This 2011 Reefer Madness propaganda is Anslinger Approved!

It’s end-of-year retrospective time!  While my colleagues on the NORML Blog (go check out the new look that matches the new site) are going to bring you the biggest marijuana news stories of 2011, here at The Daily Stash Blog we’re going to bring you stories that may have fallen through the cracks of other drug policy 2011 remembrances.

Today we bring you the Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011.  ”Reefer Madness”, of course, is the 1936 anti-pot propaganda film showing young people becoming crazed and violent on the effects of “reefer”.  Today, we use “Reefer Madness” as shorthand to describe the hysterical warnings by the anti-drug zealots as reported unchallenged by a complacent media.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011.  Thursday we’ll cover the Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011.  Friday we’ll cover the Top Ten People in Marijuana of 2011.

Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011 (audio mp3)

10. Oregonian editorial board hypes fears of medical marijuana and teen pot smoking

(The Oregonian – “Seeing through the smoke” editorial) It’s about time someone took action on the increasing number of medical marijuana dispensaries. … Right now, anyone, including teenagers, can apply [for a medical marijuana card]. A study done by Oregon Partnership found, for example, that 35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.

Unlike the Oregonian editorial board, I check sources (I work for NORML: I have to.) The survey they refer to was addressed at a Marshall High community town hall meeting. The poll was conducted by students as part of a project called “SMASH” in a “confidential, random, peer-to-peer” survey – meaning one high school kid asking another high school kid. We have no control group, no control for confounding variables, not even a mention of the survey size or the randomness of those polled (maybe the SMASH kids are more likely to “randomly” speak to their friend, for instance, or stood in the hall and talked to anyone passing by who would answer.)

But besides all the methodological issues arising from trusting the polling data of high school kids talking to their friends, it’s important to note what their survey actually said:

PERCEPTION: Students surveyed believed that 8 out of 10 students smoke marijuana

REALITY: 7 out of 10 students DO NOT smoke marijuana

Kids surveyed thought 77.3% of others were smoking marijuana.  76.07% of kids never smoked marijuana, another 12.27% smoked it once or twice a month.  So, kids think 3 out of 4 other kids smoke pot when 3 out of 4 kids actually don’t.  Where, oh, where could the kids be getting the message that youth cannabis smoking is out of control, when, in fact, Oregon’s 12th grade monthly cannabis use rates have declined 14% (before | after) since 1999, when medical marijuana got underway in Oregon?

9. Papa John’s Pizza supports driver who reported medical marijuana patient to police

You would think that pizza delivery companies would understand who their customers are and that a great number of them smoke marijuana.  If you’re a pizza delivery company in Colorado, you’d understand that many of the marijuana smokers in your delivery area may be legally using cannabis for medicinal purposes.  But apparently Papa John’s pizza in Colorado doesn’t care too much about its drivers violating the privacy of its customers who are medical marijuana patients.

(9News) The man was smoking medical marijuana just before the pizza arrived on Friday evening. The delivery driver smelled the marijuana and called the cops. The Papa John’s employee, who was not identified, was concerned because the customer’s 9-year-old daughter was in the house.

8. The annual scaremongering about marijuana-laced Halloween treats begins now

L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Glen Walsh said parents should definitely inspect the candy their children bring home after trick-or-treating.

Walsh said a pungent smell or an odd taste can serve as indicators on whether the food contains marijuana. As for the potency of the marijuana-laced prodcuts, Walsh said the level of THC, the chemical found in marijuana, can vary from zero to over 90 percent.

OK, so watch closely, parents.  You don’t want your kid getting a candy with 0% THC in it.  But if you find any of that 90% THC stuff, you can send it my way for proper disposal.

How stupid is this?  First off, if there is a person out there who would intentionally hand THC-laden treats to children, they are a criminal.  They’d be just as likely to poison Halloween treats or put pins or razor blades in them.. which is an urban legend with no truth to it whatsoever.

Second, if you are a person who uses THC-laden treats for medical or recreational purposes, why are you handing out a $20 “Buddafinger” when you could pass out a 20-cent “Butterfinger”?  You want to be so sure some kid you don’t know and won’t see gets high that you’ll spend 10 times more on Halloween candy?

