Did you know that the Department of Justice has already spent nearly a half a billion dollars fighting medical cannabis? Did you know that the Obama Administration spent over half of that money on medical cannabis investigations, paramilitary-style raids, prosecutions, incarceration, and civil asset forfeiture lawsuits? Most Americans do not know these things, but what is worse is that most Members of Congress don’t know that either. Can you help Americans for Safe Access (ASA) let them know?

Make a donation of $50 or more to help ASA send copies of our groundbreaking new report “What is the Cost” to every Member of Congress, and we will send you your own copies to give to your Representatives in July.

56 full-color pages filled with facts about the economic and human cost of the federal attack on medical cannabis comprise this timely report. The economic arguments are persuasive, but the report also highlights the human cost of federal enforcement. “What is the Cost” contains moving profiles of the victims of federal enforcement – those who have died for lack of safe access to medicine and those who are in federal prison right now. The report ends with politically-viable solutions to end the federal attack on medical cannabis that Congress could adopt this year.

ASA is calling on members to help get the report printed and distributed right now. Your Members of Congress will be home for the summer recess in July. Will you take your copy of the report to a meeting at their District offices then? Use ASA’s Online Action Center to request a meeting right now. We need for Members of Congress to see the human faces impacted by this issue and to know there is a safe political space to stand for reform right now. You can help make that happen today.

Make a donation to help get the ball rolling today, and then send an email  asking to meet your Representatives in Congress or staff in July. ASA will help you get ready for the meeting, too! We can make this happen if you act now. Donate online now or send a check or money order for $50 or more to Americans for Safe Access, 1806 Vernon St. NW, 3rd Floor, Washington, DC 20009.

Thank you for helping!

We have Exciting news to share!! Compassionate Idaho is now a chapter of Americans For Safe Access (ASA)! This is exciting for us for a number of reasons but it is an honor to be a chapter of such a renowned organization. ASA has worked at the Federal and State Levels for Years and is Very active in helping protect patients from arrest, prosecution, and forfeiture. They Demand Safe Access for Patients Now! They have even sued our Federal Government to try to reschedule cannabis to a lower level to recognize it’s medical value. They take the ‘legalization for recreation’ out of the debate and focus on the patients and their needs. Currently there is a ‘Peace For Patients Campaign’ running. Clearly this is a Great fit for Compassionate Idaho and we couldn’t be happier about it!

This means a lot to us on many levels. We will have more resources in general. They can help us with fundraisers and campaigns. They can help with training our activists to be Extremely efficient with their tools. They provide access to doctors that are experts in their fields and have vast knowledge for cannabis and the human body. Their ‘About’ page says it best.

“Founded ASA in 2002, Americans for Safe Access is the largest organization of Patients, medical professionals, scientists, and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis. We engage a multifaceted strategy public education, impact litigation, grassroots development and advocacy, media campaigns, and direct support services.

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It seems that area law enforcement has not yet learned the value of working WITH the local community.

Thursday’s raid on The Greener Side, a medical marijuana resource center, can hardly be considered a top priority. With law enforcement services severely cut across the state, surely there are more dangerous individuals threatening community safety than a group of medical marijuana patients.

Besides the raid in Eugene, it has been reported that after a two year investigation, up to 70 law enforcement officers were used in concurrent raids in southern Oregon.

In August of last year a woman in Josephine County called 911 as a man who had previously assaulted her was breaking into her home. The dispatcher had to tell the woman there was no one to send. The county had laid off 23 deputies because of budget cuts.

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Tom Ammiano

The California Assembly rejected AB 473 on Friday. The 35-37 vote means the effort by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) to regulate commercial medical cannabis activity in the state will not move on to the Senate. Friday was the last day for bills to be approved in their house of origin, but even after two votes in as many days, the controversial bill did not garner the forty one votes needed for approval. AB 473 would have created a new Division in the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) to write and enforce statewide regulations.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and our coalition partners at Californians to Regulate Medical Marijuana (CRMM) strongly support the goal of better and more equitably regulating commercial medical cannabis activity in California. Although medical cannabis has been legal in the state for seventeen years, the legislature has never adopted a comprehensive plan to implement Proposition 215 or regulate cultivation, transportation, and distribution of medicine. Patients, cultivators, industry workers, and other stakeholders need sensible regulations to help overcome public ambivalence, perceptions of abuse, and wildly inconsistent enforcement practices in communities across the state.

