By Charlie Cain, Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Source: Detroit News

Lansing, MI -- Five months after voters approved a ballot measure to allow people with "debilitating" illnesses and diseases to use marijuana, the state Monday begins taking applications for the Michigan Medical Marijuana Program. But it will take weeks before patients can legally use marijuana.

Once state health officials receive an application for approval they have 15 days to review it. If approved, the state will then mail out a picture ID card within five days.

By Charity Bonner
Source: Courier News

Elgin, IL -- Michigan recently became the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana. Illinois may not be far behind.

Senate Bill 1381 would allow seriously ill patients with certain debilitating conditions to use medical marijuana without consequence of arrest, and would provide for the patient's primary caregiver to legally possess no more than seven dried cannabis plants and two ounces of dried usable cannabis.

By Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing
Source: Republican Eagle

Minnesota -- This year, I’m working to pass legislation that will provide compassionate health care to those suffering from cancer and other end-of-life diseases. By providing for the legal use of medicinal marijuana, these folks could experience some relief from the debilitating pain they suffer on a daily basis.

We’ve heard hours of testimony from patients and their family members who have said that medical marijuana was the only thing that could cure the nausea or increase their appetite enough to eat a meal.

By Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune
Source: Star-Tribune

Minnesota -- A bill that would legalize the medical use of marijuana in Minnesota continues to work its way through the state Legislature, with a Senate hearing on it set for today.

The Senate Finance Committee scheduled a hearing on the bill this morning. The bill, gaining support among legislators but adamantly opposed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, already has been approved by three other Senate committees.

By HealthDay News
Source: Forbes Magazine

HealthDay News -- New research out of Spain suggests that THC -- the active ingredient in marijuana -- appears to prompt the death of brain cancer cells.

The finding is based on work with mice designed to carry human cancer tumors, as well as from an analysis of THC's impact on tumor cells extracted from two patients coping with a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.

By Reuters
Source: Reuters

London -- The active ingredient in marijuana appears to reduce tumor growth, according to a Spanish study published on Wednesday. The researchers showed giving THC to mice with cancer decreased tumor growth and killed cells off in a process called autophagy.

"Our findings support that safe, therapeutically efficacious doses of THC may be reached in cancer patients," Guillermo Velasco of Complutense University in Madrid and colleagues reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

By Megha Satyanarayana, Free Press Staff Writer
Source: Detroit Free Press

Michigan -- Steven Karapandza has tried two dozen drugs to treat headaches. After trying marijuana, the 27-year-old Sterling Heights computer worker sensed some relief, and with the passage of the state's medical marijuana law, decided to become a legal medicinal user.

"It's got good palliative benefits," he said. "I could care less if pot's ever legalized recreationally." Now, he's nervous after Madison Heights police raided the home of a medical marijuana user who kept an address book that included other users.

Editorial
Source: Foster's Daily Democrat

New Hampshire -- It is time to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Now illegal under federal law, there is sufficient evidence to show the drug has value in treating illnesses. At the same time, let's be sure reform is undertaken in an orderly manner.

A bill before the New Hampshire Senate determines, "Modern medical research has discovered beneficial uses for marijuana in treating or alleviating the pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with a variety of debilitating medical conditions, as found by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine in 1999."

By Charlie Cain, Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Source: Detroit News

Lansing, MI -- Lynn Allen is busy squirreling away marijuana seeds - at $5 a shot - as he prepares to take advantage of a new state law that will allow seriously or terminally ill patients to legally smoke pot to ease their pain and suffering.

The 52-year-old married father of two from Williamston is confined to a wheelchair and unable to work because of a lack of stamina. He is one of an estimated 50,000 Michigan residents who may qualify for medical marijuana use once the state begins accepting applications on Saturday.

By Jim Ash
Source: Tallahassee bureau

Tallahassee, Florida — A self described stay-at-home mom from Orlando who wants better treatment options for her ailing father is launching a drive to put medical marijuana on the 2010 ballot.

Kim Russell, a third-generation Floridian and founder of People United for Medical Marijuana, (PUFMM,) said she is not a marijuana user and is not trying to get pot legalized in Florida. She just wants her 62-year-old father to get the most effective drug for his Parkinson's disease.

