At what is sure to be the strangest bedfellows imaginable, members of the Orange County Republican Party have joined up with medical marijuana patients for a protest billed as the Broken Promises Medical Marijuana Rally.
 
Scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16 at an Obama campaign fundraiser breakfast in Corona Del Mar,  Republicans and medical marijuana patients will rally together to protest the Obama’s Administration policies including his broken promise to respect state laws regarding medical marijuana and to refrain from using the Department of Justice to circumvent  those laws.
 
At 8 a.m. there will be a National Media Press Conference featuring speakers from the Orange County GOP, Orange County Women’s GOP, Orange County Tea Party and the Greater Orange County Collective Alliance, an organization representing medical marijuana collectives operating in Orange County.
 
Given the  state’s right bent of the Republican Party, it really shouldn’t be so surprising to see the grass roots of the Party’s faithful parting company with the national Republican Party elite whose positions on medical marijuana range from benign neglect to downright awful.
 
With California’s one million medical marijuana patients and millions more living in the fifteen other states and District of Columbia that have legalized the use of medicinal marijuana upset with the Obama Administration’s federal invasion and no-holds barred assault on patients and their providers, it could be considered a shrewd political calculation to tear them away from the Democratic Party and align them with the Party that supports their rights.
 
This is bound to an historic rally of sorts, so if you can roust yourself out of bed early enough to be there at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16 at 219 Evening Canyon Road in Corona Del Mar, you may very well witness the making of an historic and absolutely fascinating coalition. You will also get free coffee and non-medicated doughnuts. For more information go to www.gocca.org.


via marijuananews.org

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Related:
http://gocca.org/?page=rally
http://othersidefarms.com/Obama.html
http://othersidefarms.com/blog/index.php/News/obama-in-corona-del-mar

 

The city has spent $457,612 on court fees in its court challenges of the marijuana clinics.

Costa Mesa City Attorney Tom Duarte asked federal authorities months ahead of a January raid to help shutter the marijuana dispensaries operating illegally in the city, according to a letter he wrote to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

"In light of your office's recent announcement relating to increased enforcement against illegal marijuana cultivation and distribution, we therefore seek your office's assistance," Duarte wrote to U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. on Oct. 26. "We believe that by working together with the U.S. Department of Justice, we can eradicate these illegal businesses from our city."

In the letter, Duarte cited the high legal costs of challenging the clinics.

The city has spent $457,612 on court fees, officials said.

"So far, the city has expended significant resources on these lawsuits," Duarte's October letter read. "We intend to move forward against illegal facilities throughout the city with increasingly aggressive enforcement. In light of the obvious profits that sustain these businesses, we anticipate a vigorous defense."

In mid-January, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Costa Mesa police searched two dispensary owners' homes and their shops. Federal prosecutors sent letters to about three dozen other Costa Mesa dispensaries with orders to close up shop or face similar consequences.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's Los Angeles office, said the city's letter and the raids were not directly connected.

Costa Mesa was already a target, he said, because of the number of storefronts here.

Just days before the feds came knocking, Mayor Gary Monahan went on KOCI radio's "Cannabis Community" show and declared that he wanted to legalize and regulate the city's clinics.

KOCI's station chief shut down "Cannabis Community" minutes before it was to air Sunday.

Station officials said they thought the show ended a week earlier when the show's host, Robert Martinez, was forced to close his dispensary, too.

Station officials said they felt pressure to silence the marijuana-advocacy broadcasts in light of the federal crackdown.

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, local dispensary owners and patients chastised the city's approach to medicinal marijuana.

"We've been trying to work with the council and even offered to help them with ordinances," said Marla James, president of the Orange County chapter of Americans for Safe Access. "They don't want anything to do with it."

"Sometimes you just have to stand there and stamp your feet on the ground and say I believe in something," said Joan Schumann-Levine, a 63-year-old Costa Mesa resident and medicinal marijuana user. "It's a revenue opportunity. Get a clue, guys!"

Costa Mesa is embroiled in litigation with five dispensaries, including one involving James at the federal appeals court level.

Source: COSTA MESA SOUGHT FEDS' HELP BEFORE POT RAIDS
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v12/n114/a09.html
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Thu, 09 Feb 2012
Source: Daily Pilot (Costa Mesa, CA)
Copyright: 2012 Daily Pilot
Contact: dailypilot@latimes.com
Website: http://www.dailypilot.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/578
Author: Joseph Serna

Related: A Plan to Solve the City Budget Deficit

"Chadd McKeen: This is a very simple breakdown of my "10% city fee/tax plan" and you can see the massive amount of revenue that could be generated for the municipalities if they allowed dispensary's to operate. This could generate a huge amount money for our economy, not to mention, our Country gained its Independence in part from Cannabis, research it!

Now of course they're going to reverse engineer this and say, "what about all the money the dispensary's will make?" Well, if they operate how they're supposed to, and there will be money to regulate that from the 10%, it will be put back into the collective, like how Harborside does up North and we do on a much smaller scale here at OtherSide Farms. 

I am a problem solver and have reached out to the city so many times and I am beyond puzzled. I spoke of this almost 2 years ago in the OC Weekly cover story I was featured in, "Growing Pains"."
 

Source: A Plan to Solve the City Budget Deficit

 

The increase in MRSA infection in UK hospitals is a growing concern for both doctors and patients alike, but according to an American based company an effective, cannabis-based disinfectant is available to fight the super-bug.

MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is a type of bacteria which has become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. MRSA infection has become increasingly difficult to treat, and can lead to death.

