Potimus Prime

The “so-called” war on drugs has failed and decriminalizing marijuana may help curb drug-related violence and heal broken social stigmata. At least, that’s what the consensus of several heralded former world leaders was on Wednesday.

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,” members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy recorded in a report which is scheduled to be officially presented to Ban Ki Moon in New York today; the 19-member commission includes former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, Mexico’s former president Ernesto Zedillo and the ex-UN chief Kofi Annan.

“Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President (Richard) Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”

The report acknowledges that “the global scale of illegal drug markets — largely controlled by organized crime — has grown dramatically” and urges those in authority toward swift, proactive measures that are proven to reduce crime and improve health “encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs (especially cannabis) to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens” and in turn, promote social and economical development.

You can download a copy of the Global Commission on Drug Policy Report from their website, it’s available in both English and Spanish.

(Source)

In what appears to be a full-out, flagrant show of the United States’ hypocritical stance on the growing and usage of hemp and marijuana, medical or otherwise. Raids continue to be carried out even after state dispensaries were told they were to be given safe harbor under the superseding state medical marijuana laws, the federal government “advised” the National Cancer Instituted to remove all suggestions alluding to the medical properties of cannabis from their website; one after the other, our government is employing these guerilla tactics against “Big Bad Marijuana” while issuing their buddies and campaign donors licenses to grow the plant legally, with carte blanche.

Consider US Patent 6,630,507, which describes and protects the use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. If the United States government truly believes that marijuana has no medicinal properties, why does the Department of Health and Human Services hold this patent, a patent that lists the application of medical marijuana during treatment as useful in the case of several diseases, including: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dementia and HIV?

Online coupon websites have been springing up like dandelions; businesses are bumping shoulders with each other, attempting to reel in fresh and recurring business through special deals and loyalty programs. Medical marijuana collectives and dispensaries are hopping on the online coupon bandwagon right and left, reeling in new patients with coupons accessible via mobile/web. Check into your favorite dispensary on Foursquare next time you’re there, you might get a freebie!

In a world where competing medical marijuana retail venues litter the streets in the kinds of numbers as McDonalds or Starbucks, online coupons are helping budding business owners draw in new and hopefully, recurring business. Colorado entrepreneurs saw the need for a bottleneck and filter for this surge of loyalty cards and goods vouchers and launched MMJDAILYDEALS.COM, an online medical marijuana coupon aggregator that currently serves over 10,000 patients in five Colorado cities and suburban areas: Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Ft. Collins, Summit County & Mountains.

Right now, their front page deal is a quarter ounce of any top shelf strain (which currently consists of: Chocolate Chunk, NYC Diesel, and Super Skunk) for $42 at Cannabis & Co in Denver, Colorado. It pleases me as an internet technology evangelist and medical marijuana patient to see these businesses adopting this online coupon strategy.

Chuuuuuuuuuuuuuch!

Recovered last year at a garage sale outside the city of Buffalo, New York, the “lost hemp diaries” detail the work of Lyster Hoxie Dewey, who served as an assistant botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture from 1890 to 1902, and afterwards as botanist in charge of fibre investigations. In these marijuanalogues (for real) Lyster Dewey recorded his painstaking efforts cultivating varieties of hemp on a parcel of land belonging to the US Government, this parcel of land was then known as Arlington Farms, the chosen site for what is now the United States Pentagon, the largest office building in the world.

As early as 1914, Dewey writes of inspecting hemp at Arlington Farms. For nearly a quarter-century, he carefully notes his quotidian progress as a grower and hemp advocate: “Thursday, October 19, 1922. Fair, cool. Go to Arlington Farm on the 9 a.m. bus and work all day,” he wrote. “Harvesting Kymington, Yarrow, Tochigi, Tochimington, Keijo and Chinamington hemp.”

What was just another day at a garage sale will go down as another page in history of the United State’s twisted and sometimes ambiguous affair with hemp. David Sitarski was looking for local historical artifacts and stumbled upon several dusty diaries and yellowed photo albums and paid $130 for the items, planning on using them for a website he was creating. Eventually, after researching more about the artifacts, he deduced that the old man in the photographs was a crucial hemp pioneer, and jobless and hurting for cash, Sitarski auctioned off the items, asking $10,000. Michael Krawitz, funded by David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, was able to purchase the historic objects for $4,000 and has put them on display in a public museum. (Fun fact: Bronner was arrested in October 2010 for planting hemp seeds on a lawn at DEA headquarters.)

Download Hemp by Lyster H. Dewey (USDA Yearbook of Agriculture 1914)

News Source: Washington Post

Whether you love it or loathe it, or you just don’t care, there are some pretty important facts and statistics you should probably know to form your own educated opinion about the whole shebang, so here you are, courtesy of SloshSpot, your online hub for offline fun.

A Florida grower is in talks with officials of Monroe, Michigan, to bring the USA’s largest medicinal pot farm to an old and unused, now-defunct paper mill. Said operation will consist of 340 compartmentalized grow rooms, each of which could supply five qualified patients their allotted dozen plants.

Migration of this farm would also produce about 30 local jobs, as farmhands would definitely be needed to maintain this mega garden.

Nation's Largest Medicinal Marijuana Farm