• Cannabis & Hemp

    Juicing fresh cannabis

    Leaf introduces Dr. William Courtney and Kristen Peskuski of Cannabis International; along with the people involved in researching, promoting, regulating and benefiting from raw cannabis.

    Dr. Courtney is a physician and researcher from Mendocino, California, who gives medical marijuana approvals to qualified patients in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Kristen Peskuski is a researcher and patient who put her systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, interstitial cystitis, and numerous other conditions into remission juicing fresh cannabis.

    They help make sense of the science behind patient’s recoveries from a diverse range of medical conditions. Attorneys, physicians, law enforcement, medical care providers, patients and their families discuss their experiences with medical cannabis. They specifically focus on juicing fresh cannabis, which is non-psychoactive and contains medical properties 200-400 times stronger than traditional, heated cannabis.

    Patients have reported success with osteo and rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disorders, cancer and many other conditions using this unique therapy.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Calgary addicts no longer given crack pipes

    CBC News Aug 19, 2011

    Alberta health officials will no longer hand out free crack pipes to addicts in Calgary.

    For three years Alberta Health Services [AHS] has been quietly handing out clean crack pipes to drug users on the street through a mobile van program called Safeworks.

    Continues: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/08/19/calgary-crack-pipes-street-health.html

  • Letter of the Week

    EDITORIAL IS CLAPTRAP; DRUG LAWS BASED ON RACISM

    Re: “Drugs: Illegal for a reason,” Daily News editorial, July 21.

    What absolute claptrap! Drugs are indeed prohibited “for a reason” but to argue that drugs are banned because of the harm they do makes no sense whatsoever.

    Nearly all the harm done to users and non-users alike by illegal drugs is because the drugs are prohibited. Thousands were poisoned by adulterated booze during prohibition and thousands more are dying today because of adulterated drugs, an aspect of government policy my wife and I became well-acquainted with when our 19-year-old son, Peter, died shortly after ingesting some street heroin in 1993. Drug prohibition encourages crime, too, as was shown when Al Capone rose to power after alcohol was banned.

    Let us never forget also that drug prohibition is racist in origin. It began almost a century ago when the drugs used by certain non-white minorities ( blacks, Chinese, Mexicans ) were banned ostensibly to protect virtuous, white, Christian women from being seduced by these minorities.

    Drug laws are an ideal vehicle for social control because they can be applied in an arbitrary manner. Middle class white swingers can indulge their pleasures with impunity. Drug laws apply only to certain social groups: the poor, the coloured, the young, the unemployed, those on the street. Today, the police are happy to make use of this racist legislation to control and harass those whose lifestyle, haircut or skin colour offends them.

    The best way to reduce the harm and heartbreak of illegal drugs is to end drug prohibition. Let’s legalize all drugs, remove the propaganda and the police from the equation and have the drugs manufactured by knowledgeable, competent organizations that will supply cheap, quality tested drugs of known purity and potency and that, in order to avoid legal liability, will impart factual drug information to us and to our children.

    ALAN RANDELL

    Victoria

    Powered by MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 09 Aug 2011
    Source: Kamloops Daily News (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Kamloops Daily News
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/679
    Author: Alan Randell
    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n484/a03.html?1205

  • Events

    Seattle Hempfest

    Seattle Hempfest is held the third weekend in August each year. The next Seattle Hempfest is August 19-20-21, 2011,.

    It’s open to the public on Friday from 12 noon to 8 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm. Admission to Seattle Hempfest is free.

    The event spans three Seattle waterfront parks: Centennial Park, formerly Elliott Bay Park (North Entrance), Myrtle Edwards Park, and Olympic Sculpture Park (South Entrance).

  • Letter of the Week

    Traumatic

    Re: “Grow op kids need help,” Editorial, July 30.

    I must take issue with your editorial regarding the removal of children from homes where there is illegal marijuana being grown.

