MAP Drugnews

lagrandeobserver.com (US) Banks are currently hindered by federal law from providing financial services to marijuana businesses. Even in states where those businesses are regulated. (Fri Feb 02 22:07:05 2018 PST) [$drug_related(100%), $drugwar_propaganda(98%), $propaganda_theme2(50%), $propaganda_theme5(80%), $propaganda_theme7(98%), $illegal_drugs(100%), $drugs(95%), $drug_law(100%), $govt_prohib_other(66%), $plants(100%), $intoxicant(100%), $medical_cannabis(100%), $cannabis(100%), $cannabis_industry(85%), $various_drugs(95%), $various_illegal_drugs(100%), $youth(80%), $legalism(50%), $aggrandizement(100%)]

capebretonpost.com (US) Lawyers contemplate class action to push government into cannabis amnesty... (Fri Feb 02 02:05:31 2018 PST)

capebretonpost.com (US) Was charged with two counts of trafficking in cocaine. (Fri Feb 02 02:05:31 2018 PST) [$drug_related(100%), $drugwar_propaganda(60%), $propaganda_theme5(60%), $illegal_drugs(100%), $drugs(95%), $chemicals(100%), $euphoric_stimulant(100%), $stimulant(100%), $cocaine(100%), $various_drugs(95%), $youth(60%), $school(100%), $aggrandizement(100%)]

capebretonpost.com (US) Lawyers contemplate class action to push government into cannabis amnesty... (Fri Feb 02 02:05:31 2018 PST) [$drug_related(100%), $drugwar_propaganda(70%), $propaganda_theme2(70%), $propaganda_theme5(60%), $illegal_drugs(100%), $drugs(90%), $plants(100%), $intoxicant(100%), $cannabis(100%), $various_drugs(90%), $youth(60%), $school(100%), $aggrandizement(100%), $meeting(100%)]

The Compass, 30 Jan 2018 - Larger towns like Bay Roberts, Carbonear expect to field requests to sell pot product Municipal leaders in Conception Bay North's two largest towns expect to field requests from entrepreneurs looking to earn a dollar off the impending legalization of marijuana.

Toronto Star, 29 Jan 2018 - Dissenting opinion found charter rights were violated during 'fishing expedition' A senior Ontario judge has called out Toronto police officers who arrested a man on gun and drug charges for "casually intimidating and oppressive misconduct," and wondered if their actions would have been different in a whiter and wealthier neighbourhood.

Toronto Star, 30 Jan 2018 - Two suspended after allegedly eating edible weed following raid Toronto police confirms two of its officers have been suspended after police sources say the pair consumed edible marijuana while on duty over the weekend - shortly after a marijuanadispensary raid in the area.

Boston Globe, 29 Jan 2018 - Governor Charlie Baker plans to meet with US Attorney Andrew Lelling next month, and the governor thinks state and federal law enforcement priorities could converge on cracking down on the illicit marijuana market. At the state level, where marijuana has been legalized for medical and other uses, stamping out the black market trade could bolster the regulated sale of the intoxicant, the governor said.

Boston Globe, 29 Jan 2018 - NORTH ANDOVER - Dr. Jeff Goldstein is hunting for "a billion-dollar molecule." But to find it, he first needs permission from residents here to grow marijuana - actually, a stupendous amount of marijuana. That's why, on Sunday afternoon, he was pacing anxiously behind a small folding table in the lobby of Osgood Landing, the massive former Lucent Technologies plant he bought with his wife in 2003 and now hopes to convert into one of the world's largest indoor marijuana growing and research centers.

Hamilton Spectator, 29 Jan 2018 - Responses from survey questioned Ohsweken - If you ever thought the legal pot thing would go down nice and mellow anywhere, from Salt Spring Island to St. John's, or Six Nations in between, what were you smoking?

Winnipeg Sun, 30 Jan 2018 - City forms committee to prepare for legal weed The City of Winnipeg has formed a new committee to guide its pot plans. The Cannabis Co-ordination Committee will guide local preparations as the feds prepare to legalize recreational marijuana sales, effective July 1.

Click here for reuse options! The U.S. is out of step with the rest of the world.

New Hampshire lawmakers are once again considering lowering the drinking age in the state. The proposal this year, from Rep. Dan Hynes (R-Merrimack), would allow 20-year-olds to drink alcohol in private settings, but not buy it or consume it in public.

