Cops Testify That Marijuana Is “Excellent” Medicine

by
sour diesel marijuana strain
 
Law enforcement officers say the marijuana butter they used gave “excellent” results and cannabis “gave me my life back” during testimony in a twisted case that has already driven one officer to take his own life.
As chronicled in a series of articles published by the MLive Media Group, three corrections officers including Mike Frederick and Todd VanDoorne secured their medical marijuana physician’s certification from a pain management doctor. In 2011 or 2012 the officers began using butter infused with marijuana, which they purchased from licensed caregiver Timothy Scherzer, to alleviate pain.
 
Full Article:
http://www.theweedblog.com/cops-testify-that-marijuana-is-excellent-medicine/
 
 

Doctors Call On DEA To Reschedule Marijuana For Medical Research Purposes


 
The American Academy of Pediatrics is requesting that the Drug Enforcement Administration reclassify marijuana as a less harmful substance in order to facilitate research of the substance for medical use, according to a policy statement released Monday.
“The AAP strongly supports research and development of pharmaceutical cannabinoids and supports a review of policies promoting research on the medical use of these compounds,” the AAP statement reads. To that end, the group recommends that the DEA reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I controlled substance to Schedule II.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, the U.S. has five “schedules” for drugs and chemicals that can be used to make drugs. Schedule I is reserved for drugs that the DEA considers to have the highest potential for abuse and no “currently accepted medical use.” Marijuana has been classified as Schedule I for decades, along with other substances like heroin and LSD. While a lower schedule for marijuana would not make it legal, it could ease restrictions on researching the drug.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/pediatricians-call-on-dea_n_6550486.html

Anchorage Opens the Door to Cannabis Cafés



 
Beginning on February 24, thanks to a ballot initiative approved last November, Alaskans 21 and older will no longer face criminal penalties for marijuana possession (up to an ounce), sharing (ditto), or cultivation (up to six plants, half of them mature). Lest the streets be filled with happy tokers celebrating their new freedom, the Anchorage Assembly yesterday unanimously passed an ordinance that bans marijuana consumption in “public places,” including “places of business or amusement.” But unlike the Denver City Council, which has not seen fit to allow cannabis consumption in any business open to the public, the Anchorage Assembly approved an amendment that makes an exception for consumption “authorized by a state permit or license or authorized by a municipal permit or lease.” That provision leaves open the possibility of businesses that cater to people, including tourists, who want to use marijuana in a setting other than a private residence.
 
Full Article:
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/28/anchorage-opens-the-door-to-cannabis-caf

Green Genes

WM. WILLARD GREENE
phylosbiosci_dc-14
IMAGE: Daniel Cole
 

In the winding curves south of I-405, across the street from the Oregon Health & Science University Integrity Office, the history of marijuana is being mapped. For 10,000 years, humans have carried this plant everywhere, but we still know astonishingly little about it. For the first time, its genetic lineage is being mapped; this means not only helping develop cures for disease, but also determining the tenor of your high with scientific certainty.

Mowgli Holmes, chief scientific officer at Phylos Bioscience, leads a team that is tackling a maze of crossbreeding and landraces, strains that were isolated in specific regions and adapted accordingly. Samples are culled and drawn from every available source.

“We’re testing everything we possibly can,” says Holmes, a molecular geneticist who has a doctorate in microbiology from Columbia University. “We’re testing samples from jars pulled directly off the shelf from a shop in Ohio, in 1937, after prohibition went into effect. The pharmacist stashed them away in his attic.”

I ask him for an example of a species the cannabis family tree will resemble. Apples? Grapes? He smiles.

“Humans,” he says.

 
 
Full Article:
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-23880-green_genes.html

Grow Their Own! California Tribe Will Grow Medical Marijuana on Tribal

Associated Press
The Pinoleville Pomo Nation in California plans to grow and manufacture medical marijuana.
The Pinoleville Pomo Nation in northern California’s Mendocino County is set to be the first tribe to grow and manufacture medical marijuana on tribal land.
The tribe has inked a deal to develop an indoors grow facility on its rancheria north of Ukiah.
“We anticipate construction to begin in early February, and operations to commence by the end of the month,” Barry Brautman, president of FoxBarry Development Company, LLC, told Indian Country Today Media Network.
FoxBarry Farms—a subsidiary of the Kansas-based firm, which partners with tribes on economic development projects ranging from farms to casinos—will help develop the “state-of-the-art greenhouses, as well as processing and office space,” Brautman said.
FoxBarry will additionally manage distribution of the medical marijuana and related products in the state. “Our first phase will include 90,000 feet of greenhouse space, and another 20,000 feet of indoor space,” Brautman said.
The operation will sell marijuana only for authorized medical users and dispensaries in accordance with California state law. Many anticipate California to join at least four other states in legalizing recreational use of marijuana next year.
 
Full Article:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/01/26/grow-their-own-california-tribe-will-grow-medical-marijuana-tribal-land-158864

World’s Biggest Cannabis Museum Opens in Barcelona

Lorena Muñoz-Alonso
The Hash Marihuana Cáñamo & Hemp Museum of Barcelona, at the Palau Mornau<br>Photo via: Designboom
 
Unlike in the Netherlands, cannabis consumption hasn’t been legalized in Spain, but from Friday onwards Barcelona will boast the biggest museum in the world devoted to marijuana’s various uses and properties, El Periodico reports.
The museum is the brain-child of Dutch entrepreneur Ben Dronkers, founder of Amsterdam’s Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum and the company HempFlax, dedicated to growing and processing industrial hemp.
Dronker’s Barcelona outpost project began in 2002, when he found and purchased an impressive palace in Barcelona’s Gothic quarter which had fallen into severe disrepair. The Palau Mornau was originally erected in the 15th century, but during the early 20th century was refurbished in the dazzling Modernisme style.
Dronkers spent the next ten years renovating the historical building and working towards realizing his dream of having the Barcelona-based Hash Marihuana Cáñamo & Hemp Museum. The institution will house more than 65,000 objects, including ethnographic artifacts, and pot-related visual material, sprawled across 900 sumptuous square meters.
 
