CWL

weedporndaily:

How Will Mainstream Media Spin This Government Study?

The Rorschach Inkblot test asks people to make up stories about ambiguous pictures. Rorschach’s hope was that the tales people told about each blot would reveal something about personal predilections and an approach to the world. Well, our friends at the National Institute on Drug Abuse have just published a nice inkblot test for the media. The experiment, “Tolerance to Effects of High-Dose Oral D9-Tetrahydrocannabinol and Plasma Cannabinoid Concentrations in Male Daily Cannabis Smokers,” is about (you guessed it!) developing tolerance to THC. We’ll see how media handle the implications of the results. It’s either a reassuring result for those concerned about safety on the roads or a chance for misguided alarms about purported dependence.

The experimenters drafted 13 guys who were experienced cannabis smokers to stay in the lab for several days. Each day, they had to swallow more and more Marinol. Marinol is pure THC in a pill, but without the cannabinoids and various compounds found in whole plant cannabis that mitigate the psychotropic effects of THC and perform other beneficial health functions. Many people have reportedthat Marinol left them far more impaired than plant cannabis, undoubtedly for this very reason. In fact, one guy dropped out “for personal reasons” and another “due to psychological reactions to THC.” These guys had smoked marijuana at least 1,000 times, so I’m guessing that they would have had a handle on “psychological reactions to THC” if they’d been allowed to (heaven forbid!) use their own stash. But the dosage was nothing to sneeze at — 120 mg of THC per day — or the equivalent amount of THC as three joints of decent medical cannabis in the U.S.

Read more 

drugpolicyreform:

Bill Would Lift Medical Marijuana Evidence Ban In Federal Court

Late on Tuesday, U.S. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA) and 18 co-sponsors (15 Democrats and three Republicans) introduced HR 6134, the “Truth in Trials” Act, bipartisan legislation to allow defendants in federal criminal prosecutions the ability to use medical marijuana evidence at trial, a right not currently afforded them.

Because of a June 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, the government has the discretion to enforce federal marijuana laws even in medical marijuana states. The Raich ruling also allows federal prosecutors to exclude all evidence of medical use or state law compliance in federal trials, virtually guaranteeing the convictions of medical marijuana patients and providers.

“The federal government has tilted the scales of justice towards conviction by denying medical marijuana defendants the right to present all of the evidence at trial,” said Congressman Farr. “My bill would restore due process rights to law abiding citizens acting within the parameters of state and local laws. Juries should hear the entire story of a patient’s medical marijuana use before choosing to convict, not the heavily edited version they currently hear.”

“It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution or proceeding under any federal law for marijuana-related activities, which the proponent must establish by a preponderance of the evidence, that those activities comply with state law regarding the medical use of marijuana,” the bill states.

Continue..

drugpolicyreform:

Marijuana Linked To Better Brain Function In Bipolar Patients

Results from a new study show indicate that bipolar patients with a history of marijuana use have better neurocognitive function than those who have never used cannabis.

The team, from The Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, found that patients with bipolar I (BD I) disorder who used marijuana performed better on tests of attention, processing speed, and working memory than other BD 1 patients, reports Mark Cowen at News Medical.

“This data could be interpreted to suggest that cannabis use may have a beneficial effect on cognitive functioning in patients with severe psychiatric disorders,” said lead researcher Raphael Braga.

drugpolicyreform:

Obama’s Embarrassing Silence on Marijuana

One thing you can bet we won’t hear anyone talking about at the Democratic National Convention is marijuana. Nobody will be discussing how bad it is, how good it is or even acknowledging that it exists. Then, at the end of the day, a not-insignificant number of attendees will be getting high at every hotel in Charlotte and bitching about what a buzzkill Mitt Romney is.

It sounds silly to even suggest that marijuana would get a mention at our nation’s biggest political showcase. Of course it won’t, and I actually agree, in theory, that it shouldn’t. But somehow our policymakers have managed to turn this mostly-helpful plant into a massive international fiasco that’s becoming increasingly difficult to deal with from one day to the next. I’ve heard many democrats address Obama’s handling of the marijuana issue by asking, “what do you expect?” and I’m happy to answer them. I expect change. Absent that, I expect an explanation. An explanation is something you ought to have when you’re arresting millions of people to protect them from a piece of plant material they put in their own pocket. The billions we spend trying to stop people from relaxing in this particular fashion should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other enormous amount of money our government spends, if not far more.

