‘The worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Galileo’: Scientists call for drugs to be legalised to allow proper study of their properties

CHARLIE COOPER
 
The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD amounts to the “the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo”, the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt has claimed.

Professor Nutt, who was dismissed from the Home Office’s advisory council on drugs in 2009 after clashing with ministers, said that UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s have delayed the development of “innovative treatments” for PTSD and depression by 30 years and also set back research into areas of neuroscience such as consciousness.
In a paper published today with two other scientists in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, he said that drugs policy is being driven by “politics, not science”.
Professor Nutt left the Home Officer in 2009 after suggesting that taking MDMA ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse-riding and that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than many illegal drugs.
 
Full Article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-worst-case-of-scientific-censorship-since-the-catholic-church-banned-the-works-of-galileo-scientists-call-for-drugs-to-be-legalised-to-allow-proper-study-of-their-properties-8654514.html

Medicinal marijuana stops seizures, brings hope to a little Black Forest girl

By Barb Cotter
photo - 6-year-old Charlotte Figi uses her "talker" at speech therapy Friday, May 17, 2013 Photo by Nichole Montanez, The Gazette
6-year-old Charlotte Figi uses her “talker” at speech therapy Friday, May 17, 2013 – Photo by Nichole Montanez, The Gazette
 
Six-year-old Charlotte Figi, a picture of precious in her “Gatsby”-style bob and blue toenails, stands patiently as her mother reaches up her dress to change her out of her soiled Pull-Ups. – Charlotte never says a word. She hasn’t in the past hour, and won’t for at least another 30 minutes, when she finally whispers the name of a visitor who is about to leave.
In the Figi household, these are signs of progress: Charlotte saying something. Charlotte eating and drinking. Charlotte standing and walking.
Charlotte breathing.
About 18 months ago, in the winter of 2011, Paige and Matt Figi signed a “do not resuscitate” order telling medical personnel to forgo life-saving measures for their daughter and let fate take its course.
They’d done all they could to control the seemingly endless, violent seizures that hit Charlotte 20, 40, 60 times a day. They put her on an extreme diet. They tried at least a dozen medications, many with harmful side effects. Despite some promising starts, nothing worked. And the rescue medications they were giving her to stop the seizures in fact stopped her breathing. CPR brought her back to life more than once.
After years of watching a cruel, incurable genetic disorder called Dravet Syndome rob their daughter of her basic bodily functions and send her into convulsions that caused head injuries and broken teeth, they had reached the end.
“We really thought, this is a horrible existence; she’s not going to live much longer.” Paige says. “This is not a life for her. This is torture. She is suffering all day. I’m not OK with this. She wasn’t even human anymore. She’d lie in my arms drooling, seizing, screaming and crying.”
Then, in an act of desperation, or inspiration – or maybe both – Matt called Paige from overseas, where he was working, and suggested a radical approach to Charlotte’s treatment.
“We need to try cannabis for Charlotte,” he told Paige. “We live in a compassionate state.”
Fifteen months later, the little girl with the DNR order is standing in the kitchen of their Black Forest home with her mother getting her Pull-Ups changed, cuddling in the arms of a visitor, playing with toys and strategically pushing the buttons on her “talker,” an electronic device that communicates when Charlotte can’t.
Her seizures have dropped from 1,200 a month to three, and the ones she has are shorter in duration and less severe. She’s off all the other medications with their troubling side effects. And, as one of the youngest medical marijuana patients in Colorado, her dramatic turnaround is starting to draw national attention, with a CNN report on the horizon.
 
