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Tommy Chong Claims Legalized Marijuana Could Save Our Country
Erik | May 16, 2013 | Comments 0
Tommy Chong
Tommy Chong, who is undoubtedly one of the most iconic people in the entire cannabis community, has recently made a proclamation that legalizing marijuana on a federal level could save the country from its financial dire straits.
“Look at the situation we’re in now, sequesters, cuts, everything cut across the board. Now, the government is tapped into the biggest cash crop in the world,” Chong explained. “There’s little manufacturing cost. You don’t have to do anything except watch it grow and get a couple of hippies to cut it and then put it in a bag.”
Tommy also has a very strong, Jack Herer-type passion when he talks about how the re-legalization of hemp crop cultivation in the United States and in other countries around the globe may perhaps be the solution to protect the planet from perishing by the hand of our fellow man.
“Hemp itself is going to save the world,” Tommy affirmed.
Cheech Marin, the shorter half of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, was asked about the probability of marijuana being legalized on a national level. He approximates that it will become legalized within a few years due to the growing number of states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal dedications.
“The tipping point is 24 states to legalize medical marijuana, so it’s coming soon,” Marin avowed.
These two guys have been making a mockery of the federal government’s drug policy in their movies and stand-up routines for decades, it would be nice to see it legalized at a national level during their lifetime.
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Filed Under: Activism • Entertainment • Exclusive Web Content • Hemp • Recreational Cannabis • The War On Drugs
Study Claims Marijuana Tied to Lower Bladder Cancer Risk
FRIDAY May 10, 2013 — New research says smoking pot may be less likely to cause bladder cancer than smoking cigarettes.
The finding is potentially valuable, the study authors said, given the ongoing debate over legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.
But one urologist not involved with the study was skeptical of the finding, and noted that nonsmokers weren’t among the men included in the study.
For the study, the researchers compared the risk of bladder cancer in more than 83,000 men who smoked cigarettes only, marijuana (cannabis) only, or both substances. The investigators found that men who only smoked pot were the least likely to develop bladder cancer over the course of 11 years.
“Cannabis use only was associated with a 45 percent reduction in bladder cancer incidence, and tobacco use only was associated with a 52 percent increase in bladder cancer,” said study author Dr. Anil A. Thomas, a fellow in urology at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Smoking both tobacco and marijuana raised the risk of bladder cancer, but less so than for those who only smoked tobacco, Thomas found. He presented the findings Monday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Diego.
Dr. Karim Chamie, an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, took issue with the fact that every man in the study smoked something, so there was no comparison to men who did not smoke at all.
“It’s hard to judge a study when the reference group is not nonsmokers,” Chamie said. And the number of bladder cancers diagnosed in the study seemed low, he added, especially because everyone smoked something and smoking tobacco is considered a leading risk factor for the disease.
“We know smoking increases your risk of bladder cancer by two- or threefold,” Chamie noted.
Also, the men in the study weren’t representative of the entire United States, Chamie said, noting all were insured residents of California.
Thomas said his research team wasn’t looking at all age groups and was not collecting data on lifetime prevalence.
Thomas stressed that he’s not condoning or recommending marijuana as a way to affect risk of bladder cancer. The value of the study may be to spur other research into new treatments for bladder cancer, he said.
The men in the study, aged 45 to 69, were patients at Kaiser Permanente in California. Thomas and his team evaluated data on their lifestyle habits, including tobacco and marijuana smoking, between 2002 and 2003.
The researchers cross-referenced the study data with medical records to see who was diagnosed with bladder cancer. They omitted men with a history of bladder cancer.
Overall, 41 percent of the men reported marijuana use, 57 percent said they used tobacco and 27 percent reported using both.
During 11 years of follow-up, 279 men — 0.3 percent — were diagnosed with bladder cancer. Eighty-nine pot smokers (0.3 percent) developed bladder cancer compared to 190 (0.4 percent) who did not smoke pot.
More frequent marijuana use — smoking pot more than 500 times — was associated with greater risk reduction than infrequent marijuana use — smoking once or twice, the researchers found.
Thomas said that while the study saw a link between smoking marijuana and lower bladder cancer risk, compared to tobacco smokers, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. He couldn’t explain the link, but speculated on the possible mechanism.
