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Even though Colorado passed Constitutional Amendment 64 legalizing the use of marijuana in November, it's still a crime to sell cannabis in the state. Sure, plenty of charitable Coloradans on Craigslist will accept "donations" for doobie. And others are happy to barter. But what if you don't have a pair of old shoes to trade for weed? How can one score an ounce of super-frosty Golden Goat in Colorado and not run afoul of the law? Former NASA scientist Dale J. Chamberlain has the answer. He'll teach you to grow it yourself, at his (acronym alert) High Altitude School of Hydroponics outside Ft. Collins.

 

Chamberlain knows more about far-out farming than almost anyone. At the Kennedy Space Center in the early 1990s he studied horticulture for future lunar colonies. "I assisted in building a plant-growth chamber that is still on the space shuttle," he says, explaining that low-gravity hydroponics left him uniquely prepared to handle Colorado's new legal landscape. "The law states that it must be grown in an enclosed lockable space. And although one might argue that could be a garden with a fence around it, there's more pests out there than insects and squirrels." To keep invasive teenage stoners out of your garden, Chamberlain came up with the perfect solution, a device he's dubbed The Colorado Grow Box. "We took this chamber that was designed for the space shuttle and created a grow box similar to what was flown on NASA's space shuttle fleet."

 

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com

On the same day a drug-law reform group released a poll showing that a majority of New Mexico voters favor reducing - and even eliminating - penalties against marijuana possession, a House committee voted in favor of a bill that would take away jail sentences for adults possessing small amounts of cannabis.

 

On a party-line 3-2 vote, the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee gave a do-pass recommendation to House Bill 465, sponsored by Rep. Emily Kane, D-Albuquerque. Democrats on the committee voted for the bill, while Republicans voted against it. The bill goes now to the House Judiciary Committee. But even if the measure eventually passes the Legislature, Gov. Susana Martinez, a former prosecutor, has said she's against relaxing laws on marijuana.

 

Kane argued that state and local governments spend too much money arresting and jailing people in marijuana possession cases. Police, she said, should be able to use the time it takes to book someone caught with a small amount of marijuana to investigate more serious crimes.

 

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

Deputies confiscated 23 marijuana plants from the home of a Parrish woman battling disease after receiving a complaint Monday afternoon, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

 

About 2 p.m., deputies arrived at the home of Cathy and Robert Jordan in the 4300 block of 98th Avenue East in the Beck Estates development

 

Authorities were alerted of suspicious circumstances by a real estate agent who was conducting routine inspections in the area.

 

Robert Jordan, 64, told the Bradenton Herald on Monday that he had just awoke from a nap in his easy chair when he saw two deputies approach his house with drawn guns.

 

“I ran out and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” Jordan said. “They said, ‘We have probable cause. You are growing marijuana.’ I said, ‘It’s medicine for my wife. I know people use that as an excuse, but this is true.’”

 

Cathy Jordan, who has had Lou Gehrig’s Disease since 1986 and is wheelchair-bound, uses the herb for medicinal reasons. She has advocated for the legalization of medical cannabis in Florida for 16 years.

 

Read more: http://www.bradenton.com

Late last week, in a speech at a medical marijuana conference flagged by Think Progress, Caltech theoretical physicist John H. Schwartz blasted the federal government’s treatment of marijuana research. Schwartz described the Catch-22 situation set up by the “tag team” of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse: At the same time the government says there is insufficient research to change marijuana’s designation from “a dangerous substance with no medical value,” government bodies systematically block such research from taking place.

 

Think Progress cited passages from Schwartz’s pointed remarks:

 

The most blatant example of this behavior [from the government] came last year, when NIDA blocked an FDA-approved clinical trial testing marijuana as a remedy for post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. It’s especially sad to note that the study participants were veterans, with PTSD deemed untreatable by other means. After 12 years of war, this is how we treat them.

 

The physicist, of course well-versed in the idea of confirmation bias, then compared the way marijuana research is currently run to allowing creationists to oversee paleontological research:

 

Consider what American science might look like if all research were run like marijuana research is being run now. Suppose the Institute for Creation Science were put in charge of approving paleontology digs and the science of human evolution. Imagine what would happen to the environment if we gave coal and oil companies the power to block any climate research they didn’t like.

 

Read more: http://www.salon.com

Everett, Wash.  (Metro)  -- Medical marijuana providers are now openly fighting a proposed tax that they say would be unfair to patients. 

 

One of them tells "The Everett Herald" he hopes lawmakers would at least direct money from the tax toward research on pot rather than use it to ease the state's financial problems. 

 

Under the proposal, marijuana would be taxed 25-percent at each of three steps in the sale and distribution process.

 

Source: http://kgmi.com

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A bill to legalize the medical use of marijuana in Oklahoma has been granted a hearing in a Senate committee.

 

The bill by Democratic Sen. Constance Johnson of Oklahoma City will be considered Monday by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, where it'll likely face stiff opposition.

 

Johnson has introduced several measures over the last several years to ease the penalties for marijuana possession, but they typically have not even been granted a hearing.

 

Tulsa Republican Sen. Brian Crain chairs the panel and says that while he personally opposes the idea, he agreed to hear the bill because of Johnson's persistence.

 

The bill would allow a qualified patient or designated caregiver to possess up to eight ounces of dried marijuana and 12 plants.

 

Source: http://newsok.com