The country’s 80,000 Holocaust survivors will be eligible for as much as a 90 percent subsidy for their pharmaceutical bills, the Social Affairs Ministry announced yesterday after months of debate. The arrangement will go into effect in about a month; the names of those eligible will be given to the health maintenance organizations.

The agreement, reached by the social affairs, health and finance ministries, is expected to cost the state NIS 50 million and will come from the Social Affairs Ministry’s budget for services to Holocaust survivors. That budget currently covers various needs, including nursing care, dental work, purchasing glasses and hearing aids, etc.

Holocaust survivors aged 75 or above will pay no more than NIS 100 for the medicines they normally receive. The maximum deductible fee for medicines received by Holocaust survivors under the age of 75 will be NIS 125.

Social Affairs Ministry data shows that more than 80 percent of Holocaust survivors are older than 75. No special procedure will be required for the survivors to receive the subsidy; it will become automatic once their data is entered in HMO databases.

Meanwhile, the ministry continues to meet with representatives of the Claims Conference and of the Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets, so the subsidies for medicines will be raised to 100 percent of the cost.

Research in 2009 by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which examined the condition of Holocaust survivors living in Israel, concluded that many suffer from cardiovascular problems and chronic skeletal pain. The study also showed that survivors are prone to suffer from anxiety attacks, and half of their number consider their health to be weak.

Ze’ev Factor, chairman of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, regretted the delay in reaching the agreement as some 30 Holocaust survivors die on a daily basis.

Ministry approves marijuana for 14-year-old cancer patient – Haaretz – Israel News.

A 14-year-old girl with hematological cancer may receive marijuana, the Health Ministry decided.

The girl has been receiving treatment at a pediatric oncology clinic at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa for several months, and is suffering from the side effects of intensive chemotherapy, including pain and loss of appetite.

Her doctors recommended marijuana to treat these problems. The Health Ministry approved the request last week, and she began receiving marijuana joints on Friday. The hospital said that although smoking by children is problematic, the joints have improved her condition.

Ayelet Ben Barak, a senior physician in the department treating the teen, said, “Because of the problematic nature of smoking at these ages, we are looking into administrating the marijuana by other means.”

An 88-year-old woman with chronic pain has asked to receive marijuana cookies.

About 800 patients in Israel currently receive medicinal marijuana. Fewer than 10 are under age 18.

Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.

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By the government’s count, 14 states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Some medical marijuana advocates say Maryland shouldn’t be included in that group, because the law there only allows for reduced penalties for medical marijuana usage.

Link to Can Marijuana Help Rescue California’s Economy?

Article text:
Could marijuana be the answer to the economic misery facing California? Democratic State Assembly member Tom Ammiano thinks so. Ammiano introduced legislation last month that would legalize pot and allow the state to regulate and tax its sale – a move that could mean billions for the cash-strapped state. Pot is, after all, California’s biggest cash crop, responsible for $14 billion in annual sales, dwarfing the state’s second largest agricultural commodity – milk and cream – which brings in $7.3 billion annually, according to the most recent USDA statistics. The state’s tax collectors estimate the bill would bring in about $1.3 billion in much-needed revenue a year, offsetting some of the billions in service cuts and spending reductions outlined in the recently approved state budget.

“The state of California is in a very, very precipitous economic plight. It’s in the toilet,” says Ammiano. “It looks very, very bleak, with layoffs and foreclosures and schools closing or trying to operate four days a week. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment we’ve ever had. With any revenue ideas people say you have to think outside of the box, you have to be creative, and I feel that the issue of the decriminalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana fits that bill. It’s not new, the idea has been around, and the political will may in fact be there to make something happen.” (See pictures of stoner cinema.)

Ammiano may be right. A few days after he introduced the bill, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that states should be able to make their own rules on medical marijuana and that federal raids on pot dispensaries in California would cease. The move signaled a softening of the hard-line approach previous administrations have had to medicinal pot use. The nomination of Gil Kerlikowske as the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy may also signal a softer federal line on marijuana. If he is confirmed as the so-called Drug Czar, Kerlikowske will bring with him experience as police chief of Seattle, where he made it clear that going after people for posessing marijuana was not a priority of his force. (See a story about the grass-roots marijuana war in California.)

