By Tessa Stuart

eggrole / Flickr
 
Inside 420 W. Pico Ave. in downtown L.A., patients can pick their treatment from a menu; the strains of marijuana have names like “skittles,” “sour diesel” and “sucker punch.” The main attraction at Kush Connection, though, is “Master Yoda” — known for a sweet, citrusy taste, and for delivering the smooth, powerful, full-body high that earned it the blue ribbon in the hybrid category at the Los Angeles Cannabis Cup.
The grower has warm memories of that day in February. “It was a personal crossroads for me,” he says of accepting the trophy from hip-hop group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony on the L.A. Center Studios stage.
After years of facing stigma for his work, he was finally being validated. Everyone was happy, no one was fighting, and the event was held out in the open, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

All that peace, love and transparency is poised to go up in one big cloud of smoke. Although L.A.’s Sept. 6 ban on dispensaries has been put on hold, police crackdowns seem inevitable, and paranoia is pervasive. The grower, who has taken pains to be legally compliant, says law enforcement has been staking out Kush Connection in recent weeks with a telephoto lens.
One might think that patients are stocking up, but the grower says it has been the opposite: Business is down 65 percent since the ban was announced July 24.
One answer to the chaos and uncertainty is to grow your own.
“If you go by the state attorney general’s guidelines, they don’t say anything about dispensaries,” says Robert Calkin, founder of the Cannabis Career Institute in North Hollywood. “What it does say in the attorney general’s guidelines is that we can create private groups of citizens who can grow and distribute amongst ourselves.”
 
Complete article here:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/09/how_to_grow_weed_in_los_angele.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hO5meenaso&feature=player_embedded

 
“People have and always will take intoxicants that provide pleasure and harm. But there are ways in which we can make that activity safer, less damaging to individuals, to society, to the world.”
 
Complete article here:
http://www.newint.org/features/2012/09/01/illegal-drugs/

 
JAMRUD, (Pakistan): Jam Bazaar in Pakistan is cramped with guns, pistols and marijuana, living proof of a booming market in what hawkers call the best medicine or “black gold” in the world.

Associated Press
 

Laurel Dewey – Author, Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden and the Jane Perry mystical crime thriller series

 
What if everything you were ever told and believed about a subject wasn’t true? What if the well-meaning, trusted and respected people who told you those lies were just parroting the propaganda that they heard?
That’s the exact dilemma I found myself in about three years ago. For most of my life, I bought into the grim and terrifying stories I heard about — dare I say it? — marijuana.
Whether they called it doobie, reefer, pot, Mary Jane or plain ol’ weed, I believed all those ominous voices when they warned me that marijuana could cause everything from brain damage to a craving for stronger drugs (i.e., the “gateway” theory.) And so as I got older, I just kept repeating the same marijuana mantras to others, convinced that I was right. “Marijuana is dangerous,” I told others. “Only brain dead stoners use it.”
Someone once said to me, “the further you get away from the facts, the easier they can turn into a myth.” Boy, is that the truth. It all started three years ago when I decided to finally research marijuana. If anything, I was determined to prove to myself and others that my concerns were valid. Living in Colorado where medical marijuana was legal to possess and grow once you qualified for a “red card”, I was surrounded by “pot shops.” Thanks to Amendment 20 in our State Constitution, these dispensaries grew and flourished faster than it takes a medical marijuana bud to mature. In Denver County alone, there are around 400 medical marijuana dispensaries, outnumbering the 375 Starbucks statewide. I freely admit that I mocked these businesses and rolled my eyes at the people who frequented them. So, on that summer day nearly three years ago, I decided to dig into this controversial plant and arm myself with even more information that would support my anti-marijuana stance.
But a strange thing kept happening. The more I dug into what some opponents refer to as “the green menace,” the more I continued to find research studies I wasn’t aware existed. Some of these studies had been buried — perhaps purposely — and made scientific claims about Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Sativa that I found almost too good to be true. For example, I read a 1974 study(published in 1975) that was conducted at the University of Virginia that proved that the cannabinoids in the cannabis plant shrunk cancerous tumors and killed cancer cells, leaving healthy cells alone. Even though it was there in black and white, I still didn’t buy it. So I kept investigating. I found that when I used the Internet search terms “cannabis+indica+healing+benefits,” I got a whooping 220,000 websites. When I added the word “medical” to that group of words, the field increased to 452,000.
For the next six months, I spent every spare moment researching “the Devil Weed.” Putting it bluntly, I was shocked. There was absolutely nothing “devilish” about it. All this remarkable information had been out there, waiting to be discovered and all I had to do was agree to view it with an open mind. I learned that Cannabis Indica had been compounded into liquid extracts in the late 1800’s and up until the early 1900’s. These extracts were recommended by medical doctors to alleviate everything from teething pain in infants to reducing the pain of arthritis and menstrual cramps.
I found out that contrary to what I’d been told, nobody has ever died from using marijuana in the thousands of years this plant has been available. In fact, I had no idea that its medical use dated back to around 2700 B.C. and was called a “superior” herb by the Emperor Shen-Nung (2737-2697 B.C.). I discovered that while I had been demonizing marijuana, thousands of people worldwide had been quietly and effectively curing or relieving a multitude of health problems, including Crohn’s disease, migraine headaches, chronic depression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, dementia, epileptic seizures, Parkinson’s disease and even AIDS. The more I researched and talked to pro-cannabis physicians, patients, researchers and historians who studied the plant, the more I heard incredible testimonials of recovery from illnesses and mental imbalances in addition to, as one patient told me, “just a better outlook on life.”
And that’s when I uncovered information that really challenged the stories I’d been told. People were using this “weed” to get off of opiates, alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine and other powerful drugs. Thus, it was gaining traction as “an exit drug,” instead of the “gateway drug.” Seniors were also secretly using it to improve their cognition. Wait…what? How is that possible? Didn’t marijuana make you a “brain-dead loser”? No, not according to the scientific data I discovered. The opposite was true as researchers found that the plant allowed neurogenesis in the brain — the growth of new neural pathways, even when the brain had been damaged by age or trauma.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurel-dewey/marijuana-is-not-addictive_b_1739339.html