7. Portland Reporter Anna Canzano: A medical marijuana-hating sheriff’s best friend

[Oregon Sheriff's Association President] Tom Bergin said at the rate Oregon is going, he believes Oregon is three times sicker than California. Why? Well, more than 90 percent of cardholders say they’re using pot to treat pain — not glaucoma or cancer — as the bill was initially marketed.

Here are the facts from the state’s medical marijuana program registry:

• There are 49,220 medical marijuana patients
• There are 44,756 patients who indicate chronic pain as a qualifying condition

So Canzano, Bergin, and every prohibitionist who scoffs at people in serious pain treating it with a non-toxic herb pull out their calculators and exclaim “90% of cardholders are using it for pain, not glaucoma or cancer!”  (The number is actually 90.9%.)

What Canzano distorts lies in the word “not”.  Under Oregon law, a registry cardholder can qualify under more than one condition.  The state even puts “A patient may have more than one diagnosed qualifying medical condition” right there on the website where you got the numbers to crunch.  Are we to believe people with cancer and glaucoma don’t suffer chronic pain as well?

6. Florida Woman Sues Over Being Arrested for Sage

A woman in Florida who was arrested for felony marijuana possession is suing for wrongful arrest. She might just have a case, she was charged with marijuana possession even though the bag they caught her with turned out to be Sage. 49 year old, Robin Brown says a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy caught her while she was bird watching back in March of 2009. He used his field kit on the herb she had in a bag, and said that in the field it tested positive for marijuana. The deputy sent the 50 grams of substance to a state crime lab.

Her lawsuit says that she was arrested before the test was performed. Her arrest was ordered by the Assistant State Attorney, Mark Horn, in June of 2009. She was arrested at her place of business, Massage Envy in Weston. She said that she was arrested in front of co-workers and her customers and subjected to a full body cavity search during her overnight stay in jail. When her lawyer discovered the herbs had not been tested a second time, he used the courts to force the tests which determined what Ms. Brown was contending all along, her sage was completely marijuana free.

5. Teen dies after plastic fumes scar lungs, media blames synthetic pot

The boy smoked the fake marijuana out of a plastic PEZ candy dispenser. The chemicals in the drugs caused extensive damage to his lungs. Brandon was put on a respirator in June and had a double lung transplant in September.

So, we’re to assume here it was the K2 that scarred the boys lungs and not the freakin’ fumes from the melting plastic of a PEZ dispenser?!?

Tonya Rice told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper Brandon was put on a respirator in June after smoking Spice fake cannabis, which is said to be ten times more dangerous than cocaine.

Not to be cruel or insensitive about the boy’s death, but he didn’t suddenly die from the acute effects of K2 use.  He used it in June, fell very ill, was given a double lung transplant, and died from an infection because of his lowered immune system in October.  So, to compare, we have cocaine, which can give you a heart attack by overdose and kill you the minute you snort / smoke / inject it, versus a synthetic cannabinoid smoked through plastic, requiring a double lung transplant, leading to a fatal infection four months later in the hospital that kills one boy.  We’re not trying to say K2 is safe – it isn’t – but it’s not “ten times more dangerous than cocaine”.

4. CASA’s Joe Califano blames marijuana for Arizona shooter

I haven’t seen press reports or talking heads discuss their concern about how easy it has been for this mentally ill young man to get marijuana. And there has been no mention of the potential of marijuana to spark latent psychosis and exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

So as we continue to think about this killer and his deranged mind, we should be asking this question: Is Jared Loughner an individual whose psychosis was prompted or exacerbated by the use of marijuana?

Gee, Joe, what do you think we ought to do?  Make marijuana illegal?  Lock up people who use it?  Break down their doors at night and shoot their dogs?  Use helicopters and infrared to eradicate the plant wherever it’s grown?  Throw billions at American and Mexican law enforcement for armor and weapons to fight its traffickers?  Train dogs to sniff it out?  Drug test employees, high schoolers, even middle schoolers to detect its use?

