cannabisnews.com: Protesters Rally For Medical Marijuana Use





Protesters Rally For Medical Marijuana Use
Posted by CN Staff on September 23, 2002 at 18:55:55 PT
KCRA's David Bienick Reports 
Source: TheKCRAChannel
Sacramento, Calif. -- Protestors Monday locked arm-in-arm at the state Capitol to support medical marijuana, but their push for justice landed some of them in handcuffs. The protesters rallied against recent raids by federal drug enforcement agents. The protest turned into a march to the federal courthouse, where hundreds of people converged to try to make their point.
Protestors blocked the doors at the federal courthouse. Some waited to be arrested by police. Hundreds of protestors rallied, insisting that medical marijuana helps them deal with pain associated with a variety of illnesses. "I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue," said medical marijuana supporter Patti Carballer. "I have post traumatic arthritis and classic migraine headaches," said medical marijuana supporter Jeremy Walkawitz. Sharon Brooks says that since she suffered a stroke in 1996, marijuana has helped reduced the tremors in her arm. "I just smoke a small amount in the evening. The spasms go way down. I wake up the next day, and I'm fine. I go about my business," Brooks said. But six years after California voters passed Proposition 215, legalizing medical marijuana, the issue is not settled, because the federal government still considers all pot illegal. "United States attorneys should refrain from filing charges in this state, where doing so directly conflicts with California law," said San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan. But the protestors say the federal government is actually cracking down, recently raiding a number of medical marijuana farms and clubs in California. "We woke up to guns and to the stomping of boots and riot gear. And we were forced to the ground, and our garden was taken," said Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana spokeswoman Valerie Corral. Prior to the protest, organizers worked out a deal with the California Highway Patrol, saying that nobody would be arrested for marijuana possession as long as there was no smoking on the grounds. "There has been a couple of incidents. But on Capitol grounds, there haven't been any problems at all. They've been very, very cooperative," said CHP spokesman David Brunelle. Note: Some Arrests Made.Source: TheKCRAChannelAuthor: David Bienick Reports Published: September 23, 2002Copyright 2002 by TheKCRAChannelWebsite: http://www.thekcrachannel.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:WAMMhttp://www.wamm.org/Americans For Safe Accesshttp://www.safeaccessnow.org/Pictures: MMJ Protests - Sept. 23, 2002 http://freedomtoexhale.com/protestpics.htmMarijuana Protest Leads to Arrests at White Househttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14216.shtmlMedical-Pot Supporters Fight Fedshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14210.shtml
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Comment #16 posted by BGreen on September 24, 2002 at 04:20:35 PT
Thanks for answering me, Dr. Russo
As a fellow guitarist, we need to jam at the big Cannabisnews.com party we're going to have upon re-legalization.
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Comment #15 posted by Ethan Russo MD on September 24, 2002 at 03:56:09 PT:
BGreen
You are correct, sir!
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Comment #14 posted by BGreen on September 23, 2002 at 23:56:54 PT
DdC, Dr. Russo and anybody else
I have a rudimentary knowledge of pharmacology, and in my days of pharmacy work I filled a lot of multiple prescriptions for the elderly and nursing home patients. I know most of the drugs weren't needed except to deal with side effects of each other. They were given sleeping pills with a rather long half-life, and then prescribed antidepressants to combat the lethargy.I was thinking about the TV ads for "prescription medications" and the fact that more than half of the commercials are describing side effects, then I got to thinking about all of the zombified elderly and had a rather dreadful thought; There aren't any double blind tests going on to test the safety of these "drug cocktails" because there are millions of possible combinations that people might be ingesting, so in effect the so-called "safe and effective" legal drugs might be lethal time bombs endangering the lives of the amerikan public.When the argument about all of the different chemicals in cannabis comes up, we have to mention that they were all included in the same plant which implies an intended synergistic effect, whereas the mixing of multiple prescription drugs is playing possible russian roulette.The incarceration of humans for cannabis on the basis of health claims has to be stopped. We must have a level playing field. There are way too many other health endangering activities which are perfectly legal and I'm tired of politicians spewing false health claims without the refutations of the medical community.
