The high-tech medical marijuana pipe, as Westword‘s Joel Warner puts it, “designed by weed-smoking Colorado whiz kids,” did quite well for itself at the 22nd annual High Times Cannabis Cup awards in Amsterdam.
Browsing: Global
| DEA |
| “Drug money” and cartel weapons seized by the Mexican Federales and the DEA |
Promised security help from the United States for Mexico’s drug war, including helicopters and scanners for contraband detection, has been held up by bureaucratic red tape and is slow in arriving, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Ken Ellingwood reports in the Los Angeles Times.
The GAO examination said that just $26 million, or 2 percent of the nearly $1.3 billion appropriated for security aid, had been spent by the end of September.
The multi-year Merida Initiative is intended to help Mexican officials, who are locked in a bloody three-year offensive against illegal drug cartels. The Mexicans have complained that the promised American help has been too slow to reach them.
| “Jephthath’s Sacrifice” by Maciejowski (c. 1250) |
| If you sell pot on the Gaza Strip, be careful or you could lose your head. |
Selling pot can now officially get you killed in Gaza City — by the government, that is.
Despite the area’s proud tradition of fine hashish (Blond Lebanese, anyone?) the Hamas-run government of Gaza has approved a law that will allow for the execution of “convicted drug dealers,” its attorney general said today, according to the Associated Press.
The Islamist government ruling Gaza is taking a page from the tired old playbook of drug prohibitionists in America and worldwide — that imposing draconian sentences will reduce drug smuggling and discourage drug use. The policy, in place for close to a century in many parts of the world, has proved to be a colossal failure.
Hamas has cracked down on drugs, saying it has arrested more than 100 drug dealers and users. Dozens of pounds of contraband, mostly marijuana, have been seized.
Blithely undeterred by the facts, Gaza’s attorney general blamed the Israeli government for not punishing potheads severely enough (or killing them quickly enough). If the intent is to prove governments in the Middle East can have drug policies even dumber than those of the United States, then mission accomplished!
| Greenhouseseeds.nl |
| Mighty Super Lemon Haze extended for another year its reign over the Dutch pot scene at this year’s Cannabis Cup Awards. |
A heady sativa, Super Lemon Haze, repeated as the favorite Dutch coffeeshop strain at the 22nd Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. It won last year as well, as reported at CelebStoner.com, and is the first strain to repeat since the Green House’s Super Silver Haze in 1999.
Vanilla Kush from Barney’s placed second in the competition for the top prize. Headband Kush from Green Place finished third.
Both the Green House and Barney’s continued to dominate the Cup as the two powerhouses have for a decade. The last shop to win the Cup other than the Green House or Barney’s was The Noon with the legendary Blueberry, all the way back in 2000.
| Photo: Horsma / Hamppuforum, Wikimedia Commons |
| Sweet Tooth #3 cannabis bud, grown in Finland |
For all the progress toward a European Union, there is still no unified approach to medical marijuana in Europe, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Cannabis is legal for treating certain illnesses in the Netherlands, but Sweden, for example, doesn’t recognize any medical use for the herb at all.
Legal expert Catherine Sandvos of the Dutch Cannabis Bureau (a government agency providing high-quality medical marijuana) told the Journal that cannabis is just “too controversial and too political” to even be on the European agenda.
The Dutch have led the continent in legalizing medical marijuana, which is treated separately from the recreational cannabis available at Amsterdam’s coffee shops.
| Photo: Michael W. deBenutzer, Wikimedia Commons |
| Hitting all the high notes? |
A New Zealand woman who played classical musical to her 20 cannabis plants “to encourage them to grow” has been sentenced to community work, according to Kiwi website TVNZ.
Zarah Murphy of New Plymouth, N.Z. cultivated the plants in a room with photos on the wall of healthy palnts as “role models” and played them “nice classical music,” her lawyer told New Plymouth District Court on Monday.
The lawyer, Pamela Jensen, said Murphy was growing the plants for her own medical use, to treat her post-traumatic stress disorder, the Taranaki Daily News reported.
She was undergoing psychotherapy for her condition and could possibly attend drug counseling in the future, according to Jensen.
Judge Allan Roberts, while granting the elaborate grow room was a “pretty good effort,” still sentenced music lover Murphy to 250 hours of community work and $1,235 in unpaid fines.
| 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.”