Garbage, sawdust and hemp may fuel your car one day

Fueling up your car may one day be as easy as cleaning out the refrigerator or taking out the trash, according to Edmunds.com.
Here’s a list of some of the innovations in alternative fuels being researched:
Garbage: Waste Management Inc. is liquefying and purifying landfill gas to fuel trucks, so the method is already in use. Producing liquid gas reduces emissions — and the stink.
Soybeans and animal fats: Soybeans, vegetable oil and animal fats can be used to make clean, nontoxic diesel fuel. Diesel engines need few or no modifications to accommodate this biodiesel fuel.
Sawdust: The lumber industry generates thousands of tons of sawdust each year. An add-on wood “gasifier” allows the dust to fuel the automobile.
Corn: E85 flex-fuel engine vehicles run on E85 ethanol, most, if not all, of which is derived from corn. Right now, E85 is slightly less potent and more expensive, but it has potential. Many consider corn ethanol to be environmentally harmful, however, which is an obvious obstacle in the way of becoming more mainstream.
Hemp: Fermented oils of hemp seeds or stalks can be used to create a biodiesel fuel that is both cheap and efficient. The plant can also be fermented to make ethanol.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/sc-cons-0414-autotips-20110414,0,2558229.story

Ontario judge declares criminalization of pot unconstitutional

 
By Sarah Boesveld, Postmedia News
Ontario is one step closer to the legalization of marijuana after the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.
 

Ontario is one step closer to the legalization of marijuana after the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.

Photograph by: Enrique Marcarian, Reuters

 

TORONTO — Ontario is one step closer to the legalization of marijuana after the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.
The court declared the rules that govern medical marijuana access and the prohibitions laid out in Sections 4 and 7 of the act “constitutionally invalid and of no force and effect” on Monday, effectively paving the way for legalization.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ontario+judge+declares+criminalization+unconstitutional/4604943/story.html#ixzz1JQBpBrrA

Medical defense would expunge patients caught with marijuana

By: Hayley Peterson

ANNAPOLIS — The Maryland General Assembly passed legislation that would enable people caught carrying less than an ounce of marijuana to avoid a $100 fine and misdemeanor if they prove they have a debilitating disease.
The Senate gave final approval to the measure with less than five hours to go before the end of the legislative session. The House already passed the measure.
Patients must produce a doctor’s note in court that says they were using the drugs for medical reasons, according to the bill.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/capital-land/2011/04/medical-defense-would-expunge-patients-caught-marijuana#ixzz1JHRhpsv6

Cancer patient’s message: Medical marijuana really does help

By JOE NICKELL of the Missoulian

Roger Chalmers, suffering from late-stage cancer, smokes marijuana last week in the bed where he is confined in his Ninemile Valley home. “The marijuana is by all means the only good thing that has come along to help me out,” says Chalmers. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian

 
Partway up the Ninemile Valley west of Missoula, in a house tucked in a fold of the wooded mountainside, Roger Chalmers lies in a dim, shuttered bedroom, awaiting the end.
His skin is ashen, his beard white, his face slack. A small, rectangular plastic controller rests in his lap, its attached wire snaking to a rack behind him where hangs his “pain bag” – a sack of the powerful painkiller Dilaudid, which slowly, mercifully drips into his abdomen via two tubes, damping the red-hot pain caused by the late-stage cancer that has spread from his kidney into his back, his hip, his shoulder, his bones.
But there’s still another fire in Chalmers’ belly, one that he doesn’t hesitate to enunciate the moment a newspaper reporter walks into the room where he will likely die.
“I hate to see this great state fold underneath us veterans again,” he says, his voice urgent yet as soft-edged as a yawn. “Not that it’s exclusively a vets’ issue; but it’s been a touch-and-go kind of experience with the medical marijuana here in Montana. One day it’s sanctioned, one day it’s not. The country backed out from us before, and now they’re doing it again. I’d like to see our state get behind the issue like it cares; because marijuana is truly the only thing that has really helped me get through.”
Thirteen months ago, at the very time when concerns over the exploding growth of the medical marijuana industry were becoming a hot-button political issue in Montana, Chalmers was diagnosed with renal carcinoma. By then, the disease was in its so-called fourth stage – the most advanced stage before death.
Ten chemotherapy treatments later, Chalmers has reached the end of his treatment options. He won’t get better.
*****
He only hopes to live out his remaining days in relative comfort in the “little dream castle” he shares with his wife, Ada Marie, and an assortment of affectionate pets.
About 140 miles east of here, Montana’s state legislators are gathered in Helena, considering bills that would either repeal the voter-approved law that legalizes the medical use of marijuana, or severely curtail the industry that has sprung up to serve Montana’s 28,000 registered medical marijuana users.
While that game of political football plays out, Chalmers can’t even make it to the sidelines. His strength sapped, he hasn’t walked in a month.
Yet, if voters who passed the medical marijuana initiative in 2004 had any mascot in mind when they cast their ballots, it was surely someone like Roger Chalmers, a man who served his country dutifully for 10 years, who has no interest in getting high but rather just wants to peer through the veil of pain and sleep through the night a little while longer.
“The marijuana is by all means the only good thing that has come along to help me out,” he says. “It puts the lights out at night for me where this other drug (Dilaudid), we’re still struggling with it. Marijuana helped me get my appetite back.
“I’m out after this stage,” he says, his eyes scanning slowly, blankly, back and forth. “It’s taking me apart piece by piece. It’s terrible to have to point out how do you hurt, where do you hurt, are you hurting today? The constant answer is, ‘yes,’ I hurt. And in knowing that things are going to be turned upside down, it just makes it worse.”
Even before he was diagnosed with cancer, Chalmers was no stranger to the medical benefits of marijuana. That’s because, for decades now, he was no stranger to the chronic maladies that are most effectively treated with medical marijuana.
It all started for him back in the early 1970s, when he was still in the Air Force, serving as a weapons control officer in Korea during the Vietnam War.
“I was out working on the runway, and they issued us flight frames – these partially dark glasses,” he recalls. “When I put those on, I could tell right away there was something going on with the light and being relieved of it. After that, I couldn’t not be in sunglasses.”
*****
After consulting with doctors, Chalmers was diagnosed with glaucoma, a disease that causes painfully high fluid pressure in the eyeballs. Untreated, glaucoma can eventually lead to blindness.
Shortly after his diagnosis, Chalmers met with a base doctor who quietly suggested he try marijuana to relieve the pressure in his eyes.
“At first I was like, you’re shitting me,” he recalls. “So one day, I came in for an eye pressure reading and he took me home to his house for a quick lunch and we smoked. When I went there, the pressures in my eyes were 11 and 13. When he took the pressures after, they were like three and five. I was like, wow, that’ll save my sight. So I started using marijuana right there.”
Despite receiving some relief by using marijuana, Chalmers’ eyesight slowly deteriorated over the years. After his 10-year stint in the military, his disability left him unable to work a regular job. He made his way for some time as a guitarist.
He met Ada Marie in the winter of 1980, while living with his brother in Polson. She was the keyboardist in a band called Country Gold, and was looking for a second guitarist.
“Word got around that there was this good guitar player in town, so I chased him down and we started working together,” she recalls with a sweet smile. “Been together ever since.”
As the years went on, Roger began to suffer from another painful malady, gout. It, too, responded well to treatment with marijuana.
To be sure, he tried the prescribed treatments from doctors – ocular drops for the glaucoma; other medicines for the gout. Only the marijuana helped.
“The marijuana has saved my sight, without a doubt,” he says. “I wouldn’t have as much sight as I do now. The ocular drops, they didn’t seem to do anything. They were willing to try all these other weird drugs on me; why wouldn’t they be willing to try the marijuana?
“With having all those things and then the cancer, it fits like a T – the classical definition of the medical marijuana use,” he continues. “It’s kind of hard to believe one person could have all these things. It’s shocking to me.”
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Cannabis could be used to treat epilepsy

