cannabisnews.com: Marijuana as Medicine










  Marijuana as Medicine

Posted by CN Staff on August 10, 2005 at 06:50:59 PT
By Wes Woods II 
Source: Press-Enterprise 

California -- Lanny Swerdlow, the spokesman for the Palm Springs-based Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project, has been a longtime advocate to get medical-marijuana cards for patients in Riverside County. He's now trying to help San Bernardino County patients get the cards. At today's Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project meeting, Swerdlow will discuss the medical-marijuana card effort in both counties and a recent UCLA study explaining how marijuana doesn't cause lung cancer.
"It's education about the law and education about what's going on and what to do to change things," Swerdlow said. The meeting is free and takes place at Joshua Tree Inn, 61259 Twentynine Palms Highway in Joshua Tree. Senate Bill 420, which legalized medical-marijuana cards in California, was passed in January 2004. The bill helps the state Health Department determine rules usage and give medical-marijuana users a way to register anonymously. Swerdlow will encourage members to attend the Riverside County Community Health Agency's SB 420 Implementation Committee meeting to discuss the identification-card program. The meeting will be held from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Aug. 15 in the Breckenridge Room at the Sherman Building Conference Center, located at 3900 Sherman Ave. in Riverside. Riverside and San Bernardino counties do not have programs in place for the cards. "We're in the process of contacting the Department of Health in San Bernardino County so patients can get a medical ID card," said Alfred Laue, who's a member of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project. Laue's wife, Linda, uses prescription marijuana for her fibromyalgia, a chronic-pain illness. Linda Laue said she experiences extreme joint and muscle pain, headaches, and colon troubles, among other ailments. "I bake with it," said Laue, who first used marijuana in 1972 after suffering a massive stroke that required 12 hours of brain surgery. She said she died twice on the operating table at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey before being revived. "A lot of people say, 'You use marijuana, you're getting stoned,' " Laue said in a phone interview. "I'm not -- I'm getting normal. I get, at least, comfort in that I don't hurt as much." Also discussed will be UCLA physician Donald Tashkin's study on heavy, long-term marijuana use and whether it's connected to lung cancer. "People who smoked marijuana, they didn't have a higher rate of lung cancer than those who didn't smoke,"Swerdlow said of the report. "In certain aspects of the study, using marijuana might protect you against lung cancer." Source: Press-Enterprise (CA)Author: Wes Woods II, The Press-EnterprisePublished: Wednesday, August 10, 2005Copyright: 2005 The Press-Enterprise CompanyContact: letters pe.comWebsite: http://www.pe.com/CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml

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Comment #26 posted by FoM on August 11, 2005 at 06:39:05 PT
Hope
Thank you. What you wrote is very good.
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Comment #25 posted by Hope on August 11, 2005 at 06:22:27 PT
"Our mother" (comment 21)
is bullying and threatening the neighbor's kids.I want her to stop it and be someone I can feel honored to call my "Mother".I'm a grown woman and my "mother" in this case is embarrassing me and I'm concerned, very concerned, about her judgment. No, I don’t want to say my “mother’s” judgment is impaired…but it certainly looks like it is.She's mistreating some of our brothers and sisters and making some deadly and costly mistakes. That mistreatment of others is where my personal outrage is coming from. That's what has provoked me to disagree with "her" and try to convince her to do right, by everyone. It’s sort of ,”My Lord! Mother why are you being so merciless to my little brother (or sister) for such a minor infraction…if it’s a real infraction at all?”I'm seeing so many people being killed or maimed mentally, physically, and emotionally by the war on drugs. It's not right. I still love her and will protect her and defend her when she's right, but when she's wrong, I love her enough to tell her I think she's wrong and will not stop insisting that she 
change any errant ways she might be following and encourage her as much as I can to do right.If my neighbor cries out against her, I know that aspect of my “mother’s” personality that is provoking his alarm. She’s not always a kind loving, nurturing mother. She resorts to violence at the drop of a hat. I hope that everyone will stay calm, including the neighbors, and let’s try to get “mother” to come to her senses and stop trying to round up the neighbor’s “kids” so that she can lock them in a closet for years or the rest of their lives because they broke some of her rules. Rules that are, in the scheme of things, exceedingly minor compared to the “punishment” she seeks to inflict on them.
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Comment #24 posted by afterburner on August 10, 2005 at 22:56:40 PT
FoM, Follow-up
You have mail.
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Comment #23 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 22:37:22 PT

