Couple admit to smoking marijuana around infant
Mar 19, 2012 Online Issue
CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — Police arrested a pregnant woman and an expectant father after they admitted to smoking marijuana in a truck while an infant 
boy sat with them.
On Saturday at around 10 p.m., Officer Zack Upton responded to an anonymous call of an odor of marijuana coming from 100 Tandy Drive, according to a news release from Clarksville Police spokesman Officer Jim Knoll.
When Upton arrived, he noticed a blue Ford Taurus with people inside of it.
He could smell the odor of marijuana coming from the truck, Knoll said.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: marijuana smoking, pot, weed
Smoking marijuana not linked to obesity: study
Sep 11, 2011 Online Issue
(Reuters Health) – People who smoke marijuana may be prone to “the munchies,” but surprisingly, they are less likely than non-smokers to pack on the pounds, suggests a recent study from France.
Analyzing data covering more than 50,000 American adults, researchers found that roughly 14 percent to 17 percent of the people reporting that they smoked pot at least three days per week were obese. That compared with a 22 to 25 percent obesity rate among people who said they had not used pot in the past 12 months.
“Initially, we thought we made a mistake,” said Dr. Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at the Louis-Mourier Hospital in Colombes, France. He and co-author Dr. Bernard Le Foll had to check the results several times to make sure they were correct, Le Strat said.
“This is only a preliminary result,” Le Strat told Reuters Health. “It doesn’t mean that marijuana does actually help you lose weight, but perhaps there is a component that does.”
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, included two surveys of U.S. adults – one covering 43,000 people, the other about 9,300 respondents. Both had been conducted by branches of the U.S. National Institutes of Health between 2001 and 2003.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pot-smoking grandparents sparking controversy
Jun 13, 2011 Online Issue
LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. — Joe Schwartz is a 90-year-old great-grandfather of three who enjoys a few puffs of pot each night before he crawls into bed in the Southern California retirement community he calls home.
The Second World War veteran smokes the drug to alleviate debilitating nausea and is one of about 150 senior citizens on this sprawling, 18,000-person gated campus who belongs to a thriving — and controversial — medical marijuana collective operating here, in the middle of one of the largest retirement communities in the United States.
The fledgling collective mirrors a nationwide trend as more and more senior citizens turn to marijuana, legal or not, to ease the aches and pains of aging. But in Laguna Woods Village, tucked in the heart of one of the most conservative and wealthiest counties in California, these ganja-smoking grandparents have stirred up a heated debate with their collective, attracting a crackdown from within the self-governed community.
Many members of the two-year-old collective keep a low profile, but others grow seedlings on their patios and set up workshops to show other seniors how to turn the marijuana leaves into tea, milk and a vapour that can be inhaled for relief from everything from chemotherapy-related nausea to multiple sclerosis to arthritis.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: marijuana smoking
Burns: Misclassification behind medical-marijuana fiasco
Jun 13, 2011 Online Issue
Confusion over the conflicts, both imagined and real, between Arizona’s voter-approved medical-marijuana law and federal law has been running
rampant in recent weeks.
On one hand, the federal government has warned growers and sellers of the potential for prosecution while stating a hands-off policy toward those who have been certified for use.
On the other hand, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne have replied to U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke’s warnings with yet another lawsuit, incurring more needless legal fees for Arizona taxpayers and seriously delaying full implementation of the new law.
Patients who can benefit from the medication are caught in the middle.
They are eager for the relief they know they can get from medical marijuana but do not understand how all the political maneuvering is in their best interest.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arizona, marijuana smoking
Does Marijuana Really Kill Brain Cells?
Sep 14, 2009 Online Issue
“Smoking marijuana kills brain cells.” If you have ever smoked marijuana you’ve probably heard this myth at some
point or another. But you might not know the horrible origins of this dreadful lie.
It was Ronald Reagan who said “the most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana.” What were those reliable scientific sources you ask?
In 1974, Dr. Robert G. Heath, a researcher at Tulane University in New Orleans, reported that he had found proof that marijuana caused brain damage while experimenting on monkeys. Heath reported that rhesus monkeys smoking an equivalent of 30 joints a day began to atrophy and die after just 90 days. Autopsies revealed that the monkeys who had been exposed to the marijuana smoke had more dead brain cells than the control monkeys, who had not been exposed.
Read the rest of this entry »
