Public Opinion Shifting in Favor of Marijuana, but Its Therapeutic Benefits Are Unclear With San Diego set to grant 36 new permits for medical marijuana dispensaries this year, the drug is about to become more legitimate than ever in the city. Does that mean cannabis is good medicine? Only solid science can prove what human ailments the green, leafy plant can truly soothe, but science has never been in the driver's seat as far as marijuana is concerned. Californians approved the Compassionate Use Act in 1996, giving doctors broad leeway to prescribe the drug if they determine "that a person's health would benefit from the use of marijuana in the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." [continues 1517 words]
District Attorney's Funding Grants to Prosecutors' Group at Issue The U.S. Department of Justice will withhold as much as $30,000 in grants to San Diego County because of a disagreement over spending of money and assets seized in criminal cases. District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has granted tens of thousands of dollars from forfeited assets to the California District Attorneys Association, a professional group. The subject of the dispute is $29,400 of federal funds that went for an office lease for the prosecutors group. Dumanis is active in the statewide education and advocacy organization and has served as its president and vice president. [continues 706 words]
Life-Saving Naloxone May Become Easy to Purchase SACRAMENTO - Slowly, trembling, she inserted the needle into a sponge and continued rescue breathing on the plastic mannequin. This could be her son. One one-thousand. These could be his cold lips. Two one-thousand. She squeezed the clear liquid into the sponge arm of the mannequin. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand. The constant worry that accompanies having a 25-year-old son addicted to heroin has taken a toll on the retired schoolteacher from a Sacramento suburb, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy. [continues 814 words]
The euphoria surrounding legalizing pot for recreational use is clouding common sense when it comes to driving. Pot remains the drug of choice for teenagers and research shows that youth are extremely vulnerable to marijuana's ill effects. Young drivers who smoke pot are at particularly high risk for being involved in a vehicle crash, not only due to overall driver inexperience, but also to the increasing availability of pot products with high levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). In a recent study of 23,500 drivers from six different states including California, drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, up from more than 16 percent in 1999. Marijuana was the primary drug involved in the increase. It is important to note that five out of the six states surveyed have medical marijuana policies in place. [continues 313 words]
(AP) - While security has tightened at the U.S. border, drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas. The area where boats were seized off California and the northwest coast of Mexico tripled to a size comparable to the state of Montana during the 2013 fiscal year, which ended in September. Off South America, traffickers over the years have been traversing territory so big the continental United States could be dropped inside of it. Mexico's Sinaloa cartel has been loading marijuana bales onto 50-foot vessels as far south as the Mexican port of Mazatlan - where its leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was captured early Saturday - and running them up the Pacific coast to the U.S., as far as Northern California. It's unclear if Guzman's arrest will hinder the maritime runs. [continues 254 words]
In 2010, as Colorado lawmakers were creating America's first state-licensed and regulated medical marijuana industry, fellow police officers at a Colorado Drug Investigators Association conference jeered a state law enforcement official assigned to draft the legislation. Some of the sharpest barbs came from visiting narcotics officers from California. "I was told that we hadn't learned anything from California that you can't do anything to regulate marijuana," said Matt Cook, a retired Colorado Springs police officer who became the first director of Colorado's Marijuana Enforcement Division, a policing agency that now regulates state-licensed marijuana workers, pot stores and commercial cannabis producers. [continues 1352 words]
Regarding the appeals court upholding the federal government's right to crack down on California medical marijuana dispensaries ("Court says feds can raid state pot shops," Jan. 16), the fact that marijuana use increases the chance of becoming psychotic is not widely known. Researchers from the University of Bristol, Imperial College and Cambridge University examined 35 studies that tracked tens of thousands of people for periods ranging from one year to 27 years to examine the effects of marijuana use on mental health. They found that people who used marijuana had roughly a 40 percent higher chance of developing a psychotic disorder later in life. Dr. Wilson Compton, a senior scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Washington, called the study persuasive. [continues 94 words]
Draft ordinance could effectively ban pot dispensaries in some San Diego districts By Joshua Emerson Smith newsThe number of allowable cannabis dispensaries in each council district under a draft ordinance, according to a SANDAG mapping study - Illustration by Lindsey Voltoline Imagine if the city shut down all the corner drug stores and allowed them to open in only a few neighborhoods. Then imagine you're sick and rely on public transportation. Soon this may not be far from reality for medical-cannabis patients in San Diego, according to a mapping study done by the San Diego County Association of Governments and obtained by CityBeat. [continues 1148 words]
The Del Mar Union School District board will wait until the San Diego City Council is closer to making a decision on its medical marijuana ordinance before they weigh in on the topic, the board decided at its June 26 meeting. A resolution was brought before the board to approve but it decided to hold off taking any action. Board president Doug Rafner said he was concerned that a resolution might be considered too political. "I don't want to come down on one side or the other, all I know is it shouldn't be near a school," Rafner said. [continues 421 words]
