Canadian Man Heralded for Curing Cancer Seeks Asylum in Europe

Canadian authorities have still not laid charges ten days after the police action.

December 5, 2009 – (SALEM, Ore.) – There’s a man from Athol, Nova Scotia, Canada who has caused a stir around the world. About five years ago, he made the shocking claim to have cured cancer. As unbelievable as that sounds, there is viable evidence to support his claim.

You may not have heard of Rick Simpson, many people have not yet had the chance. He’s well known globally in the cannabis community, but the general public has been slow in receiving his whole story.

Simpson makes and distributes a medicinal cannabis extract popularly known as “hemp oil”. He does so without any profit motive. Many patients have claimed to be cured of their ailments, often terminal cancer, by this extract.

This pioneer for alternative health solutions was in Europe in November, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) took the opportunity to raid Simpson’s home in Canada. As his house, office, and garden were being trampled through by police, Simpson was accepting an International Freedom Fighter award, thousands of miles away.

“While he has been touring in Europe his residence was raided by the RCMP and rumor has it the DEA was involved as well,” explains friend Desmond Wynnd.

“The newest issue of “High Times” that came out a week or two ago has a lengthy article on his story and it’s felt by many this is what prompted the latest raid. He is now seeking political asylum in Europe.”

The 22nd Annual High Times Cannabis Cup is held in Amsterdam annually, and Rick Simpson received the acclaimed honor of “Freedom Fighter of the Year”. The special event came on the heels of a European tour Simpson had just completed.

For five years, Simpson has been diligently working on the behalf of saving lives, challenging the traditional remedies for skin cancer and other cancers, diabetes, as well as many chronic illnesses. He aspires to enlighten the medical community and bring the discussion of curing cancer to a new level. That discussion is widely believed to be more politically motivated than cure goal-oriented.

Though Rick Simpson has helped so many, there are forces that want to stop him, at any cost.

As of December 3rd, Canadian authorities had still not charged Simpson, ten days after the police action. Initially there were discrepancies in available information from the two involved agencies that carried out this police action.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police first claimed that such an action would have been undertaken by the Amherst Police Department, as Simpson’s home falls within their jurisdiction. Amherst PD denied that they incited this action when reached for comment, and deferred inquiry for detail to the RCMP.

Rick Simpson wrote, “If I return home, I will be arrested and put in jail without bail or medicine. I am not afraid of their jails but I cannot go without my medicine, the system has nothing that could help me with my conditions. So for me to return to Canada would be like committing suicide. I would be thrown in jail and denied my medicine and a short time later you would hear in the news that ‘Rick Simpson died of natural causes’.”

“It seems the goal is to keep me from returning home and they succeeded. But to what end? All hemp magazines on this planet are now telling their readers how to heal themselves with this wonderful medicine. If governments want to live in denial, it will be short-lived. We are gaining tens of thousands of followers every day. You cannot stop the truth.”

“For the time being, it seems I will be seeking asylum in Europe.”

The Canadian government’s lack of tolerance for marijuana has been building the last few years, a reaction, some believe, to America’s own drug war. Canadians are feeling the brunt. “They’re doing a great job directing hate toward Americans when it’s undeserved. I haven’t met a bad American yet. In the end, we have to take care of ourselves and each other,” Wynnd said.

One theory on limiting a person’s ability to share information is to incarcerate them. That’s a pretty easy solution. A fellow Canadian, Marc Emery, can vouch for that, out on bail for selling cannabis seeds. He is currently scheduled to be extradited to the United States for a sentence of five years in US federal prison.

Perpetrators of the incarceration strategy believe that eventually the subject may lose support of their advocates, the costs will mount up, and just getting through the drama of arrest, red tape and humiliation that follows will be enough to distract even the most passionate, motivated activists.

But Rick isn’t like “most” activists.

He’s been arrested twice in the past, and his medicinal Cannabis plants confiscated. Both times, he was able to reason with the judicial system and continue living freely. Where the maximum penalty has been 12 years imprisonment in one of these instances, the courts instead levied a $2,000 fine.

Most of us have been duped into completely and blindly accepting that there is no cure for cancer.
–Christian Laurette, producer

“Last time he was arrested, the judge wouldn’t send him to jail because the judge believed it would be a crime to lock up Rick Simpson, it’s all public record,” said Wynnd. “During his last trial he had doctors and patients lining up to testify for him. Even Narcotic officers have sent people to Rick so he could help them.”

“Mr. Simpson is in an unusual position, because unlike other people engaged in the drug trade, he was not engaged in trafficking for financial gain,” said Judge Carole Beaton. “He was engaged in an altruistic activity and was firm in his belief that he was helping others,” she said after Rick Simpson’s sentencing for his second offense in healing dying cancer patients with hemp oil.

Rick Simpson didn’t start out as a crusader to stamp out cancer. He started out as an average guy, first as a steel worker, then in maintenance at a hospital in the boiler room. In his early twenties, Simpson suffered through the loss of a cousin to cancer. That long, exasperating experience changed him forever. He heard some reports about hemp’s healing qualities, and wondered if things would have gone differently for his cousin, had hemp been an option.

For someone who had never even smoked marijuana, this was a very foreign, open-minded idea. The thought provoked some personal research though and later proved very beneficial.

After 25 years working at the hospital, Simpson was in a serious accident causing a temporary nervous-system shutdown, within hours he developed an unbearable ringing in his ears. The doctors tried to find a solution for over a year, and gave up. Not willing to accept his life sentence of daily drugs that altered his memory and other side effects, he asked about medical marijuana, to no avail. So, he began his own research, and experimented with making oil. What he discovered…worked.

To be clear, Rick Simpson’s Hemp Oil isn’t hemp oil in the truest sense. Hemp is the Cannabis (marijuana) plant, specifically the stalk and leaves raised mainly for industrial use, with extremely low THC. Rick Simpson’s oil is made exclusively from the Cannabis flowers, or buds. Not to be confused with hemp seed oil, a very different product, Rick Simpson’s hemp oil is a very pure cannabis extract made from high quality buds with a very high THC content.

In 2003, Simpson had three spots on his skin that his doctor believed to be skin cancer. The doctor removed and biopsied one, which then became infected and didn’t heal. Almost on a whim, Simpson applied hemp oil directly to that sore and the other two spots. In only four days, all three cancerous spots were gone. A miracle? Maybe so, but it isn’t a lone event.

