David Brooks

Stoned People Do Stupid Things: The decriminalisation of marijuana in more states will only produce more users

FOR a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. [ additional reference – marijuana is now very much stronger, and therefore more harmful, than the 1.0% – 2.0% smoked in the l960s] It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships. But then we all sort of moved away from it. I don’t remember any big group decision that we should give up weed. It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely using it.

We didn’t give it up for the obvious health reasons: that it is addictive in about one in six teenagers; that smoking and driving is a good way to get yourself killed; that young people who smoke go on to suffer IQ loss and perform worse on other cognitive tests.

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at four in the morning.

We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on stoner. He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life.

Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn’t really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this). We graduated to more satisfying pleasures. The deeper sources of happiness usually involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

One close friend devoted himself to track. Others fell deeply in love and got thrills from the enlargements of the heart. A few developed passions for science or literature.

Finally, I think we had a vague sense that smoking weed was not exactly something you were proud of yourself for. It’s not something people admire. We were in the stage, which I guess all of us are still in, of trying to become more integrated, coherent and responsible people. This process usually involves using the powers of reason, temperance and self-control — not qualities one associates with being high.

I think we had a sense, which all people have, or should have, that the actions you take changes you inside, making you a little more or a little less coherent. Not smoking, or only smoking sporadically, gave you a better shot at becoming a little more integrated and interesting. Smoking all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep centre, or at least, not do much to enhance it.

So, like the vast majority of people who try drugs, we aged out. We left marijuana behind. I don’t have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged.

We now have a couple of states — Colorado and Washington — that have gone into the business of effectively encouraging drug use. By making weed legal, they are creating a situation in which the price will drop substantially. One Research and Development Corp (RAND) study suggests that prices could plummet by up to 90 per cent, before taxes and such. As prices drop and legal fears go away, usage is bound to increase. This is simple economics, and it is confirmed by much research. Colorado and Washington, in other words, are producing more users.

The people who debate these policy changes usually cite the health risks users would face or the tax revenues the state might realise. Many people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of drug use because that would imply that one sort of life you might choose is better than another sort of life.

But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviours do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favour temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.

In legalising weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be. NYT Smoking all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep centre, or at least, not do much to enhance it.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/weed-been-there-done-that-1.454372\ New Straits Times, January 4, 2014

The graph above shows the percentage of young people aged 12 – 17 years of age in the USA who have used marijuana in the past month.

Note the much larger number of youth usage in States which have medical marijuana. This is not surprising since young people clearly believe that if something is ‘medicine’ it must be safe to use. Sadly they do not seem to be aware of the possible health and social consequences of using this substance, or the addictive nature of marijuana. The media in the USA seem reluctant to publish the latest scientific studies which show that marijuana is far from harmless.

MERIDIAN — Idaho State Police say they’re seeing a lot more marijuana trafficked through the state than they used to. “Over the last five years, we’ve tripled the amount of drug seizures in regards to marijuana,” said Lt. Brad Doty.

In the last fiscal year, ISP seized 806 pounds of pot on Interstate 84, Interstate 86 and other Idaho highways. Doty says they are already on pace to soundly beat that number again. Just last weekend, state police in American Falls seized more than 100 pounds of marijuana in three separate busts.

Why the increase? Doty says it has nothing to do with anything that’s changed in Idaho, rather within the nearby states. “As those states that surround us lessen their marijuana laws our drug seizures have increased.”

Oregon, California, and Nevada have all decriminalized marijuana and legalized medical marijuana. Washington and Colorado have legalized medical and recreational use.

“So basically, the large grows in Idaho will get you a lot of jail time,” said Doty. “Large grows in those states where it’s not a crime to possess marijuana, won’t.”

Doty says traffickers often take marijuana from those legal grow sites in those other states and bring it into and through Idaho to the Midwest to sell it. Since it’s illegal here there’s higher demand and bigger profits, which is why Doty also believes this trafficking trend will only continue. “The seizures are getting larger and larger, some of the largest I’ve ever seen in my career.”

