, and experienced personnel to conduct the project tasks. Appropriate DEA approved secure facility for manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, and their storage, and DEA Schedule I registration for marijuana and THC are essential. NIDA anticipates a 1-year with four 1 year options cost reimbursement type contract will be awarded. Additional quantity options for manufacturing cigarettes may also be required. In order to handle substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it is mandatory that offerors possess a DEA Research Registration for Schedules II to V and demonstrate the capability to obtain a DEA registration for Schedule I controlled substances. All studies must be carried out under pertinent FDA regulations, such as current Good Clinical Practice (cGCP) and current Good Laboratory Practice (cGLP) regulations. The pertinent FDA’s guidelines/guidance shall be followed. RFP No. N01DA-10-7773 will be available electronically on or about August 25, 2009. You can access the RFP through the FedBizOpps:
The electronic RFP contains all information needed to submit a proposal. No printed version of the solicitation document or source list is available. NIDA will consider proposals submitted by any responsible offeror. Proposals will be due on or about October 9, 2009. This advertisement does not commit the Government to award a contract. Based upon market research, the Government is not using the policies contained in Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, in its solicitation for the described supplies or services. However, interested persons may identify to the contracting officer their interest and capability to satisfy the Government’s requirement with a commercial item within 15 days of this notice.
In an attempt to clarify an apparent gaffe made a few weeks ago to California media stating that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal value”, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in a new interview with his hometown media in Seattle has only slightly, almost imperceptibly, modified his remarks by now implying that somehow how ‘smoked‘ medical cannabis is not a legitimate and effective drug delivery method:
When asked about his comments a few weeks ago Kerlikowske told KOMO news “I certainly said that legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary nor is it in mine. But the other question was in reference to smoked marijuana. And as we know, the FDA has not determined that smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question that should be answered by the medical community.”
KOMO also reports:
Kerlikowske’s stand on legalizing marijuana for everyone is more clear-cut. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, by law, actively works against legalizing drugs.
Kerlikowske takes on last jab at cannabis by continuing his predecessor’s proclivity to mislead the media and public by claiming “You know from the University of Washington, the number one call from young people for treatment here, after alcohol, is marijuana. So I’m not seeing the benefit to society with legalization here.”
Number one, cannabis is not legal in Washington state, or anywhere in the US, 2) youth in Washington, and all around the US, after being ensnared by the hundreds of thousands per year by cannabis prohibition laws enforced by the criminal justice system (or university police), are provided with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or so-called ‘treatment’.
Mr. Kerlikowske should cease employing this rhetorical straw man as he is intelligent enough to know its inaccuracy, but continues to adopt the failed rhetoric of prior hardliner drug czars Gen. Barry McCaffrey and John Walters, who consistently made the same claims during their tenure, and lost credibility every time they continued to propound such obviously misleading propaganda.
Kerlikowske’s latest unfortunate remarks affirm cannabis law reformers have much work left to do! Maybe our good drug czar should call actor Patrick Swayze and ask him ‘if he is benefiting from smoked medical cannabis?’
Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer over a year ago, is using medical marijuana to relieve the pain of his last days of chemotherapy.
According to a family insider, Swayze, 56, has found that smoking marijuana helps with his nausea, inability to sleep, and anxiety. The insider noted on the actor’s slight weight gain as well as adding that he (Swayze) feels more “normal than he has in months.”
Pictures have surfaced of Swayze out with his brother Donnie looking much healthier than he had weeks before.
“Patrick was rapidly losing weight because he couldn’t keep good down. He was so weak, he needed help getting around,” the source told the magazine.
“Marijuana works extremely well for many cancer patients. It helps fight nausea from chemotherapy treatments and may alleviate anorexia or loss of appetite,” Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa, CA, said of the situation.
It was only a matter of time before someone combined a certain memorable image of a young future president with a jokey twist on his campaign slogan … to come up with a message that Barack Obama definitely did not approve.
The folks at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws got there first. For their annual conference poster, they took an old photo of cool-dude college freshman Obama puffing away — on a regular cigarette, mind you — and tweaked it just ever so slightly to fit their message: “Yes We Cannabis.”
