Marijuana 420 News from Marijuana420.net

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- A Dutch city’s ban on sales of marijuana and hashish to foreign customers in so-called coffee shops is a lawful and necessary measure to cut crime from drug- tourism, an adviser to the European Union’s highest court said.

The city of Maastricht’s ban on shops selling cannabis- derived products to non-residents is necessary to maintain public order, Yves Bot, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice, said in a non-binding opinion today.

Election-talk usually doesn't attract our attention until after Labor Day, but there have been some notable developments recently on the topic of marijuana.

Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act, is on everyone's list of Most Divisive Issues for November. If passed, adults could possess, grow and transport marijuana statewide, but individual cities and counties would impose regulations and taxes. "Prop 19," by the way, was also the number of the original California marijuana decriminalization initiative back in 1972.

In a small white room above the Berkeley’s Patient’s Group marijuana dispensary, three men in spotless white lab coats and masks toil over bins of marijuana. One uses a high-powered video camera to scan the potent buds for hair, mold, bugs and any other detritus.

The men quietly scoop buds with names like Cali Gold and All-star Jack Frost into labeled bags for sale in the downstairs dispensary.

"We definitely have all the sanitary stuff going on," said sorter Mark Silva. "The gloves and the masks and the lab coats."

PHOENIX - Whether to legalize medical marijuana will be on the ballot this November, and Arizona voters will decide whether to allow doctors to prescribe it to some patients.

And the state hopes to regulate the drug if the measure passes.

"We need to have rules in place from the outset," says Andrew Myers, campaign manager for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project.

Myers says California's problem is that they failed to limit the number of marijuana dispensaries and the patients who could get the plants.

Eight medical marijuana providers applied for licenses to do business in Bozeman Tuesday, leaving the city with one more application than the 32-license cap the Bozeman City Commission has proposed.

"It's too early to know what the final end game is because we'll have to see what happens with those applications," Commissioner Chris Mehl said Tuesday afternoon.

But if the city winds up with too many people vying for not enough licenses, "we'll have to deal with that if and when it happens," he said.

The Michigan appeals court says the state's medical marijuana law can't be used retroactively to save people from drug charges.

The court reversed a decision by a Tuscola County judge, who had dismissed charges against a man caught with nine plants and drug paraphernalia. Keith Campbell says he was using marijuana for medicinal purposes.

July 14, 2010 - On Nov. 5, 2008, Michigan became the 13th state in the U.S. to legalize marijuana for medical use, by a statewide vote of 63 percent to 37 percent on Michigan Proposal 08-1. That may be the last time there was a clear consensus on medical marijuana use in Michigan, as municipalities seek to define its use in their borders, law enforcement officers aren't sure whether it's really legal or not, doctors debate whether its efficacy is up to snuff, caregivers seek patients and patients search for caregivers.

New federal guidelines that will streamline the diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for veterans are likely to increase the number of PTSD patients in New Mexico’s medical marijuana program because they will make it easier for veterans to be diagnosed. Out of 14 states that allow medicinal use of marijuana number, New Mexico is the only one that includes PTSD on the list of conditions that qualify for a license. Although the Veterans Administration refuses to allow its doctors to provide veterans with signatures that allow them to get a state license, at 29 percent of the total number of licensees, PTSD patients still comprise the largest group in the state program.

For Lori Stocker, marijuana is not so much for getting high as getting by.

Suffering from a rare nerve disease with no prospect of a cure, she's in constant pain.

"The pain is always there," she said. "The nerves just keep firing off pain."

Not even the insertion of a spinal cord stimulator could combat the debilitating consequences of her condition.

So Lori turned to medical marijuana for relief. It works, up to a point.

"It certainly doesn't take the pain away," she said, "but it helps... relax you a little bit so that you are not concentrated so much on it."

Oakland inched toward a plan to allow industrial-scale production of medical marijuana, sparking a lively debate between supporters and opponents who filled the Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday evening.

The proposal crafted by City Councilmembers Larry Reid and Rebecca Kaplan would prompt the first major expansion six years after Oakland first authorized the distribution of medical marijuana in dispensaries.