cannabisnews.com: NORML's Weekly News Bulletin -- August 5, 2004 NORML's Weekly News Bulletin -- August 5, 2004 Posted by CN Staff on August 05, 2004 at 13:55:22 PT Weekly Press Release Source: NORML Detroit Voters Pass Citywide Medical Marijuana InitiativeAugust 5, 2004 - Detroit, MI, USADetroit, MI: Sixty percent of city residents voted Tuesday in favor of Proposition M: The Detroit Medical Marijuana Act. The measure amends the Detroit city criminal code so that local criminal penalties no longer apply to any individual "possessing or using marijuana under the direction ... of a physician or other licensed health professional."Voters in Ann Arbor and Columbia, Missouri will vote on similar municipal initiatives this fall. Montana voters will also decide on a statewide medical marijuana legalization proposal in November.Campaign organizer Tim Beck of the Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care said that his group intends to work with lawmakers to place the medicinal marijuana issue before the state legislature in 2005. If lawmakers are resistant to the issue, Beck says that he will push for a statewide ballot proposal in 2006.Similar laws exempting patients who use marijuana medicinally from state arrest and prosecution have been passed by voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Washington, DC, though the District's law was never implemented.State legislatures in Hawaii, Maryland and Vermont have also enacted similar laws protecting qualified medical marijuana patients.For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation, at (202) 483-5500. For a summary of this fall's pending initiatives, please visit: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6172DL: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6191 Some Pot Use Will Be Legal in Detroit http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19292.shtmlIn Detroit a Challenge To All on Medical Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19291.shtmlDetroit Pot Law Raises Questionshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19290.shtmlVoters Approve Medical Use of Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19287.shtml Israel To Test THC For Post-Traumatic Stress DisorderAugust 5, 2004 - Jerusalem, IsraelJerusalem, Israel: Hebrew University researchers will begin administering THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, to Israeli soldiers to combat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, the Associated Press reported."The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) medical corps ... is introducing the use of THC, the active agent in the cannabis plant, which helps relieve post-traumatic stress disorder, on an experimental basis," the army noted in a prepared statement.Animal studies performed in Israel and elsewhere have demonstrated that both cannabinoids and endocannabinoids modulate memory. Research published earlier this year in the journal Psychopharmacology found that the administration of THC and the cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) made rats forget prior conditioning.Previous data published in 2002 in Nature noted that the "endogenous cannabinoid system has a central function in extinction of aversive memories."Speaking in May at the Patients Out of Time Third National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, Hebrew University's Raphael Mechoulam said, "The endogenous cannabinoid system could represent a therapeutic target for the treatment of diseases associated with inappropriate retention of aversive memories."For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of the NORML Foundation at (202) 483-5500.DL: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6192 Pot Shots for Israeli Soldiers http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19285.shtmlGreen Green Grass of Home http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15952.shtmlDepartment Of Health And Human Services To Evaluate Medical Cannabis August 5, 2004 - Washington, DC, USAWashington, DC: The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) this week instructed the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct a scientific and medical evaluation of marijuana as part of a reassessment of its scheduling under the federal Controlled Substances Act.The DEA's request is in response to an administrative petition filed by a coalition of health and drug law reform organizations in October 2002 to reclassify marijuana so that doctors may legally prescribe it for medicinal purposes. Under federal law, the DEA is required to submit the rescheduling petition to HHS for review because it presents extensive evidence on marijuana's potential therapeutic use that has not been examined in any prior rescheduling proceeding."Rescheduling is a public policy approach to the medical marijuana issue," said Jon Gettman, the petition's organizer. "Opponents of medical marijuana have challenged advocates to provide a scientific rather than a political case for therapeutic use. [This] petition relies on extensive scientific and