Search Results: minister (207)



Photo: www.medicalmarijuanablog.com
“Guards! Seize that one! He looks too happy!”

​A rural Tennesee judge who “routinely” orders random spectators in his courtroom to be grabbed up and piss-tested for drugs, if he doesn’t like their looks, is finally being sued by an unhappy citizen.

The distinctly yokel-like judge, who ordered a court spectator to submit to a drug test based “on a hunch” is being sued for violating the spectator’s constitutional rights, reports Daniel Tercer at Raw Story.

Benjamin Marchant’s lawsuit against Dickson County Judge Durwood Moore says Marchant was a spectator in the court in January 2009, waiting to give a friend a ride home. Marchant was undoubtedly surprised when the judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to seize him and administer a urinalysis.
Officers grabbed Marchant, allegedly without any evidence of illegal behavior, and took him to a different place in the courthouse where he was forced to submit to a drug screen urinalysis. The man was released from custody when the drug test came back negative.

Graphic: laborbeat.org

​It often seems as if the mainstream media is just waiting for something — anything — bad to turn up about the effects of marijuana, despite the long, fruitless search for damning evidence.

Smoking pot is bad because it’s illegal and it’s illegal because it’s bad, goes the circular logic; with this conclusion reached beforehand, then it’s just a matter of waiting for the research to roll in.

Unfortunately for the prohibitionists, just about every unbiased scientific study ever done on the herb shows it to be remarkably safe and amazingly non-toxic.
Especially when compared with other psychoactive substances, and even everyday palliatives such as aspirin and related painkillers — Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), which cause 7,600 deaths per year — pot looks pretty damn safe with a grand total of zero overdose deaths in history.
The difference is even more stark with other “recreational” substances such as tobacco (435,000 deaths per year), alcohol (85,000 deaths per year), prescription drugs (32,000 deaths), and illicit street drugs (17,000 deaths).
But you won’t be seeing much about that in our “fair and balanced” mainstream media, because that apparently doesn’t generate as many sales and click-throughs as trumpeting scare stories about pot.

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​There are 166 million marijuana users in the world, representing 3.9 percent of Earth’s population between 15 and 64, according to a new study.

The herb is “most used among young people in rich countries,” led by the United States, Australia and New Zealand, followed by Europe, according to the paper, published in medical journal The Lancet on Friday, canada.com reports.
The study’s authors grudgingly admit that marijuana’s impact “is probably modest” compared with the burden from legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco. After all, these are scientists, and they do have to acknowledge those troublesome data.
But the scientists fall all over themselves rushing to warn that “cannabis has a long list of suspected adverse health effects,” dutifully toeing the line that “marijuana is dangerous,” while lacking any convincing evidence to prove that claim.

Photo: www.funatiq.com
Here’s busted but unrepentant cyclist David Mock carrying around hundreds of pounds of pot behind his bike. (Just kidding.)

​The absurd charade around marijuana in professional athletics of assumed evil and feigned penitence continues with the saga of cyclist David Mock, marijuana user.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA, yes, there really is such a thing, folks, and they take themselves quite seriously) said today that Mock, 32, accepted a three-month suspension, reports the Associated Press.
His offense? An agency-administered urine test showed positive for a metabolite of cannabis.
The Anti-Dopers say Mock actually got off light. His period of ineligibility started Dec. 11, but was reduced from three months to “time served” (only six days?!) after he completed the agency’s “anti-doping educational program” (those must be really great).
The agency said Mock’s urine from Aug. 15 at the Yankee Clipper race tested positive.

cannabis.net
Sativex, which contains cannabinoids THC and CBD, is effective in reducing cancer pain.

​Cancer patients who used a cannabis mouth spray had their level of pain reduced by 30 percent, a study has shown, according to BBC.

The cannabis based spray, administered like a breath freshener, was tried on 177 patients by researchers from Edinburgh University in Scotland.
Patients in the study had not been helped by morphine or other conventional medications.
The spray was developed so that it did not affect the mental state of the patients in the way that using cannabis would, BBC reports.
The researchers were quick to hedge on their findings, reported in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, saying that the study didn’t justify smoking marijuana “as this could increase the risk of cancer.”
They evidently had spent so much time conducting their own study, they didn’t read the available literature. Multiple studies have shown that cannabis in fact contains anti-cancer agents.

Photo: Psychonaught
Five of these? Yes, please. (Super Silver Haze sativa/indica hybrid)

​​The government of the Czech Republic in eastern Europe will allow ordinary citizens to grow up to five marijuana plants starting Jan. 1, 2010.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Jan Fischer defined “personal use” amounts of cannabis and other drugs, clarifying the nation’s new penal code that will decriminalize cultivation and possession of pot. 
While marijuana will remain technically illegal, possession will be punished only with fines comparable to those imposed for parking tickets, Sean Carney at the Wall Street Journal reports.
​What constituted “small amounts” for personal use was previously undefined. Police and the courts loosely interpreted the laws on a case by case basis, often resulting in home marijuana growers being jailed.

Image: russiatoday.com
Israel is one of the first countries to permit the use of medical marijuana.

​Twenty patients in an Israeli hospital have been treated with medical marijuana in the first program of its kind in the Mideast nation.

Head Nurse Ora Shamai of the pain management program at Sheba Medical Center in the town of Tel Hashomer recently drafted a formal protocol for administering cannabis to patients. The document has already been approved by the Health Ministry’s Dr. Yehuda Baruch, and is expected to soon win final approval from the hospital.
According to the protocol, if a patient needs marijuana, the doctor in charge of treatment will help secure the necessary permit from the Health Ministry. Patients who are able to walk will smoke their joints in the hospital’s smoking room, while bedridden patients will be allowed to smoke in private rooms, near an open window.
“We make it clear to the staff that smoking medical marijuana doesn’t endanger the medical staff on the wards,” Shamai said. “It does not harm those in the area via passive smoking.”
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