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Week 1

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Missouri ballot measures proposed to legalize marijuana. Libertarian-leaning Comedian Runs for Mayor of Miami Beach. For most politicians, getting caught on camera downing shots of vodka and smoking weed while surrounded by scantily clad models would destroy their election hopes. For comedian Steve Berke, that's his campaign strategy to become mayor of Miami Beach, Fla. Running as a member of what he calls the "After Party," he hopes to oust two-term incumbent Matti Herrera Bower, a Democrat who boasts the support of local firefighter and police unions. But Berke's campaign is no joke. He's been slinging mud as only a true politician can, and he even garnered the attention of The New York Times: With the nonpartisan election on Tuesday, the mayor, Mr. Berke and two other candidates are hitting neighborhood meetings, mailing fliers and appealing to the paltry, mostly Hispanic, mostly older 7,000 or so voters who usually turn out for an off-year election.

The Times is also impressed by Berke's "pedigree" -- he graduated from Yale with a promising tennis career cut short by injury. California's 'Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act' Will Try For 2014 Ballot. By Steve Elliott of Toke of the Town This will be remembered as the election year with three competing marijuana initiatives to end prohibition in California — and none of them making the ballot. Organizers behind the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act (RCPA), one of the three (and seen by many as the most legally viable), now say their intent is to seek ballot status in 2014 with the same team of proponents, along with a much expanded professional campaign outreach and infrastructure. According to its proponents, the RCPA represents a paradigm shift in initiative language from Legalization to Repeal. The focus on repealing state marijuana laws is designed to withstand a federal preemption challenge, according to coauthor Joe Rogoway.

“It makes common sense as well as legal sense,” Rogoway said. “Our hope is that, moving forward, we can come together to finally make the Golden State green.” According to RCPA proponents, these are the next steps: Czech Govt Allows 5 Cannabis Plants For Personal Use From 2010 - Emerging Europe Real Time. Marijuana Smokers Breathe Easy Says The University of Alabama. As of January 10, 2012, a new study has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association exonerating marijuana from the bad reputation of being as harmful to your lungs when smoked as tobacco cigarettes. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and the University of Alabama at Birmingham completed a twenty-year study between 1986 and 2006 on over 5,000 adults over the age of 21 in four American cities.

Study co-author Dr. Stefan Kertesz is a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He explained that the studies measured the pulmonary obstruction in individuals with up to seven joint-years of lifetime exposure (one joint per day for seven years or one joint per week for 49 years). "What this study clarifies," Kertesz explains in a released video, "is that the relationship to marijuana and lung function changes depending on how much a person has taken in over the course of a lifetime. " Federal Marijuana Patient: I'm Living Proof Cannabis Works. Irvin Rosenfeld Will Appear in Concord At Tuesday Morning, May 8 Press Conference Irvin Rosenfeld, one of four patients who still receive medical marijuana from the U.S. federal government as part of the Compassionate Investigative New Drug (IND) Program (a little-known program that was closed to new applicants in 1992), will visit Concord, N.H., on Tuesday, May 8, for a press conference in support of medical marijuana bill SB 409.

The press conference will begin at 9:30 a.m. in the lobby of the Legislative Office Building. Rosenfeld will also meet with elected officials. For almost 30 years, Rosenfeld, who says he is living proof that medical marijuana works, has received approximately nine ounces of cannabis per month -- in the form of 300 pre-rolled joints -- from the U.S. government. A senior vice president at an investment firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Irv has been married to his wife, Debbie, for 38 years. Rosenfeld will be joined at the press conference by bill sponsors Sen. California Physicians Call for the Legalization of Cannabis | Legalization Marijuana Blog.

More and more support continues to come out for the medical marijuana industry, so why is the federal government the only ones not seeing what is going on? October 26, 2011 — The California Medical Association (CMA) has adopted an official policy calling for the legalization and regulation of cannabis, which, it says, will facilitate wider clinical research on the drug.

"CMA may be the first organization of its kind to take this position, but we won't be the last. This was a carefully considered, deliberative decision made exclusively on medical and scientific grounds," said James T. Hay, MD, president of the CMA, in a release. "As physicians, we need to have a better understanding about the benefits and risks of medicinal cannabis so we can provide the best care possible to our patients. " The CMA notes that clinicians in California, where cannabis is decriminalized, are often in a catch-22 situation. Dr. Angel Raich, Cancer Patient, Kicked Out Of Hospital For Using Medical Marijuana. This article comes to us courtesy of SF Weekly's The Snitch. By Chris Roberts Angel Raich is busy dying. The famous marijuana activist -- who took the federal government to the Supreme Court of the United States for the right to use medical cannabis -- was, earlier this year diagnosed with an inoperable terminal brain tumor, a condition that causes frequent seizures as well as constant pain and headaches.