Think it might be a problem for the president (who opposes legalization)? It’s really a problem for the photographer. Lisa Jack, an Obama classmate at Occidental College, snapped the image in 1980, one in a series of photos that never saw the light of day until she debuted them in Time’s 2008 Person of the Year issue. She had no idea her photo had been appropriated by NORML until we told her Tuesday.
“They do not have my permission,” said Jack, a psychology professor in Minnesota. These photos “are absolutely not to be used in this way. … I really made a grand effort to do this properly, and I’m very irritated. If I’d wanted these to be used for political purposes, I’d have sold them to Hillary years ago.”
NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre cheerfully acknowledged the lift by artist Sonia Sanchez, who summoned the psychedelic aesthetic of ’60s rock posters. “With very little adulteration, she placed what appears to be a cannabis cigarette” in the president’s hand, St. Pierre said. But she made few other changes: Obama “almost made the photograph for us.”
Everyone who attends the September conference in San Francisco will get a poster; NORML is also selling them on the Web ($25 for an 18-by-24-inch with St. Pierre’s autograph, $15 without). Can they do that? St. Pierre admits they didn’t get permission, but “our lawyers thought it was adulterated enough to comply with the fair use laws.”
We’ll see. Shepard Fairey made more dramatic changes to the Obama photo he turned into the now-famous “HOPE” collage — but he’s still embroiled in bitter litigation with the Associated Press, which owns the original image. The AP accused him in federal court of “blatant copying.” And yes, Jack has already called the lawyers for Getty Images, which oversees her photo’s copyright.
Jack, whose photos now have a gallery show in L.A., grudgingly admits “it’s really cool” that the images are already iconic enough to steal. She’d love to see Fairey do a work-up on them — with permission, of course.
A brief history about the series of Obama photos is found at The Huffington Post.
This informative article from CBS News about the government’s claim that there is no need for medical patients to access cannabis, when there is a ‘fake’ cannabis pill on the market, features remarks from NORML advisory board member, professor and author
Mitch Earleywine, and former deputy drug czar under Bush 1.0 Herb Kleber, which strongly underlines the differences between credible and not credible on the topic of cannabis.
Credible:
[One] problem with Marinol is that it’s orally administered,” Dr. Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, said in an email. “Therefore, it takes longer to work than cannabis inhaled from a vaporizer. (Usually 90 minutes at best rather than 15 seconds – a meaningful amount of time to the nauseated.)”
“It’s harder to control dosage, too, so folks end up discombobulated or without symptom relief,” he added. “In addition, folks who are vomiting can’t hold down the pills.” Earleywine also said that a dose Marinol costs three to five times as much as a comparable dose of medical marijuana.
Not Credible:
“Are there actions in the whole plant that you don’t get from just the Marinol? I would be surprised if there wasn’t,” he continued. “The problem is that most of the data about the potential medical actions of the smoked form are anecdotal.”
Dr. Kleber, who said he has prescribed Marinol to a patient and found it to be effective, points to what he characterizes as a significant advantage of the pill over traditional marijuana: “People don’t abuse it.”
“Marijuana addiction is becoming common and as a result I’m seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana,” he said. “Contrary to popular beliefs that there is no marijuana withdrawal, there is marijuana withdrawal. It’s very clear cut.”
Talk about anecdotal! Dr. Kleber would have readers believe, that cannabis today, as compared to the prior 2,000 years of documented cannabis use by humans is that “Marijuana addiction is becoming common”.
Really?
“I’m seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana”
Of course you are Herb because as it has been well documented by NORML that the criminal justice system throughout most of the United States presents minor cannabis offenders with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or to visit the offices of the ‘Dr. Klebers’ in America for ‘treatment’.
Dr. Kleber well knows this, so his statement is for me the working definition of disingenuous!
Lastly, there is nothing new about Marinol as it has been legal and available for medical patients since the mid 1980s. If the pill worked as Dr. Kleber claims, voters and legislators in the 13 states with medical cannabis laws would not have opted for a whole plant solution.