Once he started sharing his success story with others, people lined up to try the hemp oil. Jack Herer is an avid supporter of Simpson’s, always ready to demonstrate his personal success as the oil healed many long-term diabetic lesions on his legs. Herer would be the first to say that Rick Simpson’s Hemp Oil is miraculous.

Rick Simpson has never charged a patient for the hemp oil he creates. He not only teaches people how to make the extract and provides it to the ailing folks who request it, but he also uses it for a variety of his own medical issues. He freely lists the recipe on his site.

What will happen next for Rick Simpson remains to be seen. One thing is for sure though, raiding and seizing his home does not make the police look like the good guys. This type of action only propogates further division in society, turning civilians and police away from one another.

“People are dying needlessly when there’s a cure we all can grow on our own, or have provided to us,” Desmond Wynnd said. “This is all a waste of energy, when we could be helping sick people. That’s all Rick is trying to do.” Source.

 

Legalizing Medical Marijuana in N.J.: What Life Will be Like in the Marijuana Garden State

December 03, 2009 – The latest reports out of Trenton are that by the time the current governor leaves office, New Jersey is likely to have a law authorizing medical marijuana. So on a recent trip to California I decided to check out a marijuana clinic to see what the future will be like.

I was amazed at what I witnessed when I first walked in the door of the clinic on a downtown street in Oakland. The proponents of medical marijuana argue that those who need it are often suffering from dreadful, debilitating diseases. So I felt great sympathy for the patients as I watched them walk into the back room of the clinic to get their prescriptions filled. I could only imagine the agony these poor, unfortunate souls must have been experiencing.

Amazingly, though, every single one of them exited with a spring in his step. One young patient had apparently experienced such a miraculous cure that he picked up a skateboard and went swooping away on the sidewalk after he picked up his pot. Imagine that. The guy was probably confined to a wheelchair just the other day. Now he was doing ollies and fakies halfway to Berkeley.

I was impressed. I was equally impressed by the coffee and the chocolate cake. Did I mention that the clinic is also a coffee shop? It’s called the Blue Sky, and it’s modeled after the marijuana dispensaries in Amsterdam. In fact, the locals call this part of Oakland “Oaksterdam” to highlight the resemblance.

The difference is that in Amsterdam the pot is sold to everyone. In California, you have to have a photo ID that identifies you as a patient. I got talking to some of the staff and the patients. It turns out there are a surprisingly large number of illnesses that will qualify you for that ID card. If you’re having a hard time sleeping, for example, the doctor might prescribe some “Blue Dream.” Other maladies will respond to a dose of “Green Cush” or perhaps a few hits of “Querkle.”

Another good thing about this clinic was that it didn’t have the antiseptic air of a typical health clinic. On a sunny Sunday afternoon there was a jazz band playing on the sidewalk outside. Apparently jazz musicians long ago discovered the healing properties of marijuana, and they are eager to share their knowledge with the general public.

Down the block is an educational institution called Oaksterdam University. There, students take 13-week courses in the growing of this miracle medicine. They can even buy seedlings if they care to grow some of their own at home, a practice also permitted under California law.

Somewhere in there, I began to suspect that these patients weren’t as sick as advertised. Perhaps they were just sick of not being high.

Sure enough, it turns out the ultimate goal of California’s pot proponents is to make this miracle drug available to all adults without a prescription. On the café’s counter next to the cake was a petition calling for a referendum that would make marijuana legal for all Californians over the age of 21. It would be highly taxed and both the state and the municipality would get a share.

The owners of the Blue Sky and other clinics around California already make a point of collecting tax on every transaction and handing that revenue over to the government. The idea is that the pols in cash-strapped California will become as dependent on that revenue stream as the patients are on their prescriptions.

I’ve listened to a lot of the debate over medicinal marijuana in New Jersey, and our pols insist that our medical-marijuana law would be different than California’s, with tighter controls. I doubt it. The same dynamic at work in the Golden State is at work in the Garden State. When it comes to legalization, medicinal marijuana is just the camel’s nose under the tent.

The funny thing is, there’s another Camel headed the other way. The cigarette manufacturers are finding their product becoming more tightly regulated just as the pot growers are watching their regulations loosened. Many municipalities are banning the smoking of cigarettes on streets, in parks and just about anywhere in public. Meanwhile, the pot smokers in California are already agreeing to similar restrictions as part of that referendum.

So we may wind up with a situation in which pot smokers and cigarette smokers are treated equally under the law. They’ll be able to smoke, but just in private. Only their taxes will be public.

That’s fine with me. I don’t smoke either pot or cigarettes. But if the potheads want to join the nicotine fiends in lowering my tax burden, that may be the best prescription of all. By Paul Mulshine Source.
New Jersey considers a medical marijuana law – Video:

 

Marijuana and Chronic Pain

Severe chronic pain is usually treated with opioid narcotics and various synthetic analgesics, but these drugs have many limitations.

December 3, 2009 – Opioids are addictive and tolerance develops. The most commonly used synthetic analgesics – aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen -are not addictive but they are often insufficiently powerful. Furthermore they have serious toxic side effects including gastric bleeding or ulcer and in the long run a risk of liver or kidney disease. Stomach bleeding and ulcers induced by aspirin and other NSAIDs are the most common serious adverse drug reactions reported in the United States. These drugs may be responsible for as many as 76,000 hospitalizations and more than 7,600 deaths annually. Acetaminophen is increasingly prescribed instead because it largely spares the digestive tract, but it can cause liver damage or kidney failure when used regularly for long periods. Medical researchers have estimated that patients who take one to three acetaminophen tablets a day for a year or more account for about 8% to 10% of all cases of end-stage renal disease, a condition that is fatal without dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Given the limitations of opioids and non-addictive synthetic analgesics, one might have expected pain specialists to take a second look at cannabis, but the medical literature again suggests little recent reconsideration. Cannabis may be especially useful for the kinds of chronic pain that people who survive catastrophic traumatic accidents have to live with the rest of their lives.

