The Minnesota House and Senate passed the heavily restricted bill last week despite the Governor saying he did not support it. Pawlenty said that while he was “sympathetic to those dealing with end-of-life illnesses,” he felt marijuana poses “serious public safety and health risks.” Legalizing marijuana, even under limited conditions, “could serve to compound these problems,” he wrote.

Supporters are not giving up and say a 2010 Constitutional Amendment is likely. “I’m disappointed in the governor’s action, but I’m not giving up,” said Rep. Tom Rukavina (DFL-Virginia), sponsor of the House bill. “This would have been the narrowest, strictest medical marijuana law in the country, but the bottom line remains that there are patients suffering terribly who need protection, and I won’t stop till they are protected.”

“For the governor to veto this legislation even after the House narrowed it so much that thousands of suffering patients would have been without protection is just unbelievably cruel,” said Senate bill sponsor Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing). “Since the governor has refused to listen to reason or to the overwhelming majority of Minnesotans, we have no choice but to bypass him and take this directly to the people through a constitutional amendment.”

Photo by: Uberculture

According to a blog post by Joplin NORML, Richards objection to assigning HB277 to committee seems to boil down to, “why bother, the bill has no chance of passage”. Missouri voters are urged to let Speaker Richard know his decision to not assign the bill to the appropriate committee will not go unnoticed to majority of Americans that support medical marijuana by contacting him through one of the following methods:

Phone:
Jefferson City Office – 573.751.2173

Email:
ronald.richard@house.mo.gov

Mail:
State Representative Ron Richard
District 129
Missouri House of Representatives
201 W. Capitol Ave. Room 206A
Jefferson City, MO 65101

Minnesota
Minnesota’s Senate passed a medical marijuana bill with a 36-28 vote. The vote drew a heated debate that lasted many hours before the vote. Most criticism came from law enforcement officials despite Sen. Steve Murphy claim that “over 50 suggestions from law enforcement”  were put into the bill. Murphy also noted that law enforcement refused to sit down with him to talk about issues with the current revised bill. One law maker, Sen. Julie Rosen, decided to invoke the flawed “gateway theory”  by saying “Marijuana is not an herbal medicine. It is a gateway to drugs. I don’t even know why we are debating this!” Today’s vote was technically made by the “Senate’s Committee of the Whole”, and needs an official vote that will probably take place later this week, before making its way to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has indicated he will veto the bill.

New Hampshire
The New Hampshire Senate joined the House in passing their medical marijuana bill with a 14-10 vote. Th Senate vote Wednesday sent the bill back to the House to review relatively minor changes. If the House endorses the changes and Gov. John Lynch signs the bill, New Hampshire would be the 14th state to legalize medicinal marijuana. If you live in New Hampshire, Marijuana Policy Project urges you to send Gov. John Lynch a fax asking him to allow the bill to become law.

Rhode Island
The Rhode Island Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill, 35-2, that would establish “compassion centers” to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients. Rhode Island became the eleventh state in the country to legalize marijuana use for the chronically ill in 2006.  But lawmakers never explained how patients could get the drug and its sale remained 100% illegal. Sen. Rhoda Perry’s bill aims to close a gray area in state law and allow patients safe access to their medication.

Illinois
More than 60 religious leaders are supporting the Illinois bill that would allow patients to use medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation and without criminal consequences. If passed, the legislation would create a three-year pilot program allowing the state Department of Public Health to give registry identification cards to people with doctors’ recommendations for cannabis. Eligible patients would be entitled to seven dried cannabis plants and 2 ounces of dried usable cannabis. Many law enforcement officials and the pro drug-war group “Educating Voices” have announced a press conference at the Statehouse Thursday at 10 a.m. to argue against the bill.

Cannabis Science Inc., President & CEO, Steven W. Kubby said, “We have the science and preliminary anecdotal results confirming the anti-inflammatory properties of our new lozenges and indicating they may present an effective and non-toxic treatment for minimizing the symptoms and harm from influenza infections. Our lozenges appear to down-regulate the body’s excessive inflammatory response to the influenza virus, which could reduce the deadly consequences of an infection into something that is more like a common cold. Because of my cancer and diminished auto-immune functions, even common influenza is a deadly threat, and I’ve had incredible symptomatic relief with the lozenge.”

Dr. Robert J. Melamede, Director and Chief Science Officer, cautioned, “Smoked marijuana will not effectively prevent the excessive inflammatory response, despite delivering the beneficial pharmacological agents, due to the irritating, pro-inflammatory nature of smoke. In fact, I believe it will make things worse and should be avoided by infected individuals.”

Mr. Kubby added, “If a swine or bird flu pandemic emerges — and everyone seems to think that it is just a matter of when, not if –, there is simply no time for the usual bureaucratic process. With emergency government approval, we can legally access the huge supply of medical cannabis available in California to produce millions of life saving doses within a relatively short period of time.”

Dr. Melamede furthermore stated, “Based upon recent discoveries regarding the role that endocannabinoid system plays in maintaining human health, we have a unique solution to the looming threat posed by deadly influenza strains that we believe, if implemented, could save millions of lives. We will strive for an emergency review of our cannabis extract-based lozenge because we believe its availability will prevent many of the deaths associated with the hyper-inflammatory response associated with known lethal strains of the influenza virus. Current anti-influenza medications have a demonstrated decreased effectiveness against some of these lethal variants. Mankind cannot wait for the emergency situation to materialize. We must be proactive in gaining the necessary governmental approvals to test, and pending the outcome of our studies, produce our lozenge.”

