Eleven Things Eric Holder Could Say That Would Make Me Happy!

Eric Holder announced that he will be holding a press conference very soon to clarify the Department of Justice’s position on Medical Marijuana. This is what I’d like him to say…

11. Marijuana is no longer a Schedule One Drug.

The Good News: Marijuana will finally be reclassified as having medical value.

Bad News: Big Pharma doesn’t like to share…

10. Everyone Can Grow!

For states that have Medical Marijuana, patients will be allowed to grow six plants each. Why not? Most everyone is doing it already. That way, the Man (and Woman) can’t control our stash.

9. Arizona, You Have Medical Marijuana, Get Over It!

It would be great if the highest attorney in the land, Eric Holder reaffirmed that if the highest voters passed MM, they have spoken. This goes for any state that doesn’t like Democracy and the right of voters. I’m also looking at you, Big Sky.

8. We’re only busting deals over fifty pounds.

Until legalization happens, commerce shall continue. We’re still for Johnny Law to go after cartels and the Big Guys, but fifty elbows can be divvied up pretty quick, especially if it’s the amazing purps or some of that Solar Diesel making the rounds. I think fifty pounds and under is a fair amount that one should be able to travel with for commercial purposes, within state lines of course.

7. There won’t be any lists of Medical Marijuana patients or growers recorded anywhere.

Doctors don’t give the State or the Feds lists of their patients who are on Viagra or Ritalin, (and who wouldn’t want to know who gets a little sketchy if they’re not on their Meds?) Why should they give the Medi-jane patients up? In the Time of Grey Markets, we’ll come out, but don’t make us tell you where we live.

6. States need to get their acts together.

There are fifty-eight counties and a whole lot of unincorporated towns (Think Deadwood) in California. Unless two adjoining counties have the same laws, ordinances and restrictions, you’re going to have graft, corruption and more of the same. We need consistent and common-sense regulations within the states, left up to each state what that would be, but for the love of all that is sane, let’s have cultivation, commerce and transportation laws that make sense and work.  

5. Amsterdam is over.

The Dutch no longer want the sounds of the Grateful Dead gracing their canals. For some crazy reason (actually, the Flemish blew it for everyone) foreigners will not be allowed entry into the Hash bars without a visitor’s permit.

This is the United States’ chance for a big toe into the lucrative world of the ganja-turistas. For Las Vegas whose fountains suck the blood of a vanishing economy everyday and then spit it out in a multicolor symmetry five times a day to a couple of tourists dressed in cut-offs, and other destination cities that are having hard times. Here’s your chance!

 It’s time for these sink-holes to reinvest in the American Dream and open our own Hash Bars. Once Las Vegas discovers marijuana, munchies, and cotton-mouth, Food and Beverage directors everywhere will have a new lease on life. This model could be replicated everywhere.

4. If you’re in jail because of Cannabis, Pack your bags…

It is just time to stop. As correctional officials nationally figure out ways to release the least violent and aggressive inmates into our society. Why are non-violent, first-time marijuana offenders going to prison at all?

Because somebody says it is illegal.

3. Users are immune from Federal prosecution.

From this point on, it will be left up to the state you’re in for the rules and regulations governing marijuana. One of the reasons it is easy to get a job in Oklahoma City is because people are leaving there because of Draconian weed laws. You took a chance on gambling and casinos, alcohol and guns. Trust me, after all of that, you’re going to love marijuana. We’re a lot less hard to handle.

2. Movies are better when you’re Stoned.

I don’t know, I just think it would be cool if the Attorney General of the United States came out and said, “ You know, I saw ‘Ghostbusters’ straight the first time, then I saw it high. Man, it’s a lot funnier when you’re baked. I’ll take your questions now if you have any.”

1. We're sorry...

These last few weeks have been very tense for many of us in the Medical Marijuana movement. Dispensaries have been threatened with closures. Banks that do business with the Cannabis industry have been told to open their drawers. Proposition 19 in 2010 had a pretty good chance of passing until Eric Holder came out the week before the vote and said, “no matter what happens with the vote, the Feds will still bust pot smokers.”

