With your recent veto, I must ask. How much money are you taking from the pharmaceutical companies? It seems that you promote expensive pain relief when bought from big business pharmaceutical companies but are opposed to cheap alternatives for those in suffering. If this was not your motive it seems you would propose a bill to ban all pain relief medication and a separate bill to ban Alcohol. No, I think you are out to earn a fat wallet. I hope you lose your next election. The people need someone that will look out for the little man. You do not.

I know that there is perhaps an unavoidable delay between selecting articles to highlight here and the posting of those articles. But it might be a good idea to double-check the latest updates on stories before posting them. Case in point: "Today, June 16, 2009 (which, of course, was yesterday), the Rhode Island General Assembly overrode Governor Carcieri's veto, making the 2009 Medical Marijuana Act a law.... (W)ithin a year, the Department of Health will license a non-profit compassion center to grow and distribute medical marijuana for patients. The House voted 67-0 to override, and the Senate voted 35-3." (For those drug worriers here, that was some squeaker of a veto override vote, 'eh what?)

Carcieri, you are the man! It is about time we have an elected official stand up against the moral and ethical decay of our society. It is too bad we live in a time where people use dying cancer patients and dying aids patients as a symbol to pass their marijuana adgenda. It is a sad time for good wholesome American's. Good luck keeping your kids off tobacco, alcohol, dope and the more available pot!

Jason give me a break. No medication I take cost 400.00 an ounce. Mattering how much weed you smoke it could be $1200.00 a month. Dispensary owners are making millions of dollars and you talk about the Pharaceutical Companies. Again give me a break.

John (whoever you are) from Oceanside: would it matter to you if medical cannabis were $60/ounce? That is the price we are working with here in our plans to re-establish our state's mmj program. That would be divided between $30 for the farmer (with farmers selling medical cannabis to the state for $500/lb, instead of the $3,000/lb they now get on the illicit market), $20 for a state mmj tax (to fund the state-controlled and -administered program) and $10 for the pharmacist (since our plan is to distribute through pharmacies instead of setting up alternate distribution systems.) At $60/ounce, medical cannabis will be 1/10th (or less) the cost of an equivalent prescription for Marinol. Again, would you feel better if mmj were provided and priced in this way? Or does your profession preclude you from supporting access to cannabis by anyone at any time in any way? Just asking.

Bernie, you are correct that there is a lag, but we do our best to stay current on the news and to follow up on stories as they evolve. FYI we will cover the veto override in an upcoming article -- this was just one of those (rare) cases where the state legislature acted quickly!

Good for the governor but if there was an override shame on the other politicians.Let us get this clear. Marijuana is not a safe and benign drug. Studies have shown it increases the heart rate, blood pressure,impairs memory,increases the risk of mental health problems when use is initiated at an early age,impairs the immune system and marijuana smoke contains 50% to 70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke.Studies have shown that tar from marijuana causes cancer when rubbed on the skins of animals and lungs of marijuana smokers show growth of abnormal cells. Our lawmakers must not fall prey to people that just love to smoke marijuana and disregard the science showing it is not a safe drug.

Victor, in addition to vaporizers eliminating CO and tar for medical cannabis users, the reality-based evidence on marijuana hazards is different. To quote DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young when he ruled cannabis be reclassified from Schedule I: "Nearly all medicines have a toxic, potentially lethal effect, but marijuana is not such a substance. There is no known record (of) a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.... The record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience ... (and it) is now used daily by enormous numbers of people .... (D)espite this long history ..., there are simply no credible reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death. By contrast, aspirin ... causes hundreds of deaths each year.... (R)esearchers have ... been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.... A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.... Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis, marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care." Judge Young's conclusions have been mirrored by 15,000+ medical journal articles since 1988, and by another DEA judge's review and similar ruling since then. Of course, the DEA continues to ignore all science, and its own judges. Why? "Never argue with a man (or a government agency) whose job (or existance) depends on not being convinced." H.L. Mencken For more on Judge Young's ruling, see http://www.mamas.org/fjudge.htm

If, in the program cited by Bernie, the cannabis were $60 an ounce, each ounce ground in a 1/16th-inch sifter will produce about 900 single tokes in a screened narrow crater utensil @ 25-mg. per toke, the cost per serving would be 6-2/3 cents, and at 5 servings a day about $120 per year. (Compare present-day pack-a-day cigarette habit at $2000 per year.) I mention this in part because of having read somewhere that the government has been furnishing a select list of patients with 900-mg. marijuana cigarettes (i.e. 36 single tokes each, to be lit up once and burned away in a few minutes). Jason has a point about the pharmaceutical companies, but I think the tobacco industry is far and away the greater antagonist because if cannabis is available masses of users of both herbs will gravitate away from the profitable hot-burning overdose cigarette format to vaporizers and one-hitters, no longer cowed by "anti-paraphernalia" laws.

Thankfully the legislature overrode this misinformed governor. Marijuana is a safe and effective medicine. As a seriously ill person who uses marijuana frequently, it helps me in incredible ways with no severe side effects like all of my other prescription medications. Marijuana has been used medically for thousands of years. Stop the insane war against marijuana and against sick people. The drug warriors profit by marijuana staying illegal. Private prisons profit from marijuana remaining illegal. We all lose with marijuana still illegal. Stop the madness.