Martin Martinez is such a patient:
High school friends of mine made a daily springtime habit of smoking marijuana just outside the principal’s office windows, purposely blowing in billows of pungent smoke on the afternoon breeze. Being chased out of the yard by irate school officials heightened the drug’s effects as young hearts raced to join their buddies bursting with laughter. An outsider among outsiders, I was not fond of such games. Nor was I interested in the use of pot for purely social or recreational uses. Marvelous insights captivated my mind when stoned. As I grew older my use of cannabis developed beyond intuitive meditation and became the catalyst of many profound mystical experiences. Later in life I found that the moderate use of cannabis did not interfere with demanding physical tasks and skills such as building construction and home remodeling. While a large dose of marijuana would tend to make me feel less active, a smaller dose invigorated my vitality. I also rode a motorcycle in my youth. I felt that a small dose of marijuana actually increased my motor skills. By the age of 27 I had driven many thousands of miles while mildly stoned and had never caused an accident. Then one night a reckless driver swerved into my lane and crashed into me at a combined speed of 60 miles per hour. I was not expected to survive.

I suffered dozens of severe injuries in the crash, including 25 orthopedic fractures and massive skull fractures which severely crippled several cranial nerves. Two months after the crash I lay in bed a crumpled mass of pain. My IV fed me up to 10 milligrams of morphine every 7 minutes, 24 hours a day, but still I had trouble sleeping because the pain was so intense. I was told that I was not going to recover mobility and that I would spend the rest of my life connected to a medical facility. I could barely speak due to the nerve damage to my voice and throat. The constant pain in my eyes was excruciating. I was given morphine and other narcotics which incapacitated me, but did not reduce the pain in my eyes. Swallowing was a challenge which often resulted in choking and coughing fits lasting many minutes. As the weeks went by I began to suspect that the medications I was given were actually contributing to my neurological impairments by inhibiting concentration and depressing neurological responses. In addition, I was painfully aware that narcotics had a disastrous effect on my intestines.

One day I was visited by an outpatient who had AIDS. He told me a little about the medical uses of marijuana and he gave me a joint. I waited till late at night when the nurses were busy elsewhere. I smoked the joint in secret and my heart raced so much I feared that I might burst the scars of my recent surgery. But then the contraband was gone, the scent was dissipated, and outraged nurses still had not discovered me, so my heart rate slowed to a comfortable purr. I felt relaxed and at ease, but not stupefied. I could still sense the deep scars of my damaged nerves, but I was somehow mentally distanced from the pain in a way that morphine did not offer. I slept that night more soundly than I had since the crash.

I left the primary hospital as soon as I could talk my doctors into releasing me. I returned to my hometown and became an outpatient at a facility there. I continued to use narcotics and other pain medications prescribed by my doctors, but over the months and years I gradually replaced several prescription medicines with the use of cannabis. Nearly all of the drugs I had been given by doctors seemed to depress my mind and body, and the addictive quality of narcotics created numerous unpleasant psychological effects. Unlike narcotics, cannabis use imparted positive mental and physical stimulation, called euphoria, that encouraged my rapid recovery.

With the use of cannabis replacing sensory-depressive narcotics, I found myself recovering far beyond the expectations of my first 27 doctors. Five years after the crash I took some college courses and then began to work again. By the time I was well enough to maintain a full time carpentry job I was smoking hundreds of dollars worth of cannabis per month. Ten years after the crash, having spent in excess of $10,000 per year on unreliable qualities of cannabis, I was arrested for growing my own.

In my trial the prosecution proved that I was growing what they considered to be a “huge” amount of marijuana. The fact that I had possession of 88 plants was assumed to be evidence that I was a drug dealer. I proved that I had a legitimated medical necessity for the use of marijuana and that I also had a very substantial income in real estate development which precluded a profit motive. Using the harvest estimates of the Drug Enforcement Administration agent who testified against me and the consumption estimates of the physician who testified for me, the amount of cannabis seized might have lasted me up to two years and saved me up to $20,000. Eight of the jurors in my trial were sympathetic and voted to acquit me on the grounds of medical necessity. Four of the jurors agreed with the State’s contention that I had intended to sell my medicine. A mistrial was declared and I remained free.

Two months later police officers returned to my home. They held me and searched the premises without a warrant, discovering a much smaller cannabis garden than they had seized the year before. A vindictive State prosecutor arrived at my house and intentionally confiscated confidential communications to and from my attorneys. I spent a second birthday in a row deathly sick in bed after having been released from jail. Physically, emotionally, and economically bankrupt, unable to afford the enormous cost of another trial, and unable to obtain a public defender due to my ownership of severely over-mortgaged real estate, I accepted a “no jail-time” plea bargain deal which was broken the day before sentencing. The medical affidavits of Dr. Grinspoon and four additional physicians had no apparent influence on the imperious court. I was sentenced to 90 days in jail for the criminal act of cultivating cannabis for my own medical use.

I was on the brink of catastrophe, about to begin the second worst three months of my life, when a marvelous thing happened. Hundreds of people, including doctors, medical marijuana activists, other medicinal cannabis users, and other concerned citizens, started an organized telephone, fax, and letter-writing campaign which forced the State to review and reevaluate its disposition of my case. Thanks to the sincere efforts of numerous concerned persons all jail time was then commuted to 240 hours of community service and the imposition of urine analysis testing was waived. Although the criminal actions against me cost me two years of terrible hardship, at least the State eventually decided not to further endanger my health. By: Martin Martinez. Source.

 

Another Thing Europe Doesn’t Agree On-Medical Marijuana

November 27, 2009 – Europe has yet to come up with a unified approach to medical marijuana. The Dutch will tell you it is legal to use the drug to treat certain illnesses; while the Swedish don’t recognize any medical use for cannabis at all.

“European policy is not really changing at all and I don’t think this issue is even on the European agenda. The topic is too controversial and too political,” said Catherine Sandvos, a legal expert for the Hague-based Cannabis Bureau, a Dutch national agency aimed at providing high-quality cannabis for medical purposes.

Ms. Sandvos’s native Netherlands has led Europe when it comes to legalizing medical marijuana, which it treats separately from marijuana legally available at one of Amsterdam’s famous coffee shops. The Dutch police stopped enforcing laws against marijuana in 1976 following an overall tolerance policy in the country. “It’s hard when you try to explain to outsiders that it is illegal to grow cannabis in the Netherlands, but that it is tolerated to buy it,” she says.