California was one of the first states in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. Currently, $200 million in medical marijuana sales are subject to sales tax. If passed, the Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act (AB 390) would give California control of pot in a manner similar to alcohol, while prohibiting its purchase to citizens under age 21. (The bill has been referred to the California State Assembly’s Public Safety and Health Committees; Ammiano says it could take up to a year before it comes to a vote for passage.) State revenues would be derived from a $50 per ounce levy on retail sales of marijuana and sales taxes. By adopting the law, California could become a model for other states. As Ammiano put it: “How California goes, the country goes.”

Despite the projected and much-needed revenue, opponents say legalizing pot will only add to social woes. “The last thing we need is yet another mind-altering substance to be legalized,” says John Lovell, lobbyist for the California Peace Officers’ Association. “We have enough problems with alcohol and abuse of pharmaceutical products: do we really need to add yet another mind-altering substance to the array?” Lovell says the easy availability of the drug will lead to a surge in its use, much like what happened when alcohol was allowed to be sold in venues other than liquor stores in some states.

Joel W. Hay, professor of Pharmaceutical Economics at USC, also foresees harm if the bill passes. “Marijuana is a drug that clouds people’s judgment. It affects their ability to concentrate and react and it certainly has impacts on third parties,” says Hay, who has written on the societal costs of drug abuse. “It’s one more drug that will add to the toll on society. All we have to do is look at the two legalized drugs, tobacco and alcohol, and look at the carnage that they’ve caused. [Marijuana] is a dangerous drug and it causes bad outcomes for both the people who use it and for the people who are in their way at work or other activities.” He adds: “There are probably some responsible people who can handle marijuana but there are lots of people who can’t, and it has an enormous negative impact on them, their family and loved ones.” (See pictures of Mexico’s drug wars.)

In response, retired Orange County Superior Court Judge James Gray, a longtime proponent of legalization, estimates that legalizing pot and thus ceasing to arrest, prosecute and imprison non-violent offenders could save the state an additional $1 billion a year. “We couldn’t make this drug any more available if we tried,” he says. “Not only do we have those problems, along with glamorizing it by making it illegal, but we also have the crime and corruption that go along with it.” He adds, “Unfortunately, every society in the history of mankind has had some form of mind-altering, sometimes addictive substances to use, to misuse, abuse or get addicted to. Get used to it. They’re here to stay. So, let’s try to reduce those harms and right now we couldn’t do it worse if we tried.”

It’s high season for politics in Israel ahead of their upcoming parliamentary elections on February 10, and the Holocaust Survivors Party is turning over a new leaf ? the kind often found in Amsterdam coffee shops.

The Holocaust Survivors Party has sparked interest in their mission to increase benefits paid to Israeli victims of Nazi persecution by running a political broadcast with the Green Leaf Graduates party on television.

?Close to 70,000 [Holocaust survivors] live below the poverty line,? Ohad Shem-Tov, leader of the Green Leaf Graduates, says in the ad. ?Our moral obligation is to allow them to live the remainder of their lives in honour.?

Following Shem-Tov?s remark, Holocaust Survivors Party chairman Yaakov Kfir says, ?For us, the Holocaust survivors, we have a moral obligation get this plant legalized.?

Kfir said he joined forces with the Green Leaf Graduates in part to attract more attention to the survivors’ cause.

?The fact that I am interviewed by so many media outlets indicates that the decision to hook up with the Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf) Graduates was smarter than if I had chosen to go with a larger, more solid party,? Kfir told the Jerusalem Post. 

Kfir also mentioned that he knows of many aged Holocaust survivors who have experienced difficulty or shame in obtaining cannabis to treat the symptoms of glaucoma and of anti-cancer therapy, strengthening his convictions in support of cannabis legalization.

?I have decided that ‘if I am not for myself – who will be?’ It’s time we take care of ourselves, and this might be our last chance to make sure that, despite the fact we had no childhood, we can at least reach old age decently and even be allowed to use medical marijuana if the need arises,? Kfir told the Jerusalem Post.

Israel’s Hebrew University is one of the world’s major contributors to research into medicinal applications of cannabis.

Published in Russia Today: http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/36650

The Green Leaf Graduates, which split from the political party Aleh Yarok, best known for its advocacy of the legalization of cannabis, is making waves with its most recent announcement: a plan to incorporate the Holocaust Survivors Party.

The Holocaust survivors are focused on the controversial issue of their state pension disbursement, which has been weakened by rising demands among the country’s retired workers.

The party accuses the government of misappropriating funds, donated by Germany, that were supposed to be given to Holocaust survivors. The survivors’ party alleges that instead, those monies have been paid in part to thousands of other Israelis who have no connection to the Holocaust, to ease the government’s pension burden.

