Today I got a negative comment on the Washington State I-502 initiative, which has just now officially been sent to the legislature that can make it law, send it to the people, or offer a different version along with the initiative to the people.  For those who don’t know, I-502 proposes to legalize possession of an ounce of marijuana, maintain the ban on home growing, establish state-run marijuana stores as the only legal outlet, establish a 5 ng/mL THC in blood per se DUID (automatic DUI, like a 0.08 blood-alcohol level), and establish zero-tolerance DUI standards for people under 18 under 21.

It’s still a tough thing for me.  What is “legalization”?  I grew up reading Isaac Asimov and was reminded of his “Three Laws of Robotics” when I formulated my “Three Laws of Legalization” below.  It is not an inclusive list (all conditions must be met), it is a hierarchical list (1 supersedes 2 supersedes 3):

1. An adult must be allowed to possess cannabis for personal use.
2. An adult must be allowed to cultivate cannabis for personal use.
3. An adult must not be discriminated against because of cannabis.

We can quibble about how old an “adult” is and what limits, if any, are reasonable for “personal”, but that’s the general outline.  If an adult can possess some cannabis for personal use legally, it is legalization.  But if they can cultivate, it is “legalization-er” and if they aren’t discriminated against it is “legalization-est”.  So, when I’m presented with an initiative that improves #1, then maintains #2 and makes worse #3, it puts me in a bit of a quandary.  I love legalization and I like home grow and I dislike state monopoly and I hate per se DUID… so now what?

Fortunately, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson has a proposal to modify the initiative by establishing protection for medical marijuana patients against the  per se DUID provision, but that’s still only 10% of Washington State’s tokers.  Still, all tokers now can get marijuana DUIDs if they demonstrate impairment; all per se does is make the case a slam dunk for the prosecutor.  If you were driving poorly and test at any ng/mL, that can be used against you to get the DUID conviction.  The problem is the toker not driving poorly and not even having recently toked being convicted of being impaired behind the wheel when he or she was not impaired (a.k.a. innocent).

But is protecting that toker worth voting down freedom for all tokers to hold an ounce?  That same innocent toker can be arrested driving, walking, riding, standing, or sleeping anywhere in the State, even his own bed, just for having marijuana.  So do we continue to sacrifice every marijuana smoker to the injustice of merely having any pot anywhere to save the tiny minority of marijuana smokers from the injustice of merely having a certain amount of pot in their system while they’re driving?

Most frustrating is being put in this quandary in the first place, for this fear-mongering about the stoned drivers is more prohibitionist reefer madness. From The Natural Mind by Dr. Andrew Weil (last half of chapter four pg. 86-97) (hat tip to DeOxy.org)

Dr. Andrew Weil

Because marijuana is such an unimpressive pharmacological agent, it is not a very interesting drug to study in a laboratory. Pharmacologists cannot get a handle on it with their methods, and because they cannot see the reality of the non-material state of consciousness that users experience, they are forced to design experimental situations very far removed from the real world in order to get measurable effects. There are three conditions under which marijuana can be shown to impair general psychological performance in laboratory subjects. They are:

1. by giving it to people who have never had it before;
2. by giving people very high doses that they are not used to (or giving it orally to people used to smoking it); and
3. by giving people very hard things to do, especially things that they have never had a chance to practice while under the influence of the drug.

Under any of these three conditions, pharmacologists can demonstrate that marijuana impairs performance. And if we look at the work being done by NIMH-funded researchers, all of it fulfills one or more of these conditions. In addition, the tests being used by these scientists are designed to look for impairments of functions that have nothing to do with why marijuana users put themselves in an altered state of consciousness. People who get high on marijuana do not spontaneously try to do arithmetic problems or test their fine coordination.

What pharmacologists cannot make sense of is that people who are high on marijuana cannot be shown, in objective terms, to be different from people who are not high. That is, if a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high. Now, this pattern of users performing better than nonusers is a general phenomenon associated with all psychoactive drugs. For example, an alcoholic will vastly outperform a nondrinker on any test if the two are equally intoxicated; he has learned to compensate for the effects of the drug on his nervous system. But compensation can proceed only so far until it runs up against a ceiling imposed by the pharmacological action of the drug on lower brain centers. Again, since marijuana has no clinically significant action on lower brain centers, compensation can reach 100 percent with practice.

