Pubdate: Thu, 12 Mar 2015
Source: North Coast Journal (Arcata, CA)
Column: The Week in Weed
Copyright: 2015 North Coast Journal
Contact:  http://www.northcoastjournal.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2833
Author: Grant Scott-Goforth

RABBITS WITH HABITS

Former pothead turned Libertarian wunderkind Rand Paul (who dresses 
like his dad - yikes) is attempting to brand himself as the great 
emancipator of rich white college kids, co-authoring senate 
legislation that would relax the Fed's stance on marijuana.

The bill, which is being introduced by Paul and East Coast Democrat 
senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, would downgrade weed's 
Schedule 1 status with the Drug Enforcement Agency, making it more 
available for researchers and doctors who recommend pot to veterans, 
according to the Washington Post. It would also allow pot businesses 
to use banks in states where those businesses have been legalized.

Paul (who looks like he's a Solo cup away from a kegger in press 
photos) is by no means a social liberal, but the potential Republican 
presidential candidate may be seeking the support of weed enthusiasts 
who are seeing broadening legalization around the country and who 
could make marijuana an important presidential platform in 2016. He 
has come out in support of states' rights to legalize marijuana, but 
bashed the use of it, despite his admitted history of puffing tough.

"I personally think that marijuana use is not healthy," Paul told the 
Las Vegas Sun a couple years ago. "People that use it chronically 
have a loss of IQ and a loss of ambition."

Hear that, long hair? Put down the bong, pick up a copy of The 
Fountainhead and you could be on your way to political stardom.

Humboldt officials joined five other Northern California counties in 
a summit March 5 to come up with a unified marijuana policy, the 
Times-Standard reports.

The local governments shared one major interest: local control. By 
uniting, organizers said, the small, rural counties have a better 
chance of influencing anticipated legislation on medical and 
recreational marijuana in the next few years. It was agreed, the T-S 
reporter Will Houston wrote, that individual counties should be able 
to control taxation and cultivation, rather than let Sacramento 
impose uniform standards over the diverse array of California counties.

Medical marijuana is legal in New York, but some Jewish would-be 
patients who keep kosher are stuck - the state's health department 
doesn't allow patients to smoke pot, and while the state's Jewish 
Orthodox Union supports medical marijuana, cannabis laden edibles 
haven't caught on in the orthodox community because they're not 
kosher. That's expected to change soon, as the Daily Mail reports the 
Orthodox Union's kosher certification agency is in discussions with 
edibles manufacturers to produce kosher ganja food by next year.

DEA agent Matt Fairbanks may scale mountains as part of a 
paramilitary marijuana eradication team, but the guy's got a soft side.

At a hearing before the Utah State Senate in late February, Fairbanks 
spoke against a movement to legalize medical marijuana in the state 
with an anecdote: During a raid on a mountainside grow, he 
encountered a bunny that, having grown accustomed to munching on the 
abundant marijuana plants, had become listless, foregoing all 
rabbitly ambitions.

"Deforestation has left marijuana grows with even rabbits that had 
cultivated a taste for the marijuana," the Guardian reports Fairbanks 
testifying. "One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the 
marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone."

The tale (which joined Fairbanks' other concerns about environmental 
damage) earned at least one Monty Python reference from a medical 
marijuana advocate in attendance, and an admonishing line from 
Guardian writer Alan Yuhas:

"... While rabbits and other wild creatures can suffer the effects of 
chemical inebriation, they remain unable to communicate with humans 
even on their sober days, and incapable of expressing even to 
experienced DEA agents exactly the degree of their high."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom