ELIOT, Maine - In a three-hour meeting Thursday night, selectmen voted 3-1 for a public hearing and special board meeting for a town ordinance to control marijuana dispensaries. The meeting will be held Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall. The board is seeking approval for a local ordinance allowing local controls for any legal marijuana dispensary looking to locate in Eliot. A proposed ordinance written by former selectman John Murphy was introduced Thursday night. Murphy said, "The involvement of policing is minimal" in the state law passed by voters statewide in the November 2009 election to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Maine. Newly reelected selectman Michael Moynahan noted, "Under our existing local ordinances, anyone could just come in under agricultural zoning. We need to act on this and fast." [continues 244 words]
The panel reviewing the 29 applications for eight facilities will award licenses on July 9. Seventeen groups hope to be among the first to open nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries in Maine, state officials said Friday. Maine's Department of Health and Human Services received 29 license applications from those groups before the deadline at 2 p.m. Friday. Some submitted multiple applications in hopes of operating more than one dispensary, or at least increasing their chances of operating one. The submission of applications is a major step toward implementing the law passed by Maine voters last fall. It calls for a dispensary network to enhance access to the drug for registered patients with illnesses such as cancer and AIDS. [continues 501 words]
BUsiness Plans to Create Foods With Pot Added Steamboat Springs -- Jacob Wise expects to have a medical marijuana kitchen open within a few months after the Oak Creek Town Board gave the final OK on Thursday night. Wise, who owns a medical marijuana dispensary in Oak Creek, wants to create a medical marijuana kitchen on Nancy Crawford Boulevard as he switches the focus of his business from smokable marijuana to tinctures -- liquids with the active ingredients of marijuana. Wise will have to pay about $3,000 in fees as he opens the wholesale business, including a special fee of $750 for medical marijuana businesses. [continues 223 words]
Mr. Jim Bayne's column Sunday ("Mexico has a legitimate gripe when it comes to our drug habit") refused to mention the elephant in the room; namely, drug prohibition. As he exhorts us to only use legal drugs, he and the prohibition crowd force us to use alcohol, a much more dangerous drug than marijuana, to take the edge off the day at 6 p.m. He is flat wrong that marijuana is a gateway drug. Every government research in five countries has concluded it is not (the last was our Institute of Medicine in 1999). [continues 65 words]
In his column Sunday ("Mexico has a legitimate gripe when it comes to our drug habit"), Jim Bayne wrote: "Illegal drugs impair the ability of users to act in a rational manner." He continued: "Society must have a clear mind, lest our society falls as did the Romans and others before us. However, each of us can and should set a course, for those following, which is absent of illegal drugs and undo indulgence of other items that may affect a clear mind." [continues 341 words]
I am a disabled Vietnam War veteran. I saw your notice about the Sunday Forum on medical marijuana and I want to tell you about my experience. I have been suffering for years from many illnesses, including PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), chronic headaches, chronic body pains, severe arthritis, and hand and leg cramps that affect my ability to drive. I have trouble sleeping and I wake up three or four times a night. Doctors gave me prescriptions for more than a dozen medicines that I have to take several times a day, and they are all affecting my daily functions. Sometimes the medicine is worse than my sickness -- the medicine that is supposed to help me hurts me instead. Sometimes just so I can make it through the day, I can only take the medications at bedtime. When I am taking my medicine, it really affects my family relations. [continues 148 words]
Sen. Rory Respicio has introduced legislation that would allow physicians to certify the use of medicinal marijuana to patients with debilitating conditions. The marijuana would be dispensed from compassionate care centers, which would be registered with and regulated by the Department of Public Health and Social Services. The aim of Bill 423 -- which is modeled on the laws of several states - -- is to provide some relief to patients who will benefit from the effects of marijuana, such as those with Alzheimer's Disease, HIV/AIDs, cancer, Chrohn's Disease, epilepsy, glaucoma and multiple schlerosis, among other diseases and disorders. [continues 277 words]
Guam cannot "legalize" cannabis/marijuana for any purpose. Federal laws identify it as a controlled substance, so only they can "legalize" its use. Guam should pass a law permitting the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes and under strict conditions, as proposed in my Bill 423. A U.S. jurisdiction desiring to allow for medicinal cannabis must follow the Ninth Circuit Court ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld: doctors can legally recommend, but not dispense, cannabis to patients. To stay within the boundaries of law, doctors that recommend cannabis must certify that patients have been diagnosed with a debilitating condition or disease, and cannabis can help them. [continues 444 words]
Nanaimo is one of a growing number of municipalities that pass on police and cleanup costs to property owners The City of Nanaimo has billed more than $50,000 to owners of properties that housed marijuana growing-operations. Enacted in 2006, the city's controlled substance and cost-recovery bylaw has been used to force owners to pay cleanup and enforcement costs associated with grow-ops and drug labs. For the first time, the bylaw will be now used in connection with an reported drug-manufacturing lab, after police spent days dismantling a suspected date-rape drug lab on McGarrigle Road last week. [continues 307 words]
Authorities raided a Westside medical marijuana dispensary yesterday for the second time and re-arrested its owner, a 32-year-old man who had posted bail and allegedly reopened the shop. Sgt. Dan McGrew said Juan Carlos Solis was arrested on suspicion of cultivation and possession of marijuana for sale, the same charges he is facing in connection with a prior raid in February at the Healing Center, 1437 San Andres St. Officers served search warrants at the dispensary and an apartment in the 700 block of W. Carrillo Street that Solis reportedly shared with Rudy Aragon Lopez, 28, an alleged dispensary employee who was arrested yesterday on similar drug-related charges. [continues 444 words]
Paul Armentano wouldn't be surprised if he could sniff the unmistakable aroma of marijuana during his noon talk Saturday in the Joseph Room at JFK Library. Conversely, he would also understand if some folks showed up with his face on a bull's eye. And that's the point, said the long-time pro-legalization advocate, who discusses and signs copies of the book he co-authored, "Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?" "I encourage different audiences," Armentano said. "Preaching to the choir gets pretty old fast. This is about an objective discussion about our current policy. I don't mind people voicing divergent opinions. Obviously, we've not come as a society to a consensus." [continues 677 words]
