Marijuana prohibition doesn’t work
The News Review:
- Marijuana prohibition doesn’t work
- FDA Turns Deaf Ear to Medical Marijuana Arguments
- Cannabis seized
- Marijuana as a medicine?
- The high life
Marijuana prohibition doesn’t work
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 23, 2006
Yet there isn’t a major politician in America who would support decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana. Many may have used it — some even inhaled — and still they want marijuana to be illegal. The folks from NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), which commissioned the Zogby poll, met at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco last week in their quixotic bid to legalize marijuana. There were the expected male pony tails and counterculture clothing, but no contraband wafted through the lobby. Marijuana activists can’t smoke even cigarettes in California hotels. NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre archly noted, “You (Californians) are great at ostracizing the tobacco user… The folks from NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), which commissioned the Zogby poll, met at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco last week in their quixotic bid to legalize marijuana. There were the expected male pony tails and counterculture clothing, but no contraband wafted through the lobby. Marijuana activists can’t smoke even cigarettes in California hotels. NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre archly noted, “You (Californians) are great at ostracizing the tobacco user. ” Implicit is his message: Let social sanction, not the heavy arm of the law, deal with marijuana abuse.
FDA Turns Deaf Ear to Medical Marijuana Arguments
Daily News Central - Apr 23, 2006
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A number of US states have passed legislation allowing marijuana use for medical purposes, but the FDA said, “These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective. ”
The statement contradicts a 1999 finding from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported that “marijuana’s active components are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea, the anorexia of AIDS wasting and other symptoms, and should be tested rigorously in clinical trials. ”
‘Isn’t a Scientific Statement’
Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, said Thursday: “If anybody needed proof that the FDA has become totally politicized, this is it. This isn’t a scientific statement; it’s a political statement. ”
Mirken said “a rabid congressional opponent of medical marijuana,” Republican Congressman Mark Souder, of Indiana, asked the FDA to make the statement… ”
A number of US states have passed legislation allowing marijuana use for medical purposes, but the FDA said, “These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective. ”
The statement contradicts a 1999 finding from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported that “marijuana’s active components are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea, the anorexia of AIDS wasting and other symptoms, and should be tested rigorously in clinical trials. ”
‘Isn’t a Scientific Statement’
Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, said Thursday: “If anybody needed proof that the FDA has become totally politicized, this is it. This isn’t a scientific statement; it’s a political statement. ”
Mirken said “a rabid congressional opponent of medical marijuana,” Republican Congressman Mark Souder, of Indiana, asked the FDA to make the statement.
Cannabis seized
Croydon Guardian - Apr 23, 2006
community_service_for_benefit_fraud. In a joint intelligence-led operation officers from Purley and Kenley safer neighbourhood teams raided an address in Old Lodge Lane, Purley, during the early hours of yesterday morning (Tuesday) just a week after the teams were launched. Officers uncovered a hydroponics factory in the property with around 40 cannabis plants in an upstairs bedroom of the house. advertisement
A 27-year-old woman was arrested and has been bailed pending further inquires. Further inquires led police to an address in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, where an amount of cannabis was recovered.
Marijuana as a medicine?
Free Market News Network - Apr 23, 2006
It beats all the drug companie's anti-depressents hands-down without any major side effect. Mis-information is so prevelant on the topic, many whom I discuss the issue with don't even know that it is little more than a plant that can be pulled right out of the ground and ingested. It is very obvious that this government would deny a dying man a cigarette, let alone something that is going to improve the quality of life for those who are terminally ill. I feel even more so for these people, just anouther example of how bearuaracy limits choice and destroys lives.
The high life
St. Petersburg Times - Apr 23, 2006
All he has left are his stories, but what stories they are, romantic and dangerous and foolish and scrambled. Lamb was one of the Steinhatchee Seven, a group of young men arrested in 1973 with 9 tons of marijuana. At the time, it was the largest marijuana bust in the country. It was bigger, Lamb said, more like 13 tons, but they'd already off-loaded some of it in Clearwater on their way up the coast. It was the first time they had used a shrimp boat to transport in bulk, and it was the last time they didn't have a clean plan for arrival. "We got busted because we didn't have an unload," he said. For two days, the crew shoveled bales onto skiffs and dumped them on an island at the river's mouth… A surf rat, he met some Californians in the mid '60s and learned about pot. He soon was selling to his friends at Boca Ciega High School and earning more money in a few days than his single mother, who waited tables, did in a couple of weeks. A few years later, Lamb and a friend he names some names in the book but guards others went to Iowa to harvest hemp from World War II-era fields and sell it at Woodstock. Others followed from Florida and soon, he said, the state was full of "funk pot. " Later Lamb spent a few months in California transporting Mexican weed to Hawaii and surfing. The money kept getting better. He said he gave some to his mother, paid off her medical bills for a cancer surgery, and took a trip to the Bahamas.