NORML Daily Stash
Has the Most Common Marijuana Test Resulted in Tens of Thousands of Wrongful Convictions?
(AlterNet) As darkness approached, [Robin Rae Brown, 48,] returned to her pickup truck to find Broward County’s Deputy Sheriff Dominic Raimondi and Florida Fish and Wildlife’s Lieutenant David Bingham looking inside the cab. The two men asked what she was doing and when she said she had been bird watching, Bingham asked whether she had binoculars. As she opened her knapsack, Officer Raimondi spotted her incense and asked if he could see it. He took the bowl and incense, asking whether it was marijuana. “No,” she recalls saying. “It’s my smudge, which is a blend of sage, sweet grass, and lavender.” “Smells like marijuana to me,” said Raimondi, who admitted he had never heard of a smudge stick. He then ordered Robin to stand by her truck, while he took the incense back to his car and conducted a common field test, known as a Duquenois-Levine, or D-L, test. The result was positive for marijuana.
Exactly 90 days later, Robin was arrested at the spa in Weston, Florida where she has worked as a massage therapist for three years. She was handcuffed in front of clients and co-workers, and charged with felony possession of marijuana. She was brought to a local police precinct in the town of Davie where she was booked and held for three hours. Unable to post the $1,000 bail because she was not allowed to call her boyfriend Michael, she was transferred to the Women’s Correctional Facility in Pompano Beach. At no time was she read her rights.
Five hours after her arrest, she was finally allowed a brief phone call and left a message for Michael to post her bail. At the jail, a female officer came in and told Robin to take off all her clothes. She had already been searched at the precinct station and had her shoes, socks and bra confiscated. “I’m on my period,” she said. “I don’t care,” said the officer, who ordered her to pull her underwear down to her ankles, squat over the floor drain and cough. The following morning at 4:30 a.m. she was released onto the streets of Pompano Beach with no idea where she was.
John Kelly’s entire article on Alternet is worth a read. He shows how too many states have accepted the notion that if a police officer dips a substance into these unreliable D-L test packets and says it’s weed, well then, it’s weed, when in fact we are arresting, detaining, and imprisoning thousands based on little more than an officer’s word and pseudoscience.
Barbara Kay: More warnings about the dangers of pot
When it comes to well-meaning prohibitionists, you can’t find any better representative than Canada’s National Post columnist Barbara Kay. In her latest piece, she investigates the latest studies about “marijuana-induced psychosis” and presents them as an argument for maintaining marijuana prohibition, as she did back in 2008.
Her colleagues razzed (as did I) and asked why marijuana should remain illegal while alcohol and tobacco, which she admits is more “noxious in its effects in the general public”, are legal. Two reasons: history and economics, she argues:
The use of alcohol stretches back over the millennia as an integral part of human civilization and remains, when used properly, a prime ingredient of civilized conviviality and positive social bonding. Alcohol in moderation is not only a social lubricant, it is good for one’s health.
It’s the old Art Linkletter / Richard Nixon argument:
The transcripts show Linkletter telling Nixon, “There’s a great difference between alcohol and marijuana.”
Nixon replies: “What is it?” The president wants to know!
“When people smoke marijuana,” Linkletter explains, “they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon says. “A person does not drink to get drunk. . . . A person drinks to have fun.”
A year later, however, Linkletter changed his tune. According to the New York Times, “After much thought and study he had concluded that the drug was relatively harmless.”
Nixon and Kay are wrong, of course: plenty of people are drinking to get drunk, most particularly the young people she’s so concerned would suffer from “marijuana-induced psychosis”. According to SAMSHA, 8% of youth aged 12-17 engaged in binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row, or as I used to call it, Friday night) in the past thirty days. Twice as many (16%) teens report experiencing a blackout from alcohol use.
I’m not arguing that we prohibit responsible use of alcohol for adults in order to protect the children from irresponsible use, but that’s exactly what Kay is supporting for marijuana. Yet everything she praises about alcohol – thousands of years of human use, integral to civilization, social bonding, good for health – are praises tenfold for cannabis use.
It is rather kooky to criminally prohibit marijuana and then claim its lack of social integration is reason to keep it prohibited. It is ghoulish to support the legality of alcohol and tobacco with economic arguments, as Kay continues:
As for tobacco, if we knew hundreds of years ago what we know now about its effects – never good, only bad – I would have argued against legalizing it as well. But as with alcohol, it’s not so easy to disband an industry as huge and profitable as tobacco on the grounds that it is unhealthy. There is too much at stake economically. So we’re stuck with it.
