Very scary stuff. I will offer a moment of silence for everyone involved, including good officers for they know not what they do. I pray for this country and for the souls of our fellow country men.

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.”

“The lawsuits claim the federal government “entrapped” medical marijuana suppliers by seeming to give the okay to their operations in an October 2009 Justice Department memo. They also claim that the federal actions violate the 9th, 10th, and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution.” – Hawaii news daily

“The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms.” -NYTimes

50% of Americans polled, a record high, favor medical marijuana legislation. This is up 4% from last year and up 16% from 2006.

Investigators at Italy’s Instuto di Chemica Biomolecolare assessed the anti-cancer activity of various non-psychoactive cannabinoids – including cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), and cannabichromine (CBC) – in vivo and in vitro. Researchers reported that CBD acts as a more potent inhibitor of cancer cell growth than other cannabinoids, including THC, and noted that the compound is particularly efficacious in halting the spread of breast cancer cells by triggering apoptosis (programmed cell death).

Cannabigerol and CBC also possess anti-tumor properties, but lack the potency of CBD, they found.

“These results suggest the use in cancer therapy for cannabidiol,” investigators concluded.

Previous studies have shown cannabinoids to reduce the size and halt the spread of glioma (brain tumor) cells in animals and humans in a dose dependent manner. Separate preclinical studies have also demonstrated cannabinoids to inhibit cancer cell growth and selectively trigger malignant cell death in skin cancer cells, leukemic cells, lung cancer cells, and prostate carcinoma cells, among other cancerous cell lines.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500. Full text of the study, “Antitumor activity of plant cannabinoids with emphasis on the effect of cannabidiol on human breast carcinoma,” is available online at: http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/reprint/jpet.106.105247v1. Additional information on cannabinoids’ anti-cancer properties is available in NORML’s report, “Cannabinoids as Cancer Hope,” online at: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6814

The bill will legalize the possession of up to one ounce and the cultivation in up to a 25 square foot area by anyone over the age of 21. The bill does not affect or limit patients rights under Prop 215.

While I think there was one initiative that was better this one has a much higher likelihood of passing in the general election come November.

While the bill doesn’t explicitly allow for sales it does allow local governments to create a rules and regulations for marijuana businesses to operate under.

Register to vote here.

More information on the bill here.

The California Supreme Court today struck down the state’s limits on how much medical marijuana a patient can possess, concluding that the restrictions imposed by the Legislature were an unconstitutional amendment of a 1996 voter-approved initiative.

The decision means that patients and caregivers with a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana can now possess as much as is “reasonably related to the patient’s current medical needs,” a standard that the court established in a 1997 decision.

“I’m very pleased. They gave us exactly what we wanted,” said Gerald F. Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University who argued the case for Patrick K. Kelly, a medical marijuana patient from Lakewood who was convicted of possession and cultivation. “This makes it very clear that all of the rights of patients under the Compassionate Use Act are fully preserved.”

The initiative did not limit the amount of marijuana that a patient could possess or cultivate other than to require it be “personal medical purposes.”

In 2003, the Legislature passed a law intended to clarify the initiative and give guidance to patients and law enforcement officials. The Legislature decided that patients could have up to 8 ounces of dried marijuana and grow as many as six mature or 12 immature plants. The law also allowed a patient to have more if a doctor stated that amount was insufficient.

The court concluded that those restrictions improperly amended the Compassionate Use Act, which was approved by voters and includes no provision that allows the Legislature to amend it.

– John Hoeffel

Obviously this is great news for all of California medical marijuana patients and for our State as a whole as it shows courts are still willing to respect and defend the will of the people as expressed through our initiative system.

“It’s been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that marijuana has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical utility,” said Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D. Sunil, the medical student who spearheaded both the passage of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS is also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in the U.S. “The AMA has written an extensive, well-documented, evidence-based report that they are seeking to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help to educate the medical community about the scientific basis of botanical cannabis-based medicines.”

The change in stance follows a general trend in medical society as well as government to be more open medical marijuana. In February of 2008 the American College of Physicians (ACP), which is the second largest physician’s group after the AMA adopted a resolution calling for an “evidence-based review of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance to determine whether it should be reclassified to a different schedule.” “The two largest physician groups in the U.S. have established medical marijuana as a health care issue that must be addressed,” said Caren Woodson, the ASA Government Affairs Director . “Both organizations have underscored the need for change by placing patients above politics.”

While the CSAPH report has not been released officially to the public, AMA documentation indicates that it: “(1) provides a brief historical perspective on the use of cannabis as medicine; (2) examines the current federal and state-based legal envelope relevant to the medical use of cannabis; (3) provides a brief overview of our current understanding of the pharmacology and physiology of the endocannabinoid system; (4) reviews clinical trials on the relative safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis and botanical-based products; and (5) places this information in perspective with respect to the current drug regulatory framework.”

Feel free to check them out and see what others say about us or leave a review.