medical evidence. Now we challenge HHS to provide patients and doctors an opportunity to provide evidence of marijuana's accepted medical use as part of their formal review of all the available and relevant evidence."The petition seeks the removal of marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act and its rescheduling to a lower classification that would recognize its potential medicinal use and expedite its development as a FDA-approved medication.NORML filed a similar rescheduling petition with the DEA in 1972, but was not granted a federal hearing until 1986. In 1988, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young ruled that marijuana did not meet the legal criteria of a Schedule I prohibited drug and should be reclassified. Then-DEA Administrator John Lawn rejected Young's determination, a decision the D.C. Court of Appeals eventually affirmed in 1994.Full text of the petition is available online at: http://www.drugscience.org/ Petitioners include NORML and California NORML, the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis, Americans for Safe Access, the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, High Times Magazine, Iowans for Medical Cannabis, the Los Angeles CRC, New Mexicans for Compassionate Use, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, and Patients Out of Time.For more information, please contact either Jon Gettman at (540) 822-5739 or NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre at (202) 483-5500.DL: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6190Source: NORML Foundation (DC)Published: August 5, 2004Copyright: 2004 NORML Contact: norml norml.org Website: http://www.norml.org/NORML's Weekly News Bulletin -- July 29, 2004http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19248.shtmlNORML's Weekly News Bulletin -- July 22, 2004http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19220.shtmlNORML's Weekly News Bulletin -- July 15, 2004http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19190.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #21 posted by The GCW on August 06, 2004 at 15:26:07 PT Kapt, see comment #3, below.US CO: Vaccination without representation [ Post Comment ] Comment #20 posted by kaptinemo on August 06, 2004 at 11:11:53 PT: And I am only too well aware of Uribe's intransigence in the face of Colombia's own Supreme Court. It's the old dilemma of the man with nothing but laws in his hand telling the man with the gun what to do. But Uribe's gun - figurative and literal - is supplied by the US. And he STILL can't win. [ Post Comment ] Comment #19 posted by kaptinemo on August 06, 2004 at 10:54:56 PT: Some startling vindication In re: Comment #6I didn't see this until today; nice to know other minds out there are on the same wavelength:Sex, Drugs, and Stupidity By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet. Posted August 4, 2004. http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/19451/From the article:*Meanwhile, in England, a government health adviser appropriately named David Nutt is promoting the idea that children in the U.K. should be immunized against drug addiction. Apparently, the Scripps Research Institute and a British biotech company called Xenova are already working on vaccines against cocaine addiction. Actually, what the "vaccines" would do is block the pleasure receptors in the brain that respond to the happy-joy feelings created by favored drugs like cocaine and heroin. Of course, these are the very same pleasure receptors that allow you to feel good when you pass a test, fall in love, or eat sugary desserts.So if we play our cards right, we can have a whole generation of monogamous kids who don't feel pleasure. I'm looking forward to that future, aren't you? Think of the trouble we'd avoid - never another broken heart, never another drug addict. Oh, but wait - we'd still get addicted to alcohol, which is the drug that kills the most people every year. People would still fall (monogamously) in love with other people who didn't love them back. Luckily, with gene therapy, they'd never fall in love with anybody else again. And they wouldn't be able to get any pleasure out of drowning their sorrows in drugs. Sounds great!*Clockwork Orange, here we come. (And for you younger folks, go rent the movie. But toke up first, it's as gross as it is horrifying.) [ Post Comment ] Comment #18 posted by Virgil on August 06, 2004 at 10:23:13 PT Correction The Colombian Supreme Court ordered the sprayings to stop. It is the puppet President Uribe that orders them on. [ Post Comment ] Comment #17 posted by Virgil on August 06, 2004 at 10:19:26 PT Kap Richard Cowan says that Mexico and Colombia are the primary importers of laughing grass- http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=753 It is strange how that is not talked about by the imperialists that now run/ruin Colombia.The US had the Constitution of Colombia changed so that there puppet might continue in his role as plunder conspirator. Colombia is going to increase its military budget when people are starving and uneducated. You can look for Colombia to borrow money to give the IMF and World Bank control over all things for a long time to come and privitization on an increasing scale. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Colombia has long ordered the killing of everything with poisons from the sky and the government and the US masters laugh as death rains down on everyone and everything. [ Post Comment ] Comment #16 posted by kaptinemo on August 06, 2004 at 10:02:54 PT: And just to sweeten the tale it looks like the annointed of the DrugWarriors is just as dirty as his opponents: Senor Uribe seems to have had some contacts with la cocaina before:http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1110/a06.html?999Just as Al Giordano of NarcoNews stated long ago, when Uribe was crowned (as Mexican General Rebollo was in Barry's day; see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=rebollo+drugs) as the leading anti Santo del Sud.Cocaine is like air down there; it's ubiquitous. It's everwhere. It's used as currency. You can't conduct a single business transaction without the money used becoming tainted. All thanks to prohibition. Es cierto, muy estupido! [ Post Comment ] Comment #15 posted by kaptinemo on August 06, 2004 at 09:41:47 PT: Hey, Johnny Pee: Ever heard of Sisyphus? The legend of Sisyphus was that Sisyphus had to roll a huge boulder all day to the top of a mountain only to have it roll down to the bottom again, day after day, for Eternity. Evidently Johnny Pee never heard that one, but it's no different than Sisyphus or King Canute. And what could we have done with the taxpayer's money used in ruining the health of dirt-poor campesinos?The Chicago-Sun-Times article CorvallisEric kindly provided us must be read in full to appreciate the irony.Especially the bit about drug stockpiling. How does Johnny Pee think that a ship load of 13 TONS of nose candy was shipped to the US?Look up the words Svesda Maru in Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=svesda+maru13 Effin' TONS of white powder. TONS!!!!!! And just remember: that was *one* ship. How many others got through? Enough to maintain static price levels and quality, not to mention quantity. Yet he wants to 'keep on keepin' on'.I'll go one better. How about this: would you believe a freakin' SUBMARINE!?Drug submarine found in Colombia http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/915059.stm My fictional namesake would be laughing his arse off right now.As I am. With ingenuity like this, there's simply no hope for DrugWarriors, none at all. But like Sisyphus, they just keep on pointlessly rolling that rock, so long as there's a paycheck involved. [ Post Comment ] Comment #14 posted by ron on August 06, 2004 at 09:23:23 PT Did I hear right? Thanks for the video link Jose. The sentence that follows the reported Bushism sounds like:"We must never stop thinking about how best to offend our country".He's certainly done that. [ Post Comment ] Comment #13 posted by breeze on August 06, 2004 at 08:50:39 PT Everytime the "drug warriors" speak... or are quoted in any piece, it makes me gag.Spoonfed lies are now turning to shovel and siv. [ Post Comment ] Comment #12 posted by potpal on August 06, 2004 at 08:09:29 PT fyi... Snatched from the BBC website...today 8/6/04US anti-drug campaign 'failing' Walters praised Mexico's efforts to combat the drugs trade US drugs tsar John Walters has admitted that Washington's anti-narcotics policy in Latin America has so far failed. Mr Walters said in Mexico that billions of dollars of investment over many years have failed to dent the flow of Latin American cocaine onto US streets. "We have not yet seen in all these efforts what we're hoping for on the supply side, which is a reduction in availability," he said in Mexico City. But he predicted positive results would be seen within a year. Mr Walters was speaking just after he had visited Colombia, where US-backed efforts to wipe out drug-smuggling gangs and eradicate coca crops have turned the country into the world's third-largest recipient of US military aid. However, in an interview with the Associated Press news agency, he defended the Plan Colombia aid package and insisted that it should continue. "We have a history in the United States of not following through on programmes like this," he said. Production shift While praising Mexico's efforts to combat the drugs trade, Mr Walters also said that there had been no notable disruption in the supply of drugs to the US. Anti-narcotics raids had been successful in removing a number of important cartel leaders but had not led to any shortage. However, Mr Walters said he hoped that there would be a decline in the amount of cocaine available in the United States over the next 12 months. Correspondents point out that whenever the US has been able to cut coca production anywhere in Latin America, the shortfall has been made up by increases elsewhere in the region. Production has notably risen in Peru, the world's next biggest producer of cocaine after Colombia. [ Post Comment ] Comment #11 posted by Jose