Marinol was supposed to be the government’s great ’silver bullet’ back in the mid 1980s to end the public debate about patients’ need for whole-smoked cannabis–an analog of one of the plant’s major ingredients isolated in pill form.
Want to know more about ‘pot’ pills vs. the real thing? Checkout NORML’s published paper ‘Marinol vs. Natural Cannabis‘.
Does the Pot Pill Work?
The Government Says a Pill Called Marinol Offers the Same Benefits as
Medical Marijuana. Is it True?
By Brian Montopoli
August 4, 2009
(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.
But Marinol is not the same thing as traditional, smokable marijuana. It is a less complex substance lacking both some of the good components found in traditional marijuana (such as cannabidiol, which has been found to have anti-seizure effects) and the bad or not-yet-fully-understood components (among them potential carcinogens) that can also come with the drug.
Ken Trainer, a 60-year-old Massachusetts resident who has battled Multiple Sclerosis for 25 years, said he has long been smoking marijuana to deal with the regular tremors he gets in his arms and legs.
“If I smoke a joint, the tremors go away most times before the joint is gone,” he said. “It makes my life a little easier.” Marinol, by contrast, “didn’t really do much of anything for me,” he said.
56-year-old Des Moines resident Jeff Elton, who was diagnosed with gastroparesis six years ago, had a similar experience when he was prescribed Marinol to deal with his chronic nausea and vomiting.
“I felt no relief, I didn’t feel ill, I felt nothing,” he said. “It might as well be M&M’s.”
Elton said he switched to marijuana, which he smokes through a vaporizer – a device that heats the active ingredients into a vapor instead of burning them. He said it allows him to keep down his food and regain some of the weight he lost while on Marinol.
Here is an update from South Dakota where the judge who placed a one year gag order on South Dakota NORML’s Bob Newland not to publicly advocate for cannabis law reform whilst on probation for a minor cannabis offense has had to defend his sentencing and constitutionally-questionable limitations on Mr. Newland’s First Amendment rights to free speech; the right to peaceably assemble; petition the government for a redress of grievances.
To place this into sharper political context, in their first attempt two years ago, South Dakotan voters narrowly defeated a pro-medical cannabis initiative, 51%-49%.
Therefore, placing First Amendment restrictions on the state’s most vocal and notable cannabis law reform advocate for a minor cannabis offense sets a wretched legal precedent for personal freedom and political organizing in South Dakota.
To make matters worse, now an anti-drug state senator is gratuitously misleading the public by claiming that medical cannabis advocates in South Dakota are disingenuous:
“Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.”
The voters of South Dakota need to run another pro-cannabis law reform initiative and pass it ASAP, making politicos like Adelstein and Judge Delaney eat crow—like hundreds of other politicos since the early 1990s who’ve opposed cannabis law reform, only to see voter-driven initiatives wash over them, and their opposition to these important–and popular–public law reforms.
——————————–
28 July 2009
Hello everyone,
I write today to tell a tale of an execrable and gratuitous lie told by SD State Senator Stanford Adelstein.
First, on Monday, July 27, the following story appeared in the Rapid City Journal
Judge defends marijuana sentence
Jack Delaney imposed a gag order on political activist Bob Newland
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Monday, July 27, 2009
The well-known public advocate for the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes had previously pleaded guilty to felony possession of the drug. And Delaney wanted to make the sentence sting without imposing an unduly harsh prison term on a 60-year-old man with a relatively clean criminal record.
So in essence, he told him to shut up for a year about one thing: medical marijuana, and an ongoing campaign to bring the issue to another public vote in 2010.
Delaney sentenced Newland to one year in Pennington County Jail but suspended all but 45 days under a set of stipulations that included weekly drug tests, random searches and a one-year ban on public advocacy for medical marijuana.
Delaney rejects assertions by some that he was imposing his personal beliefs on medical marijuana through the sentence.
“I have no concern whatsoever about whether medical marijuana is legalized,” Delaney said during an interview with the Journal in his office. “The important thing was to have a sentence crafted to impose a penalty on Mr. Newland that was significant to him.”
