Cannabis Hemp News

A new front has opened in opposition to the war on drugs--a religious front. Several newly formed groups are contesting our prohibitionist, anti-drug strategies because they restrict religious freedom and "cognitive liberty." Drugs alter consciousness and "the right to control one's own consciousness is the quintessence of freedom," reads part of a manifesto of the Journal of Cognitive Liberties. The journal is one of many projects of the four-year-old Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, a California- based, non-profit group that promotes intellectual freedom. The group defines cognitive liberty as "the right of each individual to think independently and aut…

Ottawa — Recipe for Reefer Madness. Take: One rookie justice minister who wants to decriminalize simple pot possession. Toss in: Several court rulings that Ottawa must allow medical use and possession of pot. Spike with: Two lower-court acquittals (and counting) of recreational pot smokers by judges who say the law is no longer valid. Bake: At low heat on backburner for too long. Serve up: Confusion for millions. We can all be forgiven for not knowing the state of Canada's marijuana law. Even the courts seem confused. On Jan. 10, a second Ontario Court judge in a month found there is currently no law prohibiting the possession of small amounts of marijuana, s…

Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ News flash: A new poll has found British Columbia is the most pot-friendly province in Canada. This will come as no surprise to anyone who remembers the flower-power era of the 1960s, when Vancouver was the Canadian equivalent of hippie mecca San Francisco. Out of the haze of the Easter Be-Ins and psychedelic music scene emerged a B.C. pot culture that has only grown en stronger over the years. Pot has become an entrenched part of the provincial economy. Depending on who you talk to, growing marijuana is a $1-billion to $8-billion business in British Columbia. Some argue it contributes more to the economy than f…

Source: NOW Magazine (Canada) Published: Vol. 22 No. 20 - January 16 - 22, 2003 Copyright: 2003 NOW Communications Inc. Contact: letters@nowtoronto.com Website: http://www.nowtoronto.com/ Medical pot advocates won a landmark decision last week when Justice Sidney N. Lederman of Ontario's Superior Court ordered the feds to fix a medical marijuana regime he declared unconstitutional. The following is an excerpt from his 40-page ruling. The respondent in this case (the government) argued that the several hundred kilograms of marijuana that have been harvested by Prairie Plan Systems to date are intended for research purposes only. Minister (Allan) Rock, however, is …

Source: Columbia Missourian (MO) Website: http://www.digmo.com/ The Columbia City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would lessen the penalty for having small quantities of marijuana. A group seeking to decriminalize possesion of small amounts of marijuana gathered enough signatures on an initiative petition to ensure that their proposed measure will be voted on by the council. If the council does not pass the ordinance, it will be submitted to voters on April 8, City Manager Ray Beck said. The proposed ordinance would direct all people charged with possessing 35 grams of marijuana or less to municipal court instead of state court, limit punish…

Neighbours wondered why the blinds were closed and no one was ever home at several city houses. They found out on Friday: FOUR HOUSES. 992 MARIJUANA PLANTS. STREET VALUE $1M Renata D'Aliesio, Journal Staff Writer The Edmonton Journal Four homes raided by the police Green Team. Above: A home where two suspects lived at 12419 55th Street Jugs of plant fertilizer crowd a kitchen counter at 13418 32A Street. "This house was sweating. I've never seen it so bad. Even the dryer vents had icicles because there was so much condensation. This house may have to be condemned." Det. Clayton Sach, of Edmonton police The middle-aged woman never seemed to stay for more tha…

Source: Columbia Missourian (MO) Author: Stephanie Von Brochowski, Reporter Published: January 19, 2003 Copyright: 2003 Columbia Missourian Contact: editor@digmo.com Website: http://www.digmo.com/ The Columbia City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would lessen the penalty for having small quantities of marijuana. A group seeking to decriminalize possesion of small amounts of marijuana gathered enough signatures on an initiative petition to ensure that their proposed measure will be voted on by the council. If the council does not pass the ordinance, it will be submitted to voters on April 8, City Manager Ray Beck said. The proposed ordinance …