Afterburner
Thank you so much. I posted the news about Emery because I thought I should. I try to post articles that sometime I don't want to post but I mentally remove myself and post them anyway. I want to be fair. I don't look up to individual people. I never have been that way. No one maybe except Neil Young. I'm kidding now.This came to mind and thought I'd share it.Take good care.No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
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Comment #22 posted by afterburner on August 10, 2005 at 22:24:48 PT

FoM
Even though I track what Cannabis Culture and Pot-TV have to say about cannabis reform and medical cannabis reform, I do not agree with everything I hear or read. I find that the CC Forums especially display at times an over-exaggerated negativity toward the USA and vicious in-fighting that is a disservice to the reform movement. Most Canadians like Americans as a people; it's the US government they object to. If the US government was not consistently using bully tactics against Canada, the anti-Americanism would not be as fierce. Unfortunately, the Forums are not private, but are read by rabid prohibitionists who use thoughtless and compromising statements as evidence when charging cannabis citizens. I prefer the mostly reasoned and factual debate at Cannabis News to the wild and wooly emotionalism of CC Forums. However, I feel that there is a place for both in the cannabis reform movement. Some people operate from a mind-dominant frame of reference, and other people are more emotive, more action-oriented. You are a super-newshawk and a caring and gifted moderator. You often post articles that you do not agree with, because they are news-worthy and comment-worthy. In such a spirit you posted the Marc Emery news. Not to do so would be a form of unnecessary censorship, like the manipulative mass media engages in. Do not feel threatened by the DEA's attempt to paint Marc Emery as a "drug kingpin." Cannabis prohibition has put most cannabis into the hands of the black market, whether idealistic proponents of civil disobedience or selfish, greed-driven opportunists. According to the DEA, all cannabis "possession, trafficking, and cultivation" is crime. They refuse to acknowledge medical cannabis at the federal level. The good and bad "criminals" are an unavoidable by-product of cannabis prohibition. IMO, these so-called criminals do not undermine the efforts of medical cannabis pioneers, like WAMM co-founder Valerie Corral. Remember, her cannabis garden was raided by the DEA too. To them she is just another criminal. So is Angel Raich, thanks to the US Supreme Court cowardice. Be true to yourself. Cannabis News will survive. The US public is finally waking from its long anti-cannabis sleep. They need this rich informational site, the tireless contributions of the posters here and the reform groups' persistent push for law reform. "We were right. We were giving. That's how we kept what we gave away."I consider you a friend too.
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Comment #21 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 20:46:51 PT

Afterburner
I've been busy and slow to respond but I wanted to tell you how I feel about what has happened in Canada. The more I read the more the whole thing bothers me. I mind the anger directed at the United States. I love my country. I'm sure Canadians love their country too. If I didn't like the way the laws were in Canada I wouldn't talk down about Canada. It's like the old expression that we can say that we don't like our mother but if someone else insults our mother it makes a child very angry. Canadians shouldn't be so hard on us down here. We are trying and working to help change laws too. We have a great country. It's has lots of people and problems are expected. We can't change everything but we can make a difference if we do it right. Anger towards the USA from Canadians only will alienate the two countries. Emery did what he did and will suffer the consequences. That is his fault not all of Americas fault. I hope you understand what I mean.I consider you a friend.

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Comment #20 posted by Taylor121 on August 10, 2005 at 12:12:00 PT

Thanks FoM, and everyone here; A Task on the Net
Thanks everyone for doing their part to keep our movement alive and ticking. I continue to be impressed that we are operating with such credibility under a hostile Congress and Administration. FoM of course has her hands full, but everyone else that isn't too busy I still encourage you to get involved in non cannabis forums/communities around the internet and use the forums as a tool to communicate to others about the failure of cannabis prohibition. http://big-boards.com has a list of the top 900 or so internet forums. Many of these forums have "off topic" or "political" topic forums that you can freely post about marijuana legalization. Activists should be as proactive as possible convincing others, especially conservatives, that a change is needed. Be polite out there and stay focused and rational. Remember, do not over exaggerate or lie for the cause; that makes us as bad as the quacks we are fighting with. Stay honest and forthcoming while being polite. Good luck
:)
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Comment #19 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 12:01:36 PT

Taylor121
Thank you and bless your heart!
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Comment #18 posted by Taylor121 on August 10, 2005 at 11:59:41 PT