Yaakov Kfir, the party’s leader, said he joined forces with the Green Leaf Graduates to attract more attention to the survivors’ cause.

“The fact that I am interviewed by so many media outlets indicates that the decision to hook up with the Aleh Yarok graduates was smarter than if I had chosen to go with a larger, more solid party,” Kfir said on Wednesday.

“And that is a shos ['terrific' in Hebrew slang], as the youngsters taught me. The voice of the Holocaust survivors is finally being heard, and this is how I hope to get to the 350,000 Holocaust survivors and their offspring.”

Kfir, a 74-year-old survivor from Petah Tikva, has campaigned for better health care for survivors for 25 years. But after a series of political defeats, he finally chose to get involved in the process directly.

“I have decided that ‘if I am not for myself – who will be?’ It’s time we take care of ourselves, and this might be our last chance to make sure that, despite the fact we had no childhood, we at least reach old age decently and even be allowed to use medical marijuana if the need emerges,” Kfir said.

Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the Green Leaf Graduates, voiced strong support for Kfir’s cause. She described the government’s failure to address the concerns of Holocaust survivors as a “national disgrace” and hoped that younger voters drawn to the party would be given additional incentive to vote in order to support the survivors’ cause.

“People who would vote for the survivors right now are all older. [The survivors' party] wants to get younger people involved, like the Pensioners Party did before,” said Levine, referring to the Gil Party’s surprising 2006 success, which was fueled largely by disillusioned young voters.

She was forthright about the Green Leaf Graduates’ intention to use support for the survivors’ cause to further its own agenda of legalizing marijuana and said that the survivors had no problem with the issue.

“They say to us that at their age they don’t see why [marijuana] is an issue,” she continued. “They don’t consider it drugs. They even have friends who have cancer or something who are ashamed to ask for a prescription. Easier access to medical marijuana is something we’re fighting for.”

But despite the Green Leaf Graduates’ electoral expectations, the new partnership has flummoxed many in the Knesset, including the major parties. Labor representative Colette Avital wondered why the Holocaust survivors’ party did not join a party where it “has a better chance.”

“It doesn’t make too much sense to me,” said Avital, speaking to The Jerusalem Post by phone on Wednesday, on her way to a meeting with a group of, among others, Holocaust survivors. “The issues confronting survivors are much too serious to be mixed up with something else.”

Avital claimed that survivor issues were an integral part of the Labor platform and that Labor “would be more than happy to include” the survivors’ party.

“In a way it’s a shame because I’m not sure they’ll even be able to get in,” she said. “It’s a waste of votes. I haven’t got a clue why they aren’t talking [to Labor].”

In a statement issued earlier, Kfir painted a very different picture.

“We, the Holocaust survivors have voted time after time for the same people who go and betray us,” he said, citing a broad feeling among survivors that their concerns are not being taken seriously by mainstream political parties.

“This is why I have decided to turn to the young voters and to convince them to vote for us, so we – their grandparents – get what we deserve: full medical treatments and nursing, if we need it.”

Published by The Jerusalem Post

On Tuesday, a party representing Israeli Holocaust survivors joined forces with the pro-marijuana Green Leaf party for a run at Israel’s parliament. The new party launched its campaign in a near-empty, underground, graffiti-filled nightclub in south Tel Aviv, pledging to pursue two primary goals: to financially assist elderly Holocaust survivors and to legalize the consumption of cannabis.

While most of the attention in the run-up to Israel’s Feb. 10 general election is focused on its three major parties ? Likud, Kadima and Labor ? and their high-profile candidates for prime minister, many Israelis are considering voting for the smaller, and quirkier, of the 34 parties officially registered.

Parties need to win just 2.5 percent of the vote, or roughly 70,000 votes, to win a seat in the notoriously fractious parliament.

Most participants won’t even pass that threshold, though TV ad campaigns that premiered Tuesday will give them an opportunity to present their offbeat agendas to an electorate fed up with lofty issues such as war and peace. Parties receive government subsidies for the commercials, so even minor political movements can get air time.

Israel is no stranger to fringe, obscure political parties. Previous candidates vying for parliament have included a group that campaigned for men’s rights, the establishment of a national casino and a group led by a fishmonger and puppeteer that tried to abolish banking fees.

The alliance between Holocaust survivors and marijuana advocates is not the only long-shot bid for parliament. The “Power to Change” party is promoting rights for the handicapped. It launched its campaign with an online video showing a couple in bed. The woman then gets up and hands her mate his prosthetic limbs. The party said it hoped to send a message that the handicapped are a functioning part of society.