But those who buy the drug on the streets are not getting the quality severely ill patients would need. The Dutch government set up the Cannabis Bureau — the only institution of its kind in the continent — in September 2003.

“The state realized that so many people wanted to use cannabis, so it said ‘why not give it to them via prescription instead of them accessing the drug illegally,’ ” Ms. Sandvos added.

The Cannabis Bureau ensures that patients who have a prescription from a doctor are getting marijuana that has been tested to make sure it doesn’t contain any pesticides or bacteria. Not only does the Cannabis Bureau sell cannabis across all pharmacies in the Netherlands through a prescription, but it also distributes the drug to Italy, Finland and Germany through the Ministry of Health of each country. According to the agency’s data, it sells around 100 kilos of cannabis every year.

The situation couldn’t be more different in the U.K., where it is unlawful to self-medicate cannabis regardless of the disease people suffer from. In 2005, Barry Quayle and Reay Wales, who were both afflicted by serious and chronic conditions, found no relief in prescription drugs and turned to cannabis to alleviate their pain. But a U.K. court ruled against them.

“The whole debate in relation to the use of cannabis for medical purposes is highly politicized,” said Daniel Godden, an associate solicitor for Hodge Jones & Allen LLP in London. Those who say marijuana is relatively safe can face severe political consequences. Last month, Professor David Nutt, the British government’s chief drug adviser, was removed from his post after he said the drug was less harmful than alcohol.

Favorable views toward cannabis face opposition from some local politicians and international lobbying groups. Jorgen Sviden, director of Stockholm-based European Cities Against Drugs, which represents 261 cities in 30 countries, isn’t convinced of the drug’s medical qualities.

“In principle, we don’t have an argument against cannabis as a treatment, but we haven’t seen any scientific evidence that provides a convincing argument for its medical use,” he said. “If in the future we come across proof that cannabis is a good treatment, then this is good.”

Some initiatives have managed to stay away from the political debate, however. The U.K. happens to be home to GW Pharmaceuticals PLC, which manufactures a drug based on marijuana extract — Sativex. Although it has some ingredients that derived from the actual drug, it has been treated by the U.K.’s regulators as a medicine like any other as it doesn’t contain the psychotropic substances marijuana does. The company is preparing to launch the drug into other parts of Europe, in partnership with Germany’s Bayer AG and Spain’s Almirall SA.

GW is hoping to sell its product, which will treat the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, across all countries in Europe but has initially filed for a license in the U.K. and Spain so far. Paul Cuddon, an analyst with KBC Peel Hunt in London, says he expects the drug to win approval in both countries in the first half of 2010 and then the firm will file for individual approval in each country.

“I’m not anticipating any legal problems in the rest of Europe at all,” Mr. Cuddon added. “This is a treatment that is highly different from raw cannabis and it has undergone rigorous chemical trials.”

Other countries have tough stances, however. Ireland, for example, doesn’t recognize marijuana as a drug with medical benefits. This means that manufacturing, producing, selling or possessing cannabis is unlawful for any purpose. The Ministry of Health is the only government branch that can grant an exception, but a spokesman said it never has.

Noel McCullagh, 34, has learned this the hard way. An Irish citizen, Mr. McCullagh lives in the Netherlands, where he uses cannabis medication to treat the severe effects of his muscular dystrophy. However, Irish authorities have warned him that he will be arrested if he enters his native country in possession if cannabis-based treatment.

In Sweden, the law doesn’t recognize the cannabis to have any medical use.

Beyond the debate of marijuana’s use, Dr. Willem Scholten, of the World Health Organization, believes patients should have access to high-quality medicine. So if cannabis has medical attributions, “there needs to be a system in place to ensure that patients get their medicine without any contamination and that they get the same content every time.”

Despite the radically different approaches in Europe, some believe the continent will eventually adopt it as a medical treatment.

“I can imagine European citizens will eventually think cannabis is a good medicine and that it should be accessible to people who suffer from serious pain as a result of HIV, multiple sclerosis or other grave illnesses,” said Brendan Hughes, senior legal analyst of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon. By JAVIER ESPINOZA. Source.

 

California’s Medical Marijauna Patients Expanded To Include Teenagers

At the Peace in Medicine Healing Center in Sebastopol, the wares on display include dried marijuana — featuring brands like Kryptonite, Voodoo Daddy and Train Wreck — and medicinal cookies arrayed below a sign saying, “Keep Out of Reach of Your Mother.”

The warning tells a story of its own: some of the center’s clients are too young to buy themselves a beer.

Several Bay Area doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to include teenagers with psychiatric conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“It’s not everybody’s medicine, but for some, it can make a profound difference,” said Valerie Corral, a founder of the Wo/Men’s Alliance forMedical Marijuana, a patients’ collective in Santa Cruz that has two dozen minors as registered clients.

Because California does not require doctors to report cases involving medical marijuana, no reliable data exist for how many minors have been authorized to receive it. But Dr. Jean Talleyrand, who founded MediCann, a network in Oakland of 20 clinics who authorize patients to use the drug, said his staff members had treated as many as 50 patients ages 14 to 18 who had A.D.H.D. Bay Area doctors have been at the forefront of the fierce debate about medical marijuana , winning tolerance for people with grave illnesses like terminal cancer and AIDS. Yet as these doctors use their discretion more liberally, such support — even here — may be harder to muster, especially when it comes to using marijuana to treat adolescents with A.D.H.D.

“How many ways can one say ‘one of the worst ideas of all time?’ ” asked Stephen Hinshaw, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. He cited studies showing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention, memory and concentration — functions already compromised in people with the attention-deficit disorder.

Advocates are just as adamant, though they are in a distinct minority. “It’s safer than aspirin,” Dr. Talleyrand said. He and other marijuana advocates maintain that it is also safer than methylphenidate (Ritalin), the stimulant prescription drug most often used to treat A.D.H.D. That drug has documented potential side effects including insomnia, depression, facial tics and stunted growth.

In 1996, voters approved a ballot proposition making California the first state to legalize medical marijuana. Twelve other states have followed suit — allowing cannabis for several specified, serious conditions including cancer and AIDS — but only California adds the grab-bag phrase “for any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

This has left those doctors willing to “recommend” cannabis — in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of medical marijuana, they cannot legally prescribe it — with leeway that some use to a daring degree. “You can get it for a backache,” said Keith Stroup, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Nonetheless, expanding its use among young people is controversial even among doctors who authorize medical marijuana.

