Movies? Well, yes, says Glynis Murray, she does dabble in producing them (most recently, Everybody’s Fine, starring Robert De Niro).
“But that’s not my regular day job,” she says in a recent Skype interview. “Henry (Braham, her partner) is a director of photography and I’m a producer. We’ve been doing ads and documentaries forever and produced our first feature 10 years ago. But this is our real day job.”
“This” is Good Oil, which is just being introduced into the American market. Good Oil is the first culinary oil made from the seed of hemp plants – and Murray and Braham are evangelists about both its flavor (for cooking and salads) and its health benefits.
“Initially we were growing hemp as a step toward sustainable farming,” says Braham, cinematographer on such films as Waking Ned Devine, The Golden Compass and several others. “But we found that the seeds were nutty and tasty. So we started reading up about the oil and realized it had been out there for centuries.”
Still, it took them 10 years to refine the process of turning hempseed into a hempseed oil that not only was beneficial to a human diet but appealing to a human palate.
“It’s been sold for years in health stores,” he says. “But you’d have to be pretty sick to want that taste. So we worked at developing it with an attention to detail that focused on it as food rather than medicine.”
“Our challenge was how to capture the taste and make the oil in a time scale that made sense,” Murray adds. “What we wanted was to find an alternative to olive oil – and we found one that was far more healthy.”
As the Good Oil website points out, hempseed oil has 25 times the Omega-3s as olive oil – and half the saturated fat. And even olive oil is a relatively new innovation in home-cooking in northern Europe.
“Before olive oil, most recipes started with a slab of animal fat,” Braham says. “That was the core, the start. It’s only in the past 25 years that olive oil and other vegetable oils started being used. Now there’s a mesmerizing array of oils to choose from. People are more interested in what they’re cooking with.”
Hemp, Braham says, is “a unique story. Nothing is wasted. It’s the fastest-growing plant around, it’s incredibly efficient at capturing carbon, it takes little cultivation and it doesn’t use any chemicals or pesticides. We use the seed to make food with serious health benefits – and the rest goes into building products.
“We’re always hearing tips about how to live a greener life. And here it is, in a bottle. It’s a pretty exciting kind of story.”
The pair has been farming for almost a decade and a half, having escaped from a full-time life in the film industry: “We both came from a farming background,” Braham says. “We went off and made films, then reached a stage in our lives where we wanted to go back to our roots. We were looking for something sustainable, economical and environmental.”
Good Oil is being marketed “in serious food stores in Paris and it’s taken seriously by chefs as well as nutritionists,” Braham says. In the U.S., the product is being sold at Whole Foods in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, with plans to expand its distribution.
And no, Murray and Braham point out, there are no psychotropic effects associated with hempseed oil.
“I think there’s a huge awareness of the difference between hemp and cannabis,” Braham says. “Still, there’s this perception. That’s one of the reason we market it as Good Oil, rather than hempseed oil.”
“It’s not like we’re using Woody Harrelson as a spokesman,” Murray adds. “In the United Kingdom, there’s been no antipathy to it at all. Still, we put a number of health claims on the side of the bottle and one of the ones we used at first was ‘good for the joints.’ That shows you how naïve we are.”

Hemp campaigner Bernard Rappaz says he won’t end his hunger strike and has accused doctors treating him in hospital of violating his human rights by force-feeding him.
In an interview with the Tages Anzeiger and Der Bund newspapers, Rappaz says he would rather die straight on his back than live bent over, conforming to rules he disagrees with.
Growing cannabis plants as part of his campaign for the legalization of hemp means he faces a 5-year prison sentence, which prompted him to immediately began a fast.
He’s only eaten intermittently over the past hundred days.
Earlier this week, he was moved from Geneva’s cantonal hospital—where medics were respecting his wish not to be fed—to Bern’s Inselspital, where he’s being given food against his will to keep him alive.
He’s appealed against the prison sentence, but judges have refused to suspend his term for health reasons.