This reminds me of the marijuana and driving study* from 2010.  It studied 85 people with an age range of 18 to 31, with a mean** age of 20.5 (so we’re talking more young twenty-somethings and adult teens than the pushing thirty crowd) who described themselves as “occasional” marijuana smokers, defined as strictly 1-10 times per month.  They also couldn’t be recent users of other illicit drugs or anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds.

The point of the study was to investigate differences in simulated driving by gender for those young people who smoke pot.  What they found was not much difference, not just between men and women, but between people who smoke pot and people who don’t.

As shown in Table 2, participants receiving the active and placebo cigarettes performed similarly on the baseline “uneventful” segment of the driving task and no sex differences were observed. No group differences were seen in the means or standard deviations of the mean speed or steering wheel position.

Translated from geekspeek: During regular driving simulations, people who smoked pot and people who didn’t drove similarly.  There was no difference between men and women, either.

The next portion explains how “eventful” driving (or “PASAT performance”) – a sudden yellow stoplight, a dog running into the road, a driver running an intersection, an emergency vehicle, and being distracted by stuff in your car – differs between pot smokers and non-pot smokers who drive in a simulator.

During the “eventful” segments of driving, a within-subjects comparison of PASAT performance prior to smoking and during driving showed a trend in the interaction between placebo vs. active marijuana and practice vs. driving PASAT performance [F = 3.36, p = 0.07)]. Persons smoking the placebo cigarette showed an improvement in performance of the PASAT during the driving task, likely attributable to practice effects. Under the influence of marijuana, however, no differences were found between PASAT performance during practice testing and while driving.

It’s a weird logic train to follow.  What they are saying is when they put the pot smokers through the simulator in “eventful” driving situations, they did just as well on the test high as they did in practice sober, while the non-pot smokers did better on the test sober than they did in practice sober.  In other words, pot smokers drove just as well after smoking pot as they did before smoking pot, while non-pot smokers drove a little better.

That brings me back to Dr. Weil’s point – it’s not like we’re lighting up to see how well we do on the “oh shit, dog in the road!” test later.  There are no “practice” runs in real driving; you assume every drive could be “eventful” but the reality is almost all drives are “uneventful”.  Few drivers are actively thinking, “OK, I know I must be ready for a dog to run out, because it happened on the previous drive I took,” so how in real life would they benefit from this “practice effect”?

Participants who smoked active marijuana decreased their speed during this section of the drive, suggesting additional compensatory skills were used. While women performed significantly worse than men on the PASAT during both practice and driving administrations***, no sex differences were observed in respect to driving performance or practice effects. No differences during the PASAT were seen in the standard deviation of speed, the mean steering wheel position or the standard deviation of the steering wheel position, suggesting the decrease in speed allowed participants to successfully compensate for the effects of marijuana.

So the high drivers slowed down in order to drive as safely as the people around them?  Do we want people to be driving faster when there are the threats of dogs, yellow lights, emergency vehicles, bad drivers, and things bugging them in the car?

All participants safely went through the Go/No-Go task intersection while the light was yellow. No group differences in speed, steering position, time to first reaction or type of reaction were observed in response to passing the emergency vehicle. The frequency of dog and car incursions and the tactics used to avoid collisions were similar between groups, as was the mean speed of impact for those colliding. No sex differences or interactions of sex and drug were observed.

Now, while this all makes the “What About the Stoned Drivers?!?” scaremongering out to be much ado about nothing, it should be noted that

• we’re talking about US Gov’t schwag weed of 2.9% THC in 0.8 gram joints;
• we’re talking about smoking just one or less-than-one joint****;
• we’re talking about video game driving;
• nobody’s mixing the weed with booze, which multiplies the impairment.

Nobody should smoke pot and drive impaired, but nobody should drive impaired, period.  This crusade to set per se limits to catch stoned drivers seems like a solution in search of a problem, and that problem isn’t catching impaired drivers, it’s winning votes.  People who smoke pot know when they are too impaired to drive and generally do not.  Alcohol, in contrast, deludes its users into believing they are not impaired when they are.

Plus, there is a reliable dose-dependent correlation between one’s blood alcohol level and one’s impairment.  Yes, the alcoholic will drive better at 0.08 BAC than the social drinker will at 0.08 BAC, but both of them will drive better at 0.00 BAC as well.  Meanwhile, stoned drivers present as much risk on the road as drivers at 0.05 BAC – a level we do not automatically deem a crime if you’re driving home after wine at dinner or a beer at a ballgame and don’t demonstrate impairment.  Stoned drivers are no more a risk factor than retired persons.