Gene Schoenfeld, a doctor in Sausalito, said, “I wouldn’t do it for anyone under 21, unless they have a life-threatening problem such as cancer or AIDS.”

Dr. Schoenfeld added, “It’s detrimental to adolescents who chronically use it, and if it’s being used medically, that implies chronic use.”

Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said she was particularly worried about the risk of dependency — a risk she said was already high among adolescents and people with attention-deficit disorder.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, however, patients and doctors have been reporting that marijuana helps alleviate some of the symptoms, particularly the anxiety and anger that so often accompany A.D.H.D. The disorder has been diagnosed in more than 4.5 million children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers have linked the use of marijuana by adolescents to increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia for people genetically predisposed to those illnesses. However, one 2008 report in the journal Schizophrenia Research suggested that the incidence of mental health problems among adolescents with the disorder who used marijuana was lower than that of nonusers.

Marijuana is “a godsend” for some people with A.D.H.D., said Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist who has written several books on the disorder. However, Dr. Hallowell said he discourages his patients from using it, both because it is — mostly — illegal, and because his observations show that “it can lead to a syndrome in which all the person wants to do all day is get stoned, and they do nothing else.”

Until the age of 18, patients requesting medical marijuana must be accompanied to the doctor’s appointment and to the dispensaries by a parent or authorized caregiver. Some doctors interviewed said they suspected that in at least some cases, parents were accompanying their children primarily with the hope that medical authorization would allow the adolescents to avoid buying drugs on the street.

A recent University of Michigan study found that more than 40 percent of high school students had tried marijuana.

“I don’t have a problem with that, as long as we can have our medical conversation,” Dr. Talleyrand said, adding that patients must have medical records to be seen by his doctors.

The Medical Board of California began investigating Dr. Talleyrand in the spring, said a board spokeswoman, Candis Cohen, after a KGO-TV report detailed questionable practices at MediCann clinics, which, the report said, had grossed at least $10 million in five years.

Dr. Talleyrand and his staff members are not alone in being willing to recommend marijuana for minors. In Berkeley, Dr. Frank Lucido said he was questioned by the medical board but ultimately not disciplined after he authorized marijuana for a 16-year-old boy with A.D.H.D. who had tried Ritalin unsuccessfully and was racking up a record of minor arrests.

Within a year of the new treatment, he said, the boy was getting better grades and was even elected president of his special-education class. “He was telling his mother: ‘My brain works. I can think,’ ” Dr. Lucido said.

“With any medication, you weigh the benefits against the risks,” he added.

Even so, MediCann patients who receive the authorization must sign a form listing possible downsides of marijuana use, including “mental slowness,” memory problems, nervousness, confusion, “increased talkativeness,” rapid heartbeat, difficulty in completing complex tasks and hunger. “Some patients can become dependent on marijuana,” the form also warns.

The White House’s recent signals of more federal tolerance for state medical marijuana laws — which pointedly excluded sales to minors — reignited the debate over medical marijuana.

Some advocates, like Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard University, suggest that medical marijuana’s stigma has less to do with questions of clinical efficacy and more to do with its association, in popular culture, with illicit pleasure and addiction.

Others, like Alberto Torrico of Fremont, the majority leader of the California Assembly, argue for more oversight in general. “The marijuana is a lot more powerful these days than when we were growing up, and too much is being dispensed for nonmedical reasons,” he said in an interview last week, bluntly adding, “Any children being givenmedical marijuana is unacceptable.”

As advocates of increased acceptance try to win support, they may find their serious arguments compromised by the dispensaries’ playful atmosphere.

OrganiCann, a dispensary in Santa Rosa, has a Web site advertisement listing the “medible of the week” — butterscotch rock candy — invitingly photographed in a gift box with a ribbon. OrganiCann also offers a 10 percent discount, every Friday, for customers with a valid student ID. Source.

 

The Benefits of Medical Marijuana for Chronic Pain Sufferers

November 21, 2009 – Cannabis, otherwise known as marijuana (or marihuana), has been a topic of debate for many years, not only in Canada, but also in several other countries including the U.S. and the U.K. However, while marijuana for recreational use has not been legalized in Canada, medical marijuana use can be granted for medicinal needs.

The Definition of Chronic Pain

Although “chronic pain” seems all encompassing and thus easily used as a reason for medical marijuana use, the organization of Health Canada very clearly defines what can be considered severe enough pain for medical marijuana. With that said, there are many suffering from chronic pain – due to a variety of reasons – with grants for the medical use of cannabis.

Arthritis, headaches and back pain are the most common, but fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, neuropathy and phantom limb pain are also common reason for chronic pain. Continuing pain can also be caused by debilitating illnesses such as MS (multiple sclerosis), scoliosis, osteoporosis and others.

Original Treatments for Chronic Pain

For many, medical marijuana use is a “last resort”, used only after several pharmacologic treatments fail. Typically, the first treatments include pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Unfortunately, long-term use can cause serious side effects; even if there is pain relief, it can only be in short periods due to the need for short-term use of the “first line” of treatments.

Should the first treatments fail, narcotic opioids such as codeine, morphine and oxycodone are generally prescribed. Although often highly affective, the concern for these types of narcotics is that they have a high possibility for addiction and abuse. As well, their use is also limited, due to possible side effects in higher doses. The withdrawal symptoms for addictive pharmaceuticals can be mild to painfully severe.

Medical Marijuana for Chronic Pain

For those that don’t respond to the first or second line of treatments, medical marijuana may be prescribed. As well, there are those who prefer not to use man-made pharmaceuticals that have a high rate of addiction or serious side effects.

According to Health Canada, “Dependence is unlikely to be problematic when cannabis is used therapeutically, although withdrawal affects may be uncomfortable. These include restlessness, anxiety, mild agitation, irritability, tremor, insomnia and EEG/ sleep disturbance, nausea, diarrhea and cramping.”

Relief from chronic pain, however, far outweighs the possibility of addiction for many:

– Migraines – Severe, incredibly painful and often lasting as long as 72 hours, migraines can cause serious debilitating issues such as nausea, vision changes, vomiting and a high sensitivity to light and sound. Many of the pharmaceuticals used to either stop or lessen the amount of migraines cause the same issues as the onset of the migraines themselves. Often, sufferers stop treatment because it doesn’t work or because the side effects are too severe.

