Colorado continues to see growth in state-regulated sales of recreational marijuana, with the latest figures showing sales totaling $34.1 million in August, The Washington Post reports.
The newspaper's Wonkblog crunched numbers from the Colorado Department of Revenue, finding that sales of recreational pot have begun to outpace medical cannabis.
And increased sales means more revenue for the state. Staff writer Christopher Ingraham, who has dug into Colorado's marijuana data before, reports that the state took in $7.5 million in revenue from the sales of medical and recreational cannabis in August -- and about $45 million so far this year.
Ive been around marijuana since I was 14/15. Every one of my friends smokes pot, most also partake in other drugs like cocain,ectasy, acid, mushrooms.
Some smoke pot 5 times a day. Now we are 22. One of my friends who smokes daily got taken away 1 week ago to a mental hospital for the 2nd time. Id say if he never did drugs he would not be there but he also abused it.
The business of pot
It’s estimated thousands of Australians are risking arrest by using cannabis for medical reasons. A national clinical trial has been announced but legalisation could be many years away, and then for expensive pharmaceutical drugs only. Di Martin investigates the science and the politics of medical cannabis.
No pressure, Colorado and Washington, but the world is scrutinizing your every move.
That was the take-home message of an event today at the Brookings Institution, discussing the international impact of the move toward marijuana legalization at the state-level in the U.S. Laws passed in Colorado and Washington, with other states presumably to come, create a tension with the U.S. obligations toward three major international treaties governing drug control. Historically the U.S. has been a strong advocate of all three conventions, which "commit the United States to punish and even criminalize activity related to recreational marijuana," according to Brookings' Wells Bennet.
The U.S. response to this tension has thusfar been to call for more "flexibility" in how countries interpret them. This policy was made explicit in recent remarks by Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, who last week at the United Nations said that "we have to be tolerant of different countries, in response to their own national circumstances and conditions, exploring and using different national drug control policies." He went on: "How could I, a representative of the Government of the United States of America, be intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United States of America have chosen to walk down that road?"
In spite of legal prohibition, Canada has one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world. In Ontario, more than one in 10 adults and nearly one in four high school students used cannabis in the past year. In doing so, they become exposed to the health risks of cannabis and the risks of becoming criminalized by the act of procuring or possessing the substance. In addition, they are in danger of being introduced to other, more dangerous illicit drugs.
It seems obvious that our current approach is not reducing access to cannabis or the harms associated with its use. Young Canadians and other vulnerable groups bear a disproportionate burden of these risks, with adolescents, individuals with mental illness, and those with a pattern of heavy use being most susceptible to the negative impact of cannabis.
The question: “Does cannabis cause harm?” has a simple answer. Yes. The more important question assumes a public health approach: “What legal context most effectively mitigates the harm?” Bringing best evidence to inform an answer, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) recently released a cannabis policy framework. It recommends legalization – with strict regulation – as the optimal choice.
Dr. Catherine Zahn is the CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
The UK government’s comparison of international drug laws, published on Wednesday, represents the first official recognition since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that there is no direct link between being “tough on drugs” and tackling the problem.
The report, which has been signed off by both the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat crime prevention minister, Norman Baker, is based on an in-depth study of drug laws in 11 countries ranging from the zero-tolerance of Japan to the legalisation of Uruguay.
The key finding of the report, written by Home Office civil servants, lies in a comparison of Portugal and the Czech Republic, both countries where personal use is decriminalised.
“We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country,” it says. “The Czech Republic and Portugal have similar approaches to possession, where possession of small amounts of any drug does not lead to criminal proceedings, but while levels of drug use in Portugal appear to be relatively low, reported levels of cannabis use in the Czech Republic are among the highest in Europe.
“Indicators of levels of drug use in Sweden, which has one of the toughest approaches we saw, point to relatively low levels of use, but not markedly lower than countries with different approaches.”
Voters in Guam approved a ballot initiative Tuesday that would legalize marijuana for "debilitating medical conditions" such as epilepsy, HIV, cancer and glaucoma. The bill, which passed by more than 56 percent, makes Guam the first U.S. territory to legalize medical pot.
