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Cannabis Protest London: Date set 12 January 2009 PR Cannazine http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/content/view/807/27/ Jim (Pinky) Starr is the founder of www.protestlondon.co.uk , and someone who is a self-confessed medicinal user of cannabis. But try as he may, Jim Starr has failed to find out why he and other cannabis users deserve 5 years in prison for smoking cannabis and can face up to 14 years in prison now, just for sharing a spliff! Pinky is unable to sit back and relax after already calling protests against the government in 2008 to give medicinal and recreation users the right to use cannabis without the fear of prosecution. If the mountain won't come to Moha…

Cannabis users will escape with £80 fixed penalty fine Mathew Hickley 14 January 2009 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...nalty-fine.html Drug users caught with cannabis will be given £80 on-the-spot fines and will not get a criminal record or have to appear in court under government plans. The use of controversial fixed penalty fines - originally created to deal with minor 'nuisance' offences - is being expanded to take in 21 new crimes. These include stealing petrol from a filling station, making threats to destroy property and drunken and yobbish behaviour on trains. Magistrates attacked the plans at a crisis meeting with Justice Secretar…

One More Chance for Religious Marijuana Jacob Sullum 13 January 2009 Reason Magazine http://reason.com/blog/show/131044.html Last week the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by a man who argues that his conviction on marijuana charges violated a state law protecting religious freedom. Daniel Hardesty, a member of the cannabis-centered Church of Cognizance, was arrested in 2005. His religious freedom argument was rejected at trial and by the Arizona Court of Appeal, but now he will get one more chance. Arizona's Free Exercise of Religion Act allows the state to impose a substantial burden on the exercise of religion only if it is "the least restrictive means"…

Blow the whistle on faceless bench Geoff Wilkinson 13 January 2009 herald sun http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...5000117,00.html THERE is clearly something wrong with our legal system and our priorities when cricket and football umpires are subjected to more scrutiny than judges. How can it be that people adjudicating on leg before wicket and push in the back decisions are held more accountable than those who preside over trials that can send people to jail for years? How bizarre that we can watch countless replays from every angle of the circumstances leading to an umpire's decision, but aren't even told the name of a trial judge whose decision has been …

Mistakes lead to record number of appeals Geoff Wilkinson 13 January 2009 Herald Sun http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...801-661,00.html ALMOST two-thirds of County Court judges had convictions or sentences overturned on appeal last year. One judge saw defendants win 12 of 14 appeals against conviction or sentence in 2007-08, and nine successful appeals out of 18 the previous year. New figures reveal a record number of appeals against conviction and a record rate of successful appeals last year. The judges reviewed on appeal - revealed by the Herald Sun today - show that 36 of the County Court's 58 judges and six acting judges saw appeals upheld. Nin…

Man banned from leaving home at night 13/01/2009 The Press and Journal http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.a...990651?UserKey= AN ELGIN drug dealer will have to stay in his house overnight for the next 10 weeks after being convicted of supplying almost 10oz of cannabis resin. Michael Stanford, 25, of 4 School Brae Place, appeared at Elgin Sheriff Court for sentence after pleading guilty during a court appearance last month. He had been charged with being concerned in the supply of cannabis resin and possession of the drug at his address between August 1 and November 25 last year. Fiscal depute Shona Duncan had previously told the court that police were acting…

Pain relief dope crop costs paraplegic 12 January 2009 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4816320a12855.html A man who became a paraplegic after a logging accident 10 years ago turned to cannabis for pain relief because he did not like the effects of his prescribed medication. But that has landed 48-year-old Graham Coote in Tauranga District Court on a charge of cultivating the class C drug and cost him a $600 fine. "Regrettably the law does not allow that," Judge Christopher Harding told the wheelchair-bound man who had to sit alongside the dock. "Any sympathy I might have has to be put aside." However, Coote was entitled to be dealt with as a first time drug offende…

