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Dude, Is It Legal Yet?

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The answer is ‘Yes!’  as Washington and Colorado have moved to legalization, nine states have decriminalized and twenty-three have introduced medical marijuana legislation.

By Marc Snelling / OB Rag

Dude, is it legal yet?

People have been saying this since the seventies.  Speaking to activists from this era, it seems many felt that legalization of marijuana in the US was imminent in the early seventies. But other than Alaska in 1975 (re-criminalized in 1991) the seventies did not see legalization of marijuana come to pass.

The activists of the seventies (Baby Boomers) have now been joined by the next generation – the children of the seventies (Gen X).  With these two generations working together public support for legal marijuana is now over 50% and is on the rise.  Victories in the battle to change US laws continue as both generations of activists work towards change.

Today the answer to ‘Dude, is it legal yet?’ is becoming ‘Yes!’ for more and more people as Washington and Colorado have moved to legalization, nine states have decriminalized and twenty-three have introduced medical marijuana legislation.   [Read more…]

California Halts Injection of Fracking Waste, Warning it May Be Contaminating Aquifers

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By Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublica

California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state’s drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers there.

The state’s Division of Oil and Gas and Geothermal Resources on July 7 issued cease and desist orders to seven energy companies warning that they may be injecting their waste into aquifers that could be a source of drinking water, and stating that their waste disposal “poses danger to life, health, property, and natural resources.” The orders were first reported by the Bakersfield Californian, and the state has confirmed with ProPublica that its investigation is expanding to look at additional wells.

The action comes as California’s agriculture industry copes with a drought crisis that has emptied reservoirs and cost the state $2.2 billion this year alone. The lack of water has forced farmers across the state to supplement their water supply from underground aquifers, according to a study released this week by the University of California Davis.   [Read more…]

Summer gardens coming on strong in San Diego!

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By Susan Taylor

Hello fellow gardeners. How does your garden grow? Here in San Diego it is mid summer with temperatures in the mid 90s, five miles in from the beach and further east. Watering enough? Perhaps you have over watered your tomato vines as I have resulting in way more vine than fruit. Might be time to fertilize your beds with an organic fertilizer or fish emulsion. If you have garden veggies that are looking stressed from the heat and are not productive, do pull them out-there’s time to re-plant beans, squash, basil and other herbs.

In San Diego it is still too early for fall planting, let’s hang back a bit. If you have stone fruits they should be ripening nicely and good luck with keeping the birds from getting their fair share! This wasn’t a good year in my garden for apricots but there’s enough peaches for sure; I say there’s some peach crisp and jam in the household’s future unless I keep eating them out of hand from the trees.   [Read more…]

The Little Thing Our Cities Can Do to Inspire Millions More People to Bike

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Protected bike lanes help riders feel less exposed to danger, and are also appreciated by drivers and pedestrians, who know where to expect bicycles.

By Jay Walljasper / AlterNet

You can see big changes happening across North America as communities from Fairbanks to St. Petersburg transform their streets into appealing places for people, not just cars and trucks.

“Over the past five years we’re seeing an infrastructure revolution, a rethinking of our streets to accommodate more users—busways, public plazas, space for pedestrians and, of course, bike lanes,” says David Vega-Barachowitz of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. “More protected bike lanes is one of the most important parts of this.”

Protected bike lanes separate people on bikes from rushing traffic with concrete curbs, plastic bollards or other means— and sometimes offer additional safety measures such as special bike traffic lights and painted crossings at intersections.  Protected bike lanes help riders feel less exposed to danger, and are also appreciated by drivers and pedestrians, who know where to expect bicycles. Streets work better when everyone has a clearly defined space.   [Read more…]

Carl DeMaio’s Solutions for the Border Refugee Crisis? “Send ’em Home” and “Send Me Money”

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By Doug Porter

Reasonable voices are making themselves heard over the rabble clamoring for a quick and dirty solution to the Central American refugee crisis. Carl DeMaio, who’s running for San Diego’s 52nd Congressional seat, isn’t one of them.

The failed mayoral candidate and former city councilman has posted a “Secure Our Borders Now” petition on Facebook. You’re supposed to think that by signing this appeal the gov’t will know that you support “ ensuring the United States remains secure from the threat of drugs, guns, and criminals coming through our borders.” Fill out the form, hit send, and voila! Carl’s donation page appears, while your plea goes into a virtual dumpster.

It took some effort but Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis got DeMaio’s actual position (beyond weasel words) on this issue: “Send them home. Don’t give them hearings for asylum. Don’t screen them to ensure they’re not being trafficked.”

I suppose we can now add “send me money” to that list.   [Read more…]

Hilarious DIY Birth Control Solutions for Hobby Lobby Female Employees

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In the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling, here are some homemade solutions for female Hobby Lobby workers to prevent pregnancy.

By Jill Richardson / AlterNet

With the recent Supreme Court decision, allowing closely held corporations like Hobby Lobby to refuse to cover certain forms of birth control in their employee insurance plans, female employees might wonder how they will keep from getting pregnant. Not a problem! They can use their employee discounts to purchase low-cost items at any Hobby Lobby to make any number of DIY craft birth control projects.   [Read more…]

California Cap and Trade Funds for Low income Communities: Real or Imagined?