CNews 
I see no legal reason for cannabis news to be taken down in the foreseeable future. The Canadian situation with Marc Emery is very different from cannabis news. Cannabis news is purely free speech assuming you keep people from peddling drugs to others on this site (which I never have seen a problem with). Although the DEA's decision to prosecute Emery was done in part to silence the legalization movement as evident in their press release, the charges laid against them was not based on a law against a certain type of speech, rather it was for selling marijuana seeds, illegal in both Canada (although de-facto legal since Canada doesn't enforce) and illegal in the United States. The U.S. gained jurisdiction through a criminal treaty signed by both Canada and the United States (I believe in the late 70's). No worries, believe it or not free speech is still fairly protected here in the states. Just keep your nose clean and don't brag about breaking United States Federal law
 :)
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Comment #17 posted by Hope on August 10, 2005 at 10:58:02 PT

Plants
There are many truly poisonous and apparently worthless plants but no plant should be illegal for anyone to grow. None! Not one! Those plants are gifts from the Creator, or Creation...however you want to look at it, and we have not begun to unlock the secrets that all of them hold. Everything mankind needs is in them. I am sure of it. We just have to find it and use it. Every plant should be “free” for those who want to study and use it. We could be missing huge benefits, remedies, and palliatives. All astounding discoveries aren’t made in a lab belonging to a pharmaceutical company or scientific organization. Sometimes regular people who devote themselves to understanding something make the most astounding discoveries and breakthroughs. Whose to say that Steve Tuck, someone who could easily be a modern day George Washington Carver, shouldn't have been the next guy that would have brought huge benefits to the earth and it's peoples through some discovery he made in his study of the cannabis plant? Yet prohibition lunatics have forced him to give up the study he loves so much and made his life as hard as they can, separated him from his family, want to lock him in prison, quiet his voice, and smother his curiosity and ability.There's got to be something good in even poison ivy and bull nettle if we would just learn what it is and use it. Peanuts have much good in them...yet simply by roasting them, they can turn into a poison that can kill certain people. To think about destroying permanently any plant is outrageous. Heck...they wouldn't even kill the last vials of small pox and polio they had at one time and they try to dig up old flu germs out of the graves from the flu epidemic in the early part of the twentieth century to “preserve” things for study, yet we actually have moronic cretins who want to destroy… permanently… some of our most astounding gifts in the form of plants. How sane is that? The sheer and true insanity of some of the people who try to run this world is terrifying.ALL plants should be free and available for ANYONE who wants to grow, study, or use them…whether he has a degree or “acceptable” laboratory or not. 

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Comment #16 posted by runderwo on August 10, 2005 at 10:07:39 PT

always
Yep, he will always be a marijuana cultivator. And thus a menace to society, justifying the ethics and cost of his imprisonment. I guess.
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Comment #15 posted by Richard Zuckerman on August 10, 2005 at 09:24:12 PT:

HOW CAN THEY POT IS THE CAUSE?
Fluoride in drinking water is known to be carcinogenic. In fact, some factions, Unions, of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have concluded this. Read the history of the cover-up about the medical damage cause by water Fluoridation, from THE FLUORIDE DECEPTION, by Christopher Bryson, c. 2004 or 2005, Seven Stories Press? www.fluoridealert.org. Aspartame is the subject of litigation in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. There was a cover-up of the medical dangers associated with Aspartame being added to our food!There is a secret government operation known as CHEMTRAILS, which drops hazardous materials into our air from airplanes. It is no coincidence that the number of cases of respiratory illness is on the rise! The government wants to control the weather. In fact, the Web site of www.militiaofmontana.com sells a book showing Nikola Tesla's technology being used by the government to induce an earthquake! One of the seminal eye opening authorities, the book entitled MARIHUANA RECONSIDERED, c. 1971, by Dr. Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Psychiatrist, Harvard University Press, contains numerous references to studies concluding Cannabis is safe and and helpful! My favorite aspect of his book, though, is his ratio decidendi, that in order to ascertain the medical dangers of "Marijuana" with a reasonable medical certainty, the observer must be able to rule out extrinsic causes of the medical ailments allegedly stemming from the use of "Marihuana". The government has lied so often they have no credibility anymore! When a criminal defendant claims the police made false statements to obtain a Warrant, the judge ordinarily takes all of the allegedly false statements, puts them aside, and decides whether without those allegedly false statements there exists sufficient evidence aliunde to support the issuance of the search warrant. Applying this test to the alleged medical dangers of Marihuana, putting aside all of the lies by the pro-government scientists and propagandists like the federal drug czar, there exists sufficient evidence to support the position that Marihuana is safe, nontoxic, and of medical use!Richard Paul Zuckerman, Box 159, Metuchen, N.J., 08840-0159, richardzuckerman2002 yahoo.com. Exclusively voting for Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party, and Green Party candidates.
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Comment #14 posted by afterburner on August 10, 2005 at 09:22:40 PT

