The Ohio Medical Cannabis Act of 2012

A Message From The Campaign

Apr 27, 2011

For the better part of a decade, advocates have attempted to pass bills in the Ohio General Assembly to provide Ohio's sick and dying citizens with safe access to medical marijuana (cannabis). However, when confronted by this issue, our state's elected leaders simply shy away. While the effort to pass a bill in the statehouse is still being pursued, there is another way citizens can enact change.

If a group of citizens feel strongly that an issue has not properly been addressed by the Ohio General Assembly, they can propose an initiated constitutional amendment to the people for a statewide vote. This is the route we've decided to take, placing the issue before the voters on November 6, 2012.

Cleveland Public Library (CPL) is celebrating the beginning of our national pastime by announcing the opening of the Cleveland Public Library Sports Research Center and its inaugural exhibit, “Pride & Passion: The African American Baseball Experience.” CPL is proud to be partnering with the Cleveland Indians for the opening reception to display the new Center and Pride & Passion exhibit on April 25 at 3:30 p.m. on the 5th floor of the Main Library, Louis Stokes Wing, corner of East Sixth and Superior. The Center will be open and free to the public year round.

On Thursday, April 7th, 2011, on the Green rooftop of the Environmental Health Watch Building, Environment Ohio released a new report showing that smog-forming pollution from Ohio’s power plants puts children’s health and Ohio’s environment at risk - Environment Ohio - Clean Air Program Reports - Dirty Energy’s Assault on Our Health: Ozone Pollution - 2011-04-07.  From the press release for the news conference announcing this report:

Power plants create the ingredients for dangerous ozone pollution, commonly referred to as smog, and the report ranks which power plants emit the most smog-forming pollution in Ohio and nationwide, and highlights the latest findings about how smog impacts our health and environment.

The report comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to finalize a standard in July to help reduce smog pollution, which could save up to 12,000 lives per year. Yet Congress and industry lobbyists are working to keep EPA from doing its job by threatening to block rules that limit dangerous air pollution. Environment Ohio is urging Senator Sherrod Brown to stand up for Ohioans’ health and support the EPA.

Earth Month Tip of the Day: It's electric.

Today's environmental tip: It's electric! You can check how much of your electricity comes from renewable “green” power sources, such as wind or solar. Green power produces less carbon emissions, reduces air pollution, and helps protect against future costs or scarcity of fossil fuels. If green power is a consumer option, check price differences from suppliers before you buy.

Today's environmental tip: Be sensible! The Earth might seem like it has abundant water, but in fact only one percent of all water on the planet is available for humans. Buy fixtures and products that are water efficient - you can use less water to get the same job done just as well. When you go shopping, look for the WaterSense label to find water efficient products.

EPA Celebrates National Public Health Week April 4-10, 2011

Posted on April 4th, 2011 - 10:30 AM

By  Administrator Lisa P. Jackson

When we talk about environmentalism, it typically brings to mind sweeping vistas and wide-open landscapes. Some people might think of saving the whales, protecting spotted owls or preserving old-growth forests. Those things are critically important – but they only tell part of the story. When the modern environmental movement got its start in the 1960s, it took hold in our nation’s cities and was led by people concerned about pollution in the air they were breathing, toxins in the water they were drinking and chemicals on the food they were eating.

The effort to safeguard our environment started – and continues to be – an effort to safeguard our health.

Living in Cleveland, fighting against excessive polluting by popular local industrial interests, I've found environmental and climate awareness here brain-dead... zombified... people walking in an unnatural smog, accepting unnatural death around them. So I appreciate a mathematical explanation of how an entire city of 500,000 may become dominated by environmental zombies - from today's Climate Progress, which references a study of the proliferation of zombies finding they will drive humanity to the collapse of civilization.... I believe this effectively explains Cleveland (and much of America) today:

The model showed two equilibria: the disease-free equilibrium (with no zombies) and the doomsday equilibrium (where everyone is a zombie). The application of a linear stability analysis showed that — in the absence of further interventions — the disease-free equilibrium was unstable and the doomsday equilibrium was stable. This finding was not promising.

Simulations based on a city of roughly 500,000 people demonstrated that an entire such city would be replaced by zombies [rapidly]. Were this mass replacement of a population to occur in a city such as Washington, DC, it may be unlikely anyone would notice.

There is a solution: "the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to attack hard and attack often":

----Filmmaker and public speaker Reggie Bullock is one of the most sought after motivational speakers in the United States. On March 15, 2009, Reggie’s short film "A War For Your Soul" was independently released on the internet, and has catapulted as a “stirring, epic and inspirational” video for today’s generation”. Over 6 million internet viewers have watched “A War For Your Soul” in 1 year.

Thanks to Laura McShane for pointing out an excellent article on lead poisoning research at Case Western Reserve University, in the Fall/Winter 2010 Think Magazine - with multimedia features - on-line at Getting the Lead Out: Fifteen years after being effectively removed from the U.S. market, the prolific danger of leaded gasoline becomes clearer. 