The advocacy ban was an infringement on Newland’s First Amendment rights. Delaney doesn’t deny that. But neither does he consider it more onerous or any less appropriate than many other infringements imposed as part of felony sentences.
The random searches Newland faces in the next year would be violations of his constitutional rights, but for the felony plea. Felons can face otherwise unconstitutional firearms restrictions and the right to associate with certain people or go to certain establishments, Delaney said.
“We restrict speech as well in a lot of protection orders, or in divorces, where in some cases the parties’ freedom to speak to one another may be limited,” he said.
And given the fact that the maximum penalty for Class 6 felony marijuana possession was two years in prison and a $4,000 fine, Newland’s sentence could be considered light by others who face similar charges, Delaney said. He was particularly concerned about younger minority defendants who might get a longer jail term for the same crime.
“I’m sitting there faced with a gentleman who is older, well known, who is thought by many to be considerably more well off than he is, and he is seeking a sentence that is going to be considerably more lenient that what they (minority defendants) might receive,” Delaney said. “So my thought was that I have to take something from him that is as valuable or maybe even more valuable than his freedom.”
Delaney settled on what he calls the “partial infringement of speech,” as well as limits on his freedom of association in support of medical marijuana. Newland may still meet in private with medical marijuana advocates to plan the medical-marijuana campaign. But he cannot appear publicly in or speak on or for the campaign.
“I’m taking away a legal right of the person to associate,” Delaney said. “I’m taking away his liberties. But not nearly as much as if he were in jail.”
Typical sentences for the same felony possession charge range from 45 days to 120 days in jail, Delaney said. But many of those who receive such sentences have more criminal marks on their record, he said.
Delaney has received about 40 e-mails commenting on the verdict, with many critical of the ban on speech and public involvement in the medical marijuana campaign. Many of the e-mails came from people active in the medical marijuana movement, he said, and some engaged in “name calling.”
Others, however, were more understanding when Delaney explained his rationale.
“All felonies are serious crimes, and they have a wide range of impacts on anybody who’s a felon,” he said. “This is unusual. And if it hadn’t been Bob Newland, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.”
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com
*************
In the online “Comments” on this story, Sen. Adelstein said this (reprinted as written, bad grammar and spelling intact):
Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.
I met with him at the Capitol in Room 411, (or maybe 412) during the session to offer, to assist for MRDICAL purposes in a Bill, as Chair of Health and Human Services. I said that I would only do so if there were 3 (three) simple changes in the legislation he was proposing.
1. There would be a required prescription from and MD legally authorized to issue drug prescription
2.The prescription could only be given if either there was no FDA drug that would accomplish the same as the marijuana or that drug cost three more times the cost of the pot.
3. The marijuana could only come from one or two sites approved and inspected by the SD Dept of Health
He and his friends in the room flatly rejected all three saying that anyone could grow the stuff for anyone else at any time that it was needed
I walked out of the room, knowing that they had no true interest in the help for people with pain and/or suffering. I of course opposed their bill vigorously and it did not even get to the House floor.
Newland is and should be treated as a common felon. The Judge was correct from stopping his phone posturing, I only wish that it was for more than a single year.
Stan Adelstein, State Senator District 32
The details of the meeting as described by Adelstein are a lie. You can read the true story at the decorum Forum Blog, and you can comment there or at the Journal “Comments” site above.
Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske hit the road this week to rail against the perils of pot:
“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” he said at an appearance in Fresno, California.
This is a striking departure from what Kerlikowske told me in an interview in May.
Because of the restrictive terms the Vice President’s office imposed on our interview, I’m not at liberty to quote the drug czar directly.
But when I asked Kerlikowske for an example of how he hoped to bring sound science back to Office of National Drug Control Policy, he told me that science would answer whether smoked marijuana has any medical benefit.
That’s a question that science answers, he told me, not ideology.
From this week’s comments, it appears it took just two more months on the job for Kerlikowske’s openness to scientific uncertainty to snap shut in a fit of ideological conviction.