To date, “[The] role of [illicit] drugs as a causal factor in traffic crashes involving drug-positive drivers is still not well understood.”[6] While some studies have indicated that illicit drug use is associated with an increased risk of accident, a relationship has not yet been clearly established regarding the use of psychoactive substances and crash severity.[7] Some reviews of traffic fatality data indicate that, in general, drivers with the presence of illicit drugs in their system possess an enhanced fatality risk compared to sober drivers. However, this risk is far lower than the fatality risk associated with drivers who operate a vehicle with the presence of alcohol in their system above or near the legal limit for intoxication.[8] According to one review of the literature: “The risk of all drug-positive drivers compared to drug-free drivers is similar to drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%. The risk is also similar to drivers above age 60 compared to younger drivers [around age 35].”[9]

* Sex differences in the effects of marijuana on simulated driving performance.

** Not “mean” angry, by “mean” average (though average is, technically, something different.)

*** “Significantly worse”… to the delight of every “women are bad drivers” joke writer alive.  This writer is married to a woman with a poorer driving record and, thus, will withhold judgment for my own well-being.

**** This was the only sex-related difference they could find.  Almost all men smoked the entire real joint but only a little more than half of the women did.  Interestingly, all the men and all but one woman smoked the entire fake joint.  I think the real joint difference probably attributes to body weight (lighter bodies – women – feel high sooner and stop).  That everyone but one completes the fake joint makes me wonder how something that doesn’t get you high can be a placebo for something that does?

Remember Rhode Island Rep. Robert Watson?  We reported on him back in April 2011…

Robert Watson drew fire in February when he said, “I suppose if you’re a gay man from Guatemala who gambles and smokes pot, you probably think that we’re onto some good ideas here,” referring to the General Assembly.  Watson refused demands to apologize.  Karma’s a bitch, dude.

nydailynews A Rhode Island lawmaker, who recently slammed his colleagues by invoking the image of pot-smoking immigrants, has been busted for alleged marijuana possession.

Republican House Minority Leader Robert Watson was arrested in East Haven, Conn., on Friday at a police checkpoint and was also charged with driving under the influence.

Rep. Watson lost his position as House Minority Leader over this.  He even made our Top Ten Stupid Stoner Stories for 2011.

It would appear Rep. Watson is attempting to become our first Stupid Stoner to make back-to-back year-end lists:

(Providence Journal) SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — Former House Minority Leader Robert A. Watson was arrested early Sunday morning and charged with possession of marijuana after a plow operator called the South Kingstown police to report an erratic driver.

When the police arrived, they saw a white Volvo sedan in the lot, with its rubber tire missing from the rim on the front driver’s side. The driver’s side door was open and a man who identified himself as Robert Watson was standing beside it, according to the police. There were no passengers in the car.

“The officers observed what appeared to be a pipe commonly used to smoke marijuana on the driver’s side floor of the Volvo,” Buckley said. “The officers also discovered a clear sandwich bag containing a green, leafy substance believed to be marijuana in the area of the driver’s seat.”

And now for the cherry on top of this irony sundae…

Watson was brought to the South Kingstown Police Department for processing and was released at 4:20 a.m. Sunday, Buckley said, with a summons to appear in Fourth District Court at 9 a.m. on Feb. 2

UPDATE: It gets better…

(WPRO AM 630 News Talk) When officer Trevor Richmond arrived the officers approached Watson inside the vehicle and found him with a beer can in hand. Officer Macrae asked Watson to hand over the Natural Ice beer can and exit the vehicle. Watson was reluctant to obey the officer, saying “Do you know who I am? I’m the E.G. Rep.”

The police report says Watson appeared to be highly intoxicated and was slurring his words as he stumbled from the vehicle.

When Watson exited the vehicle police observed a marijuana pipe on the driver’s floor of the vehicle.

The officer escorted Watson to the cruiser but explained that he was not under arrest at the time. Watson responded with a slurred “F*** You, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, F*** you.”

So now Rep. Watson has taken the time-honored public relations route of checking himself into rehab… for marijuana!

(NBC Providence) Rhode Island state Rep. Robert Watson has checked into an in-patient rehabilitation program following his second arrest on marijuana possession charges.

State GOP Chairman Mark Zaccaria said Watson’s decision to enter a residential rehab program shows he is taking steps to address his problem.

