That ‘Bama Weed: Looking for Relief in the Deep South

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

For the fourth time in as many days, I steer up the steep, dusty driveway and see the same surly hounds, with ribs protruding and a dangerous glint in their eyes. I close the car door and walk briskly to the front of the house in the 100-degree heat, hoping I don’t get nipped on the heels again, as I did yesterday.  
When Kevin (not his real name) answers the door with a smile on his face, I know he must have good news. Yes, he saw “the guy,” and yes, he was able to hook me up.

I’m not buying illicit narcotics–at least not by my definition, since I’m not looking for hard drugs like meth, coke, or heroin. I’m just trying to find some of the herbal medication recommended by my doctor back in Washington–which always seems to work, but isn’t recognized as medicine here in Alabama, where I’m visiting family. 
After years of becoming accustomed to getting my legal medicinal cannabis from dispensaries in Washington, it feels faintly ridiculous to revert to the black market. But nausea and pain from hepatitis C are strong motivators, which get stronger every day unless I use cannabis. Dignity semi-intact, here I am looking for the remedy.

100_0212 tight bud crop.jpg
These young sativa buds were harvested a good three weeks before their peak.

​There’s only one no-name strain to pick from, but at least it’s not the brick Mexican schwag. The cannabis is $110 an ounce. That’s less than half the typical dispensary price in Seattle, but it’s also about half the quality too.

By the look of them, the buds appear to be a young sativa, harvested a good three weeks before their peak. As such, they provide a clear-headed, if muted, effect, and thankfully relieve the nausea, although only after I smoke almost an entire joint.
Read complete article here:

US professor who faked Pfizer drug research is jailed for 6 months

Sentence for influential anaesthesia professor after 12 years of bogus research

Scott S Reuben, the influential Massachusetts anaesthesia professor, who pleaded guilty in February this year to health care fraud after it was discovered that he had been faking research for pharmaceutical companies for 12 years, was sentenced this week to six months in jail plus three years supervised release.
Having received many thousands of dollars in research grants, the former chief of the acute pain unit at Baystate Medical Center published his ‘findings’ in scientific journals such as ‘Anesthesia & Analgesia’. Yet his ‘work’ on post-operative pain management using highly controversial pharmaceutical drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex had never actually been carried out.
Read complete article here:
http://www.anh-europe.org/news/us-professor-who-faked-pfizer-drug-research-is-jailed-for-6-months

Chief Apologises For Caning Teacher for Smoking Pot

Aggrieved teachers of Ejisu Besease School in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality of the Ashanti Region have returned to the classrooms after staying out in solidarity with one of their colleagues who was allegedly flogged by the chief of the town.
Their decision to go back to the classroom follows an unqualified apology rendered by the Paramount Chief of Ejisu over the issue.
Teachers in the municipality unanimously decided to boycott classes on Monday June 27 to protest the physical abuse of their colleague by the local chief.
Francis Kattah was subjected to 25 lashes by the chief of the town in the presence of his son and some students for allegedly smoking Indian hemp in public. One of the teachers who participated in the protest, Alexander Amankwa-Adjei told Citi news they are still expecting the local chief to apologise.
Read complete article at:
http://news.peacefmonline.com/education/201106/53012.php

