I say that it is a conundrum, but it is really just a confusion. Why? Because since Michigan Proposal 1 passed, there has been little or no talk about it. We know that it will go into law as of December 4th. We know that the framework of how it will be regulated won’t be in place until sometime around April 2009.
But what else is going on? Are the citizens just to sit around and hope that everything is going the way that it should?
I am confused.
After a few days of letting it sink in that Proposal 1 did pass, I am ready to talk about it.
First, I am really happy that the voters in Michigan took this important step in aiding their neighbors by giving them an alternative to drugs to help combat pain and suffering. Use of a natural product rather than a man-made one is always preferrable.
Michigan now has 10 days to verify the results of the vote, and then 120 days to put it all into action. My advice to the residents of Michigan?
Don’t screw this up. Proposal 1 still has a group of folks who did not want it to pass, and that group of folks includes people in law enforcement. Do not screw this up.
We, in Pennsylvania are working for what you just voted for. We want to use your success to help our citizens who are suffering. Here is an article written by Derek Rosenzweig:
Smoke Blowing in the Winds of Change
By Derek Rosenzweig, PhillyNORML - 11/5/2008
With the astounding victory this 2008 Election of Barack Obama and Democrats in the House and Senate, the people of the United States have stood up to re-claim the American Dream. For decades the world has seen us as a beacon of hope and opportunity, but the last eight years have marred that image for many. Now the time has come for our country to prioritize and set a new course.
Massachusetts’ and Michigan’s voters had the chance to show where their priorities lie by voting on ballot initiatives which would liberalize marijuana policies. In Massachusetts, citizens voted over 65% to decriminalize possession of an ounce or under of cannabis, making it punishable only by a civil fine of $100. In Michigan, voters decided 60% - 40% to allow sick and dying patients to cultivate and use marijuana under their doctor’s care.
Over the last few months I’ve spoken with dozens of patients throughout Pennsylvania who suffer from ailments including chronic pain from a botched surgery, obsessive compulsive disorder, severe arthritis, HIV/AIDS, PTSD, and other conditions. Some of these patients are on disability and can’t work. All of them are on all sorts of medications, often times to the level that it incapacitates them or simply doesn’t give them the relief they need. Then they take one or two puffs on a joint and it brings them almost immediate relief.
Pennsylvanians have, for the most part, long taken a rational view of how to deal with the problems that we face collectively. Now that we as a nation start to walk in a new direction, we as a Commonwealth must do the same thing. Our citizens - our friends, loved ones, co-workers - deserve the chance to live their lives with dignity and self respect, but for many of the patients I spoke to that simply isn’t the case right now. The condition their medications put them in precludes a normal life. For these people the simple fact that medical marijuana actually helps their lives become bearable makes it an easy choice to use it. From a medical standpoint, marijuana has huge potential as a medicine, it’s safer to use than most pharmaceuticals, and its side effects (ie, the high) are well within tolerance limits.
The problem for them is how are they getting it, and what are the potential consequences of illegally obtaining and using this drug as a medicine. For some, it can mean getting fired from a job (and losing health benefits) for testing positive on a urine test, and for others it could mean they’re severely unlucky and get arrested. Depending what they get caught with they could be in jail for 30 days or 5 years. Some ailments require a large amount of cannabis to effectively treat, and under our current laws that amounts to a potential death sentence. We have to be better than this.
That’s why it’s so important that this Commonwealth takes the advice of the voters in Michigan and allows our friends, loved ones, and co-workers to use marijuana as medicine under the care of their doctor. Thirteen states - over 25% of our nations’ citizens - now have the right to use cannabis under state law, and President-elect Obama has publicly stated numerous times that those patients in medical-marijuana states will not have to fear Federal interference during his administration. Until the Federal government changes marijuana’s status as a Schedule 1 drug, Pennsylvania must create its own system of legal cultivation and distribution so that doctors can legally - and without worry of losing their license - prescribe or recommend cannabis to a patient. Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana, along with PhillyNORML and the Marijuana Policy Project, are working together to introduce a bill in the General Assembly which would do just that. It’s the least we can do to show where our priorities lie.
Comment at our online forum at http://www.phillynorml.org/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=548
- Derek Rosenzweig
Michigan voters, according to The Detroit Free Press, have voted yes on Michigans Medical Marijuana Proposal 1. This makes it legal for patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and other conditions can be authorized to cultivate, possess and use marijuana without fear of prosecution under state law.
This does not eliminate the fact that the Federal Government stills views marijuana as a dangerous drug, and people possessing it can be arrested and jailed under Federal law.
That all being said: Good job, Michigan. You took a huge step forward in helping people manage their pain and suffering without putting billions of dollars in the big pharma companies.
