well its veterans day and once again we honor all the brave young men who offered so much for this great nation and as I’m one of them  (NAM 72) i must wonder what the hell we bothered to fight for as we have no rights left to speak of and what few we do have are going fast with civil unrest riots and more going on in our nation i am sure it is only a question of time before the brave  warriors we send out to fight for all that’s right ( BIG BIZ) are turned on us much as KENT STATE when i was a young hippy believing the world could and would be better for us all if we as the Beatles said just give peace a chance sadly big biz wants it all and that leaves nothing for you and i sadly i fear the tides of changes will bring even more civil unrest and protests i hope it brings forth change that is true change good for the whole not just the rich so i encourage you all to thank a VET but question his boss ( the FEDS ) as to why he’s beening sent to WAR  love and miss you all hope to hear from the supreme court soon and be home with you all shortly there after  love respect eddy

Thanks to Kitty Larson and Jeremy Miller of the World Famous Cannabis farmers Market for helping Eddy with $250.00 for his commissary. Thanks to the combined efforts of everyone the bees lines were a big hit!

www.cannabisfarmersmarkets.com

We are ready for an exiting day at the Cannabis Farmers Market is Tacoma Wash. The Market has been responsible for a lot of fundraiser, helping Eddy directly. We hope to keep up the trend and have a great day today.

We will be selling Bees Line and taking donations all day. Come see a preview of The Free Eddy Lepp Music DVD!!

Help Eddy Lepp, the enviroment and your self

TODAY Marks the 100th Anniversary of the 1st Marijuana Prohibition

www.chroniccandy.com

Today marks an unhappy anniversary in hemp history. On April 29, 1911, Massachusetts enacted the first state law making it illegal to sell or possess cannabis without a prescription, becoming the first U.S. state to institute marijuana prohibition.

Violators of the new law were subject to a $100 fine and up to six months in jail, and just being present in the same room with marijuana could get you three months in the pokey.

Ironically, marijuana was merely collateral damage of the MA law, which was aimed primarily at other “hypnotic” drugs such as opium, morphine and heroin. Abuse of opiate painkillers had become a concern among reformers and temperance advocates in the early 20th century, and cannabis was added to the list “for the sake of completeness,” since it was also a hypnotic palliative commonly found in pharmacies.

Officials admitted that marijuana was not a problem, but warned that “it might become one” unless “steps were taken” to prevent it.

“Ironically, only after being prohibited did cannabis become widely popular”

“This incidental decision would turn out to have far-reaching consequences, aptly illustrating the dangers of governmental misjudgment in matters of drug regulation,” Gieringer said.

Interestingly, the Massachusetts law specifically permitted medicinal use of cannabis with a prescription; the medical value of “Indian hemp” was widely acknowledged at the time.

“Only in 1937 was medical cannabis suppressed at the insistence of federal narcotics boss Harry Anslinger, whose last-century ‘Reefer Madness’ policy sadly remains with us today,” Gieringer said.

It didn’t take long for other states to hop onto the moralistic anti-drug bandwagon. California, Maine, Indiana and Wyoming all prohibited marijuana in 1913, despite the fact that, just as in Massachusetts, there was no public concern about cannabis at the time.

“Ironically, only after being prohibited did cannabis become widely popular,” Gieringer said. Marijuana use spread in the 1920s from Mexican and Caribbean immigrants to jazz musicians and hipsters; so, predictably, did the laws against it, since its use was popularly associated with minorities, fringe elements, and strange-seeming subcultures.

More than 30 states had outlawed marijuana by 1937, when Congress passed the first federal prohibition law, and penalties got stiffer and stiffer through the 1950s and into the 1960s.

“None of this did anything to prevent an explosion in marijuana use in the late 1960s and 1970s,” Gieringer said. “The result was to leave marijuana firmly established as America’s second most popular intoxicant after alcohol, a status it seems destined to enjoy for the foreseeable future.” (Actually, in my opinion, it’s fixin’ to leave alcohol in the dust.)