Building materials going to pot 13 January 2009 The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...0-12377,00.html CANNABIS could soon be going up in buildings rather than going up in smoke. The hemp plant is one of six identified by Department of Primary Industries (DPI) scientists in Queensland as a source of natural resin to reduce the building industry's reliance on resins produced from fossil fuels. DPI project officer Dr Andries Potgieter said generating resins from renewable sources such as plant oils could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and result in a smaller carbon footprint. Currently most resins and adhesives used in aerospace structures a…

Medical Cannabis for New Mexico - UK Patients go to jail 11 January 2009 PR Cannazine http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/content/view/804/27/ The North American state of New Mexico (pop. 2 million) looks set to become the 14th US state to legalise medical use of cannabis, as its been announced this week the New Mexico Department of Health has finalised regulations for the registry identification cards and a production/distribution system for its state-wide medical cannabis program. According to state regulations medical marijuana patients will be able to grow, 4 mature cannabis plants as well as upto 12 seedlings for their own personal use. On top of this its been announce…

Jury Duty as Gigantic Waste of Time David Warner 8 January 2009 http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/the941/20...-waste-of-time/ I love jury duty. I really do. Civic pride, the American way, whodunnits, sitting in judgment — what’s not to like? But I didn’t love jury duty today. Because today, at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center, I had to witness the gigantic waste of time, money, labor, energy and brains that is expended on taking a single individual to trial for the alleged crime of “trafficking in cannabis.” I never got to find out how the case turned out. Maybe that’s because, when the prosecuting attorney asked if any of the prospective jurors would have…

Man banned from park for two years over drug dealing offences 9 Janaury 2009 Islington News http://www.thecnj.co.uk/islington/2009/010...s010909_18.html A MAN has been banned from a park for two years after he was caught carrying eight bags of cannabis. Highbury Corner Magistrates imposed a two-year anti-social behaviour order on Shumon Ahmed, 20, from Inglebert Street, Finsbury, after he was last week convicted of possessing the drugs at Grimaldi Park, off Pentonville Road, in October last year. He was also sentenced to 70 hours of community service. Mr Ahmed has been banned from the park and the roads around Priory Green estate until December 2010. Islington Police …

Feature: DEA Rejects Yet Another Rescheduling Petition, But the End Game Lies Far Down the Road Drug War Chronicle, Issue #567 Stop the Drug War http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/567/DE...duling_petition The DEA has rejected yet another petition seeking to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), this one from Iowa-based marijuana reformer Carl Olsen. It is only the latest petition rejection by the agency in a glacially-paced struggle to reschedule marijuana that has been going on since 1972. But Olsen and other advocates of the rescheduling tactic say that is to be expected, and the rejection is only the opening phase of this particu…

Have been talking to my Bro inlaw , who is in the Federal Police . He is about 3rd from the top , in the PC division, thats no BULLSHIT ! Well , he tells me , that if they were really bothered about Pot Growers , that this site could be hacked very easily . Scared me , as he doesnt know that I smoke . BUT , the reason that this site isnt scrutinized is because they have better things to do such as , Terrorism , and pedophiles . Which is good , for us all . He says that the main reason Pot Growers get busted , are so called friends dobbing people in on a Local level , or neighbors seeing suspicious behaviour , So theres a bit of inside info Dont let ya so called…

Cannabis Hemp - The New Oil Fields? Bill Stone 9 January 2009 PR Cannazine http://pr.cannazine.co.uk The British Cannabis Lobby is to write to the UK government, over what its calling the "gross mishandling" of the nation. They're accusing the government of refusing to acknowledge the fact legalising and encouraging the growing of industrial hemp as a national crop, could play a huge part in cutting the Great British carbon footprint. A spokesman for the Cannabis Lobby said "Once upon a time, the stories regarding the multitudes of benefits and uses associated with industrial hemp were the stuff of hippy legends and folk-lore." "But with the global communicat…