By Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger

Tony Kurdzuk/Star-Ledger – A marijuana plant

Lisa Segal wakes up every morning locked in a fetal position, her muscles in spasm from multiple sclerosis.
She’s 59 years old, and has tried everything. The only medicine that relaxes those muscles and settles her nausea is marijuana.
So when her supply runs out, she drives an hour from her Gloucester County home to Philadelphia, and walks the streets to buy pot, leaning on her cane. It scares her to death, but it’s better than spending her remaining years curled up in bed, in pain.
“These are not people I want to deal with,” she says. “I have nightmares that the police are going to come into my house and arrest me.”
The medical marijuana movement aims to end this official cruelty, and allow people like Segal to live in dignity. That was the idea, anyway, when the Legislature passed the law last year. It was supposed to be up and running by now.
But thanks to Gov. Chris Christie, this effort has gone terribly off track. So Segal still has to sneak to Philly for her fix, like a criminal.
“The way the rules are written now, I’ll have no choice but to continue doing what I’m doing,” she says.

Read complete article here: 

http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2010/12/post_1.html

By BEN HARTMAN

Medical marijuana patients protest police raid of “Tikkun Olam” storefront at demonstration in Tel Aviv.

The protest came four days after police raided a storefront on Ibn Gvirol run by “Tikkun Olam”, where patients would come to get their doses. During the raid, police arrested two managers of the storefront and held them for questioning for several hours, on suspicion of drug trafficking.
Shai Meir, spokesman for Tikkun Olam, Israel’s largest medical marijuana supplier, told reporters at the organization’s headquarters in an apartment in north Tel Aviv that police actions against the clinic and its patients mainly harms those seeking medical treatment.
“The bottom line is that the only ones who have suffered as a result of these police actions are the patients. Every arrest, every detention of a patient disrupts their treatment, treatment which demands routine. This causes serious harm to the patients.”

One patient who took part in the protest, Yedidya Kanuf, sat inside the apartment in a wheelchair hooked up to a life support system, where he has been confined since a car accident ten years earlier left him paralyzed from the neck down.
His breathing labored, Kanuf described the cannabis he receives for his pain as nothing short of a lifesaver.
“Before I was on medical marijuana, I was being treated for pain with all types of very strong drugs. I never got out of bed, never saw the sun. Once I started taking prescription cannabis the amount of drugs I took plummeted. When people call it a drug I get annoyed because for me it has given me life,” Kanuf said.

Read complete article here:

http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=200135

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

Graphic: The Bilerico Project 

In a move sure to sweep the land, a jury pool has refused to convict the defendant of a marijuana charge. 
​​In what could grow into something much bigger in future cases, potential jurors in Missoula County District Court staged a revolt Thursday, taking the law into their own hands and making it clear they would not convict anybody for having less than 2 grams of marijuana. 
The tiny amount of marijuana police found in Touray Cornell’s Missoula, Montana home on April 23 became a big point of contention for some members of the jury panel, reports Gwen Florio of The Missoulian. One juror after another said there was no way they would convict somebody for having 1/16 of an ounce of pot. 
One juror wondered aloud why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, according to a “flummoxed” Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul, who called it “a mutiny,” Florio reports. 
When District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll to find who might agree, of about 27 potential jurors before him, around five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.   
“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess to address the situation. 
Deschamps said that in his nearly 30 years as a prosecutor and judge, he had never seen anything like it.

Read complete article here:

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/12/jury_pool_in_marijuana_case_stages_mutiny_wont_con.php

By Steve Elliott
NEWS JUNKIE POST

The New Mexico Department of Health on Friday announced changes to its medical marijuana regulations, one of which will add to the supply of legally grown marijuana by increasing the number of plants licensed producers can grow from 95 to 150.
Another change will create a permanent revenue stream to allow the program to pay for itself by increasing producer fees.
The new regulations take effect December 30, reports Phaedra Haywood at the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Under the new fees, marijuana producers who have been licensed for less than a year will pay $5,000 annually; those in business for more than a year will pay $10,000; and producers in business for three years or more will be charged an annual fee of $20,000.

Read complete article here:

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/12/18/new-mexico-oks-more-plants-for-medical-marijuana-producers/

-Government Law- 
Where operator of medical marijuana dispensary never applied for an operating permit as required by local ordinance, Government Code section providing a 90-day statute of limitations for actions “to determine the reasonableness, legality, or validity of any condition attached to a variance, conditional use permit, or any other permit” did not apply. Ninety-day period in which to challenge a local zoning ordinance on its face under Sec. 65009(c)(1)(B) runs from date the ordinance is enacted, not from date that locality first attempts to enforce it against plaintiff. Plaintiff’s assertion that it was challenging ordinance “as applied” did not render 90-day statute inapplicable where the harm alleged by plaintiff–that it was ordered to stop operating–resulted solely from the enactment of the ordinance and not from any “final administrative action” or permit condition. 
     County of Sonoma v. Superior Court (Marvin’s Gardens Cooperative, Inc.) – filed December 15, 2010, First District, Div. Five 
     Cite as A128734 
     Full text http://www.metnews.com/sos.cgi?1210%2FA128734

By Damien Hoffman

Yes, Arnold may actually pump you up with tourism dollars … from marijuana.
It’s no secret the California economy is in deep shit. But thanks to California’s creative entrepreneurial spirit, the largest state in the US union is also one of the top 10 economies in the world.
Those entrepreneurs are waking up to one of the greatest market opportunities within what’s already becoming one of the hottest new economic sectors in the US: marijuana tourism. The AP reports:

“The Dutch government moved a step closer to barring tourists from Holland’s signature marijuana bars with a ruling by the European Court of Justice on Thursday.”