    You spoke of the authorities and the parents, but you forgot the children themselves. What impact do you think it has on a child when the police storm a home, arrest the parents and then tell the children they are being taken away to a strange place by strangers for an unknown length of time? Where are those children going to be placed? Who will be caring for them? When can they see their parents again? Can you assure them the parents still love them? How do you assure those children they have done nothing wrong and are not being punished, as you hand them over to strangers?

    To remove a child from his or her known world is one of the most frightening things one can ever do to a child. It has a far deeper traumatic impact than does parental neglect or punishment and once it happens, that emotional trauma can never be erased. These are a few of the factors your editorial neglected to consider.

    Grace Isaak

    Calgary

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2011
    Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
    Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
    Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
    Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n495/a06.html

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The War on Drugs: Doubling Down on a Bad Bet

    According to The New York Times, America’s war on drugs has entered a new phase: It’s so successful that the CIA is planning to send retired military personnel and private contractors to Mexico to bring the battle to the doorstep of the organized crime cartels. Well, that’s not quite the story. The decision to deploy mercenaries in Mexico is definitely from the Times, but the part about the success of the drug war is pure Washington spin.

    Indeed, the idea that the federal government is prepared to commit more money and more lives – and that Mexican officials are prepared to let Yanquis join the fight – is testament to desperation on both sides of the border. The war on drugs, now in its fifth decade, was never winnable. All that’s keeping it going is bureaucratic inertia, and a lot of politicians who would rather destroy civil government in Mexico than admit that it takes more than true grit to prevail.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Majority of Americans Ready to Legalize Marijuana

    As was the case last year, most respondents believe the “War on Drugs” has been a failure.

    Many Americans continue to believe that marijuana should be legalized, but are not supportive of making other drugs readily available, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

    In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,003 American adults, 55 per cent of respondents support the legalization of marijuana, while 40 per cent oppose it.

    The groups that are the most supportive of making cannabis legal in the U.S. are Democrats (63%), Independents (61%), Men (57%) and respondents aged 35-to-54 (57%).

    However, only 10 per cent of Americans support legalizing ecstasy. Smaller proportions of respondents would consent to the legalization of powder cocaine (9%), heroin (8%), methamphetamine or “crystal meth” (7%), and crack cocaine (7%).

    Across the country, 64 per cent of respondents believe America has a serious drug abuse problem that affects the entire United States, while one-in-five (20%) perceive a drug abuse problem that is confined to specific areas and people. One-in-twenty Americans (5%) think America does not have a serious drug abuse problem.

    Only nine per cent of respondents believe the “War on Drugs”—the efforts of the U.S. government to reduce the illegal drug trade—has been a success, while two thirds (67%) deem it a failure.

  • Letter of the Week

    ‘War On Drugs’ Distracts From Fighting Crime

    Re: “Legal drugs and gangs,” July 1.

    The editorial on the failed “war on drugs” is music to the ears of the criminal justice professionals who make up Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We know, from personal experience, that prohibition enriches criminal gangs and fosters criminal activity while doing nothing to reduce drug use and the attendant violence in our cities.

    Forty years of the so-called “war on drugs” in North America has actually increased the supply and potency of illegal drugs. Countries which have removed criminal penalties for drug use, such as the Netherlands and Portugal, have achieved declines in use and addiction.

    Prohibition is a threat to public safety. Making drugs illegal has created a profitable black market, and participants in the underground economy can settle their disputes only by violence. Uninvolved bystanders and police officers often pay the price.

    So many police officers and prosecutors are bogged down in drug enforcement that serious crimes go unsolved. In 1963, before the “war on drugs,” all but 15 per cent of murder cases in the U.S. were solved. Today, 40 per cent of murders never lead to a conviction, even though law enforcement now has vastly better forensic tools and technology.

    Let’s legalize drugs and bring the trade above ground where we can regulate and control it.

    John Anderson
    Chair, Criminology Department
    Vancouver Island University

    — MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

    Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jul 2011
    Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
    Copyright: 2011 Times Colonist
    Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481