Recent content by Gothmog

I've noticed that ready made joints are shaped not like tobacco cigarettes, but have the above mentioned tapered form. Why is that? Back in the day nearly everyone of my acquaintance preferred pipes or bongs to joints, but when they were needed joints were rolled as close to straight and even...

Cannabis prohibition certainly didn't start 40 years ago. It's important to keep in mind that cannabis possession has been effectively prohibited at the federal level since 1937, and in most of the states for decades longer than that. At any level, the prohibition of cannabis has gone on much...

Rand Paul is a Republican by affiliation, but you'd have to call him an outlier. I doubt that any left-leaning progressives would vote for Paul in any case, no matter how they feel about MJ. Traditionally, marijuana legalization/liberalization has been a nonpartisan issue because no...

Re: Obama Administration Has Spent Nearly $300 Million Cracking Down On Medical Marij I was alluding to aspects of the marketplace, whether deliberately planned or not, that favor the well-off. Bad roads, for instance lis less of a problem for those who can afford new SUVs. The amount of...

Re: Obama Administration Has Spent Nearly $300 Million Cracking Down On Medical Marij We're in debt because of decades of unfunded wars, "too-big-to-fail" failures and bailouts, and neglect of the social commons--infrastructure, education, and public health and safety--in favor of privatized...

Re: Obama Administration Has Spent Nearly $300 Million Cracking Down On Medical Marij Have you noticed? Every time the voters pass a city ordinance or state law to permit or regulate the use of cannabis, the DOJ and DEA get busy.

I have virtually no experience with vaporizers, but I do know that the better ones have a shutoff mechanism that prevents the medication from getting so hot that it ignites. Cheap vapes that get too hot produce such a harsh and foul ingestion experience that you'd be better off relighting...

There are several dispensaries within a half-hour's walk of my apartment, which is in a fairly well urbanized section of L.A. I can't see any of the "problems" the opponents like Sabet are ranting about. You have to show your papers every time you go in a dispensary; they are not...

And even for those who are physically capable of tending a few plants, what percentage of those people have a safe place to do so without risking harassment by Federal officers, landlords, or opportunistic thieves? The dispensary system did away with all those risk factors.

So wait a minute. They've tolerated the dispensaries for years, and then now, because somebody reminds them that they are illegal under federal law, they have to close them all down? Arguing from that premise, how can state courts adjudicate any case relating to the state law? And who says...

Exactly. If "not for profit" means "absolutely no cash or other consideration of value", and if the Federal authorities are using the same definition, then it's all over for MMJ as far as dispensaries are concerned. Without revenue you can't pay someone to sit there all day and weigh it out...

He may rue the day. A lot of people in reliably Democrat states like California voted for MMJ back in '96, and they voted for Obama in '08. He could fail to carry California next year if enough residents are sufficiently disgusted as to stay home on election day. Until last week I believed...

The US Attorneys claim they are only enforcing the state law, which did not explicitly provide for dispensaries (to the best of my understanding). However, they leave out a couple of important points. If patients are to be allowed to use cannabis as a therapeutic agent, they have to obtain it...

How can anyone see this ruling as a "victory" for MMJ activists? From the L.A. Times story on the case, here: (Emphasis mine.) I didn't know that a state court could "take judicial notice", as I believe the expression is, of Federal law. For instance, I'm fairly certain a state court can't...

I've been seeing this story in some other media, and there may be some backpedaling. NBC News described the crackdown as being directed at certain dispensaries which are particularly troubling to the the DOJ. Even this is mostly under the color of suppressing violations of the state MMJ law...