Cannabis plants are being grown at a secret facility in the south of England in the hope of producing a new treatment for epilepsy.
Ben Whalley, middle, with Dr Gary Stephens and Dr Claire Williams of Reading University at the secret cannabis farm Photo: GEOFF PUGH

Richard Gray

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Researchers at the University of Reading have discovered that three compounds found in cannabis leaves can help to reduce and control seizures in epilepsy.

They are now using extracts from the plants grown in huge industrial-sized greenhouses in the south of England to develop new drugs that could ease the misery of millions of epilepsy sufferers around the world. In the UK alone there are more than 500,000 people who suffer from epilepsy.
Read complete article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8440303/Cannabis-could-be-used-to-treat-epilepsy.html

Marijuana expo at University of Phoenix Stadium

The Green Relief Medical Marijuana Convention and Expo will be held April 14 through 16 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. The Green Relief Expo will provide a comprehensive view of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Industry and feature workshops, panels and speakers that include doctors, lawyers and law enforcement personnel. Attendees will include patients, caregivers, those who are hoping to operate a medical marijuana dispensary, as well as the companies that will supply the industry and concerned Arizona business owners who will be impacted by the new law.
Read complete article here:
http://www.glendalestar.com/news/headlines/article_1cb2dfce-6059-11e0-a89d-001cc4c03286.html

Ziggy Marley to release his first graphic novel; Marijuana Man

by Diana Davis
Ziggy Marley has put down the mic and picked up a pen, the musician is set to release his first graphic novel later this month.
Marley made an appearance at WonderCon to introduce his upcoming graphic novel, ‘Marijuana Man.’ The aptly titled comic will drop on 4/20. As we already know, the man believes in the power of hemp and ‘Marijuana Man’ showcases this belief. Marley says he, ‘created the character and created the story around the character. His name, where he comes from, what he’s fighting against.’ Once the treatments were made, Marley entrusted his hero to writer Joe Casey and illustrator Jim Manhood. When asked if his original vision came to life Marley exclaimed, ‘Yeah, man. With Jim and Joe’s vision into it, it really came out great.’
Read complete article here:
http://www.examiner.com/events-in-san-francisco/ziggy-marley-to-release-his-first-graphic-novel-marijuana-man

Panel voices high hopes for hemp

By Andrew Giambrone
If Gov. Dannel Malloy gets his way, possessing under one ounce of marijuana will no longer be a crime in the state of Connecticut.
At a conversation sponsored by the Yale College Democrats Monday night in the Branford Common Room, four panelists involved in government and the law discussed the decriminalization of marijuana before an audience of 20 students. Though they agreed that bills currently under consideration would save money for the government and reduce the number of prisoners statewide, each of the speakers said that concerns about appearing to publicly endorse marijuana use might impede decriminalization.
“The laws will only change when public opinion changes,” said Mike Lawlor, Connecticut’s undersecretary of criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy Management. “The sad thing is that we spend more money running prisons than we do public colleges.”
Read complete article here:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/mar/29/panel-voices-high-hopes-for-hemp/

ND college students boozing less, smoking more pot

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – A new report says North Dakota college students are drinking less and smoking more marijuana.
The study used information gathered last year from almost 4,000 students in North Dakota’s 11 public colleges and Jamestown College in Jamestown, N.D. The numbers were compared to a similar survey done two years ago.

Study coordinator Jane Frisch said students are having fewer drinks per week and drinking less often. Almost 30 percent of students said they hadn’t had a drink in a month.
Read complete article here:
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/article_dfff8fe4-6127-11e0-81cd-001cc4c03286.html