Medical Marijuana forum?

Living in the US, marijuana is a touchy subject and very illegal in most states. My question is that, Are there any issues hosting a medical marijuana website that talks about growing and other aspects ect? i.e Patients are growing illegally in their states and talking about it on the forum?

 

i think you can talk about it on the internet all you want

you just can actually possess, sell , grow it in real life

 

Technically there should not be anything wrong with it, but believe it or not people have gotten in trouble for just selling books on the subject. If you were or are going to do something such as that I would not do it before contacting a damn good attorney. When it comes to issues such as this, the constitution and other rights don't appear to matter as much in the gov's eyes.

 

You can talk about anything weed related on the internet, even post pictures of your grow-op legally in the US.

Contact the admin over at overgrow ( http://overgrow.com/edge/ ) or post a thread on the forums, these guys know a lot about this kind of stuff.

 

It is not protected by the 1st amendment since you are talking about how-to perform an illegal action.

 

Technically you should be correct, however imagine one wrong post, one wrong keystroke...they watch, they will hit on anything they possibly can...Plus it being an illegal activity opens more items up than usualy when speaking 1st ammendment rights, not to mention it's considered drugs which gets put in the dark when it comes to rights all the time.

 

chong got busted for selling bongs online I think. I would also watch out for your current hosting company, maybe find an adult hosting company that dosn't really care what you put on it.

If you do make the site let me know about it, I'll join.

 

Chong was but one of a long list of people who got 'busted'

 

Why not find a host from The Netherlands?

In The Netherlands it is legal to buy, grow, smoke marijuana and you can even order it online.

 

Legal up to 5 grams per shop but since there a lot of shops you can go on a shopping spree

You can hold up to 29 plants orso i believe and no more for personal use.

Ordering online? don't know of this but my guess is that it wouldnt be accepted, how stupid this might seem regarding other things that are allowed

But yes a dutch host would be the best way to go

 

If you reside in the USA, then our laws still apply to you, as the operator of the website, regardless of where your website is hosted.

 

Selling marijuana online would be a bad idea, however you can legally sell seeds online

 

Not fertile seeds in the US

 

This would be an information forum only where people talk...There would be no selling of anything similair to the www.shroomery.org

 

The advice to hire a good lawyer was on point.

Make sure your lawyer reads and is up the curve on this case:
Rice v. Paladdin Enterprises, 128 F.3d 233 (Cert. denied, 118 Supreme Ct. 1515 (1998)).

In this case, the publisher sold a book on how to be a hitman. A guy bought the book, and followed the instructions in it to murder an eight year old quadraplegic, his mother, and his nurse. The murderer had been hired by the quadraplegic's father, who wanted to inherit a $2 million legal settlement the child had received.

The publisher was sued on the theory that by publishing hitman directions it helped cause the crime and should compensate the relatives of the deceased. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that, free speech and all that notwithstanding, the lawsuit could go ahead and the publisher could be sued.

While this is a civil, not a criminal, case, the First Amendment issues are still very relevant. If a court finds that it was your intent to help people do something illegal, you could have problems.

This is a really complicated legal area, involving Constitutional issues that are not easy even for the experts, and the individual facts can change the outcome, so you need to talk to a really good lawyer. On top of the US law issues are the issues about whose law can apply - the internet being worldwide, there are always really complicated issues about whose law can be applied when your site is being read everywhere from Nepal to Brazil. And, a forum being a forum, there are the really complex issues that can arise of derivative liability - whether you can get sued if someone with clear bad intent uses your site to urge illegal behavior.

Prepare yourself for this likelihood - there probably will be no safe harbor here. No matter what you do, there might well be some issue of residual risk. All the same, there may be ways to reduce your risk, involving things such as putting up the right kinds of terms of use, moderating the forum in the right way (whatever that is), and having a proper corporate structure that might help insulate you from direct liability.

I am NOT your lawyer, and this post is NOT legal advice to you. You need to hire a good lawyer, discuss your particular facts and plans in detail with her, and proceed from there. Online discussion boards may be a good place to chat about general issues, but when it gets real, you need to be talking to a qualified lawyer with whom you have a client-attorney relationship.

 

It's not what you say, but how you say.

It is not automatically not protected under the First Amendment just because marijuana itself is illegal. There are several websites in existence that discuss the subject that are thriving just fine.

However, any such website, forum, chat, etc. would immediately get you on the radar of several watchgroups, and with blank checks issued by the Patriot Act for government agencies to circumvent civil liberties, I would be very wary of the subject genre.

Not too long ago, Colorado voters in the Mile High City voted to make "nominal" amounts of marijuana posession legal.

 

Right. Talking about marijuana is not illegal at all. If you where to inform people how to grow it and it was believed that people would act on this information, you are now in a bit of a spot.

 

hostings don't actually about that as long as its not about porn or warez.

 

Its fine, no problem. I used to run a marijuana forum back in the day

 

providing your only talking then should be no problem