Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 1:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
In a two-part article called, “Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Pot”, writer and parent Marie Myung-Ok Lee talks about using cannabis as a therapy to treat her nine-year-old son’s pain, irritable bowel, and other effects from his autism. You should really read Part One and Part Two in full, but I will just give you some snippets of the positive responses this little boy named “J.” has experienced from medical marijuana:
My son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us.
We made the cookies with the marijuana olive oil, starting J off with half a small cookie, eaten after dinner. J normally goes to bed around 7:30 p.m.; by 6:30 he declared he was tired and conked out. We checked on him hourly. As we anxiously peeked in, half-expecting some red-eyed ogre from Reefer Madness to come leaping out at us, we saw instead that he was sleeping peacefully. Usually, his sleep is shallow and restless. J also woke up happy.
[S]ince we started him on his “special tea,” J’s little face, which is sometimes a mask of pain, has softened. He smiles more.
[My mother] remarked that J seems calmer. As we were preparing for a trip to the park, J disappeared, and we wondered if he was going to throw one of his tantrums. Instead, he returned with Grandma’s shoes, laying them in front of her, even carefully adjusting them so that they were parallel and easy to step into. He looked into her face, and smiled.
Pre-pot, J. ate things that weren’t food. There’s a name for this: pica. … His pica become so uncontrollable we couldn’t let him sleep with a pajama top (it would be gone by morning) or a pillow (ditto the case and the stuffing)…. The worst part was watching him scream in pain on the toilet, when what went in had to come out. I had nightmares about long threads knotting in digestive organs. (TMI? Welcome to our life!)
Almost immediately after we started the cannabis, the pica stopped. Just stopped. J. now sleeps with his organic wool-and-cotton, hypoallergenic, temptingly chewable comforter. He pulls it up to his chin at night and declares, “I’m cozy!”
Next, we started seeing changes in J.’s school reports. … At one parent meeting in August (J. is on an extended school year), his teacher excitedly presented his June-July “aggression” chart. An aggression is defined as any attempt or instance of hitting, kicking, biting, or pinching another person. For the past year, he’d consistently had 30 to 50 aggressions in a school day, with a one-time high of 300. The charts for June through July, by contrast, showed he was actually having days—sometimes one after another—with zero aggressions.
When J. was in his dark phase, we spent our time out of sight, out of mind, inside our house with a screeching, violent, food-and-dish-flinging J. The sounds were contained by double-paned windows (when they weren’t broken). Now, within our family, we’ve reached a lovely homeostasis: household goods unbroken, our arms and J.’s face unscratched.
Fortunately for Marie, she lives in Rhode Island, one of the thirteen states that allow parents to use this non-toxic therapeutically active herb for their severely ill child. Marie also tells of her life with J. prior to cannabis and how doctors were quick to prescribe Risperdal (”Thorazine for kids”, she calls it,) a drug that has never been studied for long-term safety in children and has a list of nasty side effects. Almost a quarter million children under age 12 were prescribed Risperdal last year and from 2000-2004, 45 children died from it and five other popular “atypical antipsychotics”. Fortunately for J., his mother and his doctor chose a much safer and more effective alternative in cannabis.
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Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Providence Journal) PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Department of Health is moving forward with plans to create the state’s first medical marijuana clinic where patients who use the drug for medicinal purposes can legally purchase it.Compassion centers are to be operated as independent nonprofit entities overseen by boards or principal officers, to be regulated by the Health Department, much like a hospital or a nursing home. The state will not play a role in the day-to-day operations, but it will check to ensure that protocol is followed.
Centers must have “a fully operational security alarm system” with marijuana to be stored in locked areas within the clinics, according to the regulations. If clinics elect to grow marijuana at a second site, that location too must be equipped with proper security.
Staff and board members may not have felony drug convictions and must undergo background checks to be conducted by the attorney general’s office. They must also participate in training sessions at the facility.
This will make four states in which the buying and selling of marijuana is allowed by the state. Rhode Island and New Mexico have “compassion center” language with state controls and a very limited number, while California and Colorado both tolerate the fast-growing number of dispensaries operated in those states.
As I looked through the comments I noticed one that asserted that the Rhode Island compassion center would be broken into “all the time”. This is where the prohibition of marijuana for the healthy endangers the access for the sick. Dispensaries and compassion centers get robbed because of the great profit in prohibition and massive demand from non-medical users with no other access. Then the public gets stories on their news about the violence associated with a dispensary or compassion center and attributes that to allowing medical access, rather than where it belongs, on the prohibition.
