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Victory! California resumes issuing medical marijuana ID cards

When California officials halted the medical marijuana registry two weeks ago, we urged you to take action. Well, your activism has paid off ... Eleven days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) Department of Health Services suspended the state's medical marijuana ID program and asked for legal advice from the attorney general, the program's up and running again. More than 550 of you mobilized to ask Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D) to quickly issue an opinion stating that the ID program does not aid and abet a federal crime and ordering it to reopen. And on Friday, Lockyer's office did just that.

The news gets better. In addition to restarting the program, Lockyer's opinion provides a clear explanation of why states can enact medical marijuana laws ­ including laws with registry ID cards. Lockyer wrote: "The federal government's decision to criminalize the use and possession of marijuana ­ for all purposes ­ does not require California to do the same." He quoted the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion that the "federal government may not compel the states to implement ... federal regulatory programs." These firm statements will help allay some of the fear and confusion caused by the Department of Health Services' and others' knee-jerk reactions to the Court's recent medical marijuana decision.

In addition to your efforts, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) deserves praise for its key role in securing a prompt resumption of the program. The ACLU threatened to sue the Department of Health Services if it did not resume its registry ID program by 5:00 p.m. today.

California's ID card program was just getting started when the Department of Health temporarily suspended it. Only 123 cards had been issued from three pilot counties at the time of suspension. Those three counties ­ Amador, Del Norte, and Mendocino ­ began issuing cards in June, and other counties are expected to follow suit on August 1. Unlike in most medical marijuana states, California's registry ID system is voluntary. Patients whose doctors recommend medical marijuana are protected from prosecution whether or not they have medical marijuana ID cards.

However, ID cards are a quick and easily verifiable means for patients to prove that they qualify under the state's medical marijuana law. Many patients find that the cards protect them from harassment and even arrest. The California bill that established the registry ID program explicitly provided that patients with ID cards are protected from arrest. However, courts have interpreted the vague language of California's medical marijuana initiative ­ Prop. 215 ­ to protect patients from conviction and to warrant a dismissal of charges, but not to completely protect patients from arrest.

Thanks again for your efforts and your support of the Marijuana Policy Project. We'll continue to keep you posted about the implementation of California's registry ID program and other marijuana policy reform developments.

Karen O'Keefe, MPP legislative analyst

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 7:20 PM

 

Medical pot backers plan vigils to mourn activist
(Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune, July 17, 2005)
In the same public square where he poked government in the eye so many times, where he smoked marijuana in the open and even handed out samples, Steve McWilliams will be heard from one last time Tuesday. . . . Friends and supporters of McWilliams, who killed himself last week in a desperate effort to end his suffering and draw attention to his cause, will gather at City Hall at noon to remember the activist who pushed San Diego into becoming the largest city in the nation to adopt a medical marijuana law. . . . McWilliams' suicide Monday, the day he turned 51, has reverberated far beyond San Diego County. . . . Activists in at least 15 other cities are planning events to coincide with the San Diego memorial. They expect the gatherings will be part remembrance and part protest over the way they say McWilliams had been targeted by the federal government. . . . In Washington D.C., supporters are planning a candlelight vigil encircling the Capitol. Medical marijuana advocates said they want to get a proposed law, aimed at permitting a medical-necessity defense in federal cases, named after McWilliams. . . . "He was a pioneer in the movement," said Claudia Little, a retired nurse from Point Loma who is helping to organize the San Diego service. "He was the one who brought the issue of the implementation of Proposition 215 to the forefront." . . . McWilliams almost single-handedly forced the San Diego City Council to address Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that for the first time gave ailing Californians the legal right to use marijuana to ease symptoms. . . . Ultimately, his efforts paid off. The council formed a task force to draw up medical marijuana guidelines, and in 2003 it passed an ordinance outlining how many plants patients would be allowed to grow in San Diego. . . . "There were clearly others, but Steve McWilliams was the driving force" behind those guidelines, said Councilwoman Toni Atkins, who plans to request that the City Council adjourn tomorrow's session in his memory. "He was willing to take on that role when many people would not, or couldn't." . . . In 2003 he was convicted of illegal cultivation and received a six-month federal prison term. The sentence was stayed pending appeal, but he was not allowed to use marijuana while the case was unresolved. . . . When he died, McWilliams was in serious and persistent pain from an earlier motorcycle accident, a condition he said was made worse by his abstinence from marijuana. In a note he left at his side, he said the discomfort was too much for him to bear and he hoped his suicide would help change the government's position on the medicinal value of marijuana, MacKenzie said. . . . He had often said the prescription painkillers he used as a substitute for marijuana were far more expensive and left him nauseous and weakened. . . . [COMMENT by Lorenzo: Ironically, it was these government-enforced prescription painkillers that McWilliams used to end his own life.] . . . Thousands of patients across California sympathized with McWilliams' plight, MacKenzie said, but they are afraid to confront the federal government because they could be prosecuted. . . . "Steve McWilliams was tortured by the federal government because of the medication he needed," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Berkeley-based Americans for Safe Access. . . . In addition to Washington, D.C., where activists plan a candlelight vigil and walk around the Capitol, mourners are planning memorial services in [California], Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oregon, Indiana and Colorado, McWilliams' home state. . . . "Patients are having to suffer, even though laws have been passed," said Jim Greig, a medical marijuana patient from Eugene, Ore., who is organizing the event there. "We still don't have access to our medicine.