So if a substance makes government a ton of money and creates a ton of jobs, it really doesn’t matter that it kills 400,000 North Americans a year, does it? See, if marijuana wanted Barbara Kay’s support, all the money it generates and jobs it creates would need to be legal and taxed, then she wouldn’t mind being “stuck with it”. But since marijuana’s effects are “usually good, rarely bad”, Kay sticks with her support of criminal prohibition of cannabis.
The latest studies confirm that the risk of marijuana-induced psychosis is real, and the most at-risk users are teenagers; regular teenage pot smokers seem to have double the risk of developing paranoia, hallucinations and psychotic breaks five years later.
These studies she links to are referenced in an article that features the story of Don Corbeil:
Corbeil had been smoking pot since he was 14, a habit that escalated to about 10 joints a day.
He started hearing voices and, at one point, Corbeil thought he was the Messiah. Police found him one day talking incoherently, and brought him to hospital, where he was eventually diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis.
Corbeil had dabbled in other drugs, such as acid and ecstasy. But marijuana was his mainstay.
Of course, the article does note that “who exactly is at risk remains hazy” and “the study, however, did not determine whether the drug prompted symptoms or was used to self-medicate.” It also noted “the vast majority of pot smokers will not go psychotic.” But the warnings that the small subset of young teenagers already susceptible to mental illness that smoke ten joints a day might have an increased risk of psychoses is enough for Kay to support locking adults in cages for smoking a joint at home.
According to CAMH, more than thirty percent of Onrtario’s Grade 10 students reported cannabis use in the past year. Add to that the worries about the vastly increased strength of today’s marijuana. Since the 1970s mainstream marijuana has seen a 25-fold increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s psychoactive ingredient.
“Pot 2.0! It’s Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!” Look, I’ve seen the clothes, hairstyles, and listened to the music of the 1970s… there is no way our parents’ weed was 25 times weaker than what we’re smoking now. In fact, even the article from which Kay cribs the “Ontrario” high school sophomore data knows better:
And what they’re smoking is not their hippie dad’s doobie. Growers have bred more potent pot, more than doubling the amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient, and decreasing the cannabidiol, a protective ingredient.
Eh, “doubling”, “25-fold increase”, it’s all the same to a prohibitionist.
Now if Kay were really worried about those kids and their access to pot, maybe she should explain how what we’re doing now is working when 3-in-10 Ontario sophomores have smoked it this year? According to the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, the number of tobacco smokers aged 15-19 works out to aboot 3-in-20 (14%), eh? They also find that only aboot 1-in-20 (5.6%) 15-19-year-olds have an unhealthy dependence on alcohol.
It’s not that marijuana is harmless and that’s why we should legalize it. We’ve found that prohibition of a very harmful substance, alcohol, was a worse problem than the minority of people who use it irresponsibly or unhealthily. We’ve found that strict regulation of an addictive substance, tobacco, has had remarkable success in reducing its use. So why wouldn’t we try that solution with a substance that is far less harmful and addictive than those two?
Barbara Kay tries to straddle the fence, because even she knows the truth about cannabis, but is still reluctant to give up on prohibition:
Clearly the actual statistical negatives of pot are very small. But what seems to emerge is that for a very small subset of the population, the risk for psychosis is high. One of these days it may be possible to test for that susceptibility as we do for allergies. What we know is that the health facts on marijuana use are not all in, and until researchers are as familiar with the effects of marijuana as they are with those of alcohol and tobacco, there should be no rush to make pot available in local handy stores.
We are still learning plenty about alcohol and tobacco and their effects on health and behavior. It wasn’t that long ago that “Doctors Smoke Chesterfield” ads were on our TV sets and nobody had ever heard of “fetal alcohol syndrome”. Yet discovery of tobacco and alcohol’s previously unknown health dangers never prompted Barbara Kay to pull those products from local handy stores (is that Canadian for “convenience store”?) And day after day here at NORML we report study after study that shows heretofore unknown benefits of cannabis use, like this one that shows schizophrenics who use cannabis demonstrate better cognitive functioning… the same people whose susceptibility to cannabis Kay is using to frighten us into caging adults over cannabis.
As for allergies – there are people on this continent who are deathly allergic to peanuts. Some of them are even children. For the rest of us, peanuts are nice plant product we consume for nourishment, enjoyment, and occasionally while socializing. The fact that peanuts can kill a tiny subset of people with an allergy didn’t lead us to laws banning all peanut use for adults. Instead we did the sensible thing and required confectioners, bakers, and snack food manufacturers to label their products not only if they contain peanuts, but even if their non-peanut snacks are made with equipment that has touched peanuts.