It's just the latest effort to lower the drinking age in the Granite State. Earlier efforts to lower the age to 19 for active-duty service members or allow those 18 and over to drink when accompanied by adults failed. This year's effort is likely to fail, too—but maybe it shouldn't.

When it comes to the legal drinking age, the United States is out of step with the rest of the world. In more than 100 countries, the legal drinking age is 18 or 19, while only the U.S. and 11 other countries (Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Kiribati, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nauru, Oman, Palau, Samoa, and Sri Lanka) set it at 21.

Our northern neighbor, Canada, has a drinking age of 18 or 19, depending on the province, and our southern neighbor, Mexico, sets the age at 18. Most European countries go with 18, and the others go even lower.

In fact, more countries have a legal drinking age lower than 18 than set it at 21. Those include a dozen European countries, such as Portugal, which allows drinking anything at age 16; Germany, which allows beer drinking at 16; and Switzerland, where 16-year-olds can drink beer and wine.

Setting the legal drinking age is the domain of the states, but that has not really been the case in the U.S. Although in the 1970s, more than half the states lowered the drinking age from 21 to 20, 19, or 18 as they shrugged off the hangovers of Prohibition, Congress in 1984 made the states an offer they couldn't refuse: With the enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the states could choose between raising the age to 21 or losing their federal highway funds. They went with keeping their federal dollars.

By 1988, every state in the country had raised the legal drinking age to 21. (There are some delimited exceptions: underage drinking is allowed in 29 states if done on private premises with parental consent, 25 states if for religious purposes, and 11 states if for educational purposes.)

One of the main arguments propelling the 1984 law and bolstering it ever since is that keeping the 21 age limit reduces traffic accidents and fatalities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that a drinking age of 21 decreased the number of fatal traffic accidents for 18- to 20-year-olds by 13 percent.

But proponents of lowering the drinking age can point to comparative data to argue that the evidence is not nearly so clearcut. Many countries with a drinking age of 18 have fewer drunk driving accidents and fatalities than the U.S., and during the 1980s, as 21 was becoming the law of the land across America, the rate of traffic accidents and fatalities in the 1980s decreased less than that of European countries whose legal drinking ages are lower than 21.

There are a number of other arguments for and against lowering the legal drinking age, admirably adumbrated at Procon.org, but outside of debates in the realm of public health, two arguments for lowering the drinking age are especially compelling: The first is the argument for consistency and the second is the argument for liberty, or perhaps more precisely, the pursuit of happiness.

The consistency argument is simple: Eighteen is the age of legal adulthood for everything except being able to drink alcohol. Alcohol should be no exception. You can get married, sign contracts, vote, join the armed forces—but you can't have a beer?

The liberty argument is pretty simple, too: Drinking alcohol is an enjoyable activity. Adults under 21 should not be denied that enjoyment when other pleasurable activities are legal at age 18.

Maybe it is better to have a higher legal drinking age, but the age of 21 is not ordained by God. Whether states should continue to keep it should be informed not only from a public health or harm reduction perspective, but also by considerations of the values we hold. Where do we draw the lines?

 

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The city is going proactive on getting past pot busts off people's records.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions going back decades, opening up new job and housing opportunities to those arrested for cannabis-related offenses, the city’s top prosecutor announced Wednesday.

“We want to address the wrongs caused by the failures of the war on drugs for many years in this country,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said when announcing the new policy at a press conference Wednesday.

Proposition 64, the voter-backed ballot measure that legalized marijuana in 2016, allows those convicted of marijuana offenses to petition to have their convictions overturned or sentences reduced.

Instead of waiting for people to petition to get their records cleared, Gascon said his office would proactively expunge 3,038 misdemeanor convictions and review nearly 5,000 felony convictions, many of which may be downgraded to misdemeanors with reduced sentences.

“As progressive as San Francisco is, a misdemeanor or felony conviction for marijuana can have significant implications for your employment ability, housing, education and many other benefits,” Gascon said.

An estimated 2.8 million Californians were arrested for cannabis-related offenses over the last century, but less than 5,000 people have petitioned to have their convictions overturned since Proposition 64 took effect, Gascon said.

The process for getting marijuana convictions cleared can be time consuming, the district attorney said. It often requires individuals to file petitions, hire lawyers and go to court.

