News
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
In what's being treated as a metaphor for the fruitlessness of the War on Drugs itself, New Jersey cops caused over $12,000 in damage to a BMW 325i, tearing it apart in search of marijuana. After tearing apart the dash, doors, seats and prying off exterior body panels, what'd they find? Nada. Police impounded Darren Richardson's 2004 3-series after smelling a "strong odor of raw marijuana" during a routine traffic stop.
New Jersey cops destroy BMW searching for weed that wasn't there
States say it's time to rethink medical marijuana - CNN.com
(CNN) -- Medical marijuana advocates are hoping state governments can succeed where their efforts have failed by asking federal authorities to reclassify pot as a drug with medical use. Shortly before Christmas, Colorado became the fourth state to ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify marijuana as a narcotic in the same league as heavyweight painkillers including oxycodone. The governors of Washington and Rhode Island filed a formal petition with the agency in November, and Vermont signed onto that request shortly afterward. All four are among the sixteen states and the District of Columbia that have laws on the books that allow the medical use of marijuana, even though the drug remains illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, federal authorities have asserted their power by raiding dispensaries in states including California and Washington.
Could Medical Marijuana Reduce Patients’ Need for Opioid Painkillers? – TIME Healthland
A small, new study backs a long-standing claim of advocates of medical marijuana: pain patients can safely use cannabis while taking opioid painkillers, and may actually need fewer pills because of it. The research included 21 chronic pain patients, who were taking either long-acting morphine or Oxycontin twice a day. Adding marijuana to these opioid drugs reduced patients’ pain by an average of 27% and did not significantly affect blood levels of the prescription drugs.Cannabis and tobacco smoke are not equally carcinogenic
Tobacco has dramatic negative consequences for those who smoke it. In addition to its high addiction potential [ 1 ], tobacco is causally associated with over 400,000 deaths yearly in the United States, and has a significant negative effect on health in general [ 2 ]. More specifically, over 140,000 lung-related deaths in 2001 were attributed to tobacco smoke [ 3 ]. Comparable consequences would naturally be expected from cannabis smoking since the burning of plant material in the form of cigarettes generates a large variety of compounds that possess numerous biological activities [ 4 ]. While cannabis smoke has been implicated in respiratory dysfunction, including the conversion of respiratory cells to what appears to be a pre-cancerous state [ 5 ], it has not been causally linked with tobacco related cancers [ 6 ] such as lung, colon or rectal cancers. Recently, Hashibe et al [ 7 ] carried out an epidemiological analysis of marijuana smoking and cancer.
"The concern with marijuana is not born out of any culture-war mentality, but out of what the science tells us about the drug’s effects. And the science, though still evolving, is clear: marijuana use is harmful. It is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects. We know that over 110,000 people who showed up voluntarily at treatment facilities in 2007 reported marijuana as their primary substance of abuse. Additionally, in 2008 marijuana was involved in 375,000 emergency visits nationwide.
truth: the Anti-drugwar The "Dangers" of Marijuana - StumbleUpon
Deputies Give Marijuana Back To Dispensary Under Court Order - Toke of the Town
Deputies returned two pounds of seized cannabis to a California dispensary on Friday after a court ruled that the marijuana had been improperly confiscated. The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department confiscated two pounds of marijuana from Common Roots Collective during a shakedown, I mean "inspection, on December 1. But the dispensary's lawyer argued that the deputies violated federal law, since authorities, including code enforcement officers, had entered the property on an inspection order and not a search warrant, reports CBS 13 .