Police said a snow plow operator reported Watson was driving erratically on a flat tire late Saturday night. Police said they found a pipe used to smoke marijuana and suspected marijuana.

Not a single mention in this story about the Representative being drunk and caught with an open can of beer.  Nope, it must be the marijuana problem that’s forced him into rehab.

EVERY demographic has increased its support for marijuana legalization since 2005

Yesterday we revealed The Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011.  Today we continue our Year-End Retrospective with a look at the biggest news stories of scientific research into cannabis, public opinion polls on legalization, and statistical research on cannabis consumers.  We call it The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011.  Tomorrow we’ll continue with The Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011 and Friday we conclude with the The Top Ten People in Cannabis of 2011.

The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011 (audio mp3)

10. The Carbon Footprint of Cannabis

Cannabis Karri reported on a study that measured just how much electricity we’re using to grow cannabis indoors.

A new report conducted and published by Even Mills, PhD, a respected and long time energy analyst along with Staff Scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory has concluded that Americans spend an amazing 1% of the entire national electricity consumption, or the equivalent of the output of seven large power plants on growing cannabis.

Since medical marijuana use has become so much more popular, and most of those states do not have a dispensary program, many more people are learning to grow marijuana indoors. The 20 terawatt-hours per year that marijuana growers use is due to the bright, often 24 hours a day lighting and an air change rate 60 times higher than a norml home. Even a modest indoor garden can have the same energy consumption rate of an entire data center. Since indoor cultivation of cannabis is a necessity to hide operations from authorities and others the energy bill to growers is about $5 billion each year. That extra energy to produce American cannabis is equal to the energy consumption of an extra 2 million average US homes. It also, unfortunately, produces greenhouse gas pollution equal to 3 million cars according to the new research.

9. Pot smokers are thinner and smarter than average

We have all suffered through jokes about cannabis consumers being fat, stupid couch potatoes.  So it was a joy in 2011 when two international studies found us to be thinner than our non-toking counterparts…

“We found that cannabis users are less likely to be obese than non-users,” [researchers said]. “We were so surprised, we thought we had [made] a mistake. Or that our results were due to the sample we studied. So we turned to another completely independent sample and found exactly the same association.”

…and smarter, too!

A new British study finds … men with high childhood IQs were up to two times more likely to use illegal drugs than their lower-scoring counterparts. Girls with high IQs were up to three times more likely to use drugs as adults. A high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158. An average IQ is 100. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

None of this means taking up pot smoking is going to shed points and boost IQ.  It does mean that some popular stereotypes about us are completely unfounded.

8. Two-thirds of patients surveyed substitute marijuana for prescription medications

Many a medical marijuana activist can tell anecdotes of patients who’ve reduced or eliminated their need for opiate pain killers by substituting cannabis.  This year, Berkeley Patients Group surveyed their patients and found two-out-of-three had done just that.

In an anonymous survey, 66% of 350 clients at the Berkeley (Calif.) Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary, said that they use marijuana as a prescription drug substitute. Their reasons: Cannabis offered better symptom control with fewer side effects than did prescription drugs.

Those with pain symptoms said that marijuana has less addiction potential than do opioids. Others said marijuana helped to reduce the dose of other medications.

Speaking of the addiction potential of opioids…

7. Oxycontin is five times the “gateway drug” as marijuana

Prohibitionists have been using the “Gateway Drug” scare for years to frighten the public about legalization.  Despite every study blowing the concept out of the water, it still resonates with a large segment of the voters.  So I decided to take a look at the data to find out which drug is really the one with the greatest correlation to hard drug use, and it definitely wasn’t cannabis!

We cross-referenced the NSDUH numbers based on whether someone had ever tried marijuana. We found that only 1.5% of people who have toked became monthly cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, meth, heroin, LSD, and PCP, less than 1% of the people who’ve tried pot are using those drugs regularly. Meanwhile, 2.9% of the people who’ve ever tried an legal analgesic (pain reliever) are regular cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, and meth, more than 1% of who tried analgesics are regular users. People who tried analgesics are more than twice as likely as people who tried pot to use heroin regularly and three times more likely to use LSD regularly.

