Marijuana Blog

78 year-old billionaire backs medical marijuana

Last week, Massachusetts unveiled the questions that will be asked on the ballot this November. While these proposals no doubt faced stiff competition against 2008′s queries in the excitement category — remember dog racing and the misguided attempt to ditch the income tax? — the decision on whether to legalize medical marijuana will likely stir up debate and discussion. And it already has. A few left-wing organizations and hippie activists have stepped up to support the cause (shocker, right?), but so far it’s Peter Lewis, a nearly octogenarian billionaire and former chairman of Progressive Insurance, who has been the main financial backer.

In the initial campaign to reach the ballot, Lewis donated $525,000 to the Committee for Compassionate Medicine, the organization supporting the proposed bill. Their complete fundraising haul from that January report? $526,000, or about 99.8 percent of their total budget. So why has Lewis been bankrolling this campaign? Lewis admits to smoking pot recreationally earlier in his life, but after an  infection took his lower left leg, Lewis realized firsthand the value of marijuana as a pain killer. On his experience in the hospital dealing with that pain, Lewis writes, “I was very glad I had marijuana. It didn’t exactly eliminate the pain, but it made the pain tolerable — and it let me avoid those heavy-duty narcotic pain relievers that leave you incapacitated.”

Lewis believes that the federal War on Drugs is partly to blame for “outdated, ineffective, and stupid” marijuana laws, and has tried to bring reform on a state by state level. It’s been estimated that Lewis has donated at least $40 million to all types of marijuana reform in different states. This election year alone Lewis has donated to reform efforts in Washington, Colorado, and his home state of Ohio.

But do Lewis’ past attempts to legalize weed bode well for the Commonwealth? Currently 17 states and the District of Colombia allow medical marijuana, and 10 of those laws were prompted by successful ballot initiatives. So Lewis has had success in the past, and getting the question on the ballot should be considered a good sign for proponents of reform. Recent polls show that between 57 percent and 64 percent of Massachusetts voters would favor such a law.

Though it’s a ways to go until November, the early indicators look good for those of us who favor allowing medical marijuana. Not to jinx anything, but thank you, Peter Lewis.

Tommy Chong says hemp oil is working to cure his prostate cancer!

It's official, Tommy Chong's prostate cancer numbers are looking better!  Cannabis and hemp are amazing plants with so many valuable healing properties.  It's time we take a serious stand and demand fair, safe access and appropriate legal classifications for a substance we all know could be improving the lives of countless men and woman across the global.  Go Tommy Chong, we wish you the best, and this weekend - we're rolling a fatty just for you! 

View the original tweet: http://twitter.com/tommychong/status/223866867062800384

Maine resident may lose housing because of medical marijuana plants

Don LaRouche of Portland, Maine, suffers from glaucoma and Crohn's disease. For the past five years, the 50-year-old has turned to medical marijuana to help treat the effects of his ailments, growing the plants in his residence as permitted by state law. But LaRouche has also relied on federal housing assistance to help pay rent on his trailer home, and the organization that issues his vouchers now says he must stop cultivating the plants or lose his aid.

As Maine's WCSH6 reports, LaRouche's dilemma is the product of a discrepancy between state law -- which has legalized the use and cultivation of medical marijuana -- and federal law, which still lists the plant as an illegal Schedule I drug.

Officials in charge of overseeing the assistance program say that violation of federal law within a residence paid for by its vouchers is grounds for termination of aid, regardless of the practice's status under state law.

"The decision we're presented is whether to terminate or allow them to continue to receive that voucher," Denise Lord, director of the Maine State Housing Authority's Voucher Assistance Program, told WCSH6. "I think given Maine law and federal law we try to find the best possible solution for everyone."

LaRouche told WCSH6 that he has grown the plants in his trailer because its the cheapest method of getting his medicine. He has until July 23rd to stop growing marijuana or lose his assistance and has reportedly already reached out to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and other members of the state's congressional delegation to explore other avenues.

Similar confusion over the conflicting state and federal laws arose earlier this month when the Oregonian reported on a little-known provision of that state's law allowing some food stamp recipients to deduct medical marijuana costs from income when calculating their eligibility for the federal program. Maine reportedly contains a similar measure on these type of deductions.

Medical marijuana reaches several ballots

Massachusetts residents will vote on a ballot initiative in November that would make cannabis available for certain registered users. Residents of Arkansas, North Dakota and Ohio may vote on similar ballot measures to join 17 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing the drug for medical use.

"It is totally possible the presidential election can swing on the marijuana issue," said Morgan Fox, communications manager at Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based lobbying group.

He cited Colorado where 2 percent of residents are registered marijuana users and several polls find the presidential race a near tie. A candidate’s view on the issue could gain or cost him the state, Fox said.

For the past year, Arkansans for Compassionate Care has gathered signatures for a petition asking to put a medical marijuana law on the November ballot. The deadline to file with the state is Friday.

Campaign Director Ryan Denham said there is a good chance Arkansas’ initiative could make it to the ballot and pass, which would make it the first southern state to support the movement.