You did good this time.
namaste.
I was the 119th person to vote at my precinct this morning.
How about you? Have you yet, or will you before you go home tonight?
Vote. Vote. Vote.
And if I haven’t mentioned it recently, get out and vote.
Namaste.
Tuesday November 4th is Election Day.
In Michigan they are not only voting for the next President of The United States, they are voting on a proposal to make Medical Marijuana legal. Very important.
For all of my readers in Michigan.
VOTE ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4TH.
To all of my readers around the rest of these United States.
VOTE ON TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4TH.
We all want the same things. No matter if we agree, or disagree, please go vote.
Namaste
Ok folks, here is your chance. I just received a comment from someone who wants to know where the proof is?
Who has proof the medical marijuana works? Who of you has used it, or knows someone who uses it and gets relief from pain. I need you comments now. There are only 5 days left to change minds. Si let us get to it.
Leave your comments now.
namaste.
Since I have started writing, and posting info on Michigan’s proposal 1 this site has received a tremendous amount of attention. 3000 hits from people who want to know what the medical marijuana proposal is all about. I have had folks who suffer from one ailment or another post their thoughts. Surprisingly, I have only had a few negative posts. Some of them I deleted because of profanity, or just being stupid.
What does this mean? There are more than 3000 people who live in Michigan. There are more than 3000 people who could benefit from a prescription to medical marijuana. What I think is needed is that everyone who reads this blog needs to talk to 5 friends about voting next Tuesday. And everyone who reads this should talk to those friends about the benefits of medical marijuana.
It is not addictive. It does not rob the patient of their facilties. It works. It doesn’t do any damage to their bodies.
If you tell 5 friends about this, maybe the proposal will pass.
If you don’t, maybe the proposal fails, and those folks who are in pain, or who could benefit from medical marijuana keep going to the pharmacy and getting their pills.
The pills that rob them of their facilties. The pills that are addictive. The pills that can be doing damage to their bodies.
You choose.
namaste.
Palin’s Pot Problem
Why should other Alaskans be arrested for something Sarah Palin once did with impunity?
Jacob Sullum | September 17, 2008
When it comes to questions about youthful marijuana use, Sarah Palin is no Slick Willie. “I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled,” the Republican vice presidential candidate told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006, before she was elected governor of Alaska.
Although Palin’s handling of the issue scores higher on the candor meter than Clinton’s, she has the same difficulty reconciling her personal experience with her policy positions, a problem also shared by former pot smoker Barack Obama. None of them has a persuasive answer to the question of why other Americans should be arrested for something they did with impunity.
Pot smokers who are arrested do not typically spend much time in jail. But as a 2007 report from the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics noted, they pay a substantial cost that includes not only public humiliation and legal expenses but collateral sanctions such as “revocation or suspension of professional licenses, barriers to employment or promotion, loss of educational aid, driver’s license suspension, and bars on adoption, voting and jury service.”
According to figures released by the FBI this week, about 873,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in the United States last year, a new record. Pot busts accounted for nearly half of the 1.8 million drug arrests; as usual, the vast majority, about 775,000, were for simple possession, as opposed to cultivation or sale.
This is the fifth year in a row that marijuana arrests have increased, but the upward trend began in the early 1990s. Three times as many people were arrested on marijuana charges last year as in 1991.
The increase in arrests does not correspond to an increase in use; instead, the chance that any given pot smoker will be busted (though still small) is much higher than it was two decades ago. It is also higher than when Palin attended college in the ’80s, which is presumably when she tried marijuana.
By way of extenuation, the Anchorage Daily News reported, Palin noted that marijuana “was legal under state law,” although “illegal under U.S. law.” In 1975 the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution, which says the “right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed,” prohibits the government from punishing people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in their homes.
A 1990 ballot initiative ostensibly recriminalized all marijuana possession, but in 2003 the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled that “a statute which purports to attach criminal penalties to constitutionally protected conduct is void.” The following year, the Alaska Supreme Court declined to hear the state’s appeal of that decision.
In 2006 the state legislature, at the urging of Palin’s predecessor, Frank Murkowski, passed another law that supposedly made private possession of marijuana for personal use a crime. A judge found that law unconstitutional as well, and the Alaska Supreme Court is considering an appeal of her ruling.
The upshot is that smoking marijuana in the privacy of one’s home is just as legal in Alaska today as it was when Palin did it. Evidently she regrets this situation.
As mayor of Wasilla in 2000, Palin championed a city council resolution opposing a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana for adults. Last March her administration asked the Alaska Supreme Court to reverse its 1975 decision shielding private marijuana use, arguing that the drug is more dangerous than it used to be.
