Search Results: history/ (8)

Way more than doctors anticipated.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

In Colorado, the number of young children exposed to marijuana, mostly through edibles, is up 150 % since 2014, a study found. Reason and The Washington Post argue that the risk remains very small.

A study in rats found that exposure to pot smoke can damage blood vessels.

One in 13 Americans older than 12 have used marijuana in the past month, a new government studyfound. That figure has held steady for about 25-years. It’s least popular between Texas and Alabama. (Here’s a map.) States where it’s less common are more likely to be concerned about marijuana.

A Globe and Mail investigation found that mold and other contaminants are widespread in the Toronto MED supply. Colorado released numerous seized batches after they tested negative for pesticides.

Following a scare, Colorado determined that THC was not in the drinking water in the tiny town of Hugo, Colo.

A bill in Congress that would expand MED research does not include products containing THC or the parents of children with autism in its “Safe Harbor” clause.

In Arizona, a long-anticipated study to test MED on veterans with PTSD will begin seeking patients soon.

Michael J. Stevens writes on the promise of cannabis tissue culture.

The Guardian can’t find any evidence for the myth that babies are awash with endocannabinoids, cannabinoids produced by the human body at birth.

Carfentanil, a powerful opioid used to sedate elephants is causing overdoses in heroin users. Time asks if MED can mitigate the opiate epidemic. (See The Hill for more.)

A Colorado judge blocked the suspensions of four doctors, the first in the state to be punished foroverprescribing the number of plants MED patients can grow or trust to caregivers. Heavy prescribing doctors could see business decline with legalization, the Guardian reports.

Dr. Michael Soler is the first physician in Puerto Rico allowed to recommend MED.

WLOX
Mississippi state Senator Deborah Dawkins: “I think most people want their doctors to help them make their own decisions”

​Senator Deborah Dawkins of Pass Christian, Mississippi, for the fourth year in a row, is submitting another proposal to legalize medical marijuana in the Magnolia State.

According to the experts, when used for medicinal purposes, cannabis can be quite useful. And that’s why Senator Dawkins is working hard to legalize its medical use in Mississippi, reports Terrance Friday at WLOX.
“I think most people want their doctors to help them make their own decisions,” Dawkins said. “And to me, we’re taking something away from the patients and their physicians.”
A number of studies have shown that some attributes of the cannabis plant can help relieve pain, control nausea, and help with a long list of other ailments. As of now, 16 states and the District of Columbia have already legalized the medical use of marijuana for certain conditions.

Law Firm Blog

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

None of this is true. It takes place in an office in a big nondescript government building, someplace where obedient, bored American people work and make lots of money arresting other Americans. We now go to a conversation already in progress.
Jack: I would like to speak to the person in charge of busting potheads.
Receptionist: He’s at the bar…
Jack: I’ll wait…
[Three hours later]
PICOBP: C’mon in, mind if I smoke?
Jack: Smoke what? 
PICOBP: Cigarettes? What else is there?
Jack: That’s why I’m here.

The Cannabis-Driven Neolithic Revolution Starts the First Civilization: Cooperation Over Conflict

Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.

Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

A Chinese Neolithic legend said that the gods gave humans one plant to fulfill all of their needs.
 
That plant was hemp.
 
One plant with five must-have survival products: food, rope, cloth, medicine and spiritual enlightenment.
The first contact between humans and the hemp plant are lost to history. 
The following history is circumstantial; it is my attempt to reverse-engineer the missing prehistory of cannabis that hasn’t been told.

Graphic: Wikipedia/Steve Elliott; Idea: Peaceful Soul
Shakespeare: “Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed?” (Damn long-haired hippies.)

​Doobie, or not doobie? That is the question. A team of paleontologists wants to dig up William Shakespeare to find out of he used marijuana.

They didn’t just come up with this out of thin air; some recent evidence actually suggests that Shakespeare may have gotten high. Now Francis Thackeray, an anthropologist and director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has placed a formal request with the Church of England to unearth the Bard, reports David Edwards at The Raw Story.

The playwright is buried under the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and the planned analysis is of the “nondestructive” variety, according to Thackeray, reports Alec Liu at FoxNews.com.
“We have incredible techniques,” Thackeray said. “We don’t intend to move the remains at all.” The team instead plans to conduct a forensic analysis using state-of-the-art technology to scan the bones.

Photo: The Weed Street Journal
Interestingly, the 1911 Massachusetts law specifically permitted medicinal use of cannabis with a prescription

​Friday marks an unhappy anniversary in hemp history. On April 29, 1911, Massachusetts enacted the first state law making it illegal to sell or possess cannabis without a prescription, becoming the first U.S. state to institute marijuana prohibition.

Violators of the new law were subject to a $100 fine and up to six months in jail, and just being present in the same room with marijuana could get you three months, according to cannabis historian Dale Gieringer of California NORML.
Ironically, marijuana was merely collateral damage of the Massachusetts law, which was aimed primarily at other “hypnotic” drugs such as opium, morphine and heroin. Abuse of opiate painkillers had become a concern among reformers and temperance advocates in the early 20th century, and cannabis was added to the list “for the sake of completeness,” since it was also a hypnotic palliative commonly found in pharmacies.
“This incidental decision would turn out to have far-reaching consequences, aptly illustrating the dangers of governmental misjudgment in matters of drug regulation,” Gieringer said.
Interestingly, the Massachusetts law specifically permitted medicinal use of cannabis with a prescription; the medical value of “Indian hemp” was widely acknowledged at the time.
“Only in 1937 was medical cannabis suppressed at the insistence of federal narcotics boss Harry Anslinger, whose last-century ‘Reefer Madness’ policy sadly remains with us today,” Gieringer said.

The Chinese shaman tomb and its contents from 2,800 years ago. Almost 800 grams of cannabis was found inside the tomb.

Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.

Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

To begin, please watch the following to understand the significance of this cannabis discovery.
China’s Secret Mummies: National Geographic Explorer, December 2007

This National Geographic special provides major archeological evidence of religious cannabis use 2,800 years ago (at minute 38:00 of the video).


Upon your death, what personal items would you want placed next to your corpse in your tomb?

What very special items define you and what your life stood for, in the very short period of time you were alive? 

In other words, what is most sacred to you?

To the holy men in this story, cannabis represented the sacred.

I believe that humans have a natural right to use cannabis as part of their private spiritual/religious practice. We all walk our own spiritual path.

Remember, you experience the divine in your head, not in a temple or church.

Meet the “Yanghai shaman,” who will be your guide.



Photo: Robert Platshorn
Robert Platshorn, the Black Tuna, brought a million pounds of Colombian gold to American shores.

​If you were an American pothead in the 1970s, you probably smoked some of Robert Platshorn’s weed. His organization brought in tons of fine Colombian when it was considered some of the best pot in the world. And that’s the reason Platshorn later became the longest serving marijuana prisoner in U.S. history, doing 29 years inside the federal prison system.

Much of the primo Colombian flooding the U.S. marijuana market in the late 70s could be traced back to the Black Tuna Gang, a major smuggling ring which once brought 500 tons of pot into the United States over a 16-month period.
I remember well the sweet, potent buds of Santa Marta Gold that were available in 1977 and 1978. Possessed of a soaring sativa high and mind-blowing expansion in the lungs, this ‘lombo weed became the gold standard of connoisseur pot to a generation of appreciative stoners. To this day, I think of Colombian weed every time I hear Rush or Blue Öyster Cult.