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By Jim Bliesner

California is leading the world in its pursuit of reducing carbon emissions, the identified culprit in causing global warming. California has not only established benchmarks for major industries for their reduction of carbon but has legislated a fining system for those who do not comply with the benchmarks.

If a major polluter, say Sempra Energy cannot meet its goal of reduced emissions, it has the option to pay the state for the excess. The payment goes into a statewide Cap and Trade fund (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund). Those funds in turn are to be allocated to activities that reduce carbon emissions.   [Read more…]

How About Sidewalk-Counseling the Conservative Movement?

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By Dante Atkins / Daily Kos

This past Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of McCullen v. Coakley. The decision came down in favor of the plaintiff, an anti-abortion grandmother who challenged a Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot protest-free buffer zone around abortion-providing medical facilities. The plaintiff successfully contended that such a buffer zone violated her free speech rights as they applied to the concept of peaceful “sidewalk counseling”—a somewhat Orwellian turn of phrase for the often-abusive methods anti-abortion activists use in their attempts to dissuade women from seeking the medical care to which they have a legal right.

Lawyers for the commonwealth argued unsuccessfully that the buffer zone law was necessary to protect patients and staff from violence and intimidation, while plaintiffs argued (and the court agreed) that there were already laws in place to deal with the more aggressive forms of “counseling” that these protesters might offer. And in an ideal world, one in which every act of intimidation and violence was prosecuted to its fullest extent, the court’s unanimous decision might be the correct one.   [Read more…]

Will This Congress Be the One to Finally End Decades of Drug War Madness?

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They’re talking a lot about pot these days.

By Helen Redmond / AlterNet

For decades the ability to study the medicinal effects of marijuana have been obstructed by the federal government. But in a sign that the marijuana landscape is changing, a bipartisan group of 30 members of Congress wrote a letter to Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, asking her to remove barriers to obtaining the drug for research purposes. (The full letter appears at the bottom of this article.)

According to a press release by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon):

“Currently, scientists not funded by the NIH seeking to conduct research on marijuana are subject not only to the review process that applies to other Schedule I substances, but to an additional review process by the Department of Health and Human Services that allows for access to the only source of marijuana grown in the United States that can be legally used for research.”

The Public Health Service (PHS) review protocol applies only to marijuana.

Currently, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, meaning it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. This is ludicrous and shows how out of touch both the DEA and the federal government are.   [Read more…]

Major Federal Health Official Admits That Prohibition Has Harmed Research Into Marijuana’s Benefits

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There would be far more literature about cannabis’ efficacy if the feds didn’t impede studies.

By Paul Armentano / AlterNet

Those who work in marijuana policy reform have long been aware that federal regulations and agencies significantly impede investigators’ ability to conduct clinical studies of cannabis, in particular those protocols designed to evaluate the plant’s therapeutic potential. During recent testimony on Capitol Hill, Nora Volkow, the director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, admitted this fact publicly to members of Congress. (View the entire June 20 hearing, titled “Mixed Signals: the Administration’s Policy on Marijuana, Part Four,” here.)

Though Volkow appeared Friday before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform ostensibly to speak about her recent review in the New England Journal of Medicine (a paper I previously critiqued for AlterNet here), she spent a significant portion of her time defending her agency’s virtual stranglehold on investigators’ ability to engage in cannabis-specific clinical research.   [Read more…]

The Dirty Energy War: Gov’t Shutdown Threat as the Koch Brothers Scheme in Dana Point

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By Doug Porter

President Obama’s address to eight thousand graduates at the University of California Irvine campus this weekend made it perfectly clear he’s no longer willing to play games when it comes to regulating emissions.  Saying ‘denying climate change is like arguing the moon is made of cheese’, he issued a call to action on global warming.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are issuing their own call to action. According to a report in the New Republic, senior members in the House GOP are seriously contemplating using appropriations bills necessary to keep the government open in order to block proposed EPA regulations on coal emissions. Pursuing this strategy could set the stage for a budget showdown, including a partial government shutdown.

Why the desperation? Perhaps because the people with the money to fund conservative causes say fighting to save dirty energy is a priority. A mere twenty miles south of the UC Irvine event, the Koch brothers told donors at a secret meeting in Dana Point this past weekend about the newest weapon in their political arsenal, a super PAC called Freedom Partners Action Fund.

  [Read more…]

Increase In C-Sections Matches Rise In Fetal Protection Efforts, Reproductive Legislation

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Think you always have a choice over how to give birth? Think again.

By Michele Goodwin / AlterNet

When most women become pregnant, understandably they believe the choice of how they give birth will remain theirs; whether to deliver vaginally or through cesarean surgery or where to give birth, at home or at a hospital. Decades ago, those decisions were well within the domain of pregnant patients whose reproductive liberty and autonomy interests gained constitutional recognition in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

After all, whose body is it anyway? But what may have seemed clear-cut decades ago, is now put to the test by doctors and lower courts.

Decades ago, refusing to undergo cesarean surgery was not a crime. That’s another matter now in the wake of recent “fetal protection” enactments that make it a crime for a pregnant woman to engage in any conduct that might threaten harm to a fetus. Some doctors believe this applies to how a woman gives birth.   [Read more…]

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