Reefer madness is alive and well in Kansas.  The Weed Blog picked up on a story out of Topeka, Kansas, where the legislature held a hearing to discuss medical marijuana.  Supporters outnumbered opponents by a long shot.

Dramatic testimony was given by a son whose mother died from the FDA-approved prescription arthritis drug Humira.  Esau Freeman of Wichita read a two-page list of Humira’s known side effects and asked, “I’m here to ask you if we can do better. If patients in Kansas deserve the legal right to access safe and more natural medicine. I’m asking you as responsible and caring legislators of this great state of Kansas to investigate the evidence of medical marijuana with an unbiased and open mind.”

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Eric Voth, the chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, claimed that the state of Oregon has mostly stopped pre-employment drug screenings after medical marijuana passed in 1998 because “they had no usable work force.”  Also during testimony, Voth claimed that in California, more prescriptions (recommendations) are filled on Friday afternoons by those under 25 than at any other time by any other group.  ”It’s a scam, it’s not a prescription,” Voth said.

Rep. Trimmer noted that few of the people testifying offered much in the way of scientific citation for cannabis’ proven medicinal benefits.  ”Do we have any evidence on either side from sources like the National Cancer Institute, the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Opthamological Association Journal?” Trimmer asked. “I would hope that we have something in the medical profession that tells us whether these things work or not. I like to base policy on sound research.”

OK, then…

National Cancer Institute:  The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Although few relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients in the United States who recommend medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.

American Medical Association:  Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.

New England Journal of Medicine:  Federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medical use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to treat. The government should change marijuana’s status from that of a Schedule I drug … to that of a Schedule II drug … and regulate it accordingly.

American Academy of Ophthalmology:  …no scientific evidence has been found that demonstrates increased benefits and/or diminished risks of marijuana use to treat glaucoma compared with the wide variety of pharmaceutical agents now available. [This lady would beg to differ...]

The chairwoman, Rep. Brenda Landwehr, wasn’t buying any of the testimony from patients who told how cannabis had helped them medically.  ”I think that, if there was a huge benefit for those folks, the FDA would have already stepped in,” Landwehr said.

So once again we have opponents of medical cannabis use retreating to the tautological safety of the FDA excuse:

1. Cannabis is not a medicine because it is not FDA approved;
2. The FDA can’t study cannabis, because it is in Schedule I;
3. Cannabis is in Schedule I because it is not a medicine.
4. Return to Point 1.

The fact is the FDA can never approve cannabis as a medicine because that would be like asking you to define exactly what a dog looks like.  The FDA is set up to evaluate the beneficial and harmful effects of a certain amount of an exact molecule given consistently to test subjects.  The FDA can – and has – evaluated THC molecules in synthetic form and approved their medical benefits.

But evaluating whole plant cannabis involves too many variables, just as defining a dog runs the gamut from chihuahua and pug to St. Bernard and greyhound.  Sure, they all have four legs, tails, two eyes, etc., but some are short, tall, thick, thin, long snouts, flat faces, fast, slow, friendly, aggressive, and so on.  A dog that would serve well for an elderly woman in a city apartment might not work for a middle-aged man who likes hunting ducks.

The same applies to cannabis.  Even different buds picked from the same plant can have variance in their constituent cannabinoids.  Varieties that work great for aiding my creativity might not be beneficial for treating my co-host’s chronic pain.  One grower may cultivate that variety I like with better results.  Some days, I may want a different variety that eases my stress.

The main point is this: FDA approval of cannabis is unnecessary.  The whole point of the FDA’s creation was to protect us from the patent medicine manufacturers of the early 20th Century that were selling us “snake oil” of dubious value, elixirs that were sometimes harmful to health.  It continues to evaluate the new patent medicines devised by the chemistry of man to ensure their safety and efficacy.  Cannabis has 5,000 years of history of safe, effective use in humans.  It is not a new chemical substance whose effects and dangers are unknown; it is a plant as old as history.  Retreating to the FDA excuse or claiming there’s not enough scientific research is the last resort of the frustrated prohibitionist.