But if opponents want to cling to the idea that we should do everything in our power to stop someone from smoking that first marijuana joint, lest they become illegal drug addicts, then it is time to prohibit Vicodin, Lortab, Lorcet, and Oxycontin, those powerful legal opioid pain killers. The first Vicodin/Lortab/Lorcet leads to almost three times the risk of becoming a non-pot illegal drug user than the first joint and almost the same risk as smoking a joint every month. That first Oxycontin is more than five times the risk for drug abuse than the first joint.

6. Drug testing is still unreliable, inaccurate, unnecessary, invasive, and counter-productive

We drug test our citizens when we suspect they’re committing a crime, when they’re applying for a job, when they’re going to school, and when they’re in an accident.  Yet drug detection for marijuana is so unreliable and unscientific that its use is an affront to all free people.

First it is the “drug dog” that police and courts believe are akin to infallible scientific instruments instead of animals with instincts to please their human masters.

The accuracy of drug- and explosives-sniffing dogs is affected by human handlers’ beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional cues, UC Davis researchers have found.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that detection-dog teams erroneously “alerted,” or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times — particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present.

Next it is the “drug lab” that may mishandle as many as one in ten tests.

An Indiana state lab wrongly reported 1 in 10 marijuana cases as positive, including some that were deliberately manipulated, an audit report indicated.

The audit’s findings showed errors in about 200 of 2,000 marijuana tests reported to law enforcement as having positive results, the Star said. This includes about 50 results the report said were consciously manipulated by lab workers.

Part of the justification for testing us for employment is workplace safety.  Yet, in medical marijuana states where tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens are legally using cannabis, we’ve seen drastic declines in workplace danger.

Prior to the beginning of the medical marijuana program [in Oregon], workplace injuries and illnesses that contributed to a lost workday stood at 3.4 per 100 full-time workers; in 2009 that rate is 2.3 per 100, a decline of 32%.  No-time-lost injuries and illnesses declined 40%, from 3.5 to 2.1 per 100.  Fatalities are down from 3.3 to 1.9 per 100, a drop of 42%.

These declines occurred while the medical marijuana patient registry grew by an average of a little more than 50% per year.

Another egregious use of drug testing is to make it a requirement of citizens seeking welfare assistance.  Florida’s law to do just that has been blocked while its (un-)constitutionality is determined, but in the time it was in effect, it cost Florida more than it saved.  It also found that welfare recipients were less likely to turn up positive than the general public.

The Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region tested 40 applicants and only two tested positive for drugs, officials said. One of the tests is being appealed.

DCF said it has been referring applicants to clinics where drug screenings cost between $30 and $35. The applicant pays for the test out of his or her own pocket and then the state reimburses him if they test comes back negative.

Therefore, the 38 applicants in the Central Florida area, who tested negative, were reimbursed at least $30 each and cost taxpayers $1,140.

Meanwhile, the state is saving less than $240 a month by refusing benefits to those two applicants who tested positive.

Finally, the unintended consequences of drug testing became more apparent.  When marijuana is the drug that is the hardest to conceal on a drug test, people will turn to drugs that are easier to conceal.

As I looked at the data, I noticed that in the span from 2005 to 2011, the positive test rate for marijuana for all workplace drug tests (pre-employment, random, and post-accident) declined 20%, from 2.5% of approximately 2.4 million tests to 2.0%.  That’s about 12,000 fewer cannabis consumers who were caught by a pee test.

Meanwhile, oxycodone positives have increased 96% for all urine testing, although these tests are administered about one tenth as often (280,000) for oxycodone as for cannabis (2,400,000).  This despite the facts that while marijuana metabolites may be detected in urine for weeks, oxycodone metabolites are flushed from one’s system in two or three days.  Furthermore, random positives for oxycodone (1.20%) are almost twice as great and post-accident positives for oxycodone (1.80%) are nearly three-times greater than pre-employment positives for oxycodone (0.65%), which suggests to me that the pre-employment screens don’t work very well at keeping oxycodone users out of the workplace.

5. For past two years, more Americans arrested for marijuana than all other drugs combined despite arrest protection for America’s One Million Legal Marijuana Users

When somebody mentions “The War on Drugs”, remind them what we’re really talking about is a “War on Marijuana”.

Nationally, there were 1,638,846 drug arrests reported to the FBI, with 52.1% of those arrests for marijuana charges.  Last year, 51.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana, showing a slight increase in marijuana as the majority of all drug arrests.  The last time marijuana made up a majority of the “War on Drugs” was 1985, when 55.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana.

