Cannabis Copilot News – Local Medical Marijuana News For The International Medical Marijuana Community

(El Paso Times) EL PASO — Mexican federal police said Saturday that they arrested a second man in connection with the recent birthday party massacre in Juárez in which gunmen killed 16 people, including 11 teenagers.

Federal officials said the team of shooters were tipped off that people at the birthday party were members of a rival gang known as Artistas Asesinos (Artists Assassins), who reportedly work for the Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán drug cartel from Sinaloa.

The shooters were informed that the party would be at 10:30 p.m. Around that time, 16 gunmen arrived, some armed with AK-47s and AR-15 assault rifles, to shoot the partygoers, and sealed off the 1300 block of Villas del Portal.

Officials said some of the victims were gang members, but most were identified as students and athletes.

The attackers initially did not mean to kill some women and children. Arzate Meléndez said at a news conference Saturday that Ramírez said “que dispararan a todos parejo,” which roughly translates to “shoot everyone.”

In total, 16 died and 12 were wounded. The youngest killed was a 13-year-old girl; the oldest was 42.

Stop and think about this.  This massacre occurred just over the border from El Paso, Texas.  Imagine chaperoning your teenage son’s or daughter’s birthday party.  Picture gunmen with assault rifles bursting in, spraying your home with gunfire.  Try to comprehend the horror of trying to escape, trying to help your child, and finding every escape route blocked by more gunmen.

28% of young people will use marijuana this year; 11% will use twice a week or more.

You may think that Juárez is far away and that you and your children have nothing to do with rival drug gang warfare, so this doesn’t affect you.  But so long as there exists a War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs, there is the chance you can get caught up in the crossfire.  These Mexican gangs are controlling marijuana trafficking in 230 American cities.  28% of all young people aged 18-25 will use marijuana this year; 11% will use more than twice a week.  Those young people are going to get their marijuana from someone.  Will it be a dealer for a Mexican gang from Sinaloa or Juárez?  Could there be a misunderstanding that leads to gunmen attacking your college-aged child’s party in Peoria, Pocatello, or Portland?

Plus you must remember that both sides fighting the War on Marijuana are well armed and that sometimes, police make mistakes, too.  Mistakes on search warrants for drug raids killed 64-year-old John Adams of Lebanon, Tennessee; 46-year-old Willie Heard of Osawatomie, Kansas; 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston of Atlanta, Georgia; 45-year-old Israel Mena of Denver, Colorado; 44-year-old Cheryl Noel of Dunkalk, Maryland; 65-year-old Mario Paz of Compton, California; and 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda of Modesto, California were all shot by police who were serving warrants on locations that either turned out to be wrong addresses or turned out to find no drugs whatsoever.

The only sensible way to protect our children from the horrors of prohibition-related drug trafficking violence is to take the market away from the criminals and give it to responsible law-abiding businesspeople.  After all, when is the last time you hear of teenagers getting caught in the crossfire of Al Capone’s gang warring over moonshine distribution?

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Hemp Headlines

1. Two more teenagers die from Jaurez drug massacre at wrong address
2. Washington lawmakers asked to repay lunch funds from visit with Rick Steves
3. new group LegalizeUtah looking to end prohibition in the Beehive State

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

• Roots Monday: Maree McRae – “Speak Your Mind”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Marijuana study looks like a go in Rhode Island
• Midwest reform efforts in Kansas and Iowa

This Month in NORML with Executive Director Allen St. Pierre

• Update on the CBS Times Square billboard controversy and the Super Bowl Focus on the Family “Tim Tebow ad”

Daily Toker Tunes and live chat available every even hour (Pacific) from 8am-10pm.

Our new format at NORML SHOW LIVE runs from 8am-10pm Pacific Time, with Daily Toker Tunes playing for an hour between the replays of the most recent show.  So many people have asked the names of the songs played that I’m posting the list here every day for your reference.

If you’d like to get your band or favorite tune played in the Daily Toker Tunes rotation, just send me an email to stash@norml.org with the subject Toker Tunes and I’ll forward it to our volunteer music editors for review.  Remember your tune needn’t necessarily be about cannabis – we also love tunes about freedom, justice, civil rights, and more.

