The Department of Justice sent a memo on Monday to all its prosecutors regarding federal prosecution of marijuana cases in States that have legalized the use of medical marijuana. From the memo:
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Continue Reading Prosecuting Significant Marijuana Traffickers
…he was being considered for Surgeon General. (With my hearty apologies to the better line: “By the time Mozart was my age… he was dead.”)
Right wing nut jobs (see the above link) are going ballistic over the travesty of appointing a neurosurgeon with a healthy background in communicating with the public…
I’ve written about “Austin Marijuana” laws before, and perhaps unwisely, I joked that Austin is Weird, but unfortunately, it is constrained by the laws of the great State of Texas and therefore no different when it comes to marijuana laws than anywhere else in the Lone Star State.
Scott Henson called me on…
Texas has no medical exception for possession of marijuana…but California does.
And living in the “California of Texas” – Austin – we have Whole Foods, Central Market, and of course, the “Keep Austin Weird” movement that was even featured on 60 minutes.
So I had to laugh when I read the…
District 49 (which includes parts of Austin, Texas) State Representative Elliot Naishtat filed a bill yesterday “relating to the use of medical marijuana”. The bill would add an affirmative defense to possession of marijuana charges: proof of a licensed doctor’s prescription:
SECTION 1. Section 481.121, Health and Safety Code, is amended by adding Subsections (c) and (d) to
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From Scientific American today we learn of a study published in the journal Neurology that marijuana helped HIV patients reduce chronic foot pain.
A quick aside here, before commenting on the Drug Czar’s knee-jerk uninformed reaction to this…
HIV-Associated sensory neuropathy is a serious condition affecting almost one third of HIV/AIDS patients. According to Medscape Today…
British pharmaceutical company GW announced it planned to start human trials on a fat-fighting marijuana drug today. From the CNN article “Drugmaker to test fat-fighting marijuana drug”:
"The cannabis plant has 70 different cannabinoids in it, and each has a different affect on the body," GW Managing Director Justin Gover told Reuters.
"Some can
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Mark Katz posts about a recent successful medical marijuana defense case, based on these provisions in Maryland’s marijuana statute:
(i) In a prosecution for the use or possession of marijuana, the defendant may introduce and the court shall consider as a mitigating factor any evidence of medical necessity.
(ii) Notwithstanding paragraph (2) of this subsection,
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Jacob Sullum at Hit and Run wrote about a recent medical marijuana ruling in California:
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the federal government can continue to charge medical marijuana users under the CSA despite California’s law, the judge said, that does not mean California’s law is invalid. According to the ruling, the removal
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Sanjay Gupta writes an article in Time this week entitled “Why I Would Vote No On Pot”. After stating his thesis that marijuana isn’t very good for you, he goes on:
True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC,
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