The Compassionate Coalition

Mason Tvert responds to news of Colorado legalization initiative falling 2,500 sigs short; Paul Armentano reports on marijuana reform in state legislatures; Mark Pedersen from Sensible Missouri; music by Lionize

Tere Joyce with Dan Hanken from the Cannabis Clubs United with Community; reknown cannabis cultivator Jorge Cervantes from Barcelona, Spain; music from Wiz Khalifa.

Dr. Mitch Earleywine reviews Israeli cannabis vs. cancer study; pharmaceutical lobbying threatens marijuana legalization; music by Winstrong & DJ Jacques.

CA Senator Mark Leno

A bill by California Senator Mark Leno (D-SF) that would have prevented employment discrimination against legal medical cannabis patients will not be adopted by the California legislature this year. Senator Leno decided not to ask his colleagues to vote on SB 129 before today’s deadline for Senate approval. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) sponsored the bill and worked closely with the Author to build support for the SB 129. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure the majority of votes needed to guarantee a victory in the Senate.

Then Assemblymember Leno first introduced this bill in 2008, following the California Supreme Court decision in Ross v. Ragingwire. The Ross decision held that medical cannabis patients are not protected from employment discrimination by Proposition 215. The state legislature approved AB 2279 that year, but it was vetoed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Senator Leno re-introduced the bill as SB 129 last year, in hopes that Governor Brown would be more sympathetic. Unfortunately, we have run out of time to persuade a handful of ambivalent Democrats to support the bill before today’s deadline for a vote on bills from last year.

Senator Leno and other lawmakers may pick up the mantle of patients’ rights again in the future, but it is time now for voters to take the lead. The campaign to adopt the Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act of 2012 (MMCRT) will begin in earnest in February. This voter initiative will create a safe, regulated access model for medical cannabis, while preserving the rights of patients under Proposition 215. Additionally, the MMRCT will help to protects’ civil rights – including protection from employment discrimination. The MMRCT states that

Persons using marijuana medicinally pursuant to Section 11362.5 [Proposition 215] are entitled to the same rights and protections from civil and criminal liability as users of prescription drugs under California law.

ASA is committed to protecting patients’ rights, and the MMRCT is an important part of that effort. We have hit a roadblock in the legislature for now. That means it is time for the voters to lead on this issue again. The MMRCT will help address some long-standing issues for California patients – and it may serve to push lawmakers in the right direction. Look for news from ASA about what you can do to support MMRCT soon.

You can join a constituents’ conference call about the voter initiative on Thursday, February 2, 2012, at 5:00 PM PST. Dial (832) 431-3335 to connect to the call, and then enter pass code 1618568# to join the conversation.

On behalf of ASA, I want to thank Senator Leno and his staff for their leadership and hard work in protecting patients’ rights since 2008. I also want to thank the thousands of ASA members who supported the bill.

Subcool from Team Green Avenger with news on new marijuana breeding and clothing line; Todd Armstrong's Toker Topic: Labels; music by Da Blaknix

When people ask why I’m certain the federal laws preventing medical use of cannabis must change, my answer is simple: cancer. Curing it is the holy grail of modern medicine, and cannabinoids hold the most promise.

The latest study showing the cancer-fighting properties of one of the constituent components of the cannabis plant is out of Italy, where University of Naples researchers demonstrated that cannabidiol, better known as CBD, helps prevent the spread of colon cancer in an animal model of the human disease. Since colon cancer affects millions of people, this is a big deal.

But it’s not big news.

Many, many other studies have demonstrated that CBD’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory actions, as well as its ability to inhibit the breakdown of the body’s own endocannabinoids, have a cancer-fighting effect. CBD has been shown to kill glioma cells (the most deadly form of brain cancer), reduce the growth of lung and breast cancer cells, and inhibit the spread of cancer. And that’s just CBD.

Add in THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis available by prescription in synthetic form as dronabinol or Marinol, and scientists have demonstrated that the plant holds the potential to fight or prevent cancers of the breast, prostate, skin, lung, uterus, cervix, pancreas, mouth and biliary track, as well as leukemia, neuroblastoma, thyroid epithelioma, and gastric adenocarcinoma. All by selectively targeting cancerous cells and leaving healthy cells alone.

That’s in contrast to conventional cancer treatments that largely work by creating a toxic environment in the body with the hope that it kills the cancer before it kills the patient. And as hard as chemotherapy and radiation treatments are to tolerate, cannabinoid treatments have exceptionally low impact.

Now, to be clear: we’re not talking about a patent-medicine approach that says cannabis will cure whatever ails you, and there have been no clinical studies done with cancer patients that would show us anything conclusive one way or another.

But there is a mountain of evidence that the immune-modulating function of cannabinoids has everything to do with regulating how our bodies respond to cancers of all varieties. And it’s worth noting the federal government’s own National Cancer Institute recently published a guide for physicians that noted the cancer-fighting properties of cannabinoids and stated that cannabis could be a tool for controlling the disease.