If we want to win this fight to end adult prohibition, there needs to be many of us speaking our minds. Today’s tune for Roots Monday is a wonderful folk song from singer/songwriter Maree McRae. The song titled, “Speak Your Mind” is beautifully written Amerciana like you would hear from seasoned artists like Alison Krause or Patti Griffith. Maree McRae is from Denver, Colorado and has a new album called “Urgency” that is filled with more gems from this talented artist. She had some success with her first album, “I won’t settle for less” but then quit touring to take care of her young son who has an immune disorder. Her son, Stephen, is now a teenager, and Maree is back to making music. Visit her website, Maree McRae.com to purchase her music or hear more from this artist.

I’m excited to announce the formation of three new NORML chapters and six subchapters.

Our chapter in Spokane, Washington, formerly known as “Inland Northwest NORML“, has been promoted to our newest statewide chapter, Washington NORML. Kevin Oliver is the Executive Director and has stated it is his goal to form a Washington NORML subchapter in every county by the end of the quarter. They have already instituted subchapters in Asotin County (Clarkston), Stevens County (Collville), Whitman County (Walla Walla), Thurston County (Olympia), King County (Seattle), and Spokane County. The new Washington NORML groups are working together with Sensible Washington to collect signatures for I-1068, the legalization initiative filed by NORML Legal Committee attorney Douglas Hiatt.

Our statewide chapter in Virginia, Viriginia NORML, has gotten its official recognition from the Commonwealth and is seeking responsible volunteers to help form subchapters throughout the state. Dee Duffy and Sabrina Fendrick bring more strong female leadership to the NORML family and I’m looking forward to their East Coast activism.

We’re also accepting applications from college students interested in forming an official university chapter of NORML on campus. Students at Central Connecticut State University, led by Ross Martowski, have become the latest NORML college chapter to promote the growing truth about cannabis. College chapters table in the student unions educating their student body, provide film screenings and guest speakers, and fight to reduce university penalties for students who choose cannabis instead of alcohol.

Oregon NORML Boardmember Linda Mason demonstrates use of a Volcano Vaporizer on local TV news

As the executive director of NORML, the leading lobbying organization for pot smokers’ rights, Allen St. Pierre gets asked a lot of strange questions. But the one he’s been getting lately is, “What is that metal thing they use on Weeds?”

The answer is the Volcano Vaporizer, a smokeless inhalation device that has recently shown up on both the Showtime series and HBO’s Bored to Death, in which a sexy stoner played by Jenny Slate lures Jason Schwartzman into her bedroom to test one out. (“Just squeeze down on that nipple and suck in the vapors,” she coaches him.) It’s even used at the renowned Chicago restaurant Alinea, albeit unconventionally, to pipe aromas of nutmeg and coffee to diners as they eat dessert.

“If you live in Ohio, or if you’re a baby boomer who has no problem with cannabis, and you see them using that, you’re asking, ‘What’s going on?’” says Pierre. “There’s a veneer of sophistication to it. This is not your daddy’s bong.”

Indeed, the Vaporizer wouldn’t look out of place in the pages of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. With its sleek, brushed-aluminum chassis and digital temperature gauge, it could be mistaken for a device that steams milk. And, perhaps not incidentally, the $700 Volcano is growing in popularity with the cappuccino crowd—highly educated strivers who demand nothing but the best. “If you’re buying this, you are either an aficionado, or you are well-read in the best ways to deliver cannabis to your body as science currently tells us,” says Pierre. “Otherwise you’d have to have a lot of vanity to drop this much money.”

If you’re going to be a lifelong cannabis user, then the investment in a good vaporizer is a must.  One of the points that prohibitionists make about pot smoking is that smoke contains harmful carcinogens.  While the data currently don’t support marijuana smoking as a serious cancer risk, inhaling any smoke from burning vegetable matter isn’t exactly healthy.  So a cannabis user looking to maintain optimum health should definitely get a vaporizer.  In 2001, NORML and MAPS teamed up to run a scientific study on vaporization and found that vaporization “produced THC at a temperature of 185° C. (365° F.) while completely eliminating three measured toxins – benzene, a known carcinogen, plus toluene and naphthalene. Carbon monoxide and smoke tars were both qualitatively reduced by the vaporizer…”

Also, considering what marijuana costs, it makes economic sense to invest in a good vaporizer.  In 2003, NORML and MAPS again found that “the Volcano® vapor was remarkably clean, consisting 95% of THC with traces of cannabinol (CBN), another cannabinoid.  In contrast over 111 different components appeared in the gas of the combusted smoke, including a half dozen known [carcinogens]. Non-cannabinoids accounted for as much as 88% of the total gas content of the smoke.”  In other words, when you’re toking up vapor, 95% of it is getting you high; when you’re toking up smoke, 12% of it is getting you high.  Your weed purchases will last much longer with vaporization.

