The president of a medical marijuana advocacy group said Friday he will remain in that position despite a judge’s order that he no longer use the drug.
Chris Lindsey was sentenced in Missoula to five years of probation and ordered not to use marijuana after pleading guilty to conspiracy to maintain a drug premises for his role in a dispensary raided in 2011.
Lindsey was one of four partners in Montana Cannabis, a dispensary with locations across the state that was raided in a federal crackdown on large pot operations.
Lindsey also is an attorney and president of the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, an advocacy group that filed a lawsuit against medical marijuana restrictions passed by the Legislature in 2011. The group also organized a voter referendum that failed to recall the law.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ordered Lindsey to undergo regular drug testing, complete 200 hours of community service, stay away from firearms and forfeit $288,000 in bank accounts held under the name Montana Caregivers Association.
Lindsey said he intends to remain as the head of Montana Cannabis Industry Association and has the blessing of its board.
 
Full Article:
http://www.necn.com/01/04/13/Montana-Cannabis-partner-sentenced-to-pr/landing_health.html?&apID=624c7dd4f6cc47479880254212ec7cff
 

Posted by Johnny Green

 
A number of Show-Me Cannabis supporters from across the state have now written letters and submitted them to papers in their areas. We are also collecting these letters on our website as part of a new feature called Missourians Speak Out. This section will be devoted to supporter-submitted content explaining why you think we should end cannabis prohibition.
This isn’t just limited to letters, either. If you use cannabis medically and want to tell your story, we’d like to hear it. If you have been abused by the criminal justice system and want to prevent others from enduring the same, let us know about. If you fled to another state because of Missouri’s draconian cannabis laws, remind the people of Missouri how the state’s unjust laws forced you to become a refugee.
 
Full Article:
http://www.theweedblog.com/missourians-speak-out-against-cannabis-prohibition/

By Rebecca Onion

 
 

By NORML

 
The availability of cannabis retail outlets in The Netherlands is not associated with the greater incidences of cannabis use or an increase in the intensity of the public’s consumption of marijuana, according to a study published in the European Journal of Criminology.
 
Full Article:
http://www.thedailychronic.net/2013/14140/amsterdam-marijuana-retail-outlets-not-associated-with-rise-in-use/

By Brittany Anas

Bongo Love, of Lafayette, takes a hit of marijuana from a vaporizer while sitting next to Kyrie Wozab, of Louisville, on Wednesday at the Hive Co-Op. (JEREMY PAPASSO)
 
By day, The Front Tea & Art Shop sells papier-mache piggy banks, handmade flutes and elaborate carvings alongside tea leaves and hemp coffee.
By night, the eclectic cottage at the corner of S. Public Road and Cleveland Street becomes the Hive Co-Op, billed as Colorado’s first cannabis-friendly coffee and tea shop, where customers can gather to smoke pot or use vaporizers.
The co-op is BYOC: bring your own cannabis. There’s a 1-ounce limit, $5 cover charge and 21-years-of-age requirement with a valid ID. Oh, and a point of decorum — former Lafayette dispensary owner Veronica Carpio, who runs the place, prefers the word “cannabis” over “marijuana.”
Full Article:
http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_22301222/cannabis-friendly-coffee-and-tea-shop-opens-lafayette?source=most_viewed#axzz2GwnS8UPD
 

By Nick Miller
nickam@newsreview.com
 
Enough with the doctors’ prescriptions and medicated gummy worms—how much money can California and Sacramento rake in if marijuana is legalized?
It’s a question political leaders and traditional media outlets are not just quietly wondering—they’re straight-up shouting it out loud on the heels of Colorado and Washington’s big free-weed moment.
Because, frankly, the payday’s looking pretty sweet. Up north in Washington, its Office of Financial Management estimated in August 2012 that legalization would generate the state more than $500 million in tax revenue annually just through the implementation of a pot tax. And that’s just special tax revenue alone, not total economic impact.
 
Full Article:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/billion-dollar-doobie/content?oid=8724062

by John Hopperstad

 
Now that marijuana is legal in the state, farmers and others across Washington are starting to look into the idea of growing pot.
When voters on Nov. 6 approved the legalization of marijuana, the state began work on how to regulate and license grow operations and retail stores. It is expected to take more than a year before the rules and regulations are in place.
The owner of a pig farm on Ebey Island in Everett sees a lot of potential in adding a pot crop to his operations.
“Farming is a game of pennies,” pig farmer Bruce King said. “You don’t really make a lot of money at farming.”
King said pigs have been profitable, but growing marijuana could be a jackpot.
Just one acre could yield 2,700 pounds, “and at the current retail price, that’s about 75,000 bucks.”
King said he’s never tried marijuana or any other drug, but now that pot is legal, he wants to be first in line for the permit to grow it.
 
