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 [...]
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 [...]
Evan Wood, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, is the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. His Prop. 19 commentary appears in the Los Angeles Times. ========== People on both sides of the marijuana legalization debate have strong feelings about Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that promises to regulate, control and tax cannabis. But science and empirical research have been given short shrift in the discussion. That’s unfortunate, because the U.S. government has actually funded excellent research on the subject, and it suggests that [...]
Oct 122010
A new Rand Corporation study disputes claims by proponents of California’s Proposition 19 initiative that widely legalizing marijuana in the state will cripple Mexican drug cartels. The Rand report, released this morning, said the ballot measure will have little impact on drug trafficking from Mexico — unless Proposition 19 results in California pot growers smuggling huge quantities of home-grown Golden State weed across the United States. The report said legalizing marijuana beyond currently legal medical use in California would, at best, put a 2 to 4 percent dent in the revenues of Mexican drug cartels, [...]
This commentary was written by Gil Kerlikowske, John Walters, Barry McCaffrey, Lee Brown, Bob Martinez and William Bennett, directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. It appears here in the Los Angeles Times. Californians will face an important decision in November when they vote on whether to legalize marijuana. Proponents of Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, rely on two main arguments: that legalizing and taxing marijuana would generate much-needed revenue, and [...]
Aug 232010
Dr. Timmen Cermak, president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine, wrote this guest opinion column for the San Francisco Chronicle. For more information on the scientific evidence behind cannabis, visit the California Society of Addiction Medicine’s website. ========== Like so many political debates in our society, the argument over Proposition 19, the initiative to legalize marijuana in California, is portrayed as good vs. evil, black vs. white, us vs. them — while nobody is looking objectively at the medical science of marijuana. If research does enter the debate, each side touts the scientific bits [...]
Bud’s note: I’m hoping this fine Sunday feature story by Sacramento Bee reporter Peter Hecht is a sign of things to come. Weed has gone mainstream in California, as Hecht explores in detail below, but it hasn’t when it comes to the mainstream media. Apart from Hecht’s “Weed Wars” blog and John Hoeffel’s reporting in the Los Angeles Times, most daily newspapers seem content to cover CAMP busts and dispensary ordinances. Let’s hope they step it up, perhaps after Labor Day. ================= John Wade, 43, a San Francisco commercial lighting specialist, takes a quick hit [...]
Mendocino and Humboldt counties, California’s two most renowned pot-cultivation regions, are among the top counties in per capita arrests for marijuana. And despite a softening of social attitudes towards marijuana, California law enforcement officials arrested 78,514 people statewide for pot offenses in 2008, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.” Those are some of the conclusions that can be reached from an analysis of 2008 arrest data from the California Department of Justice — and statewide interactive mapping by Philip Reese of The Sacramento Bee. In 2008, the last full year for which figures are available, [...]
Reading is cool; interacting is better