Search Results: high/ (12)

Singapore executed Chijioke Stephen Obioha by hanging. A Nigerian national and football player, Obioha was found with 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds) of marijuana in 2007. According to Singapore law, anyone with more than 500 g is presumed to be trafficking.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, known as “The Punisher” for his advocacy of vigilante murders,threatened his human rights activist critics.

A Florida county sheriff’s office may have trained drug sniffing dogs with material other than drugs, according to ProPublica. Another ProPublica report led Portland, Ore. to change its policy for the drug tests used in many arrests.

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t take up the case of a Native American church in Hawaii that wants to be exempt for marijuana laws.

A college student who had $11,000 confiscated at the Cincinnati airport after his checked bag smelled of pot, challenged the forfeiture and got his money back.

Seantrel Henderson, a Buffalo Bills offensive lineman, may sue the NFL over his second cannabis suspension of the season. Henderson’s Crohn’s disease forced him to have two and a half feet of his colon removed.

The Bay Area has the country’s highest concentration of cannabis users in the country.

My friend Reilly Capps wrote a story for The Rooster about “ Stoners anonymous.

A survey found that cannabis is attracting an increasingly upscale clientele.

Anita Thompson, widow of Hunter S. Thompson, wants to market the gonzo journalist’s personal cannabis strains. Skepticism abounds.

The founder of Healing Church, a Catholicism-inflected pot “ministry” in Rhode Island, is involved in abizarre legal situation. If I’m reading this correctly, Anne Armstrong had a vision of cannabis leaves on a six-foot replica of the Virgin of Guadeloupe – an image said to have appeared on a Mexican peasant’s poncho in 1531. Armstrong later obtained and then lost custody of the replica. She also faces a possession charge.

The Stranger put together a cannabis gift guide. It includes weed filled advent calendars and Christmas ornaments. The piece also cites scripture to prove Jesus was a stoner.

Country music legend Loretta Lynn smoked pot for the first time at 84, for her glaucoma. She didn’t like it, but defended Willie Nelson and the right to do it.

A woman in Greensboro, N.C., was “shocked,” in a bad way, when someone mistakenly mailed her four pounds of weed.

That’s a lot of lotion.
Here’s your daily round-up of pot news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.
A report found that cannabis “ medicinals and personal care products” could be a $2 billion industry by 2020. Sales of high-CBD products are growing among non-traditional cannabis users.

The new REC states have big plans for pot taxes. The Cannabist alerts them to “ five immediate concerns” about the industry.

Kris Krane, president of consulting firm 4Front Ventures, pooh-poohs the notion of Big Pot.

“There isn’t some megalithic industry that exists today…The notion that there are these gigantic, big-money players running in to take this whole thing over is just a fiction. There’s no Philip Morris, no Anheuser-Busch, no cannabis division at Bank of America. Even the most successful company is still barely in the growth stage.”

September was the third-straight best-month-ever for Colorado dispensaries.

A company called CanPay has what it calls the first “legitimate” debit payment system for dispensaries. The customer pays with a QR code accessed on their phone.

The Post Office has few safeguards for stopping employees who intercept weed sent through the mail.

Employers in California will still be able to fire workers who test positive. The San Jose Mercury News piece mentions that near one drug testing lab in Colorado, workers who arrive with containers of someone else’s clean urine tend to heat it up in a nearby convenience store’s microwave.

Canadian firms appear to be gouging the government healthcare system by signing up veteran MED patients for expensive strains according to a Vice report. Canadian companies could also benefit if there’s a crackdown in the U.S.

The Toronto Stock Exchange halted trading of six surging cannastocks. Some market watchers think it’sstill too early to invest.

Heavy rains in southern Oregon will force growers to torch moldy crops. Some rural Colorado communities derive much needed revenue from pot.

Florida entrepreneurs are excited about MED.

Jamaica’s licensing authority received 89 applications.

Could Delaware become a tax-free cannabis haven?” Small-scale Northern California growers areadjusting to legalization.

The U.S. Surgeon General says most illegal drug users don’t receive treatment. Many of them don’t want or need treatment, Reason says.