So legalize it already and slap on a warning label: “This product contains cannabinoids. Discuss cannabinoid use with your doctor. Cannabinoids should not be used by pregnant women, children, and those susceptible to psychoses or with a family history of mental illness.”
Study: Cannabis using schizophrenics have better cognitive functioning
The Impact of Cannabis Use on Cognitive Functioning in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Meta-analysis of Existing Findings and New Data in a First-Episode Sample.
Yücel M, Bora E, Lubman DI, Solowij N, Brewer WJ, Cotton SM, Conus P, Takagi MJ, Fornito A, Wood SJ, McGorry PD, Pantelis C.
Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, National Neuroscience Facility, Alan Gilbert Building, 161 Barry Street, Carlton South, Victoria 3053, Australia.
Abstract
Cannabis use is highly prevalent among people with schizophrenia, and coupled with impaired cognition, is thought to heighten the risk of illness onset. However, while heavy cannabis use has been associated with cognitive deficits in long-term users, studies among patients with schizophrenia have been contradictory.
This article consists of 2 studies. In Study I, a meta-analysis of 10 studies comprising 572 patients with established schizophrenia (with and without comorbid cannabis use) was conducted. Patients with a history of cannabis use were found to have superior neuropsychological functioning. This finding was largely driven by studies that included patients with a lifetime history of cannabis use rather than current or recent use.
In Study II, we examined the neuropsychological performance of 85 patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and 43 healthy nonusing controls. Relative to controls, FEP patients with a history of cannabis use (FEP + CANN; n = 59) displayed only selective neuropsychological impairments while those without a history (FEP – CANN; n = 26) displayed generalized deficits. When directly compared, FEP + CANN patients performed better on tests of visual memory, working memory, and executive functioning. Patients with early onset cannabis use had less neuropsychological impairment than patients with later onset use.
Together, these findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia or FEP with a history of cannabis use have superior neuropsychological functioning compared with nonusing patients. This association between better cognitive performance and cannabis use in schizophrenia may be driven by a subgroup of “neurocognitively less impaired” patients, who only developed psychosis after a relatively early initiation into cannabis use.
Stash for Thu, Jul 29, 2010
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-07-29.mp3)
Hemp Headlines- Cannabis college opening Rhode Island
- Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com finds greater support for Prop 19 by robo-polls over human pollsters
- Oregon Court of Appeals says marijuana use alone isn’t enough reason to take children from mother
Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com
- Groovin’ Thursday: Indubious – “Ganja Weed”
- Austin filmmaker Bob Ray touring the Pacific Northwest for CrashCamFilms.com
- Lynnette Shaw from Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, consultant on Prop 19, on legalization in California
Groovin’ Thursday: Indubious – “Ganja Weed”
The Marijuana Music Awards have grown over the years. And, the music that gets entered has grown also. Not to mention some of the artists themselves probably grow. No, I dont know that. But, I do know I’ve got to Judge the Marijuana Music Awards two prior years to this one and I was always impressed with the tunes I heard. The John Doe Radio Show has thrived off these tunes and in The Stash, the section of the end of our show where we highlight the best of tunes that I can find, the majority of them have been Marijuana Music Award entries.
This year was no different. Best Reggae was won by an act called Indubious. The song is called ‘Ganja Weed’. Self proclaimed West Coast Reggae Funk Pioneers, the tunes that kick out from this group are nothing less than funky. And. I quote from their band description here: “Rising up out out of the fertile soil of Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, the group of Intergalatic Reggae Revolutionaries known as Indubious come straight from the heavens above to spread the word of love and light through their epic sound.”
So enjoy this tune, and think of other places where intergalactic beings are enjoying, well… Intergalactic Reggae.
Download audio file (Indubious – Ganja Green.mp3)
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Oregon Court of Appeals rules mother who tested positive for marijuana shouldn’t lose kids
(OregonLive.com) The state cannot take children away from a mother who tests positive for marijuana use without evidence that shows her drug use endangers the children, the Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled.
DHS workers visited the home and … found that the home was clean, the children had appropriate food to eat and they appeared “happy and healthy,” the appeals court wrote in its decision. A DHS worker also had testified that the mother “appears to have appropriate parenting skills.”
[I]n reversing the decision, the appeals court said “the record lacks evidence showing that mother’s use of marijuana, her ‘chemical abuse problem’ as found by the trial court, is a condition or circumstance that poses any risk to her children. That evidence is necessary to establish jurisdiction over the children.”