After 14 years of teaching the Drug Abuse Resistance Education curriculum to Newton's fifth-graders, the School Department has abandoned it and has begun a prevention program that focuses largely on parental involvement and is targeted to all middle-school children. DARE, among the most popular school drug-prevention programs in the country, has been criticized as having limited long-term effectiveness, according to Suzi Kaitz, health and drug-alcohol education specialist for the Newton schools. The School Department decided to make a switch, she said, because of ''the awareness that there were other programs that had more impact.'' National research on the new dua…

Human beings have a serious substance-abuse problem. It certainly wouldn't hurt some of us to lay off a bit, but our unquenchable collective appetite for self-administered intoxication of one sort or another would, arguably, have far less ruinous consequences were our societal attitude toward booze and drugs somewhat less complicated and inconsistent. Our biggest problem is with substance abuse as a concept. Alcohol and illicit drugs are, and always will be, a two-fisted moral and legal conundrum because we harbour an innate desire for black-and-white, "right" or "wrong" answers. We don't like gray areas, but the consumption of alcohol and other intoxicants takes place…

Next week Justice Minister Martin Cauchon returns from Europe, determined to introduce legislation decriminalizing marijuana possession. It now seems likely that he'll succeed. Mr. Cauchon is convinced that Canadians are ready to join the Europeans in effectively legitimizing the recreational smoking of pot. Toking on the continent has become so commonplace that people light up on trains and in bars. Police ignore simple possession. Mr. Cauchon would like the same to apply here. But he is only a cabinet minister, and Edmonton is not Paris. Before he can hope to get "decrim" (get used to the word) through Parliament, he must first pass the Cerberus of the Prime Minist…

The number of American children being treated with psychiatric drugs has grown sharply in the past 15 years, tripling from 1987 to 1996 and showing no sign of slowing, researchers said yesterday. A newly published study, the most comprehensive to date, found that by 1996, more than 6 percent of children were taking drugs such as Prozac, Ritalin and Risperdal, and the researchers said the trajectory continued to rise through 2000. While the increase may partly reflect better diagnosis of mental illness in children, the authors said they fear that cost-saving techniques by insurance companies, marketing by the pharmaceutical industry and increased demands on parents an…

The Trial of Ed Rosenthal By Ann Harrison, AlterNet January 17, 2003 A federal judge in San Francisco is blocking a jury from hearing evidence that could exculpate an outspoken medical marijuana activist. Ed Rosenthal, who is facing 20 years in prison on federal drug charges, believed himself to be immune from prosecution when he was deputized by the nearby city of Oakland in 1998 to cultivate cannabis for chronically ill patients. Rosenthal's case is a challenge by federal prosecutors to California's Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215), a 1996 voter referendum that made the cultivation, possession and consumption of medical marijuana legal in California with a doctor's…

Problem drinkers who also use marijuana may be particularly injury-prone, according to a study of emergency room patients. Rhode Island researchers found that among 433 injured patients considered problem drinkers, those who said they also smoked pot appeared more accident- prone than others. Compared with patients who said they didn't use marijuana, users were more likely to have had another injury in the past year, particularly an alcohol- or driving-related one. Overall, nearly half of the study participants said they had smoked pot in the past three months, according to findings published in the January issue of the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. It is no…

Pot grow sentence surprises everyone Thursday January 16, 2003 FRANCES BARRICK RECORD STAFF KITCHENER -- A kitchen fire caused by a Kitchener man who had a large marijuana grow operation in his rented townhouse resulted in the first-time offender being sentenced yesterday to eight months in jail, a term that shocked even the drug prosecutor on the case. "I was surprised," said Kathleen Nolan, who had asked for a 12-month jail sentence for 28-year-old Michael Broz. Until recently, the most prevalent sentence for first-time offenders convicted of operating indoor pot operations was a period of house arrest, a sentence defence lawyer Harold Cox had asked for his c…

6:23 pm EST January 17, 2003 -- A controversial bill is still smoking in the State House. Medical marijuana was snuffed out by the Senate last May but over the summer, a committee studied the issues surrounding legalizing the drug for patients. Today the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed its findings, and it's likely this bill will be brought to life again. Katherine Perera has been living with HIV for 15 years and today she tried to explain to Senate Judiciary members how important marijuana is to her for pain relief. "I think there are a lot of examples of people using it medically in a very responsible fashion." Perera was one of 12 members on the Medical Mar…