“The theory is that there are receptors in the bladder that are affected by cannabis,” he said. The cannabinoids [compounds] in the marijuana may link with the cannabinoid receptors in the bladder and somehow protect against cell changes that can lead to cancer, he said.
A man’s lifetime risk of bladder cancer is almost 4 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. This means about one in 26 men will develop bladder tumors.
The study was funded by the Kaiser Permanente Research and Evaluation Center. Findings and conclusions of research presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
To learn more about bladder cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Posted: May 2013
Federal Suit Claims Police Distort Marijuana Searches to Create Misdemeanors
A lawsuit says that New York City police officers routinely stop black and Latino men without cause and then charge them with low-level misdemeanors when small amounts of marijuana are found.
NYT > Marijuana and Medical Marijuana
British economy claims new victim: Prince Charles’ veg shop
Britain’s Prince Charles arrives to meets with Qataris who studied in Britain during a reception at a hotel in Doha March 14, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Stringer
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s weak economy has taken its toll on the nation’s poshest greengrocer with Prince Charles forced to close his organic vegetable store, citing falling trade and rising prices.
Prince Charles, the heir to the throne and a champion of the environment, opened a store near to his country home Highgrove in Gloucestershire, south-west England, about eight years ago after converting his estate to organic farming in 1986.
The store, The Veg Shed, sold organic vegetables and fruit freshly grown on the estate’s Duchy Home Farm and became known for selling edible but oddly shaped organic produce that would normally be rejected by supermarkets.
But a spokeswoman for the prince said the store had closed after it failed to make a profit as it was no longer financially viable. The produce was invariably more expensive than at local supermarkets.
“The Veg Shed has closed, basically in response to consumer trends, a preference for shopping remotely,” a spokeswoman from Clarence House, the prince’s official London residence, told Reuters on Tuesday.
She said consumers wanting a taste of the royal organic produce can still order boxes online.
(Reporting by Limei Hoang, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)
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Federal Suit Claims Police Distort MJ Searches
One man was walking home with groceries. Another was on a break from his job at a meat market. A third was walking down the street listening to headphones.
That is when the men say police officers confronted them, sometimes violently, searched their clothing and discovered small amounts of marijuana, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit that is expected to be filed on Thursday in United States District Court for the Southern District, in Manhattan.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of five Bronx men, contends that New York City police officers routinely stop black and Latino men without cause and then charge them with low-level misdemeanors when their pockets are emptied and small amounts of marijuana are found.
In each of the cases, the amount of marijuana found on the men would have amounted to little more than noncriminal violations punishable by a fine of up to $ 100 for first-time offenders. But the lawsuit contends that the charging officers falsely claimed the marijuana was in public view, making it a low-level misdemeanor under Section 221.10 of the New York Penal Code, which allows for sentences of up to three months in jail.
Critics of the Police Department say the practice, which they call manufactured misdemeanors, is widespread. The arrests are often the outgrowth of the department’s stop-and-frisk program, which is being challenged in federal court for, among other things, disproportionately targeting black and Hispanic men.
The lawsuit names the city, the department and several officers and supervisors as defendants. It was filed by the Bronx Defenders, which represents low-income defendants, and the law firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady L.L.P. A similar lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society is pending in state court in Manhattan.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department declined to comment on Wednesday, saying the city had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
The Police Department charged more than 50,000 people with marijuana misdemeanors in 2011. More than 84 percent were black or Hispanic, a disparity that is even more pronounced in the Bronx.
In an effort to limit these arrests, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has made decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana in open view one of his top goals this legislative session. The Legislature failed to act on a similar measure last year, despite support from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.
Though state law calls for misdemeanor cases to be tried within 60 days, the time limits are seldom met, the lawsuit contends. People arrested in the Bronx have it even worse; a recent series of articles in The New York Times revealed a dysfunctional justice system plagued by long delays that often make it all but impossible for people charged with misdemeanors to ever reach trial.
Two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Francisco Zapata and Danilo Melendez, were featured in one of the articles. They endured long delays and made frequent court appearances waiting for trial before the charges against them were finally dropped.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 2, 2013, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Federal Suit Claims Police Distorted Marijuana Searches to Create Misdemeanors.
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Ray Rivera
Published: May 2, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
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