VIGILS in CALIFORNIA for Steve McWilliams SCHEDULED FOR TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2005

Los Angeles:
Where: U.S. Federal Building
11000 Wilshire Blvd.
Just East of the 405
Los Angeles 90024
When: 8:00 p.m.

Where: Oakland City Hall
One Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
When: 7:00 p.m.

San Diego:
Where: Civic Center Concourse Plaza
202 C. Street
3rd and B Street, Downtown San Diego
When: 12:00 Noon

San Francisco:
Where: Civic Center Plaza
In front of City Hall
When: 12:00 Noon

Santa Cruz:
Where: WAMM
When: Evening

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 3:53 PM

 

Terence McKenna talks about VR and psychedelics
[NOTE: This is from a much longer interview Terence gave to Jon Hanna and Syliva Thyssen at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference in Hawaii. Click the link above to read this excellent interview on the MAPS site.]

Sylvia: They haven't made art illegal. Which makes me want to shift this conversation a little bit. Tell us one delightful thing for yourself that has resulted from the AllChemical Arts Conference.

Terence: Well, I'm very keen for these Active Worlds, these virtual walk-around pieces of art. [see www.activeworlds.com for more information on this technology, and surf the links at www.digitalspace.com for more about the virtual AllChemical Arts Conference gallery.] I always said that virtual reality could be a technology for sharing the inside of our heads, and that's what we have not had. If we could show the power of these hallucinatory states as they actually are, the argument would be over. And so in a way it's interesting. It's a challenge to us, to use the animation tools and the scripting tools, to be as good as we say we can be. And so its no more of a hassle with the establishment. It actually lays the obligation back on the artist. And if artists would rise to that challenge, I think incredible art would begin. Transcendent art worthy of the name could be created.

Jon: With my own visions, the only kind of medium that they could be completely conveyed with would be the computer. The only parallel that there is, is computer animation, which sometimes is already so much like these visions, and could be even more so. So it really is an amazing tool.

Terence: That Active World, "Pollen," that we were looking at. There should be an effort out of our community to get together a core group of designers, animators, texture-mapping people, and just build. And build a psychedelic world where that's the charter, "This world is psychedelic. This world is for psychedelic people."

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 6:34 PM

 

Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
(Fred Gardner, Counterpunch, July 2/4, 2005)
Marijuana smoking -"even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airwaves, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance for the assembled drug-company and university-based scientists (most of whom get funding from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse). Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. With NIDA's support, Tashkin and colleagues have identified the potent carcinogens in marijuana smoke, biopsied and made photomicrographs of pre-malignant cells, and studied the molecular changes occurring within them. It is Tashkin's research that the Drug Czar's office cites in ads linking marijuana to lung cancer. Tashkin himself has long believed in a causal relationship, despite a study in which Stephen Sidney examined the files of 64,000 Kaiser patients and found that marijuana users didn't develop lung cancer at a higher rate or die earlier than non-users. Of five smaller studies on the question, only two -involving a total of about 300 patients- concluded that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer. Tashkin decided to settle the question by conducting a large, prospectively designed, population-based, case-controlled study. "Our major hypothesis," he told the ICRS, "was that heavy, longterm use of marijuana will increase the risk of lung and upper-airwaves cancers." . . . The Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance program provided Tashkin's team with the names of 1,209 L.A. residents aged 59 or younger with cancer (611 lung, 403 oral/pharyngeal, 90 laryngeal, 108 esophageal). . . . "You don't see any positive correlation, but in at least one category [marijuana-only smokers and lung cancer], it almost looked like there was a negative correlation, i.e., a protective effect. Could you comment on that?" . . . "Yes," said Tashkin. "The odds ratios are less than one almost consistently, and in one category that relationship was significant, but I think that it would be difficult to extract from these data the conclusion that marijuana is protective against lung cancer. But that is not an unreasonable hypothesis." . . . Abrams requested that his results not be described in detail prior to publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal, but we can generalize: they exceeded expectations, and show marijuana providing pain relief comparable to Gabapentin, the most widely used treatment for a condition that afflicts some 30% of patients with HIV. . . . To a questioner who bemoaned the difficulty of "separating the high from the clinical benefits," Abrams replied: "I'm an oncologist as well as an AIDS doctor and I don't think that a drug that creates euphoria in patients with terminal diseases is having an adverse effect." . . . "How can they dispute that it has medical effect?" an investigator working in Germany asked us earnestly. She had come to give a talk on "the role of different neuronal populations in the pharmacological actions of delta-9 THC.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 8:38 PM

