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Jim Miller and Ken Wolski, founders of Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey and Chris Goldstein, Executive Director of NORML New Jersey, on the trial of multiple sclerosis patient John Wilson, facing 20 years for growing 17 plants for medical purposes. Wilson is not only not allowed to mention his medical use of marijuana, the judge has forbidden him from even mentioning that he has multiple sclerosis.
Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 2:30 pm | By: Radical Russ
Wanna protect your brain from this? Smoke a joint!
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, used high-tech scans to compare microscopic changes in brain white matter in teens aged 16 to 19 who were divided into three groups: binge drinkers (boys who consume five or more drinks at one sitting, and girls who have four or more drinks); binge drinkers who also smoked marijuana; and a control group with little or no experience with either alcohol or drugs.
As expected, the binge drinkers showed signs of white matter damage in all eight brain regions examined by the researchers. But the binge drinkers/marijuana users had less damage in seven out of the eight brain regions than the binge drinkers did. And compared to the control group, the binge drinkers/marijuana users had more white matter damage in only three regions.
The researchers wrote that brain white matter tracts were “more coherent in adolescents who binge drink and use marijuana than in adolescents who report only binge drinking.” They said it’s “possible that marijuana may have some neuroprotective properties in mitigating alcohol-related oxidative stress or excitotoxic cell death.”
So, naturally, when these 16-to-19-year-olds graduate and go to college, we immerse them in an alcohol-saturated party culture and forbid them from using cannabis. It is illegal for them to be using either drug, so we provide slap-on-the-wrist penalties for the alcohol use but kick them out of the dorms, surrender their college aid, require random urine screening, and saddle them with a criminal drug record that makes the top careers and positions all but impossible to attain.
Because we want to protect the children. For God’s sake, won’t somebody think about the children?!?
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm | By: Radical Russ
The New York Times has a nifty interactive map based on data from the 2006-2007 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (more data here). It provides a drop-down menu to choose which dataset you’d like, which I naturally used to choose “Percent of people 12+ who have used marijuana in the past year”. Based on that information, your Top Five Stoner States are:
Rhode Island (16.12%)
Vermont (15.75%)
Alaska (13.79%)
Oregon (13.12%)
Colorado (12.99%)
Surprised that California isn’t in that list? Me, too. I’m not at all surprised by Vermont, Alaska, Oregon, and Colorado, but stunned that Rhode Island came in at #1. I’d caution that this represents everyone from the once-a-year-at-a-concert toker all the way through the daily Stasher. If frequency and amount used were considered, I’d be willing to wager we here in Oregon are, uh, higher than #4. Curious about your Bottom Five?
Utah (7.17%)
Iowa (7.32%)
Mississippi (7.79%)
Texas (7.92%)
Alabama (7.96%)
That #1 result for Utah shouldn’t surprise anyone with its majority Mormon population that even rejects coffee drinking. Another category where Utah is number one is consumption of Jell-O, which was named the official state snack. Oddly enough, the one time Utah lost its Jell-O crown was when Iowa briefly overtook them. So I wonder, is there some sort of yin/yang thing going on between cannabis and gelatin snacks? If you’re too high does it make it tough to follow the Jell-O recipe, or is it that you get such munchies you don’t have time to wait for Jell-O to set? By the way, does anybody have a recipe for ganja Jell-O; maybe that’s the solution?
I also thought it would be interesting to look at the Top Five States for Binge Alcohol Drinking:
North Dakota (32.02%)
Wisconsin (28.84%)
Minnesota (28.75%)
South Dakota (28.34%)
Rhode Island (27.92%)
Apparently Rhode Island is the place to get your drink on and your smoke on. But for the other Top Five Stoner States, binge drinking rates fall somewhere in the middle of the country from Oregon (21.71%) and Alaska (22.74%) toward the lower range and Vermont (25.57%) and Colorado (26.15%) toward the upper range. Unsurprisingly, Utah (15.64%) is at the bottom of this list as well. I suppose if Jell-O vodka shots aren’t bumping that number up, ganja Jell-O won’t likely work, either.
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Los Angeles Times) One of the people who was instrumental in pushing for laws to increase the legal drinking age to 21 now calls his actions “the single most regrettable decision” of his career.
Dr. Morris Chafetz, a psychiatrist who was on the presidential commission in the 1980s that recommended raising the drinking age to 21, made his remarks in an editorial that he is shopping for publication and which he released to the advocacy group Choose Responsibility. Chafetz wrote the editorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the law that was signed by President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984.
“Legal Age 21 has not worked,” Chafetz said in the piece. “To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.”
Chafetz said the law instead has resulted in “collateral, off-road damage” such as binge drinking that occurs in underage youth and crimes like date rape, assaults and property damage.
NORML doesn’t take a stand on the use of other drugs, other than to report scientific and medical facts about them. For instance…
(MSNBC) Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study suggested Thursday.
Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco use and poor eating and exercise habits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the study, estimated that 34,833 people in 2001 died from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits.
Another 40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use.
And to remind you that cannabis is a far safer substance for your body and for society and its greatest harm is caused by its prohibition.
Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm | By: Dudemaster
You can’t escape the headlines; recently a cornucopia of athletes have been in the headlines relating to Marijuana. Some in possession, others test positive in urine tests, and others are photographed with a bong like Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps.