(Hat tips to Drug Policy Alliance for the headline, which was their 2nd subhead, and California NORML for some of the list of grievances…)

"If you inhaled in New York City, today you might be Barry the Drug Criminal"

When originally asked as a candidate his stand on the issue of medical marijuana, President Obama had pledged not to be “using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue”.

Today, four US Attorneys from the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice announced plans to “outline actions targeting the sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana.”  Sixteen dispensary owners in California have received letters giving them 45 days to shut down before the federal government shuts them down and seizes their assets

The Obama Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has openly declared that the mere act of registering to use medical marijuana in accordance with state law is reason to suspend a citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana.

The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.

President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.

Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.

President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments.  In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.

It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era.  However, there is one critical difference between President Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana compared to President Bush:  George W. Bush never bothered to ask us what we thought about it.

President Obama has asked the American People on nine separate occasions for suggestions on public policy.  In every instance, the subject of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana support have been the top concerns cited by Americans.

President Bush never openly mocked us on the issue.  Of course, if President Bush had bothered to address our medical marijuana questions, it couldn’t have been any more incoherent than President Obama’s recent response.

Full disclosure: I voted for, campaigned, fund-raised, phone-banked, and publicly spoke on behalf of the Obama Campaign in 2008 when I was still a progressive talk radio host on satellite radio.  It won’t happen again.  Some tell me we’re more likely to see legalization under a Democratic administration; I see two Republicans running for president espousing marijuana regulation.  I see arrest graphs showing greater rise in marijuana arrests under Clinton than any president but Nixon. At this point in my childless life, I must take Keith Stroup’s words to heart and “never again vote for any politician who would treat you like a criminal”.

(ABC News) Preventing preterm births just got 150 times more expensive, now that KV Pharmaceuticals has gained exclusive rights to produce a progesterone shot used to prevent premature births in high-risk mothers.

Although the shot has been available in unregulated form from specialty compounding pharmacies for years for $10 a pop, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted KV Pharmaceuticals sole rights to produce the drug, which will be marketed as Makena and cost $1,500 per dose — an estimated $30,000 in total per pregnancy.

Don't worry. You'll probably deliver before the pill you're taking to prevent a problem birth jumps 150x in price

I’m sorry, would that be the Food and Drug Administration that we are constantly told we need to approve medical marijuana?  The cannabis that we can grow at home for about $25 an ounce yet is priced at $300 an ounce at dispensaries?

Though KV Pharmaceuticals plans to offer financial assistance to low-come households in need of the drug, how private health insurance companies and Medicaid will respond to this price spike remains to be seen, leaving many doctors fearing that access to this treatment will become severely limited or interrupted for those currently mid-treatment.

My wife used to work in management for a major health insurer.  Let me answer that question for you… the response will be, “hell, no, we’re not paying for a $1500 shot that costs $10!”

And because FDA laws prohibit compounding pharmacies from making FDA-approved products, doctors will be legally obligated to stop using the cheaper version of this drug, a representative for the company told ABC News.

Why, we wouldn’t want poor and working class mothers to avoid high-risk pregnancies, would we?

“I hope I deliver before the new price kicks in,” says Devika Ross, 36, who has been taking the nonbranded form of the shot, called 17-hydroxyprogesterone caproate, for the past 11 weeks. Her first child was born about three months premature and after a combined 232 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, died from pulmonary hypertension.

When Ross became pregnant again this past fall, she was at high risk of another preterm pregnancy and was placed on the progesterone shots 16 weeks into her pregnancy. She is now almost a month further along than she was when her first child was born, and she has a good chance of delivering full-term.

“My insurance pays for the [nonbranded] shots, but I don’t know if they would cover it if it cost $1,500 a shot. That doesn’t seem fair, especially because not everyone has insurance,” she says.

If it isn’t painfully clear to you why home cultivation is such and important right to maintain, just come back to this story about what happens when a corporation is given monopoly control over an important medication.  There’s nothing wrong with corporations and cannabis sales per se, but only when balanced by the power of the consumer to reject their markups, contaminants, modifications, and poor quality by growing their own home cannabis.

It's not the plant... it's who is profiting from it!

“[M]arijuana has no scientifically proven medical value.” So stated the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on page six of a July 2010 agency white paper, titled “DEA Position on Marijuana.”