The number of cases of MRSA has been rising sharply - from 2,422 in 1997 in England and Wales, to 7,684 in 2003/4 in England alone. Official figures show that about 15% of reported MRSA cases result in death.

Disinfectant - A Huge Market
UK Children of the 70's and the 80's will be well familiar with the famous Domestos bleach TV adverts which ran for a couple of decades.

Domestos..Kills all known germs..Dead!

Much as they do today, animated germs and bugs ran riot across our screens (and down our toilet bowls), and the unbeatable bleach product would swing in as our saviour, and that of our families and young children.

Today, disinfectant is a huge consumer market, which sees shoppers spending millions of pounds sterling every year on liquid for the toilet, for the kitchen sink, and of course, the new generation of bleach/disinfectant wipes and sprays, used to protect our families from cross-contamination on the kitchen work-tops and food preparation areas.

If only we could kill germs and bugs as efficiently in our hospitals, right? Well apparently we can, according to a study which says Cannabis has shown "Exceptional" antibacterial activity against MRSA.

But the truth is no-one wants us to know about it. At the behest of a government which is dead set against any positive news regarding cannabis being released for general consumption, the press simply refuses to tell us about it.

But thankfully thats not the case in America.

Cannabis Science Inc
Dr. Robert Melamede, PhD., Director and Chief Science Officer for American based Cannabis Science Inc, reported recently on the current state of research into the use of natural plant cannabinoids to reduce the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus (MRSA), and the prospects for development of topical whole-cannabis treatments.

According to studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and by the Center for Disease Control in 2007, MRSA is responsible for more than 18,500 hospital-stay related deaths each year, and increased direct healthcare costs of as much as $9.7 billion.

Source: Cannabis Kills All Known Germs..Dead..including MRSA superbug

NATIONAL PRESS CONFERENCE this Thursday, February the 16 from 6:30 am to 8:30 am! 5 Crowns Restaurant 3801 E. Coast Hwy. Corona Del Mar 92625! Please come to support GOCCA! President Obama must answer for his contradictory policy on medical cannabis!!

Please share this with any cannabis advocates that you know! This might be the ONLY chance Southern California gets to address President Obama before the elections!!!

more details»  copy to my calendar



Thursday Feb 16, 2012 Barack Obama will be visiting Corona Del Mar, CA for a campaign fundraiser breakfast. Join us in a rally to protest the Obama administration's broken promise to respect state laws regarding Medical Marijuana and to refrain from using the Department of Justice to circumvent those laws.

 

The Costa Mesa City Council violated California's open meetings law last year when it secretly authorized a letter seeking federal law enforcement assistance in shutting down the city's medical marijuana dispensaries, according to open government expert Terry Francke.

The decision to send the October letter, which preceded a federal crackdown on the dispensaries last month, was made "as part of litigation and in closed session," said city spokesman Bill Lobdell, referring to an exemption in the open meetings law known as the Ralph M. Brown Act.

But the council was prohibited from making any decisions about the letter — or even discussing it — in closed session while under that Brown Act exemption, according to Francke, who is the general counsel of Californians Aware, a statewide First Amendment advocacy organization.

"It contains no privileged or legally sensitive information, and the discussion and decision to send it does not qualify as one for a closed session concerning litigation," Francke said after reviewing a copy of the letter.

"The purpose of that closed session is to allow the council to talk to the city attorney about the progress of a certain case," said Francke. "It is not to conceal initiatives to represent the city's position to federal authorities."

Responding to Francke's assessment, Tom Duarte of the Jones & Mayer law firm, who is also the city attorney, wrote in a statement that "the closed session item regarding existing medical marijuana litigation was properly noticed and placed on the Oct. 18, 2011 City Council agenda."

He added that "no reportable action was taken" and the letter was consistent with long-standing city policy.

Francke, however, said the issue is not whether the letter was in line with existing policy but whether it was lawful to discuss the letter in a closed litigation session.

"The test is whether discussing the matter in open session would, in the words of the Brown Act, 'prejudice the position of the agency in the litigation,' " he said. "Obviously that's not the case here."

Last month, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police raided two collectives in Costa Mesa and issued warning letters to at least two dozen others.
In reaction to the crackdown, more than a dozen medical marijuana supporters spoke at this week's City Council meeting, pleading with council members to allow the shops to reopen. Several said they had chronic pain, insomnia and other medical issues that have been greatly eased by marijuana use.

After the federal raids, some of the marijuana shop owners and customers suspected that the crackdown was prompted by an invitation from the City Council. Their suspicions appeared to be confirmed when the Orange County Register first reported on the letter earlier this week.

The Oct. 26 letter was signed by Duarte and sent to U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., the top federal prosecutor in Southern California.

"We are writing this letter on behalf of the city council and the City of Costa Mesa to request your office's assistance in shutting down twenty-seven illegal medical marijuana dispensaries in our city," the letter said.

Duarte wrote in the letter that the city was "expending significant resources" fighting lawsuits to enforce a city ban on the collectives. Costa Mesa has spent more than $450,000 fighting five ongoing lawsuits related to pot dispensaries, according to Lobdell.

But Francke insists that a city council's decision to call for federal help in situations like this is "an alignment and escalation that at least deserves prior public attention and discussion."

"The repercussion, if any," Francke said, "is that residents will need to monitor this council's use of closed sessions much more carefully if they want to, in the words of [the] Brown Act, 'retain control over the instruments they have created.' "

Source: City's Secrecy on Pot Shop Letter Was Illegal, Expert Says