But, Doty says traffickers often aren’t just trafficking drugs, they’re committing other crimes too. “It can trickle into other aspects of law enforcement. So, whether that’s thefts or burglaries or other crimes that are all contributed to or surround drug interdiction or drug enforcement. So, the more marijuana that we can seize off the road, obviously leads to more convictions with other crimes, as well.”

Fourteen weapons were seized during drug trafficking busts last year.

Doty also stressed that not all users are traffickers, but reminded everyone that Idaho doesn’t issue or recognize medical marijuana cards.

In order to help battle this trafficking, ISP is adding three drug detection dogs next year.

Source: www.nwcn.com   November 13, 2013 

Andrew Jennings killed himself aged 25, after years of mental illness. His mother, Maggie believes his paranoid schizophrenia was triggered by cannabis use. She told Katy Edwards the poignant and disturbing story.   Andrew John Jennings died in April this year, clutching a photograph of his childhood cat, Mr. Wigs , in a fume-filled car down a quiet Suffolk lane. He was 25 years old.

At his funeral in St Peters Church, Charsfield, his mother Maggie and sister Belinda, 27, spoke of his long battle against paranoid schizophrenia, the terrible illness that dominated his whole life and had made him a prisoner in his own body.   Belinda, who works as a senior laboratory technician for Greene King, had said: “None of us can understand how tough it was for him, every hour of every day. In the end he realized this was no life for him.  “Andrew is at peace for the first time. Deep down I know this was the best and only option for him.”

By the end, Andrew was plagued with up to five “characters” – voices and faces, who would torment him constantly — mocking him and goading him ceaselessly.   His mother, a former producer on BBC Radio Suffolk’s John Eley programme, who now runs a B&B in Debach, believes he took his own life, knowing there could be no other escape from the illness.

She described the moment when Andrew left her and her partner Brian, for the very last time, just minutes before he committed suicide.   She said: “He told me that if it did have to happen that I should know there was no other way and that I was not to blame myself in any way. He said at no time in my life could I have done anything different — that this was in him and there was nothing that could have changed it.”

Maggie is certain, however, that had her son not used cannabis for much of his adult life, he might still be alive today.    She said: “I accept that had he not been so heavily into cannabis he could still have been very sensitive and troubled. He might even have needed a bit of help but he wouldn’t have had this dreadful, dreadful thing.”     She referred to recent research carried out by the Institute of Psychiatry, in London, which revealed a strong link between cannabis consumption and schizophrenia.

Professor Robin Murray, who led the study, published in the British Medical Journal earlier this month, has warned that the research should not be ignored. He cited many examples of cases, where, as with Andrew Jennings, bright young boys have suddenly begun to fail at school, displaying bizarre behaviour, before going off the rails altogether, ending up in a psychiatric unit.   Maggie first began to have concerns about Andrew when, aged 14 and a pupil at Ipswich School, he fell in with a group of cannabis users.

He became less communicative and was getting into trouble at school, which Maggie found very strange, given that he had won an award for the most promising student the previous year.   He had also begun to behave strangely.   On one occasion, he went missing for a whole week, having hidden away in a friend’s barn near Woodbridge. Another incident saw him set fire to the kitchen floor.  He was asked to leave Ipswich School, aged 15, owing to his disruptive behaviour and spent one year at Farlingaye High School in Woodbridge.

“He was a lovely, lovely child but he was beginning to change into someone I didn’t know,” Maggie said. “I am sure it was the drugs.”   She took him to the family doctor, who told her she did not need to worry, adding that “boys will be boys”.  Maggie also insisted that Andrew saw a drugs counsellor, but came away feeling she had been dismissed as an over-anxious mother.

Andrew did very poorly in his GCSE examinations and tried a few college courses, but could not settle. It was when he was working as a forklift truck driver in Felixstowe and living in his own flat that, Maggie believes, real paranoia took hold.   “He would come back with very strange stories about his work mates,” she said.  “He thought everyone was looking at him and calling him   names.”

Andrew was becoming a loner and had begun to drink heavily. He went through a string of part time jobs. He would complain to his mother that the man living above his flat made too much noise and would call him names.  “You could never tell what was real and what wasn’t,” Maggie said.  “He took no pride in anything. He would dress in black and curl up in his dirty flat.”   Even the habitual Friday night curries with his mother and sister were becoming very strained.   “It was obviously awkward for him to come,” Maggie   added.

