Marijuana Blog

Hidden within the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2014 proposed budget is a section that will allow Michigan’s medical marihuana fund to be used to pay for county-level law enforcement agencies to hunt down the very people that paid into the fund.

 

The allocation is officially known as Section 728 of the budget proposal contained within Senate Bill 190. It provides for an allocation of up to $3 million earmarked “for discretionary grants to county law enforcement departments for education about and enforcement of the Michigan medical marihuana program”. The medical marihuana program (MMP) is administered by the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), who refuses to release information on the amount of money in this fund without a Freedom of Information Act filing.

 

Section 728 was not included in the first version of SB 190 and the House version of the appropriations bill contains no similar language. According to the Senate Fiscal Agency, this section was inserted by Sen. Jansen, the bill’s sponsor, purportedly at the request of LARA’s administration. SB 190 has been passed out of the Appropriations Committee and now faces a vote of the full Senate on April 25. Both the House and Senate versions of the Appropriations Bill will be reconciled in Conference Committee, where sections can be debated and removed.

 

Read more: http://www.theweedblog.com

Medical marijuana (also known as THC) for pets makes perfect sense to me. California veterinarian Dr. Doug Kramer is seeking to have medical marijuana legalized for pets.

 

As I understand it medical marijuana offers relief to pressure from glaucoma and helps people suffering from pain, lack of appetite and nausea related to cancers, and other illnesses - also to assist with end of life. Also, for people, one beneficial outcome of the weed is that it helps to relieve stress related to illness.  Our pets do feel pain as we feel pain, so therefore, pain relief is essential. And for pets, end of life can even be scheduled. And when ill, our pets do sometimes get very anxious.

 

There are problems with these ideas. First, not sure how to teach pets to smoke. And brownies are out of the questions, since chocolate is dangerous to pets (though carob brownies would do the trick!).

 

More seriously, though in theory I do believe it is a really good idea - there may be the same beneficial affect of medicinal marijuana  for pets, to my knowledge there have been no clinical trials. Many drugs have the absolute same affect for pets as people, however, some do not- and even prove dangerous. And what would the dosage be? Another concern is if THC was made available for say the dog in the family, who's to say the teenagers in the family - or for that matter adults - won't use it too.

 

Kramer, though argues that THC helped his own dog. Kramer is correct to say that not all pets respond to pain relief or appetite stimulants.

 

Read more: http://www.chicagonow.com