Mr. Richard Cowan, Director and CFO, who recently spoke in Mexico City to a conference sponsored by the Mexican Congress, stated, “I believe the Mexican Congress recognizes that doctors should be able to prescribe medical cannabis. We are prepared to work with the government of Mexico to produce similar medical cannabis products to help fight the outbreak there. We look forward to working with Government officials, including Homeland Security, to help advance our treatments for these outbreaks in Mexico, Canada, the USA, and around the world.”

About Cannabis Science, Inc.

Cannabis Science, Inc. is at the forefront of medical marijuana research and development. The Company works with world authorities on phytocannabinoid science targeting critical illnesses, and adheres to scientific methodologies to develop, produce, and commercialize phytocannabinoid-based pharmaceutical products. In sum, we are dedicated to the creation of cannabis-based medicines, both with and without psychoactive properties, to treat disease and the symptoms of disease, as well as for general health maintenance.

Cannabis Science Inc.
Steven W. Kubby, President & CEO, 888-889-0888
info@cannabisscience.com

President Obama angered many marijuana supporters when he laughed off questions about marijuana legalization in an online town hall saying “the answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy — (laughter) — to grow our economy”. Many took Obama’s answer as a rude side step of an important issue, and are upset that while the President stated that he does not believe legalization is a good economic strategy, he ignored the fact that marijuana legalization is about more than tax revenue for the government.

Polling data shows that the support for marijuana legalization has increased since 1989, however there is no correlation between support of marijuana legalization to the status of the economy. So if generating billions of dollars for the government is not the only motivating factor in marijuana legalization, what else is causing this increase?

1. Failed Drug Policy & Criminal System

An estimated 900,000 people will be arrested for marijuana this year alone. The prison population in the U.S is six to ten times as high as most Western European nations leading to overcrowding in many jails and prisons around the country. Overcrowded prisons then turn into more serious safety and health issues for both staff and inmates. Additional problems arise because marijuana is classified as a schedule 1 drug along with cocaine and heroin, which means in some places, a person arrested for simple marijuana possession is incarcerated along side dangerous inmates facing more serious violent charges.

Marijuana raids have resulted in an unarmed people being shot, family pets killed in front of their owners, and police busting wrong houses. State agencies frequently declare children of marijuana smokers to be “in danger”, sometimes resulting in the children being placed into foster homes. Examples like these have lead many to believe the United States drug policy is ruining more lives than it is helping.  The fact that the U.S leads the world in illegal drug use is evidence that the “war on drugs” has failed and many people are looking for a new approach to what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Americans “insatiable demand for illegal drugs“.

2. Mexican Drug Cartels

Roughly 7000 people have been killed by drug cartel violence in Mexico since January of 2008.  Jorge Ramos, mayor of Tijuana, Mexico, says his city is in a “real war” with the cartels. Marijuana makes up about 70% of the black market drug trade that funds these cartels, leading many to believe legalizing marijuana will put these cartels out of business.

U.S citizens should be alarmed that there is evidence that the violence in Mexico is spilling across the border. A survey of police and FBI offices suggested that Mexican cartels have drug distribution networks in 230 American cities – and that related killings and kidnappings in cities like Phoenix and Atlanta have increased. The thousands of people directly effected by these deadly drug cartels were most likely hoping for a more serious response from Obama on the issue.

3. Medical Marijuana

The low price of medical marijuana compared to prescription medicine is hardly “non-economic”; however, the symptom relief that patients receive from medical marijuana is far from an economic issue. Therapeutic use of marijuana dates back over 4,500 years. There are currently 13 states that allow medical marijuana and many more states with medical marijuana bills in various stages.

U.S Attorney General Eric Holder recently outlined the Obama Administration’s vow to end federal raids on medical marijuana establishments operating legally under state law. The governments classification of marijuana as a schedule 1 means that it currently has “no accepted medical use in treatment”, yet the government has supplied some patients with 10-12 FDA approved marijuana joints a day for over 22 years. The Obama administration has yet to clear up the mixed signals about the future of the federal government involvement in medical marijuana. Many patients and activists fear these mixed signals could be confusing to potential voters in the many states that will voting on the issue in the coming years.

4. Industrial Hemp

A 1938 Popular Mechanics article noted that hemp could be used to make more than 25,000 different products and was hailed as a billion dollar crop at the time. Hemp is a close cousin to the marijuana plant, although it does not contain enough THC to even give someone a buzz, let alone get someone high. It is often said that hemp was the real target of marijuana prohibition fueled by various industries that felt threatened by the easy to grow and hard to patent plant.

The United States is the only industrialized country to not grow hemp domestically. In fact, the DEA has admitted 98% of all domestically eradicated “marijuana” is actually “ditchweed” hemp which grows in the wild and has no recreational or medical use. Every American, no matter their views on marijuana, should expect the President to address why the government goes as far as spending tax payer money to eradicate such an obviously useful plant.

5. Accessible Knowledge

Sure, the Internet has been around a long time, but the way we use the internet changes every year. Right now, the web industry is filled with companies who’s sole purpose is to spread information. While web savvy users are probably tired of the term “web 2.0″, many mainstream users are just now discovering sites like Digg, Facebook and Twitter, which all allow people to share information more easily.

With issues like marijuana, where information has been skewed in society for such a long time, the internet has allowed more people to discover the facts for themselves. Before the internet, most news and information came from biased news media, often influenced by politicians, and spread by faulty word of mouth. The “reefer madness” type of propaganda that worked in the past, has little effect on most people today. This is leading to an increase in marijuana legalization support even among non-users.