Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
London, Aug 10 (ANI): A new study has revealed that stress and dieting can lead to a positive cannabis test long after the drug was last used.
Lead researcher Jonathon Arnold, from the University of Sydney in Australia, says that the main psychoactive ingredient of cannabis tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is instantly absorbed by fat cells and over the next few days is slowly diffused back into the blood.
During the study, Arnold and colleague Iain McGregor exposed THC-laden fat cells taken from rats to the stress hormone ACTH.
The researchers found that the hormone increased the speed of release of THC from the cells.
They later injected rats with 10 milligrams per kilogram of THC (equivalent to a person smoking between five and 10 cannabis cigarettes, depending on their strength) every day for 10 days.
Two days later, they injected a third of the rats with ACTH, deprived another third of food for 24 hours, with the rest as controls.
They found that rats that were not given food had double the blood level of THC acid, a metabolite of THC, compared with the controls.
The other group exposed to ACTH also showed a statistically significant increase in THC acid levels.
Paul Armentano has been documenting the science of how long-term cannabis users can fail a cannabis screening up to 100 days after ceasing cannabis use, and that people can pass many cannabis screens and then fail one. So many people who are on probation or parole have cannabis screening as a part of their sentence and so many go back to prison when the failed cannabis screen turns up. These people often insist that they have stopped using cannabis, but prosecutors contend that the failed test, especially after passing a few tests, is evidence of the re-initiation of cannabis use.
The science Armentano has documented shows this clearly is not the case, but until now there has been no understanding of why the levels of detectable THC and metabolites rise and fall so dramatically in the former user’s blood and urine. This research begins to unravel that mystery and shows us that stress and diet may have much to do with it. The research has not yet been replicated in humans, but this gives scientists a clue to study further.
My not-so-scientific analysis? If you’re trying to pass a drug test, stop smoking pot for a few weeks, chill out, and eat a Twinkie.
Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 4:22 pm | By: Paul Armentano
[Or how your donations to NORML helped a Los Angeles woman avoid five months in a cage after failing nine consecutive urine screens for marijuana while on probation. -- "R"R]
At NORML’s Aspen Legal Seminar this past June I presented on the topic of cannabis pharmacokinetics and explained how an understanding RE: the science surrounding the metabolism and absorption of cannabinoids could be a valuable tool for defense attorneys. Recently I put my theoretical knowledge into practice as an expert witness in a federal evidentiary hearing in L.A. federal court.
At issue: defendant was under three years federal probation (probation period to expire on 8/13/09); defendant had a string of NINE consecutive failed UAs for carboxy THC beginning on 10/27/08 running through 1/08/2009. On four of the nine tests, defendant’s carboxy THC levels were HIGHER than they had been on the previous test. When the samples were normalized, defendant still failed all nine tests. Feds were willing to let the 10/27/08 test slide, as defendant showed a medical marijuana recommendation, but considered all eight positive tests thereafter to be evidence of new/continued use and a probation violation. Defendant alleged she had NOT used cannabis since 10/27/08 and that all the the positive tests since that time were residual (evidence of the use prior to 10/27/08). Feds brought in a toxicologist with 39 years experience who alleged that the string of positive tests as well as the spikes in the defendant’s test results could “absolutely not” be from residual use and instead were indicative of new drug use. Feds asked for 5 months prison time and additional three years probation.
Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Sheriff Gene Mitchell said a Huntsville teenager, who gave birth to a child in a bathtub at a Lawrence County residence, has been arrested after the child tested positive for marijuana.
Mitchell said Kimberleigh Ann Duffey, 19, 6313 Marsh Ave., Huntsville, has been arrested for chemical endangerment of a child.
“We were notified by the Lawrence County Department of Human Resources after the positive test,” Mitchell said.
He said the child was born at a residence in Lawrence County near the Trinity community in December. The sheriff said DHR has take custody of the child.
“It’s a reckless and selfish act for a mother to use drugs while pregnant,” Mitchell said.
Duffey is being held in the Lawrence County Jail on bail of $15,000.
OK, so we separate a newborn infant from her young mother for “chemical endangerment” from a chemical that is non-toxic and not proven to cause serious harm to the infant. Cannabis has been used since the dawn of time by expectant mothers for relief from the nausea of morning sickness and treating general pain and is safer than anything else she could take for the same symptoms. And why do you suppose the woman was giving birth at home in a bathtub instead of a hospital; could it be that she feared hospital staff would detect the marijuana and take her child?
