SHOULD CANNABIS SEEDS BE ILLEGAL?

QUESTION:  Should Cannabis/Hemp Seeds be illegal/highly regulated/prohibited, regardless of the legal or medical status of cannabis?

Cannabis seeds contain zero levels of cannabinoids.  However, the bractlets which surround the seeds contain the plants' Highest concentration of cannabinoids (see picture). Even washing with an organic solvent can leave trace amounts of cannabinoids on the seeds. 
Interestingly, even after germination and the presence of the two "seed" leaves (cotyledons), the sprouting plant has no measurable cannabinoids. 
It is not until the first pair of true leaves appear that a measurable amount of cannabis can be determined.
SOURCE:   Starks, Michael (1990) Marijuana Chemistry. Ronin Pub: Oakland.
Archive photo from Bing Search.

CALIFORNIA CANNABIS BALLOT INITIATIVES 2012

California has six cannabis reform initiatives competing to qualify for the 2012 ballot. 

Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012

With a static web site listing 4 changes this bill would make, I found the information to be “generic” and understated.  The four items noted are:
1. Repeals all criminal prohibitions and penalties on cannabis related conduct for adults, 19 and over
2. Mandates strict rules against unlawful distribution to and by minors, driving impaired.
The “driving impaired” clause has had opponents in many states, as the testing for cannabis intoxication is imperfect, and many of these bills require blood or urine tests to determine the “level of intoxication”.  The issue should be driving under “impairment”, which can be determined through standard road-side tests, and should not require the collection of blood or urine
3. Maintains medical rights for patients under Prop 215 and SB 420
4. Vests the newly created California Cannabis Commission with the regulation of commercial cannabis
http://w.ww.causes.com/causes/650028-repeal-cannabis-prohibition-2012/about

Regulate Marijuana Like Wine,

 

Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control and Taxation Act of 2012 Initiative,

 

California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative of 2012,

Marijuana Penalties Act of 2012

Patient Reasonable Access Act.

Sources
ASA Forum>Access Southern California>California Cannabis Initiative Forum. susansoiree,  SSDP Los Angeles 2012-02-22 08:12:31
RCPA 2012. http://w.ww.causes.com/causes/650028-repeal-cannabis-prohibition-2012/about

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

WHAT HAPPENED TO HB 1491?

In May of this year, House Bill 1491 was sent by the Texas Legislature into the Public Health Committee for review. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Elliott Naishtat, would sanction the physician’s recommendation of medical cannabis to patients without any reprisal or condemnation from the legal or medical communities. Even more importantly, HB1491 allows for the prescribed medical use of Cannabis as an Affirmative Defense against marijuana possession charges.


This is very similar to the Arizona law that protected me from fear of prosecution or arrest while living in Arizona with responsible medical use and a letter from my doctor.

While the law may begin by simply stating a person can present an affirmative defense, if properly supported by a Judiciary that will uphold this defense, positive changes will be affected through fewer bodies incarcerated, especially the sick ones. When the D.A. realizes that the Judges will not jail a person for medically recommended treatment, s/he should follow that it is not in their interest to prosecute such cases, and subsequently refuse to file charges. When law enforcement realizes that the D.A. will not file charges on a medical defense, they will stop wasting their time and further endangering the health of the patients, by arresting them.

While this is NOT medicalization in the “California” sense, it is a GIANT LEAP in the right direction.

Most importantly, it loudly overplays the propagandist rhetoric demonizing cannabis as an illegal street drug that is destroying our “youth”.

And while the most favored arguments against any cannabis use are invented under the inauthentic auspices of protecting the nation’s children, no medicalization effort of yet has included the service to children.

Forbidden fruit always tastes better

From my experience and studies of addiction, communications and human behavior, I would claim that exactly the opposite behavior would be predicted from children raised in a culture where cannabis is medicalized and socially accepted. It is human nature to want what is forbidden; what is not allowed is especially exciting to the developing and curious brain of a child or teen. Medicalization and the unrestricted media, transparency, and advertisement that would come with it, may instead have the effect of desensitization rather than increased curiosity.

Texas HB 1491 appears to be lost in committee. It’s time to wake them up and remind them! Follow the link to the members of the Public Health Committee. Take time to stay on them, stay with this issue.
Follow this link to the Texas Legislature, and another list of links directly to the Public Health Committee Members.  
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/Committees/MembershipCmte.aspx?LegSess=82R&CmteCode=C410
If you need another reason or reminder of why this is so very important in Texas, take a look back at my blog entry “The Five Worst States to Get Busted With Pot”, here’s a link so you don’t have to search for it: http://sustainablygreen.blogspot.com/2011/05/norml-five-worst-states-to-get-busted.html

Stay posted, stay involved…

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The Green Association for Sustainability

The Case Against Cannabis Legalization

The Case Against Legalization:
           How Cannabis Taxation and Regulation Laws Further the Prohibitionists' Agenda
by Kimmarie Rojas

Introduction

Cannabis Activists are a-buzz with excitement at the prospect of California’s “Tax and Regulate” campaign, as well as other “legalization” attempts about the Nation. The arguments seem favorable, and the current recession is but another tool in the arsenal of reasons why legalization, taxation and regulation would be the right thing to do.