“In practice, prohibition has served as a crime-creation program, criminalizing otherwise innocent Americans, promoting a criminal market, and generating disrespect for the law,” Gieringer said. “Americans would be well advised to reject their bankrupt paternalism and reclaim their historical freedom to use cannabis.”

How was your 420?

Thanks to the combined efforts of Kitty Larson and Jeremy Miller of the Seattle and Tacoma Cannabis Farmers Markets, FreeEddyLepp.com was able to collect $450.00 for Eddy’s commissary. A busy night of raffles, selling bees lines and just plain grass roots style of walking table to table with a donation bucket. Big thanks to everyone who contributed time and money!! It was a great 420 for Eddy!!

www.cannabisfarmersmarkets.com

www.thebeelinestore.com

 

Seattle Cannabis Farmer's Market

 

 

Help Eddy Lepp, the enviroment and your self

Help Eddy Lepp, the enviroment and your self

 

 

 

 

 

 

FreeEddyLepp.com raised $250.00 for Eddy Lepp’s commissary today at The Cannabis Farmers Market in Seattle. Thanks Kitti Larson and Jeremy Miller!! Today was a great day as so many people stopped by the Free Eddy Lepp booth. So many people knew who Eddy was, so many more people were interested in learning. Big props to Trinity Brown who donated some glass art for prizes for donations to Eddy. Big props to EVERYONE at Sacred Plant Medicine in Tacoma for being so generous to Eddy in the past and your continued help in the future!! We look forward to our time with you this 420!!

On Tuesday March 15, officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided two medical marijuana dispensaries – Alternative Herbal Health Services and Zen Healing – in West Hollywood, California. The raids were the first to take place in the city since the Obama administration reversed federal policy targeting marijuana dispensaries that complied with state laws.

The day before, DEA raids also swept through Montana, forcing at least one business, Montana Cannabis, to close its doors. One marijuana advocate called the action a “blatant, obvious, calculated, bullying interference by the federal government.”

But wait. Didn’t the Obama administration say it wouldn’t pursue cases against marijuana dispensaries that are legal under state law (16 states have legalized the drug – California and Montana being two of them)?

The answer is more nuanced and complex than most marijuana advocates would like to admit. In 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did issue a memo that outlined guidelines on federal action, telling authorities not to arrest or prosecute users of suppliers who are not breaking any local laws.

But the Holder memo does not have the force of law behind it, and district attorneys general throughout the country can ultimately decide how they will treat the federally-regulated Schedule 1 drug. Details of the recent California and Montana raids are still largely unknown, as the DEA has yet to comment on why they took place or what was seized.

According to William Kroger, an L.A.-based attorney representing the two West Hollywood dispensaries, the dispensaries both complied with Holder’s guidelines better than most other dispensaries, yet they still got raided.

“The federal government could come into West Hollywood and say…they’re going to go after them,” Kroger told The Daily Caller. “It’s just a numbers game. When they pick your number out of that hat, they pick that number.” He went on to add that there are a number of different levels of regulation a dispensary has to comply with just to be deemed legal by the state.

“My sense is that on one hand, there is this message coming from the Obama administration on medical marijuana saying ‘don’t push this too far,’” Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told The Daily Caller. “But when it gets carried out by federal law enforcement, any nuance in that message gets lost, and people in federal law enforcement try to push it back even further than the Holder memo would suggest.”

“Why does it have to be armed agents? Why the need for a show of force like this?” Nadelmann added, before calling the recent raids “very heavy-handed response by the Justice Department that appears inconsistent with the Holder memo and the general message of the Obama administration.”

Chris Goldstein, founder of Freedom Is Green, and a leader in reforming state laws on the East Coast for medical marijuana, called the DEA raids, “state-sanctioned robbery.”

“The important thing here is they never arrest anybody,” Goldstein told TheDC. “They go in, take the money and the marijuana, and that’s it. It’s essentially a robbery…but where does the money go?”  He went on to say that during raids, the DEA isn’t doing any real enforcement, just “stealing product and cash.”