Yet only four months after the agency committed its “no medical pot” stance to print, it announced its intent to allow for the regulation and marketing of pharmaceutical products containing plant-derived THC — the primary psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

But don’t for a second believe the DEA has experienced a sudden change of heart regarding patients’ use of the marijuana plant — use that is now legal under state law in 15 states and the District of Columbia (although recently approved laws in Arizona, New Jersey, and Washington, DC still await implementation). Despite growing public support for medical marijuana legalization, America’s top anti-drug agency remains resolute that these hundreds of thousands of medi-pot patients are no more than common criminals, and their herbal remedy of choice is nothing more than the “Devil’s weed.”

It’s not public pressure that’s motivating the agency to consider rescheduling an organic cannabinoid for the first time since the creation of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970. (Under this act, all prescription drugs are classified as schedule II, III, IV, or IV controlled substances, while all illicit substances are categorized as schedule I drugs.) And it’s not the recent publication of a series of FDA-approved “gold standard” clinical trials affirming the plant’s safety and efficacy that’s prompting the agency into action. (The DEA has so far refused to acknowledge these studies even exist.) Rather, the agency’s sudden call for regulatory change is inspired by far more politically influential forces: The DEA is responding to the demands of Big Pharma.

[Continue reading how your pot plant will still get you prison but Big Pharma's pot plant pills will get them profit at Alternet...]

Alcohol = good! Caffeine = good! Alcohol + caffeine = bad! Cannabis = very bad!

I’m a cannabis consumer.  I don’t drink much alcohol anymore; maybe a margarita at a Mexican dinner or a bottle of wine on the beach but never more than, say, a drink per month.  Maybe that’s why I’m only now getting caught up on the phenomenon known as “Four Loko”.

For those like me who missed it, Four Loko is a 23.5 ounce can of booze with lots of calories and caffeine that’s popular with the young binge-drinking set.  By “lots”, I mean that one can of Four Loko contains:

1. 12% alcohol (like a sparkling white wine, which comes in a 25.36 ounce bottle)
2. 260mg of caffeine (“roughly the same amount of caffeine as a tall Starbucks coffee“, which is 12 ounces, but who really drinks “talls” when 20 ounce “ventis” are available?)
3. Guarana and taurine (like a Monster energy drink, available in 23.5 ounce cans as well)
4. 660 calories (like a McDonald’s cheeseburger Happy Meal and a Coke)

The company was started in 2005 by three friends at The Ohio State University (motto: “Don’t dare confuse us with that other Ohio State University!”) who obviously noted the popularity of “Red Bull and vodka” and “Jaegerbombs” among college drinkers.  They took out SBA loans and in this awful economy created a successful company, created American jobs, and made many charitable donations.

But then, college kids got a hold of this new drug cocktail and, being invulnerable as they are at that age, misused it and were hospitalized.  More horror stories followed, including a young healthy person who had a heart attack and the disturbing story about a brutal rape where the victim was forced to drink 10 cans of Four Loko!  (What difference does it make whether packs of vile rapist scum force the victim to drink Four Loko or chocolate milk?  Never mind, it was awful and Four Loko was there!)  University of Florida studied the drinks and found they led to a fourfold increase in drunk-driving intent.

Next came the frenzy to ban the drink in state legislatures.  Washington’s governor said the fruit-flavored drinks in bright-colored cans were just too appealing to young people.  ”It’s no different than the kind of appeal that Joe Camel had to our kids when it came to cigarettes,” Gov. Christine Gregoire said.  Today we get a lawsuit from Florida parents whose son partied for 30 hours straight, played around with a loaded handgun, and shot himself in the head… dead because of Four Loko!  (Don’t you dare bring up easy access to a loaded handgun… Four Loko was there!)  Now, bowing to what would surely be FDA action to force them to do so, the makers of Four Loko are removing the caffeine, guarana, and taurine.

The urge to prohibit when the youngsters discover the Next Drug Scare runs strong in the American people.  Here we have what amounts to a ban on mixing two legal products.  Nobody is calling for bans on energy drinks and certainly nobody is calling for a ban on “tallboy”-sized cans or fruity flavored alcohol.  I can still buy Mike’s Hard Lemonade, a triple-serving energy drink, and a Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese.  But not a can of Four Loko?

