Flagstaff, Ariz. (AP) - The Navajo Nation had bitter debates when it was deciding whether to allow casinos on the reservation and whether alcohol should be sold in them. The arguments focused on the revenue and jobs that casinos and liquor could bring to a community in which half the workforce is unemployed and most arrests and pervasive social ills are linked to alcohol abuse. When the federal government announced this month that it would allow Native American tribes to grow and sell marijuana, the divisive discussions returned. The tribal president's office talked about expanding crops to include marijuana for medicinal but not recreational use, while a tribal lawmaker quickly declared his opposition. [continues 883 words]
FLAGSTAFF, ARIZ. (AP) - The Navajo Nation had bitter debates when it was deciding whether to allow casinos on the reservation and whether alcohol should be sold in them. The arguments focused on the revenue and jobs that casinos and liquor could bring to a reservation where half the workforce is unemployed and most arrests and pervasive social ills are linked to alcohol abuse. When the federal government announced this month that it would allow American Indian tribes to grow and sell marijuana, the same divisive discussions resurfaced. The tribal president's office talked of expanding crops to include pot for medicinal but not recreational use, while a tribal lawmaker quickly declared his opposition. [continues 702 words]
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - The Navajo Nation had bitter debates when it was deciding whether to allow casinos on the reservation and if alcohol should be sold in them. The arguments focused on the revenue and jobs casinos and liquor could bring to a reservation where half the workforce is unemployed and most arrests and pervasive social ills are linked to alcohol abuse. When the federal government announced this month that it would allow American Indian tribes to grow and sell marijuana, the same divisive discussions resurfaced. The tribal president's office talked of expanding crops to include pot for medicinal but not recreational use, while a tribal lawmaker quickly declared his opposition. [continues 906 words]
So, voters in Los Angeles just passed a ballot measure to shut down all but 135 or so cannabis clubs. What gives? - -SoCal Sal Who knows? The voters just kicked through a law that enacts most of the regulations from an ordinance passed by the Los Angeles City Council in 2007. This law states that all the clubs that registered with the city prior to the 2007 cutoff date will be allowed to stay open. Everyone else has to shut down. [continues 453 words]
After 150 years of broken promises, the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota are nurturing their tribal customs, language, and beliefs. A rare, intimate portrait shows their resilience in the face of hardship. Almost every historical atrocity has a geographically symbolic core, a place whose name conjures up the trauma of a whole people: Auschwitz, Robben Island, Nanjing. For the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation that place is a site near Wounded Knee Creek, 16 miles northeast of the town of Pine Ridge. From a distance the hill is unremarkable, another picturesque tree-spotted mound in the creased prairie. [continues 4115 words]
(1) COLUMN: SPECIAL HEARING SET AFTER JUDGE'S DEATH LEAVES CASE HANGING Pubdate: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Author: Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun Criminal Drug-Trafficking Trial Involves Important Constitutional Challenge The death of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Edwards has jeopardized a lengthy and costly Victoria criminal trial involving an important constitutional challenge of the marijuana law. In most criminal cases, when a judge is unable to follow through to judgment a mistrial is declared and everyone begins again. [continues 6914 words]
(1) HOUSE PANEL CRITICIZES LATIN AMERICA ANTI-DRUG PLAN Pubdate: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times Author: Tina Marie Macias, Times Staff Writer Members Say That Bush's $1.4-Billion Merida Initiative Focusing on Mexico Would Spend Money Unwisely, That Supplies Could Be Misused, and That Congress Should Have Been Involved in Planning. WASHINGTON -- President Bush's proposal to send $1.4 billion worth of equipment to Mexico and six South American nations to combat drug cartels was met with hostility from members of a House committee that examined the plan for the first time Wednesday. [continues 6929 words]
A federal appeals court said Thursday that authorities were correct to confiscate industrial hemp grown on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The crop comes from the same plant as marijuana but doesn't contain the chemical that's responsible for the drug's high. Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe maintained that federal drug laws don't apply to industrial hemp and that tribal sovereignty gives them a right to harvest the plants. The tribal council legalized industrial hemp in 1998, but federal agents destroyed three consecutive years of crops grown by the White Plume family. [continues 54 words]
Federal Court Rules Against Indians Who Planted Crops SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - An American Indian treaty and United States law do not allow for the cultivation of industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. Alex White Plume, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and members of his family planted hemp on their property, but it was cut down and confiscated by federal agents. Industrial hemp is related to marijuana and is used to make rope and other products. It has only a trace of the drug in marijuana, but it is illegal to grow hemp in the United States. [continues 134 words]
SIOUX FALLS -- An American Indian treaty and United States law do not allow for the cultivation of industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. Alex White Plume, who is vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and members of his family planted hemp on their property but it was cut down and confiscated by federal agents. Industrial hemp,which is related to marijuana, is used to make rope and other products. It has only a trace of the drug in marijuana, but it is illegal to grow hemp in the United States. [continues 322 words]