"It is going to send a strong message on a national level to Congress," Denham, 29, said. "It'll show that even folks in the South support medical marijuana use. This is a state and local campaign, but we are fighting for a national issue too."

The group has collected more than the 62,507 signatures needed to put the measure to a vote. The state has until August to decide if the initiative qualifies.

Citizens of 26 states cannot petition for initiatives, forcing the issue into state legislatures. In June, New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to legalize medical marijuana. The state Senate was three votes shy of overriding the veto.

In his veto message, Lynch said he sympathizes with the need for those suffering from serious illness to use marijuana as a treatment, but the bill did not provide for tightly controlled production.

"While SB 409 requires that marijuana for medical use be cultivated in a ‘locked and enclosed site," Lynch said, "neither state nor local law enforcement is authorized to generally inspect and confirm that these conditions are being maintained."

Lynch’s reservations confirm Fox's comment that opposition is expressed "almost entirely from law enforcement."

"Law enforcement has a history of drumming up fears and using straw-man arguments,"Fox said. There is a misconception that it is a dangerous drug. If you ask how many times marijuana was a cause for violence, you’ll see almost none.

In Colorado, penalties for non-medical marijuana use are similar to those for alcohol misuse. The state, along with 12 others, eliminated jail time for possessing small amounts of the substance.

"I think that in the near future we are going to see Congress passing a law removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, or possibly putting it under the purview of the tobacco and alcohol act," Fox said.

Other pro-marijuana groups, such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, lobby for legalizing the drug for all uses.

Denham said people often mix up  NORML's mission and that of pro-medical marijuana groups. That is why Arkansans for Companionate Care is continuing its campaign to Friday's deadline.

"Ultimately, for me, this is an education campaign," Denham said. "We really have changed the mind of a lot of people out there."

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act would require people with "qualifying medical conditions" such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV, Crohn’s disease and other illnesses to register with the Arkansas Department of Health.

The department could charge a registration fee and limit the number of dispensaries.

"Marijuana is already available anywhere in Arkansas," Denham, a junior at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said. "The only thing this law is going to do is the people who need it are going to be able to get it."

The act would allow counties and cities to ban dispensaries, just as they can ban alcohol, but any registered user who lives more than 5 miles from a dispensary could grow up to six marijuana plants. Those users could not sell or distribute their crop.

The Marijuana Policy Project helped write the act, basing it on Arizona’s successful 2010 proposition. The group is also helping North Dakotans for Compassionate Care get an initiative on the November ballot.

In Illinois, the group is pushing to keep alive a bill that would initiate a three-year pilot program. The bill barely failed and could be reconsidered in November.

While Fox anticipates some states will continue to resist medical marijuana laws, he said it could become a national issue within four years.

"For states to treat patients like criminals just for trying to live a normal life and using a medicine that is far safer than most prescriptions is inexcusable," he said.

Source: Scripps Howard Wire Foundation

New Study: Weed is NOT a Gateway Drug - Alcohol Is!

A study in the August edition of The Journal of School Health finds that the generations old theory of a “gateway drug” effect is in fact accurate for some drug users, but shifts the blame for those addicts’ escalating substance abuse away from marijuana and onto the most pervasive and socially accepted drug in American life: alcohol.

Using a nationally representative sample from the University of Michigan’s annual Monitoring the Future survey, the study blasts holes in drug war orthodoxy wide enough to drive a truck through, definitively proving that marijuana use is not the primary indicator of whether a person will move on to more dangerous substances.

“By delaying the onset of alcohol initiation, rates of both licit substance abuse like tobacco and illicit substance use like marijuana and other drugs will be positively affected, and they’ll hopefully go down,” study co-author Adam E. Barry, an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Department of Health Education & Behavior, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

While Barry’s study shows evidence that substance abuse behaviors can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy by examining a subject’s drug history, he believes that the persistent and misguided notion of marijuana as the primary gateway to more harmful substances went awry because its creators — who called it the “Stepping Stone Hypothesis” in the “Reefer Madness” era of the 1930s – fundamentally misread the data and failed to conduct an adequate follow-up.

“Some of these earlier iterations needed to be fleshed out,” Barry said. “That’s why we wanted to study this. The latest form of the gateway theory is that it begins with [marijuana] and moves on finally to what laypeople often call ‘harder drugs.’ As you can see from the findings of our study, it confirmed this gateway hypothesis, but it follows progression from licit substances, specifically alcohol, and moves on to illicit substances.”

“So, basically, if we know what someone says with regards to their alcohol use, then we should be able to predict what they respond to with other [drugs],” he explained. “Another way to say it is, if we know someone has done [the least prevalent drug] heroin, then we can assume they have tried all the others.”

And while that standardized progression certainly doesn’t fit every single drug user, the study took that into account too. “There were a low enough number of errors that you are able to accurately predict [future substance abuse behavior]… with about 92 percent accuracy,” Barry said.

By comparing substance abuse rates between drinkers and non-drinkers, they ultimately found that seniors in high school who had consumed alcohol at least once in their lives “were 13 times more likely to use cigarettes, 16 times more likely to use marijuana and other narcotics, and 13 times more likely to use cocaine.”

