Tag: Cannabis

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2014: 6 Months of Marijuana Sales: Positive Trends Emerge in Colorado

From a decrease in crime to millions in tax revenue, things are looking up. With the passage of Amendment 64 in November 2012, Colorado made history and became one of the first two states to approve legal regulation of the cultivation, manufacture and sale of marijuana for adults 21 and over. Colorado has become a proving ground to demonstrate the positive impacts of regulation instead of prohibition – and hopefully will promote similar efforts elsewhere. Despite warnings from legalization opponents, Colorado looks pretty much the same as ever since regulation, if not better. Crime is down, the economy is sound, and there remains strong overall support for legalization throughout the state. Even the state’s Director of Marijuana Coordination was quick to note recently that “the […] Read More

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Worldwide Protests Erupt Over the Racist, Failed War on Drugs

On June 26, people in over 100 cities in at least 46 countries will speak out against the war on drugs. It is difficult to overstate how much of a failure the war on drugs has been. By any reasonable standard it has done much more harm than good. Drug trafficking-related violence has soared, our prisons are stuffed with drug offenders (many of them non-violent), with minorities disproportionately represented. It is a costly, global economic disaster with economic gains from cannabis and other drugs restricted to the black market. Scientists are kept from studying cannabis, a plant that has proven to ease the suffering of countless medical patients—and those patients are forced to break federal law if they want to obtain their medicine. Even by […] Read More

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U.S. Blocks Legal Marijuana Growers From Using Federal Irrigation Water

Feds will not allow government water to be used for the growing of a Schedule I controlled substance. Cannabis farms cannot take advantage of water from federal irrigation projects, the U.S. Interior Department announced. The announcement is a major setback for growers in the states of Washington and Colorado, where both recreational and medical marijuana is legal. The Bureau of Reclamation, the branch of the Interior Department that maintains dams, power plants, and canals in 17 western states, reaffirmed that the growers cannot use water supplied through the federal system. The bureau helps provided irrigation water to about 1.2 million acres of land in Colorado and Washington. “As a federal agency, Reclamation is obligated to adhere to federal law in the conduct of its responsibilities […] Read More

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Corporations Want Control of the Marijuana Industry — Here’s How to Stop It

Putting the growing legal pot business in the hands of for-profit corporations could pose serious and dangerous consequences to the public The standard debate about marijuana legalization has been “Should we, or shouldn’t we?” For better and for worse, the country appears to be moving toward answering that question in the affirmative. The next logical question is, or ought to be, “What sorts of organizations do we want to supply that legal marijuana?” The debate typically skips past that crucial question and presumes that legal cannabis will be produced and sold by for-profit companies—with the government setting some regulatory limits such as restricting access to minors. Colorado and Washington, the two states where voters have already approved legalization, have gone this commercial route. At first […] Read More

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New York’s Pot Arrests Haven’t Slowed Down and Are As Racist as Ever [VIDEO]

New York is on track to arrest 28,600 people for pot possession this year, most of them minorities. New York’s new Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio ran a significant portion of his election campaign on his promise to end the racialized policing practices of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg. Law enforcement practices under Bloomberg, and Rudolph Giuliani before him, disproportionately targeted poor communities of color and led to the arrests of tens of thousands of people per year for carrying tiny amounts of marijuana. Sadly, the city is currently on track to hit 28,600 marijuana possession arrests under the new de Blasio administration—on par with the average arrests during the Giuliani years. And similar to stats from Bloomberg’s time in office, minorities account for 86 percent of […] Read More

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Florida Moves to Legalize Low-THC Medical Marijuana, Is Recreational Pot Next?

Those with cancer and other severe ailments can keep small amounts of low-THC medical pot. Floridians are poised to legalize medical marijuana for some patients, but there’s wide support to legalize it for recreational use as well. If medical marijuana is legalized, it would make Florida the first southern state allow it. Currently, only Colorado and Washington allow recreational use of marijuana. A Quinnipiac University poll shows that 88% of Florida voters said they approve of marijuana for medical use, with only 10% opposing legalization. Moreover, those who responded to the poll said that they would support laws that would allow people to keep small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. Some 53% were in favor, while only 42% were opposed. Among younger voters, legalized recreational […] Read More

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Here’s How Marijuana Works Better Than Opiates To Control Pain

It’s all in the way human brains are hardwired. The following article first appeared in Cannabis Now:  One compelling argument for the legalization of medical marijuana is its ability to ameliorate intense pain. Currently available technologies have helped us gain understanding of cannabis, as well as its more-commonly-accepted opioid counterparts, and the affects they have on pain. In 2010, as an attempt to gain insight on pain’s function in the brain, Oxford University conducted a study using fMRI machines and the standard tricks of psychology. Volunteers were monitored during zaps of pain to their feet. Some areas, they were told, had the potential to be unsafe. In those spots, the volunteers reported their pain levels as being higher. In reality, all of it was safe. Interestingly, in the fMRI […] Read More

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12 of the Biggest Myths About Marijuana Debunked

The arguments against legalization simply don’t hold up. For decades, cannabis opponents controlled the messaging around the popular plant and cultivated any number of lies about its effects. This built up a powerful stigma against marijuana, the effects of which have not worn off. The racist, expensive and failed U.S. war on drugs continues to rage on. The criminalization of cannabis users and distributors remains a top priority in that war. The government stubbornly classifies it as a dangerous Schedule I substance with no medical value, despite stacks of evidence to the contrary. While many acknowledge the truth about cannabis—that it is healthier than alcohol and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in treating a number of illnesses—and more than half of all Americans want it legalized, […] Read More

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2014: Medical Marijuana Patients Are Forced Back into Hiding in California

Bans on dispensaries and home cultivation are sweeping the Golden State. The following article first appeared in the East Bay Express:  The pain started for Randy Barrett when he was thirteen years old. He was whipping a three-wheeled motorcycle around the hills of Martinez, California. Back then, riding ATVs was “just part of life,” he said. “This was the Seventies and Eighties. We had dirt bikes; we had three-wheelers — the ones with a big old front rubber tire. I was driving around in the dirt and hit a patch of concrete in the road that caught the front tire and shot me forward.” Barrett’s chest bent around the handlebar and he “flew off and flipped and landed in someone’s front yard,” he said. He […] Read More

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Uruguay Unveils Details for World’s First National Legal Marijuana Market

It is refreshing to see a small, trailblazing country pave the way for more intelligent, coherent and humane drug policies. On Friday, Uruguay released its long-anticipated regulations accompanying the law that was signed into effect last December, which made Uruguay the first country in the world to legally regulate the production, sale and consumption of marijuana for adults. Drug prohibition has devastating effects on people’s lives around the globe, from the 650,000 marijuana possession arrests per year in the United States to the 100,000 drug war deaths in Mexico in the past 7 years. Amidst growing consensus among political leaders in Latin America that the war on drugs isn’t working, Uruguaymade this bold move in an effort to regulate an existing marijuana market currently controlled by illicit drug traffickers and to generate public […] Read More