Richmond County’s leading advocate for medical cannabis is taking his fight to the campaign trail.

Perry Parks — along with his cousin, Darrell Davis, who is a disabled veteran —plans to attend the Donald Trump rally in Florence, South Carolina tonight, in uniform, to ask the candidate what he plans to do to make cannabis available to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I want to see if he is aware of the disparity in treatment for the veterans,” Parks said Thursday evening. “Half the soldiers can be treated with cannabis, the other half can be arrested for it.”

Under the intense gaze of former Speaker Sam Rayburn’s marble statue, roughly 50 industrial hemp supporters held an expo on Capitol Hill Tuesday to promote lifting the federal ban on hemp, man.

The expo -- sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) -- brought together an interesting, mostly bearded collection of hemp supporters, from clothes- and shampoo-makers to (extremely sugary) cannabis energy drink retailers and proponents of making car doors with hemp.

With Rand Paul ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the GOP race has lost its strongest supporter of drug policy reform. But the remaining Republican candidates are for the most part not as retrograde in this area as you might expect, especially on the question of how the federal government should respond to state legalization of marijuana.

An emergency bill to fix a legislative drafting error that had local governments in California racing to ban medical marijuana cultivation won Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature on Wednesday.

The legislation, AB21, by Democratic Assemblyman Jim Wood of Healdsburg amends thecomprehensive medical marijuana regulations the California Legislature passed in September to eliminate a paragraph giving the state alone authority to license pot growers in jurisdictions that did not have laws on the books by March 1 specifically allowing or outlawing cultivation.

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that Tunisia was to reform the "law 52", a controversial text which makes it systematically punishable by imprisonment of drug consumption, mainly cannabis.

In a report entitled "All this for a seal," published on January 2, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), based in New York, denounced the "social cost" of the "Law 52", enacted in 1992 by the dictatorship of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Legislation that provides for a minimum sentence of one year of drug use in prison and prohibited judges to take into account mitigating circumstances.

On the I-5 interstate, just south of the Canadian border, Washington State Patrol has a problem with pot.

"It smells like marijuana in the car," Trooper Mallorie Baffa says as she shines her flashlight in the face of a 19-year-old man in a Lexus. He caught her attention by taking a wide turn.

Marijuana has been legal in Washington state for the past two-and-a-half years. But the young driver is under the age of 21 so there's zero-tolerance for any amount of the drug in his system. He could lose his licence and have a conviction on his record for the rest of his life.

"He was impaired," says Baffa. "He was under the influence of marijuana. To be impaired by a substance and to be behind the wheel of a car is not safe."

D.C. Council votes to create task force to study issue of marijuana in businesses - Washington Business Journal

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Tina Reed Staff Reporter Washington Business Journal

D.C. Council to consider permanent ban on marijuana clubs

A Republican-sponsored bill that would make three or more convictions for simple possession or casual exchange of marijuana a misdemeanor rather than a felony passed a key hurdle on Tuesday.

With a unanimous 9-0 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would make changes to the prosecution of those found guilty of possessing marijuana and other controlled substances three or more times.

The move is expected to decrease the state's incarceration costs by as much as $2 million, according to the bill's fiscal note.

The change  comes as part of a package deal. The heart of the bill was actually centered on enhancing the state's DUIs laws.

As support toward the legalization of marijuana for both medical and recreational uses rises, questions about the history and legitimacy of its prohibition are being brought to light. Though cannabis has been used by humans for almost 5,000 years, the past 80 years of its existence have been filled with controversy, crime and misinformation. Yet, the underlying intent behind the prohibition of cannabis — though hidden behind the guise of public safety — holds racist, xenophobic and disingenuous sentiments. As these intents become more integrated into public knowledge, the general attitudes — at least of Americans — toward cannabis have changed drastically.