Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-05-07

It’s Wednesday, May 7th and it’s 4:20 somewhere in the world. I’m your host, “Radical” Russ Belville.

Don’t forget to call your Congress and tell them to support HR5842 & HR5843 to end DEA raids in medical marijuana states and to legalize personal possession of marijuana. The number is 202-224-3121.

If you have a product that you would like to market to the cannabis community, you can advertise on the Daily Audio Stash. Your ad will be focused on exactly the customer base you’re seeking out; the thousands of responsible cannabis consumers who download and listen to this show. Our listeners are educated consumers who want to support the businesses that support the growing truth about cannabis, and we deliver the advertising freedom you won’t find on radio, TV, or print ads. To advertise on the Daily Audio Stash, send us an email at stash @ norml.org.

Wednesday is Cannabis Science day on the Stash, and coming up after the news, we’re separating the stems of propaganda from the buds of truth with Dr. Mitch Earleywine. Today Dr. Mitch and I discuss yet another attempt to falsely link marijuana to aggression. Seriously, do these scaremongers even know any potheads?

Cannabis Karri brings us our musical break this hempday humpday with a New York group called Mudville and their simply-named song, “Stoned”.

And I wrap things up with another listen to the Global Marijuana March from this weekend from all around the country. Today we’re headed to Philadelphia with Ken Wolski of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana in New Jersey, Josh Schimberg down in Austin with Texas NORML, and back east to New York City with Rob Robinson of NY NORML. It really is about the grassroots, people, and your local NORML chapter is the place to start ending adult marijuana prohibition.

Speaking of local activism, I want to feature the best from the marijuana marches this weekend. So we’re starting another “Pass the Stash” contest where you could win a DVD from Suburban Noize Records’ rappers Kingspade. Stay tuned for details later in the podcast.

Welcome to the show, load up your Wesley Pipes and sit back with your favorite strain… This is your NORML Daily Audio Stash.

Home where 2-month-old infant died contained marijuana, police say - Lehigh Valley Live Breaking News
Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) police seized marijuana, smoking pipes and infant items from a home where a 2-month-old baby was found smashed against a sofa cushion and not breathing Tuesday morning.

The baby’s mother, Aubrey Quinn, 24, told Bethlehem police Detective William Dosedlo that she was staying at her mother’s home Monday night. She said she drank beer and smoked marijuana before falling asleep on a sofa with her infant daughter on her chest, according to court documents.

Police filed a search warrant with District Judge Nancy Matos Gonzalez’s office Tuesday, and the inventory was returned this afternoon. In addition to the marijuana and two pipes, police seized infant formula and blankets, police said.

Quinn told police she placed Charlanna on a sofa about 12:30 a.m. and then went to sleep on an adjacent sofa. About 2 or 3 a.m., she said she heard the baby making noises, so she put the baby on her chest and fell asleep. She awoke around 7 a.m. and found Charlanna facedown between her body and the back of the sofa.

When police and emergency responders arrived at the home at 7:05 a.m. Charlanna was unresponsive and not breathing.

A second search warrant calls for officials to take blood and urine samples from Quinn to determine the level of alcohol or drugs in her system. These tests were still pending today.

The death of this child is, of course, a great tragedy.  But it was an accident that could’ve happened to anyone, even without beer or weed.  These scary headlines, though, help the reader infer that somehow the marijuana and the baby’s death are related.  There is no headline of “Home where 2-month-old infant died contained beer”, because beer is legal.

Check the timeline.  She smoked marijuana and drank beer.  She puts the infant on one sofa and herself on a different sofa at 12:30.  Between 2:00 and 3:00, she wakes up to put the infant on her chest.  Now I’m assuming that when she woke up at that point, she didn’t fire up a bowl and chug a beer.  So she’s had at least one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours of sleep since her last intoxicant.  If the idea here is to blame her intoxication on the baby’s death, then beer is more to blame here, since your body will remain drunk longer than it will remain high.

This young mother has already suffered enough.

Marijuana grown indoors can sicken - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pennsylvania officials are poised to classify indoor grown marijuana as hazardous.

Indoor marijuana is normally grown in a solution of nutrients and other chemicals. The chemicals and mold can be dangerous to breathe, said state police Sgt. Tracy Futcher, who directs the state police’s Claudestine Lab Response Team for the Alle-Kiski Valley and other western counties.

In the recent past, police have been sickened by hydroponically-grown marijuana which was indoors in two parts of the Alle-Kiski Valley. The marijuana is grown in liquid in a closed room. Growers also control humidity and light. The process produces the unintended growth of mold, said National Marijuana Initiative director Tommy Lanier.

“The danger is that mold spores can give off toxins,” Lanier said. The toxins can cause illness. He said there are 300 to 500 percent more mold spores in growth rooms than outside because there isn’t ventilation, Lanier said.