The only thing this ban does is return young drinkers back to mixing the Red Bulls and vodka or rum and coke or good ol’ fashioned beer and coffee.  Oh, and cripple a start-up company and probably end a few American jobs.  Meanwhile, another popular drug choice for young people, cannabis, is not just banned for sale but also criminal to possess.  Using it can end a student’s financial aid and college housing, a punishment not meted out for alcohol even when a student is underaged.

About 1,700 college students die every year from binge alcohol drinking… so let’s ban the caffeine, taurine, and guarana in one of their drinks when a few of them end up in the hospital.  And for the children’s sake, don’t let them use that cannabis that has never killed anyone in 5,000 years!

(Washington Post) The Justice Department says it’s backing off the prosecution of people who smoke pot or sell it in compliance with state laws that permit “medical marijuana.” Attorney General Eric Holder says “it will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers.” Party hardy! I mean — let the healing begin!

I don’t think the federal government should be spending a whole lot of time on small-time druggies, and I’m undecided about legalizing pot, which enjoys 44 percent support among the general public, according to a recent poll. Recreational use is not the wisest thing — and if my 12-year-old son is reading this, that means you! — but it’s no more harmful than other drugs (e.g., alcohol) and impossible to eradicate. On the other hand, I worry it’s a gateway to harder stuff. So I think we probably should have an open debate about decriminalization.

The Institute of Medicine in 1999 and every peer-reviewed study since has concluded that there is no such thing as a “gateway effect” from marijuana to “harder stuff”.  What this writer, Charles Lane, wants is the government acting as parent to keep his 12-year-old off of pot by saying “don’t do it, it’s illegal”.  Which, by the way, has been a colossal failure; almost forty years into the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ and kids still say it is much easier to acquire weed than whiskey and blunts than beer.

But it should be a real debate, about real decriminalization, and not clouded — pardon the expression — by hokum about “medical marijuana.” … I do not deny that for some people, including some terminal cancer patients and pain-wracked AIDS sufferers, marijuana is a blessed relief. Let ‘em smoke, I say, just as the Justice Department has usually ignored such cases since long before Holder spoke up. But if you believe there is any scientific evidence that smoked marijuana has the multiplicity of therapeutic uses that advocates claim — well, I’ve got a bag of oregano I’d like to sell you.

There are over 17,000 peer-reviewed studies documenting the bona fide medical uses of cannabis and cannabinoids for a variety of conditions.  Would that count as enough “scientific evidence” for Charles Lane of the Washington Post?

Usually, drugs have to pass exacting testing by the Food and Drug Administration before they go on the market. There’s a good reason for this: we don’t want people spending money on products that might be ineffective or actually harmful. In California and elsewhere, however, snake oil — sorry, “medical marijuana” — got on the market via a different route: popular referendum.

Then it is a good thing that medical marijuana isn’t ineffective or seriously harmful, huh?  There are no recorded overdoses on cannabis because it is impossible; cannabis is non-toxic.  By contrast, many people die from over-the-counter aspirin overdoses every year.  You can actually die from drinking too much water, but too much cannabis will just put you to sleep.

What other substances should we handle this way? Cocaine? Laetrile? Didn’t President Obama just sign a bill authorizing the FDA to regulate the nicotine content of tobacco? And I thought he promised to “restore science to its rightful place.”

I don’t know… do you think you can get more than 50% voter support for medical cocaine or medical Laetrile, Charles?  Enough people have personal experience with marijuana’s medical efficacy — or at least marijuana’s lack of serious harms — to know that the FDA / DEA /NIDA stonewalling on medical marijuana is bullshit.  So the people legalized their medical access to marijuana by the only avenue available: taking it to the people by ballot.

By the way, we already do have medical cocaine; it is a Schedule II substance any doctor in any state can prescribe, so nobody ever considered handling it by ballot measure.  If President Obama restored science to its rightful place, do you think marijuana would still be considered to have no medicinal value while cocaine (and methamphetamine, by the way) are considered medicinal?

