By PAUL BUTLER, former federal prosecutor

 
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
The information I have just provided — about a constitutional doctrine called “jury nullification” — is absolutely true. But if federal prosecutors in New York get their way, telling the truth to potential jurors could result in a six-month prison sentence.
Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 — in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, “60 Minutes” and YouTube — I guess I, too, have committed a crime.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/opinion/jurors-can-say-no.html?_r=1

By William Connelly
 
North Carolina is home to Hemp Technologies, a company responsible for building the first modern made hemp home in the United States. David Madera and Greg Flavall co-founded this company with the intention of building ecologically sustainable houses with non-toxic, healthy materials.
Hempcrete is their building material, a concrete-like mix of hemp and lime. Hempcrete offers a range of advantages over other materials, as Madera notes, “it’s a breathable material; its non-toxic; it can never have mold; it can never have mildew. It petrifies over time so the walls actually get harder and harder so instead of something falling down in 30 years it lasts for 600.” Madera goes further saying, “50 percent of our landfills are filled with construction materials. Whenever you use cement you have 10 to 15 percent extra that has to go to the landfill. Drywall is not nearly as anti-microbial and often gets mold behind it, which causes people to get sick. With industrial hemp, there is no waste. If there is a little bit left on the last day of the job you can throw it into your yard as fertilizer.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.mountainx.com/article/38303/The-Swannanoa-Journal-Hemp-Crete-Technology
 

By David Bearman, Santa Barbara

 
We all agree that we need to generate tax dollars and pump money into the economy. Here is an idea as old as America itself. It should strongly appeal to local agricultural interests, those who wish to promote economic growth, and people who support made-in-America products. It follows the logic of a recent News-Press editorial urging increased local oil production. The very conservative writer felt that we should look to the resources available right here in Santa Barbara County for increased tax and private-profit dollars. My suggestion is much less controversial and more environmentally friendly than increasing oil production — grow hemp.
If hemp were grown here we would join the roughly 35 countries in the world where it is legal to grow hemp. Sixteen of these United States have legalized the growing of hemp. A North Dakota rancher, who is also a Republican state legislator there, has sued the federal government to allow him to grow hemp pursuant to North Dakota’s hemp law. He has been quoted as saying that it makes no sense to him that Canadian ranchers less than 50 miles from his ranch, just over the Canadian/U.S. border, are growing hemp and profiting from it, while he can’t.

Paul Wellman

Dr. David Bearman

There are compelling economic reasons for legalizing it. Hemp can be one of the pillars for lifting us out of our current economic doldrums. That hemp is commercially viable is no secret. In the late 1930s, Henry Ford built nearly an entire car from hemp. In WWII, hemp was so vital to the war effort that if you were a farmer who grew hemp, neither you nor your sons could be drafted. Over 25,000 products can be made from hemp. For those who care, you can’t get high from hemp because it contains very low levels of the euphoriant THC and high levels of the antieuphoriant CBD.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.independent.com/news/2011/dec/17/made-us/

Editor’s Corner
with PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie
 
We conduct a fair number of member surveys and polls here on PoliceOne — some of which produce relatively-predictable results. There are occasions, however, where we’re thoroughly and completely surprised by the vote tally. This, as you may have already figured out, is one of those occasions. We asked, “Should pot be legal?” and of the roughly 1,700 respondents (at the time this column posts to PoliceOne), a full 44 percent said either ‘Yes, that’s where we’re headed.’ or ‘Maybe, depending on specifics.’ The other 56 percent came down on the side of either ‘No, legalization is a bad idea.’ or ‘Are you high? Of course not!’
That 12 percent margin may seem to be a wide chasm, but compared to a somewhat similar poll conducted here on PoliceOne about two-and-a-half years ago, the split was far smaller — there was a margin somewhere along the lines of a 64-36 in that poll back in 2009.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.policeone.com/drug-interdiction-narcotics/articles/4835061-Legalizing-marijuana-Police-officers-speak-out/
 