The decision marks the first victory in a flurry of marijuana-related ballot measures this Election Day. Residents of Florida will also vote on medical marijuana legislation, and voters in Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., will decide whether to legalize pot for recreational purposes. Two Maine cities are also voting on full-scale legalization, and two New Mexico counties are mulling decriminalization.
"This is just the beginning of a very big day," Tom Angell, chairman of the advocacy group Marijuana Majority, told HuffPost. "People all across the world are ready to move beyond failed prohibition laws, especially when seriously ill patients are criminalized just for following their doctors' recommendations."
Though the Guam initiative originally faced legal hurdles, the self-governing territory's Supreme Court ultimately pushed it through to the ballot in September. A government commission will establish the program's specific rules and regulations in the coming months.
As of Tuesday, 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have some sort of medical marijuana law on the books, and the country's support of both medical and recreational pot continues to grow. A recent poll showed 88 percent of Americans think patients should be allowed to use cannabis for medical purposes, and multiple surveys over the past year have revealed a clear majority of respondents back full-scale legalization.
Recreational Marijuana Just Became Legal in the Nation's Capital
Marijuana enthusiasts of America, rejoice: Residents of the nation's capital are voting yes on smoking pot for fun.
NPR reports that as of 9:09 pm ET, supporters of the Washington D.C.'s ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana have a 65-29.5 percent lead, and the measure is set to pass.
The measure will make it legal for people 21 and older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana and grow up to six plants.
In addition to D.C., three states had ballot initiatives on legalizing marijuana Tuesday ”” Alaska and Oregon for recreational purposes, and Florida for medical use. Florida voters rejected the amendment, which needed 60% approval to pass.
http://mic.com/articles/103402/recreational-marijuana-just-became-legal-in-the-nation-s-capital
Afghan land under poppy cultivation hit a record 224,000 hectares (554,000 acres) last year, according to the UN. Opium production rose about 17 percent to 6,400 tons while the number of fields eradicated by security forces plummeted 63 percent to 2,692 hectares.
Underlining the U.S. counter narcotics failure, opium production rose faster in the areas where the U.S. and U.K. targeted $56 million of aid to help farmers switch from growing poppies to pomegranates than it did in areas that received no money, the UN said.
Experts have shown that when certain parts of cannabis are used to treat cancer tumours alongside radiotherapy treatment the growths can virtually disappear
The new research by specialists at St George’s, University of London, studied the treatment of brain cancer tumours in the laboratory and discovered that the most effective treatment was to combine active chemical components of the cannabis plant which are called cannabinoids.
Two of these called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD)were tested as part of the research into brain cancer which is particularly difficult to treat and claims the lives of about 5,200 each year. It also has a particularly poor prognosis as the rate of survival after five years of patients’ diagnosis is around 10%.
Cannabinoids are the active chemicals in cannabis and are also known more specifically as phytocannabinoids. There are 85 known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant.
The new research is the first to show a drastic effect when combining THC and CBD with irradiation. Tumours growing in the brains of mice were drastically slowed down when THC/CBD was used with irradiation.
Dr Wai Liu, Senior Research Fellow and lead researcher on the project, said: “The results are extremely exciting. The tumours were treated in a variety of ways, either with no treatment, the cannabinoids alone, and irradiation alone or with both the cannabinoids and irradiation at the same time.
“Those treated with both irradiation and the cannabinoids saw the most beneficial results and a drastic reduction in size. In some cases, the tumours effectively disappeared in the animals. This augurs well for further research in humans in the future. At the moment this is a mostly fatal disease.
“The benefits of the cannabis plant elements were known before but the drastic reduction of brain cancers if used with irradiation is something new and may well prove promising for patients who are in gravely serious situations with such cancers in the future.”
The research team are discussing the possibility of combining cannabinoids with irradiation in a human clinical trial.
The research has been published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics journal.
Ice addiction: Children in Canberra as young as 13 abusing methamphetamine
This is disgusting.
