What the future may hold for Medical Marijuana in Michigan

It is unquestionable that medical marijuana in Michigan will remain legal throughout the 2010 election season. It is also widely believed that medical marijuana in Michigan will continue to be legal for the short-term immediate future. However, while the State of California will vote on November 2, 2010 as to whether or not to make recreational marijuana usage legal, the state of Michigan is voting on new procedures to restrict the future usage and rights of medical marijuana users and medical marijuana cards in Michigan. The state of Michigan’s approach to its self-proclaimed “problem” with medical marijuana seems to be to add more government and more rules for it to have to interpret and enforce.

The first proposal that Michigan medical marijuana opponents are endorsing is the idea of medical marijuana zones. The idea of zoning will work this way:

In regards to location:

There will be no medical marijuana dispensaries located on a piece of property that is within 200 feet of a residential district, and shall be located only in downtown, light industrial and commercial zoning districts.

No medical marijuana dispensary shall be established within 500 feet of another medical marijuana dispensary.

No medical marijuana dispensary shall be located within 1,000 feet of a public school.

Regarding the use of medical marijuana dispensaries:

No person shall reside in or permit any person to reside in the premises of a medical marijuana dispensary.

No person operating a medical marijuana dispensary shall permit any person under the age of 18 to be on the premises.

The operator of a medical marijuana dispensary must be a registered caregiver.

No person shall become the lessee or sub-lessee of any property for the purpose of using said property for a medical marijuana dispensary without the express written permission of the owner of the property for such use and a zoning compliance permit from the city of Ann Arbor.

In downtown zoning districts, medical marijuana may be dispensed, but not grown.

Odors may not leave the unit occupied by the medical marijuana dispensary.

No drive-through windows are allowed at a medical marijuana dispensary.

No on-site smoking or consumption is allowed at a medical marijuana dispensary.

Regarding medical marijuana as a “home occupation”:
One registered caregiver per single-family home is limited to providing medical marijuana to five patients. Caregivers may not give, sell, or otherwise transfer medical marijuana to anyone other than the five patients that have designated them as their caregiver through the Michigan Dept. of Community Health.

Caregivers must deliver to patients – no pickups are allowed from a caregiver’s house.

An annual zoning compliance permit is required.

Odors may not leave the property.

Other restrictions:
Other restrictions include proposals to limit convicted felons from obtaining or dispensing medical marijuana, licensing by the state health department for all Michigan medical marijuana facilities that choose to cultivate medical marijuana in Michigan, limiting the number of medical marijuana growth facilities to 10 per year and the limiting of dispensing medical marijuana to licensed pharmacist.

This is not the state of medical marijuana cards and medical marijuana in Michigan today, but it could very well be its tomorrow. So while California (which borders a country that loses money, blood, and countless resources to a merciless drug war) continues to be forward-thinking and lean on the side of decriminalization and deregulation, Michigan appears to continue its quest to make marijuana the number one bootlegged drug within its state borders. To be continued…

Mr. Obama and My Marijuana

Dear Mr. President,

The economy is in shambles and after getting my medical marijuana card. I listened to you address the nation on our economic future, needless to say your speech gave me a headache (and I like you). So in order to get rid of this migraine I decided to smoke up a little bit (okay maybe more than a little bit). So I took a puff and then looked at my joint (cause that's what you do when you get the really good stuff).

Then it hit me!!! We can create some jobs here: US farmers can grow marijuana, our factories will distribute the marijuana (in Detroit and Lansing we have a lot of abandoned warehouses and factories that are ready to be converted), gas stations and mom-and-pop shops (you may remember these places from the 80's) could sell them!!! SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF NEW JOBS AND NATIONAL INCOME!!

Now I know this appears to be a radical idea and this may be one that doesn't garner a lot of cross party support, but that never matters (see How to pass Healthcare Reform 2010 Instruction Manual).

I have heard people say, would I want my brain surgeon to be high. Truth be told, I don't want a brain surgeon!!!

Needless to say, I know there is a lot of concern being expressed that people will smoke medical marijuana on their lunch breaks return to work and do something that people normally do when they get high ie...think deeply, pay attention to detail and communicate (could be useful for today's workforce). And with 85 percent of the nation smoking marijuana anyway, does the other 15 percent think that no one is smoking marijuana on their lunch break now. If so, I have one suggestion for the other 15 percent: marijuana.

Mr. President, my joint just told me to tell you that the answer is in the weed. Think about it, we won't have to import it (so for once we won't owe another country money), we could stop this war on drugs and wage a full-fledged war on cancer.

Bin Laden may even turn himself in (last picture I saw of him showed him smoking what looked like marijuana to me. I read somewhere he's got bad kidneys and receives dialysis so I am thinking he probably smokes marijuana for medicinal purposes). But turning himself in now would be a horrible health move for him, seeing as medical marijuana is illegal in federal prisons and he will probably be in prison for at least 7 or 8 hours before we find him guilty, sentence him to death by explosion and blow his a$$ up. Sorry, (excuse the language, I'm a patriot and that &*&^# brings that out in me). Now during his 8 hour prison stay he will undoubtedly need "his medicine", which we will gladly give him because we do not torture our prisoners.

Mr. President, these are just some things to ponder. Medical marijuana is legal in DC, so get some and think this over. Meet me in Flint (I have my medical marijuana card in Michigan) and we can talk this over while sharing a bag of Doritos.

Sincerely,
Medical Mike Anderson aka MMA

P.S. I know you are busy and probably don't have a lot of time in your day to read my letter, that is why I kept this one short. I figured it'd take 5 minutes for a brilliant man like yourself, you can steal the five minutes the next time that you step outside of the Oval Office for your cigarette break ;)

Obama/McCain 2012
Medical Marijuana/United States 2010

60 minutes Medical marijuana part 1

The government doesn't think drugs are bad! They think UNTAXED drugs are bad!!!

Medicinal Marihuana in the state of Michigan: Why Get to High Because of It?

Medicinal Marihuana in the state of Michigan: Why Get to High Because of It?

Here we go, so let us endeavor to make sense out of Michigan state's medicinal marihuana laws and their enforcement. To start it off the law gets foggy in some places. These sticky points have been a snag between lawmaker, patients, dispensaries and politicians for quite some time. These areas of deliberation have shockingly led to arrests, as in the now recognized Compassionate Care raid, which went down in in Ferndale, MI a brief while ago. Many dread that the law is so loosely written that it pushes to be returned before a court to settle its providence. The popular belief seems to be that rethinking the law could lead to its termination or unjust alterations. Furthermore, some think that this second glance at the law could put needless limits on certain rights that the present law has arranged. Police maintain that they purely would like some added explanation as to what the letter of the law is.

So in the meantime in their perplexed state officials have settled to perform investigations, chart raids and arrest people. A durable claim can be made that, it comes across as if the prosecution and sheriffs are utilizing their money to point out the failings of the law. The courts are in business to revise and alter the law, the enforcement branch isn't there for that cause. However, the medical marihuana laws in Michigan are trying to be enforced and rewritten by the sheriffs and prosecutors.

Here are the spots of contention that feed both sides of the spat.

Distribution: The law is indistinguishable about how medicinal marijuana patients get their medication, specially in regard to patient-to-patient purchases. The law in reality does not explicitly bound patient-to-patient sales. The law also fails to placed a certain number on the threshold that patient-to-patient sales can contain. As currently written, the law doesn't affirm whether someone bearing a medicinal marijuana card in Michigan can vend to another Michigan medical marijuana card holder. However, the police in Michigan have been utilizing this non-declaration as reasons to arrest individuals and charge them with a felony.

Dispensaries: Now to be fully sincere, I have never smoked medical marijuana and have no goal to ever do so. Furthermore I don't suffer from any unending disorder, so the abovementioned view could be adjusted as I proceed through life and age (assuming something changed for the worse). However, a person would have to be very high on pot AND medical marihuana to have not seen the delivery of dispensaries. Dispensaries cropped up almost before the ink dried on the law.

For those who can not figure it out, dispensaries are shops, home businesses, and stores that cater to selling medical marihuana in Michigan to Michigan medical marihuana card holders. The law does not confine dispensaries at all because in some way or another the legal representatives in Michigan didn't assume a group would be inventive, determined and entrepreneurial-minded enough to launch a dispensary.

Michigan, really!?

The economic calculations on dispensaries is confounding. Some authorities reckon that calculations at more than 14 million dollars annually for the state of Michigan alone.

These are the two giant spots in which the dispute over medicinal marijuana in Michigan stem from. Myself, I think the prosecutors and law enforcement agents should just let go a bit. If relaxing is a problem for them then perhaps they should make an effort to welcome the medical marijuana in Michigan, I hear it's good for easing up.

