I'm a Scientist with a strong interest in Cancer research. The evidence of the value of Marijuana as a life saving medicine is now so strong that the need to remove Marijuana from Schedule 1 has become a moral imperative.

This weekend over 3,000 Americans died, in pain, of Cancer. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that, 1,500 more Americans will die, after suffering horribly, from it. Every single minute another American dies of Cancer. Every American Cancer patient deserves the right to have safe, legal, and economical access to Medical Marijuana. Every single one.

Americans who need Medical Marijuana shouldn't be used as "Political Footballs" Please call the Whitehouse comment line at (202) 456-1111 and ask that the President take immediate action to remove Marijuana from Schedule 1 so American Physicians in all 50 states can prescribe it. Go to petitions.whitehouse.gov -- there are two petitions you can sign electronically there, one to take Marijuana off of Schedule 1 -- https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitio… other to legalize it completely -- https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitio…

Oncologists have know it for more than a quarter of a Century that Marijuana is a "wonder drug" for helping Cancer patients.

The American Society of Clinical Oncologists wants Marijuana removed from Schedule 1. So does the American Medical Association, the professional society of all Physicians. A strong majority of Americans want Physicians in all 50 states to be able to prescribe Medical Marijuana. So do their Physicians., Cancer patients can't wait.

The need to immediately, completely, legalize Marijuana throughout the world is one of the most pressing moral issues of our time, because of its medical benefits and because of the damage prohibition causes to America and to the world.

Complete legalization is critical -- its vital that there aren't "strings" or "hoops" that Cancer patients and others who need Medical Marijuana are forced to jump through.

"Charlottes web" is NOT the solution. Cancer patients and people who suffer from chronic pain need THC, not just CBD. The "Berkeley study", where 96% of stage 4 Cancer patients who had a wide variety of Cancers achieved remission, used high dose Medical Marijuana oil, 72% THC, 28% CBD, 1 gram/day (oral) over a 90 day course of treatment. It was a small study, and not placebo controlled, but those kinds of results are clearly remarkable, have been widely reported on in the press, and demand the need for immediate large scale clinical trials.

More and more present and former members of law enforcement agree about the need to end prohibition, and have formed a rapidly expanding group of current and former undercover cops, FBI, DEA, prosecutors and Judges, from all over the world, called

LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

because they've seen the damage prohibition causes to America and the world.

See http://www.leap.cc/

I'm a Scientist. Not a politician, not a cop.

But as a Scientist with a strong interest in Cancer research, I feel even more strongly about the need to ensure that no Cancer patient is denied it, because I'm so impressed with its benefits for Cancer patients.

I urge everyone reading this to PLEASE call and email the Attorney General, the press, Congress and the President today.

Medical Marijuana helps with Alzheimer's, Autism, Cancer, seizures, PTSD and chronic pain, and has helped many Americans, including many veterans, stop using Alcohol, and hard drugs, both legal and illegal ones.

Every minute an American dies of Cancer.

Every 19 minutes an American dies of a prescription drug overdose.

Many vets become addicted to prescription opiates and die from them.

NOBODY has ever died from smoking too much pot.

Cancer patients are seeing remarkable results using high dose Medical Marijuana oil, in many cases achieving complete remission, even for stage 4 cancers -- there are many excellent articles on the web, and videos on youtube with patient's personal stories about their experiences with it -- and every Cancer patient that uses Marijuana to ease their suffering benefits greatly from doing so.

It is immoral to leave Marijuana illegal, for anyone, for even a second longer.

For Cancer patients, its a matter of life and death.

Cancer patients can't wait.

Medical Marijuana has an unmatched safety profile, and for people who suffer from so many diseases, of so many kinds, its a medical miracle -- and the scientific evidence behind it is rock solid.

For Cancer patients, Medical Marijuana encourages apoptosis and autophagy of Cancer cells, while leaving normal cells untouched, is anti-angigogenic, anti-proliferative, and is anti-angiogenic.

Its also synergistic with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, making both more effective.

For many Cancer patients its meant the difference between life and death.

For everyone else, its a far safer alternative to Alcohol, and infinitely safer than Cigarettes.

Either take them off the market too, or legalize Marijuana right now.

2016 is too far away, Its too long to wait. Every year we lose more Americans to Cancer than died in WWII.

Between now and the 2016 elections, roughly 1 MILLION Americans will die of Cancer.

And Its a horrible way to die.

Why not have the registry be encrypted? That way, the state never has the names, but by supplying a key, the user can show that they are in the database.

Alcohol is safer and more ecologically sound than butane for making extracts. Or maybe people could take their weed to a certified processor to have the turn it into oil? And how about custom curing - take your buds to someone who knows how to cure and they end up something instead of a pile of unsmokable trash.