Melendez on August 06, 2004 at 05:25:38 PT Re: comment #8 As for the second story in CE's post, here's a quicktime movie of the quote. Note Rumsfeld's barely perceptible reaction.http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/movies/0805041bush.movsee also an interesting view of how scripted these political staged events are at:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/08/06/at_campaign_stop_bush_pokes_fun_at_himself/ . . . for all his impromptu humor on the stump, Bush had difficulty getting through a practiced text at the White House earlier in the day, as he signed a defense appropriations bill.In trying to pump up Americans' confidence that the government is preparing for any form of attack, Bush risked doing the opposite, saying: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - - -Freudian slip: http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/fslip.html O, these naughty times Put bars between the owners and their rights! And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, Let fortune go to hell for it, not I. I speak too long; but 'tis to seize the time, To eke it and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election. [ Post Comment ] Comment #10 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on August 06, 2004 at 04:45:11 PT LTE revision ... change "up the budget" to "keep the money coming"... one minor stretch of the truth might ruin an otherwise worthy LTE... I hate it when I hit send and -then- change my mind... so now its:Sirs,Right after John Walters concedes that the effort in Columbia has had no impact, he makes the ubiquitous plea of the drug warrior: damn the evidence, stay the course, and keep the money coming. He says, "We have a history in the United States of not following through on programs like this." Why should we follow through on failure? [ Post Comment ] Comment #9 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on August 06, 2004 at 04:40:15 PT LTE CE, that first story, the one in the Sun Times, is a heck of a piece, and deserved a quick LTE:Sirs, Right after John Walters concedes that the effort in Columbia has had no impact, he makes the ubiquitous plea of the drug warrior: damn the evidence, stay the course, and up the budget. He says, "We have a history in the United States of not following through on programs like this." Why should we follow through on failure? http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-drugs06.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #8 posted by CorvallisEric on August 06, 2004 at 03:03:29 PT OT: Walters admits failure, Bush tells truth. After flying over blackened coca fields, White House drug czar John Walters conceded that seizing cocaine, destroying coca crops and locking up drug traffickers in Colombia have had little impact on the flow of cocaine on American streets. --- But Walters nevertheless insisted that Washington must stay the course ...... Despite the effort here, cocaine prices on U.S. streets remain unchanged, a sign there is no shortage of the drug.http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-drugs06.html"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2994506a12,00.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by ekim on August 05, 2004 at 19:47:18 PT National Review Ed. calls for end in Drug War just a while ago on C-Span dir tv ch 350 Rich Lowry was giving a speech to a group of Young Gop activist after his speech he took questions from the youthful audience. about 5 or 6 queries then came a young man up to the mic and told of visiting his Grand Parents and that National Review was promiently displayed the Grands are long subscribers. With a clam eye to eye he went on to say how he could not help by notice that the cover had a Cannabis leaf on the cover and that in the magazine a story and color pictures of two elderly folks tending there garden of Cannabis, only to find out that the Feds broke in and destroyed all there hard work and locked both of them up. And do you (Rich Lowry) think that the Govt should be doing that. Rich said he did run the story and that polls have shown that time has come to change the laws. That Cannabis is no big deal. That families have been far more damaged by Alcoholics and Tobacco than Cannabis. He backed peddled a little saying that someone smoking for 30 years is looser which brought a few claps but most of the crowd had faces which said loudly (come on man you know its not so) Rich did end his reply by saying that to much money is being spent locking up people who once in a while like to use Cannabis. He did say a little about Hard Drugs and that some where very bad on the users but the Drug War needs changing. http://www.leap.cc [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on August 05, 2004 at 19:40:30 PT: Playing with fire Why do people engage in sex?Biological reproductive imperatives aside, they do so because it feels good. It feels good because those very same receptors the innocculation is supposed to target become deluged with endogenous opioids during the act.No such excitation = no