Keep in mind that these annual marijuana arrests continue to climb even as we reduce the number of marijuana users eligible for arrest in the medical marijuana state, users who grow and use the most marijuana.

Between one to one-and-a-half million people are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in the United States, according to data compiled by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates.  Assuming usage of one-half to one gram of cannabis medicine per day per patient and an average retail price of $320 per ounce, these legal consumers represent a $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.

4. Drug Czar claims medical marijuana makes more young people smoke pot, despite fewer teens smoking pot

A popular refrain of the Drug Czar is that by calling marijuana “medicine”, we lead young people to think it is less dangerous, and therefore, use goes up.

“Emerging research reveals potential links between state laws permitting access to smoked medical marijuana and higher rates of marijuana use,” said Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy. “In light of what we know regarding the serious harm of illegal drug use, I urge every family – but particularly those in states targeted by pro-drug political campaigns – to redouble their efforts to shield young people from serious harm by educating them about the real health and safety consequences caused by illegal drug use.”

Except that medical marijuana’s been around on the West Coast for over a dozen years.  Between 2003 and 2009, as more states have adopted medical marijuana, nationally the rate of monthly teen use is on the decline.

In fact, eleven of the thirteen states that had medical marijuana as of 2009 saw declines in teen marijuana use, and the five that added it after 2003 saw double-digit declines.

From 2003 to 2009 in California, monthly teen use is up only 0.26%.  In Colorado, teen use is up 3.77% in that time frame.  Yet Wyoming, a state without medical marijuana, saw the greatest increase of 5.18%.  Furthermore, looking back before 2003, to 1996 and 1998 when the West Coast legalized medical marijuana, teen use is lower now than then.

3. The people really, really want to ask the President about the legalization of marijuana that half of them support

This year, the esteemed Gallup Poll finally recorded half of the US population in support of legalizing marijuana.

Gallup reports that the 50% nationwide support for legalization also represents the first time support has outweighed opposition.  Only 46% of Americans believe marijuana should remain criminalized, with 4% undecided.

Support for marijuana legalization remains greatest in the Western states (55%) and majorities support legalization in the Midwest (54%) and East (51%).  Only voters in the South still oppose marijuana legalization (44%).  Men still support legalization at a much greater rate than women (55% vs. 46%).

Support is also greatest among younger Americans (62%), Democrats (57%), and liberals (69%).  However, support for legalization has increased even in demographics generally opposed to legalization.  Compared to Gallup’s poll last year, support increased 4% points in the South, 12% points in the Midwest, and 6% points among 50-64, but fell 1% among 65+.  Support rose 6% points among Republicans, and 4% points among conservatives. Marijuana legalization is becoming more popular with just about everyone.

President Obama, seeking input from the people on policy questions, was stunned once again to find…

On the “We the People” petitions site of Whitehouse.gov, as of this writing, NORML’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” petition is #1 by a long shot.  It has garnered over 42,000 signatures.  It needed 5,000 signatures in 30 days to generate an official response from the administration, a figure it had topped in just over three hours.

And when he asked for videos from citizens on policy issues, another stunning result…

The top question, submitted by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, garnered 13,842 votes – over 1% of all votes cast (people could vote for more than one question).

As a police officer, I saw how waging the war on drugs has cost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives but does nothing to reduce drug use. Should we discuss legalizing marijuana and other drugs, which would eliminate the violent criminal market?

Of the 193,060 people who voted more than 7% voted for the LEAP question.  That’s about one in fourteen people who took the time to Ask Obama.

2. National Cancer Institute drama over anti-tumoral effects of cannabis

A very high-profile battle over scientific integrity played itself out on the webpage of Cancer.gov, the government’s site for the National Cancer Institute.  It began when the site surprisingly updated its summary page on cannabis and cannabinoids.

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. [9-11] Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death. These compounds have been shown to induce apoptosis in glioma cells in culture and induce regression of glioma tumors in mice and rats.

Then it appeared that somebody pressured NCI to revise its update to better align with the government’s prohibition of cannabis.  The paragraphs above were removed and replaced with:

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.

Then NCI updated the “clinical studies” portion of the website to again highlight the anti-tumoral effects:

One study in mice and rats suggested that cannabinoids may have a protective effect against the development of certain types of tumors.

Decreased incidences of benign tumors(polyps and adenomas) in other organs(mammary gland, uterus, pituitary, testis, and pancreas)were also noted in the rats.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumorangiogenesis and metastasis.

Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death.

