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asshole Registered: 09/19/09 Posts: 2,623 Loc: right around the |
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Mr. Compassion
Even if Ryan Landers is too sick to get out of bed, this founding father of the medical-marijuana movement won’t rest until Proposition 19 goes up in smoke. This article was published on 10.28.10. Ryan Landers pulls a hit off a custom-made bong. He sometimes medicates using this delivery device, which helps when his thyroid is acting up. PHOTO BY MIKE IREDALE If you are a patient and would like to contact Ryan Landers for help, please call (916) 972-8853 or e-mail rplanders@aol.com. If you would like to give to his cause, please call or mail donations to: Ryan Landers, PO Box 188056, Sacramento, CA 95818-8056 A young woman squeezed into a tight black skirt with the words “indica, sativa, concentrates, clones, edibles” emblazoned on it tiptoes up stairs at an Arden Arcade-area strip mall. On the second-floor terrace, she joins a dozens-strong crowd gathered amid a dense, sour fog of marijuana burn, which steeps in the warm October-evening air. Nearly everyone is smoking, a scene typical of a summertime concert in the park, not a suburban Sacramento shopping center. Activist Ryan Landers explains that this session is a sort of ritual before the local medical-cannabis community’s annual comedy-night fundraiser. “Who’s getting hurt here?” he asks while smoking a joint. He also reminds that it’s OK to toke, or what patients refer to as “medicate,” in public. And that even Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully herself has given Landers a green light to do so. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Later, inside the Punch Line, local comedian Ngaio Bealum glows onstage in a chartreuse linen blazer. Landers relaxes at a table in the second row, wearing a black Hawaiian button-up adorned with pot leaves instead of palm trees, a far cry from his typical workday uniform of two-piece suits and white-collared shirts. He fiddles with pain patches affixed to the back of his neck, snaps pics with his iPhone 4 and hoots as comics deliver pot-themed punch lines. “You can’t smoke weed in here,” Bealum reminds the two-thirds-full room. “This is a comedy club, not a movie theater.” Laughs roll easy with the crowd—that is, until Bealum asks, “How do you feel about Proposition 19?” Silence. The comedian withdraws: “I don’t even want to get into it, because I want to have a good time tonight.” Yet it’s no joke: Prop. 19, which would decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of recreational marijuana for Californians over age 21, has torn apart the Sacramento cannabis community. And Landers’ no-on-19 effort has alienated his oldest pals—the very men and women who fought with him to end medical-marijuana prohibition more than a decade ago. Proponents argue that Prop. 19 is a once-in-a-lifetime shot at legalization in California. Landers wants to see marijuana allowed, too, but says Prop. 19 will ostracize the sickest and poorest patients. “The movement is so damned divided,” he bemoans. “I’ve lost a lot of friends.” But Landers, who’s lived with HIV for more than 15 years, has no choice. Even though he endures unimaginable chronic pain and regularly goes without eating due to unbearable nausea, his own affliction never triumphs empathy for those who are suffering. “I’d love to stop and enjoy what time I’ve got left,” he confesses, “but as long as patients’ lives are in jeopardy, I have to fight to change that.” Landers protests—and tokes a doobie—outside the White House. PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN LANDERS A movement at odds A perfectly spliced half-moon floats in the sky directly above a bright-red Hilton sign overlooking Business 80. A few blocks north, cars trickle in one by one to River City Phoenix, a dispensary on El Camino Avenue. Most everyone’s late to a 7 p.m. meeting. In fact, it’s nearly 8 o’clock. Landers is last to arrive, grumbling about having to wait hours to get a new prescription, Kadian, a time-released morphine sulfate. He also concedes, with a smile, that stoners really are never on time. Inside the dispensary, a coffee table proffers snacks, varying from veggies and dip to pot brownies. A patient pulls a tightly rolled joint out from his sock, sparks it, tokes and shares with the group, seated in a ring. Landers grabs a few whole-wheat crackers and nibbles slowly. He hasn’t eaten all day. Landers’ adopted son, David, 25, is in town visiting from South Lake Tahoe and joins him at the meeting. At age 15, David was nearly expelled from school for lawfully medicating with cannabis instead of ADD drugs. Landers intervened, kept him in class, and David graduated high school the next year. When