Marijuana

60 Minutes: California’s medical marijuana system in ‘chaos’
Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane
Published: Monday December 31, 2007

California’s Proposition 215 legalized medical marijuana in that state 11 years ago as a treatment for pain, the side-effects of chemotherapy, and other ailments. However, the federal government still views all marijuana use as illegal, and the Supreme Court has upheld the federal Drug Enforcement Agency’s right to go after dispensaries, no matter what state laws allow.

In September, the DEA raided the California Healthcare Collective in Modesto and arrested the store’s chief financial officer, Luke Scarmazzo. “They handcuffed me and put me on my kitchen table,” Scarmazzo told 60 Minutes. “One of them … said ‘you knew I’d be coming soon.’”

Scarmazzo acknowledged that he had been earning $13,000 a month for running the dispensary but insisted “I was working a lot of hours.” Scarmazzo’s lawyer described his client’s situation as a case of “selective prosecution,” because the 26-year-old Scarmazzo is also a hiphop artist, with a widely distributed Internet video in which he appears as a high-living drug dealer, chanting “Fuck the feds.”

Complicating the legal situation, California’s pot shops have admittedly become an easy source of supply for people who just want to get high. According to 60 Minutes, the California law was originally intended to provide access only to the most needy, but in an attempt not to exclude any category of illness, it wound up with language so broad that it covers ever the vaguest complaint of pain. Now anyone with a note from their doctor can buy medical marijuana, and some doctors even advertise for patients in alternative papers.

One longtime supporter of medical marijuana, Methodist minister Scott Imler, says, “It’s just ridiculous …The purpose of Proposition 215 was not to create a new industry.” Although the centers are supposedly collectives which buy marijuana grown by members and redistribute it, it is clear that large amounts of marijuana are also entering the system from the black market, putting money into the pockets of organized crime and terrorists.

Marijuana activist Don Duncan told 60 Minutes that “there’s bound to be abuse in the system” and what is needed is better regulation. However, Scott Imler argues that effective regulation is not possible as long as the federal government refused to accept the legality of medical marijuana. Until then, “We’re going to have what we have now, which is chaos.”

The following video is from CBS’s 60 Minutes, broadcast on December 30, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/60_Minutes_California_medical_marijuana_system_1231.html

hightimes.com — With a deficit that only gets bigger and bigger by the day that President Bush is in office, and clearly the war on drugs is a failure! Why after the government’s report that came out and listed the three most addictive drugs alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, all big money makers, and all legal. How is it not now a time for a change in this country?

Read the discussion at digg

Or is it 7 billion - who knows for sure?

Also check out this gem from the prometheus institute - don’t arrest, invest.

from Web MD

Pot Slows Cancer in Test Tube
Marijuana Ingredients Slow Invasion by Cervical and Lung Cancer Cells
By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Dec. 26, 2007 — THC and another marijuana-derived compound slow the spread of cervical and lung cancers, test-tube studies suggest.

The new findings add to the fast-growing number of animal and cell-culture studies showing different anticancer effects for cannabinoids, chemical compounds derived from marijuana.

Cannabinoids, and sometimes marijuana itself, are currently used to lessen the nausea and pain experienced by many cancer patients. The new findings — yet to be proven in human studies — suggest that cannabinoids may have a direct anticancer effect.

“Cannabinoids’ … potential therapeutic benefit in the treatment of highly invasive cancers should be addressed in clinical trials,” conclude Robert Ramer, PhD, and Burkhard Hinz, PhD, of the University of Rostock, Germany.

Might cannabinoids keep dangerous tumors from spreading throughout the body? Ramer and Hinz set up an experiment in which invasive cervical and lung cancer cells had make their way through a tissue-like gel. Even at very low concentrations, the marijuana compounds THC and methanandamide (MA) significantly slowed the invading cancer cells.

Doses of THC that reduce pain in cancer patients yield blood concentrations much higher than the concentrations needed to inhibit cancer invasion.

“Thus the effects of THC on cell invasion occurred at therapeutically relevant concentrations,” Ramer and Hinz note.

The researchers are quick to point out that much more study is needed to find out whether these test-tube results apply to tumor growth in animals and in humans.

Ramer and Hinz report the findings in the Jan. 2, 2008 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
View Article Sources Sources

SOURCES: Ramer, R, and Hinz, B. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Jan. 2, 2008; vol 100: pp. 59-69.

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