SAN FRANCISCO — A quarter-century after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first prescription drugs based on the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, additional medicines derived from or inspired by the cannabis plant itself could soon be making their way to pharmacy shelves, according to drug companies, small biotech firms and university scientists. A British company, GW Pharma, is in advanced clinical trials for the world’s first pharmaceutical developed from raw marijuana instead of synthetic equivalents — a mouth spray it hopes to market in the U.S. as a treatment for cancer pain. [...]
Drs. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden are medical directors of Sutter Downtown Integrative Medicine program. Their column on the science of medical marijuana appears in the Sacramento Bee. ====================================== This month, the California Medical Association made news when it became the first state medical association to recommend the legalization and regulation of cannabis, better known as marijuana. The CMA’s Council on Scientific and Clinical Affairs noted in its recommendations that there is an increasing body of evidence that marijuana may be useful in the treatment of a number of medical conditions, but research to determine [...]
A majority of indoor marijuana grows in Humboldt County use a substantial amount of electricity, and researchers said Tuesday that carbon emissions from such operations are harmful to the environment. Peter Lehman, with the Schatz Energy Research Center and Environmental Resources Engineering Department at Humboldt State University, gave a presentation to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors about the carbon footprint of indoor grows. He said electricity is a “very precious commodity” that isn’t being used efficiently in many grow houses, Megan Hansen reports in the Eureka Times-Standard. ”Two percent of our entire national electric [...]
California, whose initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use drew national headlines this year, is notoriously tolerant of a drug considered an evil weed in some parts of the country, the Los Angeles Times notes in this editorial. But is our lax attitude creating a school system full of Jeff Spicolis, the iconic California stoner from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”? R. Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration’s drug czar, suspects that it is. After an annual survey of teen drug use nationwide found that marijuana smoking is on the rise among eighth- through 12th-graders, Kerlikowske attributed [...]
WASHINGTON — America’s teens are using more marijuana and less alcohol, according to an annual government study of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders across the country. Some 6.1 percent of high-school seniors reported using marijuana this year, up from 5.2 percent in 2009, according to the Monitoring the Future survey released by the National Institutes of Health. Marijuana use by 10th-graders climbed from 2.8 percent to 3.3 percent, and for eighth-grade students it edged up from 1.0 percent to 1.2 percent, the Associated Press reports in the Sacramento Bee. “These high rates of marijuana use during [...]
Dr. Scott Haig is an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His Doctor’s View column on cannabis appears in Time magazine: =============== We don’t really know how many people smoke it. Some sources say 10 million Americans, others say 35 million. But a lot of people smoke pot and they don’t seem very sick. Marijuana just won’t go away. Everybody talks about it—many quite fondly. About everyone I know under 55 has smoked it. And they’re all right. A few have that pothead “oh wow” personality, but [...]
Oct 222010
Igor Grant is is director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research and a professor and executive vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. His guest commentary appears in the San Diego Union-Tribune. =========== The debate over Proposition 19 – the Nov. 2 initiative to legalize marijuana in California – proves once again that where there’s smoke, there’s ire. But lost perhaps in the overheated haze of political rhetoric and culture clash is an ongoing scientific effort to elucidate marijuana’s potential as a powerful pain killer for people with [...]
Educators are concerned that drug prevention programs in schools could lose credibility with students if voters next month approve a statewide initiative to legalize marijuana. “It’s starting to have an effect already — the kids are giving that back to us now,” said Betty Allen, who teaches drug prevention classes at the Center for Human Services in Modesto. Many of her teenage students were referred to the center after violating campus drug and alcohol policies, Ken Carlson reports in the Modesto Bee. They seem less convinced that marijuana is harmful if it is about to [...]
In 1969, Carol McDonald was 28, married and the mother of two young children, out for an evening of fun with a couple who smoked marijuana. By the end of the evening she was on her way to a 19-year addiction. “Within a few months, I was smoking every day,” said McDonald, a retired bookkeeper, now 69. “I had to smoke before going to work. If something was upsetting, I smoked over it. If there was a celebration, I smoked over it.” People like McDonald may be largely overlooked in the statewide debate over legalizing [...]
Gretchen Burns Bergman is co-founder and executive director of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing), an organization established in San Diego by parents seeking therapeutic alternatives to the War on Drugs. Her column appears in the Huffington Post. =============== Why would a respectable, responsible and caring group of parents want to legalize marijuana? Because we are fed up with the violence and the loss of lives and liberty caused by the war on drugs, which has become a war against our loved ones who use, struggle with, or are addicted to drugs, [...]
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