When Andrew was in his early 20s, he tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists in the bath.

For some reason – Maggie believes he was frightened – he got out of the bath and went outside where he held up a car with a knife, intending to hi-jack the vehicle and drive it off a cliff.   The police intervened before Andrew had left the scene.

It was after seeing a community psychiatric nurse that he was finally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and admitted to St Clements Hospital in Ipswich. “Even then, the real Andrew was still there, somewhere,” Maggie said.   “He was such a lovely person. He checked with the man whose car he took that he had insurance as he didn’t want to see him out of pocket.”   Sadly, Andrew’s medication never fully controlled his illness. He would drink alcohol, interrupting the efficacy of the drugs and, his mother believes, was still smoking cannabis regularly.   On his release from St Clements, Maggie tried to care for him at home but as the voices in his head began to take over, she became increasingly frightened.   A case in the media of a schizophrenic son having killed his mother because she refused to “back off”, eventually prompted Maggie to seek help.

“I had become terrified of him. I was going to bed with the car keys under my pillow so I could make a quick getaway,” she said.   Maggie was advised to take a back seat and allow carers at East Suffolk Mind to look after Andrew at The Moorings, in Ipswich.  Andrew had his own flat, which he loved, a television and a music system. He got on very well with his carers and enjoyed good food — smoked salmon, olives and feta cheese were his favourites. He was also a talented artist, although his illness would never allow him to concentrate for any period of time.

Maggie keeps a sketch of her niece, which Andrew completed just months before he died and also one of his beloved cat, Mr. Wigs.   She described how the voices would change Andrew’s face — from a smiling, “rubbery” texture, to a pinched, tortured face. She could always tell when he was having a particularly bad episode.

Andrew had told Maggie to watch the film A Beautiful Mind, which shows actor Russell Crowe’s character slump into the depths of mental illness, surrounded by the imaginary characters which dog his every waking moment. “Andrew said that was what life was like for him,” she added.   On one occasion, in February of this year, Maggie remembers Andrew asking her to cook him a Moussaka, which they enjoyed together, sitting on her patio in Debach.   She said: “Afterwards he took my hand and he said ‘It’s OK mum, I’m going to be around for a little while yet but I don’t think I can live like this for much longer.

“I cried and tried to talk him through it. I said that a miracle could always happen — there could be some new drug. He said he had nothing to look forward to. I was running out of things to suggest.”   At Maggie’s suggestion, Andrew bought himself a bicycle and set about planning a marathon journey to Wales.   “The planning was keeping him going,” Maggie said.

In the event, he only got as far as Debenham, realising there could be no real refuge from the voices.    Eventually, Maggie believes, he decided he could go on no longer.

He visited his mother’s house at around 11pm on April 24 this year to borrow a hosepipe, telling his mother he had hit an animal and wanted to clean blood from his car.  She was half-asleep and confused — she had come to suspect strange behaviour from her son. On leaving the house, Andrew had tapped Maggie’s partner Brian on the arm and asked him to take good care of Maggie.  It was only after Andrew had left that Maggie realised what he had meant. She and Brian sped after him in their car but were not able to catch him. They found his flat empty and feared the worst.

Andrew’s body was discovered, near Maggie’s home, down a quiet country lane. It was the only reprieve he could find from the horrifying illness that had made his life a living nightmare.   As far as Maggie is aware, her son never took any drug stronger than cannabis, apart from one experiment with ecstasy, which he had vowed never to try again.

“We’ve got to stop youngsters dying needlessly from cannabis,” she said.  “I hope Andrew’s example will make people think again.”

Mary Canon, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, with a specialist interest in the link between adolescent cannabis use and schizophrenia, said: “Cannabis definitely worsens the symptoms of schizophrenia, if it already exists. The prognosis is much worse if patients are heavy cannabis smokers. There is very little doubt about that.”

She added that cannabis could also be a trigger in those people who may have be susceptible to the illness.  Tina Graves, housing services manager for East Suffolk Mind, which cared for Andrew during the last few years of his life, said: “There is some evidence to suggest a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia but it has not been proven one way or the other. Everyone here was very distressed about what happened to Andrew and we have every sympathy with his family.”