By 2007, mainstream medical researchers are confirming what we’ve known for a decade: vaporization is safe and effective.  You can see demonstration of vaporization from Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café in news video that appeared last week on local Portland TV news.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Denver Post

Until a few months ago, J.B. Woods was your standard-issue insurance agent. Auto, home, life. Would you like flood coverage with that?

Then, in the middle of 2009, his phone rang: “I need insurance for my medical-marijuana dispensary,” the caller said. And since that moment, few of the policies Woods has set up for clients have been standard-issue.

Instead, Woods has become the guru of ganja insurance. Property insurance, theft insurance, liability insurance. Woods is now even offering crop insurance, in case a medical-marijuana harvest isn’t as bountiful as expected.

“They needed an insurance agent who specializes in this area because of all the complexities involved,” Woods said.

“We just realized that the market was unserved in many ways,” said Woods’ wife, Mary.

The Woodses aren’t the only ones. Across Colorado, as the medical-marijuana industry has boomed, so too have the businesses providing services to it. And as state lawmakers look to regulate the dispensary business, that outward economic ripple has resulted in a widening ring of people watching to see what happens to an industry they are connected to.

Real estate agents scout locations for dispensaries. Contractors do remodeling work. Security companies install cameras and locks. From insurance companies and law firms to growing-supply stores and ventilation companies, thousands of business owners and employees have jumped into the medical-marijuana economic vortex, Denver lawyer Warren Edson said.

And there are still Prohibitionists that doubt the money that would be generated by legal marijuana sales? This article doesn’t even touch on products bought by end consumers of cannabis; everything from dining at restaurants to buying bottled drinks at the Quikie Mart can be marketed specifically to cannabis users.

President Obama said in his recent State of the Union address that success and expansion of small businesses will be key to getting us out of the recession Wall Street put us in. So why are we letting outdated racist and morality-based laws governing cannabis use stand in the way of getting America back to work?

Huffington Post

Our friend Mason Tvert at SAFER penned an excellent op-ed at HuffPo letting retailers know the peril of alienating responsible adult marijuana consumers:

Late last month, Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) — the organization I run — called for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks Coffee after it and other companies appeared on the “sponsor” page of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA), a shady group of law enforcement officials lobbying to wipe out the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana system and keep marijuana as illegal as possible. With a board of directors composed almost exclusively of narcotics agents, along with a website and merchandise decorated in a skull motif with images of the grim reaper, military helicopters, and the slogan “Death on Drugs,” it’s safe to say these guys are not so much concerned with public safety as they are with fighting — and maintaining — an endless war against marijuana and other drugs. After all, it provides them with job security, and marijuana enforcement is their bread and butter.

Word of the boycott spread quickly across the web, and with a boost from some traditional media coverage (including some in Starbucks’s hometown of Seattle) resulted in thousands of Americans contacting CEO Howard Schultz to let him know they would not be giving their business to his company until it did some explaining. Not long after, Starbucks issued a formal statement in which it distanced itself from the CDIA and assured the Starbucks faithful it does not support such anti-marijuana crusaders. Another business listed as a “sponsor” on CDIA’s website was The North Face, one of the leading producers of hiking and mountain sports equipment and apparel. After receiving messages from people swearing off their products, the company took action to ensure everyone knows they are not actually a sponsor of the CDIA and do not support the group’s mission. In light of all the bad publicity and these major companies disputing any tie to the CDIA, the organization removed its Web site entirely. Apparently they do not have quite the level of support from the business community that they were suggesting.

As Mr. Dylan once said, “The times, they are a changin’”. Yes, they are indeed. This brings to mind what Admiral Yamamoto said of America after the Imperial Japanese fleet attacked Pearl harbor in 1941: “”I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Cannabis consumers are legion in our country. We must never give up or surrender in the fight against this incredibly wasteful and tragic War on the American People.