Jillian Follert

OSHAWA — The second attempt at Oshawa Cannabis Day went more smoothly than its predecessor last summer and managed to attract a much bigger crowd.
Organizer Ben Fudge estimated about 200 people gathered at Memorial Park in downtown Oshawa on July 1 to show their support for issues such as legalization of marijuana and recognition of the drug’s medicinal benefits.
“I’m really surprised by how many people came, we’re going to aim for 500 people next year,” he said.
Participants ranged from “die-hard activists,” he said, to everyday people interested in learning how to fill out paperwork for a medical exemption.
There was a small police presence at the event and two people without exemption cards were arrested for possession of marijuana, but Mr. Fudge said it was peaceful.
“The police were respectful and courteous. We got along well with them and they protected our rights to protest,” he noted.
The lack of controversy was a welcome change for organizers after last year’s drama.
When plans for the first Oshawa Cannabis Day were announced in June 2009, Oshawa councillors raised concerns about plans to hold it at Lakeview Park, where the City’s annual Canada Day festivities take place.
The cannabis event was moved to Alexandra Park, where roughly 20 participants were met with a dozen police officers, three cruisers and a prisoner transport vehicle. Police gave the group 15 minutes to disperse or face arrest.
Mr. Fudge said this year’s event was better organized — City officials and police were made aware of the plan well in advance.
http://www.newsdurhamregion.com/news/article/158374

Oregon voters will decide this November whether to allow medical marijuana dispensaries.
That’s one of two initiatives that qualified for the Oregon ballot Friday. The Secretary of State’s office says backers submitted enough valid signatures.
One measure would allow non-profit groups to set up shops where the state’s 36,000 medical marijuana users could buy pot.
Chief petitioner Anthony Johnson says that would be a lot more convenient than the way the system works now.
Anthony Johnson: “The law currently forces sick and disabled patients to grow their own marijuana or find someone to grow it for them. And too many people donít have the access, don’t have the resources to do that.”
The other petition to qualify Friday would require longer mandatory minimum sentences for certain repeat sex offenders. It would also impose jail time for people convicted of drunk driving three times in a ten year period.
The potential cost of the sentencing measure has not yet been determined by a state panel.
State elections officials have until August 1st to determine the fate of four additional petitions that could still qualify for the November ballot.
http://news.opb.org/article/9074-two-measures-qualify-oregon-ballot/

Jul 15th 2010 | Los Angeles

IN 1971 a group of teenagers in San Rafael, north of San Francisco, started meeting after school, at 4:20PM, to get high. The habit spread, and 420 became code for fun time among potheads worldwide. Ever since, California has remained in the vanguard of global cannabis culture. Oaksterdam University in Oakland is today unique in the world as a sort of Aristotelian lyceum for the study of all aspects—horticultural, scientific, historical—of the weed.
Legally, California has also been a pioneer, at least within America. In 1996 it was the first state to allow marijuana to be grown and consumed for medicinal purposes. Since then, 13 states and the District of Columbia have followed, and others are considering it. But this year California may set a more fundamental, and global, precedent. It may become the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise, regulate and tax the consumption, production and distribution of marijuana.
Other Western countries—from Argentina to Belgium and Portugal—have liberalised their marijuana laws in recent decades. Some places, such as the Netherlands and parts of Australia, have in effect decriminalised the use of cannabis. But no country has yet gone all the way.
Several efforts are under way in California to do exactly that. One is a bill wending its way through the state legislature that would essentially treat marijuana like alcohol, making it legal for people aged 21 and over. Sponsored by Tom Ammiano, a flamboyant gay activist and assemblyman from San Francisco, it would levy a $50 excise tax on every ounce produced and a sales tax on top, then use those funds for drug education. A rival bill would de-penalise (as opposed to legalise) marijuana, so that getting caught with it would be no worse than receiving a parking ticket.
The more visible effort is a measure, Proposition 19, which will be put directly to voters on the November ballot. This so-called Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, sponsored by the founder of Oaksterdam University, would also legalise the growing, selling and smoking of marijuana for those older than 21, within certain limits. But it would leave the regulation and taxation entirely up to counties and cities. These could choose to ban the business or to tax it at whatever rate they pleased.
This burst of activity may yet come to nothing, however. California has deeply conservative parts, and Proposition 19 has mobilised them. George Runner, a Republican state senator, calls legalisation a “reprehensible” idea. He fears that “once again California would be the great experiment for the rest of the world at the expense of public safety, community health and common sense.”

