Klara Marosszeky with farmers Connie and Lonnie Minos who have been growing the industrial hemp crop at Ashford.

ESTABLISHING a commercial hemp industry on the Sunshine Coast has been made an official policy of the Australian Independents Party after surprisingly strong support for the idea from the community.

But party officials say that while former cane land was the preferred site for hemp crops, their first priority would be getting the cane industry back on its feet.

A Daily online poll on May 15, which revealed a staggering 89% in favour of growing hemp, helped push the party towards its final decision.

Leader Dr Patricia Petersen, said the party’s own polling had shown a surprising 87% support.

“I was incredibly surprised. I spoke to a lot of people in Noosaville, especially a lot of elderly people, and there was so much support for the proposition,” she said.

“I could not find one elderly person against the idea.”

Full Article:

http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/new-party-sweetens-coast-farming-options/1873682/

PAT BOONE is more than in a metal mood – he‘s gone to pot!

The squeaky-clean ’50s crooner is singing the praises of marijuana, saying it’s helped his 36-year-old grandson cope with a debilitating injury.

While strongly opposed to “getting high,” the 78-year-old conservative Christian is making an exception for legal use for Ryan, son of Lindy Michaelis, one of Pat’s four daughters.

“Pat feels as long as it’s not being used for recreational purposes, and is used to help people cope with pain and anxiety, then it’s all right,” revealed a family friend.

A dozen years ago, Ryan was severely injured in a three-story fall through a skylight while sunbathing on the roof of his apartment.

One of Pat’s other daughters,Debby, famous for her ’70s hit “You Light Up My Life,” was first to get the terrifying news.

“Lindy was vacationing in Spain when it happened,” said the friend, “and she gets a call from her sister saying that Ryan had been in this terrible accident.

“He was so severely injured they didn’t think he would make it.”

Full Article:

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/exclusive-interview-pot-boone

The Israel Government has recently introduced new regulations on the medical marijuana program in the country, including limitations on what patients and conditions qualify for treatment. Now, doctors and patients are protesting the new restrictions. One of their methods; a hunger strike outside the home of Health Minister Yael German.

The new list of qualifying conditions is short, and many illnesses, such as Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma and psychiatric disorders are left off. In addition to the hunger strike, Dr. Ilya Reznick of the Reut Hospital in Tel Aviv (Forum Chairman), Dr. Jonathan Greenfeld, Director of the palliative oncology medicine service at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, Dr. Alan Flashman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr. Yakir Rotenberg of the Hadassah Medical Center, from the Doctors’ Forum for Safe Access to Cannabis, warn that the new law could cause patients who no longer qualify for medical marijuana to purchase drugs from illegal sources, stating in a letter to the Health Minister that the regulations are “arbitrary and discriminate among patients with different conditions without any logical explanation, and are liable to lead to damage to the continuity of treatment for some of them, contrary to the Patients’ Rights Law.”

Full Article:

http://www.theweedblog.com/patients-and-doctors-go-on-hunger-strike-in-israel-over-new-medical-marijuana-restrictions/

Assemblyman Steve Katz voted against safe access for medical marijuana patients, but doesn’t mind burning a joint in his car
[Courier Post Online]

Members of the hacktivist collective temporarily took down Katz’s site, katz4ny.com, on Wednesday morning. The site was still down as of 1:42 p.m. Pacific.

Katz was hit with a pot possession charge when an officer smelled weed after stopping him for going 80 miles an hour in a 65 mph zone on the New York State Thruway.

That was the 59-year-old Putnam County lawmaker’s first known pot bust, but oddly, he was arrested two times for allegedly mishandling dogs when he worked as a veterinarian. Both of those cases were dismissed.

Full Article:

http://tokesignals.com/anonymous-team-vendetta-takes-down-site-of-hypocritical-anti-weed-lawmaker/

DARE is No Longer Anti Marijuana But Can This Save the Unpopular Program

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or as it is more commonly known, D.A.R.E., is dropping marijuana from its curriculum. The international, federally funded program has been teaching the dangers of cannabis, among other things, to children ages 10 to 18 since its inception in 1983. Despite the lack of press release that might qualify a seemingly radical omission for a government institution such as D.A.R.E., the evident reasons are twofold.

First off, this report originally emerged in November exclusively from a fifth and sixth grade D.A.R.E. officer in Washington state. This was on the eve of the vote for initiative 502, legislators put forth to tax and regulate cannabis for medical use. This timing underscores the reconsideration of the drug in the national discourse. All that pre-2008 footage of Barack Obama talking about “starting a new conversation” on the supposed “gateway drug” has finally come to fruition, paradoxically, by abandoning one of the primary, government-regulated forums on the supposed ‘gateway drug’. This irony is even more rich when considering apparent, apples-to-apples comparisons with alcohol. That substance’s legality is not under debate, nor will it ever be again, yet D.A.R.E. continues to teach freely the negative impacts of this seemingly more prevalent drug. Given, it is a generally accepted fact that weed is a less dangerous than alcohol, but the federal government, considering the laws in place, has traditionally been the last bastion of hegemonic ignorance on this discrepancy.

Full Article:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/42679/d-a-r-e-is-no-longer-anti-marijuana-but-can-this-save-the-unpopular-program

MEXICO CITY — A comprehensive report on drug policy in the Americas released Friday by a consortium of nations suggests that the legalization of marijuana, but not other illicit drugs, be considered among a range of ideas to reassess how the drug war is carried out.

As we enjoy the incredible momentum within the cannabis law reform movement, it’s important to remember one of the founders of the movement. It’s hard to imagine being where we are today without the life and work of Jack Herer.

A longtime activist and champion of hemp, Jack wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, which was published in 1985 and has sold over 600,000 copies to date. The book chronicles that many uses of hemp and the story of why it was outlawed in the first place, along with its cannabis cousin, marihuana. It even provides a history of hemp and its long-standing place in society, especially in the first 150 years of the U.S. being a country.

“If you substitute marijuana for tobacco and alcohol, you’ll add eight to 24 years to your life.” — Jack Herer

Full Article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-/remembering-the-godfather_b_3282858.html

On Thursday, the Drug Policy Alliance will release An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs. This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and re-entry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education. The guide will be released at a forum on the Hill cosponsored by Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), both of whom fought for major drug policy reform at the local level before running for Congress and winning. This new generation of legislators has demonstrated that support for drug policy reform is no detriment to electoral success — and in fact that it can be a key asset.

Full Article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-piper/drug-war-exit-strategy_b_3281145.html

Dispensaries providing marijuana to doctor-approved patients operate in a number of states, but they are under assault by the federal government. SWAT-style raids by the DEA and finger-wagging press conferences by grim-faced federal prosecutors may garner greater attention, but the assault on medical marijuana providers extends to other branches of the government as well, and moves by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to eliminate dispensaries’ ability to take standard business deduction are another very painful arrow in the federal quiver.

The IRS employs Section 280E, a 1982 addition to the tax code that was a response to a drug dealer’s successful effort to claim his yacht, weapons purchases, and even illicit bribes as business expenses. Under 280E, individuals involved in the illicit sale of controlled substances — including marijuana, even medical marijuana in states where it is legal — cannot claim standard business expenses on their federal taxes.

“The 280E provision which requires certain businesses to pay taxes on their gross income, as opposed to their net income, is aimed at shutting down illicit drug operations, not state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries,” said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the medical marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access.” Nonetheless, the Obama Administration is using Section 280E to push these local and state licensed facilities out of business.”

Full Article:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/may/15/stopping_irs_war_medical_marijua