Meconium (the dark, tarry material passed from the neonate’s rectum in the first days after birth until milk or formula-based stool appears) is the specimen of choice for assessing in utero exposure of the neonate to maternal drug abuse
Meconium is preferred over urine for testing
Meconium documents multiple use over an extended period of time, covering the last 4-5 months of pregnancy
Urine testing can only indicate drug use over the last 1-10 days, depending on the drug
Cannabinoid (marijuana)
Negative effect on attentional behavior and on visual analysis/hypothesis testing
No effect on global IQ
Now compare that to the effects it lists for cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and benzodiazepenes, which include “intracerebral hemorrhage, small neonatal head size, reduced birth weight, fetal death, ADHD, tremors, and seizures” for the infant and “complications during pregnancy, premature labor, and ruptured uterus”.
Is society or that infant better off being put in foster care and having the young mother go through life branded as a “drug criminal” and “child abuser”?
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Wow!  I just received a fax from McGraw Hill, the people who make college textbooks, among other publishing.  They happened on a piece I wrote for The Oregon Herald on 4/20/2005 (just two weeks before I met Madeline Martinez and started my career in marijuana law reform) entitled “Drug Testing Does No Good” and are asking my permission to reprint it in a college textbook entitled “Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Management” that will be published in August.  Yours truly even receives a fee!  For something I wrote and forgot about four years ago!  (Ain’t the intertubes wonderful?)
Here it is for your reading pleasure…
Recently, an RV manufacturing plant in Goshen, Indiana, made headlines because they had drug tested all 120 of their employees and found that nearly a third of them tested positive for some illicit substance.
What caused the company to drug test all of their employees? Was there a rash of accidents? Had productivity dropped significantly? Were there increasing incidents of absenteeism and illness? Did a supervisor notice any drug use occurring at the plant, or notice an employee obviously under the influence of drugs?
No. The only reason the plant spent the time, effort, and money to test their employees was due to a police tip that there was a drug problem at the plant. In other words, there was no reason for the company to believe they had a drug problem.
You would think that running a manufacturing plant with one third of your employees working under the influence would lead to some obvious problems. You’d be right. The problem is that a positive drug test does not indicate that a person is under the influence of drugs. It only indicates that a person has done drugs in the past.
Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 12:17 pm | By: Radical Russ
Washington, DC: Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), along with Reps. Peter Defazio (D-OR), Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and Lee Terry (R-NE), has introduced legislation in Congress to criminalize the production and sale of any commercial products intended to influence drug test results, such as diuretic teas or chemical adulterants. The bill, H.R. 858, is now before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
As introduced, the proposal would “prohibit the manufacture, marketing, sale, or shipment in interstate commerce of products designed … to produce a false or misleading outcome of a test for the presence of a controlled substance.”
More than a dozen states have enacted similar laws.
Of the tens of millions of workplace drug tests performed annually in the United States, an estimated 90 percent are urine tests, which may be influenced by dilution or adding an adulterant to the sample. Over the past decade, numerous commercial businesses have marketed commercial products promising to influence drug test results, including herbal teas and substitute urine.
Sad to see one of my own Oregon Congressmen introducing this (sadder still to see him teaming up with “Mean Jean” Schmidt of Ohio!), but Oregon is one of the states with a similar law. Â This makes for brisk business across the state line in Vancouver, Washington, where a certain headshop owner advertises, “Hey, Portland, I got what you’re looking for…” on late-night mixed-martial arts TV shows.
This sort of legislation won’t have much effect, by the way.  I don’t know how you criminalize a diuretic tea – even here in Oregon we have “health detoxifier” products, not meant to be used to flush your body of any detectable metabolites, no sir, but only for personal well-being, you see, wink wink, nudge nudge.  Lawry’s Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer makes an excellent adulterant for carboxy-THC (THC-COOH) – will your crusade rid us of tender juicy beefsteak?  Cranberry juice is a good way to flush your system – are you going to put those two guys in the cranberry bog out of work, too?  Then there’s always your clean friend or relative willing to supply you with some pee.  Will pee trading become criminalized?
Just do the right thing and end workplace drug testing altogether. Â They are doing nothing to create a truly drug-free workplace:
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 1:45 pm | By: Radical Russ
Once again, a bill that seeks to punish prior use of a controlled substance with an automatic DUI conviction is before the Kentucky legislature.
