Some staffers described it as a final straw after years of witnessing Kampia’s “predatory behavior” in the office, said former membership director Salem Pearce. “He was known as someone who made crude and inappropriate comments about and to women,” she said. “The number-one perk for Rob about MPP was the access to young women.” Pearce was one of the women who resigned because she was convinced that Kampia and MPP’s board were not going to address the matter. “I realized Rob was more interested in keeping his job than the good of the organization,” she said.

All in all, this whole spectacle is a huge black eye for the Marijuana Policy Project and the marijuana movement in general. Also, it heightens the necessity of groups like the NORML Women’s Alliance. In fact one of the charter positions of the Women’s Alliance reads:

The NORML Women’s Alliance strongly opposes the sexual exploitation and objectification of women in pot-culture and business marketing.

After Kampia’s actions it is truly clear how prevalent the problem of objectification of women is in our culture and it is something we MUST strive to eliminate lest we become a group of isolated, obnoxious old men who only pretend to put on progressive airs and talk about issues such as equality, freedom, and justice out of the sides of our mouths.

As for Kampia, although I have held him in high regard in the past, a statement he made to The Reliable Source blog gives me pause. In response to the controversy he brought upon himself and his organization he tried to explain away his problems thusly, “I just think I’m hypersexualized.”

For more information on this story, we urge out to check out The Reliable Source.

Please keep sending them in. Thanks!

Mr Bell, you may be gone but will certainly not be forgotten! (especially the next morning after visting one of your restaurants)

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Read the rest.

By DAVID L. NATHAN

Most Americans are paying too much for marijuana. I’m not referring to people who smoke it—using the drug generally costs about as much as using alcohol. Marijuana is unaffordable for the rest of America because billions are wasted on misdirected drug education and distracted law enforcement, and we also fail to tax the large underground economy that supplies cannabis.

On Monday, the New Jersey legislature passed a bill legalizing marijuana for a short list of medical uses. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine says he will sign it into law. This is a positive step, as cannabis has several unique medical applications. But the debate over medical marijuana has obscured the larger issue of pot prohibition.

As a psychiatrist, I treat individuals who often suffer from devastating substance abuse. Over many years of dealing with my patients’ problems, I have come to realize that we are wasting precious resources on the fight against marijuana, which more closely resembles legal recreational drugs than illegal ones. My conscience compels me to support a comprehensive and nationwide decriminalization of marijuana.

Prohibition did decrease alcoholism and alcohol consumption in the 1920s. However, the resulting rise of violent organized crime and the loss of tax revenue were untenable and led to the repeal of Prohibition. By analogy, while the broad decriminalization of marijuana will likely reduce the societal and economic costs of pot prohibition, it could lead to more use and abuse.

The risks of marijuana use are mild compared to those of heroin, ecstasy and other illegal drugs, but the drug is not harmless. A small number of my patients cannot tolerate any use without serious impact on underlying disorders. Others become daily, heavy smokers, manifesting psychological if not physiological dependence. While most of my patients appear to suffer no ill effects from occasional use, the drug makes my work more difficult with certain individuals.

So why do I support decriminalization? First, marijuana prohibition doesn’t prevent widespread use of the drug, although it does clog our legal system with a small percentage of users and dealers unlucky enough to be prosecuted. More to the point, legal cannabis would never become the societal problem that alcohol already is.

In most of my substance-abuse patients, I am far more concerned about their consumption of booze than pot. Alcohol frequently induces violent or dangerous behavior and often-irreversible physiological dependence; marijuana does neither. Chronic use of cannabis raises the risk of lung cancer, weight gain, and lingering cognitive changes—but chronic use of alcohol can cause pancreatitis, cirrhosis and permanent dementia. In healthy but reckless teens and young adults, it is frighteningly easy to consume a lethal dose of alcohol, but it is almost impossible to do so with marijuana. Further, compared with cannabis, alcohol can cause severe impairment of judgment, which results in greater concurrent use of hard drugs.

Many believe marijuana is a gateway drug—perhaps not so harmful in itself but one that leads to the use of more serious drugs. That is not borne out in practice, except that the illegal purchase of cannabis often exposes consumers to profit-minded dealers who push the hard stuff. In this way, the gateway argument is one in favor of decriminalization. If marijuana were purchased at liquor stores rather than on street corners where heroin and crack are also sold, there would likely be a decrease in the use of more serious drugs.

The nation badly needs the revenue of a “sin tax” on marijuana, akin to alcohol and tobacco taxes. Our government could also save money by ending its battle against marijuana in the drug war and redirecting funds to proactive drug education and substance-abuse treatment. Hyperbolic rants about the evils of marijuana could give way to realistic public education about the drug’s true risks, such as driving under the influence.

Our nation can acknowledge the dangers of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana while still permitting their use. The only logically and morally consistent argument for marijuana prohibition necessitates the criminalization of all harmful recreational drugs, including alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. We can agree that such an infringement on personal freedoms is as impractical as it is un-American. The time has come to accept that our nation’s attitude toward marijuana has been misguided for generations and that the only rational approach to cannabis is to legalize, regulate and tax it.

Dr. Nathan, a psychiatrist in Princeton, N.J., is a clinical assistant professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A19

• Dispensaries are prohibited from operating within 1,000 feet of schools, day cares and other dispensaries.
• Felons convicted within the last five years are barred from running shops.
• Customers cannot smoke on site.
• New dispensary owners also have to pass a criminal background check and will have to pay a $2,000 non-refundable application fee and $3,000 a year to renew their license.

In a large part these regulations have been met with grudging approval by the Colorado dispensary owner community because they see the substantial fees as legitimizing their businesses while not being a total “game-changer.” However, it is also important to consider the people that will be affected the most: the patients. Coloradans for Medical Marijuana Regulation have produced some great videos of medical marijuana patients in Colorado talking about how medical marijuana has drastically improved their lives. When contemplating new ways to make medical marijuana more “legitimate” through taxing medical marijuana patients, please remember these people’s suffering.