Medical Marijuana

Maine marijuana activist Don Christen is getting ready to do eight months behind bars after the state Supreme Court rejected his appeal in a marijuana cultivation case where he argued he was growing for patients.

Spoken like a true drug czar -- Gil Kerlikowske does his best John Walters impression and succeeds pretty well.

Oakland's medical marijuana dispensaries asked the voters to tax them, and the voters said "Okay." A measure creating a first-of-its-kind special business tax on medical marijuana sellers passed by a lopsided margin in pot-friendly Oakland.

Medical marijuana supporters in Colorado won a major victory Monday night as the state Board of Health voted down a Department of Public Health and Environment proposal that would have strictly defined caregivers and limited them to providing for no more than five patients.

Eleven years after DC voters overwhelmingly approved a medical marijuana initiative, Congress is finally butting out. The House yesterday approved the annual District appropriations bill without the Barr amendment, which had barred the District from implementing that vote.

Hawaii's Republican Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a bill that would have created a task force to study problems and issues with the state's medical marijuana program. Now, the legislature has overridden that veto.

Colorado's medical marijuana program is taking off, with the number of patients, recommending physicians, and dispensaries all on the rise. But a state agency has proposed rule changes that could blunt the growth, endanger the new-style dispensaries and make it more difficult for patients to obtain their medicine. There should be fireworks at Monday's public hearing on the proposal.

Cops who confiscate legally permitted marijuana or plants from patients and growers in California could pay out the nose for their violations of the constitution, a California appeals court has ruled in the first decision of its kind. That just might rein in some of those renegade, recalcitrant departments who want to ignore a law they don't like.

Voters in Oakland will decide whether to impose a whopping 1500% tax increase on dispensaries, and it's not an attack on them. In fact, it was the dispensaries' own idea. Talk about your good citizens.

When he got a 93-year sentence for a small medical marijuana grow in Oklahoma, Will Foster became a poster child for drug war abuses. A national campaign helped free him, and he headed for the friendlier climes of northern California, which released him from parole after three years. But Oklahoma wants him back, and now Foster has been in jail in California for the past 15 months fighting extradition. He needs your help.