Fear Not, FoM, 'Choose Life' 
"No army can resist the strength of an idea whose time has come."The future depends on hemp and cannabis. If it continues to be illegal, the future will be a bleak down-winding from "peak oil." If people in government, business, and the voters' box wake-up and smell the cannabis, the future will be an up-winding of opportunity and plenty."You can make life a pleasant journey or a sterile cage. It's up to you." --paraphrase of Meta Metaphor by David MacDermott. "19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." --Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (New International Version)
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Comment #13 posted by AOLBites on August 10, 2005 at 09:18:48 PT

He will continue to be a (marijuana) cultivator.
Judge gets tough on marijuana growerBy Ray Estrada
Tuesday, August 9, 2005 10:48 AM CDTAs his daughter, son and mother wept in court, a Vallecito man was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for violating his probation by growing more marijuana than he was legally allowed for medicinal use and after sheriff's deputies found shotgun shells in his house."I want to talk to my father," shouted a tearful Devon Harrison as Bill Roth Harrison was handcuffed and taken to county jail. The elder Harrison said on the witness stand that it was his son who inadvertently brought the shotgun shells to his home, which violated his parole.At Friday's sentencing hearing, Judge John E Martin listened for almost two hours as Harrison and other witnesses begged for leniency because of his medical condition.Dr. Roger Orman, Harrison's physician, said his patient suffered from chronic pain from the removal of several ribs and half his sternum, which caused a serious infection. The doctor also said Harrison suffers from a severe ringing in his ears and vertigo.
Clad in a powder-blue suit and necktie, Harrison displayed his surgical scars and said if he went to prison, a blow to the chest would kill him.Harrison was allowed to grow marijuana at his ranch, but said he exceeded the two pounds and six plants he was allowed to have at a time because of fears that he would be robbed. He said three doctors had recommended he use marijuana for his pain.He said he was robbed at gunpoint in September 2003 by about seven masked robbers, including a former tenant, who earlier had threatened him. He also said he had given the tenant marijuana for pain. "Nobody cares abut me being robbed and beaten," he said.Harrison and a friend told sheriff's deputies he and a friend watched as thieves pulled up his marijuana plants and loaded them into a U-Haul truck. Authorities later found the truck and seized the pot and went to Harrison's home. Harrison said he was handcuffed for two hours while deputies searched his house.After saying much of Friday's testimony was repeated following his June trial, the judge pointed to Harrison's two prior marijuana conviction 20 years ago and the fact that he sold the illegal substance to a cannabis club to help pay his mortgage and admitted to recently giving pot away recently. Harrison's defense attorney noted that marijuana laws have changed since the 1980s.The judge was not swayed by appeals to allow Harrison to perform community service by landscaping county facilities.Prosecutor Dana Owens said community service "was not appropriate" for Harrison's parole violation. "He showed no remorse," Owens said. "All he does is make excuses."The deputy district attorney also said, "He will continue to be a (marijuana) cultivator. I don't know how many more chances the court can give him."Contact Ray Estrada at restrada calaverasenterprise.com.----------------yes this is in california.
Judge gets tough on marijuana grower
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Comment #12 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 09:15:41 PT

Hope
All these years of doing CNews I have done my very best to keep it focussed on changing the laws. I hope that we will be able to stand on that merit. I carry a tremendous burden in my heart not to cause the people grief that participate on CNews. 
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Comment #11 posted by Hope on August 10, 2005 at 09:03:43 PT

CNews gone before the war is over?
I don't see how that could legally happen. But our government is not what it is supposed to be. More citizens need to understand that our politicians have created an agency designed to thwart democracy in the US. I don't see how the ONDCP and the duty it's been charged with can be legal. How can it be legal to create an agency designed specifically to protect a law from being changed...especially an unjust law, in a country where citizens are supposed to be free to work to change such things? It's so hard not to hate the people behind such a nefarious scheme.
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 09:00:21 PT

goneposthole 
Thank you. I hope we can hang on but I am being realistic. We have people going to jail from this site and they are quietly dealing with it not making it a big political issue. I respect them for that immensely.As far as what is going on in Crawford, God Bless Them!
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Comment #9 posted by Hope on August 10, 2005 at 08:56:00 PT

Kap
I sent you an email yesterday.
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Comment #8 posted by goneposthole on August 10, 2005 at 08:54:30 PT