 

Abused Substances: Essay by Sasha Shulgin
(Alexander T. Shulgin, Technology Review, August 2005)

For the past four decades, I have studied psychoactive drugs at the far end of the spectrum: those that affect the mind. These substances are usually discovered by people experimenting on humans. . . . It should be stated outright that the uses of these drugs are not merely recreational (although of course they are used that way all the time, and for other, more meditative reasons). Recently, several researchers successfully navigated the bureaucratic paperwork necessary to get approval of and permission for clinical studies of psychedelics. A study by Francisco Moreno at the University of Arizona using psilocybin in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder has been completed. And two other studies of psychedelics are under way: one, at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, is exploring psilocybin as a treatment for anxiety in patients with advanced-stage cancer; the other, being conducted in South Carolina, studies the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder patients with MDMA--the drug more commonly known as ecstasy. Additional studies should soon be up and running, including one at Harvard's McLean Hospital that will investigate the potential value of MDMA in treating cancer patients' anxieties. . . . I choose to call these psychoactive compounds psychedelics, but many names have been used for them. . . . The very first psychedelic I experienced (this was 45 years ago) was the peyote-cactus alkaloid, mescaline. It was an awesome experience in several ways. But its most dramatic result was my realization that there was no way the forgotten memories of my childhood that had just resurfaced, and the display of colors of which I had previously been unaware, could be contained in a few hundred milligrams of a white crystalline powder. To me it was inescapable that all the richness of that day had been inside my mind all along, and the drug was just the catalyst that gave me access to it. Since I am a chemist, I can easily synthesize chemicals with subtle structural differences--like a slightly longer carbon chain here or a sulfur in place of an oxygen there--to find the dosages where they become active. . . . Two or three examples. When I moved one of the methoxy groups of mescaline to an adjacent position, and replaced another one with an ethyl group, I got a beautiful white solid that I named 2C-E. It was fully active in me at 20 milligrams taken orally. The visual activity and color enhancement it effected were very much like those of LSD, but 2C-E had a strange and (for me) novel property. On occasion, during a psychedelic experience, I would ask myself an important, private question to see what answer might bubble up. If the question turned out to be too complex, or touched on unpleasant subjects, I would drop it and ask another. But 2C-E wouldn't let me do that. I had to stay with each question until I worked through to an answer. . . . I have little insight as to how these remarkable compounds do what they do. The human mind is a mysterious and complex thing. There have never been dependable ways to get into it, take it apart, and see how it works. My hope is that psychedelic compounds may be the tools, or may lead to the discovery of tools, that can throw some light on elusive questions about how the mind works. Say a person is called "mentally ill" because he hears God speaking to him. Maybe you can put a positron emitter on a chemical that gives you distortion in sound recognition, inject it into a normal subject who is in a PET scanner, and observe that it goes to a most unusual place in the brain. Maybe that is where the physician should look for the tumor in the brain of the person who hears from God. . . . One of the major impediments to the expansion of research in this fascinating area is the war on drugs. The categorization of psychedelics as evil and dangerous keeps them in the Schedule I category, where they are said to have no medical value. Discoveries are not being published, because researchers feel that if new and potentially useful compounds are openly discussed in the medical literature, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency will add them to the illegal list. With the series of clinical trials using psychedelics, I hope the wind is shifting.

Alexander "Sasha" T. Shulgin is a pharmacologist and biochemist. He was the first to synthesize hundreds of psychedelic compounds.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 11:43 AM

 

Swarznegger to Terminate California Medical Marijuana Laws
[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 8, 2005)

This morning Governor Swarznegger will be issuing a press release announcing the suspension of the MMJ ID card program pending a report from the Attorney General's office.

The reason for the suspension is that the Gov. wants the AG to address to issues before permanently suspending the program or allowing it to continue. The two issues are:

1. Is the state of California aiding and abetting medical marijuana patients in the commission of a federal crime by issuing the ID cards?