Keep in mind this isn’t a mom with a medical marijuana card, but just a regular occasional cannabis consumer. We’ve reported on stories of people losing custody or having their custody severely curtailed because their medicinal marijuana use comes up in a court. Now we have case law (until and if it is appealed to the Supreme Court) that says marijuana use in and of itself is not enough to prove you are a bad parent…
…just as the millions of cannabis-consuming parents can tell you from experience. These are the good people I know who put their kids to bed and retire to the patio or garage to light up an end-of-day relaxant. They keep their stash locked up away from the kids. They are better parents than half the beer-drinking parents I know, and maybe precisely because their cannabis use allows them to de-stress and not take out a bad day at work on their kids.
Democrats make crack cocaine sentencing slightly less racist
Cocaine isn’t our bailiwick here at NORML and personally I have a no-white-powders rule. But one of the biggest glaring examples of the racism of the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs is the Crack-Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity.
It works like this: if you’re caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine, you get the same mandatory minimum as someone caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine. Crack cocaine and powder cocaine, chemically speaking, are identical with respect to addictive potential and psychoactive effect.
The difference, of course, is that crack cocaine is used by urban poor black people and powder cocaine is used by suburban affluent white people. Generally speaking.
So Congress, controlled by huge Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate, is sending a bill to the Democratic president who campaigned on eliminating the crack/powder disparity. This bill will increased the trigger of a mandatory minimum for crack from 5 grams to 28 grams (an ounce).
Meaning that instead of a 500:5 disparity for white vs. black people’s cocaine, the disparity will now only be 500:28. For the math-impaired, that means that our cocaine sentencing laws will go from being 100 times more racist to blacks to being 18 times more racist to blacks.
I suppose I should be thrilled with any adjustment to mandatory minimums, but I have suffered one too many “compromises” by a huge Democratic majority and president I voted for who promised a whole lot of things I really believe in*, only to start negotiations in the middle, compromise to the right, and call it a victory for the left. (Funny, I don’t remember George W. Bush, with a barely-GOP majority, ever being stymied in pushing through Congress anything he wanted, except privatizing Social Security. And it was a Democratic Congress under Republican President Reagan who gave us this 500:5 mandatory minimum disparity in the first place!)
Chris Weigant at HuffPo nails how me and many others are feeling about this latest victory for bi-partisanship:
In true incrementalist fashion, Democrats have now made things slightly less unfair, but fell far short of actual fairness. It’s as if, right after the Civil War, Congress announced that black people would now count as four-fifths of a person, instead of the previous three-fifths — in other words, a step towards equality, but not exactly the giant leap of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Which makes it rather hard to praise such an effort, even though it does represent (some) progress.
This is landmark legislation, I realize. Moving away from the “lock them all up” mentality, for politicians, is remarkable simply because it does not happen often (read: “ever”). Backing down on Draconian drug laws is not exactly atop the priorities list of many politicians, because the ads attacking them for doing so just about write themselves. So I do applaud Congress for addressing the issue (both houses have now passed the bill).
While Congress did not have the courage of their convictions to do so this time around, they did take a baby step in the right direction. This is momentous, because it is the first such step in this direction in three or four decades. But I still can’t help but wish that Congress had tackled the problem not in such an incrementalist political fashion, but rather as an issue of rank inequality to be rectified by removingall of the legally-codified unfairness at once — to restore the concept of equal treatment under the law, rather than perpetuating (if slightly lessening) the inherent injustice which still exists.
* For example…
Holding accountable the companies that spied on us without warrants.
Ending extraordinary rendition of prisoners for torture.
Closing Guantanamo Bay
Ending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”
Allowing Medicare to negotiate in bulk for lower drug prices.
“I won’t sign any health care reform bill without a public option.”
Ending DEA raids on legal medical marijuana states
Supporting Main Street over Wall Street.
I was just hoping for a change more meaningful than “He’s better than Bush”. Shee-it, I’M better than Bush!
NORML SHOW LIVE Coverage of New 4,000 sq ft Cannabis Café Grand Re-Opening
Ganja Jon ready to budtend at the new Cannabis Café
From New Cannabis Café
Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 4:20pm, the World Famous Oregon NORML Cannabis Café reopens at 323 SE 82nd Ave in Portland, Oregon.
We’re so thrilled to be back after a three-month hiatus trying to find a building that was suitable in size and comfort to house the popular café. We had looked at numerous buildings, including a marina, before we found this location. Personally, I’m thrilled that the new café is just a six-block walk away from RollaJay Studios.