David became an adult, Landers legally adopted him. He has another adopted son, also an ADD kid, who now works in Nevada City. Landers adores his two granddaughters. The Sac Patients group meets weekly during the election season. Joy Cole, a short-haired, noodle-thin lung-cancer survivor, leads the get-togethers. She also hosts an activist Internet show at www.215radio.net. Some patients drive in from as far away as Placer County and El Dorado Hills. There’s even a newbie this week—and he’s uneasy having a reporter present. “He’s writing a story about Ryan,” Cole says. “Who is Ryan?” the patient asks. “Ryan has been on the front lines fighting for cannabis for years,” she explains. The patient looks at Landers: “So, can you talk to my mother?” Only recently was Landers’ own mother convinced as to the merits of medical cannabis, after her physician of 12 years praised its use. “Then my mom, for two days, couldn’t stop talking about that,” Landers remembers. “She was just beside herself that her doctor thought it was OK, what her son had fought to create.” Memorabilia and photos decorate Landers’ Midtown office, where he spends most of his days working as an activist for medical-cannabis patients’ rights. PHOTO BY MIKE IREDALE The stars first aligned for “the movement”—a term Landers and others use to describe the O.G. medical-cannabis activists—in 1996: Californians approved Proposition 215 with a 55.6 percent majority. Landers was spokesman for the campaign. On election night that November, the 215 crew gathered at a local pizza parlor with members of the California Nurses Association, who’d lost all their bills but were happy for the stoners. The green 24-year-old Landers, who’d just voted for the first time ever—“I was told that’s how they get you for jury duty”—was suddenly the movement’s fresh face, along with another 20-something named Jeff Jones. “Jeff and I were the babies of the movement,” Landers remembers. “We were the youngest two leaders for quite some time.” But today, Landers and Jones, chancellor of Oaksterdam University’s Los Angeles branch, are on opposite sides of the Prop. 19 battle. In fact, Landers will debate Jones’ wife, Dale Skye Jones, who also works for Oaksterdam mastermind Richard Lee. Chris Conrad, a friend whose cannabis activist bible Hemp: Lifeline to the Future first introduced Landers to the cause, is also a major Yes on 19 advocate. “I really don’t want to debate some of my friends,” he says, “but they’re going to be the key people to debate.” Even in Sacramento, the medical-cannabis scene is altered and at odds. “We used to have a lot tighter community before,” explains Landers, who was awarded Sacramento activist of the decade in 2005 by local cannabis-dispensary owners, “but when Obama became president, it turned on a dime.” As an HIV patient, he likens Sacramento’s changing cannabis landscape to when CARES, or the Center for AIDS Research, Education & Services, first received its influx of federal money. “People started calling them ‘CAREless’”—though now things at CARES are “much improved,” he says. As state director of Californians for Compassionate Use, Landers works pro bono, advocating for patients’ rights. “I don’t like asking for money for what I do,” but he places donation containers for his cause at local pot clubs. And although cannabis supply and demand is greater than ever, the contributions are at a low. In fact, Landers recently noticed that many of his donation containers have gone missing altogether. Landers—not frail but on the thin side of 160 pounds, always upbeat and extremely conversational—is like his favorite cannabis strain, White Widow. Its nugs are small, tight and possess a distinctive flavor. But the actual White Widow strain went out of circulation more than a decade ago: Amateurs crossed the plant to fatten up its buds to create a more lucrative yield, and the pure strain vanished. “I should focus on money, too, but I’m trying to help people,” says Landers, who barely made his rent this October. “But part of the problem is I have a hard time asking for help.” Every six weeks, Landers receives up to a dozen trigger-point shots in knots on his back. He says he looks forward to this relief—even though, if done incorrectly, the pain can leave him bedridden. PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN LANDERS World of pain Born in the Central Valley, Landers grew up with his single mom and siblings in what he says was a “crazy” family. By sixth grade, he was jumping from home to home, living with various relatives, even his grandma’s sister—from Alaska to Texas and back to California. As a kid, Landers admired his grandfather, a highly respected doctor. He shares memories of watching Grandpa care for, and sometimes lose, sick patients. “It took him three times to