by Julia Peterson

 
Right after college I started working at a medical marijuana doctor’s office in San Francisco’s SOMA district. I did patient intakes, where I asked intrusive questions to strangers about their medical histories, their medical records, and why they wanted to use medical marijuana.
I met elderly people with chronic pain and veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I met the kind of people whose endearing stories have won the sympathy of 18 states where medical marijuana is legal.
I also met the patients who the medical marijuana movement rarely highlights—patients under 18. I mostly hated my job, but meeting those 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds and their parents made me really proud of where I worked.
Moms and dads who brought in their teenage children were easy to spot in the waiting room. They all looked the same, they clutched thick stacks of medical records to their chests, their eyes darting around the room, wondering who’s judging them. They downloaded the intake form off our website and neatly typed out the answers, which almost nobody does.
 
Full Article:
http://www.ladybud.com/2013/07/17/teenagers-the-medical-marijuana-patients-you-dont-hear-about/

RUN FROM THE CURE: The Rick Simpson Story – A Film by Christian Laurette. The original independent film that started a global shift in the way we view cancer medicine.

Project Summary

Hi. My name is Christian Laurette. I am the Producer/Director of RUN FROM THE CURE: The Rick Simpson Story, the FREE Internet documentary that shows you how to rid your body of diseases and illnesses such as cancers and many many others, while avoiding the dangers of cancer-causing treatments like chemotherapy and radiations… using only ingested, vapourized, and/or topical applications of cannabis oil medicine.
The campaign to raise this funding is crucial to my producing the film to its full potential, complete with science gurus and healed patients… we’ll explore how cannabis kills cancers and restores normal body functions from diseased states of being, and we’ll look at why our world governments and cancer societies have ignored their own research in favor of eliminating the most medicinal plant on earth from medicine.
The implications of such a healing plant reach all the way around the world. The list of healing applications of cannabis oil for disease seems to grow by the day. Please help me plant a seed that will grow forever on the World Wide Web. Help me to help the next mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, grandchild, nephew, aunt, uncle, coworker, friend… to live on and tell their true stories of survival using this miracle plant extract.
“Cannabis isn’t illegal because it makes you high… it is illegal because it makes you well.” – Christian Laurette
 
Read the rest here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/run-from-the-cure-2-documentary-film

by TheJointBlog

 
A new study published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology has found that delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – one of the prime compounds in cannabis – can potentially stop organ transplant rejections from taking place.
 
Full Article:
http://thejointblog.com/new-study-cannabis-may-prevent-organ-transplants-from-being-rejected/
 

By Paul Joncich

 
LAS VEGAS — Twelve years after Nevada voters approved medical marijuana, the state is finally getting the mechanisms in place to sell it.
By the time the dispensaries open in the Silver State, the number of Nevadans carrying medical marijuana cards is expected to increase more than tenfold.
Entrepreneurs looking to cash in are coming out of the woodwork.
State Sen. Tick Segerblom said he’s getting call after call from people eager to get into Nevada’s medical marijuana business.
 
Full Article:
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/22845360/nevada-preparing-way-for-medical-pot-shops

By Dennis Romero

LA Weekly

 
Marijuana advocates are taking their cause for legalization all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, they announced today.
The group Americans for Safe Access said it would challenge a U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit decision turning down its argument that marijuana should be downgraded from a federal “schedule I” outlaw drug:
ASA said it filed a “petition for writ of certiorari,” essentially an appeal, with the U.S. Supreme Court today that could prod the high court to consider whether marijuana is indeed among the nation’s most dangerous, most unusable drugs.
The court does not have to consider the case. If it doesn’t, the lower court’s ruling would stand.
Schedule 1 is reserved for those hardcore substances like heroin that have no business in a doctor’s office. Even cocaine, which has some medical uses despite its tough street punishments, is not a schedule 1 drug.
A downgrade of marijuana would quasi-legalize it on a federal level, essentially, opening it up to limited medical uses.
 
Full Article:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/07/marijuana_supreme_court_suit_asa_schedule_1.php

Nick Dial

 
Despite the fact that voters in Arizona passed Proposition 203 in 2010 in favor of medical marijuana, there continues to be a push by those opposed. I often read statements from the opposition that simply don’t stand up to objective scrutiny. I am a former police officer who is now disabled. While I appreciate all opinions, I feel it’s paramount that debate be based on facts and logic and not simple emotion fueled by ideology.
When working as a police officer, you get used to the concept of putting emotions aside and going where facts lead you, and this is no different. As a sufferer of Crohn’s disease, I take notice when people feel the need to dictate to me and my fellow Americans how we should handle our health.
Full Article:
http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2013/07/15/arizona-medical-marijuana-program-a-product-of-lies/

Tori LaChapelle

 
Diane Fornbacher, Publisher of Ladybud Magazine, recently posed a question online asking how people felt about the advice given to so many activist parents when it comes to having their family’s safety threatened by bad marijuana laws. Oftentimes, these mothers are told to just “move to a legal state.”
One detail that struck me during the open and balanced online discussion was a judgmental undertone that appeared to be aimed by dissenters towards the parents who agreed with the advice.
Respondents in favor of moving overwhelmingly cited their children and the effect legal consequences would have on them as their reason to move. Some responding have had personal, devastating interaction with Child Protective Services (CPS) already and are suffering the consequences. It is unclear if any of the parents responding in dissent have had CPS experiences.
 
Full Article:
http://www.ladybud.com/2013/07/15/just-move-to-a-state-where-its-legal-one-marijuana-moms-response/

By Anna-Lena Roth

 
The university town of Göttingen is getting greener and greener. But not everyone is pleased: The new plants sprouting up in parks, planter boxes and gardens across the city aren’t part of an official city-beautification project. They’re part of a pro-marijuana protest.
In early June, a group calling itself “A Few Autonomous Flower Children” spread several kilograms of marijuana seeds throughout the city. Only now are the fruits of their labor beginning to emerge from the soil. “We can’t set eyes on this useful and beautiful plant because it’s absolutely forbidden in Germany to grow it,” the group wrote in a letter claiming responsibility for the action. And they say that’s not right.
 
Full Article:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/pro-marijuana-protest-group-sows-cannabis-seeds-across-goettingen-a-910750.html

Renita Tisha Pinto, Health Me Up

 
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/No_more_Death_Penalty_for_Cannabis_Spare_Thitima_Khongnuns_life/?rc=fb&pv=10