Oregon Legalized Marijuana Initiative, Measure 91 (2014)

The Oregon Legalized Marijuana Initiative, Measure 91 is on the November 4, 2014 statewide ballot in Oregon as an initiated state statute. If approved by voters, the measure would legalize recreational marijuana for people ages 21 and older, allowing adults over this age to possess up to eight ounces of "dried" marijuana and up to four plants. Additionally, the measure would task the Oregon Liquor Control Commission with regulating sales of the drug. The initiative is being sponsored by the group "New Approach Oregon." Anthony Johnson, the chief petitioner, hoped legislators would refer the measure to the ballot, however they failed to do so before the 2014 session ended on March 10, 2014. It is also known as the Control, Regulation, and Taxation of Marijuana and Industrial Hemp Act of 2014. Via Ballotpedia

This will be the third time that Oregon voters have voted on a marijuana legalization proposal. The first initiative, Measure 5 in 1986, the Oregon Marijuana Legalization for Personal Use Act, would have legalized the personal possession and cultivation of marijuana for personal use; it won the support of only 26 percent of the voters. More recently, Measure 80 in 2012, the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, would have allowed the personal cultivation of marijuana and established a licensing system for the commercial production and sale of marijuana; it came close, with the support of 46.5 percent of the voters.

The latest Oregon initiative, Measure 91, proposed by New Approach Oregon, would legalize the use of marijuana by those 21 and older, and establish a system of licensing, taxing and regulating marijuana under the auspices of the Oregon Liquor Control Board.

Oregon: Marijuana Initiative Backers Turn In 145,000 Signatures For Proposed 2014 Ballot Measure

Congratulations, this issue, is one that the people support in far greater numbers than before. With two states down, here's hoping we have another by the end of the year.

Public opinion is changing on marijuana, including by Oregonians and voters across the country,because treating marijuana use as a crime has failed. The enthusiastic support our signature gatherers received in neighborhoods across our great state, help show Oregonians across all walks of life are ready to consider an approach that regulates, legalizes and taxes marijuana.

We are grateful for all the work contributed to bring up to this historic moment. But this campaign will be tough and we don’t take anything for granted. We will work hard to discuss the issue all across the state. To win in November, we need your help. Please spread the word and let your friends and family know that they can learn more, show their support, sign up to volunteer and contribute to this important campaign at www.newapproachoregon.com

Via: New Approach Oregon

Please sign this petition to bring medical marijuana to NY State and help my friend who suffers from dozens of daily seizures

It is time for The Compassionate Care Act to be brought to the senate floor for a vote!

Oliver Miller desperately needs legal access to certain strains of medical cannabis. He does not have the time to wait for this to be held up any longer! The decision to have access to compassionately prescribed medicine should be up to the physician, not the senate! Yet the senate is who holds this power currently. Senator Dean Skelos has the power to bring this bill to the floor for a vote. Please let him know that you want him to do this now! Do it for Oliver and for all the children and adults suffering in NY. Children are dying everyday, IT IS TIME!!!!

Link: The Petition Site

Help suffering children in need. They need 300 signatures in the next 2 days in order to pass.
 

Study: Cannabis Compound Reduces Cigarette Consumption In Tobacco Smokers

Investigators at University College London conducted a double blind pilot study to study the impact of organic non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD (cannabidiol) versus placebo in 24 tobacco-smoking subjects seeking to quit their addiction. Participants were randomized to receive an inhaler containing CBD (n=12) or placebo (n=12) for one week. Trial investigators instructed subjects to use the inhaler when they felt the urge to smoke.

Abstract

The role of the endocannabinoid system in nicotine addiction is being increasingly acknowledged. We conducted a pilot, randomised double blind placebo controlled study set out to assess the impact of the ad-hoc use of cannabidiol (CBD) in smokers who wished to stop smoking. 24 smokers were randomised to receive an inhaler of CBD (n=12) or placebo (n=12) for one week, they were instructed to use the inhaler when they felt the urge to smoke. Over the treatment week, placebo treated smokers showed no differences in number of cigarettes smoked. In contrast, those treated with CBD significantly reduced the number of cigarettes smoked by ~40% during treatment. Results also indicated some maintenance of this effect at follow-up. These preliminary data, combined with the strong preclinical rationale for use of this compound, suggest CBD to be a potential treatment for nicotine addiction that warrants further exploration.

Investigators concluded in the preliminary data that CBD could be a potential treatment for nicotine addiction and warrants further exploration.

Five Reasons Cops Want to Legalize Cannabis

Objectively speaking, cannabis prohibition has failed on all accounts, and when one looks at simply the facts, continued efforts against consumption is unjustifiable. The RollingStone helps drive home this point in Five Reasons Cops Want to Legalize Marijuana

1. It's about public safety.

While marijuana is a relatively harmless drug, the black market associated with it can cause significant harm. Much like the prohibition of alcohol, marijuana's illegality does not erase the profit incentive – instead, it establishes a risky, unregulated market in which violence and intimidation are used to settle disputes.

"When we ended the prohibition of alcohol, Al Capone was out of work the next day," says Stephen Downing, Los Angeles' former Deputy Chief of Police. "Our drug policy is really anti-public safety and pro-cartel, pro-street gang, because it keeps them in business."

Marijuana trafficking represents a significant chunk of business for black-market cartels. Though the exact percentage of cartel profits from pot is disputed, lowball estimates fall at around 20 percent.

