Marijuana can help reduce nerve pain from injuries or surgery for some people, new research reveals. A small group of patients with chronic nerve pain who smoked high potency pot said they had less pain than patients who smoked pot with less potent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), according to a new study coming out of Canada, where superior and appellate courts in Ontario have repeatedly declared marijuana laws to be of no force and effect.
Reduced pain from smoking stronger marijuana were “modest, but significant,” and helped ease the pain for people for whom “nothing else worked,” Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, told Bloomberg.
Nerve pain that doesn’t stop can be extremely challenging to treat, according to Ware, and many of the patients in the study had tried other treatments, including opioids, anticonvulsants, antidepressants and local anesthetics, but those treatments did not provide much relief for them.
The study, which involved 21 adults smoking marijuana through a pipe, has been published in the Aug. 30 Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Photo by Hendrike via Wikimedia Commons. Marijuana plant.
Another entry for the NBA police blotter: Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol for alleged marijuana possession on Sunday afternoon, the Miami Herald reports.
Haslem, 30, was originally pulled over for speeding but the trooper smelled marijuana in his Mercedes. A search of the vehicle apparently uncovered about 20 grams of pot. Both Haslem and a passenger were booked in Miami-Dade County Jail on charges related to drug possession. In addition to speeding, he was also cited for illegal window tint. Haslem was said to be released on a $9,000 bond.
In addition to possible criminal penalties if the charges stick, he may face disciplinary action from the NBA according to the Boston Herald.
Born in Miami, Haslem has played his entire NBA career with the Heat after starring at the University of Florida.
Image by Keith Allison, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license
With the national debt continuing to build, a struggling economy, and a drug war escalating at our nation’s border, it is time to legalize marijuana. That is the message of a new campaign, “Just Say Now,” which is seeking to bring an end to marijuana prohibition with ballot initiatives in 2010 and 2012.
According to CBS, the “Just Say Now” campaign is the joint effort of the group Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the progressive website FireDogLake, and the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. The campaign gets its name from Nancy Regan’s famous slogan, ‘just say no,’ which became the focus point for the government’s black and white war on drugs.
The organization is circling a petition, and urging people to get out and vote, especially in the five states, Arizona, Oregon, California, Colorado and South Dakota, that will have drug initiatives on the ballot.
The ‘Just Say Now’ campaign paints the situation as a moral problem. Saying that the government spends unneeded money on the war on drugs, police arrest a disproportionate amount of Blacks and Latinos for Marijuana crimes, and the violence at the Mexico border is largely driven by marijuana trade.
“The war on marijuana is a failure. The government wastes billions of dollars fighting drug cartels that thrive on marijuana prohibition. Thousands of people are killed, police officers lives’ are put in risk, and taxpayer dollars are wasted for nothing,” the petition reads on FireDogLake.com. “With states on the verge of legalizing marijuana, it’s time for a reality check. The federal government should drop its active opposition to marijuana legalization.”
The Huffington Post reports that legalizing marijuana is a popular idea in both the Democratic and Republican parties, as both see the potential for jobs and federal income from a highly taxable product. Is this something that we can all finally agree upon?
Marijuana farms as big as two football fields were green lighted by Oakland, California’s city council Tuesday. Four indoor marijuana farms will get permits under the new regulations, which have no limits on farm size. Proposals have been submitted for farms up to 100,000 square feet, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The vote has created outrage among small pot growers and independent farmers who fear being squeezed out of the market by big business industrial size cultivation. Opponents say that approving the large farms will undermine the grassroots economy that the medical marijuana industry is based on. (California approved medical marijuana in 1996, and since that time, pot growing has exploded in the state, bringing the multimillion dollar business above ground somewhat.) Small growers could be replaced by large corporate growers. While costs might go down, the quality and variety of pot could decrease.
But proponents say approving the larger farms will bring in more tax revenue, make it easier to enforce fire and building codes, and make the city more secure by reducing robberies. For an application to be approved, large pot growers will need to have at least $3 million of insurance, prove they have security and pay a $211,000 yearly permit fee.
Paris Hilton was arrested at the World Cup today during the Netherlands vs Brazil match. Times Live reports that Hilton was escorted from the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium for allegedly smoking marijuana.
Hilton was brought to the Mount Road Police station in St. Croix just before 8 pm. Authorities have confirmed the arrest, but they refused to comment on what Hilton was being charged for.
Hilton has since been released from the Mount Road police station.
Hilton was in South Africa with her sister Nicky to watch the World Cup. No reports of any other illegal activities have been reported.
The Daily Mail reports that Hilton has been Tweeting throughout her stay in South Africa, but hasn’t mentioned anything about her arrest. Hilton’s picture was on the cover of a local newspaper, next to her tweet, “I love the World Cup.”
Most people who want to get high think of two choices. One is to break the law. The other is to do without. “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you may find, you get what you need.”
Some people try to find a third way. That involves finding or creating a substance that gets them the high they want legally. All the drugs that are now illegal once started out as legal. Marijuana was not illegal until 1937, which means that from 1917 to 1933, alcohol was illegal and pot was not.
Now that marijuana is illegal, people are trying to find substitutes that create the high without showing up on drug tests. So they came up with synthetic marijuana, which is packaged as incense, is labeled as “not for human consumption.” It might have a warning not to operate heavy machinery on the packaging. Fake weed is also sprayed with a synthetic version of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Fake marijuana commonly sells for up to $55.00 a package, not a price one would pay for incense. Predictably with “beta version” drugs, users are running into unexpected problems. The Juneau Empire reports as follows on the problems with fake pot.
A Juneau man in his 20s was admitted Monday to Bartlett Regional Hospital with hallucinations, severe vomiting, shallow breathing and an inability to walk after smoking an incense product with friends. He was released the next day.