retire,” Landers remembers, “because he kept trying to help. That’s where I got my compassion from.” Landers’ first memory of marijuana was as a 12-year-old: An elder neighbor with glaucoma had plants. The feds seized them—and the man’s home, too. By 16, he was head of the household: His mom had just given birth to his youngest brother, and Landers left independent study to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This was short-lived; soon after, his life “fell apart,” and he moved to Sacramento. Landers discovered his HIV as part of a routine medical test. He was processing the titles of wrecked and stolen vehicles and had gotten blood work done for the gig. The year was 1995. He says he likely acquired the virus from a tattoo, an infected needle. “But how do you know?” After beginning various medications, he soon couldn’t hold down food. Or garner an appetite. “It doesn’t matter if I go days without eating,” Landers says. “It doesn’t matter if I exhaust myself. I don’t get the feeling of hunger.” His nausea is debilitating. New medications are unknowns that can leave him bedridden. This past winter, he dropped off to nearly 125 pounds, vomiting daily from November to February. He doesn’t have a favorite food and says the only meal he can truly sit down and enjoy lately isn’t the healthiest: chicken enchiladas from an El Forastero taquería near his north Sacramento home. The pain isn’t loyal to his stomach. He’s had shingles of the brain, which crawled up his neck and attacked his central nervous system. Every day, his eyes feel like they’re being “squeezed by pliers.” He never sleeps through the night and wakes up with either unbearable back pain or razor-sharp migraines. OxyContin, Norco, Percocet, morphine, methadone—they don’t work, but are on call nevertheless. Every six weeks, Landers has a friend to drive him to a preferred doctor in San Andreas, where he receives what are called “trigger-point shots” directly into the hub of swollen knobs that develop all over his back. “Nobody can believe I look forward to this,” he jokes. There’s photos on his iPhone: A 6-inch needle plunges into knotted flesh. For a guy who smokes upward of a quarter-ounce of cannabis each day, Landers is remarkably lucid. The cannabidiol, or CBD, in his pot helps dull the extreme pain and assuages nausea. But Landers says he no longer gets high from the THC. To be sure, his eyes are never bloodshot. On mornings when he can’t rise and shine, he works at computer next to the couch, getting up only to feed his parrot and tend to his cat. He has a PlayStation 3 to pass the time, doesn’t watch TV but enjoys movies. When he is out and about, you’ll often see him adjusting Lidocaine patches on the back of his neck, the same local anesthesia that dentists use to numb a patient’s jaw. Landers says, before all this, he used to question people’s pain—and the vast pharmacopoeia of drugs that ease suffering. “Now, I understand patients’ pain all too much,” he says, “and that’s why I’ll go to the mat for them.” The founding fathers (left to right): Ryan Landers, John Entwistle, Anna Boyce, “Brownie” Mary Rathburn and Dennis Peron at the attorney general’s building downtown on September 29, 1995—the day Proposition 215 was filed. PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN LANDERS Fifteen years of fame Trickles of sunlight sneak into Landers’ office, a carpeted room on the second floor of a Midtown craftsman that also houses medical-cannabis dispensary A Therapeutic Alternative. The owner, Jeanne Larsson, donates the space, and Landers keeps it dark because bright sun gives him migraines. He is seated behind an L-shaped wood desk wearing a gray suit, white shirt and Bluetooth earpiece. His hair is buzzed close, and a wiry goatee is scarcely visible on his chin. He occasionally smokes a bowl—filled with a blend of cannabis strains, hash and kief—while chatting. Mementos cover the walls, nearly two decades of memories and accomplishments. And struggle. He points out that it is the 15th anniversary of Proposition 215: On September 29 in 1995, he rallied at the Capitol with Dennis Peron, Anna Boyce and other medical-cannabis founding fathers. They announced 215, which at this time was called the Compassionate Use Act, on the west steps, then marched to the Department of Justice headquarters on I Street. “And we smoked a really good joint on the way over,” Landers remembers, “so we all stunk when we got to the [attorney general]’s office.” Good medical cannabis was hard to come by in Sacramento during this time, according to Landers. And cultivating was more than risky. Still, he was one of the first to appear on TV with his own pot plant, smiling as he committed a felony. “They could have busted down my door and arrested me,” he says. They didn’t—but it