[Editor's Note: Do an online search on 'marijuana' and 'legalization'. One word: momentum. Further evidence is found today with the front page story about medical cannabis and the 'NORMLization' of cannabis in general in America's business newspaper of record. The article partly profiles NORML board member Dale Gieringer and former NORML director Richard Cowan.
—————
LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Sellers of marijuana as a medicine here don’t fret about raids any more. They’ve stopped stressing over where to hide their stash or how to move it unseen.
Now their concerns involve the state Board of Equalization, which collects sales tax and requires a retailer ID number. Or city planning offices, which insist that staircases comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Then there is marketing strategy, which can mean paying to be a “featured dispensary” on a Web site for pot smokers.
After years in the shadows, medical marijuana in California is aspiring to crack the commercial mainstream.
“I want to do everything I can to run this as a legitimate business,” says Jan Werner, 55 years old, who invested in a pot store in a shopping mall after 36 years as a car salesman.
State voters decreed back in 1996 that Californians had a right to use marijuana for any illness — from cancer to anorexia to any other condition it might help. But supplying “med pot” remained risky. The ballot measure didn’t specify who could sell it or how. The state provided few guidelines, leaving local governments to impose a patchwork of restrictions. Above all, because pot possession remained illegal under U.S. law, sellers had to worry about federal raids.
But in February, the Justice Department said it would adhere to President Barack Obama’s campaign statement that federal agents no longer would target med-pot dealers who comply with state law. Since then, vendors who had kept a low profile have begun to expand, and entrepreneurs who had avoided cannabis have begun to invest.
Some now are using traditional business practices like political lobbying and supply-chain consolidation. Others are seeking capital or offering investment banking for pot purveyors. In Oakland, a school offers courses such as “Cannabusiness 102″ and calls itself Oaksterdam University, after the pot-friendly Dutch city. As shops proliferate, there are even signs the nascent industry could be heading for another familiar business phenomenon: the bubble.
Medical use of pot now is legal in 13 states. It is also facing some resistance. New Hampshire’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, vetoed a med-pot bill this month, citing inadequate safeguards. Los Angeles, which passed a moratorium on new dispensaries in 2007, is trying to close a loophole that has led to an explosion of new ones.
John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Peace Officers’ Association, objects to “the notion that marijuana is safe and can be used for any and all purposes to heal any and all ailments,” adding: “There are 34 different elements in marijuana smoke that are shared with tobacco.” He and others also complain about the ease with which patients can get pot recommendations from certain doctors.
Still, at a time of deep recession, the med-pot business is attracting career switchers. Mr. Werner was the sales manager of a Chrysler dealership, and dismayed with the collapse of car sales. He had a doctor’s recommendation to smoke pot, for pain from a spinal condition. One day a car-dealer friend, Bill Shofner, who also had a pot recommendation (for migraines), suggested: Why not become pot vendors?
Each invested $40,000. Following state guidelines, they set up as a nonprofit, called Lake Forest Community Collective, from which they would draw salaries.
It is on the second floor of a strip mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Lake Forest that also houses Mexican restaurants and a Peet’s Coffee shop. A customer first encounters a brightly lit front room with a security window and an Obama poster, then is buzzed into a vestibule with an ATM. Beyond that is a spotless room with glass cases displaying pot in pill bottles.
Scribbled on a board are prices, from $10 to $25 a gram, for different strains: Sour Diesel, Purple Urkel, Bubba Hash. Sour Diesel is popular, says a volunteer, and “really potent.”
This still is a far cry from, say, Amsterdam, where pot remains illegal but authorities are so tolerant that pot is available in coffeehouses.
In California, pot sales, legal and illegal, are estimated to total $14 billion a year. Medical marijuana makes up maybe an eighth of that, says Dale Gieringer, director of the state’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He estimates the state has three million pot smokers, including 350,000 with doctors’ recommendations.
[Editor's note: The July 2009 issue of Socionomics has an interesting essay and series of graphs that seeks to look 5-10 years into future regarding the decidedly declining public, political and business support for cannabis prohibition. Socionomics is a subscription based publication, and the graph and first 500 words of the essay are re-printed with permission.]