The location was completely remodeled to be a wine and piano bar. The interior is decked out in beautiful light wood panel. The floor has both tiled and carpeted areas. The place comes with this gorgeous wicker furniture, barstools and chairs, tables and couches, and comfy little faux fireplaces for those winter months.
“Radical” Russ relaxes in the new cozy café furnitureFrom New Cannabis Café
For entertainment, the place comes with a Karaoke setup and 50″ big screen TV (no, the piano in the photo is not staying). There’s a back area outfitted with a shuffleboard table, a tournament air hockey table, a pocket (not coin operated) billiards table, and a sit-down two person table arcade machine with 30 or more of the greatest video games from the 1980’s (Frogger! Millipede! Ms. Pac-Man! Missile Command! Defender!)
There is an immaculate bar and kitchen area, with a great little alcove for a 270-degree vapor bar area and a walk-up hash bar area.
You can join us on NORML SHOW LIVE for the Grand Re-Opening. We’re also looking into hosting our Friday live shows there with a permanent remote studio to save us setup time (besides, it’s just six blocks away!)
Our entrance is where that “FOR RENT” sign is. The below-ground café is as large as this entire strip mall.
View Oregon NORML Locations in a larger map
Above the café is a little strip mall with a Mexican bakery (mmm, pastries!), a deli/lotto store (here in Oregon, we have video poker lottery, so some little places open up that are essentially just mini video casinos, but by law they have to serve food, because these gambling devices have to be just a part of a restaurant or bar), salon, and right next door is a tobacco and smoke shop. There’s even a McDonald’s across the street and some great coffeeshops and restaurants a short walking distance away on Stark St.
For more information see http://usacannabiscafe.org.
Irie Wednesay: Josh Heinrichs- “Spliff and My Lady”
In the summer of 2010, Josh Heinrichs will be releasing his highly anticipated, first full length, solo album since disbanding Jah Roots last year. The album, ‘Josh Heinrichs & Friends,’ will feature a diverse & highly talented mix from today’s current, international, reggae scene. Some of the artists collaborating in the studio with Josh are Cas Haley, members of Katchafire, Inna Vision, Ooklah The Moc, Clear Conscience, 77 Jefferson, as well as others, yet to be announced.
Josh Heinrichs founded Jah Roots in 2001, along with four musician-friends from his hometown of Springfield, MO. Over the following eight years, they released five studio albums and toured extensively throughout the USA. During this time, Heinrichs wrote a number of songs that eventually gained fantastically large on-line notoriety, and were downloaded en masse all over the world. The band’s success was recognized in the official media outlets of such locales as Guam, Hawaii and New Zealand. However, after years playing to overflowing crowds at outdoor festivals and packed mid-sized venues, the toll of non-stop touring began to take a personal toll, and Heinirchs decided to step away from the band he had taken so far, in order to devote more time to his wife and children.
Be on the look out for Josh Henrich and Friends to be released on August 24th. Today’s Toker Tune is a live version of “Spliff and My Lady from the CD “Josh Heinrichs and The Soul Riddim Band Live at Schwagstock.
You can check out more Josh Heinrichs music and his tour schedule at www.facebook.com/JoshHeinrichsReggae www.myspace.com/joshuaheinrichs and you may purchase Josh’s music on i-tunes Josh Heinrichs
Download audio file (Josh Heinrichs – Spliff And My Lady.mp3)
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
BREAKING NEWS: New Jersey Lawmakers Vote to Delay Medical Marijuana Laws Implementation
BREAKING NEWS: New Jersey Lawmakers Vote to Delay Medical Marijuana Laws Implementation
The delay was requested by Republican Gov. Chris Christie. As initially signed into law, the measure was slated to take effect in July.Lawmakers in the Assembly and Senate voted on Monday, June 28, in favor of legislation to delay the implementation of the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act.
As amended, the measure will not go into effect until October 2010. The program is not expected to be up and running until early 2011.
According to the Associated Press, “The delay allows health officials to write regulations. It also may give politicians time to consider a different model for the program.”
Gov. Christie has previously called on legislators to amend thelaw — which, as written, is already the most restrictive in the nation — so that patients would only be eligible to obtainmedical cannabis in state hospitals. The Governor has also proposed limiting the cultivation of marijuana so that it could only take place at Rutgers University. NORML opposes these amendments, which if enacted, would make New Jersey’s law totally unworkable for patients.