@2 Because encryption can't mollify the paranoid.

Punish! Punish! Punish!

You wouldn't think of getting your prescriptions from a saloon, but medical marijuana sellers aren't pharmacists either. There's your solution right there: sell medical pot at Bartells, with a prescription from a doctor. Ideally, a REAL doctor. Otherwise, buy it from a recreational store -- or better yet, stop pretending that the medical marijuana market makes any sense at all and get rid of it, and increase the number of stores five-fold. And make them get decent signs; those ripped banners look like Afghanistan.

In other words, normalize it. Make it as tightly regulated as, say, milk.

What bothers me the most of these; is these are not being put up for a vote.

Medical Marijuana was passed by a Voter initiative; so was I-502. If it was my world I would make them put it up for a vote before changing anything.

Otherwise you are NOT listening to the intent of the people and just doing whatever you want.

I smell a RePete

Lol, meanwhile, while all the knuckleheads are running around in a frenzy in Olympia, the black market is thriving very nicely.

I've lived in Washington for three years and I've watched how the state's handled everything from the WSLCB alcohol disaster to the stuttering, twitchy implementation of I-502. I've come to the conclusion that the state is incapable of running a business, let alone managing one of the nations first marijuana legalization efforts. Their track record proves otherwise.

These are state employees and it goes without saying that people who can't do anything else end up working for the state. People have to have jobs, I'm ok with that, but my point is that the only way to do this right is to let the private sector run everything. Their mission should be clear, to out compete the black market (and hopefully absorb them into a legal framework), ensuring that people who need it for medical reasons or recreational reasons have access to quality products at the best prices.

Let's face it, the state has neither the experience nor the expertise to accomplish these goals, but Washington is literally overflowing with successful business people who can. The frantics in Olympia are a clear sign of a system that doesn't know what to do. Let's give the people who do know what to do a chance.

A bill the legislature passed a few years ago before Gregoire slaughtered it via sectional veto would have had us using a privacy-protecting registry designed at the University of Washington by Alexei Czeskis and Jacob Appelbaum.

The general idea is that it would provide the ability for someone to prove to a law enforcement officer that he or she was in the registry but prevent anyone--police, database operators at the Department of Health, Chinese hackers--from trolling the registry to find who is in it, even with access to the underlying database.

See their paper, "High Stakes: Designing a Privacy Preserving Registry" for details: http://www.czeskis.com/research/pubs/ppm…

Abstract:

This paper details our experience designing a privacy preserving medical marijuana registry. In this paper, we make four key contributions. First, through direct and indirect interaction with multiple stakeholders like the ACLU of Washington, law enforcement, the Cannabis Defense Coalition, state legislators, lawyers, and many others, we describe a number of intersting technical and socially-imposed challenges for building medical registries. Second, we identify a new class of registries called unidirectional, non-identifying (UDNI) registries. Third, we use the UDNI concept to propose holistic design for a medical marijuana registry that leverages elements of a central database, but physically distributes proof-of-enrollment capability to persons enrolled in the registry. This design meets all of our goals and stands up in the face of a tough threat model. Finally, we detail our experience in transforming a technical design into an actual legislative bill.

It's a shame that this isn't in the new batch of bills.

Where to start.

Combining medical and recreational systems is a public non-starter. All that will do is is cause a "Son of 502" initiative to pass, one that would likely explicitly exclude the WSLCB from having any jurisdiction on medical marijuana, full stop.

Lawmakers are not under pressure to reconcile the two systems. The DoJ had its funding to provide that pressure under the spectre of prosecution mostly removed in the last round of federal budget hearings. As long as Washington State follows their own laws and no weed heads over to Idaho, there's little the Fed can do.

Washington does allow small grows at home (how can you not know this?). Medical patients can still grow up to 13 plants for personal use. 512 explicitly states it does not impact medicinal regulations, and the grow law is in those regulations.

In the end, #7 has it mostly right. The state laws on marijuana are exceedingly clear, yet they are not being followed by the state government. The public mandates are largely ignored, and Olympia simply thinks it can do what it wants.

On this issue, that could lead to some very interesting public initiatives.

Check it out... the lobbyist pushing Rivers' bill is also a lobbyist for Merck... http://www.pdc.wa.gov/MvcQuerySystem/Lob…

Oh gee...look who contributed to Ann Rivers... MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP $900.00 https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign…

Co-sponsor Sen. Hatfield as well...
Sen. Brian Hatfield...
MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP $900.00

Ugh, antivax cretins.

You're disgusting.