The Maryland Senate voted on Saturday to allow patients access to medical marijuana at state-licensed dispensaries. The bill now moves to the state’s lower chamber.

The bill was approved overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support and without objections or discussion, by a 35-12 margin.

Maryland would join 14 other states in legalizing medical marijuana. The neighboring District of Columbia legalized it in a 1998 referendum that was only recently allowed by Congress to go into effect. The District’s city council is writing rules to establish the city’s medical marijuana policy.

Current Maryland law allows defendants charged with pot possession to cite a medical necessity defense. If a judge deems the drug to be beneficial, a maximum hundred dollar civil fine is imposed. Read the full story

TRENTON — The bill legalizing medical marijuana, which was passed by the New Jersey Legislature today, will go into effect six months after Gov. Jon Corzine signs it, as he promised to do before he leaves office Tuesday. New Jersey will become the 14th state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, and each state’s laws have their own idiosyncrasies.

Until medical marijuana becomes legal here, the state Department of Health and Senior Services will face intense lobbying from advocacy groups as it outlines a wide range of rules, such as where marijuana can be grown in the state, how much it will cost and who gets to distribute the drug. Read the full story

LOS ANGELES — The romantic comedy “It’s Complicated” arrived at the multiplex on Friday complete with an R rating, ranking it in the same category as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Basic Instinct” in the eyes of the Motion Picture Association of America.

But there is no violence in “It’s Complicated,” and the bedroom scenes are decidedly tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the R rating — which experts say could limit the box-office potential of the Universal Pictures film — comes largely from a sequence in which Steve Martin and Meryl Streep smoke marijuana. Read the full story

A medical marijuana dispensary in Denver has decided to get creative and make the business into a full-service restaurant that caters to those who need to use medicinal marijuana to ease physical ailments.

The owner of Ganja Gourmet located at 1810 South Broadway Avenue said the restaurant will “aim to help distribute medicinal marijuana to those licensed to have it and provide an atmosphere where patients can visit with one another in a safe environment.” Read the full story

2009 will go down as the beginning of the end of the United States drug war. I have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance promoting alternatives to the war on drugs for 10 years, and I can say without a doubt that there was more debate and movement toward sensible drug policies this year than in the last 9 years combined! Here are 10 stories that contributed to the unprecedented momentum to end America’s longest running war.

1) Three Former Latin American Presidents Call Drug War a Failure (February) Read the full story

Hey, hyperactive kids, in California you can get stoned — legally. California doctors are now recommending marijuana to children diagnosed with attention hyperactivity disorder, Sphere reports.

Since 2004, California has given out more than 36,000 medical marijuana cards.  The number of these cards going to children - it appears that all of the known cases are teenagers – is not known, as doctors are not required to report medical marijuana cases. Read the full story

What thoughts, comments or suggestions do our local readers have on this topic?

Texans Trying To Legalize Pot Read the full story

By Dan Cook

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) – The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.

The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it — as long as they are out of public view — despite a federal ban.

“This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members,” said Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization. Read the full story

You know things are shifting in America when Fortune magazine, the bible for business journalism, runs a cover story titled “Is pot already legal?”. You also know it when Barack Obama’s Department of Justice publishes a long-expected memo signalling that the federal government will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries if they are legal under state law. That happened formally this month. Read the full story

Justice Dept. To Stop Pursuit Of Medical Marijuana Use

WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said on Monday in a directive with political and legal implications. Read the full story

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.–(Business Wire)–
Cannabis Science Inc. (NASD OTCBB: CBIS) an emerging pharmaceutical cannabis
company, is pleased to report progress for its phytocannabinoid pharmaceutical
products to help reduce ARDS-associated deaths from both the Avian and Swine
Influenza infections.

Read the full story