BEVERLY HILLS – The proprietors of Harborside Health Center are on a mission to convert America to the miracles of marijuana and Discovery Channel’s Weed Wars is their calling card.
“I’ve seen what this medicine does for suffering patients,” said Steve DeAngelo, founder and executive director of Harborside. “I’m confident if the American people get to know my staff, my patients, they’re going to support our cause. People don’t really think about how many lives were lost in the labor movement.
“In my family we were taught to stand up for what we believe in, what was right,” he continued, adding that he grew up in Washington D.C. and was taken by his parents to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington to hand out sandwiches.
Harborside began in Oakland, California and now has a second location in San Jose. The clinics service 80,000 patients making it the biggest dispenser of medical marijuana in the country.
Steve DeAngelo, who wears his long brown hair in two braids, appeared at the Television Critics Association with his brother Andrew DeAngelo, Harborside’s general manager, and David Weddingdress, the clinic’s co-founder.
All three men have conditions that require medical marijuana. (Andrew DeAngelo has glaucoma, Steve DeAngelo has degenerative disc disease and Weddingdress has chronic back and knee pain.)
 
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/weed-wars-stars-are-a-217299

A study of medical marijuana users in California, conducted by The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, has found that medical marijuana users are in some ways just as stereotype would suggest: young men using marijuana for pain relief. In other ways, however, the study reached some startling conclusions, namely that medical marijuana users are less likely to use alcohol, cocaine or prescription drugs than the population as a whole.
 
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http://coloradoindependent.com/94937/its-true-medical-marijuana-users-tend-to-be-young-males

 
 
Melbourne, Australia–(ENEWSPF)–July 29, 2011.  The consumption of cannabis, even long-term, poses few adverse effects on cognitive performance, according to clinical trial datato be published in the scientific journal Addiction.
Investigators at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University, Center for Mental Health Research assessed the impact of cannabis use on various measures of memory and intelligence in over 2,000 self-identified marijuana consumers and non-users over an eight-year period. Among cannabis consumers, subjects were grouped into the following categories: ‘heavy’ (once a week or more) users, ‘light’ users, ‘former heavy’ users, ‘former light’ users, and ‘always former’ – a category that consisted of respondents who had ceased using marijuana prior to their entry into the study.
Researchers reported: “Only with respect to the immediate recall measure was there evidence of an improved performance associated with sustained abstinence from cannabis, with outcomes similar to those who had never used cannabis at the end point. On the remaining cognitive measures, after controlling for education and other characteristics, there were no significant differences associated with cannabis consumption.”
They concluded, “Therefore, the adverse impacts of cannabis use on cognitive functions either appear to be related to pre-existing factors or are reversible in this community cohort even after potentially extended periods of use.”
 
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http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/health-and-fitness/25723-long-term-marijuana-use-not-associated-with-deficits-in-cognitive-performance-study-says.html

Written by Matt Kanner
When Portsmouth resident Nancy Grossman was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma 12 years ago, she considered herself lucky. As cancers go, she had developed one of the most treatable forms. All you have to do, she said, is listen to your doctor. But that didn’t prove to be as easy as it sounds.
“The main thing was to eat, but immediately, as soon as I started chemotherapy, I lost all interest in food,” Grossman said. “But, being a child of the ’60s, I knew what to do.”
Rapidly thinning, Grossman went looking for marijuana, and it didn’t take her long to find some. Smoking the dried flowers made her cough, so she instead baked it into cookies. The drug helped alleviate her nausea and restore her appetite.
Grossman said her doctor did not recommend any alternative drugs. Had it not been for cannabis, she believes she never would have made it through chemo.
“I could not eat. I could not keep things down. I didn’t have any appetite in the first place, and I could not lose any more weight. So I self-medicated,” she said. “It got me through that whole period. I couldn’t have eaten otherwise.”
 
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http://www.wirenh.com/news-mainmenu-4/11-news-general/5121-the-cannabis-cure.html

 
On Tuesday, during their 102nd Annual Convention, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People passed a resolution calling for an end to the War on Drugs.
According to the Daily Caller, the resolution was titled “A Call to End the War on Drugs, Allocate Funding to Investigate Substance Abuse Treatment, Education, and Opportunities in Communities of Color for A Better Tomorrow.” It highlighted the fact that blacks are 13 times more likely to be in jail for drug-related crimes than whites in the country’s $40 billion per year “War.”
“We know that the war on drugs has been a complete failure because in the forty years that we’ve been waging this war, drug use and abuse has not gone down,” Robert Rooks, director of the NAACP Criminal Justice Program, said, according to DC. “The only thing we’ve accomplished is becoming the world’s largest incarcerator, sending people with mental health and addiction issues to prison, and creating a system of racial disparities that rivals Jim Crow policies of the 1960s.”
 
