A psychedelic response to post-traumatic stress In an extraordinary project, local research scientists and therapists, specializing in newly resurgent psychedelic medicine, are seeking to confirm what others elsewhere have recently discovered. It appears that highly illegal ecstasy-MDMA- helps people overcome the living hell of treatment-resistant PTSD. In two studies done in Switzerland and the U.S., it has been shown that pure MDMA, plus intensive psychotherapy, can cure people whose lives have been shattered by horrific traumas, ones that-even after years-keep returning in flashbacks and nightmares. [continues 482 words]
The number of cops killed on the beat had been declining since the 1970s and was bound to end, say experts. But the killing of cops in Modesto, Calif., and Greenland, N.H., Thursday could point to other trends. Two high-profile shootings of police officers in small towns - one on each coast - are highlighting statistics that show a sharp spike in police officer deaths nationwide during the past two years. But experts caution against the conclusion that criminals are ramping up a new "war on cops," instead suggesting that the statistics merely show an end to a 40-year decline in officer fatalities. [continues 562 words]
Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for legal marijuana, saying the US incarceration rate is taking a social toll. Advocates call it an important moment, but critics dismiss it. Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has become the lightning rod for a fresh, national dialogue over legal marijuana. He says the government's war on drugs has failed and so marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol. "Folks, we've gotta do something about this. We've just got to change the laws. We cannot allow this to continue. It is sapping our vitality. Think of this great land of freedom," he said last week as host of "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network based in Virginia Beach, Va. [continues 715 words]
A New Bipartisan Bill Would Remove Marijuana From the Company Of Heroin and Cocaine in Federal Regulations, Leaving It to the States To Legalize Pot - or Not. Inter-State Trafficking Would Remain a Federal Crime. A bipartisan bill introduced Thursday by Reps. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts and Ron Paul (R) of Texas, will - if passed - have a substantial effect on the enforcement, acceptance, and creation of marijuana laws coast-to-coast, say a number of analysts. "Since 1932, marijuana has been a federally-prohibited substance, and this would undo that," says Sam Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law. [continues 693 words]
Standing outside Sunset Holistic, a medical-marijuana dispensary on Hollywood Blvd., short-order cook Steve Jones still remembers the day 20 years ago when his college roommate was arrested for possessing an ounce of cannabis. "Back then, marijuana was the evil ganja weed of 'Reefer Madness,' " says Mr. Jones. "Now they say it's medicine and you take it to heal.... What'll it be next, the corner ganjaria?" The prospect suddenly doesn't seem so far out and not just in California. Thirteen states allow for the legal possession and use of medical marijuana with a doctor's authorization, and several more are considering it. Though marijuana remains banned federally, the Obama administration has decided to end federal raids on medical-pot sellers in these states. And the American Medical Association recently made news when it called on the government to reconsider marijuana's classification as a dangerous drug to allow more medical research. [continues 627 words]
Medical Marijuana Booms In Cities Such As L.A., With Some Eyeing Its Revenue Potential. But There's Pushback, Too. LOS ANGELES - Sitting on a sofa in the gymnasium-sized Quonset hut of the New Liberty Bell Temple, Daniel Reynolds puts his lips to a plastic cone and breathes in marijuana vapor. The vapor contains the active substance in cannabis that Mr. Reynolds, a cancer patient, says "eases his pain." The vast room also hosts a pool table, ping-pong table, video-game monitor, and a stage for live music. In the back, a cubicle displays Mason jars filled with green, leafy clumps. Customers pay between $25 and $55 per one-eighth of an ounce for different strains of marijuana, marked "Humboldt Gold," "Black Africa," "Banana OG," and "NY Diesel." [continues 783 words]
It Is The First Us City To Assess Such A Tax, Which Could Raise Almost $300,000 In Revenue Next Year. Opponents Of The Measure Say It Opens The Door To More Crime And Heavier Drug Use. Los Angeles - Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday became the first city in the US to assess a tax on marijuana. State and national advocates of the tax say the victory is a significant turning point in the history of cannabis use, paving the way for taxation in other communities and states and establishing more social acceptance of marijuana use. [continues 577 words]
Marijuana is safer than cigarettes, alcohol and driving without a seat belt but is prosecuted more viciously than all three combined. The only real tragedy of marijuana is its tendency, when used immoderately, to induce a lifestyle of volitional immobility. But simple self-discipline can easily counter this; and since marijuana isn't nearly as physically addictive as many other drugs, like nicotine, alcohol or opiates, this solution is by no means unrealistic. If people willingly allow marijuana to do what television, video games and pornography have done to so many, namely deprive them of ambition and self-control to such an extent they are unable to live productively, then that is their prerogative. Society creates its own filters. [continues 639 words]
