Oregon Business Leaders Seek Termination of Medical Marijuana Patients’ Right To Work
Category: News and Politics

Portland, OR: The Associated Oregon Industries are planning a legislative assault on Oregon's 10-year-old medical marijuana law, claiming that medical marijuana patients in the workplace are a safety risk. However, data compiled by Oregon NORML, from Oregon state government workman's compensation and safety records, shows a ten-year decline in workplace safety statistics. The data are published and hyperlinked on the Oregon NORML website.

Harmon, an executive vice president with Hoffman Construction, has been touring the state in his capacity as chair of the Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group, giving presentations on their goals for the 2009 biennial legislative session. These goals include re-introducing a bill that died last session that would grant employers the right to fire medical marijuana patients for their off-site, after-hours, legal use of cannabis medicine, as well as allowing employers to refuse to hire any medical marijuana patients—regardless of skill, experience, or a clean safety record.

Hoffman is also touting plans to reduce plant and possession limits, to require patients to first use Marinol before attaining a medical marijuana card; to eliminate medical marijuana clinics by requiring only one's bona fide doctor is recommending cannabis; and to require the state to notify an employer if an employee applies for a medical marijuana card.

"Oregon's own state health and safety databases show that Dan Harmon is misleading the people of Oregon," says Russ Belville, Oregon NORML's Associate Director, who pulled together data from Oregon's Occupational Safety & Health Administration, Workman's Compensation Division, and the federal government's National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. "During the ten years that the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act has been in place, the program has grown from 500 patients to over 20,000 now. Yet, workplace fatalities, time-off injuries, non-time-off injuries, DUIDs, and citations for serious OSHA workplace safety violations have all declined in the same ten years."

"Now that doesn't mean medical marijuana patients made the workplaces any safer," Belville concludes, "but if they made the workplace increasingly more dangerous, that's not showing up in these data. Harmon is offering up job discrimination against the disabled as a poor solution in search of a non-existent problem."

In 1998, after Measure 67 (the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act) was approved by voters, there were 3.3 workplace fatalities per 100,000 workers. There were also 3.5 non-fatal injuries, requiring no time off, and 3.4 non-fatal injuries requiring no time off. By 2006, those figures had dropped to 2.1, 2.4, and 2.8, respectively. There were 4,446 citations of serious OSHA violations in 1998; in 2005 the number was 4,309. DUI citations, crashes, and fatalities per 1,000 Oregonians dropped from 7.5, 6.5, and 0.16 to 7.0, 5.5, and 0.11, respectively, from 1998 to 2006.

The data, however, may be irrelevant to Harmon. While he cites workplace safety and legal liability as factors in discriminating against medical marijuana patients in the workplace, he and other business leaders in testimony before a House committee in 2007 could not cite one instance where a patient's legal off-site, after-hours use of medical cannabis contributed to any workplace safety incident. Revealing his true intentions, Hoffman was quoted in the Albany Democrat-Herald calling his work a "moral crusade" and that acceptance of medical marijuana "says something about permissiveness in this state, and we've got to stop this permissiveness."

For more information, please contact Madeline Martinez, Oregon NORML Executive Director, at (503) 239-6110, or Russ Belville, Oregon NORML Associate Director, at (503) 349-0395. Tables and charts of the data from official Oregon and federal databases appears on the "Data" page at Oregon NORML's website, http://ornorml.org/data.

2:05 AM - 0 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Study Finds Marijuana Smokers Have Lower Cancer Risk Than Tobacco Smokers
Category: News and Politics

Washington, D.C.: Marijuana smokers appear to be at a significantly lower risk of developing cancer than tobacco smokers, according to an article by Amanda Chen et al. published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (Sept, 2008).

The authors analyzed existing evidence on the carcinogenicity of marijuana smoke. Although it has long been hypothesized that marijuana smoke might cause cancer because it contains tars with known carcinogenic properties, like tobacco smoke, the authors note that epidemiological studies have so far failed to show a convincing causal relation between marijuana and smoking-related cancers.

The authors statistically re-analyzed previously published data on marijuana smoking and cancer, originally published by Dr. Stephen Sidney of Kaiser-Permante Medical Care in 1997. They looked at data on 64,833 subjects, including marijuana-only smokers, tobacco-only smokers, marijuana-and-tobacco smokers, and non-smokers, and analyzed their incidence of cancer, including lung, colorectal, prostate, breast, cervix, and tobacco-related cancers. In every case, they found a significantly lower risk of cancer for marijuana-only smokers than tobacco-only smokers.

