American Farmers And Consumers Continue To Suffer Under Industrial Hemp Prohibition

It can now be said that Uruguay is more progressive and possesses a greater sense of entrepreneurialism than the United States–at least regarding industrial hemp!

After a decade-long political and legal battle with the federal government, the state of North Dakota and their farmers are still being denied the ability to cultivate–and prosper from- industrial hemp (i.e., cannabis that is under 1% THC in content and therefore is used for industrial purposes), unlike their brethren farmers in France, China, Great Britain, Canada and now…Uruguay.

ND farmers lose appeal to grow hemp; US appeals court affirms dismissal of federal lawsuit

By JAMES MacPHERSON
The Associated Press

December 22, 2009

(AP) BISMARCK, N.D. – A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit by two North Dakota farmers who said they should be allowed to grow industrial hemp without fear of federal criminal prosecution.

Wayne Hauge and David Monson received North Dakota’s first state licenses to grow industrial hemp nearly three years ago, but they’ve never received approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration. The farmers sued the DEA, and their case has been before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for more than a year after U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland dismissed it.

Hemp, which is used to make paper, lotion and other products, is related to the illegal drug marijuana. Under federal law, parts of an industrial hemp plant are considered controlled substances.

Hovland told the farmers the best remedy might be to ask Congress to change the law to explicitly distinguish hemp from marijuana.

“I guess the next step is we’ll have to take it to Congress,” said Hauge, who grows garbanzo beans and other crops near the northwestern North Dakota town of Ray. “The fastest and easiest way to handle this would be for the president to order the Department of Justice to stand down on all actions against industrial hemp.”

Dawn Dearden, a DEA spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said the agency could not comment on the case.

The farmers’ attorney, Tim Purdon of Bismarck, would not comment on the appeals court decision.

David Monson, a Republican state legislator and farmer from Osnabrock in northeastern North Dakota, said Congress likely has no time to deal with the hemp issue.

“With all the other things, hemp is not high on their priority list, and I can understand that,” Monson said.

“Somehow, we need to get enough states involved so Congress can take action on it,” Monson said.

North Dakota officials issued Monson and Hauge the nation’s first licenses to grow industrial hemp in 2007. But without permission from the DEA, the farmers could be arrested for growing the crop.

Hemp contains trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a banned substance, and it falls under federal anti-drug rules, the DEA says. Hemp proponents say it is safe because it contains only trace amounts of THC, and not enough to produce a high.

Vote Hemp, the lobbying arm of the hemp industry, has helped fund the farmers’ legal battle. Spokesman Adam Eidinger said the group has spent about $60,000 to date. He said he was disappointed with Tuesday’s ruling.

“The 8th Circuit is kind of conservative, so I can’t say I’m totally surprised,” he said.

Eidinger said only a handful of states have passed pro-hemp farming laws. He said North Dakota is the first state to craft rules to license industrial hemp farmers.

Monson had planned to seed 10 acres of hemp on his farm the northeastern part of the state. He said hemp is grown 25 miles north of his farm in Canada, where production has been legal since 1998, after 60 years of prohibition.

Hauge said he hopes someday to seed 100 acres of hemp on his farm.

“My great-grand dad homesteaded here more than 100 years ago, with a sod house on the wide-open prairie,” Hauge said. “If he could do that, I can stand a small amount of adversity to grow industrial hemp.”

Then there is ‘progressive’ South America…

First in South America: Uruguay to Test Cultivation of Industrial Hemp

by Paula Alvarado, Buenos Aires on 12.22.09

Tree Huggers

Great news for TreeHuggers in South America: Uruguay could become the first country in the region to authorize the cultivation of industrial hemp, according to El Pais newspaper. The national Ministry of Cattle, Agriculture and Fishing has authorized an experimental cultivation of hemp to take place in october 2010. If the results are successful, the country could grant permits to producers to start growing.

The pilot cultivation will be carried away by the National Institute for Farming Technology and its place will remain secret. The goal is to get to know the productive capacities of the country and how the plants varieties respond to Uruguayan soil.

If the cultivation moves forward, however, producers will only be able to grow hemp with special permits so that the Ministry of Agriculture can control the production.

One of the companies behind the project is The Latin American Hemp Trading, which is fighting to make Uruguay the first country in the region to enter the industry of hemp since 2006.

