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The medical cannabis community is mourning the death of medical cannabis pioneer Dennis Peron, who died on Saturday at the age of seventy-two. Dennis was the founder of the legendary San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club in San Francisco and a crusader for the right to safe access to medical cannabis in California.

Called the “Father of Medical Marijuana,” he inspired the grassroots movement that adopted Proposition 215 legalizing medical cannabis in California in 1996.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a memorandum analyzing the Justice Department’s Decision to rescind Obama-era guidance on federal cannabis policy including the Cole Memo, the Ogden Memos,  the Wilkinson memo on cannabis on tribal lands and the FinCen guidance which created policies for financial institutions interacting with cannabis businesses. CRS is a non-partisan office in the Library of Congress that provides legislative advice and analysis to both parties in a neutral way.

In a 1755 letter to the Pennsylvania General Assembly Ben Franklin wrote  “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." However, while its original context, which related to tax policy, may not apply, the words lend themselves to a conversation that lawmakers should be having. How should our country address liberty, but also safety, when it comes to firearms and cannabis?

Yesterday afternoon, both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted on H.J. Res. 123, a Continuing Resolution that keeps the Government open through December 22, 2017. President Trump signed it into law this morning. H.J. Res 123 continues to fund the Federal Government at existing levels and includes all policy provisions as the previous budget. This includes the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment which is the only thing protecting medical cannabis patients from federal interference and prosecution.

The last 5 years have been a nightmare for Rhonda Firestack-Harvey, who is well known among medical cannabis advocates as a member of the Kettle Falls Five. For those unfamiliar with the story, Rhonda and her late husband Larry’s property in Washington State, near the town of Kettle Falls was raided in 2012 by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for growing medical cannabis.

As a kick off to the End Pain Not Lives Campaign on November 1, Americans for Safe Access and US Pain Foundation advocates held a press conference and rally on Capitol Hill to encourage Congress and the Administration to consider medical cannabis as an option for pain in order to help mitigate the current opioid overdose crisis that has hit epidemic proportions in our nation.

On October 15, 2017, the Washington Post and 60 Minutes released a scathing report on the pharmaceutical industry’s influence of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This report, in large part, scrutinized Representative Tom Marino (R-PA) and his potential appointment as the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) also known as the Drug Czar because of his ties with and sponsorship of legislation favoring the pharmaceutical industry.

This week, we submitted comments relating to the efficacy and medical usefulness of cannabidiol as a medical treatment. In August, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a notice in the federal register asking for public comments on cannabidiol (CBD) and 16 other substances prior to a meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) that will take place in Geneva, Switzerland from November 6-November 10. The FDA will consider the comments on these substances in creating a response to WHO which will determine what, if any, international restrictions will be placed on the listed substances.

Valencia Elliott grew up in what she calls a tough part of the country where she’d regularly smell cannabis being smoked, but she never had any interest in it. That changed late in life when her husband, an Army veteran who’d been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, confided he had cancer. Worse, he’d been hiding a prostate cancer diagnosis for a year, and by the time he told her, he also had two other types of cancer. That was June 3, 2015, but the nightmare had already started. She didn’t know what was wrong, but they were already going back and forth to the hospital with complaints about his pain.