Amanda Reiman  Policy manager, Drug Policy Alliance

 
As Democrats gather for the National Convention to banter back and forth about the issues most important to Americans, one platform that is conspicuously absent is the Federal crackdown on medical marijuana.
Legal in 17 states, plus Washington, D.C. and on the ballot in three additional states this November (Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Arkansas), conflicts between statements made by the Obama Administration and the actions of U.S. Attorneys in the “wild west” have sent the program into a tailspin.
Even though medical marijuana has overwhelming support in the U.S. — around 80 percent — there has been noticeable silence on this issue among those who represent the patients who are suffering. More than one-third of the Senate represents the medical marijuana patients and businesses under attack, yet not one has come to their defense. And, what’s worse, some may have even helped facilitate this crackdown via their support of the U.S. Attorneys responsible.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-reiman/incrimination-without-representation_b_1853051.html?fb_action_ids=301229939984388&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%22301229939984388%22%3A466596903372580%7D&action_type_map=%7B%22301229939984388%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map

Posted by Rachel Weiner
 
The Obama team released this video advertising “Harold and Kumar” star Kal Penn’s role at the convention:

 
But pot legalization advocates aren’t laughing. They see it as hypocritical for the president to participate in a stoner joke while cracking down on medical marijuana use.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/04/obamas-stoner-humor-draws-hypocrisy-charge/

By Andrew DeMillo – Associated Press
 
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The home state of the president who didn’t inhale has become an unlikely front in the battle over medical marijuana.
This fall, Arkansas will be the first Southern state to ask voters whether to legalize medical uses for pot, a move that offers supporters a rare chance to make inroads in a region that has resisted easing any restrictions on the drug.
The state’s top elected officials and law enforcement agencies oppose the idea, but legalization groups hope the referendum shows that medical marijuana is no longer solely the domain of East Coast or Western states.
“This is an issue that hasn’t been ready for prime time yet in the South. It may be that it’s starting to be, and that’s a good thing,” said Jill Harris, managing director of Drug Policy Action, the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Complete article here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/3/arkansas-an-unlikely-front-in-medicinal-pot-battle/

Written by Cliff Sain

The second annual Hemp Fest is full of music and games, but organizers believe there is something much more serious going on.
The three-day festival, which concludes today, is a celebration of the cannabis plant and features live bands performing on three stages (one indoor), inflatable games for children, and vendors selling an assortment of items including T-shirts, tapestries, smoking implements, artwork, accessories and jewelry.
But event planner Travis Holt said that while the weekend event is fun, he and others want to raise awareness about the diversity of the plant, which can be used to make clothing or food, and can be used as a medicine.
“We’re here to create a platform where people can speak on behalf of the cannabis plant,” he said.
Daisy Thomas, of Cuba, Mo., said she came to the festival with her husband, Anthony, to show support for medical marijuana.
Thomas said she had seven tumors on her liver in 2010. After $16,000 worth of treatments, she lost her job — and insurance — because chemotherapy made her too sick to work. She said it was in Ohio that she was able to find treatment using cannabis oil that she took orally. She said five of the tumors disappeared; the other two shrunk, but did not respond as well to treatment. Now, six months after her cannabis treatment stopped, she said her remaining tumors are growing again.
“When I was on cannabis treatment, I quit all my other medications,” she said. “For six months, it cost me $1,200.”
 
Complete article here:
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120903/NEWS01/309030023/Springfield-Hemp-Fest-cannabis?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE