Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Are Compassionate Use laws moot?

Have Compassionate Use and Marijuana Medicalization laws become moot?

After passing two unenforcable Compassionate Use laws in the 90's, and full cannabis medicalization in 2010, Arizona has failed to open dispensaries, and created extraordinary requirements (such as submitting three years of Arizona Tax Returns, and other irrelevant and illegal financial requirements that would disenfrancise the patient population deriving the most benefit from dispensaries).
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/01/judge_to_arizona_gov_open_the_marijuana_dispensari.php 

In New Jersey, another state with Medicalization and Compassionate Use laws, an M.S. patient appealed his arrest for growing cannabis to the state's Supreme Court, which summarily sentenced him to five years in prison.
http://www.politickernj.com/54244/nj-supreme-court-5-years-prison-ms-patient-growing-marijuana#.Tx7tP3_Bq1g.facebook

Even after Compassionate Use laws have been passed, Medical Marijuana patients are still being arrested and imprisoned with the judicial rational that State administered dispensaries have not been implemented.

Travesties such as this may be expected in the yahoo states that have yet to pass compassionate use laws; but they have become much too common in states who's citizenry has approved and supported the medical use of cannabis. The fact that state-level medical marijuana administrations have failed in developing dispensaries should have no bearing on the impementation of the law, and acceptance of the law by the judicial system.

Advocacy and activist efforts would do well to define and promote medicalization and compassionate use plans that give more than lip service to the voters' wishes.  Voters should be encouraged to deny passage of propositions and plans that rely heavily on government organization, are full of loop-holes to stall implementation, that have restrictive and irrelevant application requirements, and (especially) forbid patients to grow their own plants.  Medical marijuana laws must be fair, accessible, and consistent, but most of all, they should be implementable. 

The Green Association for Sustainability

Monday, January 23, 2012

GLOBAL POWER

 The dynamics of Power have been frequently and fully illustrated in the mass-media technology of recent years.  Global abuses of power and wealth both shock and mesmerize; national abuses in politics, the banking industry, health care, and big business have led us down an unsustainable course of economic hardships, while our public and private freedoms are shamelessly trampled by local government agencies, with no recourse. The concepts of sustainable finance, sustainable business, sustainable government, and sustainable citizenry are lessons still being learned.

Every now and then we are reminded of TRUE power:  The Power of the Earth.  And though we give homage to the power and the beauty that such power represents, it renews us and touches a part of us that realizes man's arrogance against a never-ending, continually renewing, and infinitely sustainable Earth, under our stewardship.  How humble we become, and how respectful are those who attempt to reach into and touch that power...


Check out Mpora Gear

 
The Green Association for Sustainability

Thursday, January 19, 2012

ELECT GARY JOHNSON and LEGALIZE IT????

New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson's third party Libertarian candidacy has been quietly brewing beneath the Republican primary that is, quite literally, stranger than fiction and very loud. 

His platform?  LEGALIZE MARIJUANA.  Now, before you run out and put a Libertarian in the White House, you may want to find out what Libertarianism is about, and then you know WHY he wants to legalize marijuana. Libertarians want to eliminate the prohibition not because they believe that cannabis has true value, but because they don't believe in government administration.
Gov Gary Johnson Election Platform: It's Time to End the Drug War
At least two MANY issues about this candidates election promises bother me, but I will address just two:
1.  Gary Johnson:  Does he REALLY think that as Prez, he would have that much power to overturn one hundred years of government deception, to open the can on a century of the federal government's "War on Drugs", and to pull back the covers to reveal the true cost of human life and suffering that the prohibition of Marijuana has wrought.   Too many high power people are making too much money by maintaining the drug war status quo, to allow a President to thwart them.

2.  Would you be willing to give your NAME, ADDRESS, DATE OF BIRTH, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, LICENSE NUMBER, MOTHERS MAIDEN NAME, and FINGERPRINTS to obtain a "permit" to purchase marijuana from the Government, or government regulated pharmaceutical?  No one who really thinks about it says yes.

I won't waste your time with info you already know, or personal experiences we've all had.  I believe that human beings are intended to ingest cannabis, having been created/evolved with Cannabinoid receptors in our human biology, The health, emotional, and social benefits of cannabis could be a positive forward move for humanity, but the benefits have been eliminated by prohibition.  Yet, I also believe that LEGALIZATION will play into the hands of the Prohibitionists.  Legalization allows for taxation, and taxation allows for regulation...and we already know how Federal Administrations work/don't work.  The answer is in MEDICALIZATION and DECRIMINALIZATION.  I promise that Federal legalization will NOT allow you to "grow your own", just as you cannot have your own alcohol still. Read "The Case Against Legalization" at http://sustainablygreen.blogspot.com/2010/07/case-against-legalization.html

The Green Association for Sustainability