A study suggests that cannabis use can weaken heart muscles, particularly in young men. Read it here.

The journal Science says that the lower potency of plants from the one federally-sanctioned grow ( the one in Mississippi) undermines studies conducted with those plants.

Scientists are working on a new drug that functions like MED without the psychoactive effect.

Recent studies suggest that cannabis use may have mental health benefits and could have a role in curtailing opiate use.

Viceland uncovers a U.K. network of underground MED providers who give it away to patients.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, a Liberal, said police had discovered pot and other drugs laced with the powerful opiate fentanyl. Vancounver police denied it.

Some researchers are starting to take psychedelics seriously, as therapy. Also see this.

Big-money investors are starting to see the upside in going “green.”

It’s the largest cannabis raise yet.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

New York-based Tuatara Capital has raised $93M to invest in the industry. It’s the largest known cannabis investment fund, so far.

It’s possible that Canadian cannabis companies could list on U.S. stock exchanges before American ones, since the Canadian outfits would have the support of their federal government. Last month, Ontario’s Canopy Growth became the first cannabis producer to trade on a major exchange (Toronto).

In Tampa, Regions Bank furnished a $100,000 credit line to nutrient and equipment business Efftec International. The bank’s parent company Regions Financial is a Fortune 500 company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

A member of the local health board wants Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif. to be the first hospital in the country where MED is used “openly and transparently.”

A lab at Stanford is working on a saliva test for police to use on drivers. PLOS describes a newly discovered anti-psychotic mechanism for CBD.

Missouri is suing two stores for providing CBD-oil without a license. Following the DEA announcement, Time listed seven questions scientists want to study.

A European study found no correlation between cannabis use and an elevated need for health care services.

A Minnesota MED patient tells the story of her quest to relieve disabling back pain.

Denver lawyer Robert J. Corry writes that some patients do need 75 plants. Colorado recently limited the number of plants patients can have to 75, and suspended four doctors for recommending higher plant counts to hundreds of patients. Without special permission, Colorado patients can have six plants at home. The four doctors, who didn’t violate an established rule, have asked for their suspensions to be lifted.

Vice says policy reform is overlooking home growers.

A new law will allow Canadian MED patients to grow a “ limited amount” at home. A Canadian mom says hospital nurses in Toronto refuse to administer MED to her very ill son, due to opaque regulations.

Legalization in Canada could be the end of the country’s formal MED program.

Two dozen were treated after eating edibles at a festival in Ohio. There was a similar incident at abachelorette party in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Politicians have not caught up with public opinion. 

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

A new poll found that for the first time, Republicans narrowly favor legalizing marijuana, 45% to 42%. Last week, however, Republicans voted against including support for MED in their party platform. As far as I saw, the plant went unmentioned at the convention.

Hillary Clinton named Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) as her running mate. Speaking at a high school in April, Kaine said he favors “drastic changes in sentencing laws…[but] wouldn’t vote for a law at the federal or state level that would decriminalize marijuana.” Kaine has a NORML rating of F.

Donald Trump has a NORML rating of C+Hillary Clinton gets a B+Libertarian Gary Johnson scores an A+.

Leafly meets Ann Lee, founder of Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP). Lee, 86, attended the GOP convention as an alternate in the Texas delegation. Her son Richard Lee founded the trade school Oaksterdam University in Oakland.

Decriminalization appears to have support from the Texas Association of Business and  bipartisan support in the Texas legislature. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) opposes legalization.

Marijuana.com digs up that the DEA has reduced the size of its 2017 cannabis order from last year. This hints, the piece suggests, that the agency will not reschedule. The DEA gets its weed from a facility at the University of Mississippi, the only federally legal grow in the country.

Fifty-one percent of voters oppose Massachusetts’ REC initiative and 41% percent support. The numbers are similar in Arizona.

An Arizona judge will hear cannabis-opponents in a case that could block the upcoming REC vote. They argue that the 100-word petition voters signed didn’t adequately explain the effects of legalization. Plaintiffs include Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery (R), Phoenix’s lead prosecutor.

Last year, before a weed convention in Phoenix, Montgomery offered “An aside, just a polite warning to folks traveling here…I can’t confirm or deny whether or not local or federal law enforcement may be on hand in an undercover capacity. So welcome to Phoenix, enjoy your stay, but be careful.”