Medical marijuana, on the other hand, has been a well-documented treatment for many years – even throughout the nineteenth century. Cannabinoids have often demonstrated anti-inflammatory effects, as well as dopamine blocking. It is believed by some that one of the causes of migraines is the lack of natural endocannabinoids in the body, which might explain why cannabis works to decrease the pain as well as the symptoms.

– Multiple sclerosis (MS) – MS is a degenerative disease that attacks myelin in the brain and spinal cord. If you imagine nerves to be like electrical wires, myelin is the insulating, protective sheath around the nerves. The autoimmune system treats myelin as a foreign invader, destroying patches of it and leaving nerve fibers exposed, interrupting their normal function. It is debilitating and painful, causing such symptoms as tingling and numbness, painful muscle spasms, tremors, paralysis and more.

Prescribed pharmaceuticals can cause severe, debilitating medical issues such as seizures, abdominal cramps, dizziness, mental disturbances and other problems. Many MS sufferers prefer to self-medicate with marijuana, and have noticed that cannabis helps them control tremors, spasms and bladder control. Tests have also shown that THC helps reduce pain intensity and sleep disturbance significantly.

Although these two illnesses are common for the use of medical marijuana in relieving chronic pain sufferers, the same can be said for rheumatoid arthritis, spinal cord injuries and even phantom limb pain. While more studies need to be performed to explain exactly how cannabinoids and medical marijuana work, the fact that they do work is clear. Health Canada grants access to marijuana for medical use to those who are suffering from grave and debilitating illnesses and those with chronic conditions. Medicinal-Marijuana.ca helps connect qualified patients with designated growers across Canada, providing information, support and resources to all Canadians who would like to access the medical marijuana program of Canada. Visit online today. Source.

 

Patients Flock to California Doctors Practicing Pot Medicine

November 8, 2009 – In Mississippi, where Dr. David Allen worked as a heart surgeon, authorities seized his home and ranch this year after finding $800 worth of marijuana and $1,000 in hashish. A grand jury is to consider a cultivation charge that could net him 30 years in prison under Mississippi’s drug laws.

In Sacramento, where he now lives, Allen is a legal, licensed member of a community of physicians that enables hundreds of thousands of Californians to lawfully consume or grow marijuana for personal use.

His recently opened cannabis evaluations clinic on Auburn Boulevard is a newcomer in an increasingly robust medical industry. Born with California’s Proposition 215 in 1996, the profession is newly energized by the federal government’s recent decision to relax enforcement policies for 14 states that have legalized medicinal use of marijuana.

Voters approved California’s Compassionate Use Act amid stories of AIDS patients needing marijuana to boost appetites and cancer patients needing it to counter nausea and other side effects of chemotherapy.

These days pot physicians, touting marijuana as a healthier alternative to pharmaceuticals, are writing medical cannabis recommendations for a far wider range of ills, from restless leg syndrome to psoriasis, from sleep apnea to menopause.

The widely available doctor’s “recommendations” – they’re not formal prescriptions – stir intense debate in the medical community, even among cannabis doctors.

Doctors argue over whether the recommendations, costing anywhere from $50 to $250 each, go to patients who truly need medical marijuana or help facilitate recreational drug users and provide hefty profits for the doctors writing the notes.

Doctors are barred by state law from giving out marijuana or instructing patients where to get it. But cannabis recommendations are necessary for patients to make their purchases at the pot dispensaries now sprouting like Starbucks in some communities.

The dispensaries must operate as nonprofits. The doctors are under no such constraints.

170,000 patients seen

Already, a lucrative medical industry is taking shape with pot evaluation networks such as MediCann, a “health and wellness service” started with one San Francisco clinic. It now operates 20 offices in California – including sites in Sacramento, Elk Grove and North Highlands – and has overseen the care of 170,000 cannabis patients since 2004.

“The growth has been steady. We open up a new clinic every few months,” said Matthew Desanto, MediCann’s marketing director. “Honestly, it’s just that patients need to use cannabis as medicine.”

In the past year, another group, Marijuana Medicine Evaluation Centers, opened clinics in 10 California cities. It advertises on “WeedMaps,” an Internet service for patients seeking doctors, dispensaries and other pot services.

The newfound visibility of the medical marijuana trade is pronounced on the eclectic boardwalk of Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

Along the boardwalk’s short span, greeters work the crowd in front of three oceanfront clinics, pitching the benefits of medical pot. One large beachfront house holds the Medical Kush Doctor physician’s office and the Kush Clubhouse dispensary. Another doctor’s walk-in clinic is next door to a dispensary entrance, where a woman shouts out: “Free hash bar – patients welcome!”

In his Sacramento office, where medical diplomas are displayed with a news article on a rare beating heart bypass surgery he performed in Mississippi, Dr. Allen is bullish on his career change to full-time pot doc.

Allen was living in California last February when his Mississippi ranch was raided. He denies participation in any illegal marijuana activities.

Jackson County, Miss., Sheriff’s Lt. Curtis Speirs said Allen is being investigated for felony cultivation and distribution.

“In the state of Mississippi,” Speirs said, “whether you think it’s for medicinal use or not, it’s against the law.”

In California, Allen charges $150 for medical evaluations and exults over his work with pot patients.

“Cannabis is a miracle drug that works so well for so many reasons, for so many people, that millions are willing to risk jail and property seizures to use the medicine,” he said.

He said he is dedicated to serving the people who tell him that cannabis “is better for my migraines, for my asthma, for my menstrual cramps” than traditional treatments. “How can you deny these patients?”

Construction worker Brent Bomia, 36, who said he had back surgery after a work-related fall, showed up with his medical records and got a recommendation from Allen.

“I’m happy he is here,” said Bomia. “I believe as a community this is a steppingstone to more people realizing medical marijuana really helps.”

Prop. 215 applied broadly

Under Proposition 215, physicians can recommend cannabis for cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraines or “any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

Clinical support for pot’s potential health benefits comes from the likes of Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Abrams conducted state and federally funded research that showed marijuana to be beneficial for patients with HIV and for pain from nerve damage.

“I see cancer patients every day who suffer from loss of appetite, weight loss, pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia and nausea,” he said. “With cannabis, I can recommend one medicine instead of writing prescriptions for six or seven.”

