https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3ZfgerGdKc
“Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis” reveals how cannabis acts on the brain and in the body to treat nausea, pain, epilepsy, cancer, and many other illnesses both mental and physical.
“Clearing the Smoke” includes extensive interviews with patients, doctors, researchers and skeptics.
Just as the federal government is clamping down on medical marijuana dispensaries, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) may be set to give Big Pharma the clearance to take over the market.
In 2007, GW Pharmaceuticals announced that it partnered with Otsuka to bring “Sativex” — or liquefied marijuana — to the U.S. The companies recently completed Phase II efficacy and safety trials testing and began discussion with the FDA for Phase III testing. Phase III is generally thought to be the final step before the drug can be marketed in the U.S.
“GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) today announces the initiation of the Phase III clinical trials programme of Sativex in the treatment of pain in patients with advanced cancer, who experience inadequate analgesia during optimized chronic opioid therapy,” GW said in a statement. “This indication represents the initial target indication for Sativex in the United States.” 
Sativex is the brand name for a drug derived from cannabis sativa. It’s an extract from the whole plant cannabis, not a synthetic compound. Even GW defines the drug (.pdf) as marijuana.
Yet as the FDA is poised to approve the drug for Big Pharma, state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries that provide relief for thousands of Americans are under attack by other federal agencies.
Lynette Shaw, the owner and founder of Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) in Fairfax, California, was stunned when the IRS audited her 2008 and 2009 tax returns and disallowed the foundation’s business deductions, then demanded millions of dollars in back taxes.
The IRS pursued her under § 280E of the federal tax code, which states that no business deductions will be allowed for companies “trafficking in controlled substances”.
Shaw is now suing the IRS to prevent them from destroying the entire medical marijuana industry.
Last week, the Justice Department even threatened to prosecute state employees who license medical marijuana dispensaries.
As a result, Washington state Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) said she would veto a bill that would have allowed the state to license growers.
In February, marijuana advocacy group NORML warned that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intended to legalize marijuana for Big Pharma only.
“The DEA’s intent is to expand the federal government’s schedule III listing to include pharmaceutical products containing naturally derived formations of THC while simultaneously maintain existing criminal prohibitions on the plant itself,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), wrote at AlterNet.
Source: https://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/20/big-pharma-set-to-take-over-medical-marijuana-market/
Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy signed legislation into law on Thursday, June 30 ‘decriminalizing’ the possession of small, personal use amounts of marijuana by adults. The new law, Senate Bill 1014, took effect on Friday, July 1. 
Senate Bill 1014 reduces the penalties for the adult possession of up to one-half ounce of marijuana from a criminal misdemeanor (formerly punishable by one year in jail and a $1,000 fine) to a non-criminal infraction, punishable by a $150 fine, no arrest or jail time, and no criminal record. The new law similarly reduces penalties for the possession of marijuana paraphernalia.
Connecticut’s new law is similar to the existing ‘decriminalization’ laws in California,Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska,New York, and Oregon where private, non-medical possession of marijuana is treated as a civil, non-criminal offense.
Five additional states — Minnesota,Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio — treat marijuana possession offenses as a fine-only misdemeanor offense. Alaska law imposes no criminal or civil penalty for the private possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults.
Lawmakers in California and Kentucky previously enacted laws this year reducing penalties for marijuana possession.
Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/connecticut-marijuana-decriminalization.html
In a long piece detailing Obama’s badly botched approach to medical marijuana, the San Francisco Chronicle has a rather ridiculous quote from the White House: 
A White House spokesman said that its position on medical marijuana “has been clear and consistent.”
“While the prosecution of drug traffickers is a core priority, targeting individuals with cancer and serious illnesses is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources,” said the spokesman, Adam Abrams.
It’s really an amazing thing to say, considering that literally nobody understands what the hell Obama’s position on medical marijuana is supposed to be anymore. To describe as “clear and consistent” something that has created sweeping confusion across the country is hilariously dishonest and insulting, but I guess it’s exactly the kind of crap we ought to expect from these people at this point.
I’d just love to hear someone at the White House explain to me why it is that their “clear and consistent” messaging about medical marijuana policy was so thoroughly misunderstood by the mainstream media, the medical marijuana industry, and the numerous state governments that invested countless hours developing new regulatory mechanisms as a direct result of the Obama administration’s statements. If every single interested party is horribly confused, then you are not in a good position to claim that you’ve been communicating clearly.
Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/white-house-denies-responsibility-for.html
Mother Jones Magazine published last year an article detailing “Capitol Hill’s Top 75 Corporate Sponsors” based on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures in Washington DC from 1989-2010. I thought it might be interesting to review the list with an eye toward which ones could be pushing Washington hardest to hold the line on marijuana prohibition vs. which ones seek its end. 
Big Banking & Finance: 3 Goldman Sachs, 5 Citigroup, 10 American Bankers Association, 14 JPMorgan Chase, 16 Morgan Stanley, 23 Bank of America, 24 Ernst & Young, 28Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 29 Pricewaterhouse Coopers, 30 UBS,35 Merrill Lynch, 40 Credit Suisse, 44 American Financial Group, 51MBNA, 63 Securities Industry and Financial Market Association
Who knows if the titans of big finance are strong-arming politicians to maintain marijuana prohibition? With so many other issues important to their industry, from regulation to bail outs, why would they care if the herb is verboten? When you read The Guardian’s piece on $378 billion money-laundered by Wachovia for Mexican drug traffickers or Bloomberg’s report on Bank of America’s financing of three planes for traffickers to transport 10 tons of cocaine into America, you begin to see the motivation to keep that steady flow of illicit cash into the world finance system.
Big Pharma & Healthcare: 6 American Medical Association, 20 Pfizer,25 Blue Cross/Blue Shield, 27 American Hospital Association, 31 Aflac,45 GlaxoSmithKline, 62 American Health Care Association, 66 Eli Lilly, 74Bristol-Myers Squibb
Despite the AMA’s recent call to remove cannabis from Schedule I, they make the list because their reason for the call is to allow study of cannabis for its eventual pharmaceuticalization. It’s obvious why most of these companies would not wish to see patients growing their own medicine that reduces their need for prescription meds and leads to fewer doctor visits?
Big Alcohol & Tobacco: 9 Altria, 12 National Beer Wholesalers Association, 36 Reynolds American, 41 Anheuser-Busch, 52 UST
The motivations are transparent for the purveyors of legal recreational substances. While you can grow your own tobacco and brew your own beer, it’s time and labor intensive. Why would they wish to compete with a recreational substance the customer can grow on their own? They don’t, so much so that they were among the initial funders, along with Big Pharma, for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
The Top Federal Corporate Sponsors (Who Don’t Want Marijuana Legalized)
Mother Jones Magazine published last year an article detailing “Capitol Hill’s Top 75 Corporate Sponsors” based on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures in Washington DC from 1989-2010. I thought it might be interesting to review the list with an eye toward which ones could be pushing Washington hardest to hold the line on marijuana prohibition vs. which ones seek its end.
Big Banking & Finance: 3 Goldman Sachs, 5 Citigroup, 10 American Bankers Association, 14 JPMorgan Chase, 16 Morgan Stanley, 23 Bank of America, 24 Ernst & Young, 28Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 29 Pricewaterhouse Coopers, 30 UBS,35 Merrill Lynch, 40 Credit Suisse, 44 American Financial Group, 51MBNA, 63 Securities Industry and Financial Market Association
Who knows if the titans of big finance are strong-arming politicians to maintain marijuana prohibition? With so many other issues important to their industry, from regulation to bail outs, why would they care if the herb is verboten? When you read The Guardian’s piece on $378 billion money-laundered by Wachovia for Mexican drug traffickers or Bloomberg’s report on Bank of America’s financing of three planes for traffickers to transport 10 tons of cocaine into America, you begin to see the motivation to keep that steady flow of illicit cash into the world finance system.
Big Pharma & Healthcare: 6 American Medical Association, 20 Pfizer,25 Blue Cross/Blue Shield, 27 American Hospital Association, 31 Aflac,45 GlaxoSmithKline, 62 American Health Care Association, 66 Eli Lilly, 74Bristol-Myers Squibb
Despite the AMA’s recent call to remove cannabis from Schedule I, they make the list because their reason for the call is to allow study of cannabis for its eventual pharmaceuticalization. It’s obvious why most of these companies would not wish to see patients growing their own medicine that reduces their need for prescription meds and leads to fewer doctor visits?