Hemp and the South American soy frenzy

You probably know that hemp is a great crop: fast growing, needs few to no herbicides, and is incredible versatile, among other interesting characteristics. Problem is, its production is still banned in many countries for its association with the psychoactive variety used as drug (the industrial hemp has less than 0.3% THC, while marijuana contains anywhere from 6 or 7% to 20% or even more).

So far countries in South America make no distinction between industrial and psychoactive hemp, and neither does Uruguay. But that could begin to change if the results from this project are positive.

Apart from the amazing materials that can be produced with hemp, it would be interesting to know how the region reacts if Uruguay is successful growing hemp. Right now Argentina and Uruguay are major transgenic-soy producers, with heavy use of harmful herbicides and fertilizers. If the hemp industry takes off  and proves lucrative, could it provide some balance to soy production? Hopefully

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La otra cannabis en Uruguay
Emprendimiento. Autorizan plan piloto para desarrollar la agroindustria del cáñamo

Original reporting from El Pais.

Lawmakers Call For An End To Federal Marijuana Prosecutions

June 18, 2009

Washington, DC: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, along with co-sponsors Ron Paul (R-TX); Maurice Hinchey (D-NY); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), will reintroduce legislation today to limit the federal government’s authority to arrest and prosecute minor marijuana offenders.

The measure, entitled an “Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults,” would eliminate federal penalties for the personal possession of up to 100 grams (over three and one-half ounces) of cannabis and for the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce of pot – making the prosecutions of these offenses strictly a state matter.

Under federal law, defendants found guilty of possessing small amounts of cannabis for their own personal use face up to one year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.

Passage of this act would provide state lawmakers the choice to maintain their current penalties for minor marijuana offenses or eliminate them completely. Lawmakers would also have the option to explore legal alternatives to tax and regulate the adult use and distribution of cannabis free from federal interference.

To date, thirteen states have enacted laws ‘decriminalizing’ the possession of marijuana by adults. Minor marijuana offenders face a citation and small fine in lieu of a criminal arrest or time in jail.

“The federal government has much more important business to attend to than targeting, arresting and prosecuting adults who use marijuana responsibly,” NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. “This is an issue that ought to be handled by the states, not the Feds.”

According to nationwide polls, three out of four voters believe that adults who possess marijuana should not face arrest or jail, and one out of two now say that cannabis should be regulated like alcohol.

The reintroduction of the Frank/Paul bill comes one week after the duo reintroduced HR 2835, The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act of 2009 – which seeks to halt federal interference in states that have enacted medical marijuana laws – and just days after Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) called for federal legislation to sentence certain first-time marijuana offenders to 25 years in prison.

“The US Congress has a definite choice,” said St. Pierre. “They can choose the path of compassion, fiscal responsibility, and common sense by supporting Barney Frank’s and Ron Paul’s efforts, or they can continue down America’s failed drug war path by endorsing Rep. Kirk’s draconian legislation. It is abundantly clear which direction the voters wish to go; will their elected officials follow?”

Additional information about the ‘Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults’ is available at NORML’s Take Action Center.

California’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary System – A Question for Chief Bratton: What Is More Important? The Patients Or Marijuana Prohibition? What Is Really ‘Looney Tunes’?

Analysis by Richard Cowan

Even though California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has joined the calls for a debate on marijuana prohibition itself, there is still a lot of confusion about the legal status of the supposedly less controversial topic of “medical marijuana”. 

On April 2nd the Associated Press reported that Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton “called on the City Council to speed up the drafting of stricter regulations on medical marijuana clinics, calling current state law ‘Looney Tunes’.” (Oddly, the story was reported on the San Jose Mercury-News website, but the LA Times only covered it in a blog.)

Bratton was right, but for the wrong reasons. He claimed, “They pass a law, then they have no regulations as to how to enforce the darn thing and, as a result, we have hundreds of these locations selling drugs to every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

First, if the dispensaries are selling any “drug” other than cannabis, the police do not need any action by the LA City Counsel to raid them. Find any of them selling hard drugs, and the medical cannabis community will support closing down the offenders.

That is not a rhetorical point. It is important to note that one justification for the dispensary system is that it keeps medical cannabis users from having to go to “street dealers” in order to get their medicine. However, in the broader context of cannabis prohibition in general, the California medical marijuana dispensary system does the same thing that the Dutch cannabis “coffee shop” system has been doing for decades. The Dutch call it the “separation of the markets for soft and hard drugs.” One consequence of this “separation of the markets” is that the Dutch have a much lower use of hard drugs, especially heroin, among young people than does the US.

