thank you, Seth MacFarlane

        

John P. Morgan was a professor of pharmacology at City University of New York’s Medical School from 1977 until his retirement in 2004. Though best known to the movement as coauthor of the 1997 book “Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts” — with sociologist Lynn Zimmer, who passed away in 2006 — Morgan has in fact been a staunch activist for drug law reform for decades. His service as a champion of marijuana legalization included a lengthy association with NORML, including many years sitting on its Board of Directors and Advisory Board, as well as on boards of the Drug Policy Foundation, now known as the Drug Policy Alliance. Due to complications with leukemia, he passed away in 2008.

However, as a professor of pharmacology, he was essentially an expert on the matter. I found this video of him on a fellow blogger’s site, HempNews.tv:

        

District of Columbia City Council members held their first hearing on Thursday regarding legislation to authorize the legal use and distribution of medical marijuana after Congress’ recent lift of DC’s ban on medical marijuana laws. Members of the DC City Council Committees on Health and Public Safety recently gave audience to public testimony regarding B 18-622, the Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative Amendment Act 0f 2010. It’s passage would allow for the licensed production and distribution of cannabis to authorized patients. The measure would implement ideals in Initiative 59 – a 1998 DC ballot measure that culled 69 percent of the vote. However, until this year DC city lawmakers have been barred from instituting the measure because of the Congressional ban (rescinded late last year).

Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, testified before the Committee: “The goals of Initiative 59 were threefold: To provide physicians with the legal authority to recommend marijuana as a therapy to those patients for whom they believed would benefit from its medical use; to legally protect patients who use marijuana under a doctor’s supervision from criminal arrest or prosecution; and to provide patients with legal, safe, affordable above ground access to medical marijuana. While NORML commends the efforts of the DC City Council to implement safe and reasonable medical marijuana regulations, these efforts must not run contrary to the intentions of I-59, as unambiguously expressed by 69 percent of DC’s voters.”

If all goes well, the measure should likely be passed by May of this year. If approved by the Council, Congress has 30 days to either approve or reject the measure.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500. For additional information regarding B 18-622, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center.

        

Now, that’s not to say that the fine people at eBay are burning any books, but they did recently leave a a certain member quite “frustrated and angry”. On Super Bowl Sunday, Crozet Virginia resident Fred Carwile found that his sales listings for back-issues of High Times magazine, an item he’d previously sold for may years on the website, had been removed without any warning. After due diligence, he claims that 2 different eBay customer service representatives told him that they had been pulled at the request of the federal government. Carwile is legitimately distressed, “the federal government cannot ban books.” This is especially true when I myself have seen and purchased the pot rag at 7-11, Barnes and Noble, Border’s Books, and Crown Books when our local mall was less of a black hole.

The auction site’s response… that it’s always been company policy to proscribe the sale of any item that may “encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others to engage in illegal activities.” Hilariously, eBay is based in California where marijuana is essentially de facto legal and has been for some time. “Even though there might be states that allow it, eBay probably goes under federal law,” says Anne Kott (a publicist from APCO Worldwide, a PR firm). However, she remains unable to give any explanation as to the sudden enforcement of eBay policy against the magazine, as over 500 sales had been completed in the prior 30 days.

Another highly rated power seller of the magazine, Garcia Santana, is equally discouraged. “I’ve sold hundreds of these over the year, and then to say it violates policy, to me, it’s hypocrisy. This is selective discrimination. It’s sold in every state.”

Now it’s apparently time for conspiracy theories. Santana finds it rather queer that the listings were pulled during the middle of the Super Bowl when “… nobody was paying attention,” and at “the same time Meg Whitman is running for governor.” Whitman is the former eBay CEO and billionaire now tossing her name in the hat for Republican nomination to succeed the Governator. The state of California may have an initiative on the November ballot to (finally) legalize and tax the plant, but Whitman has previously stated that she is “100% not in favor of legalizing marijuana for any reason.” In other words, she’s a hater. Neither Kott nor Whitman’s campaign had any response for this accusation, but the policy has rather clear implications for sellers like Santana who supplements his income by selling the highly collectible magazines. Despite sodomy laws still in effect in several states, eBay still allows the sale of hardcore gay sex magazines, toys and bondage equipment in its adults-only area. “Yet,” says Santana, “they pull this mainstream magazine.”

John Whitehead, a civil liberties authority at Rutherford Institute, says that eBay is free to set policies about what it sells, but he is troubled about the allegation of official involvement in a ban. “If they’re doing it at the urging of the government,” says Whitehead, “there’s your lawsuit.” For Carwile – who also sells magazines with pornographic content – it’s the fact that the banned product is legal that bothers him so. I did a search for “marijuana” on eBay that turned up over 8000 results. I also found that they’ve a multitude of glass bowls, rolling papers, herb grinders, vaporizers, and other ambiguously legal drug paraphernalia. High Times editor Dan Skye ponders if there’s a new sheriff at eBay. “This,” he says, “is kind of like a stone age— forgive the pun— mentality.”

        

Sacramento, CA: The results of a series of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials assessing the efficacy of inhaled marijuana consistently show that cannabis holds therapeutic value comparable to conventional medications, according to the findings of a 24-page report issued Wednesday to the California state legislature by the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR).  Four of the five placebo-controlled trials demonstrated that marijuana significantly alleviated neuropathy, a difficult to treat type of pain resulting from nerve damage.

“There is good evidence now that cannabinoids (the active compounds in the marijuana plant) may be either an adjunct or a first-line treatment for … neuropathy,” said Dr. Igor Grant, Director of the CMCR, at a news conference at the state Capitol. He added that the efficacy of smoked marijuana was “very consistent,” and that its pain-relieving effects were “comparable to the better existing treatments” presently available by prescription.

A fifth study showed that smoked cannabis reduced the spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. A separate study conducted by the CMCR established that the vaporization of cannabis – a process that heats the substance to a temperature where active cannabinoid vapors form, but below the point of combustion – is a “safe and effective” delivery mode for patients who desire the rapid onset of action associated with inhalation while avoiding the respiratory risks of smoking.  Two additional clinical trials remain ongoing.

The CMCR program was founded in 2000 following an $8.7 million appropriation from the California state legislature. The studies are some of the first placebo-controlled clinical trials to assess the safety and efficacy of inhaled cannabis as a medicine to take place in over two decades. Placebo-controlled clinical crossover trials are considered to be the ‘gold standard’ method for assessing the efficacy of drugs under the US FDA-approval process.

“These scientists created an unparalleled program of systematic research, focused on science-based answers rather than political or social beliefs,” said former California Senator John Vasconcellos, who sponsored the legislation in 1999 to launch the CMCR. Vasconcellos called the studies’ design “state of art,” and suggested that the CMCR’s findings “ought to settle the issue” of whether or not medical marijuana is a safe and effective medical treatment for patients. “This (report) confirms all of the anecdotal evidence – how lives have been saved and pain has been eased,” said California Democrat Sen. Mark Leno at the press conference. “Now we have the science to prove it.”

Full text of the CMCR’s report to the California legislature is available at online at: http://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/CMCR_REPORT_FEB17.pdf.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org, or Dale Gieringer, California NORML Coordinator, at: http://www.canorml.org or (415) 563-5858.