Source: East Anglian Daily Times (UK) 2003

The legalization of drugs will have harmful effects on society, and a discussion that fails to acknowledge this is ridiculous

Since Del. Heather Mizeur, a candidate for governor, announced a plan to legalize marijuana in Maryland, there has been a great deal of discussion of the issue. The Baltimore Sun called for a more measured approach that avoided the risk of “rushing to embrace a sweeping but untested new policy that could create as many problems as it solves.” In an op-ed in The Sun, Walter Olson, a fellow at the Cato Institute, derided conservative opposition to Ms. Mizeur’s drug legalization proposal and regurgitated many of the arguments that have been made by legalization advocates for decades.

What has been missing from the discussion, however, has been an honest analysis of both the impacts of broad legalization and the true intent of its advocates. Such a discussion would, no doubt, quickly chill any public momentum toward marijuana legalization.

Delegate Mizeur’s proposal is the next step in a well established playbook that drug legalization advocates have been employing in states throughout the country.

First comes a focus on marijuana, a drug that legalization advocates claim is harmless, and a proposal to decriminalize it for only those with serious medical conditions. The second play is a call for the full legalization of “medical marijuana,” often with provisions wide open to fraud and abuse. And finally, as we have seen in Washington and Colorado, advocates seek full pot legalization, making wild claims of new revenue and greater resources for other police priorities, among other benefits and no acknowledgment of the downsides.

This creeping approach to legalization of marijuana is always bolstered by arguments that also support legalization of all drugs. It is pretty obvious where the drug legalization advocates next target is and what their ultimate goal will be: full legalization of all drugs. Of course, few advocates would dare say such a thing openly, but the direction of their logic is straightforward and undeniable.

Mr. Olson argued that the coming debate would include the question of “What business is it of the government what citizens do behind closed doors?”

The question Mr. Olson raises is the quintessential argument behind legalization of all drugs, not just marijuana. It embodies the excesses of the Libertarian philosophy, sacrificing all practical consideration for purity of ideology.  A corollary of the “behind closed doors” rationale of drug legalization is the constant refrain of the “failed war on drugs.” While the prisons are allegedly full with those incarcerated for using and selling marijuana, they are also full of users and dealers of every manner of drug, as well as murders, rapists and thieves.   Have we lost the War on Murder as well? If so, should we simply declare our surrender and legalize it? Why is that concept any less absurd than the legalization of drugs because drug use has not stopped?

We then come to the argument that does differentiate pot advocates from those favoring full drug legalization, the contention that marijuana is a harmless drug that many celebrities and captains of industry have indulged in. Only in the warped mind would a vice become a virtue when committed by the “successful.”  Many legalization advocates point to the prosecution of young offenders, their lives ruined not by their conscious choice to engage in illegality but by the oppressive state seeking to stamp out a harmless vice. They lament their children’s bright futures threatened by what they insist is the inevitability of illicit drug use. Of course, this argument pushes the envelope of the free-condom, lack of personal responsibility, entitlement culture in which too many young people are raised. Drug legalization will not prevent the penchant for teen self-destruction, and its justification on such a basis speaks far more about a generation of parents than their children.

In 2005, the DEA issued a publication entitled “Marijuana: The Myths Are Killing Us.” One by one, the myths of marijuana’s harmlessness were deconstructed. Among the details documented in the report were: smoked marijuana is a health danger without any medicinal value; decriminalization and legalization efforts in other countries have led to increased usage among teens; and use of marijuana has a demonstrable harmful impact on nonusers.

The simple, undeniable reality is that the legalization of drugs will have harmful effects on society and a discussion that fails to acknowledge this is folly.

Source:  Gregory Kline is a frequent contributor to Red Maryland, a conservative radio network and blog whose content appears regularly in The Baltimore Sun and on baltimoresun.com. His email is: gregorykline@aol.com.

Doctors have long recognized a link between alcoholism and anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Those who drink heavily are at increased risk for traumatic events like car accidents and domestic violence, but that only partially explains the connection. New research using mice reveals heavy alcohol use actually rewires brain circuitry, making it harder for alcoholics to recover psychologically following a traumatic experience.