The facts are that 1% of the population exhibits schizophrenia, whether it is 1979 and 60% of high school seniors have tried marijuana or it is 1992 and 33% have tried it.  A study of 186 UK mental hospitals found no increase in schizophrenia or psychosis admissions, despite use rates of cannabis increasing greatly during that decade.

3. UK Daily Mail: Cannabis ‘kills 30,000 a year’

Cannabis ‘kills 30,000 a year’

Oh, dear.  From zero deaths* in 5,000 years of human use to ’30,000 a year’.  That sounds serious.  Let’s read on…

More than 30,000 cannabis smokers could die every year, doctors warn today.

Wait, “could die”?  We’ve gone from the active headline verb “kills” to the lede adverb “could”?  Usually you bury that wiggle room somewhere in paragraph umpteen.  Continue…

Professor John Henry, a leading authority on the drug, said the change – due to take place this summer – had undermined doctors’ efforts to highlight the risks.

He said: “Cannabis is as dangerous as cigarette smoking – in fact, it may be even worse – and downgrading its legal status has simply confused people.”

“May be” worse?  Where are the wards full of cannabis smokers?  Britain actually has some level of health care worthy of a civilized (civilised) people.  You’d think the National Health Service would bring these figures up.  It sounds like quite a cost to the government.

2. American Cancer Society says marijuana use can lead to amputation

Although it is rare, severe shutdown of blood circulation to the arms or legs has been reported in young people who smoked marijuana. In some cases, it was so severe that amputation was required.

In all my years beating back reefer madness, this is a first.  I have never heard a story of someone’s marijuana use leading to amputation.  I have covered stories of people who use marijuana for their already-existing amputation, since it is a superior medication for “phantom” pain, and I’ve covered one double-amputee diabetic’s eviction for her medical marijuana use, though.

1. Butt-chugging, vodka tampons, drinking bleach, and other parent-frightening urban legends

(KPHO) [School Resource Officer Chris] Thomas spends his days patrolling the halls of a Valley high school. He’s heard first hand how kids are getting tipsy.

“What we’re hearing about is teenagers utilizing tampons, soak them in vodka first before using them,” Thomas said.

“This is definitely not just girls,” Thomas said. “Guys will also use it and they’ll insert it into their rectums.”

Rather than the traditional beer bong you’d find at a college party, kids are sticking the tube elsewhere to get wasted.

They’re calling it “butt chugging.”

Rrrighttt… young teenage males, typically the most homophobic and self-conscious creatures on the planet, are dropping trou in front of their peers and inserting plastic tubes up their ass to chug beer.  And the vodka tampons?  Huffington Post reports that “the practice remains unverified despite multiple reports of incidents in the U.S. and elsewhere” and that a blogger “conducted her own informal trial to see whether the purported method worked“, where she notes the alcohol dissolves the glue and consistency of the tampon so much it couldn’t be inserted and that even if it were inserted, the burn you’d feel on your sensitive lady parts would not make this an enjoyable drunk.  Plus, the idea that it would help teens avoid detection with no alcohol on their breath is false, as alcohol metabolizes in your breath no matter how you ingest it.

Just when I get all riled up about our domestic reefer madness at the Partnership (to Protect Big Pharma) at DrugFree.org, our NORML Network UK host, Cannabis Cure UK, forwards me this ominous headline from the UK Daily Mail:

Cannabis ‘kills 30,000 a year’

Oh, dear.  From zero deaths* in 5,000 years of human use to ’30,000 a year’.  That sounds serious.  Let’s read on…

More than 30,000 cannabis smokers could die every year, doctors warn today.

Wait, “could die”?  We’ve gone from the active headline verb “kills” to the lede adverb “could”?  Usually you bury that wiggle room somewhere in paragraph umpteen.  Continue…

Professor John Henry, a leading authority on the drug, said the change – due to take place this summer – had undermined doctors’ efforts to highlight the risks.

He said: “Cannabis is as dangerous as cigarette smoking – in fact, it may be even worse – and downgrading its legal status has simply confused people.”

