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Irish Doctor: Smoking Marijuana Leads To Beards

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 9, 2012 Global, News

This dude used to be “normal” until he got high on weed. Honest!

From time to time, the drug warriors come up with a real gem of a reason why we should all come to our senses and just stop it, already, with this “using cannabis” nonsense. I mean, come ON. Despite whatever perceived benefits, medical or otherwise, is it worth the huge risks?

“What risks?” you may rightly be asking. “I thought it had been established that it was relatively benign, almost completely non-toxic, and certainly didn’t cause overdoses.” Well, yeah, hippie, those things may be true, but there are other horrors that perhaps you haven’t considered.

I mean the horror of facial hair.

Fortunately, we have the brave and intrepid Dr. Ruairi Hanley, an Irish physician who abundantly proves that Reefer Madness isn’t an exclusively American phenomenon.

Arizona Tribe Seizing Cars Of Medical Marijuana Patients

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 7, 2012 Medical, News

Mexico Unmasked

A Native American tribe in Arizona says that the state’s medical marijuana cards don’t apply on tribal lands, and has apparently started seizing the vehicles of legal cannabis patients as they pass through.

Under Arizona law, the state’s 18,000 medical marijuana patients with state-issued cards are allowed to transport small amounts of cannabis in their vehicles — but not on tribal lands, reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times.

In the case of the Salt River Maricopa-Pima Indian Community, that includes a strip of the Loop 101 freeway — and it seems that every legal patient who drives down that particular stretch of freeway is not only putting his or her medicine at risk, but the vehicle they’re driving, as well.

Drug Defendant Shows Up In Court With Crack Recipe On Jacket

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 6, 2012 News

Michael D. Weinstein

Leave that crack jacket at home, homie.

A man accused of drug trafficking showed up for court Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wearing a jacket the bore a cartoon-style recipe for cooking crack cocaine.

“Maybe he was hoping to impress the judge or ‘crack up’ the courtroom crowd, but the fashion police at the Broward County Courthouse labeled it a fashion fail,” reports Paula McMahon at the Broward-Palm Beach Sun-Sentinel.

“Probably not the smartest attire for a defendant!” wise-cracked Michael D. Weinstein, a lawyer who snapped the cellphone photo which accompanies this article.

The white jacket seemed to be a how-to guide for cooking crack cocaine, complete with little pictures of a white substance with a spoon, a carton of baking soda and a pot over a fire. The end product was “rock.”

The recipe was capped off by the slogan “Stack Paper Say Nothing” — in other words, make money, hold onto it and keep your mouth shut about where it came from.

NORML Owes The Medical Marijuana Community An Apology

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 6, 2012 Culture, News

Nilo Radio

NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre: “Defending the ‘medical’ cannabis industry is so yesterday”

NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre has called the medical marijuana industry a “legal farce” and “largely a sham” in an article which hit the web yesterday, creating a backlash among NORML’s many supporters (quite a few of whom likely just became former supporters) in the medicinal cannabis industry.

How many times must we repeat this? Attacking medical marijuana is not a good legalization strategy.

The sadly predictable outcome is that for the next umpteen years, every single time a medical cannabis initiative is raised in any state, the opposition are going to drag out St. Pierre’s ill-considered words as ammunition. “Why are you sitting there trying to tell us this state needs a medical marijuana law when NORML itself has admitted medical marijuana is a fraud and a sham?”

The piece, published by Steve Bloom on CelebStoner (according to NORML’s “Radical” Russ Belville, from private listserv emails sent last October, and without St. Pierre’s permission), is really unfortunate, and is a huge, huge blunder on NORML’s part. The pity of it is, it’s not just NORML that’s going to have to pay for St. Pierre’s mistake — it’s the medical cannabis community which he apparently so disdains.

Hemp and Cannabis Patient Protection Initiative Filed In WA

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 6, 2012 Legislation, Medical, News

CBS News

Medical marijuana patients are concerned about the DUI provision in legalization initiative I-502, which they say would effectively criminalize most driving by patients

Initiative Filed By Patients and Concerned Citizens’ Group

An initiative to the people of Washington state regarding cannabis for patients and hemp for farming was filed Friday at the State Elections Office. A group of patients and other concerned citizens filed the petition in response to concerns over I-502, a decriminalization initiative that threatens the driving privileges of every long-term cannabis user and fails to address hemp for farming.

Medical marijuana patients and advocates are concerned about the DUI provision in legalization initiative I-502, which they say would effectively criminalize most driving by patients. I-502 would include a five nanogram per milliliter (5 ng/ml) THC blood level as per se proof of driving under the influence of cannabis.

Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Case Of Franky The Drug Dog

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 6, 2012 Legislation, News

Alan Diaz/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a police dog’s sniff outside the front door of a house being used to grow marijuana violates a suspect’s Constitutional rights.

Police used the reaction of Franky, a Labrador, outside Joelis Jardines’ Miami, Fla., house to get a search warrant that led to the discovery of 179 cannabis plants being cultivated inside, reports the Associated Press.

The justices said on Friday that they’ll review a Florida Supreme Court decision that thew out evidence seized in the search of the house. The Florida court said that Franky the drug dog’s work at the front door was itself an unconstitutional search.

Judge Nixes Lawsuit Challenging AZ Medical Marijuana Law

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 5, 2012 Dispensaries, Legislation, News

Council of Conservative Citizens

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton: Gov. Jan Brewer and her Attorney General “have not shown that any action against state employees in this state is imminent or even threatened”

A federal judge on Wednesday granted an American Civil Liberties Union request to throw out a lawsuit filed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer seeking to strike down the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law that would allow sick patients to access important medicine.

Gov. Brewer, a notorious opponent of medical marijuana, argued in the May lawsuit that state officials fear federal prosecution for implementing the law — this in spite of the fact that Arizona’s former top federal prosecutor specifically said publicly that the federal government “has no intention of targeting or going after people who are implementing or who are in compliance with state law.”

Cambodian Anti-Drug Chief Sentenced For Drug Trafficking

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 5, 2012 Global, News

The Phnom Penh Post

Former Cambodian Drug Czar Moek Dara being dragged away to prison by police. (How long until we see Gil Kerlikowske in a similar predicament?)

Who’s gonna watch the watchers? A Cambodian court on Thursday sentenced the former director of the country’s anti-drug agency to life in prison for corruption and narcotics trafficking, according to a court official. The drug czar’s top aide was also given life in prison for good measure.

Moek Dara, who headed the National Authority for Combating Drugs, and his subordinate Chea Leng were found guilty of 32 counts of involvement in drug trafficking, prosecutor Phan Vanarath told AFP, reports Times Live.

Both were also convicted of accepting bribes from drug dealers by the court, located in the northwestern part of Cambodia in the province of Banteay Meanchey. The court is about 190 miles northwest of the nation’s capitol, Phnom Penh.

Washington Voters Split On Marijuana Legalization

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 5, 2012 Legislation, News

Elway Research

Support has fallen since last July. (Hey, looks like Elway’s auto-correct got ’em, changing “initiative” to “imitative.”)

Washington state voters appear increasingly split on the prospect of marijuana legalization as a ballot initiative heads to the Legislature next week.

A new Elway Research Poll released on Wednesday showed softening support for Initiative 502, which would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and tax sales, with 48 percent in favor and 45 percent opposed, reports Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times. The margin of error is five percentage points.

Conventional wisdom holds that initiatives which have starting points of less than around 55 percent support have a low chance of passage at the ballot box.

Marijuana Improves Mental Sharpness In Middle-Aged Men: Study

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on January 4, 2012 Medical, News

Aspen Daily News

Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in 1970, takes a smoke break for mental sharpness at the NORML convention in Aspen, Colorado in 2008.

Not only does smoking marijuana not “burn you out,” but it’s downright good for your brain. Yet more scientific evidence — this time, that it actually appears to improve cognitive functioning among middle-aged men — is now available, thanks to a new medical study.

Researchers looked at a large sample of 8,992 men who “used drugs,” mostly cannabis, at age 42 and then again at age 50, reports Dennis Romero at LA Weekly. The men were tested to measure their level of brain functioning.

Surprise, surprise — the Brits who had used illegal drugs did just as well — or slightly better! — than the chaps who had never “used drugs” at all.

When current and past drug users were lumped together as one group, their scores tended to be better than those of non-users. That advantage was small, researchers said, and might be due to the fact that people who have tried drugs tend to be better educated than those who haven’t.

“A positive association was observed between ever (past or current) illicit drug use and cognitive functioning,” the study’s authors concluded in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

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