In this particular article, two Oklahoma State football players were arrested for Marijuana possession. As you read this article and my opinion, try and put yourself or one of your children in the place of one of these young men.
Stillwater Newspress - Two Oklahoma State football players — sophomore Jamal Mosley and freshman Dexter Pratt — have been charged with one count each of misdemeanor possession of marijuana in court documents filed on Wednesday.
Both players were charged on June 17 and arraignment for both is scheduled for July 29.
OSU media relations said Thursday that OSU head coach Mike Gundy is out of town and would have no immediate comment on the situation and that information on the situation would likely come within the next few days.
Mosely, a tight end, is expected to battle for the starting spot while Pratt was one of the top incoming recruits for the Cowboys at running back. There has been talk of Pratt redshirting with Kendall Hunter and Keith Toston expected to see much of the playing time.
Police records said that both players possessed and controlled within a residence a small plastic bag containing what appeared to be, and subsequently field tested positive as a small amount of marijuana.
Most people will probably snicker after reading this and move onto more important things in their lives. But, for these athletes, their dilemma has just got started.
Because they are college students, they will probably lose their college loan, and also any scholarship they may have earned. You see, these athletes signed a contract with their university which allows them to compete in athletics. The contract specifies each athlete will support NCAA rules and regulations.
Let’s see what the NCAA requires when one fails a drug test:
NCAA Positive Test Result
If the NCAA tests you for the banned drugs listed in Bylaw 31.2.3.1 and you test positive, you will lose a season of competition in all sports if the season of competition has not yet begun for you. If the season of competition has begun, you will lose one full season of competition in all sports – i.e. remaining contests in the current season and contests in the following season up to the time that you were declared ineligible in the previous year.
Now let’s not forget these guys live in a state with extremely draconian Marijuana laws. The article didn’t mention the quantity the athletes were charged with, but assuming it was a smaller amount, the laws leave a great deal of discretion to the judge. They could receive any amount in fines and up to 1 year in prison for simply choosing a safer alternative. Is this the message we want to send our children as they approach college?
There is a really good chance that one or both of them will have to leave his college dreams behind and go to work. Since they have a drug conviction, the only jobs they can find are the kind of jobs that you and I don’t want to do. Over time they see their friends succeed financially, and it’s only logical to conclude that some people in their position have turned to selling drugs. Why not? The rationalization is that society has already made them outcasts and the only way to make an appropriate income means selling contraband or committing crimes.
In comparison, college binge drinking is a worse offense, although tolerated by universities a great deal more than Marijuana use.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers
* 54 percent of binge drinking college students black out and forget what they did or where they were at some point in the year. For students who don’t binge drink, the number was 25 percent.
* 48 percent of the alcohol consumed at a 4 year college is consumed by an underage student.
* 44 percent of students report symptoms of alcohol abuse and dependency
* 25 percent of students say they have faced academic consequences (missing class, getting a bad grade, etc.) as a result of drinking.
* On average, students who have more than 5 drinks per occasion have a GPA that is half a grade lower than the GPA for other students.
A little non-toxic Marijuana isn’t going to hurt you, but alcohol may kill you and you might just take a few people with you when you slam your car head-on into someone else.
Think for just a moment; our standing President admitted he had used Marijuana earlier in his life. The only difference between these young men and our current standing president is they got caught, he didn’t. Does that sound fair to you?
Mr. President, can you take just a moment of your time to address the growing number of Americans who are clamoring to get your support for Marijuana legalization? I know you think it’s really funny, but people are going to prison and lives are being ruined every day because you can’t stop laughing long enough to be a real president. Step up, your constituents are demanding it.
Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am | By: Radical Russ
(ABC News) Whether it’s binge drinking or addiction to alcohol, Americans have a real problem with the bottle.
So says new research released Monday, which found that nearly one out of three Americans can expect to have a problem with alcohol at some time during their lives.
“We found that 30.3 percent of the U.S. population at some time in their lives — though maybe not currently — has had an alcohol use disorder,” said study author Bridget Grant of the Division of Biometry and Epidemiology at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
But perhaps most sobering was the fact that few with alcohol problems ever reached out for help.
“What we found was that very few people who have lifetime disorders ever seek treatment,” Grant says, adding that only 24 percent of those suffering from alcohol dependency seek help. The percentage of those seeking treatment for alcohol abuse is even lower, at 7 percent.
Have you considered arresting people for possession, sales, or home-brewing of alcohol?  Dr. Kevin Sabet tells me that this is an excellent way of getting people into treatment.  ”The activist-phrase ‘treatment over incarceration’ or ‘treatment versus incarceration’ is an accepted term within the drug policy discourse,” Dr. Sabet writes regarding the 1000% increase in marijuana treatment admissions in New York City, coinciding with Mayor Guiliani’s crackdown on marijuana smokers. “Indeed, this paper suggests that law enforcement intensity may be one of many different activities that could increase treatment entry.”
If it works so well with pot smokers why wouldn’t you apply the prohibit-arrest-sentence-to-treatment model to alcohol users, who are getting into domestic abuse problems, impaired driving problems, and aggressiveness problems unlike cannabis users?  Oh, yeah, because we tried that in the 1920s and it didn’t work.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Adam: Oprah won't actually go off air for over a year, 2011 sometime. Maybe with here leaving the network soon, she'll be more likely to speak out about MMJ.
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Stash for Fri, Aug 21, 2009
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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