“You shouldn’t have to come to court and miss a day of work to get your record expunged,” Gascon said. “We will do all the work for them.”

When asked how long the effort will take or how much it will cost, Gascon could not offer a specific timeline or price tag. He said the work of expunging misdemeanor convictions would mostly be done by paralegals, but reviewing felony convictions will take more time and effort.

Some felony convictions could be related to other offenses, and each case must be reviewed individually to determine if a sentence reduction is appropriate, he said.

Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP, hailed the new policy as an important piece in the effort to undo the wrongs of an “unjust system” that has disproportionately arrested and jailed people of color on drug-related crimes.

“I feel this is a giant step toward justice, and it is a stride toward setting black people free to live in the community, to have jobs, to have healthcare and to have decent education,” Brown said, adding he hopes trade unions offer jobs to those who get their criminal records expunged through this new program.

San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Malia Cohen said this initiative will go “hand-in-hand’ with the city’s new equity program, intended to help low-income residents, people of color and those convicted of drug offenses find job and business opportunities in the city’s cannabis industry.

“Those people most adversely affected by the war on drugs will get a little bit of a break from a system that’s been targeting African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander communities since the 1980s,” Cohen said.

Nicole Elliot, director of the city’s Office of Cannabis, encouraged other top prosecutors across the state to follow Gascon’s lead.

“My hope is that this same effort will be replicated across the state by other district attorneys,” she said.

On Jan. 4, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era marijuana policy and authorized federal prosecutors to enforce cannabis laws in states like California that have legalized marijuana for recreational or medicinal use.

Gascon said while the federal government appears to have taken a step “backwards” on drug policy, San Francisco will continue working to reverse the harms caused by the 47-year-old war on drugs.

“While the national government has taken a direction sort of going backwards when it comes to drug policy, here in San Francisco again we have an opportunity to lead the way,” Gascon said. “We want to address the wrongs caused by the failures of the war on drugs for many years in this country and begin to fix some of the harm that was done not only to the entire nation but specifically to communities of color.”

 

 

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To shed more light on this subject, researchers went back to examine the data from dozens of studies on marijuana and the heart.

Although some preliminary research from last year frightened the cannabis community when it suggested that regular pot smokers were three times more likely to succumb to hypertension, a more recent analysis finds this is not necessarily the case. It seems that until the more research is conducted on the herb, the scientific world remains mostly in the dark about the overall affect of cannabis on cardiovascular health.

To shed more light on this subject, researchers went back to examine the data from dozens of studies on marijuana and heart health. Essentially, the main focus was to learn whether marijuana causes elevated cholesterol levels or high blood pressure. The study group searched for any evidence linking marijuana to heart disease. But what they ultimately discovered was that all of the previous research surrounding this topic is flawed.

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“Evidence examining the effect of marijuana on cardiovascular risk factors and outcomes … is insufficient,” researchers concluded, according to a report from Business Insider.

The results of the latest study are consistent with a much larger investigation published last year. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which consists of some of the leading scientific minds in the country, determined there was “insufficient evidence” that smoking marijuana was a detriment to heart health. More specifically, the group was unable to establish whether cannabis could trigger a heart attack.

Still, science says that marijuana does in fact increase a person’s heart rate by up to 50 beats a minute. Some believe this means the herb definitely has a negative affect on heart function. Yet, all of this “limited evidence” is all over the place. Some smaller studies have shown that marijuana might actually have the power to lower blood pressure, rather than increase it. In the end, the scientific community remains stumped.

But it is not likely we will have any definitive answers with respect to marijuana and the heart anytime in the near future. Until the federal government chooses to downgrade the Schedule I classification of the cannabis plant under the Controlled Substances Act, research will be hard to come by. As it stands, scientists have a tough time getting green lit for studies to examine the health benefits of cannabis because of all the red tape they have to cut through to get approval from all of the pertinent government agencies. This has caused researchers like Dr. Sue Sisley to get jammed up in her years-long exploration of medical marijuana as a treatment for patients with PTSD.

Considering that marijuana is legal in over half the nation for medicinal and recreational purposes, now would be a good time for the Trump administration to initiate the rescheduling process. Because not knowing how marijuana impacts the heart and other factors is the real risk to public health and safety.

 

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