 In fact, Eric Holder and then candidate Obama pledged to back off medical marijuana patients and make marijuana a low priority in terms of prosecution. At a time when Big Pharma seems to be making strides and advancements, patients and Medical Marijuana doctors are being deterred, harassed and even jailed.

Some days it is like a bad game of Ganja musical chairs. We’re never sure where to sit.

It would be nice to hear someone say, “Sorry for the inconvenience. We hear you. We won’t smile nor smirk when asked if Marijuana has medicinal value. We will take medical marijuana patients and their input seriously, realizing that they’ve been the only true governing body that has driven the medical marijuana movement since it started.”

“I am sorry.”  

Sarah Palin: Let’s End Obama-Car Now!

Sarah Palin’s bus tour of ten counties, the Rolling Blunder Review is expected to stop off at a local Waffle House to announce in a Palin-conference her move to end the horrors of auto insurance in America.

“We need to end Obama-car. The American people do not have to be told to buy vehicle insurance. I’m sure we’d do that on our own,” said Ms. Palin hopping off the rental bus.

"In my opinion, any mandate coming from government is not a good thing, obviously and I am not the only to say so, but obviously there will be more explanation coming from the American people for their support of government mandates," the Ex-Governor stated harshly about the reasoning of anyone who would buy into the buying of car insurance.  

It was brought to the attention of Ms. Palin by her handlers when their driver, Flint, wondered who was going to initial the rental agreement form refusing the upgraded ‘Super-duper protection’ or “we’re they going with basic collision.”   

Unfamiliar with the concept of protection, it was explained to Ms. Palin and family by Flint who once owned a truck, that the insurance was this thing the government made you get when you have a vehicle. Even though this was Flint’s first rental, the forty-five year-old was pretty sure that with the upgraded insurance, “That’s how they getcha.”

Sarah Palin wasted little time once the idea was quickly shuffled through her frontal cortex and Greta Van Susteren. Feeling another victory within grasp, Ms. Palin and crew are expected to make her anti-insurance announcement at the kid’s next potty break or Waffle House, which ever comes first.

“We feel like America loves rights. The Founding Fathers didn’t have car insurance, what sense does it make for us? If you love the Constitution the way I do, then you help me rewrite it. I love my America and want it back. We don’t need to be told anything from the government. We’re in charge, right?”

Forever-contender Sarah Palin had to cut her comments short as she received a call from Fox News stated she was needed elsewhere. Tim Pawlenty was thinking of speaking…    

I am totally Fed up

If you haven’t heard already, Ex-presidents, ex-prime ministers, eminent economists and the Big Dudes of the business community will be meeting to discuss how the World’s drug policies, “just ain’t working.” The quote is mine.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy will host a press conference at the prestigious Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York later this week, to pull the trigger on their findings that describes the drug war as a failure and calls for a "paradigm shift" in approaching the issue. The commission will demand that the focus changes from criminal justice towards a public health approach. The global advocacy organization Avaaz, which has nine million members, will present a petition in support of the commission's recommendations to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

The commission cites such factors as the cartel-related violence in Mexico, President Barack Obama's comments that it was "perfectly legitimate" to question whether the war on drugs was working, and the wider global economic crisis, has the world leaders questioning whether it is time to change our course when it comes to the War on Drugs.

I think they’re saying, it’s not working, too.

Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, the drug policy foundation that has consultative status with the UN said, "What we have here is the greatest collection thus far of ex-presidents and prime ministers calling very clearly for decriminalization and experiments with legal regulation," he said. "It will be a watershed moment."

As of today, the pollsters including Nate Silver says Obama has about forty-six percent of Americans voting for him. And get this; he has forty-six percent of Americans voting against him. This will be an election, as the way it’s been for the last few election cycles, it will be a run for the independents. Those crazy undecided voters who usually live in a retirement community in Florida or are slugging slag in Ohio, who by default usually choose our elections for us.