“May be” worse?  Where are the wards full of cannabis smokers?  Britain actually has some level of health care worthy of a civilized (civilised) people.  You’d think the National Health Service would bring these figures up.  It sounds like quite a cost to the government.

Here in America 15 million adults are smoking pot monthly and 1.1 million are daily tokers.  56 million adults are smoking cigarettes at least once a month and 35 million are daily smokers.  There are 276,000 new cases of respiratory or oral cancers diagnosed annually.  Cigarettes are proven to cause 435,000 deaths a year.  Cannabis-only smoking has been shown to reduce the incidence of head, neck and lung cancer.  So again, where are the wards full of cannabis smokers?

Researchers calculate that if 120,000 deaths are caused among 13 million smokers, the corresponding figure among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000.

I calculate that if my wife drops a dollar on the lottery and correctly picks six random unique integers between and including 1 and 59 we’ll be rich and the corresponding donation to NORML would be substantial.  I mean, if we’re going to be throwing in meaningless calculations, why not have some fun with it?  Where are these 120,000 deaths among 13 million smokers you begin with?  Is that an American estimate?  Because we don’t have 120,000 deaths over here and you don’t have 30,000 deaths over there.

The drug can cause cancer, lung disease and abnormalities associated with serious mental illness.

Users are up to six times more likely to develop schizophrenia.

The British Lung Foundation says smoking three joints a day can cause the same damage to the airways as a pack of 20 cigarettes.

Few people are smoking three joints a day and even those who do aren’t developing schizophrenia, psychoses, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  Even if they were, is a prison cell the best way to help them?  You’d need 36 grams to roll three joints a day at the DEA’s skinny 0.4g joint standard, and that will get you jail time in most states.

As for the schizophrenia, a ten-year study of mental hospitals in the UK found psychoses and schizophrenia rates remained steady even as cannabis use increased.

Dr William Oldfield, from St Mary’s Hospital and one of the authors of the article, said: “Cannabis and nicotine cigarettes have a different mode of inhalation. The puff taken by cannabis smokers is two-thirds larger, they inhale a third more and hold down the smoke four times longer.

And when that joint is done (usually half-done), the toker doesn’t toke again for hours or days or weeks, unlike the tobacco smoker who’s lighting up another cigarette within the hour.

“All these factors could contribute to illnesses of the heart and respiratory system, particularly as the chemicals in cannabis smoke are retained in the body to a much higher degree.”

“Could” again?  If this is such a danger, show us the bodies!

And what are these “chemicals… retained in the body”?  The chemicals in marijuana smoke that he’s criticizing as being like cigarette smoke dissipate from the body at the same rates.  The only chemicals he could be referring to are the inert metabolites of cannabinoids that are fat-soluble and stored in the body for days or weeks, and those aren’t harmful to the body in any degree.

He said the cannabis used today – especially that bought in the Netherlands – was up to 40 times stronger than that used by Flower Power hippies in the 1960s.

The level of active ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has increased from around 0.5 per cent 20 years ago to almost five per cent today.

The United Nations declares that industrial hemp is cannabis with <1% THC.  So all those “Flower Power hippies” were smoking hemp, huh?  No, wait, twenty years ago is 1991!  All those Seattle grunge rockers were smoking hemp!  Who knew?

*Dr. Mitch Earleywine, on our 4/6/11 show said that now it has been reported there is one death from acute marijuana use; a man with a history of heart problems who succumbed to the tachycardia side effect of smoking pot, had a heart attack, and died.  Sorry, I’m not convinced; if that’s the way they want to play, we’re going to have to make fast food a Schedule I drug (or Class C, for the British readers) as its side effects are killing more Americans and Britons than cannabis ever will.  Legalize (legalise) it and go ahead and slap a “do not use if you have a history of heart problems or arrhythmia” label on it.

Our friends in the UK are never content to let their former colonies transcend them in the War on Cannabis.  Where we in America have the “kush” that will lock you to a couch, the Brits have the “skunk” that will give you multiple personality disorder.  Where up in Canada they have electrical inspectors using anti-cannabis regulations to fine indoor cucumber growers, the Brits have police helicopters, battering rams, six cops, and three cop cars dispatched under anti-cannabis surveillance to discover pet rodents.