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Sen. Darrell Steinberg

The California Senate approved SB 439 on Monday. The bill, which is co-authored by Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) clarifies the scope of protections offered by the state’s medical cannabis laws and codifies guidelines published by the Attorney General in 2008. SB 439 will formally recognize the right of patients’ cooperatives and collectives to maintain storefront facilities (dispensaries) to provide medicine for members, an interpretation supported by Americans for Safe Access (ASA) since lawmakers adopted the Medical Marijuana Program Act (SB 420) in 2003. The bill also expands protections to employees of patients’ associations and recognizes that members buy their medicine from the associations.

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The California Supreme Court ruled on Monday that medical cannabis dispensaries are legal under state law, but cities and counties can still ban them. The decision in City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center is disappointing, but it is not the end of the fight for safe and dignified access to medicine in approximately two hundred communities where patients’ associations are banned. The Supreme Court pointed out that “nothing prevents future efforts by the Legislature, or by the People, to adopt a different approach.” That means the ball is in your court now.

Ask your California lawmakers to protect safe access for every legal patient by adopting statewide regulations based on our “Principles of Sensible Medical Cannabis Regulation.” Two measures before the state legislature seek to regulate medical cannabis activity – AB 473 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and SB 439 by Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). Act now to be sure these two measures, which are still being finalized by lawmakers, reflect what patients and other medical cannabis stakeholders want to see.

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Bunny Hethcox is a 54-year-old mother of two and grandmother of six. A real estate broker for 17 years, Bunny taught her kids drugs were bad. But Bunny also suffers from fibromyalgia, PTSD, depression and anxiety, and one day while driving with her son, she had a bad panic attack and was unable to find her xanax. After pulling over, sweating and shaking, her son pulled a joint from his pocket and said “I think you need this more than I do.” It took her a minute to decide whether to yell at him or try it, but once she did, she discovered that cannabis calmed her considerably.

Hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, Demerol and various other drugs had failed to ease the pain of her fibromyalgia, but after using medical cannabis for several months for her anxiety, she found that the pain lifted and her intense PTSD symptoms became tolerable. That got her doing some research on cannabis and the history of its prohibition.

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Last week, Kal Penn, who plays Kumar in the “stoner” film franchise Harold & Kumar, spoke to Huffington Post Live about President Obama’s marijuana policies. During the April 26th interview, Penn defended recent Justice Department attacks on dispensaries in medical marijuana states like California, citing articles he read from a Google search.

Unfortunately, we cannot always rely on a pliant mainstream media — that too often quotes Justice Department officials without any counterpoint — to provide consistently factual information.

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I am so excited to be attending the ASA California Medical Cannabis Policy Summit and Lobby Day this weekend.  The event last year was absolutely brilliant.  Steph and the Sacramento ASA Chapter did an outstanding job organizing the event, and together, we accomplished the impossible. Imagine visiting EVERY representative in Sacramento in ONE day.  What an undertaking!  We might qualify for a Guinness Book of World Records.

Lobbyists have a lot of power in Sacramento, but legislators really take notice when an “ordinary” citizen takes the time to show up in their offices.  The value is priceless.

Seriously, I learned so much about being an EFFECTIVE advocate: how to make  appointments to talk to your representatives, how to address them, how to prepare my talking points, and how to follow up after the meeting.  This training has served me well during the past year and I have developed relationships with several legislators as a result.

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Sadly, but not unexpectedly, last week the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a petition for rehearing filed be Americans for Safe Access in ASA v. DEA. After more than a decade of legal wrangling with the federal government over the medical efficacy of marijuana and its relative lack of abuse potential, the D.C. Circuit gave great deference to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) position that marijuana has no proven medical value. In doing this, the D.C. Circuit not only ignored voluminous evidence of marijuana’s medical efficacy, but it held the petitioners to a standard above and beyond that advanced by the government itself. Out of thin air, the Court interpreted the phrase “adequate and well-controlled studies” to require FDA-approved Phase II or Phase III studies, rather than the common meaning of the term. A similar such standard as that interjected into the proceedings by the Court at the last possible moment had already been rejected by the same Court and others in the cases of Grinspoon v. DEA, 828 F.2d 881 (1st Cir. 1987) and Doe v. DEA, 484 F.3d 561 (D.C. Cir. 2007).  This, coupled with the failure of the Court even to consider marijuana’s lack of abuse potential, was the basis for ASA’s recent petition for rehearing.

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