Voters, meanwhile, seem split. One poll has Proposition 19 winning narrowly, another shows a small plurality against it (see chart). To nobody’s surprise, voters in the liberal counties round San Rafael, Oaksterdam and San Francisco clamour for legalisation while those in the inland counties abhor it.
Perhaps more surprisingly, most blacks and Latinos are also against it. And yet blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at twice, three times or even four times the rate of whites in every major county of California, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a lobby that wants to end America’s war on drugs. This seems especially unfair, because young blacks actually smoke marijuana less than young whites. Alice Huffman, the leader in California of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, America’s most influential civil-rights lobby, is for legalisation because she considers the existing laws “the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African-Americans”.
The debate tends to lose focus as it gains heat, because nobody quite knows what legalisation would lead to. So the RAND Corporation, a think-tank in Santa Monica, has bravely tried to project some effects.
One is that the price of marijuana is likely to decline by more than 80% upon legalisation. An ounce of standard marijuana in California now costs between $300 and $450. The retail cost to consumers would depend, in the case of Proposition 19, on the taxes applied by counties, which are unknown as yet. Even so, weed seems likely to become cheaper.
This suggests that consumption will increase, but it is unclear by how much, according to the Rand study. That is because nobody knows what effect price changes, not to mention more fundamental shifts in attitude and culture, will have on the demand for marijuana. Today, 7% of Californians report using marijuana in the past month, compared with 6% in the rest of the country. That rate might go up. Or it might not: Californians also smoke less than other Americans and do more yoga, all of which is legal.
Another big topic in a state with a $19 billion budget hole is the fiscal impact of legalisation. Some studies have estimated savings of nearly $1.9 billion as people are no longer arrested and imprisoned because of marijuana. RAND thinks these savings are probably smaller, about $300m. As for revenues, California’s government estimates that the excise and sales taxes of the Ammiano bill would bring in about $1.4 billion a year. Rand thinks the figure could be higher or lower, especially if Proposition 19 prevails, since it leaves tax rates yet to be decided.
Nothing, in short, is certain, especially because legalisation would clash against federal laws and international treaties. The Obama administration has hinted at discretion, but in theory federal prosecutors could undo any state law by continuing to prosecute individual Californians over marijuana, or by suing the state. And Congress could withhold federal money, as it did in 1984 from states that resisted raising the drinking age to 21.
But Californians and others may also decide that the issue is primarily one of individual freedom, or at least the ending of an era of cruel hypocrisy. Why burden the lives of so many adolescents, especially black men, with permanent criminal records? They only did what even past and current presidents have admitted to, whether they inhaled or not.
http://www.economist.com/node/16591136?story_id=16591136&fsrc=rss

(NaturalNews) A study released by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has found that high omega-3 consumption helps to prevent colon cancer. Dr. Sangmi Kim and her team discovered what many other studies have already found, mainly that omega-3s are anti-inflammatory cancer fighters.
The research team compared groups of people who consumed varying levels of omega-3s and found that those in the top fourth bracket of omega-3 consumption had half the risk of developing colon cancer when compared to those in the bottom fourth.
The team also found that high intake of omega-6s compared to omega-3s indicates an increased risk of developing colon cancer. That is why many health experts recommend consuming a proper balance of omega-3s and omega-6s, with an ideal ratio of about 1:1.
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the typical Western diet is composed of an omega-6/omega-3 ratio of more than 15:1. Excessive omega-6 consumption contributes to a host of today’s modern diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders and inflammation.
High consumption of omega-3s will help to suppress the onset of these diseases and improve overall health.
The only problem is that foods containing high levels of omega-3s are much less prevalent than foods containing high levels of omega-6s. Common refined oils like soybean and canola are high in omega-6s compared to omega-3s. These oils are also highly processed.
According to one report, roughly 20 percent of the calories consumed in an average American diet come from refined soybean oil.
Both omega-3s and omega-6s are healthy, but too much omega-6s without enough omega-3s can be harmful to health. For this reason, it is important to make sure you are getting the proper ratio, which ultimately means eating the right foods and supplementing if necessary.
Fish, cod liver and salmon oils are all rich sources of omega-3s and are great for dietary supplementation. Vegetarian sources of omega-3s include hemp and linseed, also known as flax, oils.
Good food sources that contain beneficial ratios of omega-6s/omega-3s include wild, cold water oily fish like salmon, hemp seeds, grass-fed, pastured meats, and walnuts.
It is also best to include a variety of different fruits, vegetables, nuts and oils in your diet, and to avoid processed foods containing unhealthy oils, refined flours and sugars, and too many simple carbohydrates.
http://www.naturalnews.com/029207_omega_3s_colon_cancer.html

Teaching hospitals in New Jersey say they should hold a monopoly over marijuana distribution as the state plans to implement its medical-marijuana law, NJ.com reported July 12.
The New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals argues that secure buildings, patient connections, and solid reputation make its members ideal candidates to facilitate medical-marijuana distribution. “The program not only will make New Jersey a model for the nation in how to implement a safe and sane medical marijuana program, it could bring significant new dollars to the teaching hospitals to fund graduate medical education therein addressing New Jersey’s physician manpower shortage,” the council said.
Under the plan, medical marijuana would be grown at Rutgers University’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and allocated to 16 large teaching hospitals statewide. Patients would order the drug online and pick them up at hospital pharmacies.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2010/hospitals-vie-to-become.html

