Cannabis News

grokit

grokit

well-worn member
I just learned that the strain I'm legally growing in my medical garden is the only stuff that's sold in dutch pharmacies (big bang); it's legally prescribed and dispensed over there. I'm speaking of fully legal, as the coffeehouses are recreational and only quasi-legal. I've always liked it, since I first tried it 14 years ago.
 
vapebuddy13

vapebuddy13

Your resident Super Hero
Eschient

Eschient

Giga-Dweebess
Miami-Dade Police Push for Fines Instead of Arrests for Pot

The Miami-Dade Police Department has helped draft a measure in the county commission that would allow its officers leeway to issue fines and civil citations to anyone caught with small amounts of pot instead of arrest them.

...

(Comissioner Sally) Heyman says her office analyzed 245 arrests for marijuana possession in a recent month; only two convictions resulted from all those cases.

"That cost millions of dollars for taxpayers and those other 243 now have an arrest record," she says. ... "People make mistakes and they shouldn't have a criminal record that destroys their future possibilities for minor offenses," she says.
Click to expand...

While it's a rather weak attempt since it only allows for leaving it up to officer discretion, it does highlight an interesting shift in attitude. I'm sure it has more than a little to do with us being ground zero for a lot of these designer synthetics, too. Weed is nothing when you've got people ODing all over the place from the boatloads of Flakka and Bath Salts or whatever coming in.
 
CarolKing

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
Man gets 9 years for 2013 Bellevue hash-oil explosion
5:24 p.m. PDT June 8, 2015
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SEATTLE – A man who joined two tech workers in running a hash oil operation that exploded in 2013, destroying a Bellevue apartment building and leading to the death of a former mayor, was sentenced to nine years in prison Monday.

Prosecutors say butane gas used to make the hash oil exploded in the Hampton Greens Apartments on Nov. 5, 2013. Several people were injured trying to escape the fire.

One of them was Nan Campbell, an 87-year-old former Bellevue councilwoman and the city's first female mayor. She was sleeping in another unit when the explosion happened.

"It was terrifying to see that and think about what our mother must have been going through trying to escape from the building and what the other people had to go through trying to get out," said daughter Patty Campbell.

Nan Campbell tripped as she escaped the flames, broke her pelvis and died of complications from the injuries two weeks later.

Two more residents were left with broken bones after they had to jump from their apartments. One of them told the court in a letter that she is still in pain and will never be able to run or play soccer again.

On Monday David Richard Schultz II, 33, the man responsible for causing all of that human misery, appealed for mercy in Federal Court.

Schultz admits he'd been teaching two men to extract hash oil from marijuana in the apartment that blew up. He said he regrets what happened but was desperate to support his twin sons.
 
Gunky

Gunky

Well-Known Member
Making hash oil with butane in an apartment building is criminal. Nuts, too. Solvents like butane have to be done in an industrial environment and treated with respect and safety precautions. I prefer ice water hash anyway: it's a purer substance and the process does a better job of washing away molds, impurities, dust, etc. than solvent methods (you agitate cannabis with water and ice and run the trichome-bearing water through a set of filters which select out anything bigger or smaller than a trichome).
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Wahiker

Wahiker

Well-Known Member
UCLA Professor Finds Marijuana Is Safer to Smoke Than Tobacco

Yeah, this is kind of old news, but it's from a long-time researcher. Quote:

“You've got to hold it in your lungs longer, George.” A lot of people remember the famous comment by actor Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.

Thanks to the knowledge contained within the mind of Dr. Donald Tashkin, professor emeritus of medicine at UCLA, the statement makes more sense than ever. He has been studying weed and its effects on lungs for more than 30 years, and provided early evidence that average weed smoking does not cause lung cancer or impair lung function.
“The smoke content of marijuana is very similar to that of tobacco,” explains Tashkin. “There is a higher concentrate of cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana tar, and it reaches the lungs before any other organ, so there is this idea that they are related in causing the same health issues of the lungs.”

But, he says, “Through my studies, we failed to find any positive association.” Instead, “the association would be negative, between lung cancer and the use of marijuana. The likelihood is, that despite the fact that marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, we don’t see the same heightened risks of cancers that we see in tobacco.”

Tashkin also discusses the fact that smoking marijuana, unlike smoking tobacco, does not cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). “Reasoning for this may be that marijuana is a potent anti-inflammatory and suppressive,” he says. But “COPD is activated by tobacco smoke and other toxic substances.”

Given that even smoking it doesn't seem to cause lung problems seems to give vaping a clean bill of health.
 
LuckySeed777

LuckySeed777

Well-Known Member
Up in smoke? California lawmaker wants to defund DEA's pot eradication program

WASHINGTON – A California lawmaker is pushing to get rid of the Drug Enforcement Administration's pot eradication program, arguing it's fiscally irresponsible to spend millions burning up marijuana plants at a time when several states are legalizing the drug.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat, proposed an amendment to a fiscal 2016 spending bill that would cut the DEA's $18 million budget for the program in half. It would redirect $9 million to fund programs that help children who are victims of domestic and sexual abuse.


“Next year, I will bring another amendment to eliminate the program completely,” Lieu said in a written statement.

Republican political analyst Ron Bonjean told Fox News’ “Strategy Room” it doesn’t make sense to spend millions on the program. “I think the DEA’s budget is going to be cut severely,” he said, adding that it would be a tough sell for the DEA to justify going after and destroying marijuana plants when they’re not enforcing the law themselves in several states where it’s legal.