U.S. v.Steele Smith – First Federal Marijuana Case Allowing Medical Defense

Steele Smith is the central figure in what could be the most significant Federal Marijuana case in US history, the first allowing a medical defense based on State law.
A Medical Marijuana patient and his wife face ten years in Federal prison in a fight to uphold the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, States’ rights allowing safe, legal access to medical marijuana.
The story of a patient diagnosed with a rare disease, embroiled in a fight for his life and the rights of medical marijuana patients nationwide.
The following is a timeline of events that led to Orange County residents Steele and Theresa Smith’s battle with the federal government over medical marijuana:
Theresa and Steele Smith Summer 2001: Steele Smith – husband, entrepreneur and owner of an Orange County marketing company for 14 years — suddenly doubles over with excruciating pain and finds himself in an emergency room. It’s his first of several such visits over the next four months. Each time, emergency room doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong, so they prescribe him pain meds. Steele loses 40 pounds. Finally, a rare-diseases doctor orders an invasive scope that finds 11 ulcers in Steele’s duodenum – between the stomach and upper intestines.
The disease is called Zollinger-Ellison (Z-E) – it’s so rare that the doctor, who’d practiced for over 50 years – shakes Mr. Smith’s hand and says he’s the doctor’s first patient ever to have the condition. Steele is prescribed high levels of the newest and strongest acid-reducer known as Protonix. Due to the gut-wrenching pain, the doctor further prescribes high doses of morphine and sends him to a ‘pain’ doctor for a follow-up morphine regimen.
Mid-2004: Steele and his wife, Theresa, begin to realize that Steele has become terribly addicted to morphine. Following research on the internet and many phone calls, the couple decides to rapid-detox Steele, a procedure that nearly kills him. He spends several days in ICU, while most patients walk out of the hospital after a day or two – not in ICU. As it turns out, he isn’t completely detoxed due to the high levels of opiates he had been ingesting – the rapid-detox failed to work. Over the next year and a half, the couple tries over and over to detox Steele on their own, but it doesn’t work. The Smiths search the Internet and discovered a new detoxification drug known as Suboxin. With the help of a certified physician, Steele begins to use Suboxin and over several weeks of this specialized drug therapy became drug-free.
Steele is still experiencing pain and nausea and, therefore, cannot function completely – nor can he eat. About his time, the couple begin to gather information about Proposition 215, Senate Bill 420 and Health & Safety Code 11362.5 – the state’s Medical Marijuana Program. Steele is given a medical-cannabis recommendation and then obtained his medicine from one of the many L.A. dispensaries. This was a second miracle drug for Steele: Medical marijuana took away his pain and nausea, enabled him to eat and to become healthy once again.
No dispensaries exist in Orange County at this time, so over the next few months and several visits to L.A. dispensaries, Steele and Theresa decide to open a small collective, California Compassionate Caregivers (C3), to assist patients. They open their home to local medical-cannabis patients and begin to grow cannabis for safe access. The next few months pass in a whirlwind as, over the next few months, OC patients seeking safe access find C3 — the patient base reaches over 1,000 by 2006.
Also at this time, officers with the Placentia Police Department pay a visit to Steele and Theresa’s apartment and seize 18 plants, patient records, 4 pounds of medical marijuana, a small amount of concentrate and $1,000 in cash — no charges are filed at that time. Steele tries on several occasions to contact the Placentia officers that had seized C3’s property, however they refused to return anything to him. He then consults an attorney and the two decided that they should file a lawsuit against the City of Placentia to return to him all that was confiscated. It seems that the city of Placentia is unhappy with the lawsuit filed and so elevate the case to a federal level. This causes Mr. Smith to lose standing in civil court.
Nov. 1, 2007: At approximately 6 a.m., federal agents raid the Smith’s two homes using paramilitary-style tactics – several officers wearing masks and dressed from head to toe in black break down the front door and hold the couple (who moments earlier were asleep in their bed) at gunpoint. A fire extinguisher is sprayed at their two dogs — one dog dies four days later. The officers then begin to destroy the home while they look for guns, drugs, or anything else that could incriminate the Smiths. The couples’ home is completely ransacked and the front door broken down, left wide open for any and all of the public to take furniture and belongings at will. At the same time, the police go to C3’s medical dispensary located a few miles away and proceed to confiscate 2 pounds of medical marijuana and a small amount of concentrate – again, leaving this door open to the public to take anything left.
Steele, Theresa and two other defendants, from the second grow-house; Alex Valentine, a 21 year old patient with Elephant-man’s syndrome and thirty surgeries by his twentieth birthday, and Dennis La Londe, a friend of a friend and homeless man that was given a bed only three weeks prior, would be incarcerated and spend most of the next year in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles – a maximum security, level-five Federal prison. The four defendants were charged with conspiracy to manufacture or grow medical marijuana and are facing ten years each in a Federal Penitentiary for said “crime”.
Theresa is released after 60 days on $200,000 bond – her dying mother’s home and two signatures, while all three of the other defendants languished in federal prison for nearly a year. After 10 months, Steele is finally released back to his wife, an electronic ankle bracelet attached to him for the next year. All four defendants currently report to federal pre-trial services officers regularly until trial.
April 2010: The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, who presides over this case, rules that the medical marijuana issue will be heard as testimony – the first time in a federal court in U.S. history. The case has been continued over a dozen times; Click here for the current trial/rally date.
For more information, please contact:
Theresa Smith
2166 W. Broadway, #100
Anaheim, CA 92804-2446
714-865-5335
theresasmith.steelescase@gmail.com
http://www.steelescase.org/

OCD Can Be Treated With Medical Marijuana (Cannabis)

