cannabisnews.com: Hearing Scheduled on MMJ Ballot Explanation










  Hearing Scheduled on MMJ Ballot Explanation

Posted by CN Staff on August 10, 2006 at 07:05:45 PT
By Dirk Lammers, Associated Press 
Source: Associated Press 

Sioux Falls, S.D. - A circuit judge has ordered a hearing next week on whether the wording of a ballot measure seeking to legalize medicinal marijuana should be more objective and neutral.The case against Attorney General Larry Long and Secretary of State Chris Nelson was filed by a woman who said she smokes marijuana to ease symptoms of her exposure to nerve gas while serving as a U.S. Army medic in Iraq.
Ron Volesky, a Huron lawyer acting as Valerie Hannah's local counsel, said Long exceeded his authority by stating that possession of marijuana is a federal crime.Volesky said the attorney general should state only what effect a measure would have on state law."We think to include that in is inflammatory," he said. "That's a fact, not an effect."Long has said that even if voters approve the measure, it's still going to be a crime under federal law to possess or use marijuana.The medicinal marijuana measure was approved for the Nov. 7 ballot after supporters gathered more than the required 16,728 valid signatures.Under the proposal, marijuana could be used for medical purposes if patients and their doctors agree that the benefits outweigh the risks. Supporters contend marijuana helps those with diseases such as cancer and AIDS, and people suffering from chronic pain, nausea or seizures.The ballot explanation reads that even if the measure is passed, those who possess, use or distribute marijuana for medical reasons still can be prosecuted by federal authorities.The warning adds that doctors may be subject to losing their federal licenses to prescribe legal drugs if they certify that people with debilitating health problems would benefit from marijuana use."We think that's beyond the scope of his authority," Volesky said.Hannah, who said exposure to the nerve gas sarin forced her to retire from the military after 10 years, filed the lawsuit seeking to toss out Long's explanation of the ballot measure because it would hamper chances of passage.The Deerfield woman contends people with health problems who would be helped by smoking marijuana should not be forced to get it illegally.California voters in 1996 made it the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana. Voters in 10 other states have since enacted laws that allow dispensing pot to treat specific medical problems, although the federal government continues to outlaw marijuana.Montana voters legalized medical marijuana in 2004, and Hannah has said the South Dakota ballot proposal is patterned after that law.The hearing is scheduled for Aug. 18, before Circuit Judge Max Gors in Pierre.Complete Title: Hearing Scheduled on Medical Marijuana Ballot ExplanationSource: Associated Press (Wire)Author: Dirk Lammers, Associated PressPublished: Wednesday, August 9, 2006Copyright: 2006 Associated Press Related Article: Lawsuit Pending for Marijuana Measurehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22035.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 