Big Alcohol & Tobacco: 9 Altria, 12 National Beer Wholesalers Association, 36 Reynolds American, 41 Anheuser-Busch, 52 UST
The motivations are transparent for the purveyors of legal recreational substances. While you can grow your own tobacco and brew your own beer, it’s time and labor intensive. Why would they wish to compete with a recreational substance the customer can grow on their own? They don’t, so much so that they were among the initial funders, along with Big Pharma, for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Big Defense Contractors: 18 Lockheed Martin, 19 General Electric, 33Boeing, 37 Northrop Grumman, 43 General Dynamics
Defense contractors? When you sell weapons of war, you’ve got to have an armed enemy firing back at you to maintain production. That enemy needs ready cash to purchase illegal arms on the black market. When you learn how the opium trade fuels the Taliban in Afghanistan, how cocaine trafficking is making allies of Colombian rebels and al Qaeda terrorists, and how marijuana is setting up the next big shooting war just south of us in Mexico, you realize that these corporations can’t have global drug prohibition unraveling by the first step of marijuana legalization.
Big Energy: 46 Chevron, 49 ExxonMobil, 75 Enron
Switchgrass. Algae. Corn Ethanol. Natural Gas. “Clean” Coal. Everybody recognizes the need for alternative fuels to end our reliance on oil. It seems inconceivable that these companies would resist development of hempseed oil, the original fuel for the original diesel engine, but if they’ve already invested in other alternative fuel sources, why legalize hemp and create competitors or a need to re-direct investments?
Besides, they still have plenty of oil left to sell, and in products you never think of. Your plastic goods. Pesticides and fertilizers for your food. Building materials. Plus a few dozen other products whose manufacturers wouldn’t need to buy petroleum if they had cheaper sustainable hempseed oil to replace it with. 
Big Agribusiness: 69 Archer Daniels Midland
Second only to oil in the “who knew it was in so much stuff?” category is corn. High fructose corn syrup accounts for about half of all sugars in the American diet. It’s in your ketchup, for Pete’s sake! There’s also a symbiotic relationship between the food industry producing ethanol for Big Energy and the returned favor of producing pesticides and herbicides for Big Agribusiness. A flourishing hemp industry would produce hempseed oil for energy and the remaining hempseed becmes nutritious protein for people and livestock. Even the remaining farmers of other crops would use less fertilizers as farmers use hemp as a rotational crop and revitalizes the soil naturally.
So remember: even though a slim majority of 300 million American People would like to see the end of marijuana prohibition, a slim majority of the 75 Biggest Corporate People probably would rather keep things the way they are.
It has been a little over a month since the White House launched an outreach program promising official responses to policy ideas submitted by everyday Americans.
The result? A whole lot of arguing concerning space aliens, marijuana legalization, and onetime murder suspect Casey Anthony, followed by a bunch of vague, bureaucratic answers from bedraggled staff members.
In short: it has been an entertaining project to watch! The gist of the program was announced in September, when the White House asked people to submit questions or “calls for action … on a range of issues.” The threshold for answering a demand was setup like this: “if a petition gathers enough support (i.e., signatures) it will be reviewed by a standing group of White House staff, routed to any other appropriate offices and generate an official, on-the-record response.”
It was a pretty cool idea and it got off to a great start. The White House team first considered a petition that gathered some 32,000 signatures asking for the government to forgive all student loan debt. While not bowing to the petitioners’ demands wholesale, the Obama team responded Oct. 26 with the announcement of a new policy to reduce student loan debt on students.
We agree that reducing the burden of student loans is an effective way to stimulate the economy and save taxpayer dollars. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new policy that speaks to the concerns expressed in this petition.
Only a sucker would assume the White House drafted its student debt “Pay as You Earn” proposal in response to a petition signed by 32,000 people on the Internet. But still, it created a nice call-and-response dialogue with the participants and gave a sense that the administration was taking the petitions seriously.
But then… things didn’t go so well. The White House became overwhelmed with submissions. It raised the previous threshold of 5,000 signatures necessary for a response to 25,000. And then it started issuing blanket responses and no promises of any policy changes.
Marijuana fans collected enough signatures to get a response from the White House… but the answer wasn’t all that satisfying, just a statement explaining that “marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms.” The response also acknowledged that we can’t “arrest our way out of the problem” and noted the administration’s commitment to drug rehabilitation. 
