– The medical marijuana bill in the legislature was modified in the House to fix some problematic amendments added in the Senate, and has moved to the House floor. And with the legalization bill going nowhere, signature gathering for I-1149 is underway.
– Bud Withers discusses the controversy surrounding the high profile arrests of Washington State basketball players this season, and notes that there are legitimate questions to be asked of the Pullman police. This is especially true now that it appears that the most recent arrest occurred following what appears to have been an illegal search.
– Pete Guither takes on well-known fraudster Andrea Barthwell and her attempts to dismiss the reality of marijuana as medicine. He also writes about Florida Governor Rick Scott’s attempt to violate the rights of state workers.
– Scott Morgan looks at the staggering amount of money New York City spends on marijuana enforcement.
UPDATE: One more link: All fifteen State House Reps and Senators from Seattle support a legalized market for adult marijuana use.
UPDATE 2: The rural Texas judge who’s presiding over Willie Nelson’s marijuana possession case wants him to sing a song in the courtroom as part of a plea deal.
$75 million is a helluva lot to spend on arresting cannabis users. Let’s face it, the biggest danger with marijuana are the legal hassles from getting caught! The substance itself is no more harmful than alcohol. In fact, I’d say it’s a lot less harmful than alcohol when considering the widespread use and abuse of alcohol.
Republicans harass state workers because they enjoy it.
I wonder how many Florida state workers will lose their jobs because they’re on a doctor-prescribed medication necessary for their health which doesn’t interfere with their ability to do their jobs (and if it does interfere with their jobs they’re entitled to disability leave).
Politically Incorrect, you are economically correct, socially correct, morally correct on this subject. The amount of money the state misses out on in taxes, the jobs we’re missing out on, the lives wasted with a marijuana infraction on your record is criminal.
As far as alcohol and marijuana, alcohol: the most dangerous drug, most destructive, most expensive to society. I’ve had many friends die from alcohol, i.e., car accidents, suicide, and others lose their family and jobs. I’ll bet many other people are the same way.
There are groups around Puget Sound that are using marijuana to treat alcoholism and it works. Smoke pot the rest of your life, just don’t drink one more drop of alcohol.
Ouch, babe. The Pullman po-po gets pwned! ALL the PD’s around Pullman have sharked students like that for a long time. Like when I did a year out there, and my roommate and I drove up to Spokane to do some shopping, and he got ticketed by a Colfax PD d-bag for doing 26 in a 25. The fine? $100. And that was nearly 20 years ago!
And on another note, my wife and I have discovered a bit of a roadblock in our quest to get her on MM. It’s that her doctors, while agreeing that it’d help her immensely, cite an inability to administer a precise dose as a refuse her request for the time being.
But I recently ran into an old friend of mine who told me that she and a friend of hers are in the process of opening their own dispensary that will specialize in making tinctures, candies, and sublinguals – and they’ve arranged to send samples of their products to a laboratory to create and ensure uniformity in their products’ efficacy.
Or she could just come to my band practices instead. Both my guitarists are legal MM patients, and they kiss the bong regularly during practice. Actually a bit too regularly for the liking of their leader, that being me.
Yeah, we don’t need any unions any more…
@5
Why are people even bothering with “medical marijuana?” From what I’ve been reading, not only is it easer to get “non-medical marijuana” you and the place you get it from isn’t on any official list so people leave you alone.
That last link was probably worthy of a new post.
Michael, the only reason I give half a shit about it is because it works, and because my wife would never have even considered it before then.
This is a story I’ve told before, but I’ll tell it again. In October 2007, my wife and I were home from Reno for a week’s vacation that included my taking part in a charity event called WoodStick (getting as many drummers playing in one place as possible to set a world record), but my old rugby club’s Halloween party happened to take place later the same night.
At that party, someone gave my wife a ‘magic’ brownie. At that time, she would take 3 to 4 vicodin a day for constant debilitating pain. She ate only half that brownie, and went a day and a half without needing a vicodin. And she was more active in that day-and-a-half than she’d been in years. I was sold.
I still think that it should be legalized outright, but knowing for a fact that it has legitimate beneficial use that I’ve seen with my own eyes is why I give a shit.
Some fallout from Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis, and potential effect on the world Nuclear market. France will probably stay the way it is, but Germany continues to see some changes. The Chancellor decided to halt Nuclear plans, and in the state election in Baden-Wurtenburg, her Christian Democrats and their allies the Free Democrats took a beating, swept out of power in favor of a new coalition, a Green-Red coalition, with the Green Party being the majority party in the new coalition, and the Social Democrats the junior partner.(In recent years, Center-Right swings in Germany have produced Black-Yellow Coalitions(Black=CDU, Yellow=Free Democrats), and Center-Left swings have produced Red(Social Democrats)-Green(Green Party) coalitions. In Germany at the Federal level, coalitions have been the norm since WWII, while at the state level, absolute majorities of one party are rare, but they can happen. The post-war German electoral system of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation almost always is the reason, although in the state election Sunday, they still use an earlier form of it, minus the party list(best runner up fills the party vote).
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14943224,00.html
On the nuclear issue, Baden-Wurtenburg is home to several nuclear power plants, so a victory for a party opposed to Nuclear Power is a big development.
The History Channel has been showing recently a documentary they called “Marijuana, A Chronic History” that was very informative, and covered every aspect of the situation, with both sides give a lot of time, but the last half hour at least concentrated mostly on the Medical Marijuana industry in California.