By Walter Mencken
 
In Wake of US Attorney’s Ominous Statements Regarding Alt-Weekly Medical Marijuana Ads, Notorious Publisher Jim Holman Implements “Hemp-Based” Back Pages.
“Let’s give them something to investigate.”
STARING AT THE SALMON-PINK WALLS OF MY CUBICLE, MARVELING AT THE WONDER OF IT ALL – As the Federal Government continues the Great Medical Marijuana Panty-Bunching of 2011, concerns have arisen at alt-weeklies all over the state about the potential loss of ad revenue brought on by a crackdown on pot dispensaries.
In preparation for such an event, Reader publisher Jim Holman today announced his paper’s plan to make the paper’s medical marijuana ads “a little more user-friendly, if you know what I mean. Instead of printing the ads on expensive glossy stock, we’ll be switching over to a more practical paper made from hemp and, um, other natural products.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/almost-factual-news/2011/oct/18/emsan-diego-readerem-announces-new-smokable-ads/

 Posted by Ron Capps
There have been a raft of articles here recently about PTSD and veterans including one on the difficulty of diagnosing PTSD, the staggering number of new veterans seeking mental health care at the VA, and the both surprising and somewhat sobering news that younger veterans are more willing to ask for mental health care—this is sobering in that the number of Vietnam era veterans seeking mental health care might increase if they see a reduction in the stigma of asking for help.
 
Then, I saw this op-ed piece that accused the VA and the U.S. government of slow-rolling acceptance of medical marijuana into treatment regimens for veterans with PTSD. I’ll leave comments on the medical stuff to my colleague Cam Ritchie, a psychiatrist who served a career on active duty in the Army.  But as a patient and someone still trying to work the VA system to get benefits and treatment for my PTSD (see my series on that here on Battleland under the sub-head Limboland.), I think there are some points I would like to comment on.
One of the most important issues for PTSD sufferers is control. When things are bad for me, it’s generally because I can’t control the images in my head, or the levels of my anxiety and fear, or my ability to sleep without nightmares. Some doctors I’ve spoken with tell me they don’t think medical marijuana is a valuable treatment because they believe it causes users to lose control. I suspect this is the same issue many doctors have with alcohol.
 
As a PTSD sufferer, alcohol proved quite useful as a sleep aid and as a way of helping me get control of the memories that flashed through my brain like images on a drive in movie screen. Sometimes I drank too much, and I often wished I had something else to use other than alcohol when the prescribed medications weren’t working well enough to clear my head of the horrific images and relax. Marijuana might have helped.
 
 
 
Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/10/17/why-not-pot/#ixzz1bBMR7KxI

By John W. Whitehead
 
“On July 29, 2008, my family and I were terrorized by an errant Prince George’s County SWAT team. This unit forced entry into my home without a proper warrant, executed our beloved black Labradors, Payton and Chase, and bound and interrogated my mother-in-law and me for hours as they ransacked our belongings… As I was forced to kneel, bound at gun point on my living room floor, I recall thinking that there had been a terrible mistake. However, as I have learned more, I have to understand that what my family and I experience is part of a growing and troubling trend where law enforcement is relying on SWAT teams to perform duties once handled by ordinary police officers.”—Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo in testimony before the Maryland Senate
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=736

By Michael Roberts
Our post about Sexy Pizza offering free ‘za to a medical marijuana patient narced on by a Papa John’s driverspawned a debate joined by a woman who says she owes her life to cannabis.
 
She’s offended by the idea that some people would prefer she suffer than use it.

Laura_RT writes:

I am a cancer survivor. Because of the radiation treatment, necrosis has set in the bone of my jaw. Any movement of my jaw is quite painful (Especially chewing), making it very difficult for me to eat. And when it’s painful to chew, you find yourself taking in smaller and smaller meals. This is a condition that has been a problem for me for well over two years now. I am 5’6” and I currently weigh 103 lbs, but my weight has dropped as low as 82 lbs. I have fainted on more than one occasion from malnutrition. My doctor wants to put me on methadone to treat the pain. This narcotic is, too me, quite a bit scarier than marijuana will ever be.Marijuana has quite literallly saved my life. Pain pills cause nausea, constipation, addiction, and there’s always the ever- present concern of overdosing.
Second hand tobacco smoke is far more harmful to a child than marijuana smoke will ever be and smoking cigarettes with your child in the home is prefectly legal, so that argument doesn’t fly with me. (I smoke both, but do it in the garage for the sake of my children’s lungs)
I do not live in a medical marijuana state. Are you suggesting that I should starve to suit you and lawmakers? Would it be better for my kids if they came home from school to find me dead from malnutrition as opposed to having a mommy who smokes a little weed? Or for them to see me all pilled out on methadone? People like you are ignorant and lack even the most basic principles of compassion.
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/10/mommy_smokes_weed_cancer.php

