Feeling kind of weird about it, but....
"Marijuana backers hit a political chord; Lawmakers try to tap into fervor for legalization" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, February 10, 2014
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are beating a path to his door for meetings and advice, hoping to harness this new energy behind an issue that had been on the fringe of American politics. The once-quixotic goal of St. Pierre’s group — NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws — is now one of Washington’s most-discussed issues.
Representatives of an array of potential presidential candidates have contacted him, asking for meetings to seek NORML’s endorsement and tap its donor base. Campaign checks are being cashed at a greater rate, a dizzying degree of change in a relatively short time....
Maybe you should stop smoking if it's making you dizzy.
The signs of a shifting political environment are hard to miss. President Obama, who famously revealed he had smoked pot in his high school “Choom Gang,” said in an interview published last month that marijuana was no more dangerous than alcohol.
It's less.
Colorado and Washington state have legalized recreational marijuana.
Twenty states, including Massachusetts, make cannabis legal for medical use, and a number of others, also including Massachusetts, are preparing ballot initiatives or legislation that would authorize recreational purchases.
Related: Marijuana May Become Legal in Massachusetts
If you were to cast for an affable, clean-cut New Englander, Allen St. Pierre would surely get the part. His salt-and-pepper hair is trimmed neatly above his ears. On a recent day, he wore navy slacks, loafers, and a V-neck sweater over a green flannel shirt. The 48-year-old from Chatham used to be a caddy for the late House speaker Thomas P. “Tip’’ O’Neill.
There’s just one thing: His office, which is on K Street about two blocks from the White House, is a practically a museum to marijuana. There’s marijuana leaves on T-shirts and hats, candles that look like joints, and the latest issue of High Times magazine. A marijuana plant sits on his desk, and a giant joint on a bookshelf (both are fake).
High Times, indeed.
With the march toward legalization begun, there is much to be decided in Washington. Obama’s recent comments effectively cast the issue as “Who will sell it, who will get rich from it.” said St. Pierre.
(Blog editor exhales)
He would not reveal which prospective presidential candidates have contacted his organization, but he did note that no one from Hillary Clinton’s network has reached out — though he suspects they will as public opinion continues to move in his direction.
See: Opening the Gates of the 2016 Presidential Campaign
Smoke came out first.
In October, nearly 60 percent of Americans said the drug should be legalized, the first time that a clear majority felt that way in a Gallup Poll. It was a jump of 10 percentage points from the previous year.
A CNN poll released last month had similar findings, with senior citizens, Republicans, and Southerners now the only large demographic groups still opposed to legalized marijuana. Sixty-two percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents backed legalizing the drug, compared with 36 percent of Republicans.
And even that is changing.
With the vast majorities of Democrats and those between the ages of 18 and 34 in support of legalizing marijuana. some Democratic consultants see the issue as a way to reenergize young voters who have soured on Obama.
See: Obummer For Youth
He's been a bummer for us all.
In Florida, Democrats are hoping a ballot initiative on medical marijuana will drive up turnout this November for their gubernatorial hopeful, Charlie Crist.
They are praying anyway.
Alaska is expected to vote on legalizing marijuana in August, and Oregon is likely to follow in November.
In the Northeast, 60 percent of those surveyed by CNN supported legalizing marijuana, greater than any other region in the country. As a result, marijuana advocates are targeting New England, with plans to have the issue before voters or state lawmakers in almost every state by 2016.
The New Hampshire House last month became the first legislative body to approve a bill legalizing marijuana, although Governor Maggie Hassan has said she would veto the bill....
She's a DEM.
Most Americans no longer believe that marijuana is physically harmful, psychologically harmful, or a gateway drug....
Well, it is actually physically helpful, can cure cancer, make you smarter, and the gateway drugs are tobacco and pharmaceuticals.
Enforcement is increasingly seen as both a waste of time and as unfair. There are also potential financial benefits to legalizing – and taxing – the drug.
Oh, that is the REAL REA$ON they are legalizing pot -- because government wants its cut!
“Maybe we should legalize,” Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, said at a town hall meeting last year. “We’re certainly moving that way as far as marijuana is concerned. I respect the will of the people.”
On this lone issue anyway.
St. Pierre has been in a unique position to see the change....
When St. Pierre joined the marijuana movement, it was composed mostly of counterculture activists, with long hair and goatees. St. Pierre, in buttoned-up Washington, tried to promote a different image.
“If you present yourself as counterculture, you’ll be treated as counterculture,” he said. “I’m a preppy New Englander who wears tweed. I shave twice a day sometimes because I’m so conscious about it.”
Yeah, if you look like a banker you will receive a better reception -- but don't judge a newspaper by its cover!
Most days he wears a golden cannabis leaf on his lapel. In Washington, it gets mistaken for a Canadian maple leaf; in Denver it earns him free meals.
