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VA to allow veterans to use medical marijuana at clinics in the 14 states where it’s legal

18 August, 19:41, by admin Tags: , , ,
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WASHINGTON – Patients treated at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics will be able to use medical marijuana in the 14 states where it’s legal, according to new federal guidelines.

The directive from the Veterans Affairs Department in the coming week is intended to clarify current policy that says veterans can be denied pain medication if they use illegal drugs. Veterans groups have complained for years that this could bar veterans from VA benefits if they were caught using medical marijuana.

The new guidance does not authorize VA doctors to begin prescribing medical marijuana, which is considered an illegal drug under federal law. But it will now make clear that in the 14 states where state and federal law are in conflict, VA clinics generally will allow the use of medical marijuana for veterans already taking it under other clinicians.

“For years, there have been veterans coming back from the Iraq war who needed medical marijuana and had to decide whether they were willing to cut down on their VA medications,” John Targowski, a legal adviser to the group Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, which worked with the VA on the issue.

Targowski in an interview Saturday said that confusion over the government’s policy might have led some veterans to distrust their doctors or avoid the VA system.

Dr. Robert A. Petzel, the VA’s undersecretary for health, sent a letter to Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access this month that spells out the department’s policy. The guidelines will be distributed to the VA’s 900 care facilities around the country in the next week.

Petzel makes clear that a VA doctor could reserve the right to modify a veteran’s treatment plan if there were risks of a bad interaction with other drugs.

“If a veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the veteran from receiving opioids for pain management” in a VA facility, Petzel wrote. “The discretion to prescribe, or not prescribe, opioids in conjunction with medical marijuana, should be determined on clinical grounds.”

Opioids are narcotic painkillers, and include morphine, oxycodone and methadone.

Under the previous policy, local VA clinics in some of the 14 states, such as Michigan, had opted to allow the use of medical marijuana because there no rule explicitly prohibiting them from doing so.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are 14 states and the District of Columbia with medical marijuana laws. They are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New Jersey also recently passed a medical marijuana law, which is scheduled to be implemented next January.

New ‘Serious Offence’ Language Includes Marijuana – Canada

08 August, 21:35, by admin Tags: ,
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By Students For Sensible Drug Policy – Sunday, August 8 2010

New ‘Serious Offences’ rules by Canadian government make trading a few grams of marijuana amongst three or more people an offence with a 5 year prison term.

The ‘Regulations Prescribing Certain Offences to be Serious Offences’ came into effect July 13, 2010, and was publically enacted by the Federal Government early in August 2010.

Regulations, unlike legislation, do not need to be approved by Parliament. Regulations are the specifics of legislation; in this case it is what particular offences are included as a ‘serious offence’. The Criminal Code sets out that the federal government has the power to include activities into the defintion of ‘serious offences’ without Parliamentary debate. These regulation changes were made to the Criminal Code and Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The new regulations expand the definition of ‘serious offence’ under the Criminal Code. By designating an offence a ‘serious offence’, someone convicted would potentially face a longer period of time than if caught under the offence generally. The new regulations include a number of new offences which, if carried out in relation to organized crime, carry a 5 year prison sentence. The designation also increases police powers during investigation, such as wiretaps and warrants. There is also greater seizure of proceeds and assets provisions, as welll as changes to bail provisions. It has been said that these regulations bring Canada’s criminal laws closer to the of the United States. The new offences target ‘signature activities’ of organized crime, and involve gambling, betting and bawdyhouse related activities, as well as changes to drug trafficking laws which are discussed more below. Organized crime, or a ‘criminal organization’ under the Canadian Criminal Code is: three or more people inside or outside Canada; and these people are together mainly to either commit ‘serious offences’ or materially benefit from them being committed.

The new regulations cover trafficking and production in Schedule IV substances (includes Barbiturates, Benzodiazepines, Anabolic Steroids, and related). Importing and exporting any substance in Schedule IV and V is also included as a ‘serious offence’. As well, trafficking cannabis (including hashish) amounts under 3 kilograms has been included as a ‘serious offence’.

So if three or more people are trading a few grams of marijuana amongst themselves, this is now potentially a ‘serious offence’, and these people are facing 5 years in jail.

Not suprisingly, the federal governmetn claims these regulations are targeting ‘kingpins’, head honchos, the leaders of organized crime. Unfortunately, none of this adds up to ‘safer and healthier communities’, as the government likes to put it. These tough on crime regulations are not going to make a dent in the drug trade. The only effective way to remove drugs as a source of revenue for organized crime is to regulate them.

These regulations instead increase the criminalization of drugs and drug users in Canadian communities. Low level, non-violent offenders are the easy prey of these regulations. Prisons are not treatment centers. Prisons are not where we want young people to receive drug education, as they fulfill their prison terms from these regulations.

