State lawmakers Wednesday took a step toward possibly licensing and taxing medical marijuana sales in California, despite objections that such sales are not sanctioned by federal law. A bill that would have the state Board of Equalization study ways to tax and license the sale of medical marijuana was approved by the Senate Governance and Finance Committee on a 5-2 vote, the Los Angeles Times reports. Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), author of SB 626, said the cash-strapped state was missing out on potentially tens of millions of dollars from the sales. “There is a real [...]
Dr. Scott Haig is an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His Doctor’s View column on cannabis appears in Time magazine: =============== We don’t really know how many people smoke it. Some sources say 10 million Americans, others say 35 million. But a lot of people smoke pot and they don’t seem very sick. Marijuana just won’t go away. Everybody talks about it—many quite fondly. About everyone I know under 55 has smoked it. And they’re all right. A few have that pothead “oh wow” personality, but [...]
Bud’s note: I’m hoping this fine Sunday feature story by Sacramento Bee reporter Peter Hecht is a sign of things to come. Weed has gone mainstream in California, as Hecht explores in detail below, but it hasn’t when it comes to the mainstream media. Apart from Hecht’s “Weed Wars” blog and John Hoeffel’s reporting in the Los Angeles Times, most daily newspapers seem content to cover CAMP busts and dispensary ordinances. Let’s hope they step it up, perhaps after Labor Day. ================= John Wade, 43, a San Francisco commercial lighting specialist, takes a quick hit [...]
Paul Armentano of Vallejo is deputy director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and co-author of the book “Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?” He co-chairs the Health Professionals steering committee for the Proposition 19 campaign and wrote this article for the San Jose Mercury News. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office’s recently published critique of Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, provides needed clarity to the ongoing debate regarding marijuana policy and offers a swift rebuttal to the doomsday scenarios [...]
The co-founder of one of Sacramento’s original medical marijuana dispensaries isn’t high on the notion of legalizing marijuana for recreational use in California. With her husband, Bryan Davies, Lanette Davies founded the Canna Care dispensary, a medical cannabis outlet with a Christian theme. Davies now heads an advocacy group for medical marijuana patients called Crusaders for Patients’ Rights, Peter Hecht writes for the Sacramento Bee. Under the group’s name, she is writing voter pamphlets, urging “no” votes on the November initiative to legalize marijuana beyond medical use and allow local governments to tax and regulate [...]
The Bay Area’s roaring cannabis economy gets a new yardstick: the first-ever High Times Medical Cannabis Cup this June 19-20 in San Francisco. The 35-year-old counter-culture magazine has hosted its famed Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam every year for more than 20 years now, making it a pop culture icon and global tourist attraction. The contest High Times brings to Terra in San Francisco should be considerably more tame, David Downs writes in “Legalization Nation” for the East Bay Express. For one: buying a $50 ticket to the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup does not get [...]
Being young involves quite a bit of exciting change. There’s the end of high-school, the start of college and some measure of independence, and a whole slew of new experiences. A recent study conducted by Judith Brooks at NYU School of Medicine has revealed that one of those experiences, smoking marijuana (weed) may be associated with more relationship conflict later in life, Adi Jaffe writes in his Psychology Today blog. What’s amazing about this study is that the drug use here occurred earlier in life for most of the 534 participants, while the relationship trouble [...]
May 212010
For night owls in Sacramento, Cannabis Planet television is coming to town. The marijuana-themed program will bring its tips on pot cultivation, cooking and culture to the local airwaves just past midnight tonight – at 12:30 a.m. Saturday. The show, in English, will run on KTNC – the local affiliate for the Spanish-language network Estrella TV. Cannabis Planet producer Brad Lane is buying television time to air the program, the Sacramento Bee reports. He is paying the bills with sponsorships from local marijuana dispensaries, the River City Wellness Collective and the Horizon Non-Profit Collective, MediCann [...]
May 182010
Rickey Yuhre didn’t need an $8.7 million California medical marijuana study to tell him that pot eased his suffering. The 53-year-old former diesel truck mechanic and welder has pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic and debilitating disease of the lungs. He has fused vertebrae in his neck due to severe nerve damage, “Weed Wars” blogger/reporter Peter Hecht writes in the Sacramento Bee. Pain meds and relaxants – Oxycontin, Vicodin, Neurontin, Valium – only turned his insides out with nausea. And so he started using a special “vapor box” to medicate with marijuana without smoking. “It brought things [...]
?It seems 4/20 isn’t the only holiday on a marijuana aficionado’s calendar. In San Francisco there’s a more important — if more obscure — fete just a few weeks afterward. That’d be Cannabis Freedom Day, which is traditionally the first Saturday in May. That’s this Saturday, May 1. While, in the past there’s been some confusion if it’s called Cannabis Awareness Day, Cannabis Freedom Day, or …eh, it escapes us … it’s been accepted here in San Francisco that this is a fine day to get ripped in public. And that will all happen this [...]
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