still wasn’t a green light to grow. Landers pushes the envelope. Last fall, he bumped into U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren and introduced himself. “I know who you are,” the congressman replied. “We used to do the news opposite each other for quite a number of years.” It’s true: Back in the late ’90s, Landers would get stoned inside the Talk 650 KSTE studios while Lungren debated him via satellite. He’s debated sheriff candidate Jim Cooper on News Call Live, too—and probably stoned. In January 1997, Peron and Landers announced plans to open Sacramento’s first medical-cannabis dispensary. Within days, City Councilman Robbie Waters was urging fellow council members to crack down. Waters won; efforts to start the Capitol City Cannabis Buyers Club were foiled. But this failure taught Landers a lesson: “They’d listen to you a lot more if they knew you couldn’t make money at it.” Inside his office, Landers flips on the computer monitor and plays a photo slide show. In one shot, he’s on C-SPAN testifying at the state Capitol. Another, he’s smoking a joint in front of the Placer County sheriff’s office. On his desk rests a thick photo album of news clippings and oddities from his life’s work. Flipping the pages is like reading the children’s book What Good Luck! What Bad Luck! What good luck: Sacramentans organize the first local medical-cannabis dispensary out of a home in Citrus Heights. What bad luck: Landers is arrested on 10th and K streets during Thursday Night Market for smoking a 0.04-gram joint. The district attorney’s head of major narcotics testifies in his case. More bad luck: Thieves invade Landers grow spot in Alkali Flat and steal not only his cannabis but that of dozens of local patients as well. Whoa, lucky: His insurer writes a $9,750 check less than a week after the theft—only the second case of cannabis being covered by insurance in the history of the United States at the time. Landmark luck: Landers assists then-state Sen. John Vasconcellos in writing Senate Bill 420, a breakthrough law that implements the state’s medical-marijuana program, which Gov. Gray Davis signs just hours before leaving office. Bad-luck bonanza: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes the 420 cleanup bill. Landers files bankruptcy in 2005. His mom nearly succumbs to West Nile virus the next year. A home intruder in Antelope brandishes a gun in Landers’ face, fires shots and steals his caregiver’s medicine. The government taps his phones. The feds raid local clubs, such as River City Wellness and Capitol Alternatives. Sheriffs illegally burn down his backyard crop near Watt Avenue. And patients, friends, pass away. New patients phone Landers each week, looking for help, anything, sometimes desperate. He advises in situations such as custody cases, because lawyers often leverage medical cannabis against a parent. And he assists cancer and AIDS patients in connecting with compassion programs, which provide them with free, high-grade bud. He even educates law enforcement, such as in El Dorado County, on medical-cannabis rights so that so that patients aren’t persecuted. But Landers’ legacy is the Sacramento medical-cannabis dispensaries, to which he serves as unofficial ambassador in an attempt to have them “build up a neighborhood reputation” of being complaint and crime free. “We had to figure out a way to create real statistics, and the way to do that was to keep [clubs] off the news and to keep it quiet,” he says, sharing his strategy. It took longer than ever imagined, but it worked: On November 9, the city council will likely approve Sacramento’s first medical-cannabis club ordinance—nearly 15 years in the making. The breakthrough comes, of course, with bad luck attached: A city business permit, what with its nearly $75,000 price tag, isn’t feasible for many of the mom-and-pop, friends-of-the-movement dispensaries that stuck their necks out in the beginning. It’s a never-ending, increasingly complex battle. Landers can hardly keep track of all the dispensaries popping up. Shady club owners rat out other club owners to city officials or code enforcement. And measures such as Prop. 19 or Rancho Cordova’s “discriminatory” cannabis tax will only up the ante in 2011. “I’ve done my 15 years. I’ve had my 15 years of fame,” he says. “I need someone to step up and help.” It’s urgent: Months ago, due to lack of money, Landers quit taking his anti-retroviral HIV medications. “Everybody thinks I look better,” he says, “but yeah, that’s because I’m not poisoning myself.” “I’m so scared of not getting back on them in time.” Landers comments on the forthcoming city of Sacramento pot-club ordinance at a City Hall meeting last week. PHOTO BY NICK MILLER 19 reasons It’s Monday at 5:15 p.m. in Midtown Sacramento. Landers needs to