“This is strong stuff. The potency is way up there. The THC content is way up,” he said. “It’s 10 times more potent,” Futcher agreed.

A Web site for the White House Office on Drug Policy said marijuana smokers have a greater risk of lung infections and a “greater tendency toward obstructed air-ways” as well as causing memory loss.

The office also asserts that marijuana smoke “contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke” and consequently “has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract.”

Futcher said he will attend a training program this year and will write a standard operating procedure for state police about marijuana safety.

Cannon said indoor grows remain a challenge to deal with. “Alle-Kiski Valley courts don’t always take marijuana charges as seriously as heroin or crack cocaine unless there is a lot of it. Yet we have to remember that this is the drug of choice of the younger kids,” he said.

Cannon and other detectives said there is enough marijuana in the area that they could be totally occupied by it. But they have to spend more time investigating cocaine and heroin sales because those drugs are deadly.

Now this is the first time I’ve seen this tactic from the drug warriors - trying to cast indoor grows as something as dangerous and toxic as a meth lab!

First of all, if you’ve got a grower with any decent knowledge of how to build an indoor grow, the room will be built with adequate ventilation and air filtration. No grower wants mold, and most do everything they can to prevent it.

Second, the increased potency of pot (not 10 times stronger… maybe twice as strong) owes directly to the Iron Law of Prohibition, which says that if you prohibit a drug, you can guarantee it will become more potent. It happened during Prohibition, when sales of beer plummeted in favor of harder whiskeys, because bootleggers had limited supplies and storage. It’s happened with cocaine in the form of crack and with heroin which is cheaper and purer than ever.

However, more potent pot isn’t bad like more potent cocaine, heroin, or alcohol, because pot can’t kill you. Pot smokers smoke to get high, and the effects of smoked marijuana kick in almost instantaneously. So if you had a joint of poor marijuana, you might smoke it all before you felt high, but if you had a joint of potent marijuana, you might smoke a puff and feel quite high enough.

Third, it’s a bald-faced lie to say that marijuana may promote lung cancers when studies by Dr. Donald Tashkin at UCLA Medical School showed, in fact, that marijuana smokers showed no increased risk of lung cancer and that THC may actually have tumor-suppressing properties. Studies also show no increased risk of head and neck cancers.

Finally, I had something to write on that part about memory loss, but it escapes me at the moment… Oh, yeah, studies show that short-term memory loss is shown in marijuana smokers, but only while they are high. Once the marijuana wears off, there are no appreciable differences in the memory skills of tokers and non-tokers.

Seems to me that the police should be concentrating more of their time on heroin and cocaine. Those drugs are deadly, and marijuana is not.

Meadville (Pennsylvania) Tribune - Two arrested at marijuana ’smoke-in’
A marijuana smoke-in at Meadville’s Diamond Park has two teen-agers facing drug-related charges.

Numerous fliers posted all around Meadville had promoted the event for 4:20 p.m. on Sunday and drew about 40 onlookers.

The Sentinel Online : News : Local
Of his arrest with a quarter-pound of marijuana in 1984, Robert George Henry said, “I pleaded guilty because it was the easy way out.”

But when he was stopped in Cumberland County on Oct. 10, 2007, the 48-year-old Franklin County resident decided not to take that route. Instead, he appeared before Cumberland County President Judge Edgar Bayley Wednesday, testifying that smoking marijuana was part of his religion.

His attempt to have the charges against him dismissed did not succeed.

“I come to the belief that me smoking cannabis helps me connect with my Lord and what he wants me to do with my life,” Henry said. He starts every day with pot and prayer, he said.

Henry said he learned about The Hawaii Cannabis Ministry, which claims the sacramental use of cannabis as a cornerstone of its religion, in December 2007 and became a member on Jan. 14, 2008.

On Jan. 15, he said, he was ordained as a minister of the Universal Life Church of Modesto, Calif., which he said gives him “the ability to start my own church.”

Part of his religion, he said, involved growing his own marijuana organically. He had just picked up the last of his own marijuana and smoked a pipe before police stopped him in October, he said, but the arrest put an end to all that.

But Henry’s attorney, George N. Marros, said he had expected the decision.

“No common pleas court judge would rule on such a serious issue like this,” Marros said. At Henry’s pre-trial conference on May 6, he said, he plans to ask for a bench trial on the case, then take it to the Superior Court.

“That’s what the Superior Court is there for,” he said.

There are many people out there who are sincerely using cannabis for spiritual purposes, as humans have done since the beginnings of civilization.  The government tries to pigeonhole sacramental cannabis users as being “insincere” and decisions about religious use of drugs are often biased and contradictory.  Members of certain indigenous tribes may use certain hallucinogens under 1st Amendment religious protections, but your everyday American who meditates or prays with marijuana isn’t afforded the same protection.