(Daily Express) ANTI-drugs officers were convinced they had uncovered a cannabis factory when a police helicopter detected a suspicious building.

The onboard thermal imaging ­camera identified what looked like a clear case of a heating system to cultivate the illegal weed.

But police were left glowing with embarrassment when they swooped on Pamela Hardcastle’s semi [like a townhouse for our US readers] – and found the family’s guinea pigs Simon and Kenny being kept warm by an electric heater.

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/222606/Bungling-drugs-squad-swoop-on-guinea-pig-home-Bungling-drugs-squad-swoop-on-guinea-pig-home-#ixzz1AwPEX010

This woman is hard at work as a teacher when her elderly mother who lives in the adjoining townhouse calls her saying the police are here with a battering ram and they have a warrant.  She has no criminal record and says she doesn’t even have an unpaid bill.  The police have cut the lock on her neighbor’s gate to gain access when she arrives to show them the garage with the space heater and the rodents.

However, even with the embarrassing incident, this story does turn significantly from how it might have transpired in the United States.  Here, drug cops with a warrant wouldn’t be serving it during work hours; it would be late at night in the cover of darkness.  Here they wouldn’t be calling the homeowner and waiting for her arrival having only cut a padlock; they would have knocked, announced, and beat down the door and rushed inside with automatic weapons drawn.  Here they wouldn’t have spoken with the elderly mother; they would have forced her to the ground and cuffed her.

And most likely after discovering they’d burst into a guinea pig incubator, they wouldn’t do this:

Last night Mrs Hardcastle said a senior officer had visited to apologise in person and brought a new lock for her neighbour’s gate.

(The News – Portsmouth, UK) The parents of a young musician who killed himself on a railway line have been left questioning whether cannabis caused their son’s mental illness.

Ben Gregory, a talented trombonist, was prone to stress when he started using the Class B drug when he was 18 years old.

But after starting university studies, he began showing signs of paranoia and was diagnosed with psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia after suffering from night frights, depression and hearing voices in his head.

OK, what exactly do we mean by “prone to stress”?  Is it possible that by age 18, his psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia began to manifest and he sought cannabis to get some relief?

The 25-year-old, who lived in Wisteria Gardens, Havant, was given medication and received counselling. But he died after stepping out in front of a train at Warblington Railway Station in Havant on June 8 last year.

OK, what exactly do we mean by “given medication”?  Could he have been given one of the anti-depressants that have been shown to double the suicide risk in young people aged 18-25?

An inquest in Petersfield heard Ben didn’t have any alcohol or drugs in his system when he died. But his parents still don’t know whether cannabis caused their son to develop his mental illness.

His father, Raymond, said: ‘The medics couldn’t tell us for certain. But we know cannabis can cause psychosis in about one per cent of young men.

No, Raymond, schizophrenia and psychosis are suffered by about 1% of young men, period.  Whether they use cannabis or not.

‘Stress can also be a trigger. He was finding it difficult to cope with his university course and family problems and his grandfather died in the middle of this.’

Ben’s mum, Pamela Parry-Jones, said: ‘He dabbled with cannabis when he was 18. He had difficulties all through his life. He found it difficult through school and college, and he found our divorce difficult.’

So, then, a young man having trouble in school, grieving over his parent’s divorce and grandfather’s death, who has been “prone to stress” since adolescence and was taking brain medications committed suicide.  It sounds to me like using cannabis probably kept the young man alive and able to cope for seven years.

PORTLAND, England, Dec. 7 (UPI) — A British prisoner convinced guards his marijuana plants were tomato plants — and they even allowed him to decorate one as a Christmas tree, a source said.

Mohamed Jalloh, 28, of Brent, North London, grew his pot plants at Verne Prison in Portland, Dorset, in southern England, and for five months, guards admired his gardening, The Sun reported Saturday.

But after another inmate told guards what the plants really were, they checked out photos of marijuana plants on the Internet, and the jig was up.