be in Oakland for a Prop. 19 debate by 6:30 p.m. This is the big one he’s talked up for weeks. He blows smoke out the passenger window of a minivan cruising south on 19th Street while friend and Sac Patients Group director Cole drives. Landers jokes that the organizers “should expect me to be late.” Stoner time: Set your watch to it. Stoner is a term of endearment, however, especially between patients, who bond with an understanding insouciance. Sure, Landers admits that a lot of patients out there are “self-medicating,” or aren’t gravely ill. But even then, he reminds, the plant can’t hurt. He often rattles off his list: Marijuana is safer than alcohol, tobacco, cars, airplanes, salt, butter, soda pop, cell phones, tap water, sushi, roller coasters, candy, suburbia, TV. Than the air we breathe. And on and on. “The only way it will kill you is a ton would have to hit you and break your neck,” he often says. Pot activist, horticulture expert and Landers’ friend Ed Rosenthal repeats the same exact phrase at the Mills College Prop. 19 debate that evening. He’s seated at a long table with four other Yes on 19ers. The forum streams live online, so hardly any students show. NPR is in the house, though, as are many aging Walt Whitman types with glorious silver beards. The Yes on 19 argument is instantly compelling. Panelists refer to the initiative as the “bong rip heard round the world.” They say it will be a domino effect that legalizes cannabis globally. Rosenthal, who concedes that the measure “isn’t the initiative that he wanted,” says he’s voting for it all the same, because he doesn’t want to have to explain years from now why he voted “no” on legalization. Chris Conrad, Landers’ medical-cannabis-founding-father Landers is pro-legalization. “But Prop. 19 is not legalization,” Landers argues. “It says that nowhere in the law.” He sees 19 only as a threat to patients. Proponents vigorously reject this, but Landers—an armchair legal eagle who has worked on more than a half-dozen Capitol bills—impresses with his comeback. He says there is no language in the measure to ensure that Prop. 215 will remain unchanged. The tinfoil-hat crowd says this omission is intentional and that Oaksterdam’s Richard Lee—who, like many dispensary owners, has made millions while supposedly operating as a not-for-profit—wants to take away patients’ rights to collectively cultivate large quantities of marijuana. They call 19 the gateway to the corporate-cannabis age. But Landers, who never raises his voice or veers off-topic, isn’t one for schemes. “It’s going to take away patients’ cultivation rights,” he agrees. “And it’s going to regulate us out of the backyard.” But patients, not legalization, are his No. 1 priority. He defers to their concerns. Hecklers hit the roof midway through the debate, though their outbursts don’t match those at a Prop. 19 debate at the Cow Palace last month. Tensions rouse amid panelists, too, both sides calling each other liars, among other less-sophisticated invective. And perhaps for the first time ever, a major California electoral debate takes place where a majority of participants are stoned. When it’s all over, Landers swiftly tracks down his pal Conrad. “When this ends, we’ll be friends,” he says, playing peacekeeper. “You, I believe,” Conrad replies, looking him in the eyes. After the debate, Rosenthal, wearing Birkenstocks with socks, shares a doobie with friends outside. Does he know Prop. 19 would make consumption in public places illegal? Landers passes him on the way to the minivan but doesn’t say goodbye. Still, they’re buds. And it was Landers, who had connections with then-Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office, who snuck Rosenthal up to the 17th floor of the Department of Justice headquarters to obtain an amicus brief during the first “Feds v. Ed” trial earlier this decade. While up there overlooking downtown Sacramento, Landers pointed out to Rosenthal his old grow spot on 14th and G streets, where he’d cultivated during the height of the DEA-raid era. Unlike Rosenthal, he escaped trial. Back at the minivan, Landers sparks a joint. A gentle sweat coats his brow, and the parking-lot lights emphasize his protruding cheekbones. He’s replaying the debate, the movement, his old friends—whom he “commends.” “You think I want to fuck it up for everybody?” he lets out, rocking side to side while blowing smoke into the cloudless sky. “My goals are for the sick. That’s something I cannot compromise.” There’s no loss for words on the ride home through the East Bay and back to Sacramento. Landers chats about someday going to lobbying school. Or whether the city of Sacramento should get into the cultivation biz with him. And he wonders, if Prop. 19 passes, who will be the first local dispensary owner to go