Recreational

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Regular marijuana smokers are no more likely to develop lung cancer than those who smoke only occasionally, according to a new study. The study's results back up those of other large-scale studies.

The finding of no significant increase in lung cancer risk held true whether marijuana users smoked once, twice, or more each day, and regardless of how many years they had smoked, Dr. Li Rita Zhang reported at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research, writes Michele G. Sullivan of the Oncology Report Digital Network.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

History was made on Wednesday as the Colorado Legislature gave final approval to a bill asking voters to tax recreational marijuana, moving the Mile High State closer to becoming the first in the the U.S. to pass laws regulating legal cannabis.

The Colorado Senate on Wednesday morning approved the tax measure and another bill spelling out rules for marijuana stores and sent both the the House, reports John Ingold at The Denver Post. The House then quickly passed House Bill 1318, the bill on cannabis taxes, and sent it to Governor John Hickenlooper's desk.

House members will now take up the second measure, covering rules for the pot stores.

The Senate's Wednesday morning marijuana votes came with little discussion. Only Mark Scheffel (R-Parker) stood to speak about the bills on Wednesday, in contrast with Tuesday's lengthy debates on both bills.

Sen. Scheffel said he has reservations about allowing more open and legal access to marijuana (apparently disregarding the fact that the voters of the state obviously have no such reservations). Scheffel claimed he worried about the impact of marijuana legalization "on the kids," but decided to support the tax bill anyway.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Marijuana legalization in Colorado "appeared to be in serious trouble" Monday night, according to The Associated Press. But the late-night effort fell short.

A bipartisan group of state senators late on Monday raced a midnight deadline to possibly repeal retail cannabis legalization. It was a last-moment plan, because lawmakers on Wednesday conclude their work for the year.

Facing the threat of a filibuster and being outvoted in the House, state senators gave up the repeal plans and adjourned Monday just before 10 p.m. without advancing the repeal, the AP reports.

The possibility of repeal arose after the Senate had given initial approval to a cannabis DUI blood-limit standard that they had rejected several times before, including twice this year.

The repeal measure was described by Senate President John Morse as an attempt to "get the marijuana industry's attention" and urge their support for taxes, which will require another vote this fall because of Colorado tax law.

"Here is the inherent problem: The marijuana industry has no incentive to support a tax increase it promised voters," claimed Morse.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Cincinnati mayoral candidate Jim Berns, a Libertarian, has announced his support for the re-legalization of marijuana.

"The vast majority of Americans do not realize that the USA became a great country before marijuana was criminalized in the 1930s as a way to discriminate against Mexican-Americans and blacks moving from the south to the north," Berns said, reports WCPO.

Bern said he supports Ohio Rep. Robert Hagan's proposal to legalize marijuana for medical use, and also a second proposal which would allow people 21 and older to buy and use cannabis. He said he agrees with Hagan's idea that too much money is spent on the War On Drugs with little progress to show for it.

"Over and over I heard stories how loved ones got into trouble with the law for using marijuana, a substance of little danger compared to alcohol," Berns said. "These stories illustrate how we are making a serious health problem into a tragedy for families and the community.

"Over 300 Ohioans are killed in alcohol related traffic accidents each year," Berns said. "According to DrugFacts.org, of the over two million people who died in 2009 in the U.S., none were from the use of marijuana."

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

A Colorado Senate committee is expected to vote on legal marijuana regulations and taxes Friday as the deadline for such a decision is closing in.

Lawmakers have until Wednesday to come up with regulations and tax rates for marijuana, newly legal since state voters approved Amendment 64 in November, reports The Denver Channel.

Members of the Legislature have clashed over whether to set a marijuana blood limit for drivers, and whether to limit the size of growing operations and the number of cannabis outlets.

If the Senate Finance Committee approves the regulations and taxes on Friday, the full Senate must still debate the bills. Senators may work over the weekend -- an unusual move -- to get the job done.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

An Ohio lawmaker has introduced two proposals, one of which would allow patients with certain conditions to use marijuana medicinally, and another which would provide Ohioans the chance to legalize recreational marijuana at the ballot box.

Rep. Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown) introduced the proposals at the statehouse on Thursday, reports 10tv.com.

House Bill 153 would allow patients to use marijuana to treat medical ailments with their doctor's authorization.

The other measure, House Joint Resolution 5, would provide state residents with the opportunity for a statewide vote to legalize and tax cannabis. The measure is based on Colorado's successful legalization measure from last year, Amendment 64, according to Rep. Hagan's office.