Michigan Medical Marijuana

Michigan Medical Marijuana

It seems that every time I look I am always encountering an article in regards to how there is medicinal support located in marijuana.

I keep coming across friends that say, "Yo! Jesse, you need to check-out a cannabis doctor."

I sometimes even bump into homies that protest, "My man!! You gotta get online, and check out www.8774hemprx.com and get you a Michigan medical marijuana card."

upon further analysis of these incidences (which I might add come to pass quite a few times weekly) I have come to admire the true authority of marihuana.

I thought to myself, "Damn, my peeps may be on to some thing."

You see the first thing that stands out in my mind is the reality that I don't smoke marihuana. I have never so much as even ever experimented with marihuana. Not one of my peeps has ever seen me with marihuana, around marihuana, toting marihuana, or even thinking about marijuana. My brother smokes marihuana and when I say his get-up=and-go seems down, I am incredibly understating the facts.

next, there's very little about me that would lead an individual to be inclined to believe that I would visit an individual referred to as a "marihuana doctor". I don't typically like doctors anyway. I am one of them type of men that require that something actually fall off in order for me to go and see a doctor. Now, there are certain areas that would not have to EXACTLY fall off for me to see a doctor, but I doubt that would require me to find my way to Michigan medical marijuana Clinic.

When I hear the term "marijuana doctor" I tend to think "witch doctor" with a weed problem. I meant how are they actually qualifying people to become "marijuana doctors" is there a Michigan certification for marijuana medicine?

Are teachers now telling our children, "You know the money is in the medicine and nothing moves quicker than the medicinal weed?"

Now it may sound like I am bashing marijuana, the state of Michigan medicinal marihuana, or marijuana doctors. All of which is not true. Things just required a closer glance on my part. From first glance, being  a non-smoker, this really just didn't seem like the issue that has been leading the news as of late. There are fourteen states that have similar systems to Michigan medical marijuana facilities. I definitely needed to probe further.

Upon further review I became aware that my brother does have great ambition. I mean he essentially can seek out and find an illegal substance and do it on a wildly consistent basis. All while operating like a super spy and pretending that he does not partake in such recreation. This is obviously hard work and he conducts it as if it were a layup. Truth be told, I don't think I could so eloquently hide the tell-tell signs such as red-eye, the munchies and the incessant need to forget things.

As far as the term marihuana doctor is concerned, we will delve into that in my next blog. For now just know that I am investigating marijuana Michigan certification, the state of Michigan medical marihuana, and Michigan's medicinal marihuana.

The Growth of Medicinal Marijuana in Michigan

The Growth of Medicinal Marijuana in Michigan

The Growth of Legal Marihuana in Michigan|the State of Michigan|Michigan and other places|The United States|The Fifteen United States}

Legal marijuana seems to burning up in the papers this year (no pun intended). What led such a debatable issue ever form into a piece of legislation to be voted on? What made medicinal marijuana in Michigan go from the brains of a few members of the state community all the way to Proposition 19, and other dockets that ratified in 13 other US states? What led the officers of justices to set forth a piece of legislation before themselves in which they completely didn't wish to support 100%, at least out in the open? Did they think that it would fail? Did they believe that medical marihuana and the legalization of marihuana in the state of Michigan and fourteen other US states was just a few stoners? Did they not expect an prepared grassroots operation?

Here's how medicinal marihuana in the state of Michigan and many other United States got their beginning, and where the hullabaloo lies. The argument looks as if it rest within the clearness of the law and one main semantic. That semantic is the term "medical use"

If a state will not tightly limit what "medical use" is defined as, the camel can get its nose under the tent.

That's what happened in the state of the state of Michigan does permit physicians to "recommend" marijuana use for individuals who suffer from an array of significant diseases. (Originators of the bill purposely didn't use the term "prescribe" in an attempt to circumvent conflict with federal law.)

Michigan's law then includes a catchall condition that lets medical providers to also allow medical marijuana use for "any other illness for which medical marihuana provides relief." In practice, medical providers -- largely shielded from second-guessing by secrecy constitutional rights -- have been free to make the concluding decision as to which sickeness those could be.

The gray area is that once a drug has been FDA-approved for one use, medical experts can legitimately prescribe it for other, so-called generic purposes, even though the drug hasn't yet been certified as reliable or effective for them.