recreational—even though he’s warned many not to for legal reasons. A stop at the In-N-Out Burger in Fairfield is a welcome one. Landers, who’s had but a half-bottle of chocolate milk all day, is finally ready to eat. He and Cole medicate out front while the double-doubles grill. Soon, an actual meal. He praises the chocolate shake and finishes more than half the burger. It’s not the healthiest meal in the world, but it’s a compromise. He takes the fries to go. High spirits Back at the Punch Line comedy benefit, Landers’ son David, who’s in town visiting, listens as a comedian cracks wise that Prop. 19 will turn street dealers into dinosaurs. “What a shame,” he kids: Stoners of the future will never know what it’s like to baby-sit a dealer’s child while they “run a few quick errands”—until 2 a.m. The jokes end and a deejay bumps favorites, including Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day.” Everyone mingles—perhaps for the last time as a strictly medical industry. Landers and his son hug old friends and pose for a few photos. One picture bridges the Prop. 19 divide: David, who resides in South Lake Tahoe and can’t vote on the measure; comedian Bealum, who, as publisher of West Coast Cannabis, is a “yes” man; Amanda Whittemore, a svelte and tanned local representative for Americans for Safe Access, which has taken a neutral stance; and of course Landers, a firm “no.” At first, Prop. 19 led handily in the polls. Today, heading into election week, the race is a tossup. Landers says the more people learn about the initiative, the more doubt lingers. He wants to free the plant as much as anyone, but 19 isn’t his way. Outside, Landers burns one of his caramel-hued joints before heading off to an afterparty at the Red Lion Hotel. He’s pleased by the evening’s goodwill. “I’m glad I lived long enough to hear Robbie Waters say he supports medical marijuana,” Landers shares. “Or to hear Jan Scully say she supports the Compassionate Use Act.” He’s never one for platitudes or pep-talk anthems, but tonight’s show has him in high spirits. “They can strike us, and I don’t care how bad it hurts, but they will never hold us down.” -------------------- send guns, money ,lawyers, and drugs its been a long night everything i post is a lie im a pathological liar
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Creeper Registered: 02/06/10 Posts: 1,361 Loc: Antarctica Last seen: 7 years, 2 months |
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Well maybe he should get out of bed and work on this more, hes only got another day.
I really dont see why prop 19 has ANYTHING to do with medical marijuana.
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Title Registered: 07/26/07 Posts: 16,574 Loc: Central New Jers Last seen: 4 years, 2 months |
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It has to do with potheads that are afraid the sky is falling. Its really quite sad.
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73rd Man Registered: 04/01/03 Posts: 2,663 Loc: North Central Arkansas Last seen: 1 hour, 31 minutes |
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I don't get how it messes with patients either, but I would like to know...
-------------------- Yours in the "The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...." "When psychotomimetics become cultural, so does cultural psychosis"
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asshole Registered: 09/19/09 Posts: 2,623 Loc: right around the |
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it will create a monopoly of growers who are set to produce 58 lbs a day they will control supply and the prices will raise
-------------------- send guns, money ,lawyers, and drugs its been a long night everything i post is a lie im a pathological liar
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Stranger Registered: 07/12/10 Posts: 1,395 Loc: USA |
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Isn't there already a set number of dispensaries allowed, or at least L.A I thought it was. I also don't see how the prices would raise and not fall since it's off the black market, isn't that why all the central valley growers are freaking out?
-------------------- Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines
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Title Registered: 07/26/07 Posts: 16,574 Loc: Central New Jers Last seen: 4 years, 2 months |
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"Its legal for me, I got mine." I can legally get pretty much anything prescribed for pain because of my injuries, I still want opiates to be legalized for everyone. Instead of looking at the bigger picture you are looking at how it will effect you, if it isn't broke don't fix it? Well it is broken. Your logic is extremely selfish IMO.