“There’s a whole spectrum to how people react to a traumatic event,” said study author Thomas Kash, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “It’s the recovery that we’re looking at – the ability to say ‘this is not dangerous anymore.’ Basically, our research shows that chronic exposure to alcohol can cause a deficit with regard to how our cognitive brain centers control our emotional brain centers.”

The study, which was published online on Sept. 2, 2012 by the journal Nature Neuroscience, was conducted by scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and UNC’s Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies.

“A history of heavy alcohol abuse could impair a critical mechanism for recovering from a trauma, and in doing so put people at greater risk for PTSD,” said NIAAA scientist Andrew Holmes, PhD, the study’s senior author. “The next step will be to test whether our preclinical findings translate to patients currently suffering from comorbid PTSD and alcohol abuse. If it does, then this could lead to new thinking about how we can better treat these serious medical conditions.”

Over the course of a month, the researchers gave one group of mice doses of alcohol equivalent to double the legal driving limit in humans. A second group of mice was given

no alcohol. The team then used mild electric shocks to train all the mice to fear the sound of a brief tone.

When the tone was repeatedly played without the accompanying electric shock, the mice with no alcohol exposure gradually stopped fearing it. The mice with chronic alcohol exposure, on the other hand, froze in place each time the tone was played, even long after the electric shocks had stopped.

The pattern is similar to what is seen in patients with PTSD, who have trouble overcoming fear even when they are no longer in a dangerous situation.

The researchers traced the effect to differences in the neural circuitry of the alcohol-exposed mice. Comparing the brains of the mice, researchers noticed nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex of the alcohol-exposed mice actually had a different shape than those of the other mice. In addition, the activity of a key receptor, NMDA, was suppressed in the mice given heavy doses of alcohol.

Holmes said the findings are valuable because they pinpoint exactly where alcohol causes damage that leads to problems overcoming fear. “We’re not only seeing that alcohol has detrimental effects on a clinically important emotional process, but we’re able to offer some insight into how alcohol might do so by disrupting the functioning of some very specific brain circuits,” said Holmes.

Understanding the relationship between alcohol and anxiety at the molecular level could offer new possibilities for developing drugs to help patients with anxiety disorders who also have a history of heavy alcohol use. “This study is exciting because it gives us a specific molecule to look at in a specific brain region, thus opening the door to discovering new methods to treat these disorders,” said Kash.

Source:  www.newrelevant.com  2012

At least three Canadian police forces are publishing the addresses of busted marijuana grow houses.  What?  You haven’t heard about the latest potential nightmare for home buyers and homeowners who rent their property?  A marijuana grow house is a home that has been physically altered to facilitate the production of marijuana.  The alterations include cutting into hydro power sources in order to steal the extra electricity needed to power the high-wattage lights that help the plants grow.  The ventilation in the house is often reconfigured to remove the strange smells that are produced by the marijuana plants.  Regular spraying of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides on the plants in very high concentrations also contributes to a chemical contamination of the premises.  And, let’s not forget that there is an awful lot of water used on those plants and the resulting moisture generally leaves the house with a serious mould problem.

Guess how many grow ops are in Canada?  Well, the Canadian Real Estate Association estimates as many as 50,000 across the country, and climbing.  These houses, and other premises, are purchased or rented by organized criminals who essentially trash the house for as long as they can get away with it and leave behind a property that may have no hope of being repaired.  In some cases, the mould and structural damage is so extensive that the house must be torn down.  In some cases, these criminals buy the property.  In other cases, they rent or sublet from innocent people.  In one case, a man had an opportunity to work abroad.  He rented his home to a respectable couple who, in turn, (without the owner’s permission) sublet the property unwittingly to grow op criminals.  The homeowner returned from abroad to find his house ruined.

The profit is certainly attractive for the criminals. It is estimated that one residential grow op will house 1,600 plants and produce a $1.6 million profit in one year.  Here are the shockers for the owners of the property: most homeowners’ insurance policies will not cover the cost of repairing damage caused by this type of criminal activity, and the estimates from the Insurance Bureau of Canada suggest that the average cost of repairing a home that has been used as a grow op—if it can be repaired at all—is about $40,000.