Accordingly, the state of Michigan medical professionals are authorizing those patients to take medical marihuana to ease such disease as anxiety, headache, premenstrual syndrome, and trouble sleeping.

"You could get it for writer's block," comments Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Some the state of Michigan medical providers voluntarily detail the rundown of the individuals medical circumstances for which they have endorsed marijuana use in the state of Michigan.

They commonly statement that over 25 percent of their medical marijuana agreements have been impelled by patients afficted from problems like "anxiety" or "insomnia." (The most regular complaint is extreme pain).

As a answer, in the largest part of the state of Michigan's coastal municipal areas, medical marijuana is successfully authorized at the moment. A inhabitant older than eighteen years old who gets a note from a medical doctor can lawfully purchase the material, and medical experts seemingly enthusiastic to inscribe such notes, on average for a nominal fee of $200, make themselves known in newspapers and on websites.

There are an projected 300,000 to 400,000 medical marihuana patients in the state now, and the figure is speddily rising.

More amazingly, there are about over 500 hundred medical marihuana dispensaries now functioning within the state of Michigan candidly distributing the drug.

These dispensaries - better known as "compassionate-care clinics" by the earnest and "pot shops" by the cynical -- are decidedly outpatient services, with a lot patients arriving on bicycles, roller skates, or skateboards. (They often get discounts for doing so, because it's greener than using a fossil-fuel-powered car.)

This is where the birth of medical marihuana in Michigan has begun and left off. There seems to be many of articles in the newspaper everyday and the seeds seem to just have begun to grow.

Medical Advantages of Marijuana

Medical Advantages of Marijuana

Should weed be legal in any capacity? More importantly, should marijuana be legal in a medical or medicinal capacity? Out of the 50 United States, as of today (August 26, 2010), sixteen states say 'yes'. These 16 states allow for qualified persons to possess legal medical marijuana cards. Legal medical marijuana cards let the privilege of cultivating, possessing and consuming legal medical marijuana. The question, however, that remains…have these sixteen states been under the influence of…well marijuana? This article will take a look at the pros of medical marijuana from a view point based on only its medical benefits. This article doesn't introduce the debates on drug-war relations, crime statistics, or socio-economic impact. There will be a singular position, and that focus will be, the medical benefits of marijuana.

What ailments does medical marijuana provide relief for?

According to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) the following conditions or symptoms under Appendix IV of their Nov. 2002 report titled "Descriptions of Allowable Conditions under State Medical Marijuana Laws" could be impacted by the use of medical marijuana:

· Alzheimer's Disease

· Anorexia

· AIDS

· Arthritis

· Cachexia

· Cancer

· Crohn's Disease

· Epilepsy

· Glaucoma

· HIV

· Migraine

· Multiple Sclerosis

· Nausea

· Pain

· Spasticity

· Wasting Syndrome

Matter of factly according to Lester Grinspoon, MD, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and an article he wrote in a Mar. 1, 2007 editorial in the Boston Globe titled "Marijuana as Wonder Drug":

"While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain, and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe -- safer than most medicines prescribed every day. If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug."

Truth be told one would be hard-pressed to obtain a scientist, academic, or law-maker that would argue with the medical answers that have been put out by the medical community on the pluses of medical marijuana. For all intents and purposes it seems that the evidence is amazingly indisputable. Marijuana seems to be receiving a bad rap due to the prejudging of the plant before credible research had been analyzed on its affects, benefits and contributions to the medical community.

The most obvious and logical explanation of why some in the medical community and politicians seem to not be in favor for medical marijuana is the fact that it could be prohibitively hard to tariff or regulate. Most people would most likely not buy legal marijuana, or see a physician for a prescription once they received their legal medical marijuana card because most people suffering from ailments spend cash on other things needed to adjust to their new lifestyle. Most persons would save money and easily cultivate the plant themselves, which would be perfectly legal assuming they had a legal medical marijuana card. This wouldn't make much money for the politicians and not a lot of cash for the medical professionals either.

The simple nature in getting a legal medical marijuana cards in Michigan can be found at web sites all throughout the internet such as Medical Marijuana Advisors (http://www.8774hemprx.com) which gives online doctor evaluations and confidentiality, all while providing clients with medical marijuana cards for as little as $200.00.

The benefits to medical marijuana are laced, no pun intended, in facts and science. The pros seem to be based in fear of lost revenue and speculation. One could say it's a no-brainer, even someone that was high could figure this one out.