Posts Tagged ‘Drugs’
Stoned Journalist Reports On Marijuana (Video)
There may be hope for the dinosaur media after all if this clip represents the future of reporting at the LA Times:
Cheech & Chong On Jimmy Fallon (Video)
The stoner icons are back … on network TV, telling Jimmy Fallon stories from the slammer:
Can Mind-Altering Drugs have Mental Health Benefits?
From the Telegraph:
New studies are testing whether psychedelic drugs such as LSD and MDMA can treat OCD, post traumatic stress and cancer related anxiety.
On September 19 this year, 12 people gathered in the suburban Hermsdorf district of Berlin for a group psychotherapy session that allegedly involved illegal drugs. A day later, two of the participants were dead and another in a coma. The substances used and exact cause of death have yet to be confirmed. Local newspaper reports have claimed that heroin and MDMA (ecstasy) were taken, but other drugs may have been in circulation.
Garri Rober, the therapist who led the session which included his wife, Elke, is facing possible charges in connection with the deaths and on suspicion of supplying illegal drugs. The other nine participants were released from…
The Relentless War on Drug Users Is Escalating Violence in the US: It’s Time for Harm Reduction
Don Hazen, veteran progressive and currently the main man at AlterNet, (plus a good guy and friend of Disinformation), has penned a compelling editorial on the drug war:
Ethan Nadelmann is one of a handful of marvelously charismatic and motivating speakers within the liberal and progressive universe. He talks creatively and emphatically about race, class, gender, corruption, power, human rights, immigration and the devastating impact of prison-industrial complex on all aspects of society, all progressive touchstones. Yet relatively few people know who he is, or follow his efforts. Why? Because he has devoted his life to transforming America’s attitudes and laws about drugs, which is no easy task, and often a thankless one.
There exists a complex, almost paradoxical attitude toward drug use and the ramifications of “drug war” repression among many progressives.…
If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax Revenues, by State
A great chart from SloshSpot:
Remembering Lies: Interview With Psychiatric Abuse Victim Jeannette Bartha
It is indoctrination. If you look at any, say, religious cult – I read the work of Robert Jay Lifton and was appalled at the parallels [between Lifton's criteria for thought reform (indoctrination), and what was taking place in treatment]. For example, having a charismatic leader: that would be the psychiatrist. A controlled environment: I was told when to eat, when to sleep, when to shower. The heat was controlled in the room. It would get hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. Information from the outside by TV, mail, magazines, newspapers hardly existed at all. If there were magazines, they were so outdated. If there was a TV show that seemed to relate to the subject, we were not allowed to view it. Sleep medication, sleeping pills, were given out freely, and I also experienced sleep deprivation. There were sedatives, sleepers, truth serum drugs. Physical restraints: four-point leather restraints, or more, to a bed for – could be – 2 hours to 15 hours at a time, at which point I would also be injected with more medication.
Spices, Hormones and Cocaine! Found in Drinking Water
Christine Dell’Amore writes on National Geographic News:
How’s this for a sweet surprise? A team of researchers in Washington State has found traces of cooking spices and flavorings in the waters of Puget Sound. University of Washington associate professor Richard Keil heads the Sound Citizen program, which investigates how what we do on land affects our waters.
Keil and his team have tracked “pulses” of food ingredients that enter the sound during certain holidays.
For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July. The Puget Sound study is one of several ongoing efforts to investigate the unexpected ingredients that find their way into the global water supply…
Animation: pitcher Dock Ellis’s no-hitter while on LSD
From BoingBoing:
We’ve posted before about Dock Ellis. He was the baseball player who in 1970 pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates while tripping balls on LSD. Ellis died last year. In his honor, James Blagden and Chris Isenberg animated Ellis’s retelling of his acid adventure on the mound. “Dock Ellis’s Legendary LSD No-Hitter animation“
[Read more at BoingBoing]
First U.S. Marijuana Cafe Opens in Portland
From Reuters:
The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it — as long as they are out of public view — despite a federal ban.
“This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members,” said Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.
“Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana,” said Martinez. “We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis.”
The cafe — in a two-story building which…
American Medical Assn. Urges Federal Government to Reconsider Classification of Marijuana as a Dangerous Drug
John Hoeffel reports in the Los Angeles Times:
The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.
The nation’s largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.
In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.
“Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked cannabis,” said Dr.…
Pfizer Broke the Law by Promoting Drugs for Unapproved Uses
David Evans writes on Bloomberg:
Prosecutor Michael Loucks remembers clearly when lawyers for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company, looked across the table and promised it wouldn’t break the law again.
It was January 2004, and the attorneys were negotiating in a conference room on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Boston, where Loucks was head of the health-care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One of Pfizer’s units had been pushing doctors to prescribe an epilepsy drug called Neurontin for uses the Food and Drug Administration had never approved.
In the agreement the lawyers eventually hammered out, the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses.
New York-based Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million in criminal fines and civil penalties, and…
Marijuana Soothes Pain in Israel; Can it Bring Peace?
The Video Journalism Movement reports on medical marijuana in Israel.
Three More UK Drugs Advisers Resign
From BBC News:
Three more government advisers have resigned after the home secretary’s sacking of his chief drugs adviser Prof David Nutt, the BBC has learned.
Dr John Marsden, Dr Ian Ragan and Dr Simon Campbell have quit the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs after two others left earlier this month.
Members of the council had met Alan Johnson seeking reassurance that their independence would not be compromised.
Mr Johnson dismissed Prof Nutt for “crossing a line” into politics.
BBC home affairs editor Mark Easton said the absence of certain experts on the council meant it was “stymied” and effectively was now unable to operate under its current constitution.
[Read more at BBC News]