pleasure. No pleasure during sex means no impetus for sex. Which in turn means no need for social contact. Which means alienation. Which means that those so horribly 'innocculated' may find other, less wholesome diversions. For it's not just sex that's governed by those receptors; they are intimately tied in with emotions of all kinds...especially love.An interesting fact: may sex crimes are committed by people, usually males, who suffer some form of sexual dysfunction - like impotence - so serious their mental health is affected. They get warped. Twisted. The internal mental pressures become so great they become psychotic. And in such a state are liable to do heinous things...and often have. Someone incapable fo making love or even feeling affection...becomes someone quite capable of murder. This process would create a whole class of people who would see an entire society as fair game for retribution for what was done to them. They could wind up having absolutely no sense of humanity. They would become the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' of those who in the early 1980's spoke of children becoming 'superpredators'.Do we really want to create a generation of kids who turn out to be that way? I daresay that society as we know it would not survive. [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by rchandar on August 05, 2004 at 18:25:48 PT: mayan hmmm--yeah, but how likely is it that DEA will agree to reclassification, i don't know. they've opposed it every time petitions like this have circulated;it gives them a moral absolute that they seem to depend on.there SHOULD be coming a time when this classification will change. i'm just not sure that they're really interested in it. --rchandar [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by mayan on August 05, 2004 at 18:13:07 PT Time For Truth From the last piece on the bulletin..."Opponents of medical marijuana have challenged advocates to provide a scientific rather than a political case for therapeutic use. [This] petition relies on extensive scientific and medical evidence. Now we challenge HHS to provide patients and doctors an opportunity to provide evidence of marijuana's accepted medical use as part of their formal review of all the available and relevant evidence."If there is any objectivity whatsoever in this evaluation of cannabis then it will be rescheduled immediately. Much of the world is finally admitting what we have known all along. Now it is up to the U.S. government to accept the truth or be exposed as a total fraud!The way out...How Does Being Complicit To Cover-Up Sit With YOUR Conscience? http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1847&blz=1Talk Show Host Michael Medved Advocates Government Surveillance of 9/11 Skeptics: http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2004/050804michaelmedved.htm9/11: All In One Chunk http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11BasicQuestions.html9/11 Was an Inside Job - A Call to True Patriots: http://www.911sharethetruth.com/ [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by The GCW on August 05, 2004 at 17:12:20 PT From the Boulder Weekly US CO: Vaccination without representation Viewed at: http://www.boulderweekly.com/incaseyoumissedit.html Vaccination without representation Since the War on Drugs has failed so miserably, the government is considering a new approach: a vaccine against drugs.The shot works by blocking receptors in the brain responsible for the rush drug users yearn for. The vaccinated simply cannot get the same amount of pleasure from heroine, cocaine or nicotine as they normally would, so the hope is that the number of drug addicts will plummet. Or, people will start taking these drugs in ever-increasing doses, desperate to get high even if it kills them. This new policy obviously has kinks in it.To make things scarier, the government’s plan is not to head into addiction/recovery centers with these latest mind-controlling substances, but instead to go into the school system and experiment on "at-risk" youth.This is not a late-night sci-fi flick, folks. The program is to operate incognito alongside other routine childhood vaccinations like mumps and rubella and will be up and running in the United Kingdom as early as 2006 (bankrolled, of course, by the U.S.).Human-rights advocates responded to the news with alarm, calling it unethical to use pharmaceuticals to enforce government policy. This is your brain on approved drugs that inhibit the uptake of other, non-approved drugs. Any questions?Respond: letters boulderweekly.com [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by The GCW on August 05, 2004 at 16:46:55 PT 'nough said. Cannabis helps throughPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder.Now get the disobedient nazi segment of Our family away from the light switch. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by global_warming on August 05, 2004 at 15:31:08 PT Keep the Good News Coming... Go Michigan, as the little bricks fall so will this monstrous edifice crumble.. [ Post Comment ] Post Comment