There was not enough evidence to assess the cancer risk of marijuana smokers relative to non-smokers. While the authors noted there is some evidence to suggest that the cannabinoids in marijuana may actually suppress cancer, they concluded that more studies are needed to settle the question one way or another. In the meantime, says Dr. Sidney, the conclusions of his original study stand: "marijuana use and cancer were not associated" ("Marijuana use and cancer incidence (California, United States)," Cancer Causes and Control, Vol. 8, 1997).

For more information, please contact Dale Gieringer, California, NORML Director, or Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director. Full text of the study, by Amanda L.C. Chen et al., "Hypothesizing that Marijuana Smokers are at a Significantly Lower Risk of Carcinogenicity Relative to Tobacco-Non-Marijuana Smokers: Evidenced Based on Statistical Reevaluation of Current Literature," appears in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Sept 2008.Dale Gieringer - California NORML, (415) 563- 5858 - www.canorml.org.

2:02 AM - 0 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Swiss Voters Reject Marijuana Legalization
Category: News and Politics

Switzerland:  On November 30 a national referendum was held in Switzerland that, if approved, would have totally legalized the possession, sale and cultivation of marijuana. Unfortunately 63% of the voters rejected the proposal.

Unlike the system in place in Holland, in which hundreds of coffee shops are allowed to sell small amounts of marijuana in a gray market, not technically legal but tolerated for decades, the proposal in Switzerland would have permitted marijuana to be sold to adults in supermarkets. The only remaining ban would have been prohibiting advertising, similar to bans on the advertising of alcohol and tobacco in that country.

A second referendum, to make permanent what had been a trial program of providing a clean and safe place for addicts to take government produced heroin, was approved by 68% of the Swiss voters on that same ballot.

2:00 AM - 0 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Prohibition Plays Little Role In Teens’ Decision To Abstain From Marijuana, Study Says
Category: News and Politics

Ann Arbor, MI:  Criminal policies that seek to prohibit the use and availability of cannabis have little influence on whether young people refrain from using marijuana, according to survey data published in the November issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Investigators at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research analyzed in-school surveys obtained from nationally representative cross-sectional samples of US high school seniors from 1977 to 2005.  Researchers reported that teens were unlikely to cite factors associated with the illegality of cannabis as motivating reasons not to use the drug.

"The reason for not using or stopping marijuana use cited by the fewest seniors over the 29 years of data … was availability (less than 10 percent of seniors)," the study found.

In addition, respondents seldom cited the cost of cannabis or "concern about getting arrested" as reasons to refrain from using it.

By contrast, "concern for psychological and physical damage, as well as not wanting to get high, were the most commonly cited reasons for quitting or abstaining from marijuana use," investigators concluded.  Roughly half of those surveyed also cited concerns that their marijuana use might lead to the use of other illicit drugs.

NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said that the study's findings "reaffirm that the federal government's draconian cannabis policies do little, if anything, to shape young peoples' decisions whether to try cannabis."  He added: "Taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars arresting more than 20 million Americans on pot charges, yet there's no evidence to indicate that this criminal prohibition discourages marijuana use.  There's no doubt that these resources would be better spent educating America's young people about the potential risks of cannabis – rather than arresting them."

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500.  Full text of the study, "Saying no to marijuana: Why American youth report quitting or abstaining," appears in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

10:59 PM - 7 Comments - 15 Kudos - Add Comment

NORML Says Cannabis Should Be Regulated Like Tobacco On Influential Capitol Hill Blog
Category: News and Politics

Washington, DC:  Lawmakers could reduce Americans' use of cannabis by regulating its sale in a manner similar to tobacco, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano opined this week on The Hill's Congress blog.  The Hill is one of the most influential publications among Washington DC lawmakers and their staff.

Armentano notes that Americans' use of cigarettes has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, and is now at an all-time low.  By contrast, Americans use of cannabis has risen dramatically during this same period, from an annual rate of 0.6 million new users in 1965 to some 2.5 annual new users today.

He writes: "There's a lesson to be learned here, of course. Tobacco, though harmful to health, is a legally regulated commodity.  … By contrast, marijuana remains an unregulated black market commodity.  Sellers are typically criminal entrepreneurs who, for the most part, operate undetected from law enforcement and are free to sell their product to any person.  Unlike tobacco, marijuana's packaging carries no warning label, and government 'education' campaigns regarding cannabis' use are based almost explicitly upon hyperbole, propaganda, and laughable stereotypes."