"With billions upon billions spent on the War On Drugs with little progress to show for it, it is time for more sensible drug policy in this country," Rep. Hagan said. "This issue deserves a Yes or No vote by the people."

(Graphic: The Weed Blog)

Group of legislators will join local advocates to discuss the measure at a pre-hearing news conference in the State House Welcome Center Friday

Bipartisan group of 35 legislators co-sponsoring bill to establish a legal market for businesses to sell marijuana to adults 21 and older

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

The Maine Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety will hold a hearing Friday at 10 a.m. ET Friday, May 3, on a bill that would make possession of limited amounts of marijuana legal for adults 21 and older and establish a system in which marijuana is regulated and taxed similarly to alcohol.

"A majority of Americans are ready to move beyond marijuana prohibition, and this bill presents our legislature with a golden opportunity to take the initiative to develop a sensible new approach," said David Boyer, Maine political director for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). "I hope members of the legislature will keep in mind our state motto, 'Dirigio' or 'I lead,' when hearing testimony and casting their votes on this bill.

"Marijuana is objectively far less harmful than alcohol for the consumer and for society," Boyer said. "People are fed up with laws that punish adults for making the safer choice."

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Alaska is poised to become the next battleground in the state-by-state push to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

Almost 40 years ago, back in 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that adults have a constitutional right to possess and smoke marijuana for personal use in their own homes, reports Becky Bohrer of The Associated Press. Then in the late 1990s, Alaska became one of the first wave of states to legalize the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.

But marijuana law reform then sputtered in the state; residents in 2004 turned down a ballot measure which would have legalized marijuana, in in 2006 the state passed a law re-criminalizing possession of even small amounts of pot.

But supporters say attitudes towards weed have loosened in the past decade, and that they have a real chance in Alaska.

The proposal would make it legal for adults 21 and older to use and possess up to an ounce of marijuana, but not in public. It would set out provisions for legal cultivation and establish an excise tax.

"The whole initiative, as you can tell, is scaled down to be as palatable as possible," said one of the sponsors, Bill Parker.

If the initiative is accepted by the state, supporters will have until January to gather more than 30,000 signatures required to qualify for the 2014 primary ballot.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Behind the scenes, Colorado lawmakers are talking about introducing a measure that could repeal marijuana legalization in the state, according to advocacy groups on both sides of the issue.

State lawmakers are considering a bill to tax newly legal marijuana by more than 30 percent. Some of them want to add a caveat to the tax proposal -- that cannabis won't be legal anymore unless voters approve the taxes in November.

Legalization supporters called a Friday morning news conference to decry the effort, reports John Ingold at The Denver Post. "Numerous" lawmakers are looking at putting a measure before voters that would repeal marijuana legalization in Colorado if voters don't agree to a measure on marijuana taxes this November, said Mason Tvert, one of the authors of Amendment 64, the initiative which legalized cannabis.

The tax measure, which was approved by one legislative committee on Thursday and another on Friday, would place state sales and excise taxes on marijuana that could reach 30 percent of the retail price.

So far, no lawmakers have publicly mentioned a proposal to repeal legalization.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

The pro-marijuana movement is making inroads in some unexpected places, with a new survey showing almost half of young Christians in the United States favor legalizing cannabis.

In the poll, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 50 percent of self-identified Christian young adults ages 18 to 29 favor pot legalization, with 44 percent opposed. By way of contrast, only 22 percent of Christian senior citizens who took part in the survey said they favor legalization.

"While most religious Americans overall continue to oppose the legalization of marijuana, the generational sea change on this issue is also shifting the ground inside churches," said Robert P. Jones, CEO at PRRI. "Christian young adults are twice as likely as Christian senior adults to say both that marijuana should be legal and that using marijuana is morally acceptable."

A bigger percentage of young Christians say they find smoking cannabis to be morally acceptable compared with the general population, interestingly enough. Fifty-two percent of young Christians said it's OK to smoke pot, compared with 49 percent of all Americans.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Coloradans who test positive for marijuana can be fired from their jobs, even if their marijuana use was legal under state law, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.

The court in Thursday's split decision said marijuana use is still prohibited by the federal government, even though medical marijuana and adult cannabis use has been legalized by Colorado's voters, reports Steven K. Paulson at the Huffington Post.

"For an activity to be lawful in Colorado, it must be permitted by, and not contrary to, both state and federal law," the appeals court ruled.