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http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2011/07/28/naacp-officially-opposes-war-on-drugs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=naacp-officially-opposes-war-on-drugs

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle says she has started talking to police about stopping arrests on people on minor marijuana possession charges, including Chicago new top cop Garry McCarthy.
“It’s pretty well known within the criminal justice system that the judges will dismiss those charges [involving] very modest amounts of illicit drugs,” Preckwinkle said after yesterday’s county board meeting. “I suggested to him that although the law is pretty clear that such possession is a violation of the law, that since the judges routinely and almost universally dismiss such low-level drug charges that the police might stop arresting people for this since it clogs up our jail and these people their cases will be dismissed out anyway.”
 
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http://progressillinois.com/news/content/2011/07/28/cook-county-officials-want-police-stop-arresting-small-marijuana-possession

Jenny Sugar
 

1. Flaxseed products: One tablespoon of whole flaxseeds has 2.3 grams, one tablespoon of ground flaxmeal has 1.6 grams, and one tablespoon of organic flaxseed oil has a whopping eight grams of omega-3s.
2. One tablespoon of chia seeds sprinkled on your cereal or salad provides 2.5 grams of this healthy fat.
3. Hemp products: Two tablespoons of creamy hemp seed butter offers 2.5 grams of omega-3s, and one cup of creamy Hempmilk contains 0.9 grams.
4. Cooking oils: One tablespoon of canola oil offers 0.8 grams of omega-3s, while the same amount of olive oil may not have much, 0.1 grams, but if you cook with it often, the omega-3s will add up.

Keep reading to see the other vegan sources.
 
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http://www.fitsugar.com/Vegan-Sources-Omega-3s-18458376

by Tom Henderson

Credit: AP

Just because the folks next door are drug dealers doesn’t mean they’re bad parents.
In fact, researchers at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children say the children of couples who operate marijuana grow rooms are often extremely healthy, physically and emotionally. And they rarely use illegal drugs.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports researchers question whether parents caught growing marijuana should automatically lose custody of their children.
“After examining 75 of the kids over several years, we came to very clear conclusions that a vast majority of these kids are doing well — well fed, well kept, doing well in school and developing well,” lead researcher Gideon Koren of the University of Toronto tells the CBC. “Taking a small child from his or her parents in a well-adapted environment causes fear, anxiety, confusion and sadness.”
 
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http://www.parentdish.com/2011/07/27/the-kids-are-all-right-even-if-their-parents-grow-pot/

By Jonathan Walczak
 
 
It’s intended to help animals manage chronic pain, but you may be tempted to slip it on Fido when he gets a little too rambunctious.
 
A Seattle company is developing a medical marijuana patch for humans and animals, and intends to press for a change in state law that would allow veterinarians to prescribe medical pot for pets, something that isn’t currently allowed.

Jim Alekson, a spokesman for Medical Marijuana Delivery Systems, said in an e-mail that the company is in the process of perfecting the patch. “It is our intention, once the patch delivery system is perfected, to approach states for approval to use the patch for veterinary use,” he said.
MMDS, which will market its product under the name Tetracan, announced in February that it had acquired the patent for the patch, which was developed in 2000 by Walter Cristobal, a member of the Santa Ana Pueblo Tribe of New Mexico.
“In the 1990s, while seeking to alleviate his mother’s arthritis pain, Cristobal started developing a topical solution that could deliver the therapeutic benefits of marijuana through the skin,” writes Culture Magazine, which describes itself as the “#1 medical marijuana lifestyle magazine. Cristobal received a patent in 2000.
 
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http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/07/coming_soon_a_medical_pot_patc.php

By Steve Elliott of Toke of the Town
 
A marijuana component helps mitigate cocaine addiction in mice, according to a new study, lending further evidence to the notion that marijuana is an “exit” drug and could become the next big anti-addiction therapy.
The discovery by researchers in China and Maryland was announced in the July 2011 issue of Nature Neuroscience magazine, reports Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story.
Cannabidiol (CBD), a medically useful component of marijuana that does not produce a “high,” effectively turns down a receptor in the brain that is stimulated by cocaine, the study found.
Scientists used a synthetic version of cannabidiol, called JWH-133, to see how mice given regular doses of cocaine might respond. The found the mice dramatically reduced their intravenous cocaine intake — by up to 60 percent — after being given JWH-133.
“It’s a very significant reduction,” said Zheng-Xiong Xi, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), reports Maia Szalavitz at Time.
“It’s extremely exciting,” said Antonello Bonci, scientific director for intramural research at NIDA.
 
 
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http://www.theweedblog.com/new-study-shows-marijuana-derivative-fights-cocaine-addiction-in-mice/