How to help this bill pass (courtesy of Texas NORML):

On February 12, 2009, HB 164 was officially assigned to the Public Health Committee in the Texas House of Representatives. The most exciting part of this committee assignment is that the bill’s author, Rep. Elliott Naishtat (Austin), has been assigned to be Vice Chair of the committee! Also, HB 164 has picked up a co-author, Rep. Lon Burnam (Ft. Worth). If you, or someone you know, uses marijuana for a serious medical condition, and are willing to submit testimony to the Public Health Committee, please contact us as soon as possible (josh@texasnorml.org, 512-585-3846) so that we can coordinate an effective lobbying effort for HB 164.

Who to contact:

House Committee on Public Health – Phone: (512) 463-0806

Contact your representatives and tell them to support this bill. To find out who your State Representatives and Senators are, go here. Enter your address in the “Who Represents Me?” box at the bottom right side of the page.

The justices unanimously denied review of an appellate decision in July that concluded California was free to decide whether to punish drug users under its own laws, despite the federal ban on marijuana.

The decision is “a momentous victory for countless seriously ill patients,” said Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who defended the state law in the appeals court. He said the counties should stop wasting money “in a doomed effort to undermine the will of California voters.”

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Full article.

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—The Association Between Marijuana Smoking and Lung Cancer | (PDF)

—Marijuana Use and the Risk of Lung and Upper Aerodigestive Tract Cancers: Results of a Population-Based Case-Control Study | (PDF)

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A new rule determining how much pot constitutes a 60-day supply for medical marijuana users was finalized today, a decade after Washington voters passed an initiative legalizing marijuana for people suffering from terminal and debilitating illnesses.

The new state rule, which goes into effect Nov. 2, sets the supply limit at 24 ounces of usable marijuana plus 15 plants.

The 24-ounce amount is unchanged from an earlier draft of the rule. Some states allow more, others less. It’s the same amount in Oregon.

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In Oregon, legally smoking “green” requires a green thumb, or knowing someone who does.

Medical marijuana cardholders — even those who are terminally ill — must grow their own marijuana or find someone else to grow it for them, according to state law.

But some local activists are aiming to change that. Voter Power, a medical marijuana activist group with an office in Medford, plans to put a measure on a 2010 ballot to create dispensaries in Oregon, similar to those in California.

“Currently, we have the grower-caregiver patient system, but a lot of patients do not have access to their medicine,” said Alex Rogers, outreach coordinator for Voter Power, who works in Jackson County. “They don’t have the time or money to grow their own, nor are they connected to someone who does.”

Voter Power, which led efforts to legalize medical marijuana 1998, hopes to create a limited number of nonprofit dispensaries where cardholders can receive marijuana.
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Looks like a good plan to me. Leave your views by commenting below.

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SANTA CRUZ — Thousands of medicinal marijuana patients and supporters attended WAMMfest to celebrate and learn about the herbal medicine Saturday.

Though medical marijuana patients were able to smoke their medicine at the event that featured music, crafts and speeches, that portion of the festivities was in question until this week. After failing to muster the votes to lift the city smoking ban in parks in a prior meeting, the council Tuesday agreed to do so. Only those with a medical marijuana identification card were allowed to smoke in a specially-designated tent Saturday.

Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana co-founder Valerie Corral said the event is an opportunity to normalize the use of medicinal marijuana and bring its members’ stories to the public eye.

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…Defense attorney Douglass Hiatt argued that opiates sickened Dalton and did not relieve his pain, but Judge Laurie sided with prosecutors, effectively overruling the recommendation of the physician who okayed Dalton’s medical marijuana use.

An angry Hiatt said the judge had no business second-guessing the doctor’s recommendation. “If Judge Laurie wants to be a doctor, she should go to medical school … No patient in this state is safe if she’s right.”…

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It’s very disconcerting that someone who has the power to take away your freedom could be this uneducated on what is ultimately a very vital subject. 

Leave your comments below.

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By C. Bryson Hull

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s government wants to grow its own marijuana.

Facing a lack of the fresh weed for use in traditional Ayurvedic medical preparations, the government ministry responsible wants to be excepted from laws that have made marijuana illegal on the Indian Ocean island since the 1890s.

The Ministry of Indigenous Medicine this month broached a plan to grow 4,000 kg a year of marijuana, also known as cannabis, on a proposed 20 acre farm.

“We are interested in getting some approval to grow some cannabis with government sponsorship, but there must be controls. It is under study,” Asoka Malimage, secretary at the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine, told Reuters on Thursday.

Ayurveda is a traditional medicine with roots in the early Hindu era which makes wide use of herbs and natural remedies with the goal of healing the body and mind. In Sri Lanka, ayurveda practitioners outnumber Western-trained doctors.

Fresh marijuana fried in ghee, a form of clarified butter, is used in about 18 different traditional medicines for treating a wide variety of ailments, Malimage said.

“At the moment they are getting some stocks from the courts of law, because there are people who grow this cannabis illegally and they have been raided by the police,” Malimage said.

But the problem with that weed is that it is old and dried out, said Dr. Dayangani Senasekara, head of state-run Bandaranaike Memorial Ayurvedic Research Institute in Colombo.

“You can’t get the fresh juice from old cannabis. What we get now is the powdered form and it’s not effective,” Senasekara said.

The institute is making preparations that use marijuana to treat high cholesterol, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and skin discolorations, and soon will formulate one for treating cataracts, Senasekara said.

The use of marijuana to treat glaucoma, nausea, pain and the loss of appetite from diseases like cancer and AIDS has been the subject of great medical debate in the west.

Some countries and parts of the United States have permitted its use to treat those conditions, after some medical studies showed it was effective.

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Associated Press