So, in June, I went through the appropriate channels to try to get that explanation. At an event in Washington, D.C., I asked Obama’s drug czar whether marijuana users should be arrested and forced into drug treatment. His answer wasn’t very helpful. From Reason:

The other good question came from Scott Morgan, of StopTheDrugWar.org, who asked if Kerlikowske supported compulsory treatment of casual drug users, and if arresting marijuana users and forcing them into treatment was an effective policy. This time, Kerlikowske played dumb.

“Again, that’s a bit of a myth. If someone’s arrested for a small amount of marijuana, and the determination is made they have to go into treatment, treatment beds and space are a valuable commodity. I think professionals can clearly assess when someone is in need of treatment. Compulsory treatment is not something I’m as familiar with in great detail at the local level.”

If the drug czar isn’t “familiar with” the punishments for marijuana possession and can’t defend them, who can? His answer got worse from there, if you can believe it, and it’s exactly this kind of convoluted incoherent crap that defines our drug policy and paralyzes efforts to fix anything about it. One minute they’re saying we don’t arrest people and force them to into treatment, then they’re saying we have to do something aggressive to send the right message, and then they close by insisting that the system is working fine, whatever the heck it is.

drugpolicyreform:

Federal Judge Calls For Marijuana Legalization

A widely respected federal judge called for the legalization of marijuana in a lecture at Elmhurst College in Illinois on Thursday.

Judge Richard A. Posner of the influential Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago “is an intellectual giant who is the most-cited judge in America,” reports Larry Bodine at Lawyers.com. “His call for legalization is considered significant because Posner is considered a legal conservative,” Bodine wrote.

“I don’t think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have,” Posner said. “I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana. I can’t see any difference between that and cigarettes.”

The Elmhurst College audience applauded Judge Posner’s remarks.

Posner, who was called a “genius” by Judge William J. Bauer by way of introducing him, has written hundreds of court opinions and 40 books. Entire classes at law schools are devoted to his legal rulings.

A Reagan appointee, he attended Yale College, was valedictorian of his class at Harvard Law School and started his career as a clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Posner said he was also skeptical about laws regarding other drugs besides cannabis.

“The notion of using the criminal law as the primary means of dealing with a problem of addiction, of misuse, of ingesting dangerous drugs — I don’t think that’s sensible at all,” Posner said.

According to Posner, drug laws are “responsible for a high percentage of our prisoners. And these punishments are often very, very severe. It’s all very expensive.”

Posner pointed out in 2010 that legalizing marijuana and other drugs would save federal, state and local governments an estimated $41.3 billion a year.

drugpolicyreform:

Marijuana Dispensary Sues Los Angeles Police Department

One medical marijuana patient collective in Los Angeles is taking a unique approach in its fight to defend itself from being forced to close. It is targeting the L.A. Police Department in a lawsuit.

Other suits have been filed by other dispensaries and collectives following the city council’s unanimous decision to ban the shops from operating, but this is the first lawsuit to directly take on the city’s police department, reports the Cannabis Law Group.

The case is Collins Collective v. City of Los Angeles, LAPD. Cannabis Law Group attorney Damian Nassiri is handling the case.

According to the collective, the reason for the suit is that L.A. police officers, in violation of California law, threatened “severe repercussions” on August 13 if the collective continued in its efforts to establish a storefront dispensary. Cops said that if the collective opened, they would forcibly shut it down and arrest the members.

drugpolicyreform:

The government is threatening and raiding even the most professional and well-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Recently, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban all dispensaries and the federal government threatened the nation’s largest dispensary, Harborside Health Center. This federal crackdown runs roughshod over the will of voters and the repeated promises made by President Obama, Attorney General Holder and the Department of Justice to defer to responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana. Take action and urge your legislators to support a new bill in Congress that could stop the federal threats on medical marijuana.

drugpolicyreform:

Wading into the debate over stop-and-frisk police tactics, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to ask legislators on Monday for a change in New York State law that would drastically reduce the number of people who could be arrested for marijuana possession as a result of police stops.

