By Kevin Smith
 
Marijuana activists look to carve out a spot in Academic Plaza to hold a voting booth checking the pulse of Aggie decriminalization advocates on Thursday.
The Aggie Cannabis Reform and Education Society, ACRES, is an on-campus organization that promotes the legalization of hemp and medical marijuana, and pushes for decriminalization of recreational use.
“We want to educate people about the facts of marijuana,” said Mostafa Selim, ACRES president and junior university studies major. “We know there’s a large cannabis-friendly community at Texas A&M, so we want to organize everyone into a serious formal movement.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.thebatt.com/cannabis-club-rolls-voting-booth-to-campus-1.2793140
 

by Aly Myles
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — Despite the chilly temperatures and winds, dozens of Bob Crouse’s supporters lined up outside of the El Paso County courthouse Monday to rally for the 63-year-old leukemia patient.
 
Crouse is facing two felony charges for cultivation and intent to distribute after growing his own marijuana plants to treat his illness. If convicted, he could get up to 12 years in prison.
 
“Bob is brave. Bob is fighting here. This is really what it boils down to,” rally co-organizer Mark Slaugh said. “He’s the one patient who’s not afraid to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to take your plea bargain. I’m not going to say that I’m guilty because I’m doing what I’m supposed to and growing my plants and growing my medicine to help my disease.'”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.coloradoconnection.com/news/story.aspx?id=724439#.T0xL8IcgdZc
 

By Reuters
DENVER  – A Colorado voter initiative that would legalize possession of marijuana by adults for personal recreational use qualified on Monday for the state’s November ballot, state officials said.
Colorado already is one of 16 U.S. states, along with Washington, D.C., that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Moves to decriminalize marijuana at the state level in the United States face opposition from the federal government, which still classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic.
 
Read complete article here:
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/world/2012/02/27/19432741.html
 

Hemp, along with flax and cotton, was primarily used for making clothing at Monticello.
 
Read more about it here:
http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/hemp
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6pB-rrFsyc
 

By Steve Elliott
A petition is circulating in Arkansas to allow the sick and dying access to medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation.

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/02/arkansas_group_gains_support_to_legalize_medical_m.php
 

By William Breathes
Representative Wes McKinley wants to save the earth with hemp, and not in some philosophical, hippie-dippy way either. Through a bill he has introduced this session that would study how hemp plants clean contaminated soil, McKinley is hoping to eventually revive industrial hemp production in Colorado and the rest of the country.
House Bill 1099 wouldn’t legalize hemp farming outright. If passed, it would authorize the chairs of the agriculture, livestock, and natural resources committee in both the House and the Senate to appoint a seven-member committee to study the process of phytoremediation, a fancy term for a simple process. You see, hemp plants suck up contaminants and radiation in the soil — and it’s been proven to work in places like in Russia, where they’ve been used to remove soil contaminants from the Chernobyl disaster site.
Read complete article here:
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/02/industrial_hemp_study_bill_colorado.php
 
 

by Scott Morgan

In case you haven’t heard the news yet, it looks like police are going to win the drug war after all. Violence and corruption are bad enough, but if they’re capable of something as sickeningly devious as this, I’m not sure I see the point in dragging things out any further.

During an undercover marijuana sting at a South Florida school, a teenage boy began to fall for someone he thought was just another teenage girl.
But the boy’s crush turned out to be an undercover police officer, who would later have him arrested for selling her marijuana she asked him to obtain for her.
…
The operation resulted in a total of 31 arrests in three different Florida schools. [Huffington Post]

How many people do you think she had to flirt with to make 31 arrests? My first guess would be 31. I mean, how hard can this be? Have you ever met a bored, lovesick teenager? It’s a good thing all she asked him to do was get her some weed.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2012/feb/22/drug_cops_hatch_foolproof_plan_a
 

OKLAHOMA CITY — Most parents would go to great lengths to help their child, but some want to try a controversial approach.
KOCO Eyewitness News 5’s weekday morning co-anchor Anita Blanton talked to a metro couple who want to use marijuana to treat their son’s disease.Hearing that a child has autism can be a devastating experience, because there is no cure and there is no standard therapy.The Mejias family still has hope. They are confident medical marijuana could be just what their son Deacon needs.

‘Bitter Seeds’ leads a call to action against GMOs

By Blair Madole

In the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack sells everything he owns — one cow — for a handful of magic beans. It works out for Jack. He takes on the Giant, wins, and returns home to a happy mother (though she may not send him to market again responsible for the sale of their only livestock).
The story that unfolds in the documentary Bitter Seeds, featured at the Boulder International Film Festival, is about farmers who wager it all on what are promised to be miracle seeds, but land dust and failed crops rather than a magic bean pole. Their ending is far more grim.
A quarter of a million farmers in India have committed suicide in the last 16 years, according to Bitter Seeds. This equates to one farmer killing himself every 30 minutes, all because the miracle cotton seeds they were sold with the promise they would increase yield drove them into debt and failed to produce an ample return. In this tale, the giant they faced is GMO seed producer Monsanto, and they lost.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-7651-biff-2012-bitter-stories.html