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Volume 3 Issue 1 - Winter 2007
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| America's #1 Cash Crop: Cannabis |
America?s #1 Cash Crop: Cannabis
California leads the nation with $13.8 billion industry
Cannabis is now the most valuable cash crop grown in the US, exceeding the value of corn and wheat combined, according to a study released Dec. 18, 2006. The trend harkens back to the early days of the American Republic, when hemp was the cash crop traded by gentlemen farmers like George Washington, Tom Jefferson, and other of the nation’s founders.
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| Springtime Planting |
Springtime coming soon; time to get seeds ready
Plant for a Patient
With springtime and the outdoor planting season just around the corner, many patients give their gardens a head start by getting their outdoor crop going indoors. In this issue of Oaksterdam News, we present an excerpt from Marijuana Horticulture: the Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible “Chapter Two – SEEDS,” by Jorge Cervantes. (512 color pages, 1120 color photos and illustrations, glossary, index, $24.95.)
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| My Kind of Town |
My kind of town; my kind bud
Twenty years ago I was an art student in downtown Los Angeles. Like any aspiring artist, I enjoyed cannabis on those late nights when inspiration was lacking.
Fast forward 20 years: I’m in the office of the Oaksterdam News and I’m being asked to sample ten varieties from LA clubs. We had a number of criteria to judge including look, smell, taste, and high.
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| A Perfect Storm |
A ?perfect storm? for cannabis reform?
Odam in the Dellums era:
The phrase “perfect storm” describes how several unrelated events can combine to create a force much more powerful than any of its components taken separately. Something like that seems to be happening with cannabis policy in Oaksterdam.
For some time, the prevailing wind in this old port has been moving cannabis policies away from prohibition, starting with the city’s long history of medical cannabis distribution and regulation.
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| Jurors Can Acquit |
FIJA: Group reminds jurors they can acquit defendants in Federal medical marijuana cases
Jury selection in the retrial of Ed Rosenthal is scheduled to begin in February 2007.
Rosenthal is famous for writing cannabis cultivation books and fighting to legalize the plant for over 25 years and is being prosecuted for supplying medical plants to patients. His conviction four years ago was overturned because a juror was misinformed that she would be punished if she did not vote to find him guilty.
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| Police Return Cannabis |
Grover Beach police chief returns man?s cannabis
When Grover Beach Police Officers pulled over Ken Parson for suspicion of DUI last year, he was not arrested; but 20 grams of cannabis were seized because he didn’t show a doctor’s approval. Later, when Parson tried to reclaim it, police refused to return the cannabis, citing federal law.
“It’s a good decision,” Parson told the press. “It’s kind of a long time coming.”
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| Patients Set Agenda |
Patients set new agenda for 2007
Motivated and ready to fight for their rights, patients and medical marijuana supporters from throughout the state came to Burbank for the Americans for Safe Access conference and workshop.
A lot of work ahead — Americans for Safe Access (ASA) Director Steph
Sherer (above) welcomed participants Jan. 13 to the statewide
conference and workshop, and the group outlined an ambitious agenda for
change.
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| Pelosi Endorses Reform |
Pelosi endorses reform
Nancy Pelosi inserted statement into Congressional Record ...
“Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment offered...
“This amendment to the Fiscal Year 2005 Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary Appropriations bill would prohibit the Justice Department from spending any funds to undermine state medical marijuana laws. It would leave to the discretion of the states how they would alleviate the suffering of their citizens.
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| Documentary Film |
Award winning documentary film shows the faces and facts about therapeutic cannabis and the laws
 Now available as a DVD for home viewing, the powerful documentary Waiting to Inhale explores the battle between patients, doctors, activists and the US government over the legalization of medical marijuana. The film gives a first-hand look at the first major scientific study of medical marijuana to take place in over 30 years, in progress at the University of California, San Francisco.
Patients speak compellingly about the relief cannabis provides them from the symptoms of debilitating and terminal illnesses...
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| Cruz Cup |
Cruz Cup result: excellent!
Odam News field results:
There were seven submissions. Packaged in gram size zip lock bagies marked with images or bag colors as described below without using reference to strain.
Our judge sampled each strain in cigarette form, and smoked in sets four hours apart so as to achieve the most accurate results for effect. Below are his results alone, and not to be interpreted as being from the actual event.
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| Prison Pressure | Marijuana laws put pressure on prisons
While serious crimes go unsolved and unprosecuted, California has over 1,400 cannabis prisoners; more than 14 times the number for 1980. The state currently spends over $160 million per year to arrest, prosecute and imprison these offenders, with African-Americans being over-represented among them by a factor of five.
