Medical Marijuana News
Over 20 Cities Will Vote Whether to Depenalize Marijuana This Fall
Over 20 Cities Will Vote Whether to Decrim Pot This Fall
AlterNet / By Paul Armentano
In Michigan, voters in over a dozen municipalities, including Saginaw (population 51,000), East Lansing (population 49,000), Port Huron (population 30,000) and Oak Park (population 29,000), will decide on local measures to eliminate citywide penalties that prohibit the possession, transfer or use of cannabis on private property by adults for non-medical purposes. Voters in another Michigan city, Utica (population 5,000), will also decide on separate language seeking to deprioritize the enforcement of minor marijuana offenses by local police.
All of the measures are sponsored by the Safer Michigan Coalition and are part of the group’s long-term strategy to incrementally change the state’s marijuana laws, city by city, if necessary. In past years, voters in several of the state’s largest cities, including Detroit (population 700,00), Grand Rapids (population 191,000) and Lansing (population 114,000) enacted similar… Continue reading
NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA HAS: FIVE QUESTIONS FOR JOHN MORGAN
Bringing the MMJ Vote to Florida
By MARGIE MENZEL
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, August 20, 2014……….
Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan is spearheading a move to pass a constitutional amendment that would legalize medical marijuana in the state, putting millions of dollars of his own money and his considerable public-speaking skills behind it. He’s also backing an employee of his law firm — former Gov. Charlie Crist — in a bid to unseat Gov. Rick Scott in November.
Meanwhile, Morgan continues to expand the law firm he founded in 1988, taking the slogan “for the people” and vowing never to take a case representing an insurance carrier or a large company. Morgan and Morgan has 26 offices and 260 lawyers; its founder has made a fortune in personal-injury litigation and written a book on how he did it.
Morgan graduated from the University of Florida, where… Continue reading
Marijuana Use Lowers Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
Pot lowers intimate partner violence.
Moderation analyses demonstrated that couples in which both spouses used marijuana frequently reported the least frequent IPV perpetration.
These findings are similar to those of a separate 2014 paper I previously summarized here:
Find the abstract of this latest paper, paid for by NIDA, below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25134048
Psychol Addict Behav. 2014 Aug 18. [Epub ahead of print]
Couples’ Marijuana Use Is Inversely Related to Their Intimate Partner Violence Over the First 9 Years of Marriage
Smith PH, Homish GG, Collins RL, Giovino GA, White HR, Leonard KE.
Abstract
Research on the association between marijuana use and intimate partner violence (IPV) has generated inconsistent findings, and has been primarily based on cross-sectional data. We examined whether husbands’ and wives’ marijuana use predicted both husbands’ and wives’ IPV perpetration over the first 9 years of marriage (Wave 1, n = 634 couples). We also examined moderation by… Continue reading
Drug Warriors Try but Fail to Show That Marijuana Legalization Has Been a Disaster in Colorado
A budtender at the Medicine Man in Denver
Jacob Sullum|Aug. 15, 2014 3:17 pm
A new report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA) gathers together all the horrible things that have happened in Colorado since the state began loosening its marijuana laws in 2001. The result falls short of the terrifying effect the authors presumably were hoping to achieve.
The introduction presents the report as an objective attempt to “document the impact of the legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use in Colorado,” with an eye toward informing the “ongoing debate in this country concerning the impact of legalizing marijuana.” Given the provenance of the report (a government agency that would not exist without drug prohibition), readers may be skeptical of this just-the-facts pose. It becomes increasingly risible as you wade through the document, which considers only bad effects of legalization, down to the uniformly… Continue reading
United For Care Bus in Florida
What a great way to advertise the upcoming election in Florida. It will be the first southern state for medical! This election in November will make great strides toward removing cannabis prohibition.
Vote Yes On Medical Marijuana
Medical pot cookie prohibition ruled unconstitutional
Owen Smith was caught baking more than 200 pot cookies for the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club in 2009.
Court challenge stems from B.C. case of Owen Smith, who was charged with trafficking for baking pot cookies
Posted: Aug 14, 2014 10:42 AM PT Last Updated: Aug 14, 2014 10:43 AM PT
It’s unconstitutional to forbid licensed medical marijuana users from possessing pot-laced products such as cookies or body creams, a B.C. Court of Appeal judge rules.
Parliament has been told to recraft the Controlled Drugs and Substance Act to allow medicinal marijuana users to use products made from cannabis extract. They can include creams, salves, oils, brownies, cakes, cookies and chocolate bars.
The court challenge stems from the case of Owen Smith, who was charged with trafficking for baking pot cookies and producing topical cannabis creams for a medical marijuana club in Victoria… Continue reading
Does Marijuana Harm the Brain?
Does Marijuana Harm the Brain?
Aug 14, 2014 | By Simon Makin
The Claim
Casual cannabis use harms young people’s brains.
The Facts
A study found differences in the brains of users and nonusers, but it did not establish that marijuana use caused the variations or that they had any functional significance.
The Details
Researchers at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School conducted MRI scans of two groups of 20 young adults ages 18 to 25. One group reported using marijuana at least once a week, smoking 11 joints a week on average, whereas the other had used it less than five times total and not at all during the last year. Neither group had any psychiatric disorders, and the users were psychiatrically assessed as not dependent on the drug.
The study focused on two brain regions involved in processing rewards, the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. These areas create… Continue reading
