As vote looms, Northern California ponders how to peddle legal pot – CNN.com.

Watched this DVD (documentary) last night, got it in the mail from Blockbuster finally after it’s been in my queue for awhile now. Pretty good film, about what you’d expect. Download it on iTunes! Here is a trailer for the film:

Here’s the website: http://truehigh.com/

I just got this DVD from Blockbuster Online. Even non-smokers should watch this DVD, but I doubt many will. It is not a “stoner” movie, but a documentary about the crazy expensive war against marijuana, and how much it costs the United States in many ways. I love documentaries, and I love marijuana. This was a most excellent combination, and very educational.

From Reuters:

The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.

The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it — as long as they are out of public view — despite a federal ban.

“This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members,” said Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.

“Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana,” said Martinez. “We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis.”

The cafe — in a two-story building which formerly housed a speak-easy and adult erotic club Rumpspankers — is technically a private club, but is open to any Oregon residents who are NORML members and hold an official medical marijuana card.

Members pay $25 per month to use the 100-person capacity cafe. They don’t buy marijuana, but get it free over the counter from “budtenders”. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., it serves food but has no liquor license.

There are about 21,000 patients registered to use marijuana for medical purposes in Oregon. Doctors have prescribed marijuana for a host of illnesses, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Tourette’s syndrome.

On opening day, reporters invited to the cafe could smell, but were not allowed to see, people smoking marijuana.

“I still run a coffee shop and events venue, just like I did before we converted it to the Cannabis Cafe, but now it will be cannabis-themed,” said Eric Solomon, the owner of the cafe, who is looking forward to holding marijuana-themed weddings, film festivals and dances in the second-floor ballroom.

NO PROSECUTION

The creation of the cafe comes almost a month after the Obama administration told federal attorneys not to prosecute patients who use marijuana for medical reasons or dispensaries in states which have legalized them.

About a dozen states, including Oregon, followed California’s 1996 move to adopt medical marijuana laws, allowing the drug to be cultivated and sold for medical use. A similar number have pending legislation or ballot measures planned.

Pot cafes, known as “coffee shops”, are popular in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, where possession of small amounts of marijuana is legal. Portland’s Cannabis Cafe is the first of its kind to open in the United States, according to NORML.

Growing, possessing, distributing and smoking marijuana are still illegal under U.S. federal law, which makes no distinction between medical and recreational use.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies did not return phone calls from Reuters on Friday seeking comment on the Portland cafe’s operations.

READ MORE AT REUTERS

Man I just watched this DVD. I need to be on a damn show like that. The DVD is about the 2000 Cannabis Cup, but part of it is a reality TV show they did called Cannabis Castaways. On the show, several stoners were placed on a boat where they will live for a couple weeks, with an ENDLESS UNLIMITED supply of the world’s finest weed, and their mission is to smoke each strain of weed and vote on it. One strain would be “voted off” the boat each day until they were left with only one superior strain of marijuana, which would be the winner of that years Cannabis Cup competition.

Again, I say, I need to be on a show like that.

Demystifying the Man behind the Mission:
A Journalist’s Study Of Pro-Marijuana Activist, Rob Griffin
By Janie Sativa

Marijuana.. Cannabis. Dank. Four-twenty. Marley. The Yellow Submarine. Weed. Tai Stick. Torch. Toke. Grass. Reefer. Skunk. Smoke. Ganja. Pot. M.J. Jane. Indo. Puff. Smoke. Hemp. Dope. Chronic. Bud. Poke. Burn. Funk. Buddha.

Cannabis sativa (or subsp. indica) is a psychoactive plant primarily used by smoking the dried flowers and subtending leaves of the female plant. The major biologically active chemical compound in cannabis is 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), commonly referred to as THC.

Currently a modern movement for legalization of the cannabis sativa plant has taken stronghold in American culture, especially within the liberal sub-cultures of California. All over, people are pushing for the recognition of the substance as a medicine as well as the right to use it as a recreational substance. Just how new is this, “modern” movement?

Read the rest of this entry »

From AG Weekly:

State candidate: Hemp worth fighting for

By Blair Koch, Ag Weekly correspondent

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – Hemp, the non-narcotic and well behaved cousin of marijuana, is an ingredient found on many products gracing American store shelves, from body-care products to nutritious food and automobile parts.

Although consumers are demanding more products with hemp, fueling a robust import market from Canada, the United States government continues its ban on allowing the crop to be grown here since the government does not distinguish between hemp and its infamous cousin.

During a candidate forum at the Twin Falls County Farm Bureau office on Sept. 11, Democrat Peter Rickards, who is challenging District 23 Rep. Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, said Idaho should join with other states working to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp.

“Can we follow them back to the future?” Rickards said about Idaho’s joining North Dakota as a state allowing the crop to be grown.

Hemp hasn’t always been banned from growing in American soil. It was a major cash crop on George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s plantations. Industrial hemp was banned in 1937 along with mari-juana.

North Dakota issued its first permits allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp in 2007; but before any-one can move forward, they need a permit from the
Drug Enforcement Agency.

While industrial hemp hasn’t gained approval on the federal level, demand for hemp products contin-ues grow.

According to a press release from the Hemp Industries Association at HIA: Hemp Industries Association: Industrial Hemp Trade Group, Education & Industry Development, hemp food sales in the United States have averaged 41 percent annual growth over the past three years.

“Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Statistics Canada data show the quantity of hemp seed exports increased 300% from 2006 to 2007. Hemp oil exports kept pace, with an 85% increase in quantity. Hemp fiber exports showed encouraging progress, with a 65% increase in quantity,” the release states.

Besides a growing market for hemp products, the crop could be advantageous to Idaho farmers for many reasons, Rickards said. It’s a low-water, low-pesticide crop that reinvigorates the soil.

Although Idaho hasn’t made any official moves to legalize growing industrial hemp on the state level, Idaho State Farm Bureau board member Rick Pearson of Buhl said the organization would support an initiative to do so.

“We are in favor of industrial hemp but (it) really is more of a northern Idaho thing; they’re the people really behind it,” Pearson said. “So we would be in support of legalizing the crop, but I don’t know if it would take off here.”