How can you recognize a marijuana grow house?  The following list is taken directly from the website of the Toronto Police (who, unfortunately, are extremely familiar with the grow house phenomenon).  Consider the following:

* The house does not appear lived-in.  Someone visits but only stays for short periods of time.

*   Activity inside the house seems to take place at odd hours

* The exterior appearance of the property, such as the lawn and small repairs, is neglected.

* People using the property often back into the garage and enter the home through the garage

*  Garbage is minimal and may contain used soil and plant material.

*   Windows are covered.

*   Bright light escapes from windows, and windows are often covered with thick         condensation.

*  There are sounds of interior construction.

*  Timers are set inside the residence.

*  There is a strong “skunk-like” odour coming from the property.

*   Items being brought into the house include soil planters, fans and large lights.

*  Garbage bags are not left for the regular collection, but are transported away from the property.

*  In the winter, there is no snow on the roof even when other houses in the area are snow-covered.

*  There are unusual amounts of steam coming from the house vents.

A surprising indicator that a property might be a grow op is not that it smells of skunk but that it smells too good.  Criminals often overuse fabric softener in dryers and vents in order to mask the smell of the plants.  So, an excessive or frequent smell of fabric softener in the air may actually be a clue that the property is a grow op.

The problem is so extensive that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has started to develop National Remediation Guidelines for rebuilding or restoring a property that has been used as a grow house.

Now, here is where is gets particularly frightening for potential homeowners—real estate agents do not always tell potential buyers that a property was used as a grow house.  Unscrupulous real estate agents will ensure that the real homeowner, who is aware of the grow op problem, is never available to meet with potential buyers.  The agent will profess that he or she has no direct knowledge of whether the property was used as a grow op and the homeowner, of course, is never around to answer questions.  In a very active market, a potential buyer might be discouraged from making an offer that is conditional upon a home inspection.  In haste to buy a house at a bargain price, the purchaser may find that they bought nothing but trouble.  At least one Toronto real estate lawyer is recommending that any offer to purchase a resale home contain a clause whereby the seller of the property warrants and represents that the property was not used for the growth or manufacture of any illegal substances during their period of ownership, and that to the best of the seller’s knowledge and belief, the use of the property, and the buildings and structures thereon, has never been for the growth or manufacture of illegal substances.  If the vendor balks at putting such a clause in, you know that you are probably dealing with a grow house or a former grow house.

This brings us full circle to the fact that police forces are now publishing the addresses of busted grow houses.  If you are in the market for property, you must beware.  Check the police list: a house that seems to be a bargain may be anything but.  In addition to having the seller warrant that it was not used as a grow house, insist on a building inspection by a certified home inspector.  The people who are trying to unload former grow houses will slap on a lot of paint and plaster to cover up the mess that was left behind by the criminals.  A certified home inspector will see right through it.  If an agent or a vendor of property is rushing you to buy without a home inspection, alarm bells should be going off.

On top of turning the actual buildings into disasters, these grow houses are contributing a lot of cash to criminal activity in Canada.  Their presence in a neighbourhood increases the risk of violence and residual crime.  Their theft of electricity leads to higher utility bills.  These properties are much more likely to have fires than normal homes, and the tampering with electrical power access can create electrocution hazards on the property.  If all of that is not horrifying enough, police have found that some grow houses have been booby-trapped to injure or kill trespassers and emergency service workers.

If you suspect that there is a grow op house in your neighbourhood or you know of one, contact the police and let them deal with it.  Remember, the people running that grow house are criminals and will do anything to ensure that they are not caught.

Source:  www.mycanadianrealestatelaw.com  2007 and 2014

Since the drive to legalise medical marijuana began in the US in the 1990s, marijuana use doubled and the perception of its harm halved. As Colorado and Washington formally legitimise and sanction its recreational use, these dangerous inverse trends can only continue, Kathy Gyngell warns.

On 1 January, to much media fanfare, Colorado became the first state in the US to legalise smoking dope. Since then, our TV screens and newspapers have brought us the less-than-salutary sight of long lines of customers queuing for their ‘soma’, in freezing temperatures to boot, begging the question of whether the denizens of Colorado have nothing better to do with their lives. Out of sight are the financial vultures wheeling to cash in on this hot new market.  Price  – Colorado ran out of pot in the first week – is not putting off its addicted customers.