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) opposes the state’s MED initiative. In Wisconsin, a poll found that REC legalization has 59% support. Activists are collecting signatures for a MED initiative in Oklahoma.

Florida’s first CBD dispensary opens this week. The state is expected to vote on MED in November.


Director Brett Harvey’s documentary on the failed War on Drugs and marijuana prohibition, “Culture High” opens this weekend in New York, with more showings opening up around the country later this month.
From Village Voice film critic Chris Packham:

It’s strongly anti-prohibition, and the film’s structure favors that bias: Talking-head interview segments with former cops, marijuana smugglers, culture icons, comedians, and legislators address the counterintuitive benefits of marijuana prohibition to criminal enterprise. These are contrasted with video montages of completely ridiculous anti-drug propaganda that include clips of Fox News personalities, Nancys Reagan and Grace, stupid after-school specials and public service announcements intended to terrify children.

FlickrCommons
Is 10% of America’s workforce really toking up before clocking in?


There is a headline making the rounds from Mashable.com right now whose headline bluntly states, “Nearly 10% of Americans Go to Work High on Weed“.
Now, if you visit Mashable.com for news about anything other than maybe potato recipes, you were likely too blinded by the cutesy illustrated infographic attached to the article to have noticed how shoddy the actual attempt at journalism was.


In perhaps one of the most blatantly obvious and useless pieces of research to ever emerge on the marijuana culture, pseudo-scientists from the Boston Children’s Hospital claim that the youth of America is using recreational marijuana to put them in a better mood after suffering the heinous wrath of a bad day. In other words, these hoodlums are smoking weed to forget about the dreaded events of the day rather than going on a violent rampage against everyone who even looked at them wrong.
How dare they!

New Times Broward-Palm Beach

In this week’s issue, New Times Broward-Palm Beach (which, like Toke of the Town, is part of Village Voice Media) looks closer at the rise and eventual crack down on the synthetic cannabinoid industry.
Over the past three years, manufacturers and retailers of so-called “herbal incenses” have popped up in all 50 states. It quickly became a multibillion-dollar industry built on products that had names like Crazy Eyes, Cowboy Kush, and Skull Killa.
It’s actually a horrible misnomer to call these substances “synthetic marijuana” or “fake pot,” because they actually have nothing to do with real cannabis, and unlike herbal cannabis, they can be dangerous.
Until two months ago, many of these herbal incenses remained legal because state and federal lawmakers couldn’t keep up with the onslaught of new chemicals being churned out by overseas labs and imported by herbal-incense manufacturers. Whenever the government banned one synthetic cannabinoid, chemists simply tweaked their formulations to concoct new, legal replacements that still got people stoned.

Green Wellness

Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.
Health Education Teacher (Retired)

Medical marijuana treats so many human illnesses so well due to its stimulation of the endocannabinoid system (ECS).
Why is this so? 
Because the present day medical therapeutic application is based on the evolution of the endocannabinoid system and the psychology of our species.
Together, there is nothing more natural than medical marijuana and how it works in the human body. Let me explain.

Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.
Health Education Teacher (Retired)

A new understanding of the neurobiology of cannabis is emerging, namely the “endocannabinoid induced aerobic bliss state,” or simply the endocannabinoid runners’ high.

For users of medical marijuana, a new use for this miracle plant is at hand: its ability to produce “the psychology of exercise motivation.”
“Recent findings show that exercise increases serum concentrations of endocannabinoids, a result suggestive of a new possible explanation for a number of these changes. The cannabinoids produce psychological states that closely parallel several experiences described as being related to the runner’s high. Compared with the opioid analgesics, the analgesia produced by the endocannabinoid system is more consistent with exercise induced analgesia. Activation of the endocannabinoid system also produces sedation, anxiolysis, a sense of wellbeing, reduced attentional capacity, impaired working memory ability, and difficulty in time estimation. This behavioural profile is similar to the psychological experiences reported by long distance runners.” ~ From Endocannabinoids and Exercise / Br J Sports Med. 2004 October
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