By Evelyn Theiss

Hot Sauce Williams is known for its barbecue menu. The chain may be adding a special sauce with marijuana as one of the ingredients.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Clevelanders know about Hot Sauce Williams’ barbecue joints. Colorado is about to experience the restaurant’s famous sauce in a whole new way – with a whole new name.
Pot Sauce Williams.
That’s no joke.
“We hope to make it the Heinz of medical marijuana sauces,” said Norm Roulet, a Cleveland business consultant who got the idea off the ground.
Roulet is working with Greg Williams to turn out a high-test, marijuana-laced version of the rib coating. And Williams, special projects manager for the Cleveland-based restaurant chain, with help from a Denver lab, has created a prototype of a new version of the chain’s famous sauce. This one is infused with cannabis.
Read complete article here:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/02/pot_sauce_williams_aiming_to_b.html#incart_hbx

By Chris Roberts

It’s not your landlord knocking

​On Jan. 11, someone knocked on the door of Bruce Rossignol’s 13th Street home. The investment banker turned medical cannabis cultivator, who, as SF Weekly reported in August wishes to someday open a cannabis club in North Beach, assumed it was his landlord.
He was wrong.
At the door were a dozen officers from the San Francisco Police Department, narcotics officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and officers with the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force. They raided the sophisticated cultivation operation on which Rossignol had spent an ungodly sum of time and money.
Cops smashed his grow equipment and then seized cash and an unknown amount of marijuana.
That’s a bummer —  and one that could have been avoided with a single phone call.
Rossignol, a medical cannabis patient who says his operation was truly legal, has a dispensary permit application pending with the Department of Public Health. But the SFPD didn’t bother contacting regulators until the day after the raid, according to the police report.
Read complete article at:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/02/cops_raided_first_asked_questi.php

Program thought to be first of kind in state

Desert Sun File Photo

Written by Blake Herzog

by Gary Johnson  – Former governor of New Mexico

The Web is humming with stories and discussion from the aftermath of President Obama’s response to questions about drug legalization during last Thursday’s YouTube forum. While his words this time around are a bit more encouraging than previous signals from the administration, I would strongly suggest that we all, including the president, cut through the platitudes and get to the truth about marijuana prohibition.
If, as the president suggests, it is time for a “serious debate” about legalization, let’s get to it, starting with a few questions that beg for truth:
Why, with record federal deficits and states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, are we spending billions on yet another failed Prohibition that is accomplishing nothing other than making criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens and fueling drug cartels that threaten our fundamental national security? Is it not time to try something different?
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-johnson/yes-it-is-time-for-pot-le_1_b_816376.html

By Nadia Arandjelovic

Activist says marijuana should be classified as food.

A cannabis campaigner told MPs that marijuana should no longer be banned by law and instead be “reclassified as a food”.
Gershwyn Smith, of community activist group The Young Progressives, said the Island’s drug laws had increased the community’s problems and created “gang warfare and anarchy”.
During a presentation to the joint select committee on violent crime and gun violence on Friday, the 61-year-old said marijuana was a natural plant and used to heal certain ailments like paralysis.
He said: “God doesn’t make drugs,” adding that the ultimate solution was to change laws and policy and implement programmes that would remove hard drugs from the streets and away from the general community.
Mr Smith said other illegal substances like cocaine and heroine should be medicalised and placed in hospitals, clinics and public centres and totally controlled by Government.
He said this would get illegal substances out of the wrong hands by taking the profit away from drug dealers on the streets.
“Sick people or addicts or patients can register with the programme and get their medicine at a [reduced] price, which may be 60 cents a day instead of $50 to $500 a day at street level, depending on the extent of the individual’s addiction,” he said.
“Now we have the opportunity to encourage the addicts in their own time to try and clean up their addiction and other programmes made available.
“When there is no price in the street the product has lost its value and all crimes and social activity associated with illegal drugs comes to a stop.”
He said patients registered with the programme must be treated with respect and their identity protected.
Read complete article at:
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20110131/NEWS03/701319981/0/business

 
Prague, Jan 30 (CTK) – The Czech Legalizace.cz (Legalisation) association has started offering free hemp seeds to people who want to grow marijuana for their own treatment, the association told CTK.
Within the “Seeds to Seniors” campaign, the NGO wants to highlight therapeutical effects of marijuana and call for the legalisation of this soft drug for medical purposes.
Marijuana has been applied experimentally, for instance, for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
“We are fully aware of that unauthorised handling of hemp containing over 0.3 percent of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol narcotic) is illegal at present. We inform all applicants about the risks connected with the cultivation and possession of curative hemp/cannabis,” said organiser Robert Veverka, from the association.
The organisation criticises the situation in the Czech Republic where hemp is unavailable for ill citizens who want to use it for medical purposes. It claims that this approach is at variance with citizens’ right to health.
Read complete article here:
http://praguemonitor.com/2011/01/31/czech-association-offers-hemp-seeds-therapeutic-purposes