A few years ago, a California woman called Angel Raich took her defense of medical pot all the way to the Supreme Court. She lost on the legal issue, which had nothing to do with the medical effectiveness of pot. Along the way, though, she claimed that she was suffering from “life-threatening” scoliosis, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, bruxism, endometriosis, headache, rotator cuff syndrome, uterine fibroids, and Schwannoma. The Latin names might have snowed some judges, but physicians recognized each of these conditions as a common, non-life-threatening problem for which conventional treatments were available. Raich listed a cornucopia of potent drugs, from Vicodin to Methadone, that she had tried previously and gotten no satisfaction. I’m not a doctor, but I thought she might consider a consultation for hypochondria, or perhaps marijuana dependency.

Angel Raich's "hypochondriacal" brain tumors (courtesy of AngelJustice.org)

And you sir, have never met Angel Raich, and I have.  Perhaps you’d like to address the hypochondria in these brain scans that show the life-threatening tumors she is battling.

Charles Lane suffers from a form of Reefer Madness called Medicine of Last Resortism™.  As a man, I doubt he understands the pain of endometriosis, but maybe he’d like to join me in my special DeLorean to travel back in time to 2004, before my wife became a medical marijuana patient and she was crippled with pain, sobbing for days, from endometriosis.  This writer would prefer my wife to take Vicodin for that rather than smoke a joint, even though she is deathly allergic to Vicodin and most other opioid drugs, even though the cannabis is safe, non-toxic, works better on her pain and cramps than anything she’s ever tried, and doesn’t come with the typical opioid side effects of lethargy, constipation, and nausea.

This is not an isolated instance. According to a survey by NORML, the pro-”medical marijuana” organization, which can be expected to emphasize the desperate health of users, only 22 percent of California medical marijuana users suffer from AIDS-related disease. Most of the rest have more subjective maladies such as “chronic pain” or “mood disorders.”

For the people like Charles Lane suffering from Medicine of Last Resortism™, marijuana is an evil thing, dangerous and forbidden, and only those people who are deathly ill with only months to live and nothing to lose should be allowed to use it.  If you have something subjective, like pain or mood disorders, and you subjectively believe marijuana has been helping you treat that, why, you’re nothing but a dirty desperate drug addict lying to get a fix.  Here, take some Vicodin…

Raich’s physician was Frank Lucido, a well-known Berkeley doctor and pro-pot activist — he also makes money as an expert witness on “medical marijuana” — whose Web site boasts that he was “investigated by the Medical Practices Board of California for cannabis evaluation practices in 2003, and fully exonerated.” The case involved his recommendation of marijuana to treat attention deficit disorder in a 16-year-old boy, but, as I say, he was fully exonerated.

And you sir, have never met Dr. Frank Lucido, and I have.  I’m boasting that Charles Lane, opinion columnist for the Washington Post, was investigated by me just now on a Google Search of registered sex offender databases.  I found no record of Charles Lane as a registered sex offender, so, for now, he has been fully exonerated.  I did the search because I had my own personal suspicions about Charles Lane having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy, but, as I say, Charles Lane has been fully exonerated.

In a brilliant article (requires subscription) on this subject in the Hastings Center Report, a bioethics journal, lawyer and anesthesiologist Peter J. Cohen noted that “medical marijuana” groups have been notably passive about demanding FDA testing and approval for this purported elixir. Instead, they took their case to the people. As Cohen argued, this is no way to make health policy: “medical marijuana,” he wrote, should be “subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as any drug proposed for use in medical therapy, rather than made legal for medical use by popular will.” The “medical marijuana” movement may not be a threat to our civilization, but it is an insult to our intelligence.

By all means, medical marijuana should be approved by the same FDA that gave us the scientific scrutiny to approve thalidomide, phen-fen, and Vioxx.  Here’s the thing: when we ask NIDA for the permission to put medical marijuana through scientific scrutiny so we can approach the FDA, the DEA and NIDA reject us.