Members of the smokers and survivors’ bloc say their union is less loopy than it seems. The merger adds an air of credibility to the younger members, and it gives a boost of energy to the older members who say medical marijuana has helped some of their cancer-stricken friends.

Yaakov Kfir, 74, who survived the Holocaust as a child in Yugoslavia, said he welcomed the efforts of youngsters to push the campaign for Israel’s estimated 350,000 survivors, many of whom struggle financially.

Kfir, the party’s No. 2 candidate, said he has never experimented with drugs, but after learning much from his new colleagues was eager to try. “But only when it is legal,” he said.

Wearing a T-shirt reading “cannabis is safe medicine,” Ohad Shem-Tov, the party’s 29-year-old, ponytailed leader, said he naturally levitated toward Kfir’s life story. Kfir’s parents were killed when he was 6. He emigrated to Israel, became an air force officer and later an activist for the rights of survivors.

“They know what it feels like to be persecuted for no reason. They can identify with us,” Shem-Tov said.

The ultraliberal Green Leaf movement has run for parliament three times before, narrowly missing out in the 1999, 2003 and 2006 elections.

Internal bickering led the party to split after the last election with the Israeli comedian Gil Kopatch taking over the reins of the mother party. He recently made headlines for filming an election ad of himself sitting on the grave of Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, while rolling and smoking a marijuana cigarette.

Ben-Gurion’s descendants condemned the ad, as did the breakaway faction, known as the “Grown-Up Green Leaf,” now running with the Holocaust survivors.

Most pollsters don’t give either party much chance of passing the election threshold. But Israel does have a history of protest parties pulling off election upsets

In the previous election of 2006, a group of retirees became the trendy antiestablishment vote. Led by a quirky, bespectacled ex-spy chief, the pensioners’ party garnered seven seats out of the 120 in parliament and joined the Cabinet.

The Holocaust Survivors and Grown-Up Green Leaf Party hope to be the chic choice this time around.

Michelle Levine, the No. 3 candidate on the joint list, said they chose the word “grown-up” to distinguish themselves from the other Green Leaf party. She said this time around the issue of legalization will take a back seat to the rights of Holocaust survivors.

“We want to show the public that we will be elected not just by the nation’s pot smokers but by people of all ages and all backgrounds,” she said. “We will never drop the issue of legalization, but the issue of Holocaust survivors is more urgent.”

Published by The Associated Press

from: Ha’aretz

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By Frederik Hartig

In July, the Dutch government will introduce a nationwide smoking ban in bars, cafes and restaurants, aimed at protecting workers. But it will also make life a lot harder for the country’s infamous coffee shops, where customers will only be allowed to smoke pure cannabis.

De Tweede Kamer is located on a small side street in Amsterdam, not far from the flower market. A painting of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard hangs on the wall, and next to it, a little bit higher, there’s one of Queen Wilhelmina. White ornaments rise up the wall like smoke rings around the portraits. The coffee shop opened in 1985, and has since become an institution in the Dutch capital, a kind of art museum for the residents of Amsterdam, owner Paul Wilhelm proudly says.

But Wilhelm is worried about his company’s future. On July 1, a smoking ban will come into force in Dutch restaurants, bars and cafes. The ban will also apply to the country’s more than 700 coffee shops, which are infamous worldwide for selling soft drugs.

“Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses,” Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told public broadcaster NOS after the government issued its decision on Friday. “It would have been wrong to move towards a smoke-free catering industry and then make an exception for coffee shops. People would not have understood that.”

The chances of getting an exemption are limited, says Mark Jacobsen of BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners that has been fighting to get special provisions for the cafes.

Jacobsen argues that it’s absurd that the law is being applied to coffee shops. “In a cafe,” he said, “you come to drink something. In a restaurant you come to eat. But when you come to a coffee shop, you come to smoke, so smoking has to be allowed in a coffee shop.”

But Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink has no plans to make any exceptions. Coffee shop employees, he argues, also have the right to protection from tobacco smoke.

But Wilhelm claims it’s a specious argument. After all, people who apply for jobs in a coffee shop know that smoking is the company’s core business. “If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can’t tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They’re old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war — but now they won’t even be allowed to make this decision?”

