California’s citizens and legislators may be at the vanguard of America’s progressive cannabis policy-making, but, unfortunately, many in the law enforcement community in the Golden State are still uncomfortable with–and resistive of–the will of the voters (their employers) when it comes to physician-sanctioned, patient access to medicinal cannabis.
Meet Hawaii’s Republican Governor Linda Lingle. On Monday, Gov. Lingle vetoed Senate Bill 1058, which called on the legislature to merely study “issues relating to medical cannabis patients and current medical cannabis laws.”
While California is clearly at the vanguard of implementing major legal and policy changes in seeming conflict with the federal government’s 72-year old cannabis prohibition laws, in fact little ol’ Rhode Island is on the precipice of effectively breaking the federal government’s ban on the cultivation and sale of cannabis by joining New Mexico as the only states favoring medical cannabis laws to have state-sanctioned medical cannabis cultivators and retail outlets for qualifying medical patients.
Even though California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has joined the calls for a debate on marijuana prohibition itself, there is still a lot of confusion about the legal status of the supposedly less controversial topic of “medical marijuana”.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
was opposed by prohibitionist Kevin Sabet in a very brief cable news exchange. If supporters of cannabis law reformers want to continue to raise the public discussion level on legalizing cannabis, contact CNN and request that they provide even greater coverage of cannabis-related matters, debates and online surveys; along with MSNBC, CNBC, Fox and C-Span.
Last week NORML reported on the results of a just-released Field Research Corporation poll that found that 56 percent of California voters agreed with the statement: “Legalize marijuana for recreational use and tax its proceeds.”
Via The Hill.com Writing last week in Time.com, Joe Klein became the latest in a…