1. Colorado’s 5ng/mL per se DUID bill dies again as new research backs higher thresholds for regular users

We tackled drug testing above in #6, but this story takes #1 for showing how science and the scientific method can actually beat back prohibition.  Colorado had proposed a 5ng of THC per milliliter of blood (5ng/mL) per se DUID, meaning: if you test positive on a drug test above 5ng/mL, you’re automatically guilty of DUI, whether you were impaired or not.

Naturally, many medical marijuana patients in Colorado complained that they are such frequent and heavy users of cannabis that they would never be under such a threshold.  Furthermore, most of them have developed a tolerance to cannabis’ effects that allows them to drive under its influence without impairment, much as we understand an “until you know how [Pill X] affects you, do not drive or operate heavy machinery” warning on a pharmaceutical.

The “pot critic” of Denver’s WestWord, William Breathes, decided to become the experiment by abstaining from cannabis use under controlled conditions.  After sixteen hours and a night’s sleep, upon awakening, presumably clean and sober, Breathes was tested at 13ng/mL.  This anecdotal report, splashed all over the Denver media, was also backed up by the latest scientific research:

It concludes: “A threshold of 2-3ng/ml THC as an indicator of recent drug use (i.e, smoking within the previous 6 hours) as recommended by Huestis et al appears to be valid only for occasional users. Heavy users might exhibit measurable cannabinoid concentrations in blood, even if the last cannabis use was more than 24 hours ago.… Therefore, cannabinoid concentrations in heavy users’ blood from a later elimination phase might not be distinguished from an acute use of an occasional user.”

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-09-09.mp3)


Video streaming by Ustream

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Canada’s Civil Forfeiture Act of 2006 costs man his house
2. Missouri’s only technical college institutes mandatory drug testing of all students
3. 15 youths in Singapore facing caning, possible 20 years, for less than 30g of marijuana
4. Colorado DUID investigatory panel shows evidence that 5ng/ml per se DUID standards are not reliable indicators of impairment

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Interview with Valient Thorr – Dante’s in Portland 9/2/2011

High Times Magazine preview with Senior Editor Dave Bienenstock, author of The Official Pot Smoker’s Handbook

• Preview of upcoming HIGH TIMES Medical Cannabis Cup in Detroit, Oct 15 & 16

Video streaming by Ustream
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-09-02.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. New SB423 restrictions on probationers and medical marijuana leaves Montana woman in intractable pain
2. International Cannabis & Hemp Expo moves out of Cow Palace to downtown Oakland in Oaksterdam
3. Colorado DUID panel cannot determine a per se limit of THC in blood to reliably indicate impairment
4. Massachusetts company completes sequencing of cannabis genome

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Urb Thrasher from Urb Age Designs

• Rockin’ Friday: Cannabis Corpse – “Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise”

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide

• INTCHE moves to Oaksterdam
• HIGH TIMES outlast Wall St. Journal in 11-inning softball final, finishes season #1 at 9-1
• Stoner Movie Review: “Our Idiot Brother” with Paul Rudd
• Sebastian Bach’s home destroyed by East Coast flooding

Radical Rant

Video streaming by Ustream

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-08-29.mp3)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Company developing cannabis pain relief patch for pets
2. Victoria, Australia, bans bongs
3. Ft. Bragg city councilman killed while investigating clandestine marijuana grow
4. Billings man charged in marijuana DUID case that killed toddler
5. Stupid Stoner Stories: Man uses fake gun to steal fake weed (K2), ends up shot in the ass by citizen with a real gun

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by CannaBob and The Viper Hour on The NORML Network

• Roots Monday: Peter Tosh – “Legalize It”

Cannabis Community

• “Radical” Russ’s “STFU Speech” at 2011 Hempfest
• “Radical” Russ’s “Multiple Choice Drug Test Speech” at 2011 Hempfest
• “Radical” Russ’s “Amendments Speech” at 2011 Hempfest

Radical Rant

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Sacramento Bee columnist claims NORML ‘cherry-picks’ data

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2011-05-11.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Montana caregivers file suit on constitutionality of federal raids
2. California AB 1017 would decriminalize personal cultivation of marijuana
3. Oklahoma’s “life for hash” law would also cover pot brownies and kief screens
4. Connecticut is poised to move medical marijuana bill
5. Mexican citizens take to the streets demanding marijuana law reform

Daily Toker Tunes

• Irie Wednesday: Sun Salvation – “One by One”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