But should non-toxic cannabis be forced to undergo FDA scrutiny when it is said that over-the-counter aspirin, if it had to go through the FDA today, would not be approved for use?  The real insult to intelligence is suggesting that “the safest therapeutically-active substance known to mankind” (according to a DEA judge) needs to be studied, restricted, and prohibited in the same way a toxic, addictive, side-effect-laden drug like Vicodin is.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is letting the painkillers Darvocet, Darvon and their generic cousins stay on the market but ordered stronger warnings against deadly overdoses on Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration’s decision puts the U.S. in contrast to Britain — which banned the drugs several years ago, citing a trail of suicides and accidental overdoses — and Europe’s drug regulators, which just recommended that European Union countries do the same.

Known generically as propoxyphene, the 50-year-old prescription drug is widely used in the U.S. even though doctors consider it a weak pain reliever. The consumer watchdog group Public Citizen had petitioned the FDA to ban it here, too, saying the small benefit didn’t justify a risk that was adding up to several hundred deaths a year. In January, the FDA’s scientific advisers narrowly agreed.

But the FDA overruled its advisers Tuesday, at least for now. It ordered that a stern boxed warning be placed on the drug’s label and that patients soon start receiving a special pamphlet with every bottle that stresses the risk of taking too much.

Yeah, what’s a few hundred deaths compared to Ely Lilly’s profits?  What do scientists know compared to pharmaceutical-industry-installed government bureaucrats, anyway?

(Reuters) In his letter, (Congressman Henry) Waxman said a June 15, 2007 e-mail from then FDA Chief Counsel Sheldon Bradshaw showed he planned to forward a list of agency priorities to Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Tevi Troy. Both have ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

The initiatives also appear to have bypassed normal regulatory channels so they could be implemented sooner, Waxman said.

Before joining HHS, Troy worked for two think tanks with drug company ties, Waxman said, adding that Troy’s brother works as a lawyer for GlaxoSmithKline Plc.

(Now, admittedly, that was the Bush Admin’s FDA.  But this Darvocet story makes me doubt the leadership of Obama’s new commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, especially when TIME Magazine noted:)

Importantly, Hamburg is believed to be an acceptable choice to both the pharmaceutical industry and consumer advocates, a narrow tightrope any nominee must walk to win Senate confirmation.

Why does the head of the agency charged with regulating the pharmaceutical industry need to be acceptable to the industry she’s regulating?  Are we going to ask death row inmates their opinions of the new warden?

This is the same FDA that prohibitionists keep telling us has never and would never approve cannabis for medicinal purposes because it’s too gosh darn dangerous.  Hey, what if we package it with a special pamphlet and a stern boxed warning on the baggie: “Warning: taking too much cannabis may lead to the risk of overeating Cheetos, enjoying jam bands, and fits of giggling.”

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-07-01.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. The Importance of Permitting Consumers the Right to Cultivate Marijuana for Personal Use
2. FDA recommends lowering dosages of acetominophen, “the leading cause of liver failure”
3. Congress lifts “Barr Amendments” forbidding DC from medical marijuana and decriminalization
4. Annual Ontario Hempfest festivities will cease this year due to police harassment

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• A look at the human relationship with cannabis throughout history

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• 2009 AMMA Best Reggae Song – ‘Cassava’ by Andrew Mystic aka ‘PZ’

NORML Newsmakers

• Former Guatemalan boys national and George Washington University swimmer Juan Bocanegra, on cannabis use, athletics, and training for the Ironman Triathlon

(Yahoo! News) ADELPHI, Md. – Government experts say prescription drugs like Vicodin and Percocet that combine a popular painkiller with stronger narcotics should be eliminated because of their role in deadly overdoses.

A Food and Drug Administration panel on Tuesday voted 20-17 that prescription drugs that combine acetaminophen with other painkilling ingredients should be pulled off the market.

The FDA has assembled a group of experts to vote on ways to reduce liver damage associated with acetaminophen, one of the most widely used drugs in the U.S.

Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., according to the FDA.

Panelists cited FDA data indicating 60 percent of acetaminophen-related deaths are related to prescription products. Acetaminophen is also found in popular over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Excedrin.