One economy’s loss is another’s gain.
Let’s take a deeper look at how much of a multiplier effect marijuana tourism will have on other businesses:

Read complete article here:

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/economy/get-pumped-california-marijuana-tourism-is-about-to-explode.html

By Pete Guither
With Thanksgiving over, the Christmas shopping season is in full swing (of course it started some time ago much to my annoyance, with Christmas displays going up in stores in September!).
I thought I’d give you my own suggestion for Christmas presents: buy hemp. It’s a really good idea for a number of reasons.
Now it is true that hemp products can be a little more expensive than other products, but here’s a few reasons why it’s worth it:

• Hemp products are quality products (the food products are more nutritious, clothing products are more durable, body products are more healthy, etc.)
• Hemp products are good for the environment
• When you give hemp products, you have the chance to educate others on the value of industrial hemp while giving them something they’ll really like.
• Every time you buy hemp products you’re sticking it to the DEA, which has unsuccessfully attempted to block many of them.
• You are contributing to the development of a potentially huge industry that could help to shape the country’s views on the cannabis plant.

To find a physical store near you that sells hemp products, you can try the Industrial Hemp Products Retail Stores Directory.
Of course, you can always just Google hemp products, or hemp foods, or hemp clothing and get tons of options. If you want to make sure they’re a responsible company, you can check to see if they’re one of the Hemp Industry Association member sites.

Read complete article here:

 http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2004/11/27/holidayShoppingGuideBuyHem.html

by Fernando Henrique Cardoso

Photo: Guatemalan Elite Anti-drugs Forces, Press Office of the President of Guatemala
SAO PAULO – The war on drugs is a lost war, and 2011 is the time to move away from a punitive approach in order to pursue a new set of policies based on public health, human rights, and common sense. These were the core findings of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy that I convened, together with former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia.

Read complete article here:

http://www.guatemala-times.com/opinion/syndicated/1904-ending-the-never-ending-war-on-drugs.html

When Rick Simpson told the world he was curing cancer by using an oil made from the cannabis plant you would have thought it worthy of a little news coverage, or even a Nobel prize? 
 Instead he was dragged kicking and screaming through the Canadian court system, labelled as some sort of ‘snake oil’ peddler, and cast off to the USA, and later exiled in Europe for fear of a lengthy incarceration in his home land. 
Rick Simpsons crime was trying to help people suffering with various cancers. He was especially keen to step in with patients who’s treatment regimes were seen not to be working very well. 
When he mentioned his successes to his doctors receptionist he was told in no uncertain terms the doctor will not be discussing cannabis oil anytime soon. 
No matter if it works or not? 
 The alternative course of treatment for patients suffering advanced skin cancer (or Melanoma), is a new drug called tasisulam made by ‘impotence/erection’ specialists Eli Lilly, (no not Viagra , but the other one). 
Lilly was testing whether the drug, tasisulam, was any better than an older drug, paclitaxel, in treating people with an advanced form of skin cancer, or melanoma. 
In the meantime 12 patients have died, which a spokeswomen for Eli Lilly called ‘potentially treatment related’. 

Read complete article here:

http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/201012141399/green/eco-news/eli-lilly-drugs-trial-causes-deaths-cannabis-doesnt.html

For more info http://www.phoenixtears.ca
Learn about Rick Simpson, the man who rediscovered the cure for cancer and shared it with as many people as he could http://www.youtube.com/paulagloria#p/…
Recently while traveling from Canada Rick had his house raided again for the third time, and while Rick always admitted with pride that he had grown medicinal hemp and cured people with it… the police fabricated this “raid” and found no marijuana and actually stole other things from the property, and all without producing a warrant. The police force that broke into Rick’s home and destroyed the inside stole the very security cameras that proves what they were doing.
http://www.youtube.com/user/chrychek#…
Rick had no marijuana on his property, yet he has been charged with the best the police and prosecutor could come up with. Rick tore himself away from his heavy healing work to pick up the the Cannabis Cup Award in Amsterdam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SqSko… and due to this horrible turn of events many people will probably die without their medicine. rabbitholecentral tv is trying to throw as much light on this story as possible as the plight of these patients today maybe be yours tomorrow and of all the most valuable things to acquire in life knowledge is the greatest. Learn about hemp oil.
Finally in its entirety the should-be-award-winning documentary by Christian Laurette. If you haven’t seen it before here it is on Paula Gloria’s old director’s account so you can see and share it on youtube more easily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0psJhQHk_GI