Please contact your lawmakers and urge them to oppose Gov. Christie’s proposed amendments to New Jersey’s medical marijuana law. For your convenience, a pre-written letter will be e-mailed to your members of the assembly and senate when you enter your contact information below.
Thank you for supporting NORML’s marijuana law reform efforts in New Jersey. For more information please visit NORML NJ or the Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey.
Stash for Wed, Jul 28, 2010
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-07-28.mp3)
Hemp Headlines- Washington DC finally enacts its medical marijuana law
- Humboldt County judge rules against local dispensary for violating zoning ordinances rarely enforced on other businesses
- Cruise passenger busted in Bermuda for a quarter ounce of cannabis
Brought to you by Johnny Reeferseed & the High Rollers
- Irie Wednesday: Josh Heinrichs – “Spliff and My Lady (live)”
- Have you seen the “What if Cannabis Cures Cancer Movie?”
- Was that Dr Mitch’s father’s first time toking?
- Why is it Asian cultures get credit for using cannabis before Native American when we have artifacts with its residues and seed pots seeds have been found that are dated before Asian use?
- Did you happen to see the 20/20 special? What were your thoughts? Do you think this will make more moms be open to cannabis medically and in society in general?
- What is the best way to cook cannabis?
- Why does cannabis smell so strongly, and if we raised a strain that didn’t smell strong, could it still have a high THC content?
- In the past you have recommend not holding in smoked marijuana for longer than a few seconds. What are your thoughts on vapor from a vaporizer? Is exhaled vapor mostly wasted THC?
- Why do Sativas affect us so much differently than indicas considering its supposed to be the same plant species?
- Did you get any more information regarding cannabis being effective in maintaining healthier glucose leves in diabetics?
- Is plant genetics advanced enough for us to completley control the cannabanoids in the plants?
- Have we resolved how cannabis salve works when the prevailing view is that it can’t be absord topically. How does that work?
- Seizing Your Worker’s Pee in Not the Answer to Your Company’s Workplace Problems
Got a drug test? Be sure you’re on something other than marijuana
Few things about the marijuana issue inflame me more than workplace and student drug testing. I’m still trying to imagine how, if you had a time machine, we could visit Thomas Jefferson and the other hemp farmers discussing our Bill of Rights and explain to them in America of the future, employers routinely seize citizens’ urine to determine their fitness for employment and discriminate against them if hemp shows up in their system. I think Ben Franklin would actually LOL.
Of course we all know that cannabis metabolites show nothing about one’s current impairment and will remain in one’s system for weeks or months following cessation of use. We’ve talked about the perverse incentive this creates to use alcohol and other toxic addictive drugs that clear from one’s system in two to three days. And now, this information from the American Psychiatric Association leads me to better understand why we’re seeing such an uptick in prescription drug abuse.
Medical News: APA: Drug Test Results Often Flawed – in Meeting Coverage, APA from MedPage Today.
NEW ORLEANS — That poppy seeds can lead to false-positive results on tests for opioid abuse is not just an urban legend, researchers said [at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting last May].
Another example is that most standard drug tests don’t screen for the opioid drug oxycodone, as well as a handful of other opioids including methadone and fentanyl, noted Smith, who conducted the research while he was at Boston Medical Center.
Opioid tests screen for morphine and codeine, which are two of the most common metabolites of many — but not all — opioids. They’re not metabolites of oxycodone, methadone, fentanyl, tramadol (Ultram), and buprenorphine (Subutex, Suboxone), Smith said.
Similarly, only certain metabolites of benzodiazepines are detected on most assays. That means diazepam, nordiazepam, and oxazepam (Serax) will be detected, but alprazolam (Xanax), lorazepam (Ativan), and clonazepam (Klonopin) aren’t frequently screened.
In their review, the researchers found that drug tests generally have a sensitivity of 90% to 95%, and a specificity of 85% to 90%. These numbers are a “pretty good basis” for making clinical decisions, Smith said, but that means “one in 20 [tested patients] are going to have inaccurate results, and those are more likely to be false positive than false negative.”
Many substances aside from poppy seeds cause these false-positives. Cold medications can give a positive read on amphetamines, as can bupropion (Wellbutrin) and tricyclic antidepressants.
Sertraline (Zoloft) and oxaprozin (Daypro) can alert physicians to a benzodiazepine problem when there is none.
The HIV medication efavirenz (Sustiva) can come up as a positive for marijuana use, and dextromethorphan, rifampin, and quinolones could show as an opioid problem.
