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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Itai Danovitch is an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is a member of the California Society of Addiction Medicine’s Committee on Public Policy. His guest column on Proposition 19 appears in the Los Angeles Times. ============== In the debate on legalizing marijuana, which Californians will vote on in November in the form of Proposition 19, the health risks of marijuana are often overlooked. Legalizing marijuana will almost certainly lead to a decrease in its price and an increase in its use, according to a recent Rand Corp. study. [...]
Jul 082010
Nearly three decades ago, Thomas Coy, a teenager diagnosed with AIDS, figured he was looking at a death sentence. Over the ensuing years, he braved homelessness, despair and at least four occasions when severe illness had him thinking he was soon to gasp his last breath. But for the past five years, Coy, 45, has been working as a paid employee and an AIDS/HIV counselor for the Capitol Wellness Center, a marijuana dispensary with two locations in Sacramento, Peter Hecht writes in the Sac Bee’s “Weed Wars” blog. Five years ago, Coy also told the [...]
Being young involves quite a bit of exciting change. There’s the end of high-school, the start of college and some measure of independence, and a whole slew of new experiences. A recent study conducted by Judith Brooks at NYU School of Medicine has revealed that one of those experiences, smoking marijuana (weed) may be associated with more relationship conflict later in life, Adi Jaffe writes in his Psychology Today blog. What’s amazing about this study is that the drug use here occurred earlier in life for most of the 534 participants, while the relationship trouble [...]
Sitting behind a glass case on the counter of Less Smoke Shop on Eureka Way in Redding is a marijuana alternative that is potent, won’t show up on drug tests and is perfectly legal. It’s called Black Mamba. Sold in round, quarter-ounce, clear plastic containers, the substance looks similar to the dried herbs Aunt Molly would stir into her spaghetti sauce, Amanda Winters reports in the Redding Record-Searchlight. But officials say the herbal blend has the power to increase blood pressure, cause paranoia, agitation, hallucinations and get users very, very high. In the Midwest, where [...]
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