Medical Marijuana

Organizations are leaning on NO after this bill was just recently signed by Jerry Brown. With the passage of AB 1300, Cities and Counties are now allowed to completely ban and get rid of Dispensaries and cooperatives if they deem it necessary which many have already begun doing.

This goes against what California voters wanted when they passed prop 215 in 1996. If cities have the right to ban dispensaries and collectives then they are simply forcing medical patients to go to the streets to obtain their medication. We have never seen a city or county ban a CVS or Albertsons or any other place that people can go to pick up their medication so why are they pushing to close dispensaries that do the exact same thing?

Is it as simple as Marijuana is not in pill form so the masses still see it as this hardcore drug that it really is not? If instead of smoking marijuana we could take a pill that actually worked properly, would the people and cities and our governments feel the same way? At this point we don't know but what we do know is that this is getting out of hand and ridiculous. 

Anyone who is sick has the right to obtain their medication regardless of what it is, people take Vicodin, Morphin pills, and much much stronger medication that has extremely harmful side effects and countless amounts of people dying every year from over the counter drugs. Our government needs to step up to the plate and start helping the sick people who's only option to get better is Marijuana.

arlier this summer, medical marijuana advocates sounded the legislative alarm over a bill penned by a Southern California assemblyman that gives local governments the right to ban medical cannabis dispensaries, as many a Bay Area burgh from Danville to Daly City has already done. 

Both Americans for Safe Access and California NORML, which lobby for patients' rights and outright legalization, respectively, opposed AB 1300, authored by valley dude Assemblyman Bob Blumenfeld of Van Nuys, and begged Governor Jerry Brown not to sign it -- as Brown did yesterday.

So is this latest development a loss or a win; an abrogation of rights guaranteed to Californians under state medical marijuana law, or a recognition that medical marijuana distribution is a valid concept? 

Depends on who you ask.

For folks on the ground, Blumenfield's bill actually does very little: The cities and counties that have banned medical marijuana dispensaries can continue to do so. Likewise, the places -- like San Francisco -- that have permitted them are unchanged, and the same with the municipalities that have punted the issue. Heads in the sand stay in the sand, et cetera

(Source) http://blogs.sfweekly.com

Marijuana does so much more than most people think, it helps people around the world and so many are missing out on this amazing plant becuase of bullshit politics.

Jamey Raines tried marijuana once or twice in high school, but he said he had no interest in it after he joined the Army in 2000. He served in heavy combat in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and rose through the ranks from private to platoon sergeant. Along the way he drank and smoked cigarettes like many infantrymen do, but he said he was “100 percent against” using any drug in any form.