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Search Results: addiction/ (7)

What Does the $66 Billion Bayer/Monsanto Merger Mean for Pot?

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By on News, Uncategorized

The new company will be a major player in seeds and pharmaceuticals, two cannabis sweet spots.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Download WeedWeek’s free 2016 election guide here.

In one of the largest mergers ever, the German chemical and pharamaceutical giant Bayer will buy seed company Monsanto for $66 billion. Mainstream reports did not bring it up, but both companies have long been seen as interested in the plant. (Bayer has a partnership with GW Pharmaceuticals.) In July, the far-left site Counterpunch published a piece called “ Monsanto, Bayer and the Push for Corporate Cannabis.”

Cannabis Reports CEO David Drake publicly shamed Leafly and Weedmaps for poor cybersecurity. Social network MassRoots and data firm Headset announced a strategic partnership.

At an L.A. conference, Viridian Capital Advisors president Scott Greiper said legalization will bring about the next industrial revolution.

Canna Law Blog discusses what makes for a weak brand mark? New cannabis business lawyer Daniel Shortt explains why he’s chosen the specialty.

 

Business school student Cameron Lehman writes about opening a dispensary with his plastic surgeon mom. U.C. Berkeley’s Haas business school is starting a speaker and case study series on the green rush.

Medical testing company Quest Diagnostics says the number of Americans testing positive for illegal drugs reached a decade high of 4%. Among “safety-sensitive” workers it was 1.8 %, a slight increase.

A new study found that states with legal, accessible MED saw decreases in opioid use in adults 21-40.

Reason asks “ What will control freaks ban next?” The answer appears to be the southeast Asian plant Kratom, which the DEA is adding to the list of schedule I drugs. Wired calls Kratom a promising treatmentfor opiate addition.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute blogged on whether MED benefits cancer patients.

Food Safety News picked up a Leafly story about how to know if weed is past its sell-by date.

‘1-in-11 get addicted to pot’ stat debunked

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By on Legalize It, News, Say what?

Toke of the Town

You may have heard the sarcastic saying that “95% of statistics are made up on the spot”. It is beginning to look like that may be the case for the decades-old study on addiction rates by the National Institute on Drug Abuse(NIDA) that both pro- and anti-cannabis supporters cite when they say that roughly 9% of marijuana users will become addicted.
The same NIDA study, released in a trade journal named Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology in 1994, actually places pot near the bottom of the list, if that 9-10% figure is to be believed. Marijuana advocates can point to the study and show that addiction rates, according to the study, are much higher in substances like heroin (23-25%), cocaine (15-20%), or even tobacco (20-30%) and alcohol (15%), but progressive thinkers on the topic feel that even 9% is way off on weed, and that the number is truly much lower.

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Cannabis and Pain: Soothing a Soft Society

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By on Culture, Medical


By Sharon Letts
Knee surgery this past week has me thinking about pain, true tolerance, and why so many Americans are bent on being anesthetized. 
The Institute of Medicine states, 100 million Americans suffer from some kind of pain at a cost of $635 billion a year.
ABC News reported in January of 2012, 80 percent of the world’s pain meds are consumed in the good old U.S. of A.
Experts site our increased life expectancy, cancers, and a soft, sedentary lifestyle as the cause, but what of the rest of the world? Why are Americans suffering so? Or are we?
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Angry Herds: Pot Smoker vs. Pot Smoker

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By on Culture, Growing

Worldwide Hippies

Commentary By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
About a month ago, in California, Assembly member Tom Ammiano removed a pro-cannabis bill he authored (AB2312) from proceeding in the State Senate after determining that he wouldn’t be able to gather enough support from his colleagues.
The pulling of Ammiano’s bill, and the Feds’ continued attacks on legitimate marijuana businesses, kick-started a very heated online debate among pot activists and other political cannabis factions. The issue: “Is marijuana strictly only medicinal?” and, I’m paraphrasing, “By calling it a recreational drug, does it undermine the purpose and objectives that the medical marijuana movement has been trying to achieve for these 20 years?”
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Study: Marijuana Derivative Fights Cocaine Addiction In Mice

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By on News

Photo: FOX 43 TV

​A marijuana component helps mitigate cocaine addiction in mice, according to a new study, lending further evidence to the notion that marijuana is an “exit” drug and could become the next big anti-addiction therapy.

The discovery by researchers in China and Maryland was announced in the July 2011 issue of Nature Neuroscience magazine, reports Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story.
Cannabidiol (CBD), a medically useful component of marijuana that does not produce a “high,” effectively turns down a receptor in the brain that is stimulated by cocaine, the study found.
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Drug Czar Blames Medical Marijuana For Increased Drug Abuse

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By on Medical, News

Photo: The Fresh Scent
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske: “Calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to our young people”

​Advocates Say Federal Health Study Exaggerates Claims, Fails To Connect The Dots

The results of a national survey on drug use and health were issued Wednesday by the federal government, noting a surge in the use of marijuana and other drugs such as ecstasy and methamphetamine. Gil Kerlikowske, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), took the opportunity to rail against medical marijuana use.
Drug Czar Kerlikowske used the study to argue in mainstream media outlets that marijuana “is not medicine,” claiming that the issue of medical marijuana sends “mixed messages” to youth.
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