It appears to be the first case in Juneau requiring emergency medical treatment. Hospital officials and the Juneau Police Department had never heard of synthetic marijuana before being questioned about it by the Empire.
The “lower 49″ have heard of synthetic marijuana. Juneau Empire continues, noting as follows.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers issued a warning about the dangers of synthetic marijuana products in March, after a center in Missouri reported 40 cases involving the substance within a few months.
One researcher conducting a university study on the products’ effects told The Associated Press he had seen more than 30 cases of Missouri teenagers having hallucinations, severe agitation, elevated heart rates, vomiting, seizures and other reactions. No deaths have been reported.
The fake weed is commonly sold in “head shops” and on the internet. It need not be said that its active ingredients have not been approved by the FDA. They look like potpourri, come in foil packages or in plastic tubs with flip up lids. They have names like Red Dawn, K2 and Voodoo Spice.
Although Oregon Poison Control Center, which handles Alaska has not had any calls yet about synthetic pot, the rest of the country is indeed logging calls about the problem.
Synthetic marijuana is still legal in the US but has been banned in most of Europe and Russia. About a dozen states are debating a ban on Synthetic marijuana. It would be interesting to know what sparked the Russian and European bans of fake weed. Some American states are also debating banning Salvia, a hallucinogen grown in Mexico that is causing some problems. Banning a drug involves legally defining it, this in turn sends home chemists “back to the drawing board” to circumvent the amended and beefed up drug laws.
Beta software can crash your computer. Beta drugs strike much closer to home, affecting not your computer but your body instead. If you are the first one on your block to check out a new high, you will also likely be the first to find out its problems. Messing with your brain chemistry should not be taken lightly. It shouldn’t take your state legislature to tell you that now should it?
Yet another medical use has been found for marijuana. The British government has approved the use of Sativex, a drug made from some components of marijuana for treatment of the spasticity that accompanies multiple schlerosis. The drug is sprayed under the tongue of the patient. It is currently being used for MS sufferers who do not resond to existing treatments. GW Pharmaceuticals, the company which manufactures Sativex, has been working on developing the drug for 10 years. The drug had been in use in Canada as early as 2005 as a treatment for neuropathic pain, but its approval in Britain opens up the EU as a market for the drug. Sativex is the first marijuana derived drug to pass regulatory hurdles and to make its way into the pharmaceutical mainstream The London Telegraph reports as follows on additional uses being found for Sativex.
At the time, Dr Geoffrey Guy, chairman of GW, said: “The first six months of this year have proven the most important in GW’s history, in which we have made material progress towards Sativex’s launch in Europe and generated positive cancer pain data.”
Sativex is likely to soon make its way to continental Europe since Spain is expected to approve its use soon. Hopefully Americans suffering from MS will also enjoy the benefits of the new drug. There is no reason that drugs such as nicotine and marijuana should not be explored as sources of benefit to society. Hopefully, there will be more such discoveries as Sativex researched, tested and marketed in the future.
Federal authorities arrested Lisette Lee, a possible heir to the Samsung Electronics Fortune, along with her bodyguard and two assistants, after landing at a Columbus, Ohio airport. Lisette Lee was allegedly carrying 506 lbs of marijuana in her 13 suitcases.
Lee, who is 28 and from Beverly Hills, says that she was flying to Columbus, Ohio, to meet her boyfriend, and had no idea that she was carrying drugs.
According to CBS, police found 506 lbs of marijuana, as well as cocaine, and a ledger that showed $300,000 in profits.
The Associated Press reports that Lee was charged with conspiracy and possession of drugs with the intent to distribute, and is being held without bond.
If convicted, Lisette Lee could face up to 40 years in prison, and a 2 million dollar fine.
An Oregon worker, about to be tested for drugs at his work, informed his employer that he was using medical marijuana under Oregon’s laws permitting such use. His candor was to no avail. Neither was his permit from the State of Oregon. He was fired from his job. He appealed the termination in front of the Oregon Supreme Court and lost. Associated Press explained the ruling as follows.
“The court overturned a state Bureau of Labor and Industries decision in favor of a worker in Eugene who was fired after telling his boss he was using medical marijuana approved by his doctor before taking a drug test.
Anthony Scevers filed a discrimination claim against Emerald Steel Fabricators Inc., arguing the company failed to make a reasonable accommodation for a disability.
But the majority, in an opinion by Justice Rives Kistler, supported the company’s argument that “state law does not require an employer to accommodate an employee’s use of marijuana to treat a disabling medical condition.” It added that “the federal Controlled Substances Act prohibits the possession of marijuana without regard to whether it is used for medicinal purposes.”
There are practical problems with allowing employees to be under the influence of medical marijuana. What if they are operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery? How does the use of medical marijuana affect the worker’s fulfillment of his or her job description? Business owners and co workers have a right to be safe in the work place. Marijuana is not the only drug that raises such questions. Even antihistamines can be problematic.
There are people who should be able to relieve their chronic pain with whatever drugs work for them. We have drugs already that are illegal for recreational use but acceptable for pain relief. Perhaps marijuana could be added to such a list of drugs.
There is one very serious problem with legalizing marijuana. How do you establish which levels of it in one’s system constitute “being under the influence?” There must be a way to test for pot as well as for alcohol. Drugged drivers can be every bit as dangerous as drunk drivers.
It is quite likely that there will be corrupt doctors who will write out medical marijuana prescriptions to healthy individuals. We must be honest with ourselves about the real dangers of effectively legalizing marijuana.
I feel sorry for the worker who was let go for using medical marijuana. But his workplace has the right to establish safety standards that deal with drug use for whatever reason.
Pot legalization is not a simple matter. And we should stop treating it like it is.
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