Told by her doctors at the University of California-San Francisco that she should prepare to die, that's what Raich, 46, is doing, one day at a time -- with purpose as well as dignity. Except for Monday night, when she was summarily removed from the hospital at UCSF's Parnassus campus for using marijuana, according to NBC Bay Area -- which showed up for an interview that was cut short when Raich had a seizure and had to be rushed to a (different) hospital. "The pharmacist said, you can't use cannabis in this hospital," Raich told the television station. Berkeley-based Dr. Latest Studies Imply That Cannabinoids Are Protective Against Alcohol-Induced Brain Damage. SF Democrats demand that Feds cease cannabis closures.

Dutch government decrees that all cannabis cafes are off-limits to tourists | World news. Cannabis smokers at a cafe in Amsterdam. Soon this will be illegal for anyone not holding a 'weed pass'. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Long famous for "coffee shops" where joints and cappuccinos share the menu, the Netherlands' famed tolerance for drugs could be going up in smoke. A judge on Friday upheld a government plan to ban non-Dutch residents from buying cannabis by introducing a "weed pass" available only to residents.

The regulation reins in one of the best known symbols of the country's reputation of tolerance. For many tourists visiting Amsterdam, smoking a joint in a canalside coffee shop ranks alongside visiting the Van Gogh Museum on their must-do list. Friday's ruling by a judge at The Hague district court clears the way for the weed pass to be introduced in southern provinces on 1 May. Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan is hoping to hammer out a compromise with the national government. Coffee shops are also resisting the change. Cannabis Advocates To GOP: Why Not Cut The DEA Budget? ​With Republicans in the House claiming they want to cut down on spending for the next fiscal year, marijuana advocates are suggesting they should start with the Drug Enforcement Administration's budget. Trimming the federal largesse that keeps the DEA fat and happy makes sense.

Billions of dollars are thrown away annually on a quixotic and foolish War On Marijuana that is not supported by the public, that never achieves its goals, and that sees as its victims not only families but civil liberties and respect for law enforcement, as well. Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project told TPM that the idea makes a lot of sense, reports Ryan J. Reilly. ​ "In the grand scheme of things, the entire federal budget dedicated to keeping marijuana illegal and carrying out all the enforcement measures to do so is really something that is long past its prime," Fox said. The DEA was told last month -- along with the FBI, ATF and the U.S. More links from around the web! Activist Protests By Harvesting Cannabis Inside Giant Cage In Front Of White House.

David Bronner, the CEO of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, began a demonstration Monday inside a large steel cage in front of the White House to protest federal policy that bans U.S. farmers from cultivating industrial hemp. “The industrial hemp plants I am harvesting and processing into oil cannot produce a high of any kind, but according to the Obama Administration I’m in possession of approximately 10 pounds of marijuana,” Bronner said in a press release. Even though the hemp plants contain no drug value, industrial hemp is illegal to cultivate in the United States. Bronner is protesting the administration’s conflation of the recreational drug with a plant that has multiple industrial uses. Bronner plans to stay in front of the White House until he finishes harvesting the hemp seed from the plants and pressing the oil, which he hopes to serve on hemp bread to the public.

There may not be any Shiba Inu puppies, but you can check out the drama unfold below, via UStream: Watch the video below: Initiative 70 would make pot use a right, regulate it like tobacco. Last Friday, the Cannabis Alliance for Regulation and Education began collecting signatures for Initiative 70, the third legalization measure to be proposed for the November elections. We caught up with spokesman Rico Colibri, who broke down his proposal and why he feels it is Colorado's best option for ending cannabis prohibition in 2012. Initiative 70 is definitely not a clone of Amendment 64, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol plan, which has already been approved for the November ballot.

The measure would make consumption, possession and limited personal cultivation a constitutional right in Colorado -- legal for anyone 21 and up -- and would allow commercial cannabis sales, regulated similarly to existing tobacco sales. In addition, the proposal would remove any of the current laws and penalties associated with cannabis use, distribution and cultivation. For Colibri, the key attribute is making marijuana use a right in Colorado. "That's an eighth a day," Colibri said.