ABC story on medical marijuana - 9/10/09

[Miguel Sanchez]

Did anyone else see the Lateline story on medical marijuana in California last night? (yeah I know ABC on a Friday night-how exciting am I). Like many of you I’ve always heard that medical marijuana is a bit of a rort for SOME ‘patients’ but this was unbelievable.

They showed the opening of a new ‘doctors clinic’ which had a spruiker out the front yelling ‘the doctor is in, get your legal marijuana’. They interviewed him and he said ‘all you do is come in, fill in a few forms, chat for the doctor for a couple of minutes and within 5-10 minutes you can be buying and smoking marijuana legally’. And some of the dispensaries they showed…They even interviewed the founder of a new college which solely teaches courses on growing and selling weed, which has just opened four new campuses.

And all of this in the most-populated state of the ‘war on drugs HQ’, the US of A. A country that imprisons tens of thousands each year for drug possession and pressures other countries to follow suit. I findthe hypocrisy simply fucking mind-boggling.

 

[MindlessBilly]

I didnt watch the documentary but i have read a bit about whats going on in Cali, my feeling on it all is that its just going to harm the push for decriminalization/legalizing pot as the government will turn around and say "look we tried using marijuana medically but it just turned more people to looking for ways to abuse the new law"

 

[AfterGlow]

I'm happy that the people of Cali are taking charge of the situation and basically telling the government that they will no longer tolerate a nonsensical drug law that treats MJ like heroin. They are not the same and there is no good reason to prosecute people for using MJ.

 

[baysieguy1]

I visited Venice Beach last year, and there were plenty of doorways advertising medical marjuana. I was with my kids, so I couldn't investigate further.

 

[sunshine90]

I'm happy that the people of Cali are taking charge of the situation and basically telling the government that they will no longer tolerate a nonsensical drug law that treats MJ like heroin. They are not the same and there is no good reason to prosecute people for using MJ.

There's no reason to prosecute people for using heroin either.

 

[hyroller]

hmmmm... wonder how long it will be before they're shut down?

 

[shienar]

From what ive read the law was passed in the 90's. The basis was that it would be cooperatives which arent making serious profit, but ive read about the oakland city dispensiary turning over many millions in profit. The greatest weakness in the whole idea is that there arent any specific diseases for which a doctor can diffinitively say weed is the only option, and without these sort of guidelines people go way off course (there are of course medicines prescribed outside the original (fuck i forgot the term) guidelines). So without atleast standards corruption will ruin something which is of massive assistance to some and merely an easy way to score for others.

Some interesting articles.


http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_marijuana_legalizing.fortune/index.htm

http://hightimes.com/news/ht_admin/5536 < CHAMP Please read

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/c...uces-medical-marijuana-patient-protection-act

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/sep/06/war-on-drugs-latin-america

Thanks to my other forum, i couldnt find the specific article about the colleges in Oakland ill look for it another time.