NEW ORLEANS — People charged with possession of marijuana in New Orleans will no longer be arrested and taken to jail.
A city law that went into effect at 7 a.m. Sunday now gives police the option of issuing a summons to violators.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said the point of the new law is to free up local judges to handle more important cases.
Read entire article here:
http://www.wdsu.com/r/26669241/detail.html

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

Mark Leno’s bill would ban employers from considering a worker’s status as a registered medical marijuana patient or a positive drug test when making hiring and firing decisions.

 
Californians who use medical marijuana outside of work would be protected from job dismissal due to pot use under a bill that has been introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. The bill, SB129, would make it illegal for an employer to consider either a worker’s status as a registered patient or a positive drug test when making hiring and firing decisions. The bill would not change existing laws that bar employees from using medical marijuana at the workplace or during work hours.
 Workers such as health care providers, school bus drivers and operators of heavy equipment – so-called “safety-sensitive positions” – would not be protected by the law.
 “The bill simply establishes a medical cannabis patient’s right to work,” Leno said. He called it “a completely reasonable piece of legislation. It astounds me that there would be any controversy around it.”
Read complete article here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/28/BAQV1HFPNH.DTL

Posted By Hokulani Cheneviere

“God, that’s great! Please show us the blessings in this situation… And hurry! We are safe. We are loved, and all is well…” Roger blesses  wedding party the day before the arrest
“What a trick this is for a plant, to produce a chemical so mysterious in its effects on human consciousness that the plant itself becomes the sacrament, deserving of humankind’s worshipful care and dissemination.” Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
She’s called the Botanical Messiah-the Plant messenger. She’s a member of the Entheogen Ohana.   “Within GOD Creates”.   Cannabis, psilocybin, peyote and mescaline are a few of these plant Entheogens.
Through her Anandamide –  she delivers the Bliss.   Ananda, from Sanskrit, it means bliss or delight.  It’s in chocolate, too!   Kana bos and Keneh bosm is marijuana in Hebrew.  It’s the sweet fragrant cane in the Holy Anointing Oil of the Old Testament.  Listed as calamus in the  King James version, a mistranslation from the Septuagint.  ” The Living Torah” has the 411 .  Make you own conclusions if it seems a bit nebulous.
Ganja, Tai ma, dagga, chanvre, hanf, marijuana, cannabis, pakalolo.   Used for centuries in religion, as well as for medicines, textiles, fuel, and inebriant.   Solid proof that GOD gave humans special plants with multiple uses.  Evidence that our CREATOR gave us certain plants that help us to feel  joy, bliss, and delight.
Botanical Messiah, Plant Messenger.   As in God’s “friends and family network” with human beings.  To be high is to feel GOD within.  GOD aka “MOST HIGH”.   Within  GOD creates.  HOLY SMOKE.  Joy, bliss, delight, pono, peace, love, laughter, smiles…. ALOHA.
KAPU.  A’ole.  Pilikia.  Taboo.   Forbidden.  Prohibition. Devil weed. Reefer madness.
Why is everyone making so much huhu over a plant?  WTF was GOD thinking-giving us all those “botanical messiahs”?  THIS  has been such a major pain in da okole for human beings.    LONG ass jail terms for HIS frickin plants?  This is NOT funny, Dude.  What were YOU thinking?  I thought YOU loved us.   How is it, that a plant that brings Ananda can be so dangerous?   And if possessing these plants is a crime, then show me the victims.
The Chinese once called  it Tai Ma -The GREAT PLANT.  Some say it means Great Mother.  Same difference. Tai=GREAT  Ma=Mama or Plant.    Are you wordless yet?  Do you need a diaper?  How about a tissue then?   What other plant on the face of the earth can be used for food, livestock feed, medicine, fuel, fabric, paper, building material, rope, sacrament and inebriant? Sometimes I wonder if this plant didn’t come from another planet, it’s so wonderous.   Its use as medicine is astounding enough–appetite stimulant, aphrhodesiac, analgesic, sleep aid, glaucoma, cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, Fibromyalgia, seizures, digestive aid, anti-depressant, menstrual cramps and nausea relief.  That’s just a few of them.  Used to be, that Cannabis meds were in every household, until….Bayer Aspirin came on the scene about 1910 or so.  Mother’s soothed their colicky babies with it.  For real.
Read complete article here:
http://the-last-marijuana-trial.com/2011/01/26/whos-afraid-of-the-big-islands-cannabis-minister/