Oh, come on!  Really?  Prison guards that don’t know what a pot plant looks like?  Or a tomato plant?  Well, at least it’s nice to be telling a Stupid Prison Guard Story for once.

OK, so it’s a whole two months since we brought this study to your attention on the Stash, but whenever the British press prints something good about cannabis, it’s news to us.

(The Sentinel) A STUDY by North Staffordshire academics has rejected a link between smoking cannabis and an increase in mental illness.

The research found there were no rises in cases of schizophrenia or psychoses diagnosed in the UK over nine years, during which the use of the drug had grown substantially.

From their base at the Harplands Psychiatric Hospital in Hartshill, the four experts reviewed the notes of hundreds of thousands of patients at 183 GP practices throughout the country to look for any changing rate in cases of schizophrenia.

The work had been set up to see if earlier forecasts from other experts had been borne out, that the mental disorder would soar through the growing popularity of cannabis.

[Researchers concluded,] “The casual models linking cannabis with schizophrenia and other psychoses are… not supported by our study.”Hartshill-based Dilys Wood, national co-ordinator of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, said that so far the report had been published in medical journals and would have a far-reaching reaction if it surfaced more widely.

She added: “I believe that if it had found a causal link between cannabis and schizophrenia it would have been all over the press.

“The public needs to know the truth about drugs; not more Government-led propaganda.”

And Alliance press officer Don Barnard said: “It is hard to believe the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith did not know of this very important research when deciding to upgrade cannabis to Class B.”

Of course the Home Office knew the study showed no truth to the notion that the increase in “skunk” cannabis usage leads to increase in mental illness.  That’s why you didn’t hear anything about it from Secretary Smith and PM Brown as they raised cannabis back to Class B from Class C.  No, they let the UK Media spread the lies about “skunk” cannabis like Chef, 17, “killed by cannabis”, or Cannabis alters human DNA and causes cancer, or Cannabis ‘can cause psychosis in healthy people’, or ‘Skunk’ will bring out scary multiple personalities!

(BBC News) Researchers looking at the effects of cannabis on bones have found its impact varies dramatically with age.

The study found that while the drug may reduce bone strength in the young, it could protect against osteoporosis, a weakening of the bones, in later life.

The results were uncovered by a team at the University of Edinburgh who compared the drug’s effects on mice.

Osteoporosis affects up to 30% of women and about 12% of men at some point in their lives.

The group found that cannabis can activate a molecule found naturally in the body that is key to the development of osteoporosis.

When the type 1 cannabinoid receptor (CB1) comes into contact with cannabis, it has an impact on bone regeneration.

Stuart Ralston, the Arthritis Research Campaign Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said: “This is an exciting step forward, but we must recognise that these are early results and more tests are needed on the effects of cannabis in humans to determine how the effects differ with age in people.”

How many ads have you seen on TV for pharmaceuticals that are meant to help older women stave off osteoporosis?  Forget the Boniva, try some Sativa!  I’ve always been a big proponent of older ladies smoking weed; it’s just nice to finally have some science to back me up. 

(Guardian UK) Release is taking legal action against the British Transport Police (BTP) to determine if the use of sniffer dogs to detect drugs is lawful. If we are successful, the case will require the police to stop using sniffer dogs for this purpose.

The case was sparked by an incident in which Release’s executive director, Sebastian Saville was searched last year by the BTP at Camden Town underground station following a positive indication by a sniffer dog. Saville had no illegal drugs in his possession.

…The use of sniffer dogs to identify people carrying drugs as they make their way through London’s transport system is not only wrong in principle, but it is also ineffective in practice.

Australian research has found that in 74% of searches following an indication by a police dog no drugs were found. No equivalent comprehensive research has been conducted in the UK; however preliminary inquiries via freedom of information requests indicate that the deployment of police dogs here produces similar results. During Operation Shelter, conducted by the British Transport Police during Latitude festival in Ipswich in 2008, only 12% of searches conducted as a result of “tells” by police dogs located illegal drugs.

