By TRIP GABRIEL

In the summer of 1952, hemp plants growing wild in a lot in downtown Louisville, Ky., were killed with chemical spray.
 
Attitudes are changing in surprising places. At a hearing on Monday in Frankfort, the Kentucky capital, the state police commissioner’s opposition to hemp growing was challenged by a former C.I.A. director, R. James Woolsey.
“The specter of people getting high on industrial hemp,” Mr. Woolsey said, “is pretty much exactly like saying you can get drunk on O’Doul’s.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us/13hemp.html?_r=0

Written by Gregory A. Hall

Sen. Rand Paul on Kentucky hemp bill: Sen. Rand Paul testifying to Ky. Senate Agriculture Committee in support of industrial hemp legalization bill.
 
A bill that would legalize growing hemp for industrial use cleared a state legislative committee Monday with a unanimous vote after three members of Kentucky’s federal delegation — including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. — testified for it.
The testimony by Paul and U.S. Reps. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, and Thomas Massie, R-4th District, marked a rare, if not unprecedented, occurrence for the Kentucky General Assembly.
All three said they would work at the federal level either to pass legislation legalizing industrial hemp or seeking a waiver of federal drug laws that currently classify the plant as a prohibited substance along with marijuana, a fellow member of the cannabis family.
 
Full Article:
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130211/NEWS0101/302040106/Hemp-bill-clears-committee-unanimously
 

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

Marijuana. (Jupiter Images)
 
A new study by CU Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson suggests stoned-driving limits don’t impact traffic fatalities. Rees said he and Anderson looked at fatality data from 16 states that adopted marijuana-limit laws between 1990 and 2010 and found no statistically significant difference between states that did and didn’t have such laws. “We cut the data a bunch of different ways and the estimate just came back zero zero, zero, zero, zero,” Rees said. ”
 
Full Article:
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22552419/studies-shed-more-light-debate-around-marijuana-impaired
 

By Norma Love

JIM COLE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Clayton Holton says his use of opiate painkillers is greatly reduced when he uses marijuana. He suffers from muscular dystrophy and has been in a wheelchair since he was 10.
 
At 27, Clayton Holton of Rochester is 5 feet 11 but weighs only 66 pounds.
Holton suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy that causes wasting syndrome and complete muscle loss. He has been in a wheelchair since he was 10. He struggles even to eat.
Six years ago, he ended up in a hospital and then a nursing home where he was given Oxycontin. Then friends helped him visit California, where medical use of marijuana is legal. He started using it for pain relief, and he gained 8 pounds.
Now, when he needs relief, he reaches for marijuana.

by Johnny Green

 
Below is information about a very worthy cause. Please consider helping these two hardworking activists get to Washington DC for the Americans For Safe Access Unity Conference. Jim Greig is set to get an award, so he HAS to be there!!!! Go get ‘em Oregon!
 
Full Article:
http://www.theweedblog.com/send-sam-and-jim-to-the-national-medical-cannabis-conference-in-d-c/
 

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon(Credit: AP/Rick Bowmer)
 
In 1973, Oregon rode the hippie wave to became the first state in the country to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. Within five years, eight other states had followed, but momentum soon lagged, and then reversed in the Reagan era.
Lately, however, it’s beginning to feel like the ’70s again, with numerous polls showing amajority of Americans in favor of legalizing marijuana and the recent referenda in Colorado and Washington to do just that.
Earl Blumenauer voted on that first decriminalization bill 40 years ago in Oregon — as a “child legislator,” he jokes — and now that he’s in Congress representing the state, he thinks we’re approaching a moment where things are about to speed up very quickly for drug policy reform advocates.
“It’s just come to a head,” he told Salon Thursday afternoon. “This is largely going to be resolved in the next five years.”
Blumenauer, along with Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, introduced legislation this weekto make the federal government treat cannabis like alcohol and let states decide whether to keep it illegal. And they think they have a real chance of getting somewhere this time.
 
Full Article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/why_congress_might_legalize_marijuana_this_time/

CTVNews.ca Staff

Pot activist Robert Erb, 60, says he will use his lottery winnings to help support the legalization of marijuana in B.C. November 10, 2012. (CTV)
A British Columbia pot activist is putting his money where his mouth is — literally — by putting up his lottery winnings in the fight to legalize marijuana in the province.
Bob Erb won a $25-million jackpot in November and, at the time, pledged to use some of his new-found wealth to support  cannabis decriminalization efforts.
Now, the 60-year-old has followed through on his promise, pledging up to $500,000 to match donations made to Sensible B.C. over the coming months.

“The biggest social injustice I’ve seen in all my entire lifetime is the criminalization and prohibition of marijuana,” Erb told CTV British Columbia on Friday.
Full Article:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/b-c-man-puts-lottery-win-towards-fight-to-legalize-cannabis-1.1149949

By: Samuel Jacobs and Alex Dobuzinskis

A woman buys a massive, totally legal, dagga joint at a shop in Washington.
 
The medical marijuana shop next to a tattoo parlor on a busy street in Los Angeles looks much like hundreds of other pot dispensaries that dot the city. Except for one thing: on the glass door — under a green cross signalling that cannabis can be bought there for medical purposes — is a sticker for the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), the largest retail union in the US.
The dispensary, the Venice Beach Care Centre, is one of three medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles that are staffed by dues-paying union members. Another 49 in the city plan to enter labour agreements with the UFCW this year, the union says.
Together, the dispensaries are a symbol of the growing bond between the nascent medical marijuana industry and struggling labour unions.

During the past few years unions, led by the UFCW, have played an increasingly significant role in campaigns to allow medical marijuana, now legal in California, 17 other states and Washington, DC.
In the November elections, UFCW operatives also helped get-out-the-vote efforts in Colorado, where voters approved a measure that made possession of one ounce (28.3g) or less of the drug legal for anyone 21 and older. Washington state approved a similar measure and both states require regulation of marijuana growers, processors and retailers.
Union officials acknowledge that their support stems partly from the idea that the marijuana industry could create hundreds of thousands of members at a time when overall union membership is shrinking.
 
Full Article:
http://business.iafrica.com/news/841496.html?p=1

by Phillip Smith
 
 
Bills that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana have been introduced in both houses of the Vermont legislature. A Senate bill, Senate Bill 48, was introduced late last month, and its House counterpart, House Bill 200, was introduced Tuesday.

The bills are not identical. The Senate bill would decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of pot by those 21 and over, while the more far-reaching House bill would decriminalize the possession of up to two ounces and the cultivation of to two mature and seven immature marijuana plants. Under both bills, people under 21 who are caught with pot would be treated like minors caught possessing alcohol.
The bills have tri-partisan support (Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives), with 39 cosponsors in the House and eight in the Senate. Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) has also repeatedly indicated strong support for a decriminalization bill.
 
Full Article:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/feb/07/vermont_marijuana_legalization_b

AUSTIN, Tex.—The American Botanical Council‘s (ABC) HerbalGram has a new cover herb: cannabis. For the first time in its 30-year history, the journal will feature the cannabis plant on its cover to accompany its cover story on Israel’s federal medicinal marijuana program.
“There is obvious growing social demand for and acceptance of medicinal cannabis, and for this, and other reasons, ABC has increased its cannabis coverage in recent years,” said Mark Blumenthal, ABC founder and executive director. “Now, more than 20 years since our first cannabis story, we have decided to recognize this important plant with the first-ever HerbalGram cannabis cover.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/news/2013/02/cannabis-abc-s-new-cover-herb.aspx