Gosh, that doesn’t make any sense.  I looked all over the federal drug schedules and couldn’t find acetominophen.  It’s an over-the-counter drug, so any adult can just go in and buy as much as they want off of a store shelf (maybe even kids, too; I can’t recall any prohibition against it).  Yet it is estimated to cause 2,600 hospitalizations and 450 deaths per year.  It is also very bad for your liver:

But some people are more susceptible to acetaminophen toxicity and can experience liver damage even at the recommended dose. A study by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that about 20% of people with acetaminophen-related liver toxicity had taken less than the recommended daily amount. For other people, a dangerous dose is not much higher than the recommended dose—that is, the “window” between a therapeutic dose and a toxic dose is smaller for acetaminophen than it is for many other drugs.

Some experts also believe that taking acetaminophen for several days in a row may cause a dangerous build-up of the drug in the body. Acetaminophen is more likely to cause liver toxicity at near normal doses when used by people who drink alcohol. In fact, people who drink regularly may be more prone to liver damage even if they do not consume alcohol and acetaminophen at the same time. There appears to be added risk even if people take acetaminophen a few hours, or in some cases longer, before or after drinking.

Gee whiz, a drug that has medical value and an accepted safe use under medical supervision, yet is hepatoxic and sometimes fatal, why, you’d think that drug would be on the Controlled Substances list and require a doctor’s prescription, wouldn’t you?  Aha, but you’ve missed the parts that mention “potential for abuse” and “psychological dependence”.  Since acetominophen doesn’t get you high or addicted, the government doesn’t care so much about controlling your access to it, even if more people overdose on it than on alcohol in a given year.

But if it is a natural unprocessed herb gets you high, it doesn’t matter that it has never killed anyone, it’s safe to use without medical supervision, and it has numerous medical applications, it’s going up on Schedule I and if you’re caught with it, you’re going to jail.  And if that gives you a splitting headache, the jailers will be glad to get you a Tylenol.

(Mother Jones) AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who’s been the biggest liar? There are all too many contenders, yet one is so floridly surreal that he deserves special attention. Nope, it’s not Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo. It’s a trusted authority figure who’s lied for 11 years now, no matter which party held sway. (Nope, it’s not Alan Greenspan.) This liar didn’t end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lie—as a prerequisite for holding the job.

Give up? It’s the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a.k.a. the drug czar, who in 1998 was mandated by Congress to oppose legislation that would legalize, decriminalize, or medicalize marijuana, or redirect anti-trafficking funding into treatment. And the drug czar has also—here’s where the lying comes in—been prohibited from funding research that might give credence to any of the above. These provisions were crafted by Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and pushed for by then-czar Barry McCaffrey, best remembered for being somewhat comically obsessed with the evils of medical marijuana. A few Dems complained that the bill, which set “hard targets” of an 80 percent drop in the availability of drugs, a 60 percent decrease in street purity, and a 50 percent reduction in drug-related crime and ER visits, all by 2004—whoops!—was “simplistic” and “designed to achieve political advantage.” Though the vote count was not recorded for history, it got enough bipartisan support to be signed into law by Bill “Didn’t Inhale” Clinton.

But then, the drug war has never been about facts—about, dare we say, soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, and counterfactual claims of success. (To wit: Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.)

Like Stasher Jillian wrote: “the ONDCP is required by law to forever oppose legalization, and when they do our legislators say ‘look, the ONDCP opposes legalization so it must be a bad thing’, so they continue to vote against it.”  Yup, when it comes to legalizing marijuana, our three branches of government are quick to point fingers.  The Judicial branch, when we take medical marijuana to the Supreme Court, points to the Legislative and says, “Congress has the power to change it”.  When we look to the Congress, they point to the Executive and say, “The ONDCP, NIDA, and FDA all say medical marijuana is bad, so we can’t change it.”  When we appeal to the President and the Drug Czar, they point to the Judicial and say “The Supreme Court ruled we can control marijuana,” and they point to the Legislative and say, “and Congress has mandated that we do so.”

Regarding medical marijuana, there is no other policy (save perhaps foreign policy toward Israel) where the American people have have such overwhelming support for one side, regardless of party affiliation, and the leaders in Washington have the complete opposite stance, again, regardless of party affiliation.  And you know – you just know – that if any Congressman’s spouse was stricken with cancer, that regardless of whether they serve in a medical marijuana state or have ever voted against medical marijuana, one of their aides would magically find a joint or two to get the spouse through chemo.

Because it doesn’t matter if 70% of the American people support medical marijuana.  100% of Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and others don’t.