Inasmuch as marijuana has always been much more readily available to young people than to sick and dying older people, would Chief Bratton really prefer that young people get their marijuana from “street dealers” – who may also sell hard drugs? See T’was Another Great Victory. Teen Marijuana Use Down; Oxy Use Up. Teen Cigarette Use Went Down More Than Teen Marijuana Use.

Second, the dispensaries are not selling to just anyone. They require a special form of identification that establishes the fact that a doctor has approved of the patient’s use of cannabis. (That is all that is required by state law, and – critically – all that is allowed by Federal law.)

“Street dealers” do not require any identification, and most teens say it is easier to get marijuana (on the street) than it is to get alcohol from licensed stores. (more…)

WSJ: WHITE HOUSE CZAR CALLS FOR END TO ‘WAR ON DRUGS’

by Gary Fields, (Source:Wall Street Journal)

14 May 2009
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Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S.  is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said.  “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

View Full Image Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government’s approach to fighting drug use.

Mr.  Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems.  Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr.  Kerlikowske said.

Already, the administration has called for an end to the disparity in how crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine are dealt with.  Critics of the law say it unfairly targeted African-American communities, where crack is more prevalent.

The administration also said federal authorities would no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries in the 13 states where voters have made medical marijuana legal.  Agents had previously done so under federal law, which doesn’t provide for any exceptions to its marijuana prohibition.

During the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama also talked about ending the federal ban on funding for needle-exchange programs, which are used to stem the spread of HIV among intravenous-drug users.

The drug czar doesn’t have the power to enforce any of these changes himself, but Mr.  Kerlikowske plans to work with Congress and other agencies to alter current policies.  He said he hasn’t yet focused on U.S.  policy toward fighting drug-related crime in other countries.

Mr.  Kerlikowske was most recently the police chief in Seattle, a city known for experimenting with drug programs.  In 2003, voters there passed an initiative making the enforcement of simple marijuana violations a low priority.  The city has long had a needle-exchange program and hosts Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of hemp and marijuana advocates.

Seattle currently is considering setting up a project that would divert drug defendants to treatment programs.

Mr.  Kerlikowske said he opposed the city’s 2003 initiative on police priorities.  His officers, however, say drug enforcement — especially for pot crimes — took a back seat, according to Sgt.  Richard O’Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.  One result was an open-air drug market in the downtown business district, Mr.  O’Neill said.

“The average rank-and-file officer is saying, ‘He can’t control two blocks of Seattle, how is he going to control the nation?’ ” Mr.  O’Neill said.

Sen.  Tom Coburn, the lone senator to vote against Mr.  Kerlikowske, was concerned about the permissive attitude toward marijuana enforcement, a spokesman for the conservative Oklahoma Republican said.  [drug war]

Others said they are pleased by the way Seattle police balanced the available options.  “I think he believes there is a place for using the criminal sanctions to address the drug-abuse problem, but he’s more open to giving a hard look to solutions that look at the demand side of the equation,” said Alison Holcomb, drug-policy director with the Washington state American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr.  Kerlikowske said the issue was one of limited police resources, adding that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs.  He also said he supports needle-exchange programs, calling them “part of a complete public-health model for dealing with addiction.”

Mr.  Kerlikowske’s career began in St.  Petersburg, Fla.  He recalled one incident as a Florida undercover officer during the 1970s that spurred his thinking that arrests alone wouldn’t fix matters.

“While we were sitting there, the guy we’re buying from is smoking pot and his toddler comes over and he blows smoke in the toddler’s face,” Mr.  Kerlikowske said.  “You go home at night, and you think of your own kids and your own family and you realize” the depth of the problem.

Since then, he has run four police departments, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of Community Policing during the Clinton administration.

Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that supports legalization of medical marijuana, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Mr.  Kerlikowske.  “The analogy we have is this is like turning around an ocean liner,” he said.  “What’s important is the damn thing is beginning to turn.”

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr.  Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.

“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement.  People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”

CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENT

or…

HOW TO HAVE YOUR TEETH DRILLED WITHOUT NOVOCAIN (OR GAS)

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient

Science and medicine run deep in my family. My dad and an uncle had Ph.D.s in parasitology and pathology. My dad’s dad was an M.D. Grandpa met my grandmother when they were both attending medical school at the Univ. of California, in 1915. My grandma’s grandmother learned surgical nursing during the Civil War and afterward was the “doctor” for Oroville, California for many years. My mother, brother, and several aunts are all Registered Nurses. For at least five generations, our family has been committed to science and healing. It is from this perspective that I view marijuana as a medicine.