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asshole Registered: 09/19/09 Posts: 2,623 Loc: right around the |
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it isnt broken in California and this is a state issue
-------------------- send guns, money ,lawyers, and drugs its been a long night everything i post is a lie im a pathological liar
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asshole Registered: 09/19/09 Posts: 2,623 Loc: right around the |
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It isn't broken in California and this is a state issue
On a lighter note I whole heatedly support and encourage all Californians to contact their legislators in support of The Jack Herer Cannabis Hemp Initiative 2012 AN ACT TO AMEND THE HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE OF CALIFORNIA: I. Add Section 11362.6 to the Health and Safety Code of California, any laws or policies to the contrary notwithstanding: 1. No person, individual, or corporate entity shall be arrested or prosecuted, be denied any right or privilege, nor be subject to any criminal or civil penalties for the possession, cultivation, transportation, distribution, or consumption of cannabis hemp marijuana, including: (a) Cannabis hemp industrial products. (b) Cannabis hemp medicinal preparations. (c) Cannabis hemp nutritional products. (d) Cannabis hemp religious and spiritual products. (e) Cannabis hemp recreational and euphoric use and products. 2. Definition of terms: (a) The terms "cannabis hemp" and “cannabis hemp marijuana” mean the natural, non-genetically modified plant hemp, cannabis, marihuana, marijuana, cannabis sativa L, cannabis Americana, cannabis chinensis, cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, cannabis sativa, or any variety of cannabis, including any derivative, concentrate, extract, flower, leaf, particle, preparation, resin, root, salt, seed, stalk, stem, or any product thereof. (b) The term "cannabis hemp industrial products" means all products made from cannabis hemp that are not designed or intended for human consumption, including, but not limited to: clothing, building materials, paper, fiber, fuel, lubricants, plastics, paint, seed for cultivation, animal feed, veterinary medicine, oil, or any other product that is not designed for internal human consumption; as well as cannabis hemp plants used for crop rotation, erosion control, pest control, weed control, or any other horticultural or environmental purposes, for example, the reversal of the Greenhouse Effect and toxic soil reclamation. (c) The term "cannabis hemp medicinal preparations" means all products made from cannabis hemp that are designed, intended, or used for human consumption for the treatment of any human disease or condition, for pain relief, or for any healing purpose, including but not limited to the treatment or relief of: Alzheimer's and pre-Alzheimer's disease, stroke, arthritis, asthma, cramps, epilepsy, glaucoma, migraine, multiple sclerosis, nausea, premenstrual syndrome, side effects of cancer chemotherapy, fibromyalgia, sickle cell anemia, spasticity, spinal injury, stress, easement of post-traumatic stress disorder, Tourette syndrome, attention deficit disorder, immunodeficiency, wasting syndrome from AIDS or anorexia; use as an antibiotic, antibacterial, anti-viral, or anti-emetic; as a healing agent, or as an adjunct to any medical or herbal treatment. Mental conditions not limited to bipolar, depression, attention deficit disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, shall be conditions considered for medical use. (d) The term "cannabis hemp nutritional products" means cannabis hemp for consumption by humans and animals as food, including but not limited to: seed, seed protein, seed oil, essential fatty acids, seed cake, dietary fiber, or any preparation or extract thereof. (e) The term "cannabis hemp euphoric products" means cannabis hemp intended for personal recreational or religious use, other than cannabis hemp industrial products, cannabis hemp medicinal preparations, or cannabis hemp nutritional products. (f) The term "personal use" means the internal consumption of cannabis hemp by people 21 years of age or older for any relaxational, meditative, religious, spiritual, recreational, or other purpose other than sale. (g) The term "commercial production" means the production of cannabis hemp products for sale or profit under the conditions of these provisions. 3. Industrial cannabis hemp farmers, manufacturers, processors, and distributors shall not be subject to any special zoning requirement, licensing fee, or tax that is excessive, discriminatory, or prohibitive. 4. Cannabis hemp medicinal preparations are hereby restored to the list of available medicines in California. Licensed physicians shall not be penalized for, nor restricted from, prescribing or recommending cannabis hemp for medical purposes to any patient, regardless of age. No tax shall be applied to prescribed cannabis hemp medicinal preparations. Medical research shall be encouraged. No recommending physician shall be subject to any professional licensing review or hearing as a result of recommending or approving medical use of cannabis hemp marijuana. 5. Personal use of cannabis hemp euphoric products. (a) No permit, license, or tax shall be required for the non-commercial cultivation, transportation, distribution, or consumption of cannabis hemp. (b) Testing for inactive and/or inert residual cannabis metabolites shall not be required for employment or insurance, nor be considered in determining employment, other impairment, or intoxication. (c) When a person falls within the conditions of these exceptions, the offense laws do not apply and only the exception laws apply. 6. Use of cannabis hemp products for religious or spiritual purposes shall be considered an inalienable right; and shall be protected by the full force of the State and Federal Constitutions. 