Then came the space-alien people, who got a petition through the process asking the White House to “immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings.” The White House replied: “Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet,” and ticked off a series of NASA projects related to the discovery of intelligent life beyond the skies. Other issues that crossed the threshold garnered “no comment” responses, such as a request to “Try Casey Anthony in Federal Court for Lying to the FBI Investigators” and a request to investigate judicial misconduct the case of former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin.
For many reasons the White House didn’t offer more fully-fleshed responses. Many of the more popular petitions require acts of Congress and constitutional amendments outside of the control of the president. Others involved hot-button issues that an administration heading into campaign season would be crazy to take on.
But the angry petitioners, whose passions had been stoked by the well-meaning initiative, started airing their grievances against the White House once it dawned on them that the whole thing wasn’t much more than a public-relations ploy. “Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening,” reads a petition that has generated almost 15,000 signatures. Another one dripping with sarcasm reads: “We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition,” which generated 9,000 signatures.
Nobody was happy. The marijuana people offered this reaction. The space-alien geeks said the whole thing was ”unacceptable.” In The Washington Post, Esther Cepeda wrote that the program was all sleight-of-hand. “By bringing the absurdity of reality-TV voting gimmicks into government policy decisions, but not really following through in the way people hoped, Obama has succeeded in further turning off supporters who believed he’d be a good listener — and vindicated cynics who never believe politicians will keep their word.”
Ouch!
This We the People experiment has proven a little tricky. Is the White House ready to give up? Not yet.
Last week, the administration acknowledged the backlash but reasserted its commitment. “There has been some frustration with the answers from those who disagree with Administration policy, and that’s fair,” White House digital strategy director Macon Phillips wrote in a blog post.“…If these petitions are fostering a debate that might not otherwise take place about the issues Americans care about, that’s a positive thing.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. 
Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.
Producing six to 200 pot plants nets an automatic six-month sentence, with an extra three months if it’s done in a rental or is deemed a public-safety hazard. Growing 201 to 500 plants brings a one-year sentence, or 1 1/2 years if it’s in a rental or poses a safety risk.
The omnibus legislation imposes one-year mandatory minimums for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality. All three of these offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium-sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else’s land.
A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.
The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a kid without using a weapon.
In B.C., if police and prosecutors don’t rebel against the new laws, we’re going to be hit with massive jail costs, says Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd. The new marijuana legislation will increase the proportion of pot criminals in B.C. jails from less than five per cent to around 30 per cent, at a cost of $60,000 to $70,000 per inmate annually, Boyd says.
“Why put people who are not violent in jail?” Boyd asks. “People who commit serious violent crime are already dealt with pretty harshly, and crime rates are down, not up.”
Harper’s U.S.-style war on drugs ignores our southern neighbour’s expensive failed effort. “Eight states — including New York, where laws were the most punitive in the nation — have repealed most of these mandatory-minimum sentences, and dozens of other jurisdictions are considering repeal or reform,” a February report from Human Rights Watch says.
Even the government’s own Justice Department questions the use of mandatory minimums. “There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool,” reads a 2010 report from the department. “They constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime-prevention benefits.”
Provincial jails — where most people convicted under the new laws will end up — provide far fewer rehabilitation programs than federal prisons, leading to higher rates of re-offending, says Stacey Hannem, chairman of the policy review committee at the Canadian Criminal Justice Association.
“There’s a real revolving-door problem in our provincial institutions,” Hannem says. “If you’re going to throw even more people in there, you can bet that the recidivism rate in the provincial system is likely to go up.
“If you want to get tough on crime, that’s fine. But don’t sell it as increasing public safety. That’s just not true.”
Source:
A presentation by Peter Reynolds, leader of Cannabis Law Reform (CLEAR), an officially registered UK political party, working for a change in the law, particularly for those who need cannabis as medicine. Recorded on the 12th October 2011 at TruthJuice Bristol
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The US Justice Department has announced plans to crackdown on the medical marijuana industry in California, despite a 1996 voter-approved initiative to legalize it. Federal officials said they are cracking down on the state’s medical-marijuana dispensaries, threatening to confiscate marijuana - an medical industry that, by state estimates, generates more than $1 billion in annual sales and employs thousands.