Like most Americans, I discovered marijuana as a medicine quite by accident. 60-years old, I’ve used pot for over 41 years simply because it makes me feel good. I like it. But who would have ever guessed cannabis was actually helping me stay healthy at the same time?

A ‘bad back’ is one of medicine’s most oft heard adult complaints, and during my 35-years of farming and ranching, my body has written many a check my back couldn’t cash. Sometimes my back has hurt so bad that if I got down on the floor, I couldn’t get up without help. In the end, after trying numerous back treatments, I found that just plain walking and stretching was the best way to deal with my lower back pain, that is, walking and stretching while consuming marijuana. I had first bunched these activities together so as to allow me to get my hurting back “walked out”, and at the same time, I had the privacy to smoke a little pot out of the sight of my growing children. I soon found that walking and stretching while using cannabis was many times more effective for treating my back pain than just walking without it! Marijuana seemed to relax my muscles, reduce spasms and inflammation. When I later became acquainted with the scientific research on this subject, I found out that was exactly what cannabis, and its cannabinoids, had been doing for my body all along.

Decades of splitting firewood, pounding fence posts and other such farm work has left me with two ruptured discs in my neck and numbness and pain that sometimes plagues my hands and fingers. Nasty. Sometimes, very, very nasty. Cannabis helps control the pain from these pinched nerves and cannabis helps me sleep at night without killing my liver or kidneys, without causing gastric distress or constipation, and without damaging my sex drive or good humor. Cannabis helps me pursue my non-surgical options, while at the same time it reduces inflammation and muscle soreness from my on-going activities.

Along with the work-related injuries, I am also a walking encyclopedia of old football injuries, some that still have me hobbling around, four decades after the last touchdown. I’m a big guy, played defensive tackle and lacrosse, too. I loved banging heads. In the process, I’ve separated a shoulder, had a major knee operation and sprained both ankles numerous times. But, am I standing in line for a knee or hip replacement like my no-pot using baby sister or brother-in-law? NOPE! Why no replacements of my damaged joints? I honestly think it’s because of the four decades of cannabis use that I can still walk five miles every day on my banged-up knee and ankles without any pain or inflammation. As it turns out, even the cartilage in one’s joints has cannabinoid receptor sites.

Oh yes, sure a dislocated ankle really hurts, but for a real front-row seat to the world of pain, there is nothing like a migraine headache. I am one of the unfortunate millions of Americans who have diet-triggered migraine headaches. But fortunately, over the years, I’ve rooted out my dietary ‘triggers’, which include: chocolate, red wine, aged cheese, soy sauce,…and now, I rarely have a migraine anymore. I avoid those triggers like the plague. But in my medicine chest, just in case, to help me deal with one of those aura-producing, skull-splitting migraine headaches that still lurk along life’s path, marijuana is an essential medicine. Almost instant migraine relief is possible for me with vaporized or smoked cannabis.

In late January, this past winter, we had a freezing fog that glazed-over everything for miles around. I took a dramatic fall on the ice and landed flat on the back of my ass. Both feet went out from under me so quickly I had not even gotten an elbow or finger down to help break my fall onto the ice-covered concrete slab. Well, at least I hadn’t cracked my head, I thought, as I lay there on my back on the ice, testing for broken bones. Slowly I started to move. Yup, I was OK. No broken hip, thank God—just the start of one very, very sore ass from taking the full impact of that drop onto the ice-glazed concrete. I crawled back into the house, went directly to our freezer, and took out a double dose of my special medical marijuana spice cake. About an hour-and-a-half later, my wife and I walked out the door on the start of a slow, but enjoyable, three-mile hike. My pelvis was very sore but, with the cannabis properly applied, it was good to go. I repeated this treatment every day for the next week, cannabis edibles and walking.

As my bruised butt was healing, I went to see my dentist for a check-up. He looked into my mouth and said I needed a filling, “Nothing too major.” Fortunately I was prepared; I had taken a good dose of my cannabis edibles an hour or so before my appointment, to allow me to sit, despite my injury, without discomfort in the dentist’s chair. I said to my dentist, “No Novocain today, Doc.” He nodded and started to prepare his drill. He’d seen me do this before.