Brian Doherty

 
If you are a medical marijuana patient in one of the 16 states (plus the District of Columbia) that allow for it, you’ve got reason to believe lately that the government has it in for you.
You’ve got federal raids on the places where you can conveniently buy your medicine, the governor of Arizona trying to overturn in court her citizens’ choice to institute a medical marijuana system, and Michigan’s attorney general trying to make life as hard as he can for those using the system his state’s voters approved by 63 percent in 2008. And while it isn’t directly the government’s fault, doctors are taking people off liver transplant waiting lists for using medical pot.
It isn’t just that the government on both the federal and state level doesn’t want you to be able to legally and conveniently obtain your medicine, if that medicine is pot. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) insists you inherently lose a key constitutional right merely by letting your state know you might want to take pot medicinally.
Merely having a state medical marijuana card, BATFE insists, means that you fall afoul of Sect. 922(g) of the federal criminal code (from the 1968 federal Gun Control Act), which says that anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” is basically barred from possessing or receiving guns or ammo (with the bogus assertion that such possession implicates interstate commerce, which courts will pretty much always claim it does).
 
Read complete article here:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/16/get-a-medical-marijuana-card-lose-your-s

 
A lightweight audio system integrated into a car’s interior roof could soon render loudspeaker units in door modules or instrument panels obsolete, while the headliner itself is likely to be of hemp, flax, kenaf and sisal nonwovens and soy foam as a replacement for fibreglass fabrics.
The new audio concept has been introduced at 2011 car shows by Johnson Controls, which is now the leading supplier of automotive fabrics worldwide.
In its ie:3 demonstrator car,  the headliners and trim become loudspeakers, and a digital signal processor (DSP) maximizes the audio performance, while LED lighting in tune with the acoustics creates a relaxing interior ambience.
http://www.sustainablenonwovens.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11223%3Ajohnson&catid=26%3Aindustrial-products&Itemid=2
 
 

Tony Jones, GoLocalProv Guest MINDSETTER™

 
“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” -Thomas Jefferson.
It’s ironic that the country founded on the principals of and liberty and freedom still prohibits it’s citizens from growing a plant. I’m talking, of course, about industrial hemp. A plant that has more than 30,000 uses and is considered to be a “superfood”. This absurdity continues by the fact that hemp allowed to be imported from other country’s but is forbidden to be grown in America.

Did you know that The US Constitution was written on hemp paper? The first American flag was made out of hemp. In the past army uniforms were made of hemp. In 1937 Popular Science Magazine called hemp “The New Billion Dollar Crop.”
And then it was banned…
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.golocalprov.com/news/guest-mindsetter-tony-jones-wake-up-and-smell-the-hemp/
 

Why do we cling to the notion that paper products must come from trees? At least two sustainable alternatives exist: Hemp and bamboo.
Industrial hemp, the blue-collar cousin to marijuana that has no psychoactive properties, has been grown for at least 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. (Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper, according to the North American Industrial Hemp Council.) It was grown commercially in the U.S. until the 1950s.
States are increasingly authorizing the cultivation of hemp, USA Today reported. From 1999 through last year, 17 states have enacted measures that would either permit controlled cultivation or authorize research. Hemp, as fiber or oilseed, is used to make thousands of products, including clothing and auto parts. Proponents say American farmers and industry are being shut out of a lucrative market as more than 30 countries, including Canada, grow hemp as an agricultural commodity.
(One of those countries is France, where Kimberly-Clark has a mill that produces hemp paper preferred for bibles because it lasts a very long time and doesn’t yellow, according to the hemp council.)
Importantly, hemp can be pulped using fewer chemicals than with wood. It doesn’t require chlorine bleach, which means no extremely toxic dioxin being dumped into streams.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111214/OPINION01/712149976

By Maia Szalavitz

A small, new study backs a long-standing claim of advocates of medical marijuana: pain patients can safely use cannabis while taking opioid painkillers, and may actually need fewer pills because of it.
The research included 21 chronic pain patients, who were taking either long-acting morphine or Oxycontin twice a day. Adding marijuana to these opioid drugs reduced patients’ pain by an average of 27% and did not significantly affect blood levels of the prescription drugs. If marijuana had raised those blood levels, it could have increased overdose risk.
“The combination may allow for opioid treatment at lower doses with fewer side effects,” the authors concluded.