Radical Rant

• Denver Post’s reefer madness over failure of per se DUID bill

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2011-05-10.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Colorado’s per se DUID bill is dead again
2. Maryland governor signs improved affirmative defense bill
3. Dallas/Ft. Worth NORML’s 420 Truth Car attracts police attention

Daily Toker Tunes

• Special from Austin: Clyde and Clem’s Whiskey Business – “People Suit” and “Hits from the Bong”

NORML Newsmakers

• Imiel Visser from NORML South Africa

Radical Rant

• LifeforPot.com examines life sentences for nothing but non-violent marijuana offenses

(Denver Post) A proposal at the state Capitol to set a limit for how stoned is too stoned to drive died this evening in the Senate.

In a crucial vote, lawmakers rejected a hard cap on the amount of THC — the psychoactive chemical in marijuana — drivers could have in their systems above which they would be presumed too high to drive. Instead, a divided Senate sided with medical-marijuana advocates, who urged more study of the proposal.

Echoing the concerns of a number of lawmakers, Aurora Democratic Sen. Morgan Carroll said she believes the research is inconclusive about how much THC definitively causes impairment, meaning a 5-nanogram limit might snare sober drivers while allowing stoned ones to go free.

“If you’re going to have a shortcut to presuming somebody is impaired, let’s make sure the science is established,” Carroll said.

This is wonderful news, because the science is really inconclusive about regular cannabis use and driving impairment.  My colleague Paul Armentano just alerted me to a new study that differentiates between infrequent users and regular users:

It concludes: “A threshold of 2-3ng/ml THC as an indicator of recent drug use (i.e, smoking within the previous 6 hours) as recommended by Huestis et al appears to be valid only for occasional users. Heavy cusers might exhibit measurable cannabinoid concentrations in blood, even if the last cannabis use was more than 24 hours ago. … Therefore, cannabinoid concentrations in heavy users’ blood from a later elimination phase might not be distinguished from an acute use of an occasional user.”

This reaffirms, in greater detail than the 2009 paper by Karshner et al, the residual phenomenon and how this could confound proper interpretation in DUI per se states.

Or as we saw in the case of the WestWord’s pot critic, William Breathes, who tested at 13ng/ml after sixteen hours of non-use of cannabis.  Regular users do develop a tolerance and do not eliminate THC at the same rates.  Let’s judge driving impairment by demonstration and not by body chemistry.

(Colorado Independent) The Judiciary Committee was previously convinced by expert testimony and a blood test conducted on Westword’s marijuana critic, William Breathes, that showed even after 18 hours and a medical test confirming his sobriety that Breathes still tested over three times the THC limit to drive.

The bill is set to be heard Tuesday for second reading where the issue is likely to be debated. However, Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, who supported striking the THC limits in the DUI bill, said the bill, with THC limits, was likely to make it to the governor’s desk.

According to the Cannabis Therapy Institute, a medical marijuana advocacy group that has largely been fighting marijuana legislation this year, Carroll said she did not have the votes to kill the bill.

While many testified at the Judiciary hearing that 25 nanograms might be an acceptable level for a DUI per se, the state’s law enforcement agencies disagreed and stated that 5 nanograms may even be too high.

The problem is assuming there is a magic number related to body chemistry that can determine impairment.  A 100lb woman smoking one puff off her first joint might be too impaired to drive.  A 260lb man who tokes often chiefing a whole joint alone might be a perfectly fine driver.

Yes, we have data that shows 5ng/ml indicates recent use and observable deficits in coordination and reaction can be detected at that level.  But like all studies, it describes a statistical observation that can never be a 100% proof.  And the people who are most likely to be the exceptions on the flat ends of the bell curve are going to be the sickest patients who consume the most medicine most often.

Even if a toker is not as good a driver as when he is sober, that tells us nothing about whether he is fit to drive.  We accept that first time teenage drivers are going to be on the road as well as elderly folks.  If we were giving letter grades, maybe a driver is an A+ driver and when he’s stoned he’s a B.  Should he be punished when we allow the C- teenager and the D+ elderly driver on the road?

Blood chemistry can be a piece of evidence in establishing whether someone has consumed and could be a part of making a case that someone is impaired.  But to set a strict 5ng/ml as the only criteria is not scientifically valid and not just.  It is simply a way to streamline the conviction of cannabis consumers some of whom may be innocent of driving impaired.