Five days of media attention later, the NCI removed that particular bit of guidance, but what we now know about the mechanisms of cannabinoids on cancers raises significant questions about when best to use cannabis therapeutics. Most wait until the disease reaches an advanced stage, and for them the role of cannabis or dronabinol is almost entirely palliative – a tool to ease the suffering and nausea. But we have compelling evidence that cannabinoids exercise a profound prophylactic effect – potentially preventing cancers from developing in the first place.

So will people with family histories of cancer or other risk factors benefit from cannabinoids? Maybe. There are population studies that suggest so, but general results cannot predict outcomes for a particular individual. In other words, consuming lots of cannabis won’t necessarily protect you. Bob Marley died of cancer, after all.

How much might help is a serious question. We know that many of the actions of cannabinoids are dose-specific, but without qualitatively different research, we can’t know how much might be optimal to achieve any particular biologic objective, even if we know categorically that cannabis is non-toxic and well-tolerated.

Will we see that research soon? Seems likely. There’s a Nobel prize in it for someone. Sure, there are political and economic barriers. But it’s a politics of fear and an economics of greed. Neither can survive with millions of lives in the balance.

Ironically, given the vast economic engine prohibition has wrought, cannabinoids are problematic for pharmaceutical company profits, since plants are not novel compounds they can patent for the purpose of extracting return on their research investment. That means real clinical research, the kind that can develop the cancer treatments current studies promise, requires massive public funding.

Devoting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to cannabis every year may seem daunting. But we already do.

We just spend it on eradication and incarceration instead of research and development.

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Research study discussed:
Aviello G, et al. Chemopreventive effect of the non-psychotropic phytocannabinoid cannabidiol on experimental colon cancer. Journal of Molecular Medicine. 2012 Jan 10.

ASA’s booklet on Cannabis and Cancer

President Obama ignores marijuana legalization in latest YouTube forum, was #1 video question; Glen Schwarz from Arkansas NORML; music by Bessie Smith.

HIGH TIMES Sr. Cultivation Editor Danny Danko previews the upcoming Medical Cannabis Cup in Los Angeles; Kansas hearing brings out the reefer madness in legislators; music by Johnny Outlaw & The Johnson Creek Stranglers

Today, ASA filed the opening brief in its effort to have marijuana rescheduled at the federal level.  The brief outlines some of the most egregious analytical errors made by the DEA, which led it to the the outlandish conclusion that that marijuana is even more harmful that methamphetamine and cocaine.  This denial was prompted by ASA’s lawsuit to compel the DEA to give some response to a rescheduling petition filed by the Coalition to Reschedule Cannabis  in 2002, which went unanswered for nearly eleven years.  The Petition (rightfully) requests that marijuana be rescheduled to Schedule III, IV, or V because it has an accepted medical use in the United States; it is safe for use under medical supervision; it has an abuse potential lower than Schedule I or II drugs; and it has a lower dependence liability than Schedule I or II drugs.

Among the DEA’s other errors, the agency deviated from its own criteria in assessing the abuse potential of scheduled substances and it flat out ignored more than two hundred scientific studies demonstrating the medical efficacy of marijuana.  Only by closing its eyes to these peer-reviewed studies could the DEA conclude that marijuana lacks a “currently accepted” medical use.

Retired FBI Special Agent Michael Kahoe explains how the drug war endangers law enforcement; Yoni Goldstein's strange defense of marijuana prohibition; music by K-Stone.

Over the years, President Obama has said some encouraging things about medical marijuana, but his policy has never matched up. To many, Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address will likely be remembered as the moment when he framed his 2012 campaign for reelection. The SOTU laid out his vision and goals on a number of issues, and while he may not have used the words “medical marijuana” during his speech, the goals and themes he called for in his second term are irreconcilable with certain actions (and inactions) taken by his administration related to safe access.

 “Today, the discoveries taking place in our federally-financed labs and universities could lead to new treatments that kill cancer cells but leave healthy ones untouched.”

Here, Obama has stated a goal, having a treatment available that kills cancer cells, while not harming healthy cells. The potential for reaching this goal through medical marijuana has been known for at least several years, and even the National Institutes of Health has recognized this potential with the Physician Data Query issued by the National Cancer Institute last March. Although the government retracted certain parts of the PDQ in a politically motivated move, the post-retraction version still makes a compelling case for marijuana’s cancer-killing/healthy-cell-preserving potential by reporting that, “[c]annabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death.”

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not only ignored pursuing medical marijuana to achieve this goal, it has done nothing to make use of its own agency’s findings. This is not only irreconcilable with the goal he laid out in the SOTU, at best it is willful ignorance on the part of the Obama administration to let patients suffer without safe access to the best cancer treatments known.

 “There is no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly.”

