My 1st blog of the New Year!
I celebrated my 35th birthday Friday, January 13th with fried chicken & funk! We went to Hibiscus for dinner, and then went next door to The New Parrish to see the Funk Revival Orchestra. It was an awesomely amazing birthday!
Our SF ASA chapter recently purchased a video camera to record meetings and events. You can watch at http://www.youtube.com/user/SFSafeAccessMedia
A broad and diverse coalition of patients, patient advocates, medical cannabis providers, and labor filed a draft statewide ballot initiative recently with the California Attorney General’s office. The Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act (MMRCT) seeks to create a safe, regulated access model for medical cannabis while preserving the rights of patients granted under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. The MMRCT must now be approved before the signature gathering stage begins. In the meantime, the coalition launched an exploratory campaign this year.
We are facing a backlash in our medical marijuana community, including attacks by US attorneys, Pack on city bans, and loss of Power in CA legislature. Americans for Safe Access ASA helped facilitate a process that included many advocates, dispensary operators in conservative and liberal areas, indoor and outdoor cultivators, patients, and labor. We feel that there was a lot of bending and pulling but each group definitely fought for their constituencies and came to compromises that they could live with. The hardest thing for ASA to swallow in this initiative is the taxes. We do not believe that medicine should be taxed.
But the good news is this initiative creates civil protections for patients, cleans up SB 420 language, creates guidelines for cities and requires voters to decide on bans, creates a Bureau to oversee medical cannabis issues that includes patients and patient advocates, gives prosecutors the option to charge patients who may unintentionally violate state law to be charged with a misdemeanor instead of felonies, encourages the legislator to reschedule and to change "marijuana" to cannabis, and makes sure that patient collectives are protected.
While it's not the whole enchilada, it will begin to move us back in the direction we need to head. We fear our enemies are attempting to put in place severely onerous restrictions on safe access, so we will continue to fight for sensible regulations that protect and expand patients’ rights.
Occupy Oakland is Back! Check out what went on here over the weekend – Occupy Oakland January 28th
I think it's great that you are tackling the regulation issue. I was talking to Del. Morhaim the other week and he was saying that Ca. had missed the boat when it came to regulation and also data collection. He's is uncertain that there is strong enough evidence that the various strains really do help different ailments better than another. Which is why he's leaving language out about how many different strains should be produced under his bill.
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