When the Proposition 19 marijuana legalization initiative qualified for the ballot with a yes-or-no due vote in the November election, its passage seemed almost a foregone conclusion. Tax the approximately $12 billion pot industry in this state and you could collect $1.4 billion toward solving the state's budget deficit, not to mention helping out cash-strapped local governments. You would also take hundreds, maybe thousands, of law enforcement officers off the drug beat and allow them to go after "real criminals," said supporters of legalization. [continues 749 words]
It is almost certain that the 56 percent of California voters who approved Proposition 215 in an attempt to legalize medical use of marijuana did not intend for employers to discriminate against persons who take advantage of the law they passed. As it has evolved since passage, the 1996 initiative lets cities and counties issue medipot usage cards to users who smoke the weed to ward off pain caused by ailments from migraine headaches to a wide variety of cancers. Where they exist, the cards can only be obtained with a doctor's recommendation. [continues 745 words]
During Prohibition, hard liquor was banned by federal constitutional amendment but still remained available to pretty much anyone who wanted it. If that sounds a little familiar, substitute pot for booze. Another state budget writing season is over, and another deficit budget adopted (even though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won't admit it), with the usual lip service to fixing the so-called "structural deficit," but nothing serious done in that direction. Meanwhile, from deep in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California, long reputed to be the national capital of in-ground marijuana growing, comes a simple idea that could both solve the budget deficit and end the greatest American hypocrisy since Prohibition. Too bad it has virtually no chance of passage in this decade or, very likely, the next one either. [continues 667 words]
When U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision blocking federal agents from punishing - or even investigating - doctors who recommend marijuana to patients, he was not doing anything unique. For California Attorney General Bill Lockyer was already moving against the most prominent medipot doctor in the nation, helping the Medical Board of California in its attempt to get the doctor's medical license lifted. The question: Is Lockyer, who says he favors medical use of marijuana to help alleviate severe pain and other conditions including nausea caused by AIDS and cancer drugs, trying to clamp down on free speech or simply trying to restrict trade in an illegal drug? [continues 589 words]
As federal officials and some California prosecutors repeatedly flout or ignore the state's 1996 law legalizing medical use of marijuana, dozens and perhaps hundreds who claim they depend on the weed for pain relief and even survival are taking flight. Like Vietnam-era draft dodgers, their usual destination is Canada. Medipot activists thought they had won the right to use their drug of choice without harassment when voters handily passed Proposition 215 six years ago, with its provisions for legal marijuana use upon the 'recommendation' of a doctor. [continues 140 words]
LOS ANGELES - Confusion reigns more than ever in California's medical marijuana wars this fall as the state's most liberal cities and counties struggle to find a legal way to distribute the weed to patients who need it, and federal and state authorities fight to close the few remaining cannabis buyers clubs. The battle figures to move both to the ballot box and a jury trial, this fall, as pot-supplying cooperatives in three Northern California cities remain open in the face of a four-month-old court order to shut down. The three face contempt of court charges and pro-marijuana activists are eager to see whether any jury will convict their leaders. [continues 769 words]