Medical marijuana is a wonderful step, but it’s just a step. We must legalize marijuana for all its users or patients will always suffer from high prices, restricted access, and the danger of theft and violence.
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm | By: Radical Russ
The New York Times has a nifty interactive map based on data from the 2006-2007 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (more data here). It provides a drop-down menu to choose which dataset you’d like, which I naturally used to choose “Percent of people 12+ who have used marijuana in the past year”. Based on that information, your Top Five Stoner States are:
Rhode Island (16.12%)
Vermont (15.75%)
Alaska (13.79%)
Oregon (13.12%)
Colorado (12.99%)
Surprised that California isn’t in that list? Me, too. I’m not at all surprised by Vermont, Alaska, Oregon, and Colorado, but stunned that Rhode Island came in at #1. I’d caution that this represents everyone from the once-a-year-at-a-concert toker all the way through the daily Stasher. If frequency and amount used were considered, I’d be willing to wager we here in Oregon are, uh, higher than #4. Curious about your Bottom Five?
Utah (7.17%)
Iowa (7.32%)
Mississippi (7.79%)
Texas (7.92%)
Alabama (7.96%)
That #1 result for Utah shouldn’t surprise anyone with its majority Mormon population that even rejects coffee drinking. Another category where Utah is number one is consumption of Jell-O, which was named the official state snack. Oddly enough, the one time Utah lost its Jell-O crown was when Iowa briefly overtook them. So I wonder, is there some sort of yin/yang thing going on between cannabis and gelatin snacks? If you’re too high does it make it tough to follow the Jell-O recipe, or is it that you get such munchies you don’t have time to wait for Jell-O to set? By the way, does anybody have a recipe for ganja Jell-O; maybe that’s the solution?
I also thought it would be interesting to look at the Top Five States for Binge Alcohol Drinking:
North Dakota (32.02%)
Wisconsin (28.84%)
Minnesota (28.75%)
South Dakota (28.34%)
Rhode Island (27.92%)
Apparently Rhode Island is the place to get your drink on and your smoke on. But for the other Top Five Stoner States, binge drinking rates fall somewhere in the middle of the country from Oregon (21.71%) and Alaska (22.74%) toward the lower range and Vermont (25.57%) and Colorado (26.15%) toward the upper range. Unsurprisingly, Utah (15.64%) is at the bottom of this list as well. I suppose if Jell-O vodka shots aren’t bumping that number up, ganja Jell-O won’t likely work, either.
Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Three out of four Americans believe the “war on drugs” is a failure and can never be won. Serious people like Sen. Jim Webb, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, Congressmen Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Steve Cohen and others, even a growing body of right-of-center analysts and politicians have been saying it’s time to fundamentally reshape our approach to drug control.
So, why this divide between massive public opposition to current policies and the positions taken by our leaders? Fear, of course. They’re afraid of being punished for touching what has been perceived, mistakenly, as a third rail issue.
And the cause of this “drug war dementia”? I’m guessing it has something to do with a brilliant 2004 poll on the topic of medical marijuana. The poll asked two questions, the first confirming what had already been shown over and over again: that about 70 percent of people support the idea of legalizing marijuana, at least for medical purposes.
But then, pollsters asked something interesting:
“Regardless of your own opinion, do you think the majority of people support making marijuana medically available, or do you think the majority opposes making marijuana medically available?”
The result? In Rhode Island, where the poll was conducted, only 26.5 percent thought that most people support medical marijuana.
The lesson here? While many of our elected representatives privately support serious changes to our failed drug laws, they believe they are alone. They think if they stick their necks out they’ll be handed their heads come election time.
Which is why we must rise up and let our elected officials know they are safe to support drug law reform. And in considerable political danger if they do not.
This is also why we must come out of the cannabis closet and make ourselves known as the responsible, taxpaying, normal-with-an-a, law-abiding-(except-that-law) citizens that we are. When the only public image of the cannabis community is the “stoner”, the people who support our issue will only do so quietly, lest they be lumped in with the “burnouts”.
Never has this point been so crystal clear to me as during this last weekend’s family campout for Independence Day.
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Norma Sapp from Oklahoma NORML on the case of Will Foster, originally sentenced to 93 years in Oklahoma, paroled to California, now awaiting Schwarzenegger decision on Oklahoma extradition request.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Providence Journal) PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Backers of the successful drive to legalize the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes have now won Senate support for a study of what, if anything, is being accomplished by criminalizing use of the plant for any other purpose?
The sponsors of the eleventh-hour legislation include Sens. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston; Leo Blais, R-Coventry; Rhoda Perry, D-Providence; Charles Levesque, D-Portsmouth, and Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown.