Yet, lest we forget that “taxation and regulation” of cannabis is the main reason for the original early 20th century federal prohibition of cannabis, be reminded of “The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” placed into federal law requiring only a $1 tax, but with unachievable and public bureaucratic record-keeping and inappropriate punishments for not following the tax act to the letter, ranging from a $2000.00 fine to LIFE imprisonment. Will a Marihuana Tax Act of 2011 reverse this language and "legalization" ruse or add to it? Will another tax and regulate act remove the legal and political bricks which have built impenetrable walls around the production, harvesting, use, transfer, and possession of Marijuana. 
Although California is the thankful forerunner of medicalization, let us also not forget that it was California that made the first law restricting, regulating, and criminalizing cannabis. It was not drugs that California was against then, however. Remember, Cocaine and Heroin were still legal in 1913. Alcoholism and opiate addiction were rampant. It was racism that doomed Cannabis, not a scientific study or a social necessity. Cannabis was smoked by Mexicans; and although they were the indigenous population of the state, closed white puritans minds, believing they were greater than and more entitled in all ways, used their superior political and media powers to spread reefer madness.

Mike Meno wrote the article Colorado’s Governor Signs Medical Marijuana Regulations in the current MPP Blog.. It was a glowing review about this important bill, and how Colorado can set the pace for other state models. It sounded as if this was indeed, a "groundbreaking" event, however after reading the comments, many Colorado caretakers, patients, and smokers, emotionally wrote that this bill is a disaster for MMJ and dispensaries. Read for yourself, and note my comments to the MPP Blog:


The Power to Regulate is the Power to Destroy


Anytime a democratic people must convince the government to stop enforcing unjust laws through mechanisms such as "tax and regulate", that government has succeeded in extorting its citizens. We talk of MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION as a panacea, the end of a war, a freedom. Yet this freedom IS ALREADY OURS, simply because the “laws and regulations” that make possession or use of marijuana a punishable offence are indeed UNJUST laws. It is not “legalization” that will make cannabis free. Legalization implies the inherent right to tax and regulate, to govern the growth of a natural indigenous plant for which our bodies were designed to receive (see “cannabis receptors”), and to exact taxes from the sick, or from the fruits of the earth and human labor, that which was grown by ones own hands. Decriminalization, the repeal of those laws and loopholes in Federal Interstate Commerce laws, and all other administrators and administrations that knowingly or unknowingly created a police state. Just give back what you took one hundred years ago, and let us go on about life. Already, citizens hungry and overdue for medicalization are willing to pass initiatives that give up their right to grow their own cannabis, in return for a highly regulated cannabis medicalization plan. Giving up the right to grow a plant from a seed in one’s own soil with ones own hands is a slippery slope that gives away the very ability to survive. Imagine those sweet tomatoes in the garden being taxed. We may be willing to let the government extort money from us through taxation and legalization, but how many inherent human rights will we allow the Government to take before we realize we have a DUTY to make things right?

c 2010 MariesRun
The Green Association for Sustainability

OREGON CANNABIS TAX ACT

Oregon Cannabis Tax Act by Tee Oliver,

Oregon’s House of Representatives voted Monday night to legalize the cultivation of hemp, becoming the sixth state to do so just this year.Oregon’s Senate voted 27 to 2 in favor of the new law last week.

Monday’s 46 to 11 House vote means that the measure will become law, barring an unlikely veto by Governor Ted Kulongoski. The move is part of a rapidly growing nationwide trend to liberalize laws relating to marijuana.

Hemp is a botanical cousin of marijuana, traditionally used to make clothing, rope and other durable fiber goods.“Hemp is a versatile, environmentally-friendly crop that has not been grown in the U.S. for over fifty years because of a misguided and politicized interpretation of the nation’s drug laws by the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra said in a statement.“While a new bill in Congress, HR 1866, is a welcome step, the hemp industry is hopeful that President Obama’s administration will recognize hemp’s myriad benefits to farmers, businesses and the environment.”

According to Vote Hemp, this year Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont and ”all passed resolutions or memorials urging Congress to allow states to regulate hemp farming.”California is at the forefront of the marijuana debate, with a movement growing to decriminalize marijuana for personal use in the state by 2010.But in Oregon’s debate, politicians were careful to distinguish between hemp and weed, and to highlight the fact that the new law would allow farmers to cultivate hemp, not grow marijuana.Some members of Oregon’s legislature displayed t-shirts reading “Senate Bill 676 is about rope, not dope.”

c 2009 Tee Oliver

Oregon is 6th State to legalize Hemp cultivation!

Oregon Cannabis Tax Act by Tee Oliver,

Oregon’s House of Representatives voted Monday night to legalize the cultivation of hemp, becoming the sixth state to do so just this year.Oregon’s Senate voted 27 to 2 in favor of the new law last week.

Monday’s 46 to 11 House vote means that the measure will become law, barring an unlikely veto by Governor Ted Kulongoski. The move is part of a rapidly growing nationwide trend to liberalize laws relating to marijuana.

Hemp is a botanical cousin of marijuana, traditionally used to make clothing, rope and other durable fiber goods.“Hemp is a versatile, environmentally-friendly crop that has not been grown in the U.S. for over fifty years because of a misguided and politicized interpretation of the nation’s drug laws by the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra said in a statement.“While a new bill in Congress, HR 1866, is a welcome step, the hemp industry is hopeful that President Obama’s administration will recognize hemp’s myriad benefits to farmers, businesses and the environment.”

According to Vote Hemp, this year Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont and ”all passed resolutions or memorials urging Congress to allow states to regulate hemp farming.”California is at the forefront of the marijuana debate, with a movement growing to decriminalize marijuana for personal use in the state by 2010.But in Oregon’s debate, politicians were careful to distinguish between hemp and weed, and to highlight the fact that the new law would allow farmers to cultivate hemp, not grow marijuana.Some members of Oregon’s legislature displayed t-shirts reading “Senate Bill 676 is about rope, not dope.”

c 2009 Tee Oliver