Full Article:
http://gazette.com/article/1502070

The Good Herb: A Traditional New Mexican Plant Reemerges

By Doug Fine, The Drug Peace Bumblebee
The Good Herb: A Traditional New Mexican Plant Reemerges
 
Note: Names and locations have been changed in this week’s Drug Peace Bumblebee column.
New Mexico naturopath and traditional curandera (healer) Esmerelda Martinez was 19 before she realized that her grandmother’s famous tinctures were cannabis based. “When I was a girl and we visited the family ranch down in Sinaloa (Mexico), I knew she was a healer: we’d see ranchers ride in from hundreds of miles in all directions for her medicine, which she cooked up in the kitchen. She just called her main tincture ingredient ‘la hierba buena’: the good herb. Once I realized what it was and she saw that I was going to be a healer too, she began teaching me her recipes.”
Fast forward three decades, and now the 50-something Martinez, after studying modern herbalism in Santa Fe, finds herself helping patients – including “a lot of veterans” – navigate New Mexico’s medical cannabis program.
Welcome to herbal medicine at the beginning of the Drug Peace Era. “It is strange to be teaching how to deal with paperwork so that someone with PTSD, cancer, a war injury or severe arthritis can have access to a medicine that my grandmother used to make without electricity or running water,” Martinez told me when we met in a south central New Mexico enchilada joint.  “She lived to be 89, by the way.
 
Full Article:
http://www.thedailychronic.net/2013/21517/the-good-herb-a-traditional-new-mexican-plant-reemerges/

Judge decides marijuana-growing Cathy Luong should not go to jail

By Buffy Spencer, The Republican
CATHY.JPG
Cathy Luong – The Republican/Michael Gordon
 
Hampden Superior Court judge said Wednesday he did not see the need for Cathy Luong to be incarcerated.
Judge John S. Ferrara – saying Luong’s marijuana growing endeavor was a “substantial operation for her first foray into criminal conduct” – rejected an agreement between defense and prosecution that Luong go to jail for six months and gave her two years’ probation instead.
 
Full Article:
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/06/judge_decides_marijuana-growin.html

Medicinal use of cannabis legalized in France!

posted by 
 
This announcement should create waves throughout Europe and the rest of the world: France, one of the most repressive countries in Europe in regard to cannabis, has just legalized the medicinal use of the substance! We will however have to wait for the sanctioned publication of this decree before officially celebrating this historical event.
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Today, Friday 7th of June 2013, Decree n° 2013-473 of June 5th 2013 was published, modifying the dispositions of article R. 5132-86 of the Public Health Code related to the prohibition of operations linked to cannabis and its derivatives. Basically, article R. 5132-86 prohibited all non-industrial use of the cannabis plant. Exemptions to this needed to be granted by the General Director of the National Security Agency for Medicines and Health Products, which vary rarely happened.
 
Full Article:
http://sensiseeds.com/en/blog?p=7851&preview=true
 

New Hampshire Jury Nullifies its First Felony Marijuana Case


 
Doug Darrell beat the odds and walked home from his trial as a free man on Friday, a major win for the state’s new jury nullification law. Facing felony drug cultivation charges for growing marijuana plants behind his house, the 59-year-old Rastafarian saw all of the charges against him dropped after jurors in his trial successfully convinced their peers to nullify the case on the grounds that Darrell was simply trying to obey the customs of his religion.
“Many of us wondered what kind of precedent this would set,” said juror and FSP participant Cathleen Converse in an exclusive interview with Free Talk Live. “But after chewing on all of the possibilities and re-reading the definition of nullification, we all decided that the only fair thing to do was to vote with our consciences and acquit the defendant of all charges.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/9/prweb9907650.htm

Vermont Marijuana Decriminalization Signed Into Law, Reduces Penalties For Possession Up To An Ounce

The Huffington Post  |  By 
Vermont Marijuana Decriminalization

(Getty Images)
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed a bill on Thursday decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. The new law, which goes into effect on July 1, will remove criminal penalties on possession of up to an ounce of cannabis and replace them with civil fines.
Full Article:

What About the Children? Oakland Participates in the National Theater Release of American Drug War 2: Cannabis Destiny on June 6th; Supports CCPR

After surviving brain surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, a 2-year-old boy lay in a coma not eating for over 40 days. His parents are told to make funeral arrangements. However, his father had read about a version of an ancient drug made from cannabis. Unbeknownst to the hospital staff, the parents start secretly injecting the illegal drug into their dying son’s feeding tube and soon a “miracle” takes place. When the doctors are told that cannabis was the cause of the “miracle,” they have nothing to say.
Full Article:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1291485