Photo: blogspot

​In one of the latest examples of moronic Drug War hyperbole, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is warning parents about a dangerous new “drug” — binaural sound.
Seems these Okie drug warriors are convinced that seemingly harmless MP3 downloads are just the latest way crazy teenagers are using to get high. They call listening to the files “i-dosing,” and claim that evil “digital dealers” are selling kids the aural equivalent of crack cocaine, reports Jason Mick at DailyTech.
“Kids are going to flock to these sites just to see what it is about and it can lead them to other places,” warned Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward.
Woodward claims the “digital drugs” are leading formerly innocent children down a primrose path of self destruction and harder drugs.

Graphic: Medical Marijuana & Hemp Expo

​A three-day expo which starts Friday in Toronto is being called the first convention ever held in Canada to promote the use of medical marijuana. Organizers said they expect as many as 30,000 attendees from around the world.

The Medical Marijuana and Hemp Show is being held at the Metro Convention Centre, the same downtown location where G20 leaders met three weeks ago, reports Linda Nguyen at The Vancouver Sun.
The event will feature exhibitors from around the planet, educational seminars with doctors and a hemp fashion and cooking show.

Graphic: Style Rookie
Yes, girls, pot makes you “Fat & Ugly,” if you believe Seventeen. (look on the lower right).

​Seventeen Magazine, that bastion of annoying shallowness aimed at teenage girls, has reached a new low.

The rag, which for years has plumbed the depths of journalism, exploring just how negative a self image can be foisted upon America’s anorexics-in-training, has now told its wide-eyed readership that marijuana is, and I’m quoting here, “THE PARTY DRUG THAT CAN MAKE YOU FAT & UGLY.”
Never mind, as pointed out by 13-year-old Style Rookie blogger Tavi in a righteously indignant open letter to the magazine, that the message being given to impressionable teenage girls is oh God, the worst possible thing that could ever, ever happen to them is that, heaven forbid, their appearance should fall short of Hollywood ideals!
Never mind that equating “fat” and “ugly” in such a casually cruel way — in a culture which, more and more, values artificial standards of “attractiveness” and “beauty” over all else, and defines those as being synonymous with “unhealthily skinny” — tells teenage girls that their looks define them, and that they should feel really bad about themselves if they somehow don’t “fit.”

Graphic: White Noise Insanity

​A new U.S. government study finds a 400 percent increase in the number of people admitted to hospital emergency rooms for abusing prescription pain medication such as hydrodocone, oxycodone, and morphine.

Even with the wide popularity of prescription medication, pain pills remained the second most common type of illicit drug use in the United States in 2008, according to the study. While more than six million Americans admitted to abusing prescription painkillers in the month before the survey, more than double that amount — 15.2 million people — said they had used good old marijuana.

The increase in pill abuse among those 12 and older was recorded during the decade from 1998 to 2008. It crosses every gender, race, ethnicity, education and employment level, and all regions of the country, according to The Associated Press.
According to the study, seven of the top ten drugs reported abused by 12th graders are prescription drugs, reports the Dakota Voice.

Photo: Zazzle

​On July 13, the city council of Berkeley, California asked voters to approve a 2.5 percent tax on the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries, three of which grossed a total of $19 million last year.

“This is huge,” said Mayor Tom Bates. According to the mayor, the tax will help close a $16.2 million budget gap, but it’ll do more than that, report Christopher Palmeri and Michael Marois at Business Week.
It also makes sure that as marijuana sales go mainstream, the local community — not outside business interests — benefits. “We don’t want to have Philip Morris coming in here, sucking up all the money,” Bates said.

Graphic: Secrets Of Vancouver

​Can marijuana actually make you smarter? Well, yeah, probably so, man. But if you’re bipolar, you now have some actual scientific research to back you up in that belief.

A recent study suggests that some patients with bipolar disorder who use marijuana actually performed better on certain tests involving cognitive functioning, reports Jessica Ward Jones, M.D., at PsychCentral.
Dr. Ole Andreassen of Oslo University Hospital in Norway studied 133 patients with bipolar disorder and 140 with schizophrenia. The patients were questioned about prior drug use; over the previous six months, 18 bipolar patients and 23 schizophrenia patients had used marijuana.
All of the participants then underwent several tests to assess neurocognitive function, including the logical memory test, the color-word interference set-shifting subset test, the digit span forward test, the verbal fluency test, and learning tests.

Photo: Operation Green Rx
James Stacy with supporters in front of the San Diego Federal Courthouse

​James Stacy could face life in prison, even though he thought he was following the law.

After the Obama Administration urged federal agents to no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives that are following state laws, Stacy opened Movement In Action, a collective of his own, in Vista, California, reports Elex Michaelson of San Diego 6.
“I follow the rules,” Stacy said. “If they say I can’t do it, I won’t do it.”

Photo: Andreas Fuhrmann/The Redding Record Searchlight
Dr. Cristal Speller, left, in the consultation with Tawnya McKee which resulted in a lawsuit

​A Redding, California woman has sued a medical marijuana doctor, alleging the physician allowed a newspaper reporter to secretly interview and videotape her during a consultation in which she sought authorization to use cannabis.

The allegations are denied by both the newspaper, which wasn’t sued, and the doctor’s attorney, reports Ryan Sabalow at The Redding Record Searchlight.
Tawnya McKee alleges in a lawsuit filed late last month that on September 11, 2009, she went in Dr. Cristal Speller’s Natural Care for Wellness clinic in Redding.

Graphic: Labor Relations Institute, Inc.

​California’s Proposition 19, the marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on November’s ballot, got a big boost Wednesday as it won the endorsement of the council which oversees the political work of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in the state.

“I’m expecting to garner the endorsements of most of the major unions in California over the next several weeks,” said Dan Rush, who oversees special operations for the UFCW, Local 5, and has pushed efforts to gain union support for the measure, reports John Hoeffel of the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Briarpatch
It’s not going to be Easy Going for you if you want to buy hash at this coffee shop — unless you’re Dutch.

​The Netherlands can ban over-the counter sales of marijuana in Dutch “coffee shops” to nonresidents to end drug tourism from other countries, a senior advisor to the European Union high court said Thursday, reports The Associated Press.

The advisor, Yves Bot, senselessly claimed a Dutch city’s ban on foreign customers in the shops is a “lawful and necessary measure” to cut crime and keep the peace, reports Stephanie Bodoni at Bloomberg.
“As drug tourism represents a genuine and sufficiently serious threat to public order in Maastricht, the exclusion of non-residents from coffee shops” is a “necessary” way of protecting residents, Bot said.
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