One federal regulation Obama ought to reconsider as being outdated, lacking necessity, and being too costly is 21 CFR 1308.11. This regulation is the manifestation of the Controlled Substances Act in the Federal Record. The necessity of keeping marijuana under Schedule I was only to permit the Attorney General sufficient time to gain more complete scientific information about marijuana. That was four decades and several studies ago (the government’s own PDQ refers to several dozen of these studies), so this is clearly outdated and unnecessary. In terms of costliness, the toll of human suffering of cancer patients should be enough, but the economic drain related to cancer suffering is staggering as well.  The best way for Obama to revisit this regulation would be direct Attorney General Eric Holder to initiate the rescheduling process.

“Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same.”

Among the millions of Americans who work hard and wish to play by the rules are the thousands of providers of medical marijuana located in states that have approved the use and distribution of this medical treatment. Perhaps more than any community, these American entrepreneurs are quite willing to pay their share of business taxes that result from their work to provide safe access to medical marijuana patients who are unable to cultivate to their own medicine. However, in providing medical marijuana in accordance with state law to patients, dispensary operators must deal with a burden that no other legitimately run business have to face, Section 280E of the IRS Tax Code. This provision, which bars anyone from taking tax deductions for business expenses related to Schedule I and II substances, was originally intended to prevent cocaine kingpins from manipulating the tax code to launder their completely illicit profits, but instead the IRS is now manipulating the provision to attack state-approved businesses that provide safe access.

President Obama should not only order Holder to initiate the process to reschedule marijuana, he should also instruct Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to promulgate a comment in the Treasury Regulations that excludes medical marijuana providers operating in good faith compliance with state law. This would be particularly helpful in the event that marijuana is rescheduled into Schedule II, which would still mean safe access would be in peril related to 280E.

President Obama’s speech last night described the kind of America where safe access to medical marijuana should be readily available, but unfortunately his administration’s actions have been at odds with this goal. Rescheduling marijuana and removing unfair tax burdens on dispensary owners would go a long way in reconciling his goal of an America where patients have safe access to best the cancer treatments available.

Dr. Mitch Earleywine on new studies of CBD vs. colon cancer, huge study on marijuana and pregnancy; Steve DeAngelo's latest comments on recreational marijuana use; music by J Boog.

Joseph Phillips, organizer of the High Five K run to raise awareness for medical marijuana bill in West Virginia; Todd Armstrong on "State Lines"; music by Stay Low Productionz

Dr. Michael Reznicek MD, author of "Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the War on Drugs Without Prohibition or Rehab"; Imiel Visser from NORML South Africa; music by Richard M. Jones

Part 1 of Dr. Lester Grinspoon interview (full interview available at stash.norml.org); music by Melodramus

Tere Joyce from Last Comic Standing on Ralphie May's claim to "quit weed"; Red Beard from 420 Grow Solutions on helping home growers; music by Fusion Unltd.

The California Supreme Court has made a move that should improve safe access by granting review for two controversial medical marijuana cases decided by lower appellate courts in 2011. As a result of this move, both Pack v. City of Long Beach (link to ASA blog on Pack), and Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center, are effectively decertified until the court reaches its final decision, a process which some expect to go on for two years, as Ross v. RagingWire took two years to decide.

The decisions by the lower appellate court in both of these cases have been harmful for patient access to medicine, but the Pack fallout has been particular damaging. The Pack ruling in October set off a firestorm of cities and counties moving to ban dispensaries throughout the state, even beyond the Second District of the CA Court of Appeals where the case was decided. These panicked reactions by lawmakers have resulted in weakened availability to medicine for Californian patients. As is stands now, Pack and Riverside are now dead letters.

California Cityand County legislators should take note of the impact of this move by the state high court before moving forward with any further legislation as a result of lower court’s Pack ruling. A city or county presently considering a dispensary ban based upon Pack, such as the largest city in the state, ought to recognize that they would be undermining patients’ ability to obtain medicine they need, all in reaction to a case that no longer has legal authority. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Pack and Riverside decisions, making rash policy changes that are harmful to the health of Californians following the decertification of Pack seems like an unnecessary proposition at best.

CA Court of Appeals Pack decision: http://safeaccessnow.org/downloads/Pack_v_Long_Beach.pdf

CA Court of Appeals Riverside decision: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/E052400.PDF

Dr. Mitch Earleywine answers live Q&A, discusses new cannabis and retrovirals study; Anonymous Cop tells why he can't join LEAP; music by Pepper

Paul Kuhn from Tennessee NORML on Marijuana Education Day Jan 28 in Nashville; Todd's Toker Topics - Appearances; Drug Testing rant; music by Phobos

Robert "Black Tuna" Platshorn on The Silver Tour legalization outreach for seniors; Ken Wolski from CMMNJ.org on Wednesday protest of New jersey's failure to implement medical marijuana law; music by Willie Bryant.