CNews gone?
Perish the thought, FoM.Pot tv is back up, fyi.Cindy Sheehan is getting under George Bush's skin. George Bush is in a real pickle with her hanging out near Crawford.I never thought the dissolution of the US gov would be witnessed in our time, but it is happening before our eyes. Amazing.The United States will remain, but the US government is gone.As you sow, you reap.
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 08:44:08 PT

Maybe CNews Will Be Gone Too
I hope we will be able to stay online but maybe we will be taken down too. I wouldn't mind CNews being taken off line if it was for an American issue. I am just in a wait and see mode. I've done my best and I am happy about that.
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on August 10, 2005 at 08:33:37 PT:

Cognitive dissonances challenged
IMHO what's happening in "Canuckistan" (Pat Buchanan should apologize to them; they didn't deserve that) will have a tremendous amount of cachet when push comes to shove. It will show the laws as they presently stand in both countries to be the unworkable, unreasonable *kludges* they have always been, but heretofore had never caught the public's attention as to how patently *irrational* they are. As AB has pointed out below, patients can have weed...but where to get it? Flin Flon's 'product' is poisonous crap, so where to get the 'good stuff'? The obvious answer is to grow your own. Where to get the seeds, though? For a while, Health Canada was directing patients to a *supposedly* illegal seed dealer, Mr. Emery, inviting Canadians to *also break the law* by purchasing what he offered. Insanity!!!The whole of the prohibition as usual rests upon such cognitive dissonances. Challenge those publicly, and watch the prohib position crumble into dust. Which is IMHO what will happen at Mr. Emery's extradition trial. I am actually looking forward to it...so long as it is held in Canada, preferably in his home Province. There's lots of quiet but red-hot anger in Canada right now over the case of Mr. Maher Arar, and with good reason; what the US did to *him* proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Uncle cannot be trusted with the lives of Canadian citizens. Particularly those the US Guv'mint has taken a punitive interest in, as proven by Karen Tandy's recent less-than-subtle statements regarding how she and the agency she heads feels about Emery's *political activities*. The US media may be laying low in this but I expect their Canadian cousins to be raising the roof about it. Sooner or later, it will spill over the border, and once it is in *our* media (dusting off crystal ball) I predict the reaction will be similar to what has happened immediately after Raich/Monson. I wish I could be up there viewing the trial, I really do. For from beginning to end, it will be a condemnation of cannabis prohibition laws. One long in coming. 
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 08:11:42 PT

afterburner
Remember the seed issue isn't something that everyone cares about. Seeds sales are illegal no matter what country a person lives in. Selling Cannabis is still illegal too. We need to change the laws and then maybe it will be legal to sell seeds and cannabis someday.
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Comment #4 posted by afterburner on August 10, 2005 at 07:55:50 PT

Yes, dongenero
Two of the states, mentioned by the DEA indictment against Marc Emery, have medical cannabis laws as does Canada. Another state mentioned by the DEA, Michigan, passed city charter amendments in both Detroit and Ann Arbor supporting medical cannabis, and local activists are working to put a state regulation issue on the ballot.The question in States and in Canada is or was: if it is legal for a medical cannabis patient to possess the healing medicine and if it is legal for a licensed caregiver to grow the healing plant, where can they get the seeds. One choice is seedbanks like those of Marc Emery. The Canadian government now provides cannabis seeds to a miniscule portion of "the sick and dying"; those seeds and the Flin Flon fiasco seeds were provided by Steve Tuck, American "reefer refugee," who by the way did Not want Health Canada to sell the seeds.A Moment to Remember 
by Gary Watters (03 Aug, 2005) Reflections by an Emery Seed customer
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4474.html
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 07:49:53 PT

dongenero 
I've never had any interest in seed sales. I haven't seen any of the canadian mmj activists from the ccc list I am on comment about seeds at all. 
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Comment #2 posted by dongenero on August 10, 2005 at 07:35:39 PT

Emery helps med patients
I'm hoping that this issue with Emery is used to highlight the medical marijuana laws in the various states as well as Canada.Canada has national medical marijuana laws and as such have allowed Emery to operate, as they should.I think it should also be highlighted that seeds shipped to the US are used by authorized medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.This move by the DEA against Emery must be capitalized upon to advance our cause.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 10, 2005 at 07:27:07 PT

Just a Note
I only found this one article to post. Maybe there will be more later on. I sure hope the problem in Canada won't effect our progress but it could. I hope the organizations like MPP, NORML and DPA will get us going again. The lack of news could be just because of the time of year. I have work to do around the house with construction going on but I will keep looking for news thru out the day. Hang in there everyone. The problem in Canada shouldn't effect us forever I hope. 
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