The ‘medical’ marijuana business was already worth about  $1.4billion dollars last year.  Once pot can be pushed legitimately, once banks decide that investing is this boom is not a moral bridge too far, the sky will be the ceiling on the value of this business.

This is why the recent research finding about teen marijuana use and their perceptions of risk are so worrying. The 2013 Monitoring the Future Survey (an annual survey of 8th, 10th and 12th-graders by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan) reports that far fewer teenagers in the US today view regular marijuana use as harmful as their counterparts did before the campaign to legalise medical marijuana began in the 1990s. Rising use has been accompanied by diminishing perceptions of harm. Evidence points to this being a direct outcome of legalising marijuana for purported medical use – the political sleight of hand used by 21 states to decriminalise it since 1996.

It is no coincidence that marijuana is the only drug in the US whose use is on the rise. This is in contrast to use of all other illicit drugs which are all in persistent decline, particularly cocaine, the use of which has dropped by 75% in 25 years, as the recent United Nation’s World Drug Reports confirm.

Marijuana alone is on a persistent incline upward – and not just for adults. Its use by high-school seniors has doubled since 1991. Last year, teen use rose again, from 11.4% to 12.7% (8th graders) and from 28% to just under 30% (10th graders). A worrying 36% of high-school seniors used pot in the last year.  One in every 15 of them (6.5%) used it daily.

What this latest survey exposes is the Pandora’s box of medical marijuana. Of the 12th graders sampled by the survey who had used marijuana in the 12 months prior to being questioned and who lived in states that passed such laws, one third of them (34%) said that one of their sources of marijuana was another person’s medical marijuana prescription. 6% reported getting it from their own prescription.

The States with medical marijuana laws have failed to prevent its diversion to young people. They have given adolescents another way of obtaining the drug, exposing them to more risk.

The knowledge of this, sadly, did not stop the selfish and dope-loving adult population in Colorado from voting for the drug’s full legalisation. Yet the impact on their teens was clear within two years of medical marijuana being legalised there in 2009. For in just those two years, regular (last month) high school drug use leapt from 19% to 30% and school expulsions rose by a third, marijuana being the first reason for them. Since full legalisation “pot problems” in Colorado’s state schools have reportedly got even worse.

“Kids are smoking before school and during lunch breaks. They come into school reeking of pot,” one school resource officer said. “Students don’t seem to realise that there is anything wrong with having the pot – they act like having marijuana was an ordinary thing and no big deal.” Marijuana is freely available in Colorado. Any resident can legally get two ounces of marijuana a day (at an average of $150 an ounce) and “self-medicate” for almost any reason though even a heavy marijuana user only would get through a quarter of an ounce a day.  Observers say that state “regulation” of the medical marihuana industry was a tragic joke. One group, Smart Colorado, reports that 700 medical marijuana licenses have already been issued in Denver; that legalisation means each of these license holders is now eligible to apply for a recreational license as well. To put this number into context, it compares with the approximately 201 liquor establishments and 123 pharmacies in the city of Denver. No wonder law enforcement officials report that more marijuana is flowing into the black market and out of Colorado in greater quantities than ever before.

Tina Trent, a local blogger on crime and justice issues, hopes that “the reality of legalisation” will be a wake-up call to people in Colorado and other places as they see “people smoking pot in public and every third storefront in the tourist district turning into a head shop”. How, she asks, do you address bus drivers legally smoking pot before their shifts start, and all sorts of people smoking ‘medicinal’ pot all day long, and then getting behind the wheel? Trent, who has written a major report on the drug legalisation movement in California, is urging the public to counter the propaganda from the “professional pro-drug groups funded by George Soros”. She adds that “Legislators need to seriously consider the facts about marijuana abuse by young people”.

Her plea has fallen on deaf ears. Despite significant increases in health detection rates of risky marijuana use in Colorado since 2009, despite sharp increases in school age marijuana use, despite evidence of significant diversion from adults to youth, despite the ever expanding body