patients

By. CBC News

 

Smoking marijuana might ease some types of pain, as a new scientific study has found, but that's only if you can manage to get some of it.

 

Simonne LeBlanc, executive director of AIDS Calgary, said that while a number of her clients find marijuana to be an effective treatment for the pain and nausea associated with HIV, it's tough to come by legally in Alberta.

 

"It's really difficult to find a physician that will prescribe it," LeBlanc told CBC News on Tuesday. Read more »

By. CBC News

 

Patients seeking to use medical marijuana are being forced to wait as long as six months by Health Canada because a backlog of permit applications, a B.C. doctor says.

 

Dr. Gwyllyn Goddard says patients are told that getting a permit to use medical marijuana should take about 60 days. Each year, however, they're waiting longer for Health Canada to approve their applications — from two months to three months, and now six months.

 

Because of the delays many patients ended up buying pot illegally while they wait for the official government permit, says Goddard. Read more »

By. Joel Hoeffel, LA Times

 

Los Angeles city officials announced Wednesday that only 41 medical marijuana dispensaries are eligible to stay in business under the city’s restrictive ordinance, a number so low that the city will suspend the winnowing process and ask a judge to rule that it is legal.

 

“It was a surprise,” said Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney who worked closely with the City Council to draft the complex law and is defending it in court.

 

Rather than move ahead with a selection process that would clearly trigger a spate of lawsuits by disqualified dispensaries, the city attorney’s office decided to sue them first and ask a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to determine that the city’s process was appropriate. Read more »

By John Richardson, Portland Press-Herald

 

PORTLAND - Wendy Chapkis was a graduate sociology student in northern California in the 1980s when she witnessed the emergence of a new movement: terminally ill people growing marijuana for medicine.

 

So, naturally, she started taking notes.

 

Now Chapkis is an author and sociology professor at the University of Southern Maine, watching with more than passing interest as California-style medical marijuana dispensaries move east to this state.

 

"The whole direction Maine is going in is very disappointing to me," Chapkis said during a recent interview in her Portland office.

 

Chapkis is co-author of "Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine." She finished her work on the book while at USM, but it draws on her longtime connection to the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, Calif. Read more »

In State v. Berringer, (online here: http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/A137186.htm) the Oregon Court of Appeals held that Oregon was not required to give a California patient’s status as a patient ‘full faith and credit’ (reasoning that that status created an affirmative defense within CA only) and that the California patient’s federal constitutional right to travel did not protect this patient from being prosecuted and convicted under Oregon Law.  Although not a part of the holding, the Court also concluded that the application requirements of the law was ambiguous, and resolved that ambiguity by concluding that the law permits out of state patients to register here.

Initially, the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP), acting on advice of its counsel, the Oregon Attorney General, refused to process out of state patient applications.  But, on June 14, 2010, the Oregon Attorney general issued an opinion (online here: http://www.doj.state.or.us/agoffice/agopinions/op_2010_2.pdf) concluding that:  “(1) The OMMA contains no Oregon residency requirement for obtaining an Oregon registry identification card; and, (2) the Oregon legislature could limit eligibility for Oregon registry identification cards to Oregon residents without violating the federal constitutional right to travel.”

Read more »

By. New Jersey Courier Post

 

Look at other states and use the best model to get New Jersey's program running this year.

 

In January, New Jersey became the 14th state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It was an affirmation of what thousands of sufferers of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and other conditions already know -- that marijuana is one of the few substances, for some, the only substance, that can take away their daily pain and mask some of their symptoms.

 

New Jersey's law is restrictive, probably more so than all other states that have legalized medical marijuana. Patients certified by a doctor and registered with the state won't be allowed to grow the plant themselves. Rather, they'll have to purchase marijuana from one of a handful of dispensaries around New Jersey that will be created to provide small, strictly governed amounts of marijuana.

 

The dispensation of medical marijuana to patients was supposed to begin in October, but now the Christie administration wants a delay to fine tune the rules and parameters of the program. One thing Christie's Health and Senior Services commissioner is looking to do is create a single site for growing all the marijuana that would be available to patients who qualify to use medical marijuana. Read more »

By KATE BENSON, The Sydney Morning Herald

 

BY HIS own admission, Alex Wodak's stellar career has been little more than a series of accidents, most serendipitous.

 

But now 64 and being appointed a member of the Order of Australia for services to medicine and public health, he clearly remembers the day it almost slipped through his fingers.

 

''The 12th of November, 1986,'' he says.

 

Wodak had been the director of drug and alcohol services at St Vincent's Hospital, in Darlinghurst, for four years. The AIDS epidemic had cut a swath through Sydney, making its presence felt in the streets around the hospital where thousands of young gay men and injecting drug users lived.

  Read more »

By Jeff Skryzpek

 

EUGENE, Ore. -- The group Protect Your Rights 420 says many Oregon law enforcement officers don't distinguish between medical marijuana users and illegal pot users. Members say that's why it's even more important that people who used marijuana medicinally know their rights.

 

"I've heard it all," says Lorri Duckworth, a member of Protect Your Rights 420. "Most people who have that reefer madness way of thinking don't know you can use medical marijuana in other ways than smoking it."

 

Group members say that misunderstanding is giving them a bad name and it creates all sorts of headaches and unnecessary run-ins with the law.

 

"It's the specter of reefer madness," says member Christine McGarvin. "It really hasn't changed in a number or law enforcement perceptions." Read more »

By. Steve Elliot, Toke of the Town

 

A Canadian crackdown on compassion clubs in Quebec has backfired, according to some doctors and medical marijuana patients. Many have been forced to turn to the black market to get their cannabis after police last week in Montreal and Quebec City raided and shut down five compassion clubs and arrested 35 people.

 

Canada's federal government offers only one strain of medical marijuana, and the only legal way to purchase government pot is through Health Canada, reports CBC News.

 

Not only is government cannabis of questionable quality; the process is complicated and the wait is often lengthy, according to some patients.

 

As a result, more and more Canadian medical marijuana patients are now buying their cannabis illegally.

 

Janet McDougal of Montreal has depended on her compassion club for cannabis to help her treat her multiple sclerosis. Read more »

By. Matthew Miller

 

Terry Clark is one of more than 16,000 people in Michigan certified to smoke marijuana for medical reasons, which is exactly what he was doing Wednesday afternoon when officers from the Tri-County Metro Narcotics Squad burst into the Green Leaf Smokers Club outside Williamston with guns drawn.

 

"They treated us like criminals, forced us to the ground, even though I have to walk with a cane," said Clark, 48, who said he suffers from arthritis, seizures and chronic pain.

 

He and the one other customer in the club eventually were asked to show their state-issued medical marijuana cards, which they did, Clark said. They were then allowed to leave.

 

Law enforcement officials remained mum about the reasons for the raid and its results. Read more »