By GWEN FLORIO of the Missoulian

Medical marijuana grower Chris Williams awaits a jury verdict in a federal drug and weapons case in Helena in September.
 
Medical marijuana grower Chris Williams is seeking a new trial after being convicted in a federal drug and weapons case that carries the potential for a prison sentence of up to 92 years. He’s appealing, but his supporters aren’t waiting for the justice system.
They’ve taken his cause to the Internet, in the form of online petitions filed with the White House, with SignOn.org, and with Care2.com. Together, they’ve gathered close to 40,000 signatures nationwide.
“The sentence shocks the conscience,” said Chris Lindsey, a former business partner of Williams who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a federal drug conspiracy charge. Williams rejected a similar plea agreement.
“Look at (former Penn State assistant football coach) Jerry Sandusky,” Lindsey said. “For 45 counts of child sexual abuse, he gets 30 years. Chris Williams is going to get three times that for being a medical marijuana provider. It doesn’t make any logical sense.”
 
Full Article:
http://missoulian.com/news/local/petitions-seek-to-free-montana-medical-marijuana-figure/article_7f4de794-3502-11e2-94b4-0019bb2963f4.html

Javier Encalada

 
NIMBIN’s Hemp Embassy has reacted with delight to the announcement of a parliamentary inquiry on the use of medicinal cannabis in NSW.
A cross-party committee will look at whether marijuana can be used as an effective and safe form of pain relief for sufferers of chronic illnesses.
Labor’s leader in the NSW Upper House Luke Foley moved the motion to set up the inquiry.
Mr Foley said it will also examine what legal implications surround the medical use of cannabis and how it might be supplied.
The NSW Opposition says an Upper House inquiry into the medical use of marijuana will help the debate to be dominated by evidence, instead of dogma.
The Hemp Embassy’s vice-president, Max Stone, said the organisation is “delighted because we have been pushing really hard for this issue. The only reason they are talking about this in Parliament is because of all our years of activism.”
“We are delighted that the NSW Parliament is looking at the writing on the wall,” he said.
 
Full Article:
http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/medicinal-cannabis-review-delights-hemp-embassy/1633781/

By Beth Nakamura, The Oregonian

Mykayla Comstock, 7, is one of the youngest patients in the Oregon’s medical marijuana program. Mykayla’s mother, Erin Purchase, gives her the drug to treat symptoms related to her cancer treatment. Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian 
 
Full Article:
http://photos.oregonlive.com/photo-essay/2012/11/medical_marijuana_for_oregon_c.html

By GLENN TOWNES
 
A joint a day will keep the cancer away? It may be crass to promote grass, but a new study released by officials at Harvard University revealed that weed appears to destroy or inhibit the growth of malignant cells associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a condition common in patients with HIV/AIDS.
 
Full Article:
http://www.amsterdamnews.com/health_care/marijuana-may-be-effective-in-fight-against-hiv-aids/article_de82f3ec-3419-11e2-a705-001a4bcf887a.html

Hull Daily Mail
BUILDING a home using hemp is a creative way to head in the green direction.
At the Voase family farm near Brandesburton, hemp has played a key part in building work.

Working towards a greener, more eco-friendly way of living, the arable farmers are hemp growers and processors.
With a full crop of hemp and the equipment in place to process it, in 2009 the Voases started on their first hemp project – to convert a barn.
According to the family, there was talk of hemp being good for building, because one of the big drivers is its carbon-negative properties.
Creating a hempcrete mixture, you are on to a winner with this material.
There is more CO2 absorbed by the plant during cultivation, and during construction the walls will continue to absorb CO2.
Now, the family is enjoying an eco-friendly environment in their three-bedroom home.
Mr Voase said: “The hemp regulates its own humidity and in a three-bed house, we only have one log stove in the living room.
“It is cheap to heat and it is extremely light so you get a good insulation.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk/house-hemp-built/story-17379697-detail/story.html

By Donald Scarinci
 
The  legalization of marijuana may soon replace abortion as our society’s most controversial issue.  Like abortion, the debate never seems to end.
During the 1970s, a government commission recommended that marijuana use should not be criminal or subject someone to indictment  based on its findings that it posed very little risk to the public. However, President Nixon took a different direction, declaring all drug abuse as “public enemy number one in the United States.”
The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse was created in 1970 to determine how marijuana should be regulated under federal criminal law. When the Controlled Substances Act was passed, Congress tentatively classified it as a Class I substance; however, legislators also acknowledged that additional study was warranted to verify if it indeed warranted the law’s harshest designation.
After conducting extensive studies, the Commission found that many of the negative public opinions about marijuana were unfounded. “Looking only at the effects on the individual, there, is little proven danger of physical or psychological harm from the experimental or intermittent use of the natural preparations of cannabis,” the report stated. On the basis of its findings, the Commission also recommended that simple possession should be decriminalized, concluding:
[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only ‘with the greatest reluctance.’
Full Article:
http://www.politickernj.com/dscarinci/61215/marijuana-richard-nixon-s-fault