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Comment #18 posted by afterburner on August 10, 2006 at 21:28:22 PT
whig & museman
I too favor a new renaissance rather than a new dark age. However, I see both occurring simultaneously. The oil (fossil-fueled) industrial society is waning and dragging the world, or those people who depend on it and cannot see an alternative, into a new dark age, a devolving society, scarcity, war and rumors of war, ecological chaos. The hemp-fueled electronic aborigine society is evolving toward a new renaissance of culture and commerce, a deeper and higher spirituality, a recovery of craftpersonship, individual enterprise, family and community, and creativity.Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), "a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States." She also wrote Dark Age Ahead (2004){describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in the U.S. and Canada. She argues that this decay threatens to create a dark age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a dark age as a "mass amnesia"[1] where even the memory of what was lost is lost. The pillars Jacobs lists as under threat are:[2]-community and family -higher education -science and technology -taxes and government responsive to citizen's needs -self-policing by the learned professions} Cooperation, not coercion, must be the core philosophy, the organizing principle of the new love-based society. 
Jane Jacobs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Comment #17 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 15:03:44 PT
Max
Another thing to keep in mind about supply and demand -- when we have an economy based upon cannabis as the basis for our fuel, food and fiber there will be always huge and growing demand. So there is nothing on the horizon that could make growing it less than capable of being a way of supporting one's family. Full cannabis legalization, is what I am talking about, and this will be the result without any question. There are no economic arguments that can counter the fact that cannabis can be grown in as much quantity as the market requires, for time without end, renewable and responsible for preserving our planet.
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Comment #16 posted by charmed quark on August 10, 2006 at 14:56:22 PT
Is "use" of cannabis a federal crime?
The state AG said possession, distribution and use are all Federal crimes. Is that true? Are there Federal laws about the ingestion of cannabis?
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Comment #15 posted by museman on August 10, 2006 at 14:56:10 PT
whig
I'm with you on that resolve.
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Comment #14 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 14:45:31 PT
Max
Contrary to conservative economists, scarcity is not a positive attribute of a commercial item. There is nothing wrong with a commodity that can be equivalently farmed by anyone anywhere given some effort and time and a little land. Not everyone would grow cannabis nor should they. Those who do will have a commodity that is readily exchangeable for other items of commerce. Apart from the scarcity aspect which creates the monopolistic practices we see, that is no different in principal from oil today.Higher grades and organic practices and heirloom strains for psychoactive effects will be cultivated by those who care about them for themselves, their friends and discerning clients, exactly as now. There will be plenty of things that make up the cannabis economy other than farming, though, including every artifact produced from cannabis or hemp.
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Comment #13 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 14:35:25 PT
museman
We are preservationists witness at the second Fall of Rome. We are seeing it crumble from its own internal inconsistencies but we know it can do much damage yet. But in the wake of this transformation there must be a knowledge base immediately ready to move forward, meaning that it should be already in place at a small scale and growing throughout the time of collapse. This is the thing that small-scale cannabis economies can do now, in the places where it is possible to avoid the persecuting authorities.I am not speaking of money changing or taking the spiritual and making it commercial. I am talking about all the useful benefits of a cannabis economy in the every day exchange of goods and services, art and sciences, work and recreation.There will either be a dark age or there will be a renaissance, and it is our role to ensure the latter, to encourage the development of the structures that will preserve us.
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Comment #12 posted by Max Flowers on August 10, 2006 at 14:33:32 PT
whig / hemp economy
I like the spirit of that idea, but here's where I see a problem: all of those other commerce items have one thing in common that hemp/cannabis does not---rarity, and difficulty and expense of production. Gold needs mining and painstaking collection; oil, the same (drilling, pumping, etc.); tea even needs to take up huge amounts of real estate in foreign Asian lands and lots of labor to collect. Cannabis, by contrast, grows easily, anywhere, and takes relatively little labor to harvest with western farm machinery. For those reasons, I can't easily see it becoming a principal item of commerce in the way you describe. I mean, hemp, maybe, in huge amounts could if it were allowed to become as big as it once was and became the main precursor for paper, plastics, etc. But psychoactive cannabis strains are hard for me to imagine this happening with because so many people can grow it. The average person can't dig gold out of their back yard, or drill for oil in their back yard, or grow valuable amounts of tea in their back yard.I don't know, maybe I'm just not visionary enough...
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Comment #11 posted by museman on August 10, 2006 at 14:26:18 PT
whig
I agree. Unfortunately though I do believe in the miraculous, I have little faith that significant turn-around in base values, and mind sets can happen in time to save life as we know it.When the dust clears on the last and greatest follies of man, the information will hopefully be there for the survivors to embrace, and a few who actually know the logic and solution to teach the world a better way.The information, technology, ways, and means to stop the juggernaut, lemminglike motion of humanity consuming themselves over the brink of choice, into the abyss of the consequences, exists now. WE know this, apparently THEY don't. It's all about a salvage operation - not a SALVATION operation - what can we keep from being destroyed, and what should we keep from being destroyed, as opposed to that which we will allow to be destroyed?From my perspective, the core solution can only be described as 'magic' having to do with faith and belief. Without that there truly is no sure foundation upon which to build. There is no 'band-aid' to fix the accumulative damage to our biosphere -from sciences' point of view it's absolutely too late to stop chains of events already in play, like the melting ice-caps and glaciers.Those of humanity who cannot find their faith and belief (and I believe the definition of those terms is relative to the individual experiencing them) cannot have any real hope of survival, except for luck.I am not a pessimist. I truly am not looking for the failure, I am looking for the solution. Don't you know that if I had a modicum of opportunity to grow hemp for fuel, fiber, food, and other uses, I would be a much healthier man for it today, and I would be trading my efforts for whatever I needed.Unless we can somehow change the minds of a significant number of people towards some real nitty-gritty reality checks most specially including Spiritual, I can see no real effective action except to teach the knowledge, and warn folks to have some distance between them and the towers of Babylon- because they will fall - metaphoricly, as well as literally.
