|
|
|
Wednesday, 04 August 2010 00:00 |
 (CBS) Medical marijuana users may not have the option of taking a spoonful of sugar with their medicine if a new Senate bill makes it through the House.
Last Thursday, the Senate passed a bill that would double the penalties for people who sell drug-infused sweets.
The bill has garnered support from unexpected quarters. Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says that "those who say marijuana is medicine had better be prepared to market it as such - and not as candy."
Further, says St. Pierre, those who sell pot-infused brownies, cookies and other "medical edibles," or "medibles," have reason to be worried, because, in his opinion, the bill is written broadly enough to include them.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 00:00 |
 Obama drug official praises local marijuana regulations.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration offered a live-and-let-live approach to medical marijuana providers, so long as they complied with state laws.
As one Obama administration official told the Los Angeles Times in March:
"If you are operating a medical marijuana clinic that is actually a front, we'll come after you. But if you are operating within the law, we are not going to prioritize our resources to go after them."
Since then, marijuana activists in California have been hoping for signs that the administration will move beyond tolerating medical marijuana and consider a major policy overhaul.
Those hopes were revived last week when the head of the White House’s office of national drug control policy, Gil Kerlikowske, offered seemingly friendly words for California’s medical-marijuana laws.
Kerlikowske was in California to announce a crackdown on huge commercial pot farms in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Fresno.
|
|
|
|
Monday, 02 August 2010 00:00 |
 Medical marijuana is now legal in the District after the Democrat-controlled Congress declined to overrule a D.C Council bill that allows the city to set up as many as eight dispensaries where chronically ill patients can purchase the drug.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said in a statement the bill become law after Congress finished its business Monday night because neither the House nor Senate opted to intervene.
The council approved the bill in May, and under Home Rule Congress had 30 legislative days to review it.
"We have faced repeated attempts to re-impose the prohibition on medical marijuana in D.C. throughout the layover period," said Norton. "Yet, it is D.C.'s business alone to decide how to help patients who live in our city and suffer from chronic pain and incurable illnesses."
|
|
|
|
Sunday, 01 August 2010 00:00 |
 SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities have shot and killed a suspect during a marijuana eradication operation in Northern California.
A Santa Clara County sheriff's spokesman says deputies from Santa Clara and Alameda counties were combing a rugged and remote area looking for marijuana gardens when a suspect was fatally shot around 11 a.m. Wednesday.
It's not clear what prompted deputies to open fire. None of the officers was injured.
|
|
|
|
Saturday, 31 July 2010 00:00 |
 The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs is changing a rule that penalizes veterans using medical marijuana in the 14 states where the practice is legal, according to a departmental directive.
The change, which had been sought by some veteran groups, will prevent veterans who are prescribed and using medical marijuana in those states from losing government benefits.
The new rule does not permit VA physicians to prescribe medical marijuana, for its use to be allowed in VA facilities or for VA to pay for medical marijuana.Medical marijuana
As an illegal drug under federal law, marijuana had presented veterans and physicians prescribing it for pain relief and other conditions with potential prosecution or loss of VA benefits.
The new rule clarifies the exceptions where veterans who use Veterans Health Administration, or VHA, services can use medical marijuana in the states that allow it.
|
|
|
|