Armentano concludes: "If federal lawmakers truly wished to address marijuana use, they would take a page from their successful campaign to reduce the use of cigarettes.  This would include taxing and regulating cannabis with the drug's sale and use restricted to specific markets and consumers."

Full text of NORML's commentary, "We've Cut Cigarette Smoking By Half and We Didn't Have To Arrest 20 Million Americans To Do It," appears online.

Previous posts by NORML to The Hill's blog have received hundreds of readers' comments and are among the most frequently visited on the website.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org.

10:58 PM - 7 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

Last Chance To Register For 25th Annual Key West Legal Seminar
Category: News and Politics

Washington, DC:  NORML is still accepting registrations from criminal defense attorneys and public defenders for its 25th annual Key West Legal Seminar, taking place Thursday, December 4 through Sunday, December 6 at the Pier House Resort and Caribbean Spa in downtown Key West.  Join NORML's staff and many of the nation's top marijuana lawyers in one of the most 'pot-friendly' cities on the planet.

Topics to be covered at this year's conference include: "Paraphernalia Issues: Best Business Practices for Retailers and Defending Against A Criminal Charge;" "Using Experts In A Marijuana Case;" "Federal Sentencing and Mitigation;" and  "How To Keep Your Client From Being Deported."

NORML's annual legal seminar is fully accredited in every state that requires continuing legal education (CLE) for attorneys.

For more information about this year's seminar or to register online, please visit us on the web.

10:54 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

NORML Daily Audio Stash Tops 100,000 Downloads In October
Category: News and Politics

Washington, DC: The popularity of NORML's podcast, the Daily Audio Stash, has grown significantly in recent months - topping more than 110,000 downloads in October, it's highest monthly tally ever!

"When it comes to the subject of marijuana, more and more people are turning away from the federal government and away from the mainstream media; instead, they are turning to groups like NORML and the NORML Daily Audio Stash as their most trusted source of information for all things cannabis," Daily Audio Stash host Russ Belville said.

Belville attributed the show's recent spike in popularity to marijuana law reformers' unprecedented interest in the 2008 Presidential election. "Voters in November approved 10 out of 11 state and local ballot initiatives to liberalize marijuana policy," he said. "In both Massachusetts and Michigan, marijuana reform measures gained more votes than President Elect Obama. It's clear that a record numbers of cannabis consumers participated in the 2008 election, and that they played a significant role in its outcome. In the days and weeks leading up to Election Day, many thousands of these voters turned to the Daily Audio Stash in record numbers as well."

Episodes of the Daily Audio Stash averaged over 7,000 downloads per day in October, with one broadcast (October 10, 2008) receiving nearly 35,000 downloads. More people are also logging on to the NORML Daily Audio Stash blog. Belville says that the blog received over 12,000 hits for its post-Election Day coverage, and now averages approximately 35,000 hits per month.

Available for download Monday through Friday at: http://www.norml.org, the Daily Audio Stash provides a forum for politicians, celebrities, physicians, scientists, and citizen activists to participate in uninhibited conversations about marijuana policy and legal reform.

Since its initial broadcast on Monday, June 5, 2006, NORML's Daily Audio Stash has consistently ranked among the top 15 'most subscribed' podcasts in the 'government and organizations' category of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store - averaging more than one million listeners per year. Recent guests on the Stash include: Congressmen Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA), actor Tommy Chong, Doors co-founder Ray Manzarek, screenwriter Mike Gray, comedian Doug Benson, PBS television travel guru Rick Steves, authors Wendy Chapkis and Richard Webb (Dying to Get High), and film director Jed Riffe ("Waiting to Inhale").

3:03 AM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Study Questions Validity Of So-Called “Cannabis-Induced Psychosis”
Category: News and Politics

Aarhus, Denmark:  People who experience long-lasting psychotic episodes after consuming cannabis may be exhibiting early signs of schizophrenia, according to clinical trial data published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Investigators at a pair of Denmark universities compared the family histories of 609 people treated for so-called "cannabis-induced psychosis" and 6,476 individuals who had been treated for schizophrenia or a related psychiatric condition.  Researchers found that people treated for post-pot "psychosis" were just as likely to have a family history of schizophrenia as were those diagnosed with the mental illness.  "Cannabis-induced psychosis could be an early sign of schizophrenia rather than a distinct clinical entity," researchers concluded.

Researchers said that their finding challenge the hypothesis that heavy marijuana use may cause schizophrenia in a minority of users, noting, "These people would have developed schizophrenia whether or not they used cannabis."