The Coming Collapse of a Modern Prohibition
History shows that mood governs society’s tolerance for recreational drugs. A rising social mood produces prohibition of substances such as alcohol and marijuana; a falling mood produces tolerance and relaxed regulation. In the case of alcohol, the path from prohibition to decriminalization became littered with corruption and violence as the government waged a failed war on traffickers. Eventually, as mood continued to sour, the government finally capitulated to public cries for decriminalization as a means to end the corruption and bloodshed.
We predict a similar fate for the prohibition of marijuana, if not the entire War on Drugs. The March 1995 Elliott Wave Theorist first forecasted the Drug War’s repeal at the end of the bear market and in 2003, EWT stated that during the decline, “The drug war will turn more violent. Eventually, possession and sale of recreational drugs will be decriminalized.”
The Case of Marijuana
Social mood influences people’s actions and their social judgments. In times of positive mood, people have the resources to enforce their social desires. They can afford to express the black and white moral issues preferred during bull markets, and drug abuse is a favorite target.
During times of negative mood, on the other hand, society’s priorities change. People have other, bigger worries and begin to view recreational drugs as less dangerous, if not innocuous in offering stress relief, pain reduction and the ability to cope with the pressures of negative social mood.
Over the past 100 years, governmental activities have manifested these changing attitudes. During periods of rising mood, policymakers stepped up regulation of cannabis. During periods of falling mood, they eased those same stances.
As shown in Figure 1, each legislative attempt to restrict marijuana use followed at least three, and in most cases four or five, bull-market years. In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. The law banned casual consumption of the drug and limited its use to specific medical and industrial purposes. Franklin Roosevelt signed the law at the top of a roaring bull market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average having quintupled from its 1932 low. The real crackdown, however, came over a decade later during the massive wave III bull move.
The Boggs Act, which increased drug use penalties fourfold, and the Narcotics Control Act, which increased penalties another eightfold, both came during the most powerful portion of wave 3 of III of the bull market. Then in 1958, after four more years of rising mood, Wisconsin farmers harvested the last legal crop of U.S.-grown hemp. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush’s famous “War on Drugs” speech came on the heels of seven years of net progress in the stock market. In 1999, a year before the top of the Grand Supercycle bull market, the DEA banned the importation of hemp products that contained even a trace of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient.
Photo Caption: Hundreds attend the Colorado Board of Health hearing today on rules and regulations pertaining to the medical use of marijuana. The hearing had to be moved from the offices of the Department of Health to the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus because of increased public interest. (THE DENVER POST | Kathryn Scott Osler)
Update: The Colorado Board of Health voted not to place patient limits on cannabis buyers clubs to five patients, and other proposed limitations. Congratulations to the 500 or more concerned citizens in Colorado who came from all parts of state for a historically high turnout for a state board meeting.
Auraria crowd stands up for access to medical marijuana
About 350 people signed up to testify at the Colorado Board of Health’s meeting today about proposed changes to the state’s medical-marijuana laws.
The most controversial of those planned changes would effectively shut down medical-marijuana dispensaries and could potentially cut off access to the drug for some of the 7,630 Coloradans registered as patients who can legally use marijuana.
Public testimony started around 2 p.m. at the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus, which was standing room only as more than 500
spectators filled all of the seats in a large auditorium and balcony.
Despite slips of paper distributed by Sensible Colorado, “a pro-marijuana, nonprofit advocacy group” reminding those in attendance to “be respectful and professional” and not to “speak out of turn or taunt speakers,” the audience often broke out in cheers, hisses, or boos.
The board is contemplating a number of changes to Colorado’s Amendment 20, passed by voters in 2000. The amendment allows those with debilitating medical conditions to either grow their own marijuana or appoint a “caregiver” to do the growing for them. The proposed changes to that amendment would limit caregivers, which sometimes take the form of dispensaries serving hundreds of patients, to supplying five patients at a time.