It was fun, it was loud, it was colourful and it was a huge success. But especially green it was not. In fact, by several measures, the FIFA World Cup 2010 was possibly the least eco-friendly major international sporting event ever.
Before we let the euphoria of all the excess gees generated by a job brilliantly done hurtle us towards hosting other global mega shows – the Olympics, in particular – we’d do well to honestly assess some of the environmental shortcomings of the World Cup, along with other concerns around the (mis)allocation of scarce resources, white elephant stadiums and the behaviour of bully-boy organisers like FIFA.
An authoritative study sponsored by the Norwegian government estimates that the WC2010 was responsible for producing excess greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 2.7 million tones of CO2. That may be less than a percent of our national annual emissions, but it makes for a carbon footprint twice the size of that of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and more than eight times that of the WC2006 in Germany.
The event showed up our dirty, coal-fired electricity generation industry (12.4% of emissions came from energy use in accommodation), our carbon-intensive transport infrastructure within cities and between the far-flung stadiums (19%) and, most dramatically, the fact that we are located a great distance from most of the planet’s affluent football fans (a whopping 67.4% of emissions were due to international travel).
Yes, there was talk of “green goals”, but most of these appeared to be more ad hoc afterthoughts rather than binding and substantive commitments. Planting trees, even many thousands of them, is nice, but it’s also a notoriously ineffective method for sopping up CO2. The fact that African teams wore jerseys promoting biodiversity and that those of Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands were partially made out of recycled plastic bottles amounts to little more than greenwashed corporate PR. Our stadiums, though stunningly beautiful and wonderfully accommodating, appear to incorporate disappointingly little in the way of green design.
Golden opportunity missed
Does this mean that, from an environmental perspective, we shouldn’t host major international events again? Not at all. It just means that we missed a golden opportunity in 2010 and that there is much room for improvement in the future.
It’s been estimated that it would take in the order of R200m to offset the WC2010 carbon footprint. A big sum, sure, but not an impossible one in the context of a multi-billion rand event. Imagine if that sort of money had been invested directly in greening South Africa. In a massive energy efficiency campaign, for example. Or to kick-start a home-grown renewable energy manufacturing industry. The single wind turbine that provided some green electricity to the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium was a commendable initiative, but why wasn’t this sort of thing an integral part of the plan for every stadium right from the start. The environmental benefits would have been as lasting as the wonderful footballing memories.
Around the world, new and refurbished eco-friendly sports stadiums are now being built using sustainable and recycled materials, incorporating systems that optimise energy and water savings, capture, clean and reuse waste and rainwater and generate their own electricity with renewable energy technologies. The 2012 Olympic Stadium in London, for instance, will have a façade wrapped in low-impact hemp, while the large roof of the World Games Stadium in Taiwan is covered in solar panels that power the entire facility and supply surplus electricity to the city of Kaohsiung. A stadium that doubles as a gigantic rainwater storage device and renewable energy power station between the odd fantastic sporting event stands much less of a chance of becoming a money-draining white elephant than some of our brand new arenas.
How about the 2020 Olympics then? Bring it! If we make the environment as fundamental and central a priority on the agenda as running a spectacular show to wow the planet, it’ll be even better than the World Cup.
Andreas manages Lobby Books, the independent book shop at Idasa’s Cape Town Democracy Centre.
http://www.news24.com/Columnists/AndreasSpath/Our-Cup-carbon-bootprint-20100714

The 200,000-member United Food and Commercial Workers, Western States Council, on Wednesday announced its support for Proposition 19, the initiative to legalize marijuana in California.
“The Western States Council is endorsing Proposition 19 based upon our previous support of the medical cannabis initiative, 1996’s Proposition 215,” George Landers, the council’s executive director, said in a statement. “We view Proposition 19 as an enhanced version of the previous proposition, that creates taxable revenue and produces jobs in agriculture, health care, retail and possibly textile. We further believe that the proposition will deprive narcotics traffickers of a significant source of criminal revenue.”
Ron Lind, international president of the union, and Dan Rush of its Local 5 also spoke out in favor of Proposition 19.
“The marriage of the cannabis-hemp industry and UFCW is a natural one,” said Rush. “We are an agriculture, food-processing and retail union, as is this industry.”
The council is the political arm of UFCW in several Western states. It comprises the UFCW local unions in the states it covers.
— John Hoeffel
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/union-endorses-initiative-to-control-and-tax-marijuana-in-california-.html