Even with Ken PlasticGenitalia, Mitt Romney, Sarah “I’ll show the kids but not the husband’ Palin, Tim ‘Wake me up when I’m over’ Pawlenty, and the Betsy Ross of the Tea Party sampler, Michelle Bachman running, President Obama doesn’t have a lock on this race if the economy doesn’t start handing out some new jobs soon.

So where is our president who had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say confidently to the lamestream media when asked, “Of course I inhaled? That was the point!”

Why is President Obama, who with a real understanding of the cannabis culture, allowing the Feds to run rough shod with ‘Operation Shake and Bake’ (my terms), over the rights of Medical Marijuana community and businesses in America?

Why are world leaders and Richard Branson (I bet he’s bringing the herb) meeting, discussing a changing globe and the need to change with it, including statements made from our president for the need to transform? So why is our president somewhere in another universe allowing the Feds to create a State of Fear when it comes to Marijuana?

In the last ten days, the Feds have amped up their behind the scene attacks on Medical Marijuana community throughout the States. Starting with financial institutions, the Feds pressed for audits of banks that do business with dispensaries and the like. Then there were the closing and limiting of dispensaries up and down the State of California. Credit card companies canceled service. In Arizona, their attorney general wrote a You-better-watch-out letter. Warning the fledgling Medical Marijuana industry that if you open your doors, we’re going to be there to shut you down, or worse…Even their wacky, Arizona’s higher than Chong governor Janny Brewer, is trying to rescind Proposition 203, voted on and passed by the people, because…she doesn’t like it.

Even as a few doors of opportunity and progress open for Medical Marijuana patients and the industry, more and more are activists fighting the Drug War on two fronts; locally and Federally.

It might be time for us who are trying to make a change, not to go backwards, but to say, as most oppressed groups eventually reach, “We’ve had enough. We’re Fed up!”

Then the question persists, “Who side is the Feds really on?”

In the last weeks my people (don’t ask) have found connections between Big Pharma owning fields and gardens full of raging cannabis all over America. They’re gearing up like other outlaws for the possible Green Rush profits coming their way.

While Medical Marijuana activists, patients, new dispensary owners stand in lines, fill out forms for the latest regulations that change daily and jump through the state’s hoops in order to move ahead. Big Pharma has the cooperation of the Feds to look the other way when they grow. Plus, I’m guessing when Bristol-Myers mines the earth for a garden; they’re impregnating for more than ninety-nine plants at a time.

It is Life in prison for making Hash in Oklahoma. A birdwatcher in Florida spends a night in jail after getting the major TSA treatment with the more than personal pat-down and the standard alien probe. State’s rights are being trampled on like Snookie in Italy. The number of marijuana busts is up in some major cities even when progressive bills and ordinances are passed. California releases murderers, rapists and carjackers most Mondays through Fridays now. But pot smokers, those sly, evasive bumps-on-a-logs that commit the sin of self-medication, those are the people who need to go behind bars. Like Dr. Molly Fry and her husband, who were locked up doing a nickel over a bogus federal charge?

What more do we need to hear? How much more can President Obama do to let the people down who voted for him?

For a while there, it was looking good. After eight crazy years of the complete dismantling and the selling off of America, we had hope in the fresh young senator from Illinois. You could feel that there was change in the air. The markets were falling and homes were burning in escrow and Vegas, but it felt like he could get us through.

Then he said this thing about Medical Marijuana on the campaign trail. Something about Medical Marijuana being a low-priority item and we have better things to do than to go after these people. Dispensaries open up, hiring thousands of people throughout the state. And you know what? Crime didn’t break out at these dispensaries. The Johnny Dillingers didn’t come in with guns blazing. Neighborhoods weren’t shot up. Children still went to school and didn’t become beach bum stoners. Okay, there was an occasional magic brownie Wednesday morning treat mix-ups. Oops.

Life was good. For a moment, it looked like real change.

Then there were busts, bank audits, strip searches, Doctors in jail, Big Pharmville games going on, Feds amping up raids, all the while as cities take taxes and activists pay. And that’s since May 1^st.

I want my president back. The one who was full of hope, change and smoke (and I mean that in a good way.)

Mr. President, who side are you on? There are men and women with much more world experience than you meeting in New York this week to tell the world that they way we’ve been doing business, isn’t working.

43 million Americans experience marijuana on some level, according to NORML, yet the President smiles and smirks when asked about Medical Marijuana in townhall meetings. It was the first question asked by the MTV-crowd when he did a sit-down with them. We’re concerned. Yet it feels like he’s not taking us serious.

So listen to the straights. There’s a whole bunch of world leaders who don’t know a bong from a gong, and they’re saying there needs to be a change.

We’re changing. We’re coming out. We’re paying taxes and filling out forms with our names and addresses on it. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do for change.

Mr. President. Barack. I love the old you.

Please don’t change. Or change…whatever.

Just let us have our medicine before you give it over to Big Pharma.

100th Running of the Bay To Breakers Race, SF

 

I started to worry that my neighbor, her of multiple cocktails and a mouth that would blend comfortably in most seagoing ports where you’d find a Tourette’s Café in full swing, was going into rehab a day before the hundredth running of the Bay to Breakers footrace. This was a bad sign.

For the first time in a half a decade, we decided not to invite people over to our apartment that is located strategically across the street from the Panhandle that magically turns into a human septic tank on the urine-soaked Sunday of the race. Without our neighbor, The Broad, our four-litre Bloody Mary container may remain in half mast with the loss of our long-established boozer buddy.

For weeks leading up to the event, the apparent lack of advertising had many of us locals wondering if the race was going to indeed happen. Luckily on Saturday when the barricades and riot control barriers were dropped-shipped to corners of the race did many of us start to breathe again.    

Even though this was the hundredth running of one San Francisco’s most hallowed traditions, the cops and the City made it clear, this year would be different. No booze and no tolerance for shenanigans.

After ninety-nine years of research, it was determined that the majestic and creative floats that made the papers back East showing the depravity and the San Francisco recklessness that is impossible to capture except on the bed of home-made trailer being pulled by twelve men in Lady Gaga costumes, was actually a front for liquor. It was found that many of these delicious moving pageants were vehicles for carrying 16-gallon kegs. Much like an Egyptian barge with slaves pulling a regal queen, these faux floats were actually S&M slaves from the Mission pulling a Bear Queen from Hayes Valley with surprise! A spigot from a hidden keg protruding somewhere from between her legs.  That had to stop.

So they decided to crack down on the Bay to Breakers Race. No booze, no nudity, no floats. Possibly no fun.

Shifting the starting time from brunch to 7 AM, The race officials had hoped to starve off the partiers who like to build a little heat before running the seven miles and some change race.

It initially seemed like it worked. At eight AM, when I first step outside into the overcast morning, the runners on Fell were sparse and few. The Race Gods had set up barricades on Fell so unlike the previous hundred years, there was a separation between the runners and the on-lookers who were perched in their lawn chairs along the fences cheering the runners on.

It had rained all night and without advertising hitting us over the head for weeks like they do with a Hollywood movie or a Facebook page to join, I thought that many of the traditional party-goers were going to stay indoors on this slightly, breezy cold morning.

The scary part was no one was pissing in the Panhandle. The sign of over-crowding, and that a potential mob-riot is forming is when the frat boys start to whiz followed soon by their stooping sorority sisters. When the Big Tree with the hollow doesn’t get any action and the ten Port-A-Potties do, something is wrong in the Park.

People are behaving correctly. What’s wrong with this picture?

And it was that way for most of the morning. There were three stages of real runners who departed from the starting line in staggered starts happening every forty-five minutes until they unleashed the hordes of stumblers, happy out of shaped people, the costumed and what for many is their indoctrination into San Francisco.

What the race officials and City Pa’s and Ma’s don’t understand is, the Bay to Breakers race, like Halloween is the initiation into what most people who live in San Francisco desire, to become a local.