"During my time on the border, I saw literally tons of marijuana come over the border from Mexico," says Jamie Haase, a former special agent in the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. "Competition over the profits to be made from this illicit industry has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals in that country, and an ever-increasing amount of violence spilling over into the United States, where the Justice Department estimates Mexican cartels now operate in more than 1,000 American cities."

2. Cops want to focus on crimes that hurt real victims.

In the past decade, police made more than 7 million marijuana arrests, 88 percent of them for possession alone. In 2010, states spent $3.6 billion enforcing the war on pot, with blacks nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested. That's a lot of police time and resources wasted, says former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper, who had an "aha moment" about marijuana policy while working for the San Diego Police Department in the late 1960s.

"I had arrested a 19-year-old in his parents' home for the possession of a very small quantity of marijuana, and put him in the backseat of a caged police car, after having kicked down his door," recalls Stamper. While driving the prisoner to jail, he says, "I realized, mainly, that I could have been doing real police work, but instead I'm going to be out of service for several hours impounding the weed, impounding him, and writing arrest, impound, and narcotics reports. I was away from the people I had been hired to serve and in no position to stop a reckless drunk driver swerving all over the road, or to respond to a burglary in progress, or intervene in domestic violence situation."

Cops have limited resources, and spending them on marijuana arrests will inevitably divert them from other policing. Adds Stamper, "In short, making a marijuana arrest for a simple possession case was no longer, for me, real police work."

3. Cops want strong relationships with the communities they serve.

Baltimore narcotics veteran Neil Franklin says the prevalence of marijuana arrests, especially among communities of color, creates a "hostile environment" between police and the communities they serve. "Marijuana is the number one reason right now that police use to search people in this country," he says. "The odor of marijuana alone gives a police officers probable cause to search you, your person, your car, or your home."

Legalizing pot, says Franklin, could lead to "hundreds of thousands of fewer negative police and citizen contacts across this country. That's a hell of an opportunity for law enforcement to rebuild some bridges in our communities – mainly our poor, black and Latino communities."

Franklin adds that this would increase citizens' trust in police, making them more likely to communicate and help solve more serious crimes. Building mutual respect would also protect cops on the job. Adds Franklin, "Too many police officers are killed or injured serving the War on Drugs as opposed to protecting and serving their communities."

4. The war on pot encourages bad – and even illegal – police practices.

Downing says that monetary incentives for drug arrests, like asset forfeiture and federal grants, encourage an attitude where police will make drug arrests by any means necessary, from militarized SWAT raids to paid informants who admit to lying. "The overall effect is that we are losing ground in terms of the traditional peace officer role of protecting public safety, and morphing our local police officers into federal drug warriors," Downing says.

Quotas and pressure for officers to make drug arrests – which profit police departments via federal funding and asset forfeiture – also encourage routine violations of the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The NYPD, for example, stops and sometimes frisks well over 500,000 people a year, the vast majority of them youths of color – the basis for a pending federal lawsuit challenging the policy on constitutional grounds. While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended stop-and-frisk as a way to get guns off the street, in fact, it's more often used to arrest kids with small amounts of weed. Stamper adds that legalization would allow police officers "to see young adults not as criminals, but members of their community" – and start respecting those young people's civil liberties.

5. Cops want to stop kids from abusing drugs.

Marijuana's illegality has done very little to stop its use. A recent survey by the National Institutes of Health found that 36 percent of high school seniors had smoked marijuana in the past year. Legalization would most likely involve age restrictions on marijuana purchases, while at the same time providing quality control over product. "The only way we can effectively control drugs is to create a regulatory system for all of them," says Stamper.

"If you are truly a proponent of public safety, if you truly want safer communities, then it's a no-brainer that we have to end drug prohibition and treat [marijuana] as a health issue, like we did with tobacco," says Franklin. "Education and treatment is the most effective and cost-efficient way to reduce drug use."

On the other hand, adds Franklin, "If you support a current system of drug prohibition, then you support the very same thing that the cartel and neighborhood gangs support. You might as well be standing next to them, shaking hands. Because they don't want an end to prohibition, either."

Marijuana prohibition in the end is very costly to society, wasting billions of dollars and countless hours in law enforcement, justice system and penal system time. Marijuana isn't completely harmless, no drug is, but prohibition is by far more detrimental pot can ever be.

It's time to finally put an end to the criminalization of marijuana.

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Maine: Medical Marijuana Program Expanded To Include Patients With PTSD And Other Debilitating Disorders

Patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, Crohn’s disease, and other debilitating disorders will now be eligible for cannabis therapy, under legislation approved yesterday absent the Governor’s signature.

The new law expands the list of qualifying conditions for which a Maine physician may legally recommend cannabis to include “post-traumatic stress disorder,” “inflammatory bowel disease” (such as Crohn’s and/or ulcerative colitis), and “dyskinetic and spastic movement disorders and other diseases causing severe and persistent muscle spasms” (such as Parkinson’s disease and/or Huntington’s disease). It is the second time that Maine legislators have acted to expand the pool of patients who may have access to medicinal cannabis.

See the expanded list: MaineLegislature.org
Read the full artical : NORML

Marijuana Bacon Recipe

Watermelon cleverly combines two of your favourite things Marijuana & Bacon for the perfect treat. The BC bacon is then wrapped around cubes of cantaloupe. This recipe makes a perfect appetizer for any soiree.