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is basically an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce apprehension, fear, uneasiness or worry by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety. Unnecessary repetition of activities such as washing, cleaning, and hoarding during the day or being preoccupied with thoughts of coitus, violence, and religious ideologies as well as disgust of specific numbers are the main hints of a person suffering from OCD.
Treatment
OCD is a treatable disease. With adequate therapy and correct counseling by experienced psychiatrist and physicians, the intensity of the disease can be decreased in little time. Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder are now easily available, and fresh researches are yielding new and improved therapies that can help people with OCD and other anxiety disorders lead productive, fulfilling lives.
Some doctors even say that Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) can also help in eliminating the disease. Dr. Breen of Southern California insisted that he has been successful in treating two patients with OCD via medical Marijuana. He shared, “Today I had two patients who have been successfully treating their symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder with medical marijuana. One was a 46-year-old man whose symptoms are primarily having ‘to check things all the time.’ He explained having to walk back to his car all the time to check his door locks etc. The second was an 18-year-old male who had the compulsion to try and touch the ceiling in a room. In both cases their symptoms were disruptive to their daily lives.
Amazingly both had been using cannabis with god results to control their symptoms.”
Read complete article here:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9506003-ocd-can-be-treated-with-medical-marijuana-cannabis

Hemp House: South Africa’s Most Sustainable Home Made From An “Illegal Narcotic”


By Tafline Laylin

Because South African authorities do not distinguish between hemp and the euphoric THC-laden “dagga” plant, its benefits as a super-sustainable building material have largely gone untapped. Until now – a tireless hemp advocate, Tony Budden joined forces with Dutch architect Erwin van der Weerd from Perfect Places to build South Africa’s first seven-roomed hemp house in Noordhoek. The home is designed to showcase hemp’s incredible potential as a building material and convince the government to remove obstacles for widespread commercial development of one of the most resilient, versatile, and fast-growing carbon sinks on earth.

Read more: Hemp House: South Africa’s Most Sustainable Home Made From An “Illegal Narcotic” | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World

Cannabis plant extracts can effectively fight drug-resistant bacteria

By NORA SCHULTZ

Substances harvested from cannabis plants could soon outshine conventional antibiotics in the escalating battle against drug-resistant bacteria. The compounds, called cannabinoids, appear to be unaffected by the mechanism that superbugs like MRSA use to evade existing antibiotics. Scientists from Italy and the United Kingdom, who published their research in the Journal of Natural Products last month, say that cannabis-based creams could also be developed to treat persistent skin infections.
Cannabis has long been known to have antibacterial properties and was studied in the 1950s as a treatment for tuberculosis and other diseases. But research into using cannabis as an antibiotic has been limited by poor knowledge of the plant’s active ingredients and by the controversy surrounding its use as a recreational drug.
Now Giovanni Appendino of the Piemonte Orientale University, in Italy, and Simon Gibbons of the School of Pharmacy at the University of London, U.K., have revisited the antibiotic power of marijuana by systematically testing different cannabinoids’ ability to kill MRSA.
MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a bacterium that can cause difficult-to-treat infections since it does not respond to many antibiotics. Many healthy people carry S. aureus on their skin, but problems arise when multi-drug-resistant strains infect people with weak immune systems through an open wound. In the worst cases, the bug spreads throughout the body, causing a life-threatening infection.
To make matters worse, resistance to antibiotics is rapidly increasing, and some strains are now even immune to vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic that is normally used only as a last resort when other drugs fail.
But when Appendino, Gibbons, and their colleagues applied extracts from five major cannabinoids to bacterial cultures of six strains of MRSA, they discovered that the cannabinoids were as effective at killing the bugs as vancomycin and other antibiotics.
“The cannabinoids even showed exceptional activity against the MRSA strain that makes extra amounts of the proteins that give the bugs resistance against many antibiotics,” says Gibbons. These proteins, he explains, allow the bacteria to “hoover up unwanted things from inside the cell and spit them out again.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5787866&page=1

Brazil’s marijuana march for freedom

By Sian Herbert

Thousands took to the streets across Brazil recently in the country’s second “March for Freedom”, which saw a colourful collective of organisations protest together for the right to free speech, freedom of choice and, some, for the legalisation of marijuana. The mood was a mix of protest and celebration, in an event that marks a pivotal moment in the struggle for liberal values in Brazil.
Read complete article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/26/brazil-marijuana-march-drugs

Maine governor signs medical marijuana law

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Gov. Paul LePage has signed into law a bill that’s aimed at protecting the privacy of medical marijuana patients.
The governor signed Rep. Deb Sanderson‘s bill in his office Friday morning. The Chelsea Republican’s bill changes Maine’s medical marijuana law to ensure access and clarify and enhance law enforcement protections for patients, caregivers, doctors and dispensary employees.

Read complete article here: