OCTA 2010 Fundraiser February 12, 2010 - Village Ballroom
7pm-10pm
Featuring music from Pass Margo, Jim Matthiessen of Seattle Hempfest's house band Herbivores, BCDP - Belville, Cornett, Davis and Pate, Sidestreet Reny and the Wy'east Drummers.

$10 suggested donation at the door.

700 Northeast Dekum Street
Portland, OR 97211

From the Seattle Times.

Seattle's new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed.

The Hempsters Plant the Seed University Tour event is at Portland State University Tuesday, January 19th, at the Vanport Room in the Smith Memorial Student Union.

The event will include a screening of the movie, questions and answers, and speaker presentations from Oregon NORML Executive Director Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML lifetime member Tim Pate.

Madeline Martinez has been getting a lot of press for the cannabis movement, especially since the opening of Cannabis Cafe.

Oregon NORML's Cannabis Cafe opened in Portland at 4:20 PM on Nov. 13, the first of its kind in the United States.

"The response has been overwhelming," says Madeline Martinez, Executive Director of Oregon NORML. "We are excited to be able to provide a safe place for patients to medicate that is out of public view within the guidelines of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA). "There needed to be a place where people can socialize and network, much like our meetings," said Martinez. Many patients travel to Portland for medical care and treatment and otherwise they have no place to use their medicine during their long and exhausting trips.

Pain management is one of the places where the rubber truly meets the road in healthcare, a multi-billion dollar business. Non-toxic cannabinoid therapy has a very real place there. And non-toxic is good, as the very first rule of medicine should always be "to do no harm". So, shouldn't cannabis, from the get-go, do it differently than the Vicodin/Oxycodone "take these pills by yourself" delivery model? After all, cannabis and all its users, medicinal or not, have been long defined by society as "counterculture", so shouldn't we be expected to do it differently, when we got our turn to create legal marijuana??? How about creating a non-profit medical cannabis delivery system whose central focus was on the patients, not profits for starters?