Full Article:
http://news.artnet.com/in-brief/worlds-biggest-cannabis-museum-opens-in-barcelona-234142

Two Texas Republicans Have a Crappy Plan to Sorta, Not Really Legalize Medical Marijuana

By Stephen Young
cannabisoilwiki.JPG
Cannabis Oil
 
CBD is among the treatments prescribed for Alexis Bortell, a Rowlett 9-year-old who’s become a poster child for medical marijuana reform in Texas. Two Colorado doctors who evaluated Bortell told her family that marijuana was the best remedy for her epileptic seizures. She was given a Colorado “red card” which allows for her to take marijuana-based medications. In Colorado, not in Texas.Kevin Eltife and Stephanie Klick are taking the safest approach possible to an issue that, for them, is politically dangerous. The two legislators, both Republicans, have put themselves behind legalizing the narrowest sliver of medical cannabis. The Tyler state senator and Fort Worth state representative want to OK the use of cannabidiol (CBD) oil for people with intractable epilepsy.
Legalizing CBD with low THC concentrations — Eltife and Klick are careful to emphasize that patients would not be able to get high from their medications — for kids and adults suffering from crippling, life-threatening seizures is seemingly a no-brainer. It may not be what’s best for drug-reform in Texas, however, according to Shaun McAlister, the executive director of the DFW Chapter of NORML — the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
“I’m glad the we’re talking about medical marijuana with some actual sincerity now in Texas, because this entire state is just tragically behind the rest of the country,” he says. “On the other hand, I’m really nervous about a CBD-only push because, for one thing, CBD only legislation represents a really shallow understanding of what cannabis actually is and what it can do.”
 
Full Article:
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/01/texas_medical_marijuana_legal.php

Judge Francis Young rules marijuana is safe, 1988, DEA, USA

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
                      Drug Enforcement Administration
_______________________________________
                                       )
  In The Matter Of                     )
                                       )              Docket No. 86-22
     MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION   )
_______________________________________)

                OPINION AND RECOMMENDED RULING, FINDINGS OF
                  FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND DECISION OF
                       Administrative LAW JUDGE.
FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
DATED: SEP 6  1988 

FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge

……………………

Part VIII.
ACCEPTED SAFETY FOR USE UNDER MEDICAL SUPERVISION

     With respect to whether or not there is "a lack of accepted safety
for use of [marijuana] under medical supervision", the record shows the
following facts to be uncontroverted.
Findings of Fact

Point 3. The most obvious concern when dealing with drug safety is the possibility of lethal effects. Can the drug cause death?
4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.
5. This is a remarkable statement. First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world. Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.
6. By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.
7. Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana’s LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.
8. At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around
1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in onemarijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.
9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.
10. Another common medical way to determine drug safety is called the therapeutic ratio. This ratio defines the difference between a therapeutically effective dose and a dose which is capable of inducing adverse effects.
11. A commonly used over-the-counter product like aspirin has a therapeutic ratio of around 1:20. Two aspirins are the recommended dose for adult patients. Twenty times this dose, forty aspirins, may cause a lethal reaction in some patients, and will almost certainly cause gross injury to the digestive system, including extensive internal bleeding.
12. The therapeutic ratio for prescribed drugs is commonly around 1:10 or lower. Valium, a commonly used prescriptive drug, may cause very serious biological damage if patients use ten times the recommended (therapeutic) dose.
13. There are, of course, prescriptive drugs which have much lower therapeutic ratios. Many of the drugs used to treat patients with cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis are highly toxic. The therapeutic ratio of some of the drugs used in antineoplastic therapies, for example, are regarded as extremely toxic poisons with therapeutic ratios that may fall below 1:1.5. These drugs also have very low LD-50 ratios and can result in toxic, even lethal reactions, while being properly employed.
 
14. By contrast, marijuana’s therapeutic ratio, like its LD-50, is impossible to quantify because it is so high.
15. In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.
16. Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care.”
 
http://www.ccguide.org/young88.php

Colorado to federal government: Let our colleges grow pot for research

BY ANDREW MACH

 
Colorado colleges may soon begin growing their own weed — that is, if a group of state officials have their way.
In a letter sent to federal health and education officials last month, the state’s attorney general’s office asked for permission for Colorado’s colleges and universities to “obtain marijuana from non-federal government sources” for research purposes, the Los Angeles Times reported.
 
Full Article:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/colorado-federal-government-let-colleges-grow-pot/

Federal Judge Weighing Constitutionality of Marijuana’s Classification

By Associated Press

 
A federal judge in California is weighing the constitutionality of a 45-year-old act that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug along with LSD, cocaine and heroin.
U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller in Sacramento held a five-day fact-finding hearing on the classification question late last year, and final arguments are scheduled for next month, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. Her ruling is expected later this year.
The case marks the first time in decades that a judge has agreed to consider marijuana’s designation as a Schedule 1 drug under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, the newspaper said. Under the act, Schedule 1 drugs have no medicinal purpose, are unsafe even under medical supervision and contain a high potential for abuse.
 
Full Article:
http://www.thedailychronic.net/2015/39891/federal-judge-weighing-constitutionality-of-marijuanas-classification/