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Comment #10 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 13:45:54 PT
Cannabis sativa
Useful hemp.Cannabis is the food and the fuel of the future. Cannabis is the environmental answer to global warming, the end of dependence on oil and other polluting fuels. Cannabis is the answer to world hunger, it will grow in any climate and is more nutritious than any other grain. Cannabis is the healing of the sick and the pain treatment of choice for lack of unpleasant side effects and addictiveness.
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Comment #9 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 13:39:59 PT
museman
Every era is typified by a principal item of commerce, whether it was gold as in the past, or tea as it was under the English, or oil as it is today. That principal item, in a mercantilist system like our own, is protected by the military forces of the state.What we are undertaking, then, is an end to the oil-based economy and a new cannabis economy which is not dependent upon foreign sources nor can be monopolized by anyone to the detriment of another when there is an end to prohibition.Cannabis should be the reserve currency of all commerce, futures contracts would be specified in bulk units of flowering tops, and people would be able to grow their own and support their families without having to fear punishment. Why shouldn't we have an agrarian economy, anyhow? Isn't that what the Jeffersonian faction was arguing for all along?We need a hemp-based economy.
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Comment #8 posted by museman on August 10, 2006 at 13:23:44 PT
Munitions, Oil, and strategic deployment
Since the invention of gunpowder, there has been a small group of financiers, and munitions makers who have become the most powerful, and wealthiest dynasties in earth's history. They were not content to just make their arms, and weaponry to sell to all comers, they began the game of instigation, and provocaturing, to ensure that each and every generation had the 'opportunity' to buy and use their wares. Munitions makers started so so many wars, and made history think it was kings or states.As the turn of the 20th century brought the internal combustion engine into major focus, and use, those same families that controlled the munitions invested in oil, and now both 'industries' share markets, intelligence, and governmental backing.They've dumped obsolete weaponry on 3rd world countries like Somalia, Nigeria, for cheap trades of diamonds and slaves - which now has 10 year olds carrying automatic weapons in the streets- all to keep that area of the world in turmoil. I suspect some deep deep ancient prejudices are involved in that as well. When they get through exhausting the resources of the rest of the world they planned to go after Africa.Oil has become the addiction of addictions - the most dangerous poison to ever be consumed by man. Therefore very very profitable. A campaign to consumerize the entire world into needing that oil has just about succeeded in blanketing the earth in it's corruption.The 'golden age' of american consumerism was in the fifties, when there was an entire generation of young men who'd just been through hell so those few could at the top could rake in the profits. They were hailed as heroes, the 'saviors of the 'free' world'. The horrors were hollywoodized, and until Saving Private Ryan, they all played the status quo, and kept their nightmares and true memories of their hell submerged and silent.My parents generation swallowed the stuff hook, line, and sinker, which is a very big reason why the boomers were so rebellious. By the time we came of age, the propaganda and unreal rendering of WWII had done it's work - an entire generation of Americans was willing to give their sons to VietNam, so they did.There is a board game called "Risk" which if one undertands, is a scaled down version of the U.S. War Room in the Pentagon. It is basicly a global map depicting 6 regions or 'countries'. The object is to conquer all 6 countries to 'rule the world.'Anyone who has ever looked at the map of the world in terms of military strategy, can see that the pivotal point in any campaign is the Middle East. It is the center of the 'Old World.'In the current events, Iraq, Iran, and Israel represent absolutely crucial strategic holdings in the ongoing endeavor by the powers behind the economics to control the world, to establish that "New World Order." If they get control of both Iraq, and Iran, they basicly have control of the oil, because though Saudi Arabia now has a near monopoly on access to the last great oil fields in the Persian Gulf, if US got control of Iran as well as Iraq, they would have the same access, therefore greatly diminishing the power of the Arab Emirate, and OPEC.Somehow I think that this probably is why there is such underhand support of Islamic Jihad from wealthy sources in Saudi Arabia.Israel vs Islam. This is very old. Both cultures tell their children stories that go back before the time of Y'shua. They teach racism. I'm talking 'strong tradition' here, not referencing modern liberal-minded individuals who may have been raised as Jews or Muslims. Ishmael is a demon, a 'cast-off' to the Jews. To the muslims he is a patriarc and a hero.The establishment of the Jewish state called 'Israel' is a fulfillment of prophecy. The fact that it was established within three years of the Hiroshima attack coincides with a native American Prophecy referring to 'the gourd of ashes.'Is it coincidence that the oldest 'calendar' known to man, the Mayan calendar, ends the same year that the western world is predicted to run out of oil? 2012-13.The Armies of the North, South, East, and West are gathering into their respective strategic positions. The ultimate weapons have been created, and sold to the highest bidders. Oil to power the machines of war is still not under control. The strategic control of that oil is no doubt going to be the above-board justification for Armageddon, but there is so so much more to it.
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on August 10, 2006 at 11:59:56 PT