By David Hansen
Source: City Pages

Minnesota -- The basement corridor is crowded with a noisy throng of sheriffs and lobbyists, but Joanie Whiting manages to slip away to a quiet spot a few paces away.

There, she opens a thin manila envelope, removes a stack of glossy photographs, and begins flipping through them. They are of her daughter, Stephanie. In the first picture, Stephanie is a striking high school senior, her hair wavy and brown and spiked with yellow highlights.

By Michael Frost
Source: Southern Maryland Online

Annapolis, MD -- When a police officer asked her what she was doing behind a van in the park, Pamela Hughes told him the honest truth. "I said I was smoking a cannabis cigarette," she said.

She presented the stunned policeman with a written recommendation from her doctor and a copy of Maryland's "Compassionate Use Act," which reduces the penalties for possession of medical marijuana. "I honestly thought that I wasn't breaking the law," Hughes said.

By Ed Vogel
Source: Las Vegas Review Journal

Carson City — Medical marijuana advocates testified today that a bill that prescribes prison sentences for growing pot would prevent sick people from getting their “medicine.”

"This bill would send many patients to prison," testified Pierre Werner, a former medical marijuana patient who went to prison for growing more than the seven plants allowed for approved medical marijuana patients. "You would have to build another prison to hold them all."

By Anne Polta, West Central Tribune
Source: West Central Tribune

Willmar, MN -- Dan Hartog doesn’t look forward to the hassles that law enforcement officials predict will happen if the medical use of marijuana is legalized in Minnesota.

“Who’s overseeing it? What’s the control on it?” wondered Hartog, the Kandiyohi County Sheriff. Jim Kulset, Willmar Police Chief, is concerned about the impact if a medical marijuana bill, currently working its way through the Legislature, passes this year. “I think you open up a whole can of worms with it,” he said.

By Richard Lake
Source: Las Vegas Review Journal

Advocate of marijuana's medicinal qualities moving on after prison sentence

A couple of years back, a guy named Pierre Werner went to prison. It made the papers. It was his own fault.

The prison sentence followed Werner getting caught growing many dozens of marijuana plants in his house, which he swears he was doing for medical purposes.

By Howard Mintz, Mercury News
Source: San Jose Mercury News

Santa Cruz, C.A. -- For at least the past six years, one of the fiercest struggles in the federal government's war with the states over medical marijuana has been waged from a nondescript Santa Cruz warehouse, tucked between an auto repair shop and an electrical contractor.

These days, there is unprecedented optimism inside that warehouse, where the feisty Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana appears to be on the brink of outlasting the feds and winning the most important legal fight still left in the courts over California's nearly 13-year-old voter approved medical pot law.

By Laura Griffith, The Telegraph
Source: Alton Telegraph

Alton, IL -- An Illinois medical marijuana bill has taken the next step by passing the state Senate Public Health committee and could be well on its way, advocates say. Members voted Wednesday 6-3 to allow seriously ill patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to use marijuana as a medicine without fear of arrest if their doctor has recommended it.

The vote clears the way for possible floor votes by the entire Senate and House for the respective bills - a first for Illinois.

By Alison Stateman, Los Angeles
Source: Time Magazine

California -- Marijuana advocates were not the only ones overjoyed when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that he was ending federal raids on medical marijuana facilities unless they are in violation of both state and federal laws. In budget-strapped California, for one, taxpayers are grateful. There, the fed crackdowns, which had continued despite the end of the state's own raids, got in the way of upwards of $100 million in revenue from medical marijuana sales taxes in 2007, according to Americans for Safe Access (ASA), an advocacy group for prescription pot.

By David Warfield, H-P Staff Writer
Source: Herald-Palladium

Michigan -- Joel Schmidt was wasting away from hepatitis C, but he was afraid that using marijuana, the only thing that made his treatment bearable, would get him arrested. So he left his family and moved to California where he could use the drug legally.

"I didn't want to get in trouble, but mostly I didn't want to get my family in trouble," Schmidt said, "so I left."

Editorial
Source: Toledo Blade

Ohio -- Under a new administration, the Justice Department finally got the word. Raiding distributors of medical marijuana in states where they operate legally is a bad use of scarce enforcement resources.

Under the Bush administration, cannabis dispensaries were a frequent target of raids, pitting states that have legalized marijuana for medical reasons with U.S. drug enforcement agents governed by federal drug laws.