The fact is these regulations are in effect. There is always the unpredictable question of how the law will be enforced. Will the law be used to keep ‘kingpins’ off our streets? Or will it be used to threaten medical marijuana compassion centers and co-ops? Will the new regulations be used selectively and meaningfully, or will they be used to further marginalize people already on the fringes of our society?

The federal government’s ‘tough on crime’ approach to drugs and drug-related crime is making our communities less safe. They are pretending we can simply enforce our way out of our problems, and in the process starve social programs, diverse treatment options, and harm reduction strategies. The drug market needs to be effectively regulated, not inefficiently enforced. The prohibition of drugs creates more harm than the drugs themselves. CSSDP continues to call on all political parties to take a stand, and recognize that we need to end the criminalization of drugs and drug users, and implement a public-health based approach to drugs in our society.

- Press release from Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Portland Reporter Goes Undercover, “Easily” Gets Medical Marijuana Card

24 May, 02:51, by admin Tags:
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“I’ve been in three car accidents and have scoliosis, which give me severe neck and back pain. Somehow it was surprisingly easy for me to get a medical marijuana card!”

(KATU News)I wanted to know if all these people really need treatment with marijuana and how easy it is to get a medical marijuana card. So I went undercover to find out.

My quest to get a card began with a visit to a local medical marijuana clinic. As I approached the clinic, I was greeted by a man on a smoke break. He proceeded to review my medical records right on the sidewalk with his cigarette in his mouth.

…

Finally, the doctor returned, and I’m seen for no more than 10 minutes.

He looked at my medical records which reflect two appointments with my primary care physician for pain within the last three years. Two appointments at least 90 days apart is one requirement to obtain a medical marijuana card.

Severe pain happens to be the number one condition people give when they apply for a medical marijuana card. Of the 33,000 patients currently holding cards, 29,500 stated severe pain as their ailment. Persistent muscle spasms (7,843) and nausea (4,849) followed as a distant second and third, and then cancer (1,294), seizures (891), cachexia (660), HIV/AIDS (575) and glaucoma (509).

When I applied for the card, I did not make up any medical issues. My neck and back pain relate to three car accidents of which I was not at fault and scoliosis – a curvature of my spine.

They’re conditions charted in my medical records by my doctor and for which I’ve fairly successfully treated over the years with massage therapy but not with marijuana.

But my conditions are enough for the doctor to sign off on my card saying, on the document I would have to turn into the state to receive my card, that not only do I qualify (which is crossed off) but I would benefit from medical marijuana.

Yes, Anna Song, if you legally qualify for a medical marijuana card, it is easy to get one. You’ve been in three car accidents, have severe chronic pain, and scoliosis – as you point out, you didn’t lie, and since the clinic rightfully followed the law, you qualified. Medical science and Oregon law recognize your right to treat that chronic pain with what a DEA Administrative Law judge called “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” (NORML v. DEA, 1988)

What this report suffers from is the “medicine of the last resort” bias against cannabis, the safest medicine known to man. You mention that you successfully treat your pain with massage therapy, as if some other successful pain treatment means you shouldn’t qualify for medical cannabis. Do massage therapists enter their notes in your medical records that you turned in to the clinic’s doctor? How do you know whether the cannabis would be equally as effective as your massage therapy, or perhaps more effective as an addition to your massage therapy? What do you say to patients on fixed incomes who, unlike you, don’t have the money and insurance for regular massage therapy appointments, but might have a friend who could grow them some cannabis?

Pain is under-treated in this country and those who suffer are often stigmatized as “drug seeking” when they try to find relief. A survey by the Arthritis Foundation found that 42% of adults suffer some kind of pain daily and 89% suffer pain monthly, with a mean prevalence of chronic pain at 35.5% of the adult population (Harstall, 2003). So when you flash the big bold 29,500 patients of 33,000 getting cannabis for pain, I can only think that with 2.9 million adults in Oregon, 1 million with chronic pain, 29,500 is far too few patients using cannabis to treat pain.

For what other remedies do these one million Oregonians have? Last year the FDA called for (http://bit.ly/by1lON) even stricter controls and tighter warnings on prescription and over-the-counter acetaminophen (Tylenol) and NSAIDs (aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen) because of “unintentional and intentional overdoses leading to severe hepatotoxicity (liver failure)”. More serious painkillers of the opioid variety (oxycontin, vicodin, darvocet, etc.) are also hepatotoxic, as well as physically addictive and very mind-, mood-, and reaction-altering.

