Marijuana Blog

While the mainstream media will be focused on President Obama and Mitt Romney during this Presidential race, it is up to independent media to keep marijuana law reform in the public eye.

The best way to do that will be to tell people about former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who is the Libertarian Party nominee for President this year.

In the video below he explains his position on marijuana law reform and how it will lead to full drug policy reform, incredible savings of law enforcement resources and jail space.

Marijuana law reform will also lead to an increase of freedom. That’s something that can be measured in arrest statistics to a certain degree, but what can’t be measured is the fear people live under for being labeled criminals when they are clearly doing nothing wrong.

People should be scared of committing real crimes, those that infringe on the rights of another. Police should be worried real criminals, not whether someone has a baggie of marijuana on them.

While Gary Johnson has little chance of winning the Presidency, he can do a lot to raise awareness about marijuana law reform. For that reason alone his candidacy is worthwhile.

This weekend the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a revised medical marijuana bill in an attempt to have three compassion centers open by the fall. They have been working on the new rules feverishly for quite a while now (http://www.thcfinder.com/marijuana-blog/medical-marijuana/2012/05/rhode-island-lawmakers-working-on-new-rules-for-medical-marijuana).

After a delay of a few years, patients in Rhode Island may soon have a place to purchase their medicine. Medical marijuana was legalized in the state in 2006.

Under the new bill each of the three dispensaries would be able to keep up to 1,500 ounces – or a little less than 100 pounds – on hand at any one time. There are about 4,400 legal patients in the state.

The bill now goes to Governor Lincoln Chafee, who has said he’ll sign it. Some may remember that Chafee is the one who halted the dispensary program last year after threats from the federal government.

The new bill also provides oversight of the dispensaries by law enforcement, including a seat on the board of each center.

Time will tell whether these new rules for dispensaries will keep the federal government – which already has shown no regard for state regulations of medical marijuana, no matter how strict - from stepping in and imposing its will on the state.

Rhode Island may be the smallest state in the U.S. but patients in every state deserve full access to their choice of medicine. And until all medical cannabis users have full, legal access to their meds, no MMJ patient is truly free.

The time has long passed when medical marijuana patients should have stopped being treated like second-class citizens.  Alcoholics can by liquor most hours of the day, but medical marijuana patients shouldn’t be allowed to purchase their choice of a non-toxic herbal medicine?

Someday every state will have medical marijuana and these days will just be something kids read about. But we were there. We saw how medical cannabis patients were treated.

Source: http://blogs.villagevoice.com