Full Article:
http://q13fox.com/2013/01/02/everett-pig-farmer-growing-pot-would-smell-pretty-sweet/

 
My name is Jacqueline Patterson and I am a human rights advocate who uses cannabis (marijuana) therapeutically to mitigate (among other things) my very severe stutter.  Born with cerebral palsy, I have always had very limited use of my right side, tension, painful muscle spasms, and speech spasms.  I was in my teens when I found that cannabis made me feel better and stutter less but didn’t think of myself as a patient until I was in my twenties and a parent.
 
I could not, in good conscious, teach my children that it was acceptable to break a law that one wasn’t willing to work to fix so I began visiting my legislators in Missouri, where I lived at the time, and expanded my advocacy to include Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. My work in Iowa led to my involvement in the Showtime documentary “In Pot We Trust” (which you can youtube to see the effect that cannabis has on my stutter) and my participation in the movie enabled me to become a more effective advocate: I’m excited to say that this year, I am turning my attention to the Southern states beginning with Tennessee.
 
At the beginning of January, I will be traveling to Memphis to meet with would-be patients and organizing a small group to lobby legislators to introduce a medical cannabis bill or reintroduce last year’s bill.  It is crucial, in the instance of something as controversial as medical cannabis, to make face to face contact with politicians, to show them that patient protection is vital to the virtues of compassion and justice. The federal government, unbeknownst to many people, gives monthly marijuana to four patients as part of an “investigational new drug program” instigated in the 70’s and closed by the first Bush administration in the 90’s tragically in response to thousands of applications from ill and dying AIDS patients seeking relief from nausea and wasting syndromes.  Cannabis saves lives, kills cancerous cells, and improves the quality of existence for millions of people in our great nation and if there is one belief I hold to be true, it is that the rights of of American belong to every American.  It is in this spirit that I speak out for those who cannot or who are too afraid to speak for themselves.
 
In the past, I have always paid my own advocacy expenses, however, the high cost of living in California (where medical cannabis is legal) limits my ability to do this.  I hope that I have supporters who believe enough in the rights of an individual to utilize a safe effective herb to alleviate his/her pain and heal his/her body to contribute to my work.
 
http://www.gofundme.com/1rf6o8
 

Posted by Johnny Green
 
If you are facing prosecution for cannabis, my heart goes out to you. You are on the front lines of marijuana prohibition, and it’s extremely unfortunate that you have to face prosecution for doing something so harmless. Below is a message from a person in your shoes, urging you to keep fighting.

 
http://www.theweedblog.com/a-message-to-cannabis-defendants-from-a-cannabis-defendant/
 

By Beverly Fortune — bfortune@herald-leader.com

Men worked in a hemp processing plant in Versailles circa 1920. Advocates say growing hemp again could help the state’s economy.
 
For advocates of reviving industrial hemp production in Kentucky, the state’s past as a leading hemp producer shows the crop’s potential.
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul are among those pushing to revive industrial hemp in the state.
It’s ironic, Comer said in a recent interview, that until the Civil War, Kentucky led the nation in industrial hemp production.
The earliest settlers westward brought hemp seed in their baggage, James F. Hopkins points out in A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. During the early 1800s, Kentucky hemp fibers were in demand for rope, sailcloth and rough fabrics used to wrap bales of cotton and make pants that were called Kentucky jeans.
Lexington was at the center of that production.
In 1838, there were 18 rope and bagging factories in Lexington that employed 1,000 workers, according to research by Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter.
Lexington’s John Wesley Hunt, the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies, made his fortune growing hemp and manufacturing the fibers into rope, said Jamie Millard, former president of the Lexington History Museum.
One of Hunt’s factories was in downtown Lexington near North Broadway and West Third Street, Millard said.
“Hemp was the main cash crop of the state up until the Civil War, much more than tobacco was,” said Klotter, state historian and a professor of history at Georgetown College.
 
Full Article:
http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/01/2461252/advocates-of-industrial-hemp-point.html