Healthy Marijuana Users Needed for Behavioral Study. Researchers with the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Department of Behavioral Science are recruiting healthy volunteers ages 18-40 to participate in a research study to evaluate the behavioral effects of marijuana. Qualified volunteers will be paid for their participation. 
 
Read complete article here:
http://kykernel.com/2011/10/11/healthy-marijuana-users-needed-for-behavioral-study/

By: Rigoberto Hernandez
Robert Raich, a medical marijuana lawyer who took two medical marijuana landmark cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, says the new federal crackdown against landlords who rent to marijuana dispensaries is an intimidation tactic that probably won’t work.
Sending threatening letters to landlords is not a new tactic by the federal government. In 2007 the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice sent similar letters to landlords, but never filed a criminal or civil case against them.
“The appropriate thing to do is to put those letters in the trash, where they belong,” he said. “A lot of people realize that [the feds] don’t have the resources nor the will to prosecute every single one, but [landlords] are concerned and no one wants to be in the crosshairs.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://missionlocal.org/2011/10/medical-marijuana-expert-%E2%80%9Cthe-feds-are-bluffing%E2%80%9D/?utm_source=todaysmission&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_campaign=house_tmsidebar

Written by Tim Johnson

Vermont’s partisans of hemp received a boost Tuesday when U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., signed on as a co-sponsor of The Industrial Hemp Farming Act.
That measure, introduced five months ago in the House by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, would remove federal restrictions on the cultivation of hemp, a crop Paul calls a non-drug variety of cannabis grown for oilseed and fiber. Hemp and other varieties of cannabis are now classified as marijuana under the federal Controlled Substances Act, and cultivation of hemp in the United States is effectively banned, requiring a special permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. 
Hemp is used to make a wide variety of products, including clothing, drinks, skin butters and auto parts. Virtually all the hemp used in products sold in the United States is grown in more than 30 other countries, including China and Canada. Unlike marijuana, according to the pro-hemp lobby, industrial hemp has a psychoactive content so low that it won’t produce a high if smoked.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20111011/NEWS03/111011022/Welch-endorses-legislation-end-federal-ban-hemp-cultivation?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

By David Jay Brown
 
The Santa Cruz-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) will be taking the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to federal court for upholding a monopoly on research marijuana, and for blocking valuable medical research into the benefits of the herb that could save many lives.
 
Read complete article here:
http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/dea-going-to-federal-court-for-blocking-medical-marijuana-research

WASHINGTON–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the nation’s largest retail worker organization, demands an immediate end to the U.S. Attorney’s misguided prosecution of operators of small dispensaries of legal medical cannabis in California.
In the past year, thousands of hardworking and taxpaying medical cannabis industry workers have joined together with the UFCW in various states in order to protect their jobs in this emerging industry. In today’s economy, hourly wage jobs like these that pay good wages with decent benefits are vital to keeping our economy afloat and families out of poverty.
At a time when the unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent, our economy requires bold action from our government to create good family-sustaining jobs. The steps taken by the four California U.S. attorneys to send letters Wednesday and Thursday notifying at least 16 medical dispensaries and their landlords that they are violating federal drug laws would do just the opposite.
“I have a good middle class American Job with good health benefits and a pension that I can look forward to,” said Larry Richards, a UFCW Local 5 member and a manager at the Blue Sky Dispensary in Oakland, California. “Because of our industry and our union I am able to be a productive breadwinner and, as a person living with HIV since 1983, I have fought and struggled not to be a drain on society. I want to work, I want to be productive but now, they want to take my job and put me back on the rolls of Social Security.”
UFCW proudly stands with our members in the Humboldt Growers Association, the Citizens for Safer Neighborhoods Committee of Colorado, the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, and our coalition partners in MendoGrown, the Patients Care Alliance, the National Cannabis Industry Association, and the Citizens Coalition for Patient Care.
 
Read complete article here:
http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20111007005789/en