Also, you flash the 29,500 number in big digits and say it in voice-over, while quickly dispatching the muscle spasms and nausea as “distant second and third” with no voice-over of the numbers, followed by the remaining conditions. But any third grader checking the numbers would notice they add up to much more than 33,000, which means that many of these pain patients are indicating it as a secondary condition to their cancer, AIDS, nausea, muscle spasms, and so forth.

This report is nothing more than a paean to the demagoguery of medical marijuana opponents who want to paint a picture of “rampant abuse” where there is none. Every year, according to the states’ OSCaR database, there are 17,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed. Estimates from the orgs that specialize in these disorders tell us there are over 125,000 cases of HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy, glaucoma, epilepsy, and chronic nausea in Oregon. If anything, 33,000 medical marijuana patients is far too few patients and an indictment of the demonization of cannabis that prevents all but the most desperate patients seeking it and keeps all but the bravest doctors from recommending it.

Speaking of whom, Dr. Camacho-Otero, who has signed for more cards than any other doctor, is unfairly implied to be unprofessional or money-grubbing for doing so. It is no more surprising for Dr. Camacho-Otero to sign for a large amount of cards here than it is unusual for a single abortion provider to provide the majority of abortions in Wichita, Kansas. What every report on the “Top Ten Pot Docs” always fails to mention is that thousands of Oregon doctors are very accepting of medical cannabis and would love to recommend it to their patients, but are prevented by their hospital, clinic, HMO, VA, or federal ties from making recommendations. So we’ve created a system where most doctors can’t recommend, some of the rest won’t for fear of being labeled a “pot doc”, and the few that are brave enough to treat their patients with a non-toxic effective legal herb are pilloried for trying to help people in pain get relief.

If there is any scandal to be reported on here, it is not the too few patients that are getting medical marijuana to deal with pain. It is the gross violations of HIPPA and medical privacy regulations demonstrated by the receptionist at the clinic. It is the lack of a dispensary system that leaves patients to be preyed upon by shady growers hanging out in front of clinics overhearing private medical information. It is a reporter disposing of medicine “in a responsible way” instead of giving it away (which is legal) to a fellow patient who could have used it for real medical purposes rather than a prop for a medical marijuana hit piece that could have been written by Dan Harmon.

Russ Belville
NORML National Outreach Coordinator
Oregon NORML Lifetime Member and past Associate Director

Is America Ready? MSNBC Debate on Medical Marijuana Harvard Study vs Attorney for Drug Free America

25 March, 21:17, by admin
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Marijuana Fact or Lies?

25 March, 17:19, by admin
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Man Busted For Having Bed Made of Marijuana

24 February, 02:18, by admin Tags:
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A Massachusetts man is facing cannabis trafficking charges after police discovered that he had a bed made of 102 pounds of marijuana.

Police pulled over 40-year-old Hung The Truong for failing to follow a traffic violation.

When he opened his window they detected the strong smell of marijuana and searched the U-Haul truck attached to his vehicle.

They discovered 17 packages of the drug inside a pull-out bed and 79 packages of the substance in a hollowed-out box spring.

His bond has been set at $2 million.

$2 million for a weed bed? Come on son….

War on smokers

09 January, 02:11, by admin Tags: ,
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Regarding George Will’s Dec. 2 column on marijuana, the drug war is largely a war on marijuana smokers. In 2008, there were 847,863 marijuana arrests in the U.S. Almost 90 percent of those were for simple possession.

At a time when state and local governments are laying off police, firefighters and teachers, this country continues to spend enormous public resources criminalizing Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis. The result of this ongoing culture war is not necessarily lower rates of use. The U.S. has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available.

Decriminalization is long overdue. Taxing and regulating marijuana would render the $50 billion drug war obsolete. As long as organized crime controls marijuana distribution, consumers will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. This “gateway” is a direct result of marijuana prohibition.

ROBERT SHARPE,Arlington, Va.

Serve constituents

Members of Congress should represent the 58 percent of Americans who said “no” to the health care bill in the latest Rasmussen Poll. If our elected officials can’t find it in them to support their constituents, discontinue the electoral process and let registered voters decide the issues.

The health care program is scheduled to kick in sometime in 2013. Between now and then, taxpayers will pay for their existing health care and also for the 2013 start-up costs.

This administration indicated it was going to clean up Medicare abuse and fraud. The savings would be a significant source of revenue for funding health care. Is a progress report on the horizon?

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan “just the facts” agency, reports this health care plan will be a financial bust in 10 years. How will we pay to fix this program? What about starting with eliminating the administration’s 40 or so czars? Who are they and what have they accomplished? Please don’t tell me the economy would have been worse without them.

The president recently said the private sector was producing more with fewer people. Why can’t the federal government learn from this?

