Marijuana Blog

An Army veteran who retired after 20 years of service is fighting to win back his Second Amendment rights after learning during a gun permit application process that he can’t own one — he’s got a decades-old misdemeanor for marijuana.

 

That was back in high school, said Ron Kelly of his 1971 minor pot charge. And he had forgotten all about it when he tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle at a Tomball, Texas, Wal-Mart. The clerk informed him he didn’t pass the computerized background check, the Houston Chronicle reported.

 

Federal law guiding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System says that any person who is convicted of a crime — even a misdemeanor — that carries the potential for two years in jail can be denied gun ownership, The Blaze reported.

 

Mr. Kelly said he had served a night in jail and a year of probation. He didn’t know of his loss of Second Amendment rights — and meanwhile, he estimated he fired more than 100,000 rounds while serving in the Army infantry.

“I am ashamed of the way my government has treated me,” he said in the Chronicle.

 

He’s since contacted his congressman and senator, asking for help to get back his gun ownership rights, The Blaze said.

 

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com

PHOENIX -- The Arizona Supreme Court is letting stand a lower court's ruling that the Yuma County sheriff must return marijuana seized from a woman with a California medical marijuana authorization honored by Arizona.

 

The justices without comment on Monday declined to review a January ruling by the Court of Appeals.

 

The January ruling said medical marijuana seized from Valerie Okun must be returned to her.

 

It said that's because Arizona's medical marijuana law allows people with medical marijuana authorizations from other states to legally possess marijuana in Arizona.

 

The marijuana was found in Okun's vehicle at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Yuma. State drug charges against her were dismissed after she showed she had authorization under California's medical marijuana program.

 

Prosecutors argued that federal drug law invalidates Arizona's medical marijuana law.

 

Read more: http://www.khou.com

 

Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, doesn't think kids and teens are going to start using marijuana more frequently if the drug is fully legalized across the country. The reason is simple: They can already get pot pretty easily.

 

"There are three national surveys in which young people say it's now easier to buy marijuana today that it is to buy alcohol. In every high school in America, marijuana use is now more or less omnipresent. In the surveys for the last thirty years, 80 percent of young people say it's easy to get marijuana. So I don't think that's the group where it's going to go up. If anything, you're going to take away some of that forbidden fruit attraction to marijuana," he said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week.

 

So who will start using more marijuana if it's fully legalized? Nadelmann, a legalization advocate whose organization was founded to stop the "war on drugs," points to the grandparents of the world. "It's going to be people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s," he said. "It's going to be older people going, 'Damn, it helps with that arthritis, I didn't realize that.' Or, 'It helps me sleep at night,' or 'I actually find I prefer it to having a drink at the end of the night, or 'You know what, I prefer it to the pharmaceuticals my doctor is giving me for my mood or my anxiety.'"

 

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com