whig 
That's right. The christian fundamentalists like Pat Robertson think it is necessary based on the scripture I quoted a while ago. He was interviewed on CNN last night if you didn't see it. Got to kill them you know. That's what this is all about. Muslims and Jews fighting for the Holyland. It's for oil and power too.
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Comment #6 posted by Max Flowers on August 10, 2006 at 11:58:59 PT

whig
Very true. Those tax dollars hard at work.It's good that you point it out, because while most of us here (who post) probably already know about all that, I keep forgetting that there are thousands and thousands of people who read this site without posting who may be getting their eyes opened to things that get revealed in our comments.
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Comment #5 posted by whig on August 10, 2006 at 11:52:11 PT

Max
It's bad. Let me say something about the American responsibility for this carnage, though, because it's something we can actually understand and affect in our own part of the world. The American government has been financing Israel's military expansion. There is nothing more that it can be called when the billions of dollars in US aid and advanced weaponry are spent every year on Israeli "defense".One major consequence of this is to fundamentally empower the militaristic opportunists in Israel to the detriment of any meaningful peace movement in that country. In other words, we are subsidizing to the tune of probably half their gross national product, a military-industrial-political complex in Israel.
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on August 10, 2006 at 11:49:30 PT

Max Flowers
I think I'll pass on the pictures. I have seen enough dead bodies since this administration decided to take on the world. I hope they know why they hate us so by now. Lieberman is calling terrorists Nazis. I'm not sure why. 
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Comment #3 posted by Max Flowers on August 10, 2006 at 11:37:53 PT

(OT) Shocking Lebanon photos
Sorry to be such a downer, but I want to let people know that if they really want to see what is happening to people in Lebanon, I mean REALLY see, there are some photos at this page http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24885 that are beyond belief. Only those with the strongest stomachs should even look. They are incredibly horrible. And, some of them show clear evidence of death by illegal weapons (probably incendiary types like white phosphorus or other). The site posting them is pleading with outsiders to tell them what kind of weapons they think Israel is using that do the kind of damage they show.I think that if these kinds of photos were to make it to mainstream media, the Israelis would have a PR challenge on their hands ten times more intense than the one they have now. But mainstream media would never show them, because they're too graphic and too real.Yes, I know that Hizbollah is doing damage too, but definitely not like this.
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Comment #2 posted by OverwhelmSam on August 10, 2006 at 10:22:22 PT

Nobody Gives A Crap About Federal Law
It's the states' enforcement that effectively marginalizes and discriminates against marijuana users. Marijuana users are subject to tough restrictions by the federal government which is perpetuated by the state governments. Jail, loss of property, assualt by police, lost jobs, denial of benefits and stigmatization all in the name of righteousness. It almost seems like Jesus said "hate thine Brother." As mean and hateful as the holier than thou self righteous bigots are, you can't really blame the Romans for their assessment of these overzealous jerks. They were fed to the lions.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 10, 2006 at 08:07:13 PT

Just a Note
I was able to check for news and found this one article. The contractors are working on our chimney and it is causing my satellite signal to go out. I will get back when I can later on when they are finished for the day. Talk with you all soon. 
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