This reports on Childhood lead exposure and uptake in teeth in the Cleveland area during the era of leaded gasoline - a recent Case Western Reserve University-affiliated analysis of the lead burden of Cleveland children through the period when leaded gasoline was introduced and later phased out (from about 1930 to 1990), surfacing critical implications.

Comparison of relative temporal changes in lead concentration in tooth enamel and lake sediments, and relative changes in the total amount of lead additives to gasoline. Maximum absolute values and symbols are:  4.94 μg/g (teeth, smoothed data, uninterrupted line), 72.7 ppm (“new core Lake Erie sediment, triangles), 41.1 ppm  (Graney et al., 1995 Lake Erie sediment, open circles), and 253,000 mt of lead additives to gasoline produced in the US, closed circles (see Methods).

 It is important information that I (and others agree with) So I quote; "  A CAREFULLY MANICURED SET OF FACTUAL PREMISE DO NOT NECESSARILY AMOUNT TO TRUTH. (see more below)

U.S. Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Map (red = most polluted, blue = least polluted)

I'm certain more people than ever in history are interested in the subject of global air pollution monitoring, as a deteriorating cluster of nuclear power plant disasters in Northern Japan are already contaminating the Earth's atmosphere with deadly radioactive emissions, which will blow across the Pacific Ocean and in other directions to all points downwind until they settle back to Earth, on us, our land, in our water, and into our food-streams.

From the Wall Street Journal's Monday, March 13, reporting about nuclear fallout from the meltdown in Japan, which has taken many turns for the worst since then...

If the Japanese nuclear core were to melt, certain radioactive materials, such as iodine, strontium and cesium, would also be released. These particles are one-quarter the size of a grain of salt and can be carried by winds. The larger the grains, the more quickly they would fall out of the air.

EPA's 2005 National Air Toxins Assessment looks at human health impacts from estimated, chronic inhalation exposures based on emissions data from the
2005 National Emissions Inventory for hazardous air pollutants, assuming these emissions remain constant throughout one's lifetime

On March 11, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a press release (below) and held conference calls supporting release of the fourth update of the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) - a computer tool that helps federal, state, local governments and other stakeholders better understand the potential health risks from exposure to air toxics.  The EPA  states: "the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) contains 2005 emissions data submitted primarily from the states for 178 pollutants. Models are used to make broad estimates of health risks for areas of the country.  The tool is not designed to determine actual health risks to individuals living in these areas." "Because the data submitted varies from state to state, it is also not possible to use the data to compare risks between different areas of the country."

As someone who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which the Federal EPA and their NATA prove is highly polluted and unhealthy, I truly appreciate access to all environmental data management and mapping services the EPA may provide, as real-time as possible. These federal government tools offer citizens access to information that allows us to make better life-decisions - like where to live - and empowers us to be better environmental stewards - like shutting down coal pollution in our own backyards.

Data provided by U.S. Census Bureau.

Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population, reports the Wall Street Journal today, announcing: "A larger-than-expected exodus from Cleveland during the past decade shrunk the city's population by 17% to about 397,000, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday." That's right, Cleveland's population has crashed below the 400K floor for the first time since around the start of the 20th Century, which triggers all sorts of unsustainable, shrinking, un-re-imaginable financial and political realities for leadership and citizens here.

Perhaps the only silver lining is that this proof of Cleveland political and leadership failure will have a significant price of leaders' heads. From the Wall Street Journal:

Political observers said the decline could tilt the balance of political power in one of America's most hotly contested swing states.

"Ohio is expected to lose two congressional districts, and this big decline in Cleveland suggests that both could come out of northeastern Ohio," a Democratic stronghold, said John Green, a University of Akron political-science professor.

I just received an email from the EPA announcing it "updated its database that helps Americans understand the health and environmental impacts of electricity generation" and now provides a useful public interface - "Power Profiler is a user friendly online application that uses eGRID data to show air emissions information and the type of electricity generation, such as coal or nuclear, in various regions of the country.  By simply entering a zip code and selecting a utility, users can learn more about where their electricity comes from and what impact it has on air quality and the environment."

Good morning,

The state of the American education system today is unacceptable. As many as one quarter of American students don’t finish high school. We've fallen to ninth place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.

For the sake of the next generation, and America's economic future, this has to change.

EPA Awards $32 Million to Understand Health Impacts of Air Pollution

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $32 million to fund four new Clean Air Research Centers at universities conducting cutting edge air pollution research. The research will focus on the impacts of air pollution mixtures on people’s health. It is important to understand the health risks associated with exposure to multiple air pollutants because people are exposed to more than one pollutant at a time.“These centers are critical to understanding how to improve air quality and protect Americans’ health from complex mixtures of air pollutants,” said Dr. Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “The centers will focus on important scientific questions remaining in air research.”

Environmental Justice - It ain't a RACE thing - it's an INJUSTICE thing

As thoroughly documented on realNEO, over a course of many years - and now being thoroughly addressed by the EPA through their courses of action - Cleveland has environmental justice problems to solve.

