July 16th Rally for Caregivers!

Dear Marijuana Activists, Caregivers, and Patients:

If the city gets there way, they will limit the number of patients that a caregiver can have to 5. And in a time where the economy needs any and all the help it can get, it will then destroy almost 100 business throughout the state and it will cost more than a hundred people there jobs. All they want to do is provide a valuable, and much needed service!

If you are like us and find this absurd please show up on July 20,2009 and show your support.

Hearing Location:
Tivoli Student Union
Turnhalle Conference Room 250
Auraria Campus, 900 Auraria Parkway
Denver, CO 80204
9am - 4pm

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE PATIENT TO ATTEND & SUPPORT!

The Colorado Coalition of Patients and Caregivers is demonstrating next week, Thursday, July 16 at the CDPHE and the Attorney General's office to publicize their attack on Amendment 20 of our Constitution (the Medical Marijuana Amendment). Please read and make copies of the attached press release and flyers and go viral: we need your help to turn out as many people as possible to our protest! Please help by posting notice on any websites, blogs, boards; tell all your friends, patients, loved ones; anything and everything you can do to help us get the word out is much appreciated. I realize that this is short notice, but if we work together we can really help set the stage for and complement what Sensible Colorado and NORML will say to the Board of Health on July 20.

Directions and Time to follow shortly!

Important Hearing: Colorado Dept of Health to Limit Patients of Caregivers

If the State gets there way, they will limit the number of patients that a caregiver can have to 5. And in a time where the economy needs any and all the help it can get, it will then destroy almost 100 business throughout the state and it will cost more than a hundred people there jobs. All they want to do is provide a valuable, and much needed service!

If you are like us and find this absurd please show up on July 20,2009 and show your support.

Hearing Location:
Tivoli Student Union
Turnhalle Conference Room 250
Auraria Campus, 900 Auraria Parkway
Denver, CO 80204
9am - 4pm

Click here for more info!
Colorado 420

LAPD: Fire-gutted building housed pot farm

This article was from the A.P today

Pot Farm on Fire!

If Marijuana was legalized this wouldn't happen! Am i wrong??If "it" marijuana was legal, the fire department like all other business, would have inspected the farm and told the owners of what they were doing wrong and what needed change.

LOS ANGELES — Police hauled bags of marijuana out of a fire-gutted warehouse Thursday after firefighters discovered a full-blown pot farm inside, authorities said.

About 1,000 plants with a street value of $1 million were found after firefighters doused the blaze, police officer Tenesha Dobine said.

It was unclear how much marijuana might have been destroyed in the fire, she said.

The immature, 4- to 6-inch-high plants were grown in an elaborate hydroponic setup and investigators were trying to determine whether electrical equipment used in the operation may have sparked the fire, police and fire officials said.

"They had lights and an air conditioning system for the plants and a whole water circulation system," Los Angeles fire Capt. Henry Amaran told KCAL-TV.

No arrests were immediately made.

Flames and heavy smoke were pouring through the roof when firefighters arrived at the one-story commercial building near the Los Angeles River shortly after 6:40 a.m., fire Capt. Steve Ruda said.

It took 75 firefighters about 40 minutes to douse the blaze.

The roof collapsed and the 100-by-150-foot building was gutted but no firefighters were injured, Ruda said.

Ruda said half of the building was vacant and had a "for lease" sign up.

The other half of the building contained the marijuana farm.

Denver Post's Greene: What is state smoking?

This article appeared in the local section of the paper today!

Denver Post

On good days, Jason Young walks with a cane or uses a wheelchair. On bad ones, he can't get out of bed.

"The pain overwhelms me without something to take care of it," says the 33-year-old multiple sclerosis patient from Denver.

At first, he treated his muscle spasms with prescribed Percocet, which made him drool. Then he switched to Vicodin, which made him dumb.

Finally, Young turned to a different treatment — daily fixes of high-grade marijuana. Now he's having more good days than bad.

"The law works," he says. "The state is trying to fix a policy that isn't broken."

Young is one of 7,630 Coloradans registered under a voter-approved law legalizing marijuana for people with medical problems. The state doesn't track the number of so-called caregivers designated to grow and dispense the "medicine."

(Turns out that terms like "dealer" and "pot" are frowned upon by health officials.)

The caregiving business has boomed since Barack Obama signaled that his administration won't prosecute medical users or suppliers who follow state laws. Some 30 dispensaries have opened in Colorado since he took office.

One of the busiest is Patients' Choice on South Broadway, offering 18 organic strains to take the edge off everything from broken bones to nausea. Its "A-Train" herb offers a peppy buzz that's light on the lungs. I'm told. And "Maui Wowie" promises sleep for insomniacs.

Young is partial to a prescribed blend of "Endless Sky" and "Island Sweet Skunk," and to orange-flavor hashish lollipops that ease pain smoke-free.

Co-owner Jim Bent claims his shop has 300 customers; he and partners opened it in February.

To keep business budding, he and fellow caregivers are rallying against a proposed policy to limit their clientele to only five patients per provider. The reforms also would redefine "caregiver" to mean someone who also cooks, cleans or gives rides to sick users.

The first attempt to curb legal dealing went up in smoke.

That was after the Board of Health passed the five-patient cap in 2004. Legalization advocates persuaded a judge to overturn the policy because the meeting was held in secret.

The board has scheduled a hearing on its proposed rule changes for July 20. It has taken the unusual step of renting a bigger room to accommodate members of the public, 350 of whom already have commented by e-mail.

Oddly, the same officials pushing the reforms refuse to discuss the rationale behind them.

"We just don't get out and beat a drum and make a case of what the department's position is going to be," says health spokesman Mark Salley in a statement that sounds pretty paranoid to me.

Meantime, critics are fuming, arguing the changes stray from what voters passed in 2000.

"They would block safe access, limit choices and rip patients from their caregivers," says Brian Vicente of Sensible Colorado, a nonprofit pushing for legalization.

Advocates also argue the proposals would steer sick people to black-market cannabis that could be moldy, laced with chemicals and expensive. Caregivers take umbrage at the suggestion that cultivating marijuana isn't caring enough. They gripe that the redefinition diminishes their talents.

"I grow medicine, top-notch, with unparalleled professionalism," says Todd Young, a self-described "urban shamanist" from Boulder.

"No one would ever think of making a neighborhood Walgreens pharmacist prepare food and wipe up after patients."

Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.

Happy Independence Day !

July 4 1776, 233 years ago our country DECLARED it Independence. We have come along way. Help us carry her over the hump. Mile High NORML's Independence Day Rally at the Capital from 3:30pm - 4:30. Come Celebrate your freedom of speech by DECLARING that the Federal/State agencies CEASE its war against adult cannabis consumers. See you there!