Cannabinoid receptor sites are primarily in the peripheral nervous system. As cannabis calms the underlying causes of most back pain, the inflammation and tightness of the muscles, the cannabinoids also act on the peripheral nervous system to modulate the pain messages transmitted to the major nerves. The pain from tooth drilling is a bit different, that kind of pain is hard-wired directly into the brain. Cannabis doesn’t block that pain so much as helps a person to simply look past the pain and ignore it.

In having one’s teeth drilled, due to the fear of pain, virtually everyone trades a very few moments of serious pain from the drilling, for about two hours of having one’s face defrost from the jaw-numbing shot of Novocain. I said, “No Novocain for me today, Doc,” because I chose the pain, knowing medical marijuana would help me overcome it.

Here’s how: Take cannabis edibles an hour or two before you are to sit in the dentist’s chair. Not flinching while the dentist is drilling your teeth is a big job. You must lie there absolutely still, melted into the chair, immobile. Cannabis is very useful in this process, not so much to block the high-voltage pain from the tooth drilling, but to help your mind reach the meditative state to deflect that pain, so you can let the pain flow over you like water.

Think of your time in that dentist’s chair like body surfing in big waves. When a crusher wave comes in, you must dive down deep, hold your breath, and let it roll over you. When it’s safe, you can come up again for air. The ocean is too big to fight; you have to hold on until the wave passes. And, it’s the very same thing having your teeth drilled without gas or Novocain. The very second the drilling stops, that tooth pain stops, as well, and you can safely come up for air. With modern high-speed dental drills, the actual total number of seconds of real pain are quite few, providing the excavation isn’t the Grand Canyon (your dentist can help you judge). So, just relax, it’s really not that bad, roll your eyes back, and let her rip! With a little pot spice cake behind you, you’ll be quite surprised, you can handle it! And, it’s only going to hurt for a few seconds, anyway. Afterward, when the drilling’s all done, putting in the filling doesn’t hurt a bit.

One very nice thing about dentistry without Novocain is you always get the occlusion right, the first time, everytime, because you can actually feel your mouth when the dentist tells you to bite down, and asks, “Is the new filling too high or low?” And then, when the dentist takes off your dental bib, it’s all over; it is really totally over—no frosted face, no needle marks in your gums, nothing else to recover from.

Without the Novocain shot as part of your dental work, you can walk out of your dentist’s office pain-free after a filling, your cannabis edibles still kicked in, whistling your favorite tune! Now, you try doing that for the next hour or two with your face and lower lip de-frosting from the Novocain!

I’ve been using cannabis as a medicine for over 30 years, 5 years legally. Washington State’s voters gave me the right to use marijuana as a medicine in 1998; I got my doctor’s recommendation in ‘04. President Obama’s Justice Department has said the Feds will no longer interfere with Washington State law in this area. Decades of worry and paranoia, the fear of a SWAT Team, with their guns drawn, bursting through our front door in the middle of the night, bringing drug dogs to search for my medicine has abated, at least for now. Help NORML end America’s marijuana prohibition for good.

Achieving proper titration: In the words of the DEA’s own Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances know to man…” Advances in technology have come in all areas of modern life and making marijuana use even safer is no exception! In the last five years, I have all but given up smoking pot in favor of using a vaporizer—it’s clean and very tasty, with no tars or fire-created carcinogens—although for mobility and socialization it will always be hard to replace a joint. Achieving proper dosing levels using a vaporizer or smoking is quite easy, full effects are seen in about ten minutes and last about an hour-and-a-half before declining. Homemade cannabis edibles take about 20-40 minutes to kick-in, a lot depending on what else is in your stomach, and some experimentation is needed to find the proper dosing levels; but for long term, high-dose pain relief, edibles are hard to beat.

Irvin Rosenfeld, America’s longest surviving Federal cannabis patient, has been receiving federally-grown pot for 27 years. Irv finds smoked pot works best for him. He consumes 10-to-15 joints a day to deal with the challenges of living with a rare form of bone tumors that has afflicted him since childhood. A stockbroker handling millions of dollars in transactions, Irv has said he never feels a “high” from using marijuana, even though he uses it all day long.

About two years ago, when the pinched nerves in my neck were acting their very worst, I began using cannabis at dosing levels where pot’s marvelous, fun and useful psycho-active effects started disappearing for me as well. Damn, it’s the shits to be that sick! Thank goodness, I’m better now.