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Comment #13 posted by DdC on September 23, 2002 at 22:26:50 PT
Oh the reality of it all...¶8)
To rationalize the WoD you would have to be crazy. I had a patient that was prescribed a Rox Cocktail (morphine and a tranquilizer) It was considered a schedule#2 , less dangerous than schedule#1 cannabis that can'tbe prescribed. #2 requires the Doctor to personally confer with the Pharmacist, very secure and proper. Then the druggist gave it to the 18 year old delivery boy to bring to me for the patient. After 4 days the patient passed and the local hospice said to dump it in the toilet, though the agency had stricter requirements. Or at least the Nurse thought so. The fact I'd been administering it for 4 days slipped the mind. Paranoia, what to do with the "Morphine"? On a weekend. Can't dump it cause I could keep it, though I had it for 4 days if I really wanted it. "Bring it to the office, there's a seminar going on and the instructure can lock it up in the safe until someone can dump it. "Properly" NO.What? No, I will not bring an open bottle of morphine 6 miles to an office that isn't technically open to dump into the basically same type of toilet I have 5 feet from me. She didn't get the "splanin I'd be doin" to the sheriff as a hemp wearing longhair who had been up all night with a patient until passing, with an open bottle of morphine beside me, in an ole VW bus, taking it to a business that isn't open. So she called for back up and they conferred and got back to me and decided it would be best if a Nurse came to the house and "properly dumped it into the toilet". Just for kicks I ask her if she tested it first, then smiled. How can booze be the #1 killer of kids and not even be considered a drug in the drug war? Not a dime on the D.E.A.th's budget yet 99% eradicated hemp is. Billions of dollars to wipe out coca plants with Monsanto Dyncorps and Sikorsky receiving it and getting the taxes written off with Walters Philanthropy Roundtable to Partnership Propagandist. While more chemicals and lab Dow Corning lab equipment process the coca leaf into a white powder...Tobacco chemical additives still not mentioned by gerbals or gopers. Kill the new heathern devil weed tobacco! Nicotines addictive but I'd be willing to speculate the flame retardant chemicals added might irritate a lung or two. Flavorings and preservatives ignited might cause mutant cells and the other 650+ colorings and paper etc might add to the 400,000 deaths a year yet cigarettes with chemicals aren't mentioned let alone a controlled substance and neither is booze. Nor should it be if law enforcement would prioritize according to community needs and not DC Bushit politico's rampages on Democracy. Organic tobacco from Native Americans or from Egypt or Turkey aren't having the rash of Parkinsons, MS and other Neurological Diseases, heart or lung problems. Maybe in 30 years if we export enough but some countries are starting to protest US tobacco imports for this very reason. Maintaining Dysfunction...As atrocious and diabolically insane as caging sick and dying people for using ganjameds is... Doesn't someone feel a tad remorseful that they are also caging healthy people for using it? Like a lesser evil and yet the D.E.A.th still stormtroop the doors down medcanners after all these years of gaurding a distance from the "stoners or recreational or religious or hempsters" Then the meat and grain industry gets hip to the EFA's in hempseed as the market starts to take off their lacky D.E.A.th pissants sworm on 17 truckloads heading to petshops near you. Oh but we aren't a part of those "marijuana" people. We have CIA on our board of directors, wez legit...We're poisoned in the cotton fields even the fields near the cotton crop using 270,000 TONs of Monsanto/Dow/Dupont chemicals a year while the D.E.A.th marijuana eradications are 99% organic softer stronger hemp not poisoning farmworkers...The "American" river runs from south to north. The pollution laws across the border are much less "costly" and effective as the US. But the river still runs south to north...Where do potholes go?39 prisons were built in California and One University during the same timeframe. While earthquacks, fires and mudslides replaced fear of reefer and while rolling darkouts made Enron rich, and while SUV's clogged freeways and profitted crude oil korpses and poisoned kids lungs. Ashcraft's D.E.A.th Just Us finds sick and dying cannabis users a priority. Proper and Secure and as far from reality as one can get...When will they ever learn...When we say so!Peace, Love and Liberty...DdCPower concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. -- Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty. -- Aldous HuxleyA right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. -- Ramsey ClarkThe whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759."Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom." -- John F. Kennedy"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. KennedyAt a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would today, pour out a fiery stream of
biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. -- Frederick DouglassAnyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy. -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. -- Mohandas GandhiThe United States is in no way founded upon the Christian religion -- George Washington & John Adams, in a diplomatic message to Malta."I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." -- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787"American High Society
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionwhyitstimetolegalize.showMessage?topicID=323.topic
Divide & Maintain
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Comment #12 posted by Nuevo Mexican on September 23, 2002 at 22:15:48 PT
CNN spreads the lies....