“This is a ridiculous waste of precious federal resources, especially when multiple states and jurisdictions have already legalized marijuana,” Lieu said. “It is time for the federal government to stop making marijuana use or possession a federal crime.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-wants-to-defund-dea-pot-eradication-program/
 
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gangababa

gangababa

Well-Known Member
Portugal decriminalized drugs 14 years ago – and now hardly anyone dies from overdosing
link to UK Independent

"Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it — Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program — not jail time and a criminal record.

Among Portuguese adults, there are 3 drug overdose deaths for every 1,000,000 citizens. Comparable numbers in other countries range from 10.2 per million in the Netherlands to 44.6 per million in the UK, all the way up to 126.8 per million in Estonia. The EU average is 17.3 per million.

Perhaps more significantly, the report notes that the use of ... "synthetic" marijuana, "bath salts" and the like – is lower in Portugal than in any of the other countries for which reliable data exists. This makes a lot of intuitive sense: why bother with fake weed or dangerous designer drugs when you can get the real stuff? ...

Still, it's very clear that decriminalization hasn't had the severe consequences that its opponents predicted. "

European report so no USA data; don't know where to place USA on chart.
HT to my original source Democratic Underground
drugs-portugal.jpg
 
t-dub

t-dub

Vapor Sloth
Cops Raid Pot Shop, Remove Surveillance Cameras — the Ones They Missed Resulted in Investigation

Surveillance cameras captured officers bursting into the pot shop with their guns drawn and ordering everyone onto the ground. However, the police officers are then seen on video removing the mounted surveillance cameras.

But they missed the hidden cameras, according to attorney Matthew Pappa of Long Beach.

The officers were caught on video sampling marijuana “edibles,” playing darts and even joking about assaulting an amputee in a wheelchair, the attorney alleges.

“I was about to kick her in her f***ing nub,” a female cop is apparently heard saying

These COPS are ABSOLUTE SCUM!!! Joking about hurting disabled patients and eating edibles . . . :disgust:


mod note: This incident has its own thread.
 
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bounce5

bounce5

Well-Known Member
macbill said:
Colorado court: Workers can be fired for using pot off-duty

The state Supreme Court ruled Monday that a medical marijuana patient who was fired after failing a drug test cannot get his job back.
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Important quotes (from the article):

"The company argued that because pot is illegal under federal law, medical marijuana isn't covered by the state law."

"A trial court judge and Colorado's appeals court upheld his firing, saying pot can't be considered lawful if it is outlawed at the federal level."

And this is why legalizing at a federal level is soo important.
 
cybrguy

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Marijuana 'Dabbing' Is 'Exploding onto the Drug-Use Scene'

  • Young people who use marijuana and are looking for a new way to get high may be increasingly turning to "dabbing," a new paper suggests.


    Dabbing is inhaling the vapors from a concentrated form of marijuana made by an extraction method that uses butane gas. Dabs, also known as butane hash oil (BHO) — which are sometimes called "budder," "honeycomb" or "earwax" — are more potent than conventional forms of marijuana because they have much higher concentrations of the psychoactive chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, than is found in regular cannabis, according to the paper.

    "We have been seeing an emergence of dabs over the last three years," said John Stogner, co-author of the new paper and an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "It is really exploding onto the drug-use scene."

    Some substance users are drawn to whatever the newest trend may be. But besides novelty, the appeal of dabbing is that it's considered "a stronger, faster high," said Stogner, who studies emerging drug-use trends.
http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-dabbing-exploding-onto-drug-scene-234338471.html

Good to know it's only "Young People", isn't it?
 
Gunky

Gunky

Well-Known Member
Andrew Rosenthal editorial in the NYT:
It took the Colorado Supreme Court a year to come up with the ruling, issued on Monday, that upheld the firing of a man who used medical marijuana legally under state law to help ease the pain he has suffered since a car accident left him paralyzed. A lot of that time had to be devoted to twisting the logic behind the decision.

There has been a lot of speculation about what the ruling means for Colorado’s legal marijuana industry, and other states that have permitted the use of marijuana for medical, and in a few cases, recreational, purposes.

But really it only makes one thing clear: the only solution to the pointless and profoundly damaging marijuana prohibition in this country is a federal solution. As long as the federal government continues not only to outlaw marijuana, but to classify it as one of the most dangerous narcotics, anti-prohibition efforts in states are subject to the sort of capricious ruling issued in Colorado.

In this case, Dish Network fired a worker, Brandon Coats, in 2010 after he underwent a random drug test that showed he was using marijuana. Mr. Coats said he used the drug away from his place of employment and during his own time, and claimed protection from a state law that prohibits firing workers for conducting “any lawful activity” outside the workplace.

Marijuana was legal for medical purposes in 2010 with the proper authorization, which Mr. Coats had. But the court said the law only applied to activities that were legal under both state and federal law.

There are signs that the ice is starting to crack a bit in Washington. In June, the conservative-dominated House of Representatives voted 242-186 to prevent the federal government from blocking states that want to permit medical use of marijuana.

But the country needs a real solution on this issue and that will only come when Congress repeals the federal marijuana laws, which have no real grounding in medicine or logic, and are racist in their application – destroying the lives of millions of African-Americans while having almost no impact on white Americans, who smoke pot with the same frequency.

States could then regulate, or ban, marijuana use as they chose, and localities could refuse to permit marijuana growing or sale within their borders, as some in Colorado now do.

This should not be a partisan issue. In fact, right-wing Republicans who claim to be modern-day Federalists should lead the demand for an end to marijuana prohibition.
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