7. Commerce in cannabis hemp euphoric products shall be limited to adults, 21 years of age and older, and shall be regulated in a manner analogous to California's wine industry model. For the purpose of distinguishing personal from commercial production, 99 flowering female plants and 12 pounds of dried, cured cannabis hemp flowers, bud, not leaf, produced per adult, 21 years of age and older, per year shall be considered as being for personal use. 8. The manufacture, marketing, distribution, or sales between adults of equipment or accessories designed to assist in the planting, cultivation, harvesting, curing, processing, packaging, storage, analysis, consumption, or transportation of cannabis hemp plants, industrial cannabis hemp products, cannabis hemp medicinal preparations, cannabis hemp nutritional products, cannabis hemp euphoric products, or any cannabis hemp product shall not be prohibited. 9. No California law enforcement personnel or funds shall be used to assist or aid and abet in the enforcement of Federal cannabis hemp marijuana laws involving acts which are hereby no longer illegal in the State of California. 10. Any person who threatens the enjoyment of these provisions is guilty of a misdemeanor. The maximum penalties and fines of a misdemeanor may be imposed. II. Repeal, delete, and expunge any and all existing statutory laws that conflict with the provisions of this initiative. 1. Enactment of this initiative shall include: amnesty, immediate release from prison, jail, parole, and probation, and clearing, expungement, and deletion of all criminal records for all persons currently charged with, or convicted of any non-violent cannabis hemp marijuana offenses included in this initiative which are hereby no longer illegal in the State of California. People who fall within this category that triggered an original sentence are included within this provision. 2. Within 60 days of the passage of this Act, the Attorney General shall develop and distribute a one-page application, providing for the destruction of all cannabis hemp marijuana criminal records in California for any such offense covered by this Act. Such forms shall be distributed to district and city attorneys and made available at all police departments in the State to persons hereby affected. Upon filing such form with any Superior Court and a payment of a fee of $10.00, the Court shall liberally construe these provisions to benefit the defendant in furtherance of the amnesty and dismissal provision of this section. Upon the Court's ruling under this provision the arrest record shall be set aside and be destroyed. Such persons may then truthfully state that they have never been arrested or convicted of any cannabis hemp marijuana related offense which is hereby no longer illegal in the State of California. This shall be deemed to be a finding of factual innocence under California Penal Code Section 851.8 et seq. III. The legislature is authorized upon thorough investigation, to enact legislation using reasonable standards to: 1. License concessionary establishments to distribute cannabis hemp euphoric products in a manner analogous to California's wine industry model. Sufficient community outlets shall be licensed to provide reasonable commercial access to persons of legal age, so as to discourage and prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, such products. Any license or permit fee required by the State for commercial production, distribution or use shall not exceed $1,000.00. 2. Place an excise tax on commercial sale of cannabis hemp euphoric products, analogous to California's wine industry model, so long as no excise tax or combination of excise taxes shall exceed $10.00 per ounce. 3. Determine an acceptable and uniform standard of impairment based on performance testing, to restrict persons impaired by cannabis hemp euphoric products from operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery, or otherwise engaging in conduct that may affect public safety. 4. Regulate the personal use of cannabis hemp euphoric products in enclosed and/or restricted public places. IV. Pursuant to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the people of California hereby repudiate and challenge Federal cannabis hemp marijuana prohibitions that conflict with this Act. V. Severability: If any provision of this Act, or the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, shall be held invalid by any court, the remainder of this Act, to the extent it can be given effect, or the application of such provisions to persons or circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, shall not be affected thereby, and to this end the provisions of this Act are severable. VI. Construction: If any rival or conflicting initiative regulating any matter addressed by this act receives the higher affirmative vote, then all non-conflicting parts shall become operative. VII. Purpose of Act: This Act is an exercise of the police powers of the State for the protection of the safety, welfare, health, and peace of the people and the environment of the State, to protect the industrial and medicinal uses of cannabis hemp, to eliminate the unlicensed and unlawful cultivation, selling, and dispensing of cannabis hemp; and to encourage temperance in the consumption of cannabis hemp euphoric products. It is hereby declared that the subject matter of this Act involves, in the highest degree, the ecological, economic, social, and moral well-being and safety of the State and of all its people. All provisions of this Act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of these purposes: to respect human rights, to promote tolerance, and to end cannabis hemp prohibition. Read more: hxxp://www.myspace.com/calhemp#i -------------------- send guns, money ,lawyers, and drugs its been a long night everything i post is a lie im a pathological liar
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Title Registered: 07/26/07 Posts: 16,574 Loc: Central New Jers Last seen: 4 years, 2 months |
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I'll agree with that in 2012, but for now I support Proposition 19.
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asshole Registered: 09/19/09 Posts: 2,623 Loc: right around the |
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I just hope everyone will agree with it on Tuesday night
it is IMO a much better law and if Jack had been able to see the things his kids are saying for money on his behalf he would die of a broken heart
-------------------- send guns, money ,lawyers, and drugs its been a long night everything i post is a lie im a pathological liar
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