Facts and Stats or Disinformation from the Dept. of Silly walks?
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9702/weed.wars/facts/negative.effects/index.html
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Comment #11 posted by VitaminT on September 23, 2002 at 21:26:58 PT
False Alarm on CNN
sure they gave both sides in the debate but that's been up there for over 5 years unchanged. It's not as though they're pushing the envelope of journalistic integrity. What have they done for us lately?
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on September 23, 2002 at 21:21:11 PT
Video From KXTV
http://www.news10-tv.net/news-story/September2002/092302/_video/Demonstr.ram
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on September 23, 2002 at 21:18:23 PT
News Brief From KXTV - Sept. 23rd, 2002
Demonstrators Rally in Support of Medicinal Marijuana Supporters of California's medicinal marijuana law called on the federal government to stop a crackdown today. They rallied this afternoon at Sacramento's Federal Ccourthouse.Supporters of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, are upset over federal arrests of Californians who claim to need marijuana for medical reasons. However, a spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration said it is only going after marijuana distributors and traffickers in the state.Protesters at the courthouse demanded the release of a medicinal marijuana provider. Several of the protesters were arrested. "We are willing to hold our ground," said demonstrator Hillary Mcquie.
"We are willing to escalate our non violent tactics and demand our rights."Many of the demonstrators at the rally say they rely on marijuana to relieve pain. "I have a life to live and children, but sometimes for pain relief you need to use certain medications and marijuana is a good one," said Dan McMullan, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. "I eat it because I don't like the smoke, but I'll eat like a half a cookie, and I get out of bed." 
Demonstrators Rally in Support of Medicinal Marijuana 
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Comment #8 posted by DdC on September 23, 2002 at 20:50:51 PT
Arbitrary and Capricious sounds about right...
Testimony of Lester Grinspoon MD excerpted
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionantiwodwarriors.showMessage?topicID=35.topicUntil the recent vote in California, efforts to change the laws had been futile. In 1972 the National Organization for the Reform of Marihuana Laws (NORML) entered a petition to move marihuana out of Schedule I under federal law so that it could become a prescription drug. It was not until 1986 that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) finally agreed to the public hearings required by law. During two years of hearings, many patients and physicians testified and thousands of pages of documentation were introduced. In 1988 the DEA's Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, declared that marihuana fulfilled the requirement for transfer to Schedule II. In his opinion he described it as "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." His order was overruled by the DEA.Annual Ditchweed Eradication Boondoggle Underway Again 99% hempAs for the DEA, said Conrad, they are engaging in what is "basically an arbitrary abuse of power. They have discretion to deal with this, and their discretion is to be arbitrary, cruel and capricious." ("Arbitrary and capricious" is legal language that was used by DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in 1988 to conclude that DEA was obligated under the Controlled Substances Act to reschedule marijuana as a prescription medicine. DEA Chief Administrator Robert Bonner proceeded to arbitrarily and capriciously disregard Judge Young's well researched and reasoned decision, which the Act allowed him to do.) http://www.drcnet.org/wol/194.html#ditchweed
D.E.A.th Deceptions
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Comment #7 posted by afterburner on September 23, 2002 at 20:10:40 PT:
Bush again
According to CNN Headline News: The Bush White House said, "He supports a state's right to decide for itself." re: California's embryonic stem-cell research. Why not, medical marijuana?