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- An American Indian treaty and United States law do not allow for the cultivation of industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. Alex White Plume, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and members of his family planted hemp on their property but it was cut down and confiscated by federal agents. Industrial hemp is related to marijuana and is used to make rope and other products. It has only a trace of the drug in marijuana, but it is illegal to grow hemp in the United States. [continues 349 words]
DEA agents have been doing their very best impression of the Grinch this month by carrying out a string of raids at medi-pot dispensaries in San Diego and San Francisco, Calif. On Dec. 12, a contingent of agents simultaneously executed 13 warrants in San Diego County, seizing dozens of pounds of marijuana, computer equipment, and patient files from the store front operations that provide sick and dying medi-mari patients who use the drug in accordance with the state's Compassionate Use Act. Then, on Dec. 20, agents struck again, in an early-morning raid at the San Francisco home of Steve and Cathy Smith who run the HopeNet medi-pot dispensary, which, in part, subsidizes the cost of medi-pot for low-income patients. [continues 1119 words]
ST. LOUIS (AP) - Members of a family say they were growing hemp, not marijuana, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and asked federal appeals judges Monday to return the matter to a lower court to consider the legality of their crop. The White Plume family tried three times to grow an industrial hemp crop on Oglala Sioux reservation land from 2000 to 2002, only to have the plants seized and destroyed by the federal government. The family was later ordered by a judge to halt the plantings permanently. [continues 304 words]
HERMOSA - A Hermosa man will bicycle across South Dakota to draw attention to what he says is the need for the legalization of medical marijuana. Bob Newland, 56, Hemphasis magazine publisher, plans to launch his two-week journey to Sioux Falls on June 5. He will log about 500 miles in the interim before returning to Rapid City. While cycling across South Dakota, Newland plans to circulate a petition for Safe Access Act of 2006, which would allow physicians to prescribe cannabis as part of a course of therapy and allow patients to possess and use cannabis to alleviate certain medical conditions. Newland invites others to join the tour. [end]
Patients might prefer pot to popping pills, but they won't be doing that legally in South Dakota. The House Health and Human Services Committee deferred a bill that would have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana to the 41st day of the legislative session, effectively killing it. Rep. Gerald Lange, D-Madison, introduced the bill, which lacked any co-sponsors. Lange said that he introduced the bill at the request of one of his constituents who is suffering from a debilitating disease. [continues 510 words]
HIA Goes to the Pine Ridge Reservation An estimated 50 to 70 hardy hempsters from the US and Canada made their way to one of the most remote spots in the country on August 20-23 to attend the annual Hemp Industries Association convention (http://www.hempindustries.org) and to pay homage Alex White Plume and family, Lakota Indians who last year managed to grow, harvest, and sell the nation's first hemp harvest since the hoary days of "Grow Hemp for Victory." White Plume lives on the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota, a stark, austere landscape of parched hills and looming Badlands just east of the sacred Paha Sapa Mountains, known as the Black Hills since white men found gold there and stole them by force of arms five generations ago. [continues 1367 words]
But More Battles Remain The hemp industry Monday won another in a string of victories in its two-year-old legal battle with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over the agency's effort to block the sale and possession of foods containing hemp products. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the DEA's interpretive rule barring hemp foods, ruling that the agency violated its own rulemaking procedures by failing to give advance warning or allow for public comment before it promulgated the rule in October 2001. [continues 785 words]
In a scrubbed-out cow shed at the end of a rutted track in East Sussex, a seed packed with all the potential to transform British agriculture and save the planet is slowly taking root. Where cows once crapped and chewed the cud, Henry Gage is hunched over a lap-top germinating his plan to free one of the most 'dangerous' plants on the planet. This year Gage plans to grow 1,000 acres of hemp (Cannabis sativa L) across Britain. Yet Gage is no home-grown drugs baron but an energetic young farmer, and he doesn't want us to smoke his crop but eat it. [continues 2299 words]
Here's How Hollywood-Raised Renee Boje Became The Pot Madonna Gorgeous, guileless and naturally blissed out, Vancouver's Renee Boje, 32, is the perfect poster girl for pot activists; she's also a new mother and martyr for a cause she never dreamed she'd represent, a marijuana madonna with everyone from Noam Chomsky to Woody Harrelson writing letters on her behalf. Boje lies back on the couch, her baby Shiva curled against her breast. Images of Ganesh and Shakti smile down from the walls. Outside, the traffic on Commercial Drive has almost faded. Across the room Shiva's father, author Chris Bennet, talks quietly about ancient Egypt. [continues 3151 words]
SIOUX FALLS - South Dakota voters on Tuesday soundly defeated a ballot measure on the rights of criminal defendants. With 39 percent of the precincts reporting, Constitutional Amendment A had 26,912 votes in favor, or 21 percent, and 102,664 votes against it, or 79 percent. The proposal said criminal defendants may argue about the merits, validity and application of laws under which they are charged. Another issue, Initiated Measure 1, sought to legalize industrial hemp by allowing South Dakotans to grow, process and market it. That measure also was defeated. [continues 461 words]
Sioux Hemp