But you can bet the Bartter’s tragedy will be twisted into a propaganda tool for drug liberalisers.
They claim we have lost the so-called war on drugs, but no one ever claimed it was a war that could be won.
What we have done before and can do again is make drugs harder to procure.
That starts with zero tolerance, not a nudge nudge wink wink.[/I]
Misunderstood Medicine: 'I feel like a normal boy'
EUGENE, Ore. - A week after his eighth birthday, Forrest Smelser was diagnosed with epilepsy.
On bad days he would seize every 15 minutes."If he has a seizure that lasts longer than three minutes, we're venturing into brain damage territory," his mother Tanesha said.
After numerous trips to the emergency room and the doctor's office, Forrest was prescribed the anti-seizure drug Trileptal.
Tanesha said that's when things went from bad to worse.
"He would scream, he would fight, he would punch himself," said Tanesha.
She said the family reached a breaking point when Forrest became suicidal, something she believes was a side effect of the pharmaceuticals.That's when she decided to explore more unconventional methods to treat Forrest's seizures.
"Oil infused with CBD, medical marijuana," she said as she held a jar of medical cannabis pills from TJ's Organic Gardens, a Eugene-based medical marijuana farm with indoor operations in Oregon and Washington.
"I have my son again. He's not this fog of a child. He's not this angry child. He's my child exactly," said Tanesha.
"Now that I'm on this medication, I feel like a normal boy," said Forrest.
Forrest is not alone. According to the Oregon Health Authority, 195 of the 69,004 participants in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program are under the age of 18.
Because of privacy concerns, a spokespoeson was not able to provide a further breakdown of the age group, but patients as young as 4 years old have been reported.
Tanesha said she sold their home and moved in with family in a small town outside Eugene to save money for the cost she expected to pay to have Forrest on medical cannabis, which is not covered by insurance.
Each one of the pills he takes three times a day would cost about $5 at a local medical marijuana dispensary.
That's when one of the owners of TJ's Organic Gardens stepped up, offering to donate Forrest's medication.
"To be part of the fix is pretty special," said Jim Murphy. "It's a payment within itself."
And Murphy said his company has enough medicine for about 500 more child patients - and they're looking to supply them at no charge."It would be wrong of us not to do so," said Murphy, who said his partners have started a separate company Kind Care to dispense the medical marijuana.
TJ's Organic Gardens does not charge their direct patients but makes money from selling surplus medical marijuana to licensed dispensaries like Cannadaddys and Oregon's Finest.
Oregon law requires that medical marijuana sold in licensed dispensaries be tested for molds and pesticides and labeled for potency.
An Oregon Health Authority spokeswoman said the law is silent on marijuana grown for private use by patients.
Murphy said the plant grown for seizure patients like Forrest is special. He said unlike most medical marijuana plants grown with a high THC level in mind, Forrest's plant has less than 1 percent of the active cannabinoid known for its psychoactive properties.
"So, we're not getting children high. We're just giving them medicine, and that's what makes this plant special. It's literally the opposite of what makes all these other plants special," he said.
"A high THC, this one does not," he said pointing to the plant used to make Forrest's medication. "It has a very low THC, and very high CBD."
Murphy said this plant has been given the name CBD, an acronym for another active cannabinoid in marijuana known as cannabidiol. CBD is the chemical believed to be treating seizure patients like Forrest.
From plant to pill form takes about a week and a half, according to a TJ's Organic Gardens volunteer.
He said they use an organic ethyl alcohol extraction process to make a cannabis oil from the medical marijuana plant matter. The oil is then heated up and mixed with another edible oil to and put into a pill capsule.
http://www.katu.com/news/local/Medical-marijuana-growers-donate-product-for-8-year-old-boys-treatment-283115851.html
The libertarian side of my brain and the conservative side are at odds when it comes to this question.
I don't want to infringe on the rights of others to use drugs, But I don't want to support it either. I also don't want hard drugs readily available on the streets.
Perhaps this sums up my position.
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