Perversely, the law, intended to protect workers from smoke, only applies to tobacco. In the Netherlands, that has resulted in a rather bizarre result: Smoking pot or hashish in coffee shops will remain legal; it just can’t be mixed with tobacco. If someone wants to roll their joint with tobacco, then they have to smoke it outside. Wilhelm can only shake his head in disbelief. “That sounds a bit to me like going into a cafe and being able to buy a beer without being able to drink it there. But the cafe still lets you drink whiskey, rum and vodka.”

Besides, it will be difficult to monitor whether someone has secretly rolled his joint with tobacco or not. Mark Jacobson doubts that Dutch officials will begin policing the ban immediately when it goes into effect in July. “We’ll just have to see how strictly they enforce it,” he says.

Under the new provision, he explains, “If an official comes into a coffee shop and sees someone smoking a joint, he must confiscate it and send it to a lab to test whether it contains tobacco. It’s such an arduous procedure that it is going to create numerous problems. I don’t think they will apply it very strictly during the first year.”

Jacobsen feels the world has been turned on its head in Holland. “In every other country they do just the opposite — there they check whether there is cannabis inside,” he says with a laugh.

‘An Absurd Decision’

There are exceptions to the ban. If an establishment can set up a separate room or add a glass partition to ensure that employees are not exposed to tobacco smoke, then smoking is permitted in those rooms as long as service is not provided.

That may be easy for larger coffee shops, but it will effectively downgrade smaller coffee shops into cannabis convenience stores where people drop in to buy pot but don’t stick around. Jacobsen says he is planning to add a wall in his coffee shop, called The Rookies. The wall would separate the bar from the rest of the room, and he claims it will be the largest legal smoking space in Amsterdam.

In the smaller Tweede Kamer, though, it will be almost impossible to sufficiently protect workers from guests’ tobacco smoke. Still, Wilhelm says he doesn’t want to operate his coffee shop like a takeaway restaurant. “The soul of the Tweede Kamer has always been the social contact, the discussions, the chat, reading the newspaper or talking about politics. Now that’s all being destroyed by what I think is an absurd decision.”

Wilhelm may be fighting to preserve his coffee shop’s convivial atmosphere, but Health Minister Klink has an altogether different view of coffee shop customers. In a letter to coffee shop association LOC in which he defended his smoking ban, he wrote: “A positive side effect of the smoking ban may be that consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do with their time.”

More than a million tourists visit Amsterdam’s coffee shops each year, and Jacobsen believes more of them will now smoke pot on the city’s streets. “People are going to be smoking in a lot of other places — on the streets, in the parks, at home.” With the coffee shops, he argues, you at least had a place where you could confine much of the city’s pot-smoking activities.

The ban will also place additional burdens on coffee shop owners. If, for example, a crowd gathers in front of a coffee shop, it is the owners’ responsibility to make sure they go away. If the shop owners aren’t able to do so, despite making a visible effort, Klink has proposed banning all forms of smoking around the coffee shop.

It’s a practice that’s already been tested. In February 2006, the Amsterdam district De Baarsjes banned cannabis consumption on the local Mercatorplein square. Youth from other parts of the city where there were fewer coffee shops used to swarm to the 15 located in De Baarsjes. The city’s statistical office confirmed that the ban had successfully reduced the number of disturbances caused by young pot smokers and that a feeling of safety had returned to the area around the square.

But both the GroenLinks and Demokratie 66 parties question the scope of the study in a report at the end of January in the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool. They argued that residents of nearby Columbusplein square also should have been asked. Since the ban was put in place on Mercatorplein, there have been more pot-related disturbances at Columbusplein, they claim.

For his part, Wilhelm is still hoping to secure an exemption from the smoking ban. In July, Tweede Kamer will prohibit its guests from smoking cigarettes. He will also inform his customers that they are not permitted to roll tobacco into their joints. But he said he has no intention of monitoring every joint rolled in his shop.

It’s also possible that officials will place a low priority on policing the smoking ban in coffee shops and, in a typically Dutch fashion, a situation would be created in which smoking would be officially banned but still tolerated.

“But that may also be wishful thinking,” says Wilhelm.

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‘Prince of Pot’ given prison time

B.C. man says U.S. sentence is a political muzzle

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
P-I REPORTER

A Vancouver marijuana activist, whose arrest and pending extradition for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet outraged many Canadians, says he’s cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Seattle and is going to prison.

U.S. authorities portray Marc Emery, dubbed the “Prince of Pot,” as a major drug trafficker who pocketed millions of dollars and fueled organized crime.

But Emery, 50, says the prosecution was politically driven and designed to muzzle his vocal opposition to laws criminalizing pot.

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