Even Obama has tentatively embraced some of the movement’s ideas – even though this directly contradicts his administration’s stated policy that it “steadfastly opposes legalization of marijuana.”
In other words, Obummer is just blowing smoke!
**************
While Obama still characterized it as “a vice” and said he told his daughters it’s “a waste of time, not very healthy,” he also suggested current law is too harsh and it was “important” for the Colorado and Washington laws to move forward.
“We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,” he said.
The White House has emphasized that Obama’s comments meant no shift in policy and said that he does not support nationwide decriminalization efforts.
Cough, cough, cough, what?
Still, the administration policy can seem a bit muddled. While marijuana possession remains a felony, for example, the Justice Department said last year it will not prosecute such cases in states where it has been legalized.
Then every state should legalize it to protect their own citizens from federal discrimination!
Attorney General Eric Holder recently said the administration was working on regulations to make it easier for banks to work with state-sanctioned marijuana sellers.
Again, the legali$ation effort is not for the suffering citizen!
Banks have worried about being convicted on money laundering charges for dealing with an illegal narcotic, forcing marijuana sellers to deal entirely in cash.
Time for another hit.
They never seem to worry when they are laundering CIA-run coke, heroin, or meth.
Those opposed to legalizing marijuana have been promoting the ill effects of the drug, noting that it is stronger than when Obama was smoking it in the 1980s. Patrick Kennedy, the former Democratic Rhode Island congressman and chairman of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, has been calling for a tax on marijuana distributors that would be used to fund a study on impacts on young people.
“The insidiousness of marijuana is people think it isn’t having a negative impact on their life because it’s muted because of this type of drug,” Kennedy said in an interview. He said he tried to smoke marijuana but couldn’t because of his asthma. He has struggled with addiction to cocaine, Oxycontin, and alcohol.
So he wants to take your fun away because he couldn't inhale?
St. Pierre, meanwhile, no longer is waging a lonely fight. Where there used to be two lobbyists on Capitol Hill arguing for legalized marijuana, St. Pierre said, there are now about 25. Hedge funds are interested in investing in marijuana businesses. Companies making components that can be used to smoke are now involved.
That's about the time stop smoking.
The HEDGE FUNDS going to get HIGH, huh?
A movement once seen as fringe is now seen as something historic. As a result, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst has started archiving NORML’s files....
Remember that, all you "conspiracists" out there.
--more--"
Time to pass the joint on to someone else:
"Southern states considering medical marijuana" by Christina A. Cassidy | Associated Press, February 10, 2014
ATLANTA — Medical marijuana has been a non-starter in recent years in the Deep South, where many Republican lawmakers feared it could lead to widespread drug use and social ills. That now appears to be changing, with proposals to allow a form of medical marijuana gaining momentum in a handful of Southern states....
I think Arkansas voted it down last time out.
The key to swaying the hearts of conservative lawmakers has been stories of children suffering up to 100 seizures a day whose parents say they may benefit from access to cannabidiol, which would be administered orally. Proponents argue the cannabis oil is low in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana.
See: Epileptic Children Seizing Medical Marijuana
‘‘I’m an unlikely champion for this cause,’’ said Georgia Representative Allen Peake, a businessman from Macon who attended the evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary. ‘‘Once people realize it’s not a 6-year-old smoking a joint, most folks realize this is the compassionate thing to do.’’
Most people with a conscience, which is why authority is so slow!
Peake’s bill would revive a dormant study program allowing universities to distribute medical cannabis and would be ‘‘limited in scope, tightly restricted, well regulated and managed by doctors,’’ he said....
The bills in Georgia and Alabama still have more vetting, and their prospects are not certain, but in Louisiana, although a bill has yet to be introduced, a recent committee hearing at the Capitol on legalizing medical marijuana drew a standing-room-only crowd, and Governor Bobby Jindal made comments last month indicating he was willing to consider it.
Technically, both Georgia and Louisiana have laws on the books from the 1980s and 1990s allowing for the use of medical marijuana, but those programs essentially ended before they could start when the federal government stopped delivery of legal cannabis.
That under alcoholic and coke-sniffer W. Bush?
Louisiana’s law allowed for glaucoma and cancer patients and those with spastic quadriplegia to get marijuana, but rules for the program were never developed.
In Mississippi, Republican state Senator Josh Harkins is sponsoring a bill similar to ones in Alabama and Georgia. Harkins said one of his constituents has a 20-month-old daughter with Dravet syndrome, a form of pediatric epilepsy, and the oil can help reduce the number of seizures.
Both Kentucky and Tennessee have medical marijuana bills under consideration although they have yet to gain traction....
Related: Medical Marijuana in Tennessee
In Florida, it could become a campaign issue in the fall because Governor Rick Scott faces reelection and a proposed constitutional amendment will be on the ballot.
Related: Jesus Crist
He's already parted the smoke in some ways.
--more--"
And thus this post is up in smoke.