By JOCE DeWITT Corvallis Gazette-Times
Anndrea Hermann gives a presentation Oregon State University on Tuesday about the online course about industrial hemp that she will be offering spring term. (Andy Cripe | Corvallis Gazette-Times)
 
Industrial hemp expert Anndrea Hermann gave Oregon State University faculty members and students a sneak peek Tuesday at a class she’ll offer through OSU’s Ecampus about the benefits of uses of the plant.
The preview came in the form of a seminar titled “Industrial Hemp Today, Where We Are, Where We’re Going,” and it offered context for the online class, which will be offered this spring through the College of Forestry. It will focus on the botany and biology of hemp, as well as the implications of legal and social issues surrounding its use.
 
Full Article:
http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/education/seminar-homes-in-on-benefits-of-hemp/article_3a9b568e-337e-11e2-8779-001a4bcf887a.html?comment_form=true
 

by Debby Goldsberry

Eddy Lepp
 
After victories in Colorado, Washington, and Massachusetts, cannabis reform advocates have a lot to celebrate. But, with an annual estimate of 850,000 cannabis arrests, the fight to end the War on Cannabis is far from over. After all, 36 states and the federal government still incarcerate people for simple possession of cannabis. Last year, in a policy no longer supported by the voters, the feds locked up more than 100 people for simple possession alone.
“Thanksgiving is upon us and X-MASS right behind. Hard to believe but its my 4th set of holidays in prison. Sure hope Santa brings good news and I get out soon,” says federal pot prisoner Eddy Lepp, in his weekly letter to supporters.
Lepp is part of a smaller subgroup of arrestee’s, the more than 6200 people sentenced to mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana cultivation and sales each year. Lepp is a well-known medical cannabis advocate, and some would say, a boundary pushing dreamer. Back in 2004, he was arrested by the feds for openly cultivating several acres of medical cannabis for patients in Lake County, California. Now, he will spend ten years locked up in a federal penitentiary, unless advocates can change the laws faster.
Green Aid, an Oakland, California, based nonprofit group, helps cannabis arrestees and prisoners, like Lepp, who are caught between state laws that legalize cannabis and the “zero-tolerance” federal laws. A former pot prisoner himself, Rosenthal was arrested for cannabis cultivation in 2002, and fought back against a 20-year mandatory sentence. Ultimately spending only one day in jail, he is branded a federal felon for life. Green Aid coordinates regular fundraisers and runs on a volunteer staff. But, Rosenthal is noticeably disappointed with the efforts to raise funds for people like Lepp, saying less than 1% of the groups 11,000 facebook members donate. He says supporters think “the next person will do it. They will raise all the money. It’s too much bother. I can’t afford it.” This leaves pot prisoners and their families to fend for themselves at the holidays.
 
Full Article:
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2012/11/21/federal-pot-prisoners-will-not-be-home-for-the-holidays/

By Sam Parker

 
While in Britain, the medicinal qualities of cannabis is still treated with scepticism by a society fond of imagining pallid teenage boys crouched behind wheelie bins sucking yellow smoke through a modified Vimto bottle, in America, acceptance of the drug’s benefits is growing.
In the shadow of the Obama/Romney battle for America’s soul, two pieces of legislation were quietly passed legalising marijuana in Washington and Colorado, pathing the way for all kinds of sufferers to treat their pain with the naturally occurring weed.
Rewind three years, and one photographer had already set out to challenge the kinds of misconceptions about cannabis and its users that typically impinge rational discussion about its uses.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/21/cannabis-photography-project-robyn-twomey_n_2170904.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

By NELLIE ANDREEVA

 
The marijuana legalization movement gained major momentum in the recent November elections as measures to regulate the drug made it to the ballot in three Western states and passed in two — Colorado and Washington — with several others working on similar legislation. Now the grass-roots campaign will serve as the backdrop for a comedy in development at Fox. The Happy Tree, from former Entourage executive producers Rob Weiss, Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson, centers on a brilliant young corporate attorney who, after a nervous breakdown, quits his job and seeks a life of peace and serenity on Venice Beach only to find himself the unlikely voice for the marijuana “legalize it” movement.
 
Full Article:
http://www.deadline.com/2012/11/marijuana-legalization-comedy-series-development-fox-entrourage-producers/