Right now - through April 8, 2011 - the EPA is asking for your help determining how they carry out that responsibility, as they want public comment on THEIR Guide to Providing Environmental Justice for YOU.

As quoted from the EPA's Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action, introduced and linked below: "Environmental justice (EJ) is central to the Agency’s mission and is the responsibility of everyone at EPA".

At the beginning of the 21st Century - a time when the pace of global evolution was certain to be astounding in every way, in accelerating change each day - especially as driven by transformational new Information Technologies (IT) and services - a serious, young college computer science student wrote some historic collaboration software, in his dorm-room, to help his fellow students communicate more effectively in their evolving, un-tethering, socially-networked world, and that software has been helping citizens freely interconnect with greater impact each day since, to save the world.

The early days of this software are beloved, in real geek-lore:

In 2000, permanent Internet connections were at a premium for University students, so two students set up a wireless bridge between their student dorms to share one of the students' ADSL modem connection among eight students. While this was an extremely luxurious situation at that time, something was missing: There was no means to discuss or share simple things.

This inspired the other student to work on a small news site with a built-in web board, allowing the group of friends to leave each other notes about the status of the network, to announce where they were having dinner, or to share some noteworthy news items.

The software did not have a name until the day after that student moved out after graduation. The group decided to put the internal website on-line so they could stay in touch, keep sharing interesting findings, and narrate snippets of their personal lives. While looking for a suitable domain name...

Sunset over Lake Erie from Whiskey Island, on a nearly perfect Summer's day. Dedicated to Citizen Ed Hauser.

Dear Mr. Wolstein,

Please hold off on using the Forum Architects' plans for your redevelopment in the Flats, as much has improved in the prospects for this city and region since they were conceived - there is new energy, life and opportunity coming into Cleveland that will improve the prospects for this most important historic site that I've been vocal in my disappointment to see go.

As you are moving forward in new directions, Cleveland and regional leaders including myself must move forward in many new directions previously inconceivable. As such, planning needs frequent re-visioning - and may in fact be open sourced, real-time and community enabled with world class information technology, which we'll be developing more of in Northeast Ohio in the future.

Most significant, we are in the process of removing from our community the dangerous pollution emitted from the coal burning at FirstEnergy Lake Shore (already decommissioning), MCCO, in University Circle, and Cleveland Thermal, next door to your site (your greatest liability, easily made an asset), and the outrageous environmental injustice from Mittal and some other industrial operations - and the direct and fugitive emissions from the mobile pollution sources servicing them - ships, trains and trucks  - that are just not safe for dense urban neighborhoods, which we must save and restore. There are economically viable solutions to all these challenges - it does not need to be this way!

Dear Mr. Mowry, Chief Information Officer, Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

Welcome Home.

Without a doubt, you hold the most opportune and important office in the region, today, and I wish you great success.

FURTHER demonstrating the leadership of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland are unintelligent, compromised and bad for people's health... read how they define hazards to public health without addressing air pollution and lead poisoning, still again.

CON-MEN, WORKING FOR KOCHS!

The best line in this article is "What Dr. Eric Bieber, chief medical officer at UH, likes about resolution is that it will make it easier for people to do what's right." Yes, that would seem easier to someone who just had his coal power plant shut-the-F-down. That sure as hell wasn't easy on citizens!

Why must all the wrong people live long, healthy lives while we poor victims die of the toxins of their rich? I pray for divine intervention in the lives of these evil leaders here... as clearly they drink too much Tea and huff too many lead and coal fumes to think clearly themselves... especially if they put Cimperman in charge of OUR PUBLIC HEALTH!

Can you say take me to the Mayo Clinic please!

If there are any concilpeople with brains still functioning in Cleveland (Cummins), please bring up the obvious in the Council hearings on our leadership's stupidity - IT'S THE LEAD POISONING AND AIR POLLUTION STUPIDS - or face the consequences!

As I informed the Very Reverend Lind, of Trinity Cathedral, I am posting this outreach for the help of her good people to move Cleveland Thermal and so Cleveland beyond coal. Please reach out to these friends of the community with your words of support for a cleaner, safer, healthier, more prosperous Cleveland and NEO for all, beyond coal.

Dear Reverend Lind and supporters of Trinity Cathedral:
Norm Roulet <norm [at] realneo [dot] us>     Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 4:01 PM
To: tlind [at] dohio [dot] org
Cc: Nachy Kanfer <nachy [dot] kanfer [at] sierraclub [dot] org>
Dear Very Reverend Lind and supporters of Trinity Cathedral:

I appreciate your presence and good work in this community, and know you are prominent preachers for goodness, on a good Earth.

It has come to my attention that Trinity Cathedral is a customer of the Cleveland Thermal coal steam plant in the Flats, providing excessively-polluting utilities to your facilities on Euclid Avenue - that is featured on their website at http://www.clevelandthermal.com/services/case-studies