There is a Jackson’s Food Store – a gas station / convenience store chain out West – that is two blocks from my home. I walk my dog there every day as I pick up my fountain Diet Coke refill for lunch. I’ve gotten to speak with most of the employees about marijuana – my pot leaf hat leads to lots of these conversations. One of the kids pumping gas there is a sweet young man who is a migraine sufferer whom I’ve told would be a shoo-in for a medical marijuana card.
Then one day recently I notice that there are a whole bunch of new workers. I find out that the store had come up $1,800 short in an audit, so in response, Jackson’s was drug testing all their employees. Three employees admitted to occasional marijuana use and now they are unemployed. There is no evidence that any of them were filching cash from register and since the firings the shortages from the till haven’t ceased. But Jackson’s feels better, I guess, for having some scapegoats to blame.
Ironically, the one young man who could really use medical marijuana still has his job. ”I only toke a tiny bit and only if the pain is just unbearable,” he told me, “because I just can’t lose this job – I have to take care of my wife and kid. Luckily I hadn’t had a bad migraine for a few weeks, so I was able to pass the test.” Even if he had a medical marijuana card, his job wouldn’t be protected. My wife, a migraine patient herself, volunteered that her regular use of cannabis has turned what used to be weekly migraines to seasonal migraines – maybe four a year – and when they do come, they are moderate and not “drill a hole in my head” painful like before.
Now some would say, “Well, they knew the rules on drug testing; they don’t have to work there.” Keep in mind that Portland, Oregon is suffering some >10% unemployment. And then try to imagine your life if finding aspirin or ibuprofen or acetaminophen or naproxen in your system meant the end of your job and you have a splitting headache.
NORML Settles Copyright Case With Righthaven After Rare Strategic Maneuver
I’m still digging through mounds of email (with a 2-bit shovel, I suppose) that I missed throughout my summer travels and vacations. I came upon this bit from early June when we were getting busy in Aspen, and even though it is old news, I don’t recall mentioning it on the show or in the blog.
At NORML, our few paid staffers work long days trying to educate the media, politicians, and public about the truth of cannabis. Unfortunately, a substantial amount of our time gets diverted to deal with things that have nothing to do with marijuana law reform. For example, do you know how many fake NORMLs there are on the web? On Facebook alone we’ve had to go after fake “Duluth NORML” and now fake “Lubbock NORML” and so many more (word to the wise: if they ain’t listed on http://norml.org/chapters, they ain’t officially NORML.) Then there are the people who steal the NORML logo and slap it on merchandise or even use it to name their headshop or music, completely oblivious to the legal concept of a “service mark”. These people steal away the time and effort, and importantly, the donations of our supporters, from our primary mission of legalizing marijuana.
The latest offender is Righthaven LLC, who sued NORML for copyright infringement for posting copyrighted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Never mind that what we posted were links from a newsfeed from another company, and that Righthaven, known for being conservative in political bias, had no such lawsuits to file against conservative blogs that had cribbed from the LVRJ. Rather than spend even more supporters money fighting them, back in June we settled the case.
The advocacy group National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws has settled a lawsuit brought by copyright enforcement outfit Righthaven by agreeing to pay $2,185.
“I really think NORML would have prevailed, but NORML’s mission is advocating for the reform of marijuana laws. NORML’s key mission is not standing up to copyright trolls,” said its attorney, Marc Randazza.
NORML’s offer of around $2,200 represented what the group believed was triple the amount of potential damages in the case. To arrive at that figure, the group examined its records and calculated that the links were clicked on a maximum of 247 times. NORML multiplied that by the $2.95 per article the paper charges for archived pieces, to arrive at a total potential damage figure of $728.
So Las Vegas NORMLizers, I think there’s a newspaper subscription you should be cancelling.
Dr. Mitch Earleywine on Science Friday panel discussion of medical marijuana
Dr. Mitch Earleywine's "Parents' Guide to Marijuana"
Science Friday Archives: Medical Marijuana.
Guests
Nathan Seppa
Reporter, Science News
Washington DC
Herbert Kleber
Professor of Psychiatry,
Director, Division of Substance Abuse
Columbia University
New York, New York
Mitch Earleywine
Professor, Psychology
University at Albany – State University of New York
Albany, New York
Igor Grant
Director, Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, California
Electric Tuesday: Ten Story Relapse – “Planting Seeds”
This band would never have existed had founding members and college friends John Douglas and Mark Milam not bumped into each other and had a fifteen minute conversation at a bar and restaurant in their hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. As well as other founding member Scott Patton — himself currently on the road with country pop giants Sugarland — Ten Story Relapse consists of Kevin Caldwell and Thomas Young.