2. Is the state of California putting medical marijuana patients at risk by maintaining lists of patients and caregivers which can be seized by the federal government?

I did call and speak with a person named Rukina, who would not give her last name, and she said the Governor was going to stand by federal law and not state law. When I asked to speak with someone who would give their last name and had some more information she refused to connect me.

I strongly suggest that at the least we should immediately call the Governor's office and protest. Call him at:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633

To send an Electronic Mail please visit:
http://www.govmail.ca.gov/

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 1:11 PM

 

UK Government Report Admits Drug War Failure
(Drug War Chronicles, 7/8/05)
A study on Britain's drug strategy commissioned two years ago for Prime Minister Tony Blair and suppressed up until last week concluded bluntly that British drug prohibition has failed. . . . somebody leaked the still-suppressed section of the report to the Guardian Sunday, which promptly posted it online for all to see. The report's findings, and the Blair government's futile attempts to squelch them, are creating political waves in Britain despite London's fond wishes that the whole thing would disappear in the bright glare of the media focus on the Live 8 concert and the G8 summit taking place in Scotland. . . . [COMMENT by Lorenzo: Isn't it convienent how many hot issues disappeared with yesterday's terrorist attacks on London. It makes one wonder who benefits the most from these dastardly activities, doesn't it?] . . . its disconcerting revelation that police would have to intercept up to 80% of drugs entering Britain to affect dealers' profit margin (seizure rates are 20% at best, the report noted), it is little wonder the Blair government didn't want the report to ever see the light of day. Its grim conclusion that even if prohibitionist measures succeeded in driving up prices, the victory would be phyrric because problem drug users would commit more crimes to obtain their drugs, only added to the government's desire to bury the report. . . . "What this report shows and what the government is too paranoid to admit is that the 'war on drugs' is a disaster," said Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten in a statement responding to stories in the Guardian, the Observer, and other newspapers. "We need an evidence-led debate about the way forward but if they withhold the evidence we can't have the debate." . . . "Now that the report has been leaked, we can all see that the Government was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The Information Commissioner must investigate the way in which the report was slipped out hours before Live 8. This government seems unable to face up to its public duty and let people see the information they are entitled to see. We cannot allow ministers to continue to bury bad news." . . . And it's not just opposition politicians who are raking the Blair government's drug policies. "The leaked report from the Birt think tank is devastating proof of the futility of prohibition," Labor Party Member of Parliament Paul Flynn, a long-time critic of drug prohibition, told DRCNet. . . . The Birt report's conclusion, which also addressed consumption issues covered in the first half of the report, is hard to sugarcoat: "The drugs supply market is highly sophisticated, and attempts to intervene have not resulted in sustainable disruption to the market at any level," the group declared. "As a result the supply of drugs has increased, prices are low enough not to deter initiation, but prices are high enough to cause heavy users to commit high levels of crime fund their habits." . . . The Birt report presents British lawmakers and voters alike with a stark choice: Continue down the path of prohibition with no real prospect of success, or find a better way that reduces instead of increases the harm to both drug using individuals and the societies of which they are an inescapable part.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 11:44 AM

 

Medical Marijuana Patient-Caregiver Sentenced To 41 Months In Federal Prison

Americans for Safe Access (ASA)
For Immediate Release: June 6, 2005
Media Contact: Hilary McQuie 510.333-8554

MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENT-CAREGIVER SENTENCED TO 41 MONTHS IN FEDERAL PRISON

San Francisco -- Robert Schmidt, a medical marijuana dispensary operator, cultivator, patient, and researcher was sentenced today by Judge Stephen Breyer to 41 months in federal prison, and 3 years supervised probabtion. Mr Schmidt's dispensary in Sonoma County, named Genesis 1:29, was shut down by federal agents in a raid in September 2002. Today's sentencing was the first since the US Supreme Court decision on Gonzales vs Raich, in which the court decided that state-legal patients and caregivers could still be prosecuted under federal law.

Mr Schmidt pled guilty to charges of cultivation and possession of 265 kilograms of marijuana more than two years ago, but Judge Breyer postponed the sentencing until after the Raich ruling.

In today's ruling, Judge Breyer invoked the Booker ruling from earlier this year, which gave judges more latitude in determining prison terms over the federal guidelines. He departed 2 points in the sentence, and then further dropped the sentence by 10 months because Robert Schmidt would be ineligible for a prison drug treatment program because there was no evidence he had a drug problem in at least the 12 months prior to sentencing. Robert Schmidt has already served 7 months of his sentence, and will commence the reminder of his sentence in a minimum-security prison on September 1.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 7:15 PM