Despite recent claims purporting a potential link between cannabis use and mental illness, there is no empirical data indicating a rise in incidences of schizophrenia in populations with statistically higher rates of marijuana use.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director. Full text of the study, "Comparison of subjects treated for cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia," appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

3:02 AM - 2 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

NORML Extends Deadline For $10,000 Ad Contest
Category: News and Politics

Washington, DC: Want to express your outrage at America's draconian marijuana policies - and win thousands in cash too? Then enter NORML's 2008 ad contest and compete for $10,000 in prizes.

NORML has extended the submission deadline for flash animation and video entries until January 15, 2009. Contest rules and submission guidelines are available online.

Submission for this year's ad contest should highlight the 20-million+ pot arrests that have occurred since 1965. Possible ad narratives could include: "What if President-Elect Barack Obama had been one of the 20 million Americans busted for pot?"

Previous contest winners have had their ad designs promoted by NORML in national magazines and aired on cable television.

This year's contest could be your opportunity to express your opinion before tens of thousands of like-minded reformers nationwide, as well as help NORML's ongoing education efforts.

Submit your entry today to: media@norml.org.

2:58 AM - 2 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Americans Reject Bush Drug War Doctrine--Landslide At The Ballot Box
Category: News and Politics

Washington, DC:  Millions of Americans nationwide cast votes Tuesday in favor of marijuana law reform, approving nine out of ten ballot measures seeking to liberalize penalties on cannabis use and possession.

In Massachusetts, 65 percent of voters approved Question 2, which replaces criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana (punishable by up to six-months in jail and a $500 fine) with a civil fine of no more than $100.  More than 1.9 million Massachusetts voters (and all but three cities) backed the measure - a greater total than the number of voters who endorsed President Elect Barack Obama (1.88 million). Question 2 is expected to become law within 30 days - making Massachusetts the thirteenth state to decriminalize the personal use and possession of cannabis.  However, opponents of the measure - which include the state's governor, attorney general, and all twelve state district attorneys - note that lawmakers still have the legal option to amend or repeal the new law.

In Michigan, 63 percent of voters approved Proposal 1, which legalizes the physician-supervised use and cultivation of medicinal cannabis by state-authorized patients.  More than 3 million voters endorsed the measure, which received approximately 150,000 more votes in Michigan than did Obama. Proposal 1 goes into effect on December 4th, at which time nearly one-quarter of the US population will live in a state that authorizes the legal use of medical cannabis.

Thousands of voters in various municipalities also backed local ballot initiatives supportive of marijuana law reform.  In Arkansas, 66 percent of Fayetteville (population: 67,000) voters approved Question 16, which directs law enforcement to make activities related to the investigation and prosecution of adults who possess up to one ounce of marijuana their lowest priority.  The measure also requires the city clerk to submit letters to state and federal legislators urging them to "take immediate steps to enact similar ['deprioritization'] laws."

In Hawaii, Big Island (population: 172,000) voters approved a similar initiative (Ballot Question 1), which directs law enforcement to make activities related to the investigation and arrest of adults who possess up to 24 ounces of cannabis and/or 24 plants their lowest priority. The measure, which voters backed by nearly a 3 to 2 margin, also forbids the County Council from accepting government funding to promote federal marijuana eradication efforts on the Big Island.

In Massachusetts, voters in four state House districts (encompassing 15 towns) passed nonbinding public policy questions directing each district's state representative to vote in favor of legislation to legalize the medical use of cannabis.  More than 70 percent of voters in each district backed the measures.

Finally, voters in Berkeley, California endorsed Measure JJ, which eliminates local limits on the quantity of medicinal cannabis that may be possessed by patients, and liberalizes municipal zoning guidelines for patient dispensaries.

By contrast, California voters rejected a statewide sentencing reform measure (Proposition 5), which sought expand the diversion of non-violent offenders to drug treatment and would have decreased minor marijuana penalties to a non-criminal infraction.  Numerous politicians, including Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat US Senator Dianne Feinstein, joined forces with law enforcement and the California Beer and Beverage Distributors to lobby against the measure, which gained just 40 percent of the vote.

"Voters on Election Day demonstrated overwhelmingly that they favor political reform in this country, and that reform includes new directions in marijuana policy," NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said.  "These election results emphasize that the voters are well ahead of the politicians when it comes to the decriminalization and legalization of cannabis for adults. 

"Let us hope that President Elect Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress recognize that marijuana law reform is a populist issue.  Voters should not have to take to the ballot box to enact sensible marijuana law reforms; these reforms should be championed by their elected officials."

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500, or Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director.

1:58 AM - 9 Comments - 13 Kudos - Add Comment