The high court's decision to uphold pot club bans could result in an extended period in which it will be impossible to buy medical cannabis in some cities but not in others - unless the legislature intervenes. The California Supreme Court upheld on Monday the right of cities and counties to ban medical cannabis dispensaries in a unanimous decision that promises to have major ramifications in the state. The ruling means that cities like Walnut Creek and counties like Riverside can continue to ban medical cannabis dispensaries in their areas - even though medical cannabis remains legal statewide. It also lets cities like Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco to continue to allow regulated medical marijuana collectives operating in storefronts - i.e., dispensaries. [continues 865 words]
State's Highest Court Rules That Local Governments Are Permitted to Outlaw Medical Marijuana Dispensaries A unanimous state Supreme Court ruled on Monday that local governments can outlaw medical marijuana dispensaries if they desire, rejecting arguments that the state's landmark medical marijuana law prohibited such bans. The ruling from the high court was not unexpected - the justices had telegraphed as much during oral arguments in the case several months ago - but it was still a setback for medical marijuana activists. [continues 850 words]
Ordinance to Be Considered by City Council Includes State's First Marijuana Excise Levy The City Council will once again consider an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego today after Mayor Bob Filner revived the issue this year following a failed proposal in 2011. One of the key provisions of Filner's plan is to impose a 2 percent excise tax on all wholesale acquisitions by the dispensaries - new territory for a California city that could raise legal questions. In other words, the tax would be levied on the product going into the dispensaries, not on sales. [continues 1362 words]
SAN DIEGO - Though San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has ordered city officials to stop targeting medical marijuana outlets for prosecution and code compliance, don't expect federal authorities to take the same position. U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said Tuesday that while she is open to meeting with the new mayor on the subject, selling marijuana remains illegal under federal law. "I take my guidance from the attorney general of the U.S., and he from the president," Duffy said during an interview with the U-T San Diego editorial board. "And thus far, that direction is, we are going to enforce the Controlled Substances Act." [continues 496 words]
Forget 2014 or 2016: What's Going to Happen With Cannabis Next Year in California? While "wait and see" seems to be the prevailing attitude when it comes to sweeping cannabis-law reform in California, leaders in the state's marijuana industry say 2013 will be a year of action. In Sacramento County, the Committee for Safe Patient Access to Regulated Cannabis recently presented a petition to the board of supervisors to allow 22 medical-cannabis collectives to open for business. And next year, local activists will look to put continued political pressure on the county. [continues 521 words]
LOS ANGELES - The small, open-hull fishing boats head north from Baja Mexico, traveling at night, their navigation lights off. It is an old smuggling route, popular with tequila runners during Prohibition in the 1920s and then little used for nearly a century. Enlarge This Image But as a result of a security crackdown along the border with Mexico, the waters off Southern California have again been teeming with smugglers in the last few years, as drug cartels seek new avenues to move illicit cargo into the United States. [continues 1058 words]
In the midst of rapid cultural and technological change, there isn't much that has stayed the same since the 1960s. Marijuana use among youth and the research practices to study its effects on the brain are no exception. Current methods to study the drug's influence on adolescents are allowing health professionals and researchers the ability to understand its impacts. Researchers at the University of California San Diego find that youth may be more susceptible than adults to marijuana's neurological effects because young people's brains are still developing. They discovered that among adolescents, marijuana use is associated with verbal learning disadvantages, attention problems, short-term memory loss, difficulty with problem-solving and trouble exercising inhibition. The studies also show that youth marijuana users require more brain-processing power to complete tasks than nonusers. The studies utilize functional magnetic resonance imaging that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, allowing researchers to study varying patterns in the brain when tests are given to those using marijuana and those who do not. [continues 556 words]
Dispensaries Are Rejected in Several Races. Hetch Hetchy Measure Is Defeated. While voters in Colorado and Washington opted to legalize recreational marijuana use, a host of California communities moved instead to curtail the booming cannabis industry. In San Diego County on Tuesday, measures to permit and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries were rejected in Del Mar, Solana Beach, Lemon Grove and Imperial Beach. The closest of the measures was in Del Mar, supported by 44% of voters. In the Bay Area, a proposal that would have allowed up to three dispensaries in Palo Alto went down to defeat as well. Members of the City Council had argued that the stores would increase criminal activity and send children the wrong message, and 62% of voters sided with them. [continues 477 words]
In November, voters in Del Mar and Solana Beach face initiatives seeking to locate marijuana dispensaries within their city limits, despite numerous public-safety concerns. Despite everything we know about the negative results of marijuana smoking - a known carcinogen that attacks the respiratory system - we still see a concerted effort to normalize its use. Back in 1999, the California Healthy Kids Survey first uncovered a troubling trend that young, otherwise healthy North County teens use marijuana far more than cigarettes. Health concerns aside, selling marijuana from storefronts - medical or otherwise - continues to be illegal under federal law. [continues 71 words]
The five medical marijuana propositions on the ballot in four San Diego County cities next month are not really about how best to use California's Compassionate Use Act of 1996 to provide this psychoactive drug to really sick people who get no relief from traditional medicines. They are about community, and what might happen to those four cities Del Mar, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove and Solana Beach should any of the five propositions be approved by voters on Nov. 6. [continues 449 words]
