Regulating Weed? San Francisco to Ask Those Who "Live and Breathe It"
Task force to advise City on medical marijuana
Saturday, January 9, 2010
nbcbayarea.com
Updated 4:30 PM PST
In a sign of medical marijuana's growing acceptance, the Board of Supervisors voted Thursday to solicit advice on the issue from a new task force.
The new environment was on display at Hope Net, a cannabis dispensary in San Francisco's Civic Center neighborhood.
There, precisely at noon, a black iron security door flung open. A steady stream of men filed past the trays of glass smoking pipes, and headed toward a back room. Before a glass counter they browsed plastic bins of pungent marijuana buds, cookies and brownies. A sign on the wall advertises a raffle.
Scenes like this, once relegated to the shadows of gritty San Francisco life, now happen in the open. And Hope Net owner Catherine Smith has city supervisors' numbers in her cell phone. In fact, she advises them on municipal medical marijuana issues.
“I think it’s a big step forward for us being able to participate in city government,” Smith said as she watched the line of customers.
Today's committee vote approved a plan to create a Marijuana Task Force to advise the city on cannabis-related issues. The full board must now approve the plan
The move comes as medical marijuana undergoes its biggest evolution toward public acceptance. The Obama Administration recently signaled it would no longer crack down on legitimate medical dispensaries. Next week California’s legislature will hold hearings on a proposal by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
Supervisor David Campos, who occupies Ammiano’s former seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, said the sticky issue could benefit from sage advise from the medical cannabis community itself.
“Irrespective of what we think about these issues, it makes sense to create an advisory group with people who are experts in the area, to provide some policy guidance to the board," said Campos.
Campos said dispensary operators, advocates and cultivators will sit on the task force, and will be appointed by the supervisors.
Among the issues the task force will immediately confront, is an increase in police crackdowns on marijuana growing operations in the city’s Sunset District. Police say growers in residential neighborhoods have modified houses with elaborate and dangerous heating systems to grow hundreds of plants.
Longtime marijuana advocate Michelle Aldrich says it’s an issue perfectly suited for the task force’s new agenda.
“We can work through it and get guidelines of what people can grow in their houses and what they can’t,” she said.
Shona Gochenaur of the Axis of Love patient cooperative said her group will offer advice on cultivation and how to regulate the variety of marijuana-related items.
“We are the experts,” Gochenaur said. “We live, breathe, have risked arrest and we know what’s going to work for our patients.”
News & Information
The Past, Present, and Future of Medical Marijuana in the United States
On October 19, 2009, the Office of the Deputy US Attorney General issued a memorandum, “Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana.”1 The memo announced a federal policy to abstain from investigating or prosecuting “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The memo made clear, however, that it did not “legalize marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law.” Rather, it was “intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.” This article seeks to place the attorney general’s action in historical, medical, and legal context.
The Union
A very well built documentary about cannabis and drug prohibition. Does the drug prohibition work? Have a look and think for yourself.
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The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February, 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
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NORML
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MPP
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- The Flower: An Animated Look at Regulation vs. Prohibition
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Resource Center
A Primer on Medicinal Cannabis
Cannabis (marijuana) is among the most widely used of all psychoactive drugs. There has been renewed interest in the potential medical uses of cannabis (Cannabis sativa) in recent years. Opinion polls suggest similarly strong popular support for the reintroduction of medical cannabis in the USA, the UK, and many European countries. Expert reviews of medical and scientific evidence on this topic carried out on both sides of the Atlantic in the past few years have encouraged further clinical and scientific research.
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