L.A. Medical Marijuana Edibles: More Than Just Your Big Brother’s Pot Brownie

January 30, 2010 – Never mistake the homemade pot brownie found at a frat party for the marijuana dispensary’s pot brownie. So much more goes into the making of the medical-use treat — higher grade trimmings and quality butter, for starters. Plus a brownie like Big Sexy’s Sinful Sweets Peanut Butter Confession, available in most L.A. dispensaries, has just the right dosage and the correct strain of cannabis to give a patient suffering from depression an uplifting, energizing feeling. A patient looking for a muscle-relaxing edible, say, would probably want to go with the cannabis-laced ice cream instead.
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Because such things have to be carefully considered, patients with doctor’s recommendations need the guidance of caregivers at marijuana dispensaries. It wouldn’t be wise to walk into a store and randomly choose from the variety of edibles available: from oral sprays, pills and tinctures, to ice cream, pastries and granola bars, to peanut butter, tea and honey. Each is made with a different strain of cannabis — sativa, indica and hybrid — which produce different effects and are beneficial to specific illnesses.

For those who don’t have a doctor’s recommendation and have never been in a pot shop before, here’s a peek at some of the edibles available in medical marijuana dispensaries. The following were purchased at Zen Healing in West Hollywood by a medical marijuana patient with a doctor’s recommendation. Also included are his “tasting notes.”
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Our volunteer patient had a sweet tooth but for those more interested in savory edibles there are frozen personal-size pizzas (for around $25 at the Venice Beach Care Center) and bagel bites available as well as olive oil (usually one tablespoon a dose).

It’s not recommended to cook with the olive oil, however, since THC starts to break down at 315-320 degrees Fahrenheit. But if you ever do get a hankering for a vegetable LaGanja (lasagna) or Ganja Ganoush, you can always fly to Denver and visit the first pot restaurant in America, Ganja Gourmet.

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'

After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Sunday, 17 January 2010

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.

Seattle's new city attorney to dismiss cases of pot possession

Seattle's new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney.

By Emily Heffter

Seattle Times staff reporter

Seattle's new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed.

In addition, his new criminal division chief, Craig Sims, said he is reviewing about 50 more cases. Unless there are "out of the ordinary circumstances," Sims said, the office doesn't intend to file charges for marijuana possession.

"We're not going to prosecute marijuana-possession cases anymore," Holmes said Thursday during a public interview as part of Town Hall's Nightcap series. "I meant it when I said it" during the campaign.

Seattle voters approved Referendum 75 in 2003, making marijuana the lowest priority for local law enforcement. City records show that Carr still prosecuted many cases.

In the first six months of 2009, Carr declined eight of the 62 marijuana-related cases filed with his office, a city report shows. Of the cases he took up, marijuana was the only charge in 21 cases. In the second half of 2008, Carr dismissed 21 marijuana-related cases and filed 60 others. Of those, marijuana possession was the only charge in 20 cases.

Holmes' policy change comes amid several state-level efforts to decriminalize or legalize marijuana.

A ballot initiative filed Monday would legalize adult marijuana possession, manufacturing and sales in the state. The Legislature is also considering two bills to decriminalize and regulate marijuana, or to make it legal in the state.

The drug would remain illegal under federal law.

Push for Looser Pot Laws Gains Momentum.

Seattle — A push to legalize marijuana on the West Coast is picking up steam as Washington lawmakers and pot proponents in California and Oregon propose separate measures.

The Washington state legislature will hold a preliminary vote Wednesday on whether to sell pot in state liquor stores, though even its authors say the bill is unlikely to pass. The same day in California, backers of a well-funded ballot measure to legalize marijuana are expected to file more than enough signatures to put the initiative before state voters in November.

Activists have also been busy in Washington state, with one group filing a marijuana-legalization initiative last Monday to put the issue on the November ballot. Activists in Oregon, meanwhile, say they have collected more than half of the signatures they need by July to allow a vote on whether the state should set up a system of medical-marijuana dispensaries.

The efforts are part of a national marijuana-legalization movement that has lately been emboldened by several factors, including laws allowing marijuana for medical purposes. The recession may be another reason. With many states suffering big budget deficits, for instance, legalization advocates say the states could benefit from new taxes on the sale of marijuana. In addition, the Obama administration appears to have taken a more-mellow attitude on medical marijuana as societal views about the drug evolve. In a poll last week of 500 adults in Washington state by SurveyUSA, 56% of respondents said legalizing marijuana is a good idea.

“We’re beyond a tipping point culturally,” said Roger Goodman, a Democrat representing Kirkland, Wash., and other Seattle suburbs in the Washington legislature who co-authored the legalization bill, known as HB 2401. “Now we’re at a point where we’re figuring out the safest way to end prohibition.”

West Coast states—especially California—are particularly in the vanguard of the marijuana-legalization push given the region’s more-liberal attitudes toward a variety of issues. Legalization measures in other states, such as Massachusetts and New Hampshire, haven’t gotten as far, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Washington lawmakers will vote on a second bill next week that seeks to reduce the penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana to a $100 fine from a crime with jail time.

Still, there is deep opposition to legalizing marijuana in Washington state from law-enforcement groups and chemical-dependency organizations, many of which argue it would make the drug even more accessible to teenagers than it is currently. Also many argue that marijuana is a “gateway drug,” meaning it will lead those using it to moveon to other drugs.

“What message does legalizing marijuana send to the youth of Washington?” asked Riley Harrison, a ninth-grade student, before a packed committee hearing this week in Olympia. “That you’re willing to gamble our future for a little tax revenue?”

Washington, California and Oregon are three of 13 states that have medical-marijuana laws, which permit patients with doctors’ notes to use the drug. The New Jersey legislature last Monday approved a medical-marijuana bill that will make it the 14th state and outgoing Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to sign it before leaving office next week.

The legality of selling medical marijuana remains tenuous. Federal law considers pot illegal, and enforcement of state laws varies widely among California cities and counties. Last October, though, the Obama administration said it wouldn’t aggressively pursue users of medical marijuana where it is legal.

The legalization ballot measure in California was organized by a pot seller in Oakland, Calif., Richard Lee, whose group says the petition now has more than 700,000 signatures, far more than the 434,000 or so it needs to qualify for the November ballot. The measure would let local governments determine how to regulate and tax pot sales.

So far, Mr. Lee says that his business—which includes a medical-pot club and marijuana-business school dubbed Oaksterdam University, named after the city of Amsterdam where marijuana is decriminalized—has spent “a little more than $1 million” supporting the pot-legalization initiative. Mr. Lee says he is optimistic the measure will pass.

An April survey by the Field Poll found that 56% of California voters support legalizing pot and taxing its proceeds as a way of mitigating the state’s financial crisis.

The California measure’s opponents include various law-enforcement groups represented by lobbyist John Lovell. He says the California Peace Officers’ Association, California Narcotic Officers Association and California Police Chiefs’ Association are concerned that legalizing pot will lead more impaired drivers and embolden illegal-drug cartels to gain control over a legal industry. “The bottom line for all three groups…is we already have significant criminal and societal problems with alcohol abuse,” said Mr. Lovell.

Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Author: Nick Wingfield and Justin Scheck
Published: January 15, 2010
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/