Walking down Market Street, there are people who still gape at a naked man wearing nothing but a parka on hot winter’s day or at the Tranny with a grill of gold selling ice cream cones that come in two shapes: either the Pope’s hat or an uncircumcised dick. Or small and large.

For those of us who are locals, our heads barely move or even worse, we hardly notice what has all the tourists keeping a strong straight face.

That’s what this event is about, joining the San Francisco race. Finding stuff in your closet that doesn’t match and joining another hundred thousand people just like you, only different. If you’ve just moved to the City, this is how you become a part of what is happening, on your own terms and at your own pace.

All you have to do is be adult about it.

And there’s the fly in the oatmeal. Not all of us want to be adult all the time. We have almost three hundred and sixty-four days for that. For one day, some people want to get naked and drunk.

That’s not me. You can thank me now for that, or wait for the pictures from the Eighties, and thank me later. I don’t like to get drunk and run. I don’t even like to get naked and run. When I’m drinking, running hardly ever comes to mind.

But that shouldn’t stop those who want to.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

By noon, the Panhandle was a party. A party with Forest Rangers, Park Police, city cops, highway patrol, and Homeland Security, I think (Black SUV’s) securing the area and constantly hovering around on bicycles, motorcycles, ATV’s, horses and on foot. There were lines at the plastic pee shacks and the costumes like the alcohol was flowing.

I heard later someone had fallen off of the party houses on Fell. This is tragic and sad. But what I saw for the most part was San Francisco out in full regalia and loss of inhibitions. Isn’t that the definition of who we are?

When 4/20 happened at Hippie Hill, the media had to dig for intel describing any violence associated with the Pot Party. There was bogus complaint of two women in their fifties, who were beating each other over the heads with a boom-box. This was filed by the right-wing Examiner and because facts only get in their way, the let the false story lie.

In years past, there were fights out front and a lot of chest-beating by white boys, naked from the brain down. This year I didn’t see any of that.

As the day went on, the sun came out, drying out the wet spots and warming us like toast. More and more revelers came out too.

Thank God the young girls in their twenties didn’t forsake us and kept the nudity and scantily-dressed costumes at a maximum.

There were beer bottles tossed and garbage thrown. It didn’t have the energy of a Daytona 500 where you felt like crazy violence could break out any moment if you said the wrong thing like ‘Dale E. is a pussy.”

It felt very control and yet it wasn’t.

Obviously the City did its job. The hundredth running of the Bay to Breakers had a neutered feel to it. It really felt like someone came and took the writer, Balzac and all his marbles, and went home.

At first in the early morning hours there was something missing. It felt like the chances of seeing someone hold their friend’s hair back while they puked was just going to be a dieter’s dream. But the spirit of the City can never be held down, at least not without a safe word discussed beforehand.

As the day went on, more and more of the San Francisco people who I know and love, didn’t let me down. There were cocktails and strange behavior. All the things I’ve known to love and respect about the City.

I understand we can’t knowingly let people get fucked up and hurt themselves, but couldn’t we have like a Ron Paul Race? A race where if something happens, we have to be responsible for our own behavior and promise not to sue.

We are so close to tolerating most outlandish conduct from the Hipsters and the like. Couldn’t we for one day let the drunks have their way?

I’m just saying as long as they don’t sue and stay naked.

 

 

Cannabinophobia: The Timing Makes You Wonder

 

​​By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent

Schedule I: A category of drugs not considered legitimate for medical use. Included are heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and marijuana.

April 14th 1937

Whose bright idea was it to tax it? Is the option still open?

Marihuana Tax Act of 1937

The Act levied a tax equaling roughly one dollar on anyone who dealt commercially in cannabis, hemp, or marijuana. The Act did not itself criminalize the possession or usage of hemp, marijuana, or cannabis. It did include penalty and enforcement provisions to which marijuana, cannabis, or hemp handlers were subject. Violation of these procedures could result in a fine of up to $2,000 and five years' imprisonment.

 

Graphic: The California Pot Blog

​November 5, 1996

State's Rights, the People voted, Anyone? Bueller?