And then there’s the stimulus money that was reported to have created or saved jobs in nonexistent precincts. The administration covered this by saying those who submitted the numbers didn’t know their precinct number. If money was sent, get it back. Also, take back any stimulus money sent to real precincts on the basis of bogus reports of jobs created or saved.

JOHN SHOCKLEY,Topeka

Partial legalization of pot wholly harmful

08 January, 15:09, by admin Tags:
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DENVER — Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a marijuana leaf, is a red cross. The cross serves the fiction that most transactions in the store — which is what it really is — involve medicine.

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that federal laws against marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana that conforms to states’ laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical marijuana. Since Justice’s decision, the average age of the 400 persons a day seeking “prescriptions” at Colorado’s multiplying medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

Customers — this, not patients, is what most really are — tell doctors at the dispensaries that they suffer from insomnia, anxiety, headaches, premenstrual syndrome, “chronic pain,” whatever, and pay nominal fees for “prescriptions.” Most really just want to smoke pot.

So says Colorado’s attorney general, John Suthers, an honest and thoughtful man trying to save his state from institutionalizing such hypocrisy. His dilemma is becoming commonplace: 13 states have, and 15 more are considering, laws permitting medical use of marijuana.

Realizing they could not pass legalization of marijuana, some people who favor that campaigned to amend Colorado’s Constitution to legalize sales for medicinal purposes. Marijuana has medical uses — e.g., to control nausea caused by chemotherapy — but the helpful ingredients can be conveyed with other medicines. Medical marijuana was legalized but, Suthers says, no serious regime was then developed to regulate who could buy — or grow — it. (Caregivers? For how many patients? And in what quantities, and for what “medical uses”?)

Today, Colorado communities can use zoning to restrict dispensaries, or can ban them because, even if federal policy regarding medical marijuana is passivity, selling marijuana remains against federal law. But Colorado’s probable future has unfolded in California, which in 1996 legalized sales of marijuana to people with doctors’ “prescriptions.”

Fifty-six percent of Californians support legalization, and Roger Parloff reports (“How Marijuana Became Legal” in the Sept. 28 Fortune) that they essentially have this. He notes that many California “patients” arrive at dispensaries “on bicycles, roller skates or skateboards.” A Los Angeles city councilman estimates that there are about 600 dispensaries in the city. If so, they outnumber the Starbucks stores there.

The councilman wants to close dispensaries whose intent is profit rather than “compassionate” distribution of medicine. Good luck with that: Privacy considerations will shield doctors from investigations of their lucrative 15-minute transactions with “patients.”

Colorado’s medical marijuana dispensaries have hired lobbyists to seek taxation and regulation, for the same reason Nevada’s brothel industry wants to be taxed and regulated by the state: The Nevada Brothel Association regards taxation as legitimation and insurance against prohibition as the booming state’s frontier mentality recedes.

State governments, misunderstanding markets and ravenous for revenues, exaggerate the potential windfall from taxing legalized marijuana. California thinks it might reap $1.4 billion. But Rosalie Pacula, a RAND Corp. economist, estimates that prohibition raises marijuana production costs at least 400 percent, so legalization would cause prices to fall much more than the 50 percent the $1.4 billion estimate assumes.

Furthermore, marijuana is a normal good in that demand for it varies with price. Legalization, by drastically lowering price, will increase marijuana’s public health costs, including mental and respiratory problems, and motor vehicle accidents.

States attempting to use high taxes to keep marijuana prices artificially high would leave a large market for much cheaper illegal — unregulated and untaxed — marijuana. So revenues (and law enforcement savings) would depend on the price falling close to the cost of production.

In the 1990s, a mere $2 per pack difference between U.S. and Canadian cigarette prices created such a smuggling problem that Canada repealed a cigarette tax increase.

Suthers has multiple drug-related worries. Colorado ranks sixth in the nation in identity theft, two-thirds of which is driven by the state’s $1.4 billion-a-year methamphetamine addiction. He is loath to see complete legalization of marijuana at a moment when new methods of cultivation are producing plants in which the active ingredient, THC, is “seven, eight times as concentrated” as it used to be. Furthermore, he was pleasantly surprised when a survey of nonusing young people revealed that health concerns did not explain nonuse. The main explanation was the law: “We underestimate the number of people who care that something is illegal.”

But they will care less as law itself loses its dignity. By mocking the idea of lawful behavior, legalization of medical marijuana may be more socially destructive than full legalization.

A bong full of tears

08 January, 02:27, by admin
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Pot smokers apparently are in need of far more than food to munch on. Social facilitation, emotional pain, peer acceptance and sex-seeking were the four most prevalent psychosocial variables consistent among 322 college-age heavy cannabis users. In fact, students more prone to depression were significantly more likely to use marijuana to cope with emotional pain or when desiring to have sex. [ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS 34(9):764-768,2009]