Sniffer dogs are not about catching drug dealers. The dogs lack the sophistication to distinguish between someone who has been in contact with drugs and someone who’s actually carrying them, let alone to determine what kind of quantity that person is carrying, and what they intend to do with it. Mr Hot Shot Dealer does not travel the tube with his stash. These dogs are not used to protect the public. They cannot be compared to metal detectors or dogs trained to identify bombs or knives, since drugs are not used as a weapon against the public. So the argument that the ends justify the means – used to defend searching thousands of visitors entering a venue on the grounds of protecting the public from an act of violence – cannot apply in the context of personal possession of drugs.

A dog is not an infallible and precise scientific measurement instrument, but police would like you to think they are.  Drug K-9′s often alert just to appease their masters who are looking for an excuse to search a suspect without his or her permission.  Dan Monnat gave an excellent presentation on this phenomenon at our 2008 Aspen Legal Conference.

Cannabis ‘can cause psychosis in healthy people’

Add definitive subtitle hammering home the legitimacy of the scary headline:

A potent form of cannabis can cause healthy people to develop psychotic illnesses, a new British study has proved.

Proved, you hear?  Proved!  All right, now deliver the lede that tells us marijuana smokers how we’re destined for the mental ward:

The results appear to confirm a link between psychosis and skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 80 per cent of street seizures of the drug.

Add some related bullet points to raise the reefer madness levels to eleven:

• Skunk smokers 18 times more likely to be psychotic
• One spliff can mean lifelong mental illness
• Mental health charity calls for cannabis study

Don’t worry, by this time few people will notice this little devil in the details:

Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in King’s College London made the discovery after running tests on 22 healthy men, aged in their late 20s.  They injected them with THC – a major component of skunk cannabis which has been blamed for increasing psychosis among heavy users.

Whoa, hold on!  You injected people with straight THC and you’re using that to prove cannabis use can cause psychosis in healthy people?!?  I could have saved you the research.  Straight THC is highly psychoactive and without other cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavinoids found in herbal cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol metabolizes in the blood into another form of THC that is even more psychoactive!

Oddly enough, while the British worry about this deadly psychotic skunk weed that has risen to (gasp!) 14% THC, their Dutch neighbors won’t even approve of medical marijuana unless it is between 13%-18% THC.  Here in America, we approve of a 100% THC, no-other-cannabinoid pill called dronabinol (Marinol) which I will tell you from experience will cause a more profound negative psychological reaction than even the finest 60% THC hash I’ve encountered.

Even the researchers cautioned against making the “Skunk causes psychosis” claim, which, of course, the UK media is required to bury around paragraph eleven:

Dr Morrison said the findings offered “additional evidence that can elicit temporary psychotic-like effects in some people”, but stopped short of suggesting they proved a direct link between psychosis and THC.

He said: “Much more research is needed to clarify if skunk is actually more harmful than traditional cannabis.” More work needed to be carried out on the beneficial effects of CBD in balancing the damaging results of THC.

British reefer madness – just like American reefer madness, except bobbies bust into your flat to arrest you for skunk cannabis, instead of cops busting into your apartment to arrest you for kind marijuana.

London Police Accused Of Water Torture - via news.sky.co.uk

Six Scotland Yard officers have been suspended over allegations of “waterboarding” drug suspects.

The men are said to have pushed the suspects’ heads repeatedly into buckets or bowls of water in a bid to force them to reveal the locations of drugs.

The accusations suggest they were simulating the notorious “waterboard” torture techniques employed against al Qaeda suspects by CIA staff.

The incidents are said to have taken place at the homes of four young men arrested on suspicion of drug offences at properties in North London in November

(via UK TimesOnline) The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested at addresses in Enfield and Tottenham. Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a Class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said it would not have been in the public interest to proceed. It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.

They shoot us, arrest us by the hundreds of thousands, imprison us, entrap us, deny us health care and access to college, and in the UK, they treat us like terrorists just to find another kilo. We are the most hunted minority in the world and have to endure every sadistic thing the immoral minority can think of.

Despite all that, I can still get an eighth anytime day or night.

This is your neighborhood War on Pot.