Like its predecessors, Senate Bill5 cleverly attempts to bootstrap an ill-advised rule regarding all drugs onto a rule created for the purpose of measuring alcohol impairment. Under SB5, a driver who tests positive for traces of marijuana can be convicted of “driving under the influence” even if that driver is unimpaired at the time of arrest.
While such laws do little to actually make roadways safer, they do send many innocent people to jail and saddle them with criminal records for the rest of their lives. Current Kentucky DUI law requires prosecutors to prove that a suspect was impaired while driving. SB5 seeks to circumvent current evidentiary standards by removing this requirement. If lawmakers want to clog court dockets, cost taxpayers more money and make it tougher for Kentuckians to find and retain employment, then this is the bill to support.
SB5 attempts to create the appearance of scientific reliability by requiring blood tests to be administered within two hours of operating a vehicle. However, the two-hour standard was developed decades ago for measuring impairment caused by alcohol, not drugs like marijuana.
Moreover, the test referred to in SB5 is not a test for marijuana impairment, but merely a test for marijuana’s presence, which is not what DUI laws are supposed to punish.
The effect and perhaps even the aim of legislation like SB5 is to punish prior drug use — predominantly marijuana use — by convicting drivers of DUI without scientifically reliable evidence that they were operating a vehicle while under the influence of anything.
“Zero-tolerance” laws are more than unjust; they are scientifically unsound, which is exactly why not one single state applies such a rule to alcohol. Furthermore, these laws are even less suited for marijuana, the traces of which are detectable by drug tests long after its intoxicating effects have worn off.
Marijuana impairment peaks within minutes of use and is seldom severe or long lasting, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Conversely, alcohol impairment peaks much later and lasts for hours, meaning there’s a true correlation between high alcohol levels and driver impairment.
A driver with high levels of THC (the active psychotropic ingredient in marijuana) in the blood may not be impaired in any manner if time has passed since the substance was last used. The inability to accurately measure marijuana impairment is why both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse have stated that marijuana impairment testing via blood sampling is unreliable.
Driving under the influence of any substance is dangerous and should not be tolerated, but sending innocent people to jail for DUI using methods incapable of accurately measuring impairment is not the answer.
Lawmakers should reject SB5 as they have done in the past, instead focusing on finding real, scientifically valid ways to detect impaired drivers and get them off Kentucky highways.
Nathan Miller, a Kentucky native, is legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.
Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 9:07 am | By: Radical Russ
I just received an email from a listener:
My name is Les and I love finding the stash every day after work. I started listening to it – even all the old shows - after i lost my job at Trugreen (a ServiceMaster company) for smoking pot, even though i had a clean driving record, great customer reviews and the whole 9. Never did i burn at work or in a company vehicle, but rather mostly at home with my wife while unwinding for the evening…
In an economic crisis, we need as many people working and contributing to the economy as possible. Â To put people out of work and dependent on assistance during this crisis is foolish.
In the interest of rehabilitating this economy, we call on all private sector employers to do away with workplace drug metabolite testing, which serves primarily to disqualify responsible marijuana smokers from full employment.  Metabolite testing disproportionately targets cannabis consumers as its metabolite (THC-COOH) remains detectable for days or weeks after the window for impairment has passed; therefore, most of the people fired for marijuana were probably not impaired on the job.
We do share the concern about workplace safety, free from the threat of drug-impaired workers; however, there are other methods that are fair and accurate that do not discriminate against the marijuana consumer.  If a change in drug metabolite testing is unworkable, then we call for a change in workplace policy that allows responsible marijuana smokers who test positive for non-impairing, inactive metabolites of marijuana to keep their jobs, even if you feel some other disciplinary measures must be taken.
The last thing our country and economy needs right now are more unemployed marijuana smokers collecting a government check.
Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 11:59 am | By: Radical Russ
“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States. Â I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life. Â Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed. Â Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.
There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis. Â Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision. Â ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Adam: Oprah won't actually go off air for over a year, 2011 sometime. Maybe with here leaving the network soon, she'll be more likely to speak out about MMJ.
The Bluzguy: She promotes movies, turns books into best sellers overnight, and millions respect her opinion. Please contact her!
Missippi Hippy: I totally disregarded it Spof... My wife and I had 5 youngins
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Stress, dieting, may lead to positive marijuana test results
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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