Illegal Marijuana Farms Threaten The Environment And The Public's Safety SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. - Even Brer Rabbit couldn't make it through this briar patch. With their M-16 rifles and their backpacks snagging on every bramble, three national park rangers in commando gear spit out mosquitoes on a pathless mountainside of manzanita thickets and dense brush. Gun barrels raised to give each other cover, they advance using hand signals, pausing only to sip water in the 100-degree heat and gasp for air through mesh masks. [continues 1881 words]
THE Country Women's Association has caused shockwaves in Tasmania by voting to lobby for medical trials of marijuana as a painkiller. Retired pharmacist and lifetime CWA member Ailsa Bond, 80, was surprised at the unanimous support for her motion at this week's state conference. Mrs Bond said she prescribed a liquid tincture of marijuana early in her career, in the 1940s. She said that was before recreational use of the drug became a huge problem in the US. "Methadone can be controlled as a treatment for heroin addicts, why couldn't cannabis (marijuana) be controlled too," Mrs Bond asked. [continues 383 words]
SINCE Tasmania's Country Women's Association voted unanimously to lobby for the trial use of marijuana for medical relief, Ailsa Bond's popular cheese and parsley scones have been the subject of many a joke. "People joke that the parsley flakes could be replaced with other green flakes!" she says. The move from the CWA to get the drug approved for medical use surprised many, but the sprightly 80-year-old responds that the organisation has always been progressive. "We've been raising social issues for 60 or 70 years," she said. "We've talked about the value of water, the importance of trees, we've lobbied for childcare centres, for roads, for hospitals and libraries. [continues 433 words]
THERE was a time when a visitor to one of America's national parks only had to worry about running into a grizzly bear with a sore head. These days they have gun-toting drug dealers and armed park rangers to contend with. With their M-16 rifles and their backpacks snagging on every bramble, three national-park rangers in commando gear spit out mosquitoes on a pathless mountainside of manzanita thickets and dense brush. Gun barrels raised to give each other cover, they advance using hand signals, pausing only to sip water in the 100-degree heat and gasp for air through mesh masks. [continues 395 words]
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. - Even Br'er Rabbit couldn't make it through this briar patch. With their M-16 rifles and their backpacks snagging on every bramble, three national-park rangers in commando gear spit out mosquitoes on a pathless mountainside of manzanita thickets and dense brush. Gun barrels raised to give each other cover, they advance using hand signals, pausing only to sip water in the 100-degree heat and gasp for air through mesh masks. After 2-1/2 hours, one mile, and a thousand-foot gain in altitude, they come across evidence of large-scale activity that officials call the biggest threat to national parks since their creation over a century ago. Beside an abandoned camp scattered with trash and human waste, lie empty bags of fertilizer, gardening tools, irrigation tubing - and spent rifle casings. Illegal marijuana farming, once the province of small-time growers, has become big business on the nation's most visited public land: national parks. [continues 1595 words]
California Has Become the Epicenter of a States Vs. Feds Battle Over Marijuana Use. LOS ANGELES - At the "Sixties Paraphernalia" shop on Victory Blvd. here, you can glimpse the past of US marijuana use - hash pipes, "bongs," cigarette papers - and catch an earful about its future. "The federal government is still stuck in the pre-Beatles days of 'reefer madness,' " says Skip Stanley, a bearded biker who also holds a graduate degree in sociology. He cites a recent poll showing nearly 80 percent support for medicinal marijuana use, and notes nine states have approved such use. "States are trying to move ahead with ways of using this plant to alleviate suffering but the feds still think of users as just Dead-heads and zombies." [continues 534 words]
Guard Symbolizes Challenges Of Security-Agency Merger. SAN PEDRO, CALIF. - As the Coast Guard patrol boat Halibut escorts a giant cruise ship out of port, vacationers get a first-hand glimpse of America's growing focus on homeland defense. The factory-fresh cutter is clearing a right-of-way 600 yards wide for the floating, maritime playhouse - until it is safely beyond the breakwater of the nation's largest port. By stepping up its watch on potential terrorist targets such as cruise liners, the Coast Guard illustrates the promise - but also the challenges - involved in the planned merger of nearly two dozen federal agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security this fall. [continues 803 words]
Ralph Dornan was watching the news with his teenage son and daughter last week when his palms began to sweat. "We were tuned in to a report on [presidential candidate] George W. Bush's refusal to answer questions about alleged drug use in his past," recalls Mr. Dornan, a Los Angeles stockbroker. "I knew it was just seconds until my kids looked me in the eye and asked, 'What about you?' " The moment never came. But Dornan, who used marijuana in the early 1970s and experimented with cocaine, says he's in a quandary about whether and how to broach the subject with his kids. [continues 1164 words]