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Comment #6 posted by afterburner on September 23, 2002 at 20:00:37 PT:
interesting stuff p4me
Since ultimately only Congress can repeal federal marijuana prohibition and renegotiate international treaties on same, I say Vote Them All Out until they take a stand or take action . No more fence-sitting allowed. People are suffering and dying while the Congress avoids the issue again and again. This time it has to be different. From now on. 
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Comment #5 posted by BGreen on September 23, 2002 at 19:49:53 PT
Here's one link p4me
from the Stockport Express
Café owner faces cannabis charges
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Comment #4 posted by p4me on September 23, 2002 at 19:47:20 PT
How did the DEA get away with it all
From the CNN Drug Wars- http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9702/weed.wars/issues/background/index.html -article it says:On September 6, 1988, the DEA's chief administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, declared that marijuana in its natural form is "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. (T)he provisions of the (Controlled Substances) Act permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II."Judge Young's order that the marijuana plant be transferred to Schedule II was rejected by the DEA.The DEA said it decided against re-scheduling marijuana based on testimony and comments from numerous medical doctors who had conducted detailed research and were widely considered experts in their respective fields.--------------------------------How did they defy a ruling of the court and get away with it? The CNN article seems very factual as if they want some sort of journalistic respect. WOW! What a change in the wind. 1,2
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Comment #3 posted by p4me on September 23, 2002 at 19:38:28 PT
Holy Cow- CNN goes breaks the silence
I have not read this comprehensive online presentation by CNN called "Weed Wars." I am all but shocked by an attempt to present the facts. Here it is: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9702/weed.wars/1,2
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Comment #2 posted by p4me on September 23, 2002 at 19:22:44 PT
Day 11of the trial of the DEfenders from x-ile
DE trial day 11The good news is that 2 more charges were thrown out by Judge Fish - the bad news being that nobody has gone free yet!Following on from the prosecution withdrawing Roo's "attempted supply" and Fish saying Lannigan's evidence couldn't go forward on Friday, Fish today sdaid that Colin's "allowing premises to be used for smoking cannabis on Sept 15th" charge couldn't go ahead because there wasn't any evidence that anybody else was smoking apart from Colin, and the other direct supply charge on Steve was also kicked out because Cook's evidence was completely untrustworthy. This basically leaves all the "management" charges in whether allowing premises to used for smoking or being involved in supply........This afternoon, Colin finally got in the witness box to defend himself. Won't go into details here (edited highlights at some later stage) but it seemed to go down fairly well with the jury. He covered his history of using mediweed, then his first bust and acquittal for growing for himself, then setting up the MMCO, his second bust and acquittal and the opening of the DE. He will be giving further evidsence on the 20th Nov tomorrow.Phil has not yet returned from France, which may delay things, but otherwise tomorrow should the rest of Colin's evidence and from MMCO members.woof,woof!Billy Barker
news'oundps pretty good coverage of Colin's evidence on BBC TV North West tonigfht - articles in Mcr Evening News and Manchester Metro News last week if someone can find links?????1,2
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Comment #1 posted by lookinside on September 23, 2002 at 19:15:39 PT
She says it was great!
My better half attended the rally and said it was a success.I hope the boys back east get the message.They will try to marginalize us. We need to refuse to be marginalized. Time to show up at every political debate and rally over the next 6 weeks.We CAN make a difference!
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