Search Results: united kingdom (39)

GW Pharmaceuticals
Just how is it that the approval of a medicine for multiple sclerosis “should” end the debate over medical marijuana?

By Bob Starrett
All I had to do is see the headline “The Real Dope On Medical Marijuana,” and the vehicle, Forbes, to know what the article said. But I read it anyway and it said just what I thought it would say. I didn’t want to get caught in the “didn’t read it” trap. Just google “didn’t read the bill”  to see what happens when people do that.
Now, I didn’t know that writers had taglines, but Forbes contributor Dr. Henry I. Miller’s tagline is “I debunk the worst, most damaging, most hypocritical junk science.” Dr. Miller is a Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. That’s a mouthful. So is what he says.

GW Pharmaceuticals

​Medicinal cannabis — or at least a liquid pharmaceutical extract made from it — is available as a prescription in Sweden after the Medical Products Agency approved Sativex, a cannabis-based mouth spray, for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).

“This is great news for those who can’t get any relief from the most common drugs,” Jan Hillert, an MS researcher at Karolinska Institute, told the Dagens Nyheter daily newspaper, reports The Local.
The agency said that it plans to closely monitor prescriptions for Sativex to ensure against abuse.

Steve Elliott ~alapoet~
For best results, apply more marijuana.

​It’s already been a wacky year for marijuana coverage in the mainstream media, and we’re barely more than two weeks deep into 2012.

Already we have three major contenders for Dumbest Pot Story of the Year, which certainly points to an interesting year ahead in the cannabis information wars.
Do we really need a study on the best cure for “cannabis withdrawal”? Do people really choose to use marijuana because they were born with abnormally small brains? And speaking of brains, did you know that THC coats your brain cells and makes it hard for you to think, at least according to a self-appointed “drug expert”/counselor in Colorado?
There’s a lot of rank ignorance out there to wade through, and it ain’t pretty. Let’s put on our hippest hip boots, shall we?
The clear winner, so far, is the impending study from Australia on the efficacy of using… wait for it… cannabis to treat cannabis “withdrawal”!

Marijuana.com
The inevitable crackdown came, not as a result of harmless cannabis nor even of is frisky big brother, LSD — but due to the same, tired old death drugs that have been killing people and destroying lives for generations

Drug Screen of Surfers Could Wipe Out Sport’s Rebellious Image

The mystique of surfing, since its music-fueled rise on the American West Coast during the 1960s, has always had a lot to do with rebellion, with alternatives, with a countercultural image. With the “bushy bushy blonde hair” and the rest of the accoutrements, of course, came marijuana and LSD, drugs of choice for the surfing culture which, unlike traditional narcotics and stimulants, didn’t noticeably reduce the physical abilities of those participating in the sport.
The mystic search to catch the perfect wave became the obsession of many a stoner — but the perfection of the art of surfing was a double-edged sword. It brought with it the inevitable commercialization of the sport, and big-purse surf competitions, along with their attendant product endorsements, became the tail that started wagging the dog. 

Anondora

​The head of Colorado’s Department of Revenue has written a letter to the director of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration asking that the U.S. government slightly loosen its strict controls on marijuana due to its “potential medical value.”

Colorado is the fourth state within the past few weeks to ask the DEA to reschedule cannabis from its current, most restrictive classification as Schedule I, which means the government regards pot as having a high potential for abuse and no valid medicinal uses. Heroin and LSD are also considered Schedule I substances under federal law.

Zazzle
It’s the smart thing to do.

​The next time some buzzkill tries to hit you with the old drooling stoner stereotype, tell ’em about a new British study that finds children with high IQs are more likely to use drugs as adults than people who score low on IQ tests as children.

The data come from the 1970 British Cohort Study, which has been following thousands of people over decades, reports Jennifer Bixler at CNN. The children’s IQ scores were taken at ages 5, 10 and 16. The study also asked about drug use, among other questions.
When the participants turned 30, they were asked if they had used drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the past year.
The study found that men with high childhood IQs were up to twice as likely to use illegal drugs than their lower-IQ former classmates. The difference was even more pronounced in girls, where those with high IQs were up top three times more likely to use drugs as adults.

Addiction Inbox

​The sad tradition of inaccurate, sensationalistic cannabis reporting continues in the United Kingdom’s tabloid press. Deeply clueless reporter Tamara Cohen at the Daily Mail plumbed new depths of silliness on Tuesday with the breathless headline: One cannabis joint ‘can bring on schizophrenia’ as well as damaging memory.


Never mind that, even as cannabis usage rates have skyrocketed, the ratio of schizophrenics in the population has remained constant at one or two percent for the past 60 years. Never mind that no human beings were involved in the tests, and never mind that no marijuana was used, either.

Photo: Shroomery
Defiant Bolivian President Evo Morales — himself a former coca grower — holds up a coca leaf. Due to the United Nations’ banning of the ancient practice of chewing coca leaves, Bolivia is moving toward withdrawing from the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

​The South American nation of Bolivia is set to withdraw from the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, adopted in 1961 to outlaw “illicit substances” across the planet. It plans the move in protest of the U.N.’s classification of coca leaves as an illegal drug.

President Evo Morales — who, not coincidentally, is also leader of one of the country’s biggest coca producers’ unions — has asked the Bolivian Congress to pass a law that would take the nation out of the Single Convention, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Morales, an Aymara Indian who came to power as the leader of coca growers in the Chapare region, has moved away from the forced eradication of coca plantations while at the same time stepping up efforts against cocaine traffickers, with record seizures.

Photo: Ramble On
Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other world leaders, including the former Presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Switzerland, are endorsing a new report that calls for a paradigm shift in global drug policy.

​On Thursday, the former presidents of several countries, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former U.S. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and other luminaries will release a new report calling the global “War On Drugs” a failure, and encouraging nations to pursue legalizing and regulating drugs as a way to stop the violence inherent in the illegal drug market.

The 24-page paper, by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, argues that the decades-old “global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”
“Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won,” the report said.

Graphic: The Truth Source

​Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.


Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)
The quote below, from a news release, is a political statement that is based on incomplete and biased science. Remember, once science is politicized, it is no longer science.
“No sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use.”
Not true! An overwhelming number of studies exist to firmly support cannabis as all-purpose medicine and very possibly a strong candidate as a cure for cancer as was originally reported by the National Cancer Institute.
There has never been a single documented primary human fatality from overdosing on cannabis in its natural form in any amount. How’s that for safety!