Nearly 20 years after voters made California the first state in the nation to legalize the medical use of marijuana, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed a package of bills to regulate the multibillion-dollar medicinal-cannabis industry. The stringent and comprehensive regulations create an enforceable framework for governing virtually every aspect of the business in California - from licensing and taxation to quality control, shipping, packaging and pesticide standards. The lack of regulations for the booming medical pot business has been frustrating to growers, dispensary operators, local governments, law enforcement and patient groups since 1996 when California voters approved Proposition 215, the law that made it legal for doctors to recommend pot to their patients. [continues 769 words]
Marijuana Brings a Relaxed Aspect to the Ancient Meditative Practice In a small South of Market studio, yoga is practiced on, shall we say, a higher level. As if doing child's pose, or balasana, in a candlelit room with tranquil music wasn't relaxing enough, Ganja Yoga adds cannabis to the experience as a way to help bring one's practice to a state of heightened spiritual consciousness that may otherwise not be reached. On a recent evening, instructor Dee Dussault talked her students through the various poses, encouraging them in a soothing voice how to breathe deeply through the diaphragm and, when the mood strikes them, to take a hit off a joint or vaporizer. [continues 936 words]
Joseph D. McNamara, a former San Jose police chief who gained national attention for his progressive views on community policing, drugs and gun control, died in his sleep early Friday at his Monterey home of pancreatic cancer. He was 79. Mr. McNamara, who started his career as a Harlem beat cop in New York City and earned a doctorate from Harvard University, served as San Jose's police chief from 1976 until retiring in 1991. He worked as a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution from 1991 until his death, and wrote five novels dubbed cop noir. [continues 571 words]
Alzheimer's disease may develop in humans in part because of a blockage of natural cannabis-like chemicals in the brain, Stanford researchers believe. Our bodies make beneficial chemical compounds known as endocannabinoids to activate the receptors involved in mood, pain-sensation, appetite and memory. Those happen to be the same sensations that are activated when ingesting or smoking marijuana. Endocannabinoids play an important role in allowing signals in the brain to shine through while shutting out unwanted "noise." If these chemicals are blocked, the brain becomes too inhibited, and that leads to impaired learning and memory loss. [continues 140 words]
Giving heroin users an overdose antidote called naloxone, or Narcan, saves both lives and money, according to a study co-authored by a researcher at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Researchers developed a mathematical model to estimate the impact of distributing naloxone, an injection or nasal spray that blocks the action of the opioid on nerve and brain cells, and triggers an instantaneous withdrawal. Based on the model, researchers estimated that giving just 200,000 heroin users naloxone kits would prevent 9,000 overdoses over their lifetimes, or one life saved for every 164 naloxone kits distributed. Using more optimistic projections, the researchers estimated that as many as 43,000 deaths could be prevented, or one life for every 36 kits. [continues 134 words]
Scientists at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute have found that a non-psychotropic compound in marijuana - called cannabidiol - that has decreased metastatic breast cancer in early tests has also shown promise in treating a deadly brain cancer. The research, which was done in mice, builds upon previous findings in cancers that express high levels of a protein called ID-1. The study, which was published this month in the medical journal Cancer Research, focused on glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer that expresses high levels of ID-1. [continues 82 words]
The therapeutic uses of cannabis have long been a focus of research for Dr. Donald Abrams, UCSF professor and chief of the hematologyoncology division at San Francisco General Hospital. Abrams wrote a study last year on the combination of cannabinoids - the main ingredient in cannabis or medical marijuana - and pain drugs. Abrams talks about the preclinical work by the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute and other research on cancer and cannabis, 16 years after California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana. [continues 491 words]
Compound Helps Reduce Spread of Harmful Cells, Researchers Say Marijuana, already shown to reduce pain and nausea in cancer patients, may be promising as a cancer-fighting agent against some of the most aggressive forms of the disease. A growing body of early research shows a compound found in marijuana - - one that does not produce the plant's psychotropic high - seems to have the ability to "turn off" the activity of a gene responsible for metastasis in breast and other types of cancers. [continues 1353 words]
The first U.S. clinical trials in more than 20 years on the medical efficacy of marijuana found that pot helps relieve pain and muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and certain neurological conditions, according to a report released Wednesday by a UC research center. The results of five state-funded scientific clinical trials came 14 years after California voters passed a law approving marijuana for medical use and more than 10 years after the state Legislature passed a law that created the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego, which conducted the studies. [continues 563 words]
Tough-on-crime law does not constitute double jeopardy The Supreme Court sharpened the teeth of California's "three strikes" law Friday, making it easier for states to stiffen sentences for repeat offenders based on past crimes. In a decision hailed by the law's author and criticized by San Francisco's chief deputy public defender, the justices ruled, 5-4, that the constitutional protection against being tried twice for the same crime does not apply to sentencing proceedings in non-death penalty cases. [continues 715 words]