By Julie Sharp
Source: The Beach Reporter

Obtaining marijuana for medical purposes in California and now in the beach cities is just a phone call away despite bans on medical marijuana dispensaries by local cities.

It turns out pot delivery services for those who attain a “recommendation” from a physician have been around for a while and new establishments, known as collectives, are popping up with delivery services to Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beach, as well as other South Bay cities.

By Kari Andren, Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau
Source: Post-Dispatch

Springfield, Ill. -- A proposal to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes is once again smoldering in the Illinois Legislature. This time, opponents worry that it might actually catch fire.

Twin measures before the Illinois House and Senate would allow patients to use marijuana to alleviate chronic pain and nausea when other treatments have failed. The list of conditions includes cancer, glaucoma, HIV-AIDS, hepatitis C, Crohn's disease and Alzheimer's.

By Thomas D. Elias
Source: Colusa County Sun-Herald

California -- There was a time when the term “states’ rights” stood for trampling on the rights of individuals. Many states asserted during the civil rights era that they had the right to prevent some citizens from voting, eating in the restaurants of their choice, drinking from public water fountains or sitting where they pleased on buses and trains.

But issues of states’ rights were essentially turned on their head by a U.S. Supreme Court bent on restricting some items (like medical marijuana, approved in 1996 by California voters) and by the former George W. Bush administration, which was willing to claim almost anything to further its agenda of favoring big business over consumers and the environment.

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer
Source: Tri-City Herald

Wahington -- Four years after police seized Timothy E. Adams' homegrown supply of medical marijuana and slapped him into Benton County jail, he reclaimed his pot and related equipment.

The 45-year-old Kennewick resident drove his SUV to the rear of the Kennewick police station Wednesday, and officers allowed Adams to load up his rig with what was left of 40 mature plants that had been locked up in evidence lockers since March 2005.

By Genevieve Bookwalter
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel

Santa Cruz, CA -- After the Obama administration announced last week that it would only prosecute medical marijuana cases if they violate state and federal law, a Santa Cruz collective is still taking a wait-and-see approach to its own lawsuits and operations.

"We're not exactly sure what's going to happen with the feds," said Michael Corral, co-founder of Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz. However, "I feel in all likelihood we will be probably be left alone."

By Evan Hill, The Recorder
Source: The Recorder

CA -- If the federal government's evolving medical marijuana policy takes more concrete shape in the coming weeks, the first signs may come in two pending California cases.

In Los Angeles on Monday, a judge postponed the sentencing of a former dispensary owner and ordered the Department of Justice to put its new position in writing by the end of April, though he said he didn't think it will affect the defendant's conviction.

By Joe Vazquez
Source: CBS 5

California -- One week after President Barack Obama's top law enforcement official seemed to indicate the feds would no longer raid pot clubs, DEA agents busted a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco Wednesday night.

As agents carried large plastic containers of marijuana plants out of Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street, a small crowd of protesters formed a gauntlet outside the door, booing the agents and chanting, "our medicine is marijuana … listen to Obama!"

By Kevin Landrigan, Staff Writer
Source: Nashua Telegraph

Concord, NH -- A bill to legalize the medical use of marijuana for those dealing with chronic pain easily cleared the House of Representatives Wednesday. The House approved the bill (HB 648) and sent it to the state Senate for review, 234-137.

The bill permits possession by caregivers or eligible patients of six plants and up to two ounces of useable marijuana for those with a “debilitating medical condition” under the supervision of a physician.

By Andy Birkey
Source: Minnesota Independent

Minnesota -- A bill to allow the seriously ill to use medical marijuana passed the state House Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee on Tuesday, but not before fireworks erupted between law enforcement officials and Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-St. Louis, the bill’s author.

Bob Bushman, from the Statewide Gang and Drug Task Force, began his testimony by calling bill proponents liars when they said that law enforcement had not met with them to discuss concerns over the bill.

By Kathleen Miller, The Associated Press
Source: Baltimore Sun

Baltimore, M.D. -- Maryland advocates for medical marijuana say the state is sending mixed messages about using the drug to treat debilitating illnesses. They are hoping to persuade lawmakers to create a task force to study the issue.

In 2003, the Maryland General Assembly approved less severe fines for people convicted of marijuana possession who can prove a medical necessity for the drug in court.