Eleven people were scheduled to testify in support of the proposal, but two were not present when their names were called, and one, the owner of Cannabis Therapeutics in Colorado Springs, seemed to have accidentally signed up on the wrong side.
“This must be a mistake,” said Glenn Schlabs, the president of the board of health.
Holly Dodge, the deputy district attorney for El Paso County, spoke in support of the proposal on behalf of 20 other DAs on the Colorado
District Attorneys’ Council. She said the proposed changes would clarify, not change, the intention of the original amendment.
“There is no way of appropriately protecting a patient when they have a caregiver with 300 other patients,” she said. “That’s not caregiving, that’s marijuana growing.”
Her comments were met with boos from the crowd.
Other supporters who spoke, including police officers and spokespeople for anti-drug advocacy groups, emphasized the proposal’s ability to help
law-enforcement officers control marijuana growing operations. Because there is no limit on a caregiver’s size, several speakers said police
officers have had difficulty determining whether a growing operation is legal.
“While Amendment 20 is clear in its intent, its definition is vague enough that district attorneys cannot meaningfully advise people on the
street who are enforcing marijuana laws,” said Helen Morgan, Denver’s chief deputy district attorney.
In addition, the board heard testimony from Ned Calonge, chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment; Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics at the state health department; and representatives from Sensible Colorado and the Colorado branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
In his presentation to the board, Hyman said the state’s marijuana registry does not have enough resources to manage what he called the
“explosive growth” of registered marijuana patients.
The registry has grown by about 1,000 patients a month this year, including 2,000 new patients in June, Hyman said. He predicted that the
state would have 15,000 registered patients by the end of the year.
“We’re doing the same amount of work in a day that we used to do in over a month,” he said.
Calonge then explained why the proposal sets the patient cap for caregivers at five.
“We define a primary caregiver as significantly participating in a patient’s everyday care,” he said. “If those caregivers are making home
visits to each patient, considering travel time, they could visit five patients a day.”
Calonge cited numerous examples where a caregiver is defined as seeing five patients a day, including Rhode Island’s medical-marijuana law and
the number of patients nurses from a home-health care company sees.
“We believe we have ample precedent and supportive evidence for this number,” he said.
The board then heard testimony from those opposed to the proposal, including a doctor, a police officer, a caregiver and a medical-marijuana patient.
“More regulation drives people to the black market, and that means patient care suffers,” said Dr. Paul Bregman.
“If this law passes, patients will lose their access to safe medicine and some will die,” said the owner of a Colorado dispensary. “Please be compassionate.”
The dispensary owner said that although his dispensary serves more than five patients, he believes he provides significant care to each one.
When asked by the board where he would set his own patient limit, he said that even 5,000 patients would not be too many.
“I’d like to be under the same standards as Walgreens or a Wal-Mart pharmacy,” he said.
Lauren Davis, a former senior district attorney in Denver said the proposal would not address the concerns raised by the other law-enforcement officials who had testified.
“Limiting caregivers will increase the number of small-grower operations,” she said.
Although the public-comment period of the meeting was set to begin at 12:50 p.m., by noon, the meeting was already an hour behind schedule.
After public comments, the board will deliberate and then vote on whether to approve the proposal.
Claire Trageser: ctrageser@denverpost.com or 303-954-1638
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Patients say pot restrictions will force them to buy from black market
DENVER Colorado’s chief medical officer, police officers and prosecutors are urging health officials to limit the state’s medical marijuana providers to five patients each. They say the current system ‘which has no limits’ is causing confusion over who can legally grow marijuana and is susceptible to fraud.
But medical marijuana users and their supporters said the rule change, one of five being considered, would make it harder for people who need
the drug to get it legally.
The state health board is holding an all-day hearing on the changes on the Auraria Campus. Opponents far outnumber supporters with 350 people signing up to speak against the changes.
Voters allowed the use of medical marijuana in Colorado by passing Amendment 20 in 2000. The board is considering rules changing how the
program is run. Opponents say the five person limit is a significant change and that the board doesn’t have the authority to do that.