The governor will call for the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view, administration officials said. Advocates of such a change say the offense has ensnared tens of thousands of young black and Latino men who are stopped by the New York City police for other reasons but after being instructed to empty their pockets, find themselves charged with a crime.

In this case, the governor would be acting against the wishes of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and in spite of a September directive from the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, who instructed officers not to arrest people who take small amounts of marijuana out of their pockets or bags after being stopped by the police.

Though the governor’s legislation does not address the high number of stops by the police, it would take aim at what many black and Hispanic lawmakers as well as advocacy groups say has been one of the most damaging results of the aggressive police tactics: arrest records for young people who have small amounts of marijuana in their pockets.

“For individuals who have any kind of a record, even a minuscule one, the obstacles are enormous to employment and to education,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “When it’s really a huge number of kids in the community who go through this, and all have the same story, the impact is just devastating.”

The police in New York City made 50,684 arrests last year for possession of a small amount of marijuana, more than for any other offense, according to an analysis of state data by Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College.  The arrests continued — one in seven arrests made in the city was for low-level marijuana possession — even as Commissioner Kelly issued his directive.

(Read more)

mothernaturenetwork:

Future Rx: Marijuana without the forgetfulness
Scientists have isolated the cells that are impaired by pot, and can now work to develop a strain of a cannabis that targets only neurons.

fuckyeahdrugpolicy:

The White House’s attempt to censor popular questions about marijuana policy was foiled.

Obama’s Opportunity: Will the White House Snub Marijuana Yet Again? | NORML

Last week, the White House launched the next in its long line of social media engagement initiatives, this one entitled “Your Interview With the President.” The concept was simple, anyone could upload their question to the President on YouTube, others would vote on them, and the highest rated ones would be posed to the Commander in Chief in a Google+ Hangout on January 30th.

This seemed to be a logical opportunity to ask the administration about marijuana legalization. Last Tuesday, I posted NORML’s question to the White House YouTube page for consideration. We asked, “With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, on marijuana charges alone, and tens of billions of tax dollars being spent locking up marijuana users, isn’t it time to regulate and tax marijuana?”

The reception was overwhelmingly positive, in just several hours the question received over 4,000 “thumbs up” votes and was one of, if not the, most popular question on the service. Then a peculiar thing happened, the question was removed. After becoming the most positively voted upon question in less than a day, the White House removed the question, deeming it “inappropriate.”

We informed our audience of the censorship and encouraged them to engage the White House on their own, using our question or a one of their own choosing. Over the next several days the program was inundated with marijuana law reform questions. At first, many met the same fate as our original question and were removed from the site. It seems our persistence ended up paying off and the page administrator finally gave up trying to censor the incoming questions and most marijuana inquiries have remained up since.

Voting closed last night at midnight and I made some rough calculations of the final results to see how we performed. Of the top 160 questions asked, marijuana reform questions accounted for 105 of them. Reposts of our question brought in an estimated 17,524 up-votes in addition to the 4,028 the original received before being removed. Combined, that is over 21,000 votes for one question, which is 5 times as many votes as any other question on the page. The 105 marijuana reform questions in the top 160 brought in over 74,000 votes, dwarfing any other topic. Our friends at LEAP posted a question as well and it ended as one of the top rated questions. You can read their coverage here.

Now, we wait. “Your Interview With the President” is scheduled to take place tomorrow, January 30th. Considering this is the same individual who previously stated that, “we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws” and that legalization is a “perfectly legitimate topic for debate,” maybe he will take this opportunity to address the issue seriously for once. In an election year, this could go a long way towards winning back those who feel disenfranchised with the administration over a perceived lack of progress on the issue and amped up raids on medical programs in states such as California and Colorado.

The American people are ready for our debate Mr. President, are you?