Since their first release in 2002, Ten Story Relapse has nixed the idea of sticking to a single genre, a choice which has provided them with rising national and international exposure including regular radio airplay in both the US and UK; they’ve performed with mainstream touring acts such as Soul Asylum and The Lemonheads, and one of their songs has been used by world-renowned peace activist Ava Lowery for her cause. The group’s most recent release “Buddha and the .38″ was in 2009.
Meet Ten Story Relapse at their official website or Facebook fan page.
It’s the right time of year to plant some seeds, so plant some seeds that you know I’d like.
audio link:
Download audio file (Ten Story Relapse – Planting Seeds.mp3)
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Stash for Tue, Jul 27, 2010
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2010-07-27.mp3)
Hemp Headlines- Eric Roberts checking into Dr. Drew’s “Celebrity Rehab” to bring attention to his terrible addiction to medical marijuana.
- Black church leaders adamantly opposed to Prop 19, targeting California NAACP head for her support.
- Elderly man terrified by finding four pounds of pot hidden in a picture frame he bought at a postal auction.
Brought to you by Sahra Kant Photography
- Electric Tuesday: Ten Story Relapse – “Planting Seeds”
- Bret Michaels’ tour bus busted in Indiana for pot and “Schedule II substances”
- Interview with Pastor Craig X. Rubin
- Writer and Filmmaker Len Richmond with his new film, “What if Cannabis Cures Cancer?”
Medical marijuana now officially legal in Washington DC
Medical marijuana is now legal in the District after the Democrat-controlled Congress declined to overrule a D.C Council bill that allows the city to set up as many as eight dispensaries where chronically ill patients can purchase the drug.
Although the bill has now cleared Congress, patients will likely have to wait at least several months before they can obtain the drug from a city-sanctioned dispensary.
The law allows patients with cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and other chronic ailments can possess up to four ounces of the drug.
Patients will not be allowed to grow their own marijuana, but licensed companies will be able to sell the drug to people who first obtain a doctor’s prescription.
via D.C. Wire – Medical marijuana now legal.
After a dozen years of Congressional obstruction, the will of 69% of the voters who passed Washington DC Initiative 59 shall be implemented.
Well, kinda…
(Initiative 59) Sec. 5 (a) Any District law prohibiting the possession of marijuana or cultivation of marijuana shall not apply to a medical patient, or to a medical patient’s primary caregivers, when a medical or primary caregiver possesses or cultivates marijuana for the medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation of a licensed physician. The exemption for cultivation shall apply only to marijuana specifically grown to provide a medical supply for a patient, and not to any marijuana grown for any other purpose. In determining a quantity of marijuana that constitutes a medical supply, this act shall be interpreted to assure that any medical patient protected by the act shall have access to a sufficient quantity of marijuana to assure that they can maintain their medical supply without any interruption in their treatment or depletion of their medical supply of marijuana.
Gosh, that seems to me like that 69% of the voters didn’t vote for “Patients will not be allowed to grow their own marijuana”. Looks like they voted not only to let patients grow their own, but they can keep as much as necessary to never run out! In fact, the voters of DC approved a medical marijuana law that is far more liberal than California’s Prop 215, including such gems as:
- It has the California-style leniency on trusting doctors to recommend marijuana for almost anything if they believe it is useful (“other serious or chronic illnesses for which the recommending physician reasonably believes that marijuana has demonstrated utility.”
- You could argue the act might protect patients from being fired (or “sanctioned”) for medical marijuana use (“in so far as they comply with this act, are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.”)
- District residents can open non-profit dispensaries with explicit right to sell (“Residents of the District of Columbia may organize and operate not-for-profit corporations for the purpose of cultivating, purchasing, and distributing marijuana”) – that doesn’t sound like “licensed companies”, as in “the District decides who can be a dispensary.” Sounds like the People decide.
- The District Health Director has to come up with a way to get medical marijuana to residents on Medicaid (“provide for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients enrolled in Medicaid or a Ryan White CARE Act funded program who are in medical need, who desire to add marijuana to their health care regimen”)
So how did “patients can grow as much as they need and residents can open dispensaries” turn into “patients get to buy four ounces from a city-licensed dispensary?” To summarize, in the highest-ever vote in support of medical marijuana, 69%, back in 1998 when only California had it, the District of Columbia passed a medical marijuana bill more liberal than California’s. But in 2010, they get a law only slightly less restrictive than New Jersey’s.
But hey, they don’t even get a vote in Congress, so why should we bother with what the people of DC want, anyway?