You can let him know what you think online at www.govmail.ca.gov/ or by mail:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol, Sacramento CA 95814
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| College Activists | College activists prepare to flex new political clout
Students for Sensible Drug Policy
The Bush administration wages its War on Drugs in the name of protecting young people. Students for Sensible Drug Policy mobilizes students who are fed up with policies that hurt the younger generation.
SUPPORT - Congressman Dennis Kucinich met with SSDP staff during his Presidential bid in 2004
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| 'Gateway' Closed | This ?gateway? is closed and latched
Two recent studies should be the final nails in the coffin of the lie that has propelled some of this nation’s most misguided policies: the claim that smoking marijuana somehow causes people to use hard drugs, often called the “gateway theory.”
Such claims have been a staple of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Drug Czar John Walters. Typical is a 2004 speech in which, according to the Albuquerque Journal, “Walters emphasized that marijuana is a ‘gateway drug’ that can lead to other chemical dependencies.”
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| Filmaker | Berkeley filmmaker struggles to finish her MMj Chronicles after project stalled by computer crash
Claire Burch has made a reputation for herself as an earthy chronicler of life on the streets and the social counterculture. Her dedication has generated a catalog of films, hundreds of hours of film to be edited down, and won acclaim ...
Burch’s take on the medical marijuana movement, California Chronicles of Medical Marijuana, was already taped and well into the editing stage when her computer went down, leaving her and husband Mark Weiman hanging.
With her eyesight failing and the project unfinished, Burch is hoping for help.
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| Safer | SAFER goes back to schools
This spring Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) is working with college students to pass campus ballot initiatives and generate news stories that convey the message that cannabis is safer than alcohol and should be treated as such.
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| Cannabis Market | State?s new billion-dollar medi cannabis market offers millions in tax dollars
Federal policy impedes collection
Californians consume between $870 millionand $ 2 billion worth of medical marijuana per year, according to a report to Oakland’s Measure Z cannabis policy oversight committee.
The report projects that the state could receive some $70 million to $120 million in sales tax revenues alone if medical marijuana was taxed legally like other herbal medicines.
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| Opression | A year later, San Diego area patients still resist county, federal oppression
Twelve medical cannabis dispensaries in San Diego city and one in San Diego County were raided by DEA and local authorities on Dec. 13, 2005. All medicine, cash and many electronics such as computers, security equipment and cell phones were seized. No one was arrested and agents reportedly told operators they were welcome to reopen within minutes.
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| Paradise | Patio plantings put patient in Paradise
Patient garden photo contest:
Sometimes when someone is in too much pain to bear, a small breath of cannabis makes life tolerable. Sometimes it takes a lot more, as for our currently featured patient. And sometimes it’s healthy simply sharing space with the plants as they grow and show their personalities.
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| It's a Flower | $9 Billion a year to fight a flower
American taxpayers now spend more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot, according to an October 2006 report by the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
According to the report, Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004, 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are in for cannabis.
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| ID Card Fee | Major fee increase coming soon for state?s medical cannabis ID card
The CA Department of Health Services (DHS) announced in January a more than tenfold increase in the fee for a state medical marijuana ID card, from $13 to $142. The voluntary program, created by Senate Bill SB 420, took effect in 2004 to improve patient access to cannabis through ID cards and locally regulated sales outlets.
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| In Memoriam | Dr Mike Alcalay: Compassionate physician
Longtime cannabis reform advocate and cannabis-consultant / physician
Michael Alcalay, MD, passed away on Nov. 18, 2006 in Oakland, CA. He
was the medical director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and
a local icon.
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| In Memoriam | Pam Sakuda: Fought SD County for patient rights
Medical cannabis patient Pam Sakuda, passed away on Nov. 10, 2006, after a long battle with cancer. She died before she could receive a favorable court ruling in the landmark medical marijuana case in which she had been a plaintiff.
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| Odam News | Odam News drops WeedTRACKER review plan
A proposal to combine the dispensary review section of the Oaksterdam
News newspaper with services of the online website WeedTRACKER.com have
been dropped, according to Oaksterdam News managing editor Jaime
Galindo.
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| Economist Friedman | Economist Friedman
Milton Friedman died on Nov. 16, 2006, an American economist and intellectual who advocated laissez-faire capitalism, privatization, and ending the Drug War. His view that “the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem” certainly rings true for cannabis policy.
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Volume 3 
The Men's Wearhouse George Zimmer