The resolution would create a Special Senate Commission to study the prohibition of marijuana “made up of “elected members of the Rhode Island Senate, local law enforcement officials, physicians, nurses, social workers, academic leaders in the field of addiction studies, advocates or patients in the state’s medical marijuana program, advocates working in the field of prisoner re-entry, economists, and members of the general public.”
The bill poses a number of specific questions for study, among them:
“Whether and to what extent Rhode Island youth have access to marijuana despite current laws prohibiting its use…Whether adults’ use of marijuana has decreased since marijuana became illegal in Rhode Island in 1918…Whether the current system of marijuana prohibition has created violence in the state of Rhode Island against users or among those who sell marijuana…Whether the proceeds from the sales of marijuana are funding organized crime, including drug cartels…Whether those who sell marijuana on the criminal market may also sell other drugs, thus increasing the chances that youth will use other illegal substances?”
The legislation also questions the “dangers associated with marijuana resulting from it being sold on the criminal market, including if it is ever contaminated or laced with other drugs.”
The panel has until January 31, 2010 to report its findings and recommendations to the Senate, though it would stay alive through January 31, 2014.
What a nice 42nd birthday present for me in 2010, yet another report from yet another study on marijuana. Since every other study and report from every other government, from the 1894 British East India Hemp Commission to the 1942 Laguardia Commission to the 1972 Shaffer Commission to the 1999 Institute of Medicine Report, has reported virtually the same thing, let me answer Rhode Island’s questions in advance:
About 17 of 20 Rhode Island youth will tell you it is “easy” or “fairly easy” to obtain marijuana despite prohibition;
Adults’ use of marijuana in Rhode Island has most certainly increased since 1918, when few outside of Mexican migrants and black jazz musicians used it;
The very definition of prohibition means violence is the only way to solve disputes in the market;
If selling marijuana is a criminal act, of course marijuana sales fund criminal enterprises;
Most weed transactions involve sellers who sell only weed, but nothing stops some of them from selling other drugs to youth;
Marijuana is sometimes contaminated with other drugs or with glass to increase weight.
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm | By: Radical Russ
In landslide votes of 68-0 and 35-3, the Rhode Island General Assembly today overrode Gov. Donald Carcieri’s (R) veto of legislation to allow the licensed, regulated sale of marijuana to seriously ill patients. Rhode Island will now become only the second state (after New Mexico) to license and regulate medical marijuana dispensing.
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Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 8:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(Providence Journal) PROVIDENCE — Nearly a decade after patient advocates first pressed for full-scale legalization of marijuana for medical use, Rhode Island on Tuesday became only the second state to establish state-licensed dispensaries to sell the drug to the critically ill.
Senate lawmakers gave final approval to the House and Senate versions of the legislation, sending it to the governor’s desk with enough votes to override a veto, if necessary.
Governor Carcieri, a longtime critic of medical marijuana, confirmed in a brief interview Tuesday that he will “do the same thing I’ve done with it in the past.” A year ago he vetoed a compromise plan to study the concept, saying it would “move Rhode Island further down the path of weakening the laws governing — and public perception of — illicit drugs.”
But Senate lawmakers approved the legislation in an easy 31-2 vote Tuesday, days after the House approved the same plans in a 63-5 vote. Both tallies are well beyond the three-fifths majority needed to override a veto.
Every state that approves medical marijuana without approving a way to acquire medicine is essentially passing a huge stimulus package for their state’s black market marijuana dealers. It is good that those states will no longer arrest sick people with marijuana, but then forcing those sick people out into the streets to buy a quarter-ounce from a corner dealer exposes the frail patients to robberies and assaults. Allowing patients to grow their own medicine helps and higher limits than one or two ounces or three or six plants help, but the patients who can’t grow because of their frailty are exactly the ones most likely to be ripped off by a street hustler.
It’s the same with marijuana decriminalization; it’s nice to only fine and not jail people with pot and not saddle them with a criminal record, but that’s essentially legalizing the demand side without legalizing the supply side. More demand with the same supply means more profit for the black market and easy tax revenues that are being squandered by the states.
SneakerPimp: i wanna here about the imminent MiniSpof sounds like time for some
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
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. […]
Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Medical Marijuana for Autism
In a two-part article called, “Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Pot”, writer and parent Marie Myung-Ok Lee talks about using cannabis as a therapy to treat her nine-year-old son’s pain, irritable bowel, and other effects from his autism. You should really read Part One and Part Two in full, but I will just give you some snippets of the positive responses this little boy named “J.” has experienced from medical marijuana:
sounds like time for some 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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