The decision stems from the case of Brandon Coats, a 33-year-old telephone operator for Dish Network, based in Englewood. Coats, a quadriplegic, has been a medical marijuana patient in Colorado since 2009; he was paralyzed in a car crash as a teen.

He was fired after failing a company drug test in 2010, even though his employer didn't claim Coats was ever impaired on the job. He sued to get his job back, but his claim was dismissed by a trial court in 2011. That judge agreed with Dish Network that medical marijuana isn't a "lawful activity."

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

The Bremerton Police Department, along with many other law enforcement agencies around Washington State, is not training its new police dog how to sniff out marijuana. After voters legalized marijuana last November, Dusty is the first drug detection dog in Kitsap County who won't be looking for pot.

But in the unlikely event that cannabis once again becomes illegal in Washington, it would be easy to train 18-month-old Dusty accordingly, said Bremerton Police Officer Dahle "Duke" Roessel. "We can train them on marijuana in a weekend," Roessel said, reports Josh Farley at the Kitsap Sun.

The Washington State Patrol won't be training future drug detection dogs to find marijuana, either, according to spokesman Bob Calkins.

"It's problematic because the dogs could alert on a legal amount of marijuana," Calkins explained. "And then we're violating someone's privacy."

There's a concern that if a dog were to find a valuable piece of evidence because he had alerted on a legal amount of marijuana, all the evidence might be thrown out in court, according to Calkins.

For example, if a dog sniffs out a legal amount of marijuana and then a gun used in a murder is found along with it, a judge could rule the gun isn't admissible in court.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Funny how everyone in Washington suddenly seems to be a marijuana expert, now that the herb is legal in the Evergreen State. In one of the latest examples of how an advanced cluelessness can make its way into the press, prosecutors and crime lab scientists are claiming that the differentiation between marijuana and hemp in the state's legal marijuana law could make it impossible to go after any pot "crimes" at all.

The problem supposedly stems from a part of I-502 meant to distinguish marijuana from industrial hemp, which is grown for its fiber and seed oil. Washington law now defines marijuana as having more than 0.3 percent of the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, delta-9 THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

Scientists (who really should know better) with the state crime lab clain that "often," even potent marijuana can have less than 0.3 percent, claiming that it's only when heated or burned that "another compound" turns into delta-9 THC.

"That means if people get caught with more than an ounce of marijuana, or if police bust illicit grow operations, prosecutors might not be able to prove the plants or material seized meets the definition of marijuana, The Associated Press inaccurately reported on Wednesday.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

With the tide of public opinion seemingly ready to sweep marijuana prohibition into the dustbin of history, the bipartisan Congressional Research Service, which works exclusively for Congress, has released a legal analysis aimed at helping legislators understand the ramifications of legalization.

The analysis found that there may be some wiggle room when it comes to interpreting the Controlled Substances Act, which makes marijuana illegal for any purpose under federal law, reports Bob Berwyn at the Summit County Voice.

One section of the CSA seems to indicate that "Congress did not intend to entirely occupy the regulatory field concerning controlled substances or wholly supplant traditional state authority in the area … States remain free to pass laws relating to marijuana, or other controlled substances, so long as they do not create a “positive conflict” with federal law, such that the two laws “cannot consistently stand together,” the analysis found.

The analysis gives Congress some solid legal footing to act, according to U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado). The report finds that the federal government cannot force states to prohibit cannabis use, according to a statement on Polis's website.

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

Colorado's first legal 4/20 ended badly on Saturday as two people were shot and wounded at a rally in Denver, disrupting the first celebration of marijuana's symbolic holiday since voters approved legalization last November.

A man and a woman, each between 20 and 30 years old, were each shot in the leg, reports Keith Coffman of Reuters, but those wounds weren't life threatening, Denver police said on Twitter. A third victim, a juvenile, was grazed by a bullet and walked into a nearby hospital, police tweeted.

Officers were looking for two suspects in the shootings, which happened as the Civic Center Park rally was drawing to a close, causing thousands of people to flee the area.

The investigation into the shootings during Saturday's rally is being turned over to the Denver Police Department's Gang Unit, according to a tweet the department posted on Sunday, reports Kim Nguyen at The Denver Channel.

Police described the first gunman as a light complexioned black man, about 6 feet tax and weighing about 180 pounds. He was wearing a gray hoodie, black pants and a Carolina blue baseball cap.