Advocates in California, the first state to pass a law legalizing marijuana use for patients with doctors’ recommendations, have scheduled a joint news conference to “outline actions targeting the sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana.”
Their offices refused to provide details in advance of what moves the officials are taking or how many of the state’s hundreds of store-front marijuana shops would be affected.
Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act, which allows the use of medical marijuana, passed with 56% of the votes in 1996.
Initial stories indicated that all medical-marijuana dispensaries in California had been ordered to shut down, but the actual target remains unclear.
At least 16 marijuana shops or their landlords received letters this week warning they would face criminal charges and confiscation of their property if the dispensaries do not shut down in 45 days.
The letters state that federal law “takes precedence over state law and applies regardless of the particular uses for which a dispensary is selling and distributing marijuana.”
Dale Gieringer, the director of California NORML, which backs legalizing marijuana, said “the crackdown apparently will be tailored to fit the regional differences in the state.” He adds “They want to do a clean sweep in San Diego, whereas in Northern California they can’t possibly do a clean sweep.”
Federal prosecutors announced an aggressive crackdown against California marijuana dispensaries Friday, vowing to shut down dozens of operations and saying that the worst offenders are using the cover of medical marijuana to act as store-front drug dealers.
Many of the drug trafficking ventures are using California’s 15-year-old medical marijuana law to operate in plain sight, said U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, the top federal law enforcement officer for the San Francisco Bay area. “I understand there are people in California who believe marijuana stores should be allowed to exist, but I think we can all agree we don’t need marijuana stores across the street from schools and Little League fields,” she said.
Not all of the thousands of store-front marijuana dispensaries thought to be operating in the state are being targeted in the crackdown, which also involves new indictments and arrests of marijuana growers throughout the state over the past two weeks, said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wager, who represents the state’s Central Valley.
Instead, federal officials are initially going after marijuana shops located close to schools, parks, sports fields and other places where there are a lot of children and what Wagner termed “significant commercial operations.” He said that includes farmland where marijuana is being grown. “California’s marijuana industry supplies the nation,” he said. “And huge amounts of money are flowing back in the other direction.”
The strategies they are using vary somewhat, with warning letters issued by the U.S. attorney in San Diego giving recipients 45 days to comply and 38 property owners in Los Angeles and the Central Coast given just two weeks to evict marijuana dispensaries or growers.
The letters come just days after the IRS ruled that the largest dispensary on the West Coast, Harborside Health Center, owes millions in back taxes. The IRS said it won’t allow dispensaries to deduct normal business expenses such as payroll and rent, a potentially devastating financial blow to the industry.
U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said the move is not designed to clamp down on patients who grow their own marijuana for medical use. But dispensaries that were not part of the initial wave of warning letters “shouldn’t take any comfort,” she said. “They are illegal under federal law.”
The move comes a little more than two months after the Obama administration toughened its stand on medical marijuana. Two years before that, federal officials had indicated they would not move aggressively against dispensaries in compliance with laws in the 16 states where marijuana is legal for people with doctors’ recommendations.
The stepped-up enforcement escalates the Obama administration’s efforts to rein in the spread of marijuana stores, which accelerated after the attorney general announced in 2009 that federal prosecutors would not target people using medical marijuana in states that allow it.
Bill Panzer, a criminal defense lawyer who represents dispensaries said “It looks like there is a concerted effort for an offensive against the dispensaries in California,” and added “The Obama administration, for all the talk that he gave during the campaign, the reality is his policies haven’t been that different from Bush’s.”
“They’re cherry-picking,” Panzer said. “They want to look good in the press, so better to go after one that’s near a school.”
According to Panzer, the Justice Department four dispensaries because they are within 1,000 feet of schools or parks where children play. There is no state law against having a dispensary within 1,000 feet of a school, but under federal law, selling drugs near a school can carry a higher sentence.
The Department of Justice issued a policy memo to federal prosecutors in late June stating that marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws could face prosecution for violating federal drug and money-laundering laws. The effort to shut California dispensaries appeared to be the most far-reaching effort so far to put that guidance into action.
Sources:
https://www.baycitizen.org/marijuana/story/feds-eviction-4-marijuana-dispensaries/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_215_(1996)
https://www.baycitizen.org/marijuana/story/irs-oaklands-largest-pot-dispensary-owes/
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