So where does President Obama fit in? Marijuana legalization advocates say the president should be taking a harder stance on the issue.

“There was a lot of great hope and expectations for the Obama administration,” said Goldstein, “and there has been a fair amount of letdown.”

“One statement from the president could normalize how the DEA and U.S. attorneys treat state-authorized medical marijuana facilities,” he added. “Right now, that Holder memo doesn’t do it.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/22/marijuana-advocates-upset-with-obama-administration-policy/#ixzz1HXwgHJaB

Changing Lanes

Zustandswechsel (Change of State or Changing Lanes) is feature length documentary about the status of hemp in Styria – a region that is deeply rooted in Austria’s rather conservative culture.

Yet, beneath the time-honored surface which is steeped in history, you will also find a subculture that is larger than many would expect.

It is about nothing less than the state of the nation – in terms of a personal status change by using the so-called soft drug cannabis or, people’s drug alcohol.

Includes interviews with partners from the executive branch, medicine, hemp insiders, marijuana users, etc.

And there is a large supply only if there is large demand, right? Is this worth a look? Yes, we thought it is.

California Medical Marijuana Dispensary Taking IRS To Court

Lynette Shaw of Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana dispenses medical cannabis to a patient
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is thought to have begun audits on at least 12 medical marijuana dispensaries in California, under the decision that past business deductions are invalid because of a clause in the federal tax code prohibiting businesses that traffic in Schedule I or II drugs from making such deductions on their tax returns.

The move, which could bankrupt every dispensary it targets, is being fought by the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, the first dispensary to receive a final audit decision from the IRS, reports Kyle Daly at The American Independent. (The IRS claims MAMM owes millions of dollars in back taxes.)

Lynette Shaw, founder and owner of MAMM, hopes to strike back before the IRS can deliver more “final determinations” to other dispensaries currently being audited.

Photo: Jeff Vendsel/Marin Independent Journal
Lynette Shaw, founder and director, is shown at the offices of MAMM, which is being audited by the IRS
Shaw said she intends to file an appeal in U.S. Tax Court this month. There is actually a precedent, the Independent reports: In 2007, a San Francisco dispensary primarily serving terminal AIDS patients got its payment cut down to just more than one percent of what the IRS originally claimed the dispensary owed in back taxes.

If Shaw’s appeal is successful, it would virtually guarantee that neither MAMM nor any other dispensary in California, or for that matter, in other states, would have to worry about IRS audits in the future. But Shaw is going even farther than that — she’s challenging the very Schedule I classification of marijuana that has allowed the IRS to go after WAMM and other dispensaries.

“The Constitution says that all American laws shall be based upon a rational basis,” Shaw said. “I’ve got a truckload of evidence to argue that this doesn’t pass the muster of rational basis.”

It’s true that the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance defies all rationality. Yet there it is on Schedule I beside substances like heroin and PCP on the DEA’s list of drug classifications. Meanwhile, cocaine and methamphetamine are officially less harmful than marijuana, according to the federal government, as both of those drugs are on Schedule II.

According to the federal criteria for Schedule I drugs:

(a) The substance has a high potential for abuse
(b) The substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States
(c) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the substance under medical supervision

Drugs are supposed to meet all three criteria before inclusion on the Schedule I list. Yet marijuana has accepted, legal medical uses in 15 states plus the District of Columbia.

If Lynette Shaw can get a federal tax court to agree that cannabis doesn’t belong on Schedule I, a lot of other things besides the IRS’s campaign against dispensaries may come tumbling down. Drug scheduling affects much more than just IRS rules, of course, including things like mandatory minimum sentences.

If, on the other hand, a tax judge rules against her and no appellate court will overturn the decision, it could mean the end of the medical marijuana dispensary business as we know it.

Shaw insists she’s not asking for too much. “We’re not trying to end the Drug War,” she said. “We just want reclassification.”