In other words, Palin got to smoke pot without worrying about legal consequences and now wants to deny that assurance to fellow Alaskans doing exactly the same thing. “Palin doesn’t support legalizing marijuana,” the Anchorage Daily News reported in 2006, because she worries about “the message it would send to her four kids.”
It’s Palin’s job to teach her children that certain pleasures are reserved for grownups. The government should not continue to arrest adults who are harming no one simply because her children are easily confused.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
And I know that not everyone likes the Washington Post, but this is interesting to read:
Party Like It’s 1964
by Richard Cohen
Tuesday, October 21, 2008;
A column, like a good movie, should have an arc — start here, end there and somehow connect the two points. So this column will begin with the speech Condi Rice made to the Republican National Convention in 2000 in praise of George W. Bush and end with Colin Powell’s appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press” in praise of Barack Obama. Between the first and the second lie the ruins of the GOP, a party gone very, very wrong.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bush and now John McCain have constructed a mean, grumpy, exclusive, narrow-minded and altogether retrograde Republican Party. It has the sharp scent of the old Barry Goldwater GOP — the angry one of 1964 and not the one perfumed by nostalgia — that is home, by design or mere dumb luck, to those who think that Obama is “The Madrassian Candidate.” Karl Rove, take a bow.
It is worth remembering that both Rice and Powell spoke at that Philadelphia convention. And it is worth recalling, too, that Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” and had compiled a record as Texas governor to warrant the hope, if not the belief, that he was indeed a different sort of Republican. When he ran for reelection as governor in 1998, he went from 15 percent of the black vote to 27 percent, and from 28 percent of the Hispanic vote to an astounding 49 percent. Here was a coalition-builder of considerable achievement.
Now, all this is rubble. It is not merely that Barack Obama was always going to garner the vast majority of the black vote. It is also that the GOP, under Rove and his disciples in the McCain campaign, has not only driven out ethnic and racial minorities but a vast bloc of voters who, quite bluntly, want nothing to do with Sarah Palin. For moderates everywhere, she remains the single best reason to vote against McCain.
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But the GOP’s tropism toward its furiously angry base, its tolerance and currying of anti-immigrant sentiment, its flattering of the ignorant on matters of undisputed scientific consensus — evolution, for instance — and, from the mouth of Palin, its celebration of drab provincialism, have sharpened the division between red and blue. Red is the color of yesterday.
Ah, I know, the blues are not all virtuous. They are supine before self-serving unions, particularly in education, and they are knee-jerk opponents of offshore drilling, mostly, it seems, because they don’t like Big Oil. They cannot face the challenge of the Third World within us — the ghetto with its appalling social and cultural ills — lest realism be called racism. Sometimes, too, they seem to criticize American foreign policy simply because it is American.
Still, a Democrat can remain a Democrat — or at least vote as one — without compromising basic intellectual or cultural values. That, though, is not what Colin Powell was saying Sunday about his own party. “I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years,” Powell said. “It has moved more to the right than I would like.” He cited McCain’s harping on that “washed-out terrorist” Bill Ayers as an effort to exploit fears that Obama is a Muslim (so what if he were? Powell rightly asked) and mentioned how Palin’s presence on the ticket raised grave questions about McCain’s judgment. In effect — and at least for the time being — Powell was out of the GOP. S’long, guys.
Those of us who traveled with Bush in the 2000 campaign could tell that when he spoke of education, of the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” he meant it. Education, along with racial and ethnic reconciliation, was going to be his legacy. Then came Sept. 11, Afghanistan and finally the misbegotten war in Iraq. After that, nothing else really mattered. But just as Bush could not manage the wars, he could not manage his own party. His legacy is not merely in tatters. It does not even exist.
In the end, Powell was determined not to be one of the GOP’s useful idiots. Those moderates willing to overlook the choice of Palin, those capable of staying in a party where, soon enough, she could be an important or dominant force, retain the intellectual nimbleness that enabled them to persist in championing a war fought for duplicitous reasons and extol cultural values they do not for a minute share. Powell walked away from that, and others will follow — the second time that a senator from Arizona has led the GOP into the political wilderness.
You have to admit that THAT is pretty damning for the Republican Party.
Namaste.
Vote on November 4th.
It is getting closer and closer to election day. Two ads for Proposal 1, to legalize the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical purposes, feature a West Michigan woman describing how marijuana gave her relief during cancer treatment, and a retired obstetrician who said marijuana was the only thing that helped his cancer-stricken and now deceased wife of 51 years.
Both, now airing statewide, are the first of the marijuana campaign by either side. They can be seen here: http://stoparrestingpatients.org/
Vote on Tuesday, November 4th!
namaste.