But Dr. Lee Snook, a Sacramento pain physician who serves on the public policy committee for the California Society of Addiction Medicine, is alarmed over the burgeoning use of medical cannabis.

Snook, who heads Metropolitan Pain Management Consultants Inc., said he encounters many patients with marijuana recommendations who don’t need them or are better served by other treatments.

“People go into an outpatient clinic, say, ‘I have chronic pain,’ pay $100 for a card,” Snook said. “That’s it. I see it as a business. I don’t see it as practicing medicine at all.”

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws – which advocates easing marijuana restrictions – lists more than 160 California doctors and clinics as “medical cannabis specialists.” Their work, as with all doctors, falls under the scrutiny of the California Medical Board.

Since 1996, the board has investigated 81 complaints against doctors who recommended pot to patients.

Regulators revoked licenses for 10 physicians for violating guidelines published to ensure they conduct in-person “good faith” examinations and review patients’ health and medical histories when recommending cannabis. Some were sanctioned for failing to detect overt, drug-seeking behaviors.

Medical Board records indicate some pot doctors attracted attention after other physicians or psychiatrists complained. Other complaints came from undercover police who said they got cannabis recommendations with little or no medical exam.

All 10 license revocations were stayed and the doctors allowed to continue practicing under supervised probation.

In July, the Medical Board sanctioned Dr. Robert Cohen of Santa Monica for recommending cannabis without a physical exam or patient records for a board investigator who said she was a mother of five and needed pot to relax.

In August, the board found that El Dorado County doctor Marion Fry improperly recommended marijuana to a patient with chronic paranoid schizophrenia despite warnings from Merced County health officials that pot exacerbated his condition.

The board put Fry’s medical license on probationary status for three years. That action came two years after she and her husband were sentenced to federal prison for conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana. A trial revealed that her medical pot recommendations netted between $750,000 and $1 million over a 26-month period.

Even some pot doctors question whether the expanding industry has sufficiently established standards and oversight.

Dr. Frank Lucido, a Berkeley family physician and leader in the medical marijuana movement, worries about a proliferation of “quick-in, quick-out mills that pretty much give out cannabis recommendations to anyone 18 or over that has money.”

“It gives the industry a bad name,” he said.

Lucido said he pre-screens patients in a telephone interview, conducts 45-minute examinations and requires medical records documenting serious health issues.

Then, there is Venice Beach.

On an oceanfront featuring four new pot clinics, one employee drew in passers-by by handing out fliers adorned with a cannabis leaf and a list of medical conditions.

“Do you have any of these?” he asked. “We can get you a recommendation. It will only take a few minutes.”

Gilbert, a 42-year-old Los Angeles man who didn’t want his last name used, was in and out of the doctor’s office next to the hash bar. He got a cannabis recommendation minutes after a brief exam and blood pressure check.

“He asked me what medications I was on and what do I think marijuana would do,” said Gilbert, who said he smokes pot to alleviate pain and high blood pressure.

“Pot smokers are going to be pot smokers. If this is going to make them feel better, then so be it.” Source.

 

What We Know About Medical Marijuana

October 27, 2009 – Last week, the Justice Department ordered its staff to back off prosecution of people who use marijuana for medical purposes in the 14 states in which such use is legal. The directive reopened a question that has been part of the debate on U.S. drug policy for decades.

To understand more about the drug’s medical properties, we turned to Daniele Piomelli, who since 1998 has led a program, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to study the impact of marijuana and other psychoactive drugs on the brain. He is a professor of pharmacology and biological chemistry at the University of California at Irvine as well as and director of the center for Drug Discovery and Development at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa.

What medical benefits does marijuana offer? Have these benefits been demonstrated in rigorous scientific studies?

Several controlled clinical trials have been carried out in the last few years, using either smoked marijuana or a mouth spray that contains an extract of the marijuana plant. The results are quite consistent. They show that marijuana improves the well-being of patients with multiple sclerosis and alleviates chronic pain in patients with damage or dysfunction of nerve fibers (so-called neuropathic pain). Other work has shown that marijuana and its active ingredient THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) reduce the nausea that accompanies chemotherapy, stimulate appetite in AIDS wasting syndrome and lessen tics in Tourette’s syndrome. By and large, the use of marijuana in these trials was associated with few and mild side effects (for example, dry mouth and memory lapses).

What are the risks of medical use of marijuana? Could it become addictive or lead to use of other, more dangerous drugs?
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Marijuana can produce dependence, though less aggressively than, say, tobacco or the so-called opiate painkillers. Frequent use is risky, however, particularly during adolescence when the neural circuits in the brain are still maturing. It turns out that the brain employs its own marijuana-like substances, called endocannabinoids, to send signals from one neural cell to another, and that THC mimics these substances. The endocannabinoids seem to be very important in brain development, so messing with them before the nervous system becomes fully mature is not a smart thing to do.

There is little hard evidence that using marijuana leads to the subsequent use of other addictive drugs. On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that stressful life events (particularly in critical periods such as adolescence) can encourage drug use and facilitate the development of addictions.

How would a marijuana user be sure to get the correct dose of the active ingredient?

It is difficult to say, because the various types of marijuana now available contain widely different concentrations of THC. Standardized marijuana preparations that contain a fixed amount of THC are not currently sold to the public, though the National Institute on Drug Abuse does provide them to investigators for use in clinical trials.

Is there an alternative way to get the same ingredient in some other form?

A clinical form of THC was approved by the Food and Drug Administration many years ago. It is marketed under the name of Marinol and is used to treat nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy as well as loss of appetite in AIDS patients. It comes in capsules and is taken orally. Many medical marijuana users say the fixed dose of oral THC creates a problem; they say they prefer smoked marijuana because its dosage can be adjusted simply by changing the length and intensity of the puffs. They may be right, but the burning of a marijuana joint creates tars and other toxic chemicals that can be harmful with prolonged exposure. An alternative is to use so-called smokeless delivery systems such as vaporizers and sprays. Source.

 

Cancer and the Emerging Evidence on Marijuana’s Potential

October 18, 2009 – Research shows some cancers can be treated with marijuana. Even with successful surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy treatment, gliomas — a highly aggressive form of brain cancer that strikes approximately 10,000 Americans annually — tragically claim the lives of 75 percent of its victims within two years and virtually all within five years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells intact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the questions posed above are not entirely hypothetical. Let me explain.