Barry also noted that the rates of tobacco and marijuana use among all 12th grade high school students were virtually the same, confirming a report the Centers for Disease Control published in June, and an analysis Raw Story published in May.

The study should give pause to anyone involved in youth drug awareness programs, as its findings suggest that making science-based alcohol education a top priority could actually turn the tide of the drug war — but only if lawmakers and leading educators decide to use that same science as a foundation for public policy and school curriculum.

“I think [these results] have to do with level of access children have to alcohol, and that alcohol is viewed as less harmful than some of these other substances,” Barry added.

That social misconception, largely driven by the sheer popularity of alcohol and the profits it generates for private industry, is diametrically opposed to the most current science available on drug harms. A study published in 2010 in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug of all, above heroin, crack, meth, cocaine and tobacco. Even more striking: The Lancet study found that harms to others near the user were more than double those of the second most harmful drug, heroin.

In its last Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the CDC found (PDF) that about 71 percent of American students have had at least one alcoholic beverage in their lifetime, and almost 39 percent reported having at least one drink within the last 30 days.

“This is a time of budget tightening,” Barry concluded. “Many social services are being cut. If you take [our findings] and apply them to a school health setting, we believe that you are going to get the best bang for your buck by focusing on alcohol.”

Original article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/05/study-the-gateway-drug-is-alcohol-not-marijuana/

Medical marijuana needs rules to drive by

Let's start by stating that driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol is a crime and must be punished. All 50 U.S. states have clear laws prohibiting this activity.

But there is one intoxicant that is trickier than the others: marijuana, especially when used for medical purposes.

During the past two years, Colorado and Montana, along with more than a dozen other states, have proposed laws that set a strict threshold for determining when a marijuana user is deemed too impaired to drive. These would consider a concentration of more than 5 nanograms of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana) per milliliter of blood, as hands-down proof of intoxication or impairment.

The result would be an automatic guilty verdict, with all that entails: a temporary loss of driving privileges, fines, lawyer's fees, possible jail time and greatly increased insurance premiums. By some estimates, a conviction for driving under the influence can cost a driver as much as $10,000.

Several states are going further and have either adopted or are considering zero-tolerance laws for THC levels. This means any THC in the blood would result in a conviction.

Here's the problem with these laws: There are questions about how, and at what level, cannabis use impairs driving ability. For a patient in one of the 17 states where marijuana has been legalized for medicinal use, how are you to know when it's legal to drive? After consuming marijuana, should you wait 12 hours to drive or one day? When will your THC level be below the 5-nanogram threshold? The answer is complicated.

Although marijuana is readily detectable in toxicology tests of blood, hair, urine or saliva, what isn't clear is just how quickly THC passes through the body. We know, for example, that THC may be detected in the blood of occasional users several hours after ingesting. But in some chronic users there may be traces for days after the last use, long after any performance-impairing effects have subsided.

This is a very clear contrast with alcohol. There is a firm understanding of the rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol and there are well-known guidelines on how much time must pass after drinking before one is fit to drive. Tests can easily be administered in roadside stops. Those who fail simple benchmarks of sobriety — not to mention breath tests — are usually convicted or plead guilty.

The research on how marijuana affects driving is far less conclusive, though.

Testing done on drivers under the influence of alcohol often show that drivers display more aggressive behavior behind the wheel, and errors are more pronounced than when sober. The opposite tends to be true when drivers are under the influence of THC; they tend to have heightened awareness — rather than diminished sensitivity as they do after drinking — to their surroundings. As a result, they tend to compensate by driving more cautiously.

A 2007 control study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health reviewed 10 years of U.S. auto-fatality data. Investigators found that U.S. drivers with blood-alcohol levels of 0.05 percent — a level below the national 0.08 percent legal limit — were three times as likely to have been driving unsafely before a fatal crash, compared with individuals who tested positive for marijuana.

What this means is that we need more research before new DUI marijuana laws are enacted. Setting an absolute impairment standard for THC bloodstream levels is premature. And these laws, which target marijuana use and associated medical marijuana patients, are discriminatory.

I say this at a time when there is an absence of legislation dealing with the use and well-documented abuse of prescription painkillers, which can dangerously impair the judgment needed for safe driving. State legislatures aren't setting arbitrary and scientifically unproven blood-level standards for these drugs. So why are they focused on marijuana?

Driving while intoxicated must anywhere and everywhere be illegal, whether that impairment is caused by prescription drugs, alcohol purchased at a liquor store or marijuana used on the recommendation of a doctor. Under current standards, someone can be charged with DUI for marijuana use based on roadside sobriety tests and observations by the arresting officer in conjunction with blood samples. Those tests serve their purpose at this point.

But if states are going to turn to strict threshold laws, they should answer this question: Based solely on THC concentrations in blood from marijuana, when is a driver too impaired to drive safely?

Until the evidence is in, it's hard to see why any state needs to lower the burden of proof necessary to convict someone of a DUI marijuana charge.