Proposition 215 (or the Compassionate Use Act of 1996) is a California law concerning the use of medical cannabis. It was enacted, by means of the initiative process, and passed with 55.6% of votes in favor.

February 2009

Message Delivered

President Barack Obama delivered a message on medical marijuana in February 2009. It couldn't have been clearer and simpler: The federal government was getting out of the business of busting medical marijuana patients and providers who were following state laws in California and other states where voters had approved medicinal application of the plant.

March 30th, 2011

This is your mind not on drugs

National Cancer Institute scrubs "anti-tumoral effect" of cannabinoids after stating for about five minutes that cannabis did have some medical value in the General Information section. The wording was revised to make clearer that cannabis is not approved by the FDA for any medical use.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Do Walgreen's and CVS have this problem?

San Jose limits the number of medical marijuana dispensaries from more than 100 to roughly 10.

 

Graphic: Reality Catcher

​Thursday April 14

But the people voted!

FEDS THREATEN CRACKDOWN IF MEDICAL MARIJUANA BECOMES LAW

Washington's top federal prosecutors have threatened to crack down if the state goes forward with a proposal to legalize medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, putting in jeopardy a bill that has already passed both chambers of the Legislature. Governor Christine Gregoire vetoes most of the bill, citing fears of state employees being federally prosecuted.

April 20, 2011

WTF!!! We can't but they can...And they did it on our holiday...bastards!

US Patent Granted for Sativex in Cancer Pain

GW Pharmaceuticals announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for a patent which protects the use of Sativex® as a treatment for cancer pain.

The patent, entitled "Pharmaceutical Compositions for the Treatment of Pain", provides an exclusivity period until April 2025. The patent specifically covers a method of treating cancer related pain by administering a combination of the cannabinoids cannabidiol (CBD) and delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the two principal cannabinoids in Sativex®. In addition to this newly granted patent, Sativex® is protected by a number of other patents related to different aspects of the product.

 

Photo: TPM

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) gets lots of Big Pharma dollars. He gives them their money's worth.

Early in Sativex's development, GW hired Dr. Andrea Barthwell as a consultant to sing the drug's praises. Here's the crazy part of the woman who has assisted in getting Sativex approved in the States. Barthwell was a deputy drug czar under George W. Bush and is the former president of the American Society for Addiction Medicine (ASAM). In a recent ASAM press release, Barthwell denounces medical marijuana because...wait for it... because it was unregulated by the federal government.

And there's more...

Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Congress's top recipient of campaign funds from the pharmaceutical industry, has (what a surprise!) come out against state medical marijuana laws, despite being an advocate of states' rights on issues like allowing offshore drilling.

It's easy to see why medical marijuana activists bemoaned the double-punch of people like Barthwell and Burr who represent the pharmaceutical industry's goal for medical marijuana: demonize it, prosecute it, shut it down, then work with Big Pharma to get their piece of the pie. How it works...

 

Photo: ANU News

Sure, it cost them plenty, but Big Pharma bought Congress.

​So how do pharmaceutical companies get into the Pot Biz while legitimate medical marijuana dispensaries are being closed and under harassment?

The answer: Money.

The pharmaceutical industry is far and away the biggest spender on federal lobbying. Between 1998 and 2010, Big Pharma spent more than $2 billion sending lobbyists to the capital to fight for industry-friendly legislation and regulations. This is more than half a billion greater than the amount spent in the same period by pharmaceuticals' closest competitor, the insurance industry, and nearly twice what oil and gas companies spent.

April 27, 2011

It's almost like the Feds are working with Big Pharma...

Colorado medical-marijuana bill draws U.S. attorney's warning

The U.S. attorney for Colorado warned state lawmakers that pending legislation adjusting rules for medical marijuana would conflict with federal law and could lead to federal prosecutions.

U.S. Attorney John Walsh's letter was sent to Colorado Attorney General John Suthers in response to his request for clarification on how federal treatment of medical marijuana use may conflict with pending legislation now under consideration in House Bill 1043.

Just The Facts:

16 states have medical marijuana.

1,000 people a year die from aspirin.