Ellen Rosenblum Defeats Anti-Marijuana Candidate Dwight Holton To Become Next Oregon Attorney General

It wasn’t that long ago that the 2012 Oregon attorney general race was still in it’s infancy. Dwight Holton and Ellen Rosenblum had announced their candidacies for the Democratic Primary, and yet again the Oregon GOP failed to field a candidate. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Ellen Rosenblum at the time, but I knew exactly who Dwight Holton was.

Dwight Holton is one of the biggest anti-medical marijuana crusaders on the planet. During Holton’s two years as a federal prosecutor in Oregon, he lead a series of raids on medical marijuana providers in Southern Oregon Oregon, which deprived hundreds of legal patients of their medicine. Dwight Holton also sent harassing letters to law abiding Oregon collective owners. I personally read several of these letters from multiple collective owners who I know for a fact were following Oregon law.

As a medical marijuana patient in Oregon, I look at Dwight Holton as the ‘boogey man’ who is out to get people like me, simply because of the legal medicine I choose to consume. This is a feeling that is shared by the entire Oregon medical marijuana community, which is large. The state lists roughly 55,000 patients, but that doesn’t include caretakers, growers, and friends and family members of the program participants, as well as sympathetic supporters that have no direct ties to the program. When you add up all of those groups, and consider how we feel about Dwight Holton, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone why he lost today at the ballot box…but more of that later. ]]> brian@alpinegeek.com (Administrator) frontpage Wed, 16 May 2012 17:16:29 +0000 http://www.greeneradio.org/site/index.php/General-Marijuana/plasma-lights-burn-like-the-sun-to-grow-better-for-buds.html http://www.greeneradio.org/site/index.php/General-Marijuana/plasma-lights-burn-like-the-sun-to-grow-better-for-buds.html You've already got your pick between MH, HPS, and LED lighting systems for your grow room—now you can add LEPs (Light Emitting Plasma) to that list.

According to Marijuana.com:

Light emitting plasma is a gas and metal halide mixture that becomes heated, once activated, through an electrical field inside a very tiny little glass bulb. Once heated all the way, the gas and metal halide mixture, combined with the electrical field, creates a plasma state within the bulb in which an extremely bright light is produced. This bright light that is produced is said to be the latest technology to more closely mimic the sun in comparison to any other type of light fixture.

The new lights also consume just half of what HPS and MH fixtures do and last 50,000 hours—three times as long—as conventional ballast setups. They're new to market so expect the bulbs to be expensive and difficult to acquire for a bit until the technology further penetrates the market.

Connecticut hopes to avoid problems that other medical marijuana states — cough, cough, California — have seen. After all, marijuana is still federally prohibited, and the new Connecticut law is designed to prevent abuse or anything else that might tick off the federal government. (You know, like a well-stocked weed dispensary on every corner.)

Under the bill, patients and their caregivers must register with the Department of Consumer Protection. In addition, their doctors must certify that there is a medical need for marijuana to be dispensed, like in the case of debilitating diseases like cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis or epilepsy.

On the surface, this law sounds strict, but we'll see how long until the chillest doctors find a way around it. In other states, marijuana is prescribed for anxiety, depression, and insomnia, among other conditions.

Still no word on when marijuana will just be legalized, but it's probably not wise to hold one's breath. (Unless you're trying to keep the smoke in your lungs longer.) And marijuana laws continue to change internationally — just last week, Dutch courts upheld a law preventing tourists from buying legal marijuana in coffee shops.

[Image via AP]

Over 300 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, recently signed a petition that encourages the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to carefully consider marijuana legalization in America. The petition draws attention to an article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, whose findings highlight the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate marijuana, rather than needlessly spending billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.

Miron predicts that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement, in addition to generating $2.4 billion annually if taxed like most consumer goods, or $6 billion per year if taxed similarly to alcohol and tobacco. The economists signing the petition note that the budgetary implications of marijuana prohibition are just one of many factors to be considered, but declare it essential that these findings become a serious part of the national decriminalization discussion.

The advantages of marijuana legalization extend far beyond an opportunity to make a dent in our federal deficit. The criminalization of marijuana is one of the many fights in the War on Drugs that has failed miserably. And while it's tempting to associate only the harder, "scarier" drugs with this botched crusade, the fact remains that marijuana prohibition is very much a part of the battle. The federal government has even classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance (its most serious category of substances), placing it in a more dangerous category than cocaine. More than 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana use and possession each year, and 46 percent of all drug prosecutions across the country are for marijuana possession. Yet this costly and time-consuming targeting of marijuana users by law enforcement and lawmakers has done little to quell use of the drug.

More than 300 economists, including three nobel laureates, have signed a petition calling attention to the findings of a paper by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, which suggests that if the government legalized marijuana it would save $7.7 billion annually by not having to enforce the current prohibition on the drug. The report added that legalization would save an additional $6 billion per year if the government taxed marijuana at rates similar to alcohol and tobacco.

That's as much as $13.7 billion per year, but it's still minimal when compared to the federal deficit, which hit $1.5 trillion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While the economists don't directly call for pot legalization, the petition asks advocates on both sides to engage in an "open and honest debate" about the benefits of pot prohibition.

"At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues, and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition," the petition states.

The economic benefits of pushing pot into mainstream commerce have long been cited as a reason to make the drug legal, and the economists' petition comes as government officials at both the federal and local levels are looking for ways to raise funds. The majority of Americans say they prefer cutting programs to increasing taxes as a way to deal with the nation’s budget deficit -- marijuana legalization would seemingly give the government money without doing either. ]]> brian@alpinegeek.com (Administrator) frontpage Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:41:03 +0000 http://www.greeneradio.org/site/index.php/Medical-Marijuana/san-francisco-marijuana-shop-crackdown-is-about-locations-read-more-here-httpwwwsacbeecom201204164416873san-francisco-marijuana-shop-crackdownhtmlstorylinkcpy.html http://www.greeneradio.org/site/index.php/Medical-Marijuana/san-francisco-marijuana-shop-crackdown-is-about-locations-read-more-here-httpwwwsacbeecom201204164416873san-francisco-marijuana-shop-crackdownhtmlstorylinkcpy.html

By Peter Hecht
The Sacramento Bee