In 2007, there were over 150 published preclinical and clinical studies assessing the therapeutic potential of marijuana and several of its active compounds, known as cannabinoids. These numerous studies are in a book, now in its third edition, entitled Emerging Clinical Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids: A Review of the Scientific Literature. (NORML Foundation, 2008) One chapter in this book, which summarized the findings of more than 30 separate trials and literature reviews, was dedicated to the use of cannabinoids as potential anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

Not familiar with this scientific research? Your government is.

In fact, the first experiment documenting pot’s potent anti-cancer effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest federal bureaucrats. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana’s primary psychoactive component, THC, “slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.”

Despite these favorable preliminary findings (eventually published the following year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute), U.S. government officials refused to authorize any follow-up research until conducting a similar — though secret — preclinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.

However, rather than publicize their findings, the U.S. government shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its findings were leaked to the medical journal AIDS Treatment News, which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.

In the years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to authorize a single additional study examining the drug’s potential anti-cancer properties. (Federal permission is necessary in order to conduct clinical research on marijuana because of its illegal status as a schedule I controlled substance.)

Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and brain cancer. (An excellent paper summarizing much of this research, “Cannabinoids for Cancer Treatment: Progress and Promise,” appears in the January 2008 edition of the journal Cancer Research.) A 2006 patient trial published in the British Journal of Cancer even reported that the intracranial administration of THC was associated with reduced tumor cell proliferation in humans with advanced glioblastoma.

Writing earlier this year in the scientific journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, Italian researchers reiterated, “(C)annabinoids have displayed a great potency in reducing glioma tumor growth. (They) appear to be selective antitumoral agents as they kill glioma cells without affecting the viability of nontransformed counterparts.” Not one mainstream media outlet reported their findings. Perhaps now they’ll pay better attention.

What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer may have been achieved over the past 34 years had U.S. government officials chosen to advance — rather than suppress — clinical research into the anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It’s a shame we have to speculate; it’s even more tragic that thousands must suffer while we do. Source.

 

Medical Marijuana: The Right to Wellness vs Heavy-handed Police Raids

October 2, 2009 – If the police barged into your place of wellness pointing guns, what would you do? This may seem farfetched to some, but not when the medicine in question is a controversial plant known as herb, weed, pot, ganja, Mary Jane, or of course, marijuana.

Police raided 14 medical cannabis centers September 9 in San Diego, California, one of which was Hillcrest Compassion Care, a rapidly expanding collective that grants members safe access to their medicine.

Rev. Paul Cody, president of Hillcrest Compassion Care, explains that the cooperative is more than a place to get marijuana. “We don’t want a pot shop in our town,” he declares. “We want a mental and physical wellbeing center to heal people who are at the end of their ropes and are going through possible terminal illnesses. We want to help them live vibrant and healthy lives in the community.”

That’s right; it’s not about getting high legally. Indeed, through a citizen vote, state legislation allows California residents over the age of 21 with a doctor’s recommendation to safely access medical cannabis, either by growing it themselves, or receiving it through the cooperative effort of patients and caregivers.

A medicinal herb that was cultivated in China as early as 5000 BC, marijuana is currently used to treat multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, pain associated with cancer and HIV, headaches, nausea, anxiety, menstrual cramps, and many other conditions.

“The wonderful accomplishment of medical marijuana is that it provides a sense of control over people’s lives so that they can function,” Cody points out. “People do not get stoned; they get medicated.”

So what’s all the fuss about? San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced in a press release the day after the raids that all local medical marijuana centers were illegally dealing drugs for profit. The law mandates that collectives are non-profit entities.

On the day of the raids, police literally bashed in the doors of Hillcrest Compassion Care, handcuffing several patients and caregivers, while taking possession of the collective’s medicine and confidential patient forms. The arrest procedure posed a specific problem for Cody, who is in a wheelchair. Possessing no movement from the waist down, he would require the handcuffs to be placed in front of his body while being positioned in the front seat of the car for bodily support. His requests were ignored and consequently, he flopped to the side in the back of the police car with his hands cuffed behind his back, receiving several injuries. Subsequently, no charges were placed on any collective members.

Cody reflects, “We feel that our civil rights are being violated on multiple levels. That’s why there will be several attorneys specializing in different fields to address this matter. We are holding the City of San Diego, the City of San Diego Police Department, the County of San Diego, and Bonnie Dumanis responsible for how the raids were conducted.”

Several protests were held September 17-21, where demonstrators voiced their opinion that the state law be upheld. People must be able to exercise their right to safely access medical marijuana through non-profit collectives without harassment from the authorities.

On a larger scale, the question to legalize marijuana statewide is coming to a head. Activists in Oakland are moving forward on an initiative to tax and legalize marijuana for personal use. In effect, the measure would allow residents 21 and over to grow or possess up to one ounce of marijuana. Local governments would decide whether to tax and regulate sales. The projected economic impact would be monumental in bringing the state much needed revenue. The signatures of 433,000 registered California voters are necessary to get the initiative on the 2010 ballot—and as of October 1, there are 100 days to get it done.

In the meantime, Hillcrest Compassion Care, along with other cooperatives, are working to safely supply medical marijuana to collective members.
“Alternative needs are here,” says Cody. “Whether it’s through acupuncture, massage therapy, reflexology, or support groups—we need to have a place where we can access these medications and practices.”

That’s why Hillcrest Compassion Care goes beyond providing medical marijuana by using its resources as a non-profit organization to benefit the community. “We have programs that aren’t just for collective members,” notes Cody. “We try to reach the community abroad. Everyone is welcome.”

The collective offers yoga classes on Mondays, medicine education classes on Tuesdays, HIV support groups on Wednesdays, and music on Friday and Saturday nights. “There are many people out there who need help—that’s the bottom line,” affirms Cody. “It’s not done for profit; it’s done out of love and compassion.”

For more information on the 2010 ballot initiative in California to tax and legalize marijuana, visit http://www.taxcannabis2010.org. To learn more about Hillcrest Compassion Care, call 619.291.4420 or visit 1295 University Ave. Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., or Sunday 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.

by Elyssa Paige. Source.