oregon

By. Ersun Warnke Salem-News.com Business/Economy Reporter

Comprehensive Marijuana reforms would increase revenues, create jobs, decrease law enforcement and incarceration expenditures, increase tourism, and create new educational opportunities in Oregon’s universities.

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(EUGENE, Ore.) - The existing medical marijuana program in Oregon has been highly successful, but is in many ways less than optimal. I am not personally a medical marijuana user, nor do I have any association with the organizers of the medical marijuana regulation campaign in Oregon. My opinions on these issues are my own, and should not be confused with the proposals of any of the other groups who advocate on these issues.

MEDFORD, Ore. – Marijuana.  It’s medically legal, and with lesser restrictions, it’s a whole lot easier to get your hands on some.  Some people want to bring the drug into the forefront of society, while police are warning of the possible abuse of the system.

Oregon is one of 14 states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes.  About twenty-six thousand people in Oregon hold marijuana cards.  One of those cardholders is Lori Duckworth, who says she suffers from fibromyalgia.  She says using marijuana has turned her life around.

“Life was very painful, I was very depressed, it was a quiet life,” Duckworth says, “Now I’m not down, I can get up, go to work, attend church, and be a part of my children and grandchildren’s activities.”

By John Darling

ASHLAND — The man who opened the nation’s first “pot club” for medical marijuana users will come to town Tuesday to speak in favor of legalizing marijuana.

Dennis Peron, known as the “father of medical marijuana,” supports across-the-board legalization of marijuana. In a telephone interview, he said enforcing existing laws costs the criminal justice system a fortune.

Peron is scheduled to speak from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday in the Meese Auditorium in the Visual Arts Building at Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland. The free presentation is sponsored by Ashland Alternative Health, a clinic that helps people obtain medical marijuana cards.

Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director for NORML, the national organization that’s pushing to reform marijuana laws, says she sees a golden opportunity to convince people that legalizing marijuana could be a good thing after all.

“Why don’t we capture the revenue that’s just being lost to the criminal market in many regards and bring it to the people. We’re the ones who deserve it,” she says.

Allan Erickson Salem-News.com

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Medford Police Chief Randy Schoen has some explaining to do. The chief used the city's Neighborhood Watch Nov., 2009 Bulletin to go on a rant against medical cannabis (marijuana) and Oregon's OMMP (Oregon Medical Marijuana Program).

The chief is of course welcome to his opinion.

He is not welcome, of course, to use his city's resources to go on a rant based on opinion (and not fact) about an issue regarding citizens' health care. The chief says, "This commentary is not intended to debate the use of marijuana as a medicine."

He then follows that up with "[t]his is not about medicine, it is about profit."

It is an incredible stretch. We know that foreign cartels operate in our forests and wildlands. Nearly 1/4 million plants were seized last year in Oregon by law enforcement.

By George Rohrbacher, NORML board of directors, medical marijuana patient

The first time I met Madeline Martinez, the executive director of Oregon NORML, she told me about her dream…a meeting place for medical marijuana patients, some space to hold classes, a very different vision of healthcare. I took a drive to Portland last week to see this dream come true; to Oregon NORML’s World Famous-Cannabis Café, a trip to a Future of our own making.

Set in an older blue-collar neighborhood in North East Portland, NORML’s Cannabis Café, occupies a building that was reputed to be a ‘speakeasy’ during Prohibition, alcohol Prohibition, that is. It includes a meeting/concert space upstairs for about 200+ people, in addition to the Café downstairs. Oregon NORML signed a lease this fall with the onsite restaurant operator and took over the business in November. NORML volunteers have been working there non-stop ever since, turning the building into the Cannabis Café. Its opening last month became a world-wide press event…apparently a lot more people than Madeline thought the NORML’s Cannabis Café was an idea whose time had come.

BY KRISTIAN FODEN-VENCIL

The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled that the Douglas County Sheriff's office was wrong not to return medical marijuana to three patients. Kristian Foden-Vencil reports.

Three years ago, the sheriff raided the Dixonville home of Dwight Ehrensing. He grew pot for people who take the drug under the state's Medical Marijuana Act.

But the police found a 120 pound stash and accused Ehrensing of selling it to people who didn't have Medical Marijuana cards.

Three users who did have cards asked for their drugs and the then Douglas County Sheriff, Chris Brown, refused.

Claudia Lavander, president of the Oregon Medical Cannabis University, teaches a class that involves making a tincture of cannabis. The process includes pouring glycerin over cannabis then letting the brew sit for months.

By Casey Parks, The Oregonian

HILLSBORO -- Classes at the Oregon Medical Cannabis University are usually packed. But as Claudia Lavander demonstrated how to create a muscle-relaxing salve (key ingredient: marijuana), she spoke to a mere audience of one.

Having a reporter attend the class had scared students away, she said.

"I'd love for you to be here with a full class," she said. "But I have pilots and lawyers, and they don't want to get labeled."

Even as more patients turn to medical marijuana, even as rules relax and cannabis cafes open, people still worry about stigmas. That's why Lavander's salve recipe includes marijuana-masking tea tree oils. And that's why her business partner, Clancy Adams, dresses nicely and speaks scientifically.

It's all about image, Lavander says. If they want to get down to their preferred business -- "helping people help themselves" with medical marijuana -- they first have to help the world see they're legit.

By J. Craig Canada Santa Cruz County Drug Policy Examiner

On Friday the 13th NORML announced the opening, in Portland, of the first medical marijuana coffee shop in America.  Since then this unforgivable error has been picked up by CBS 3, Examiner.com, Canada Free Press, Daily Finance, Money Times, Visit Bulgaria, The New York Times, Passport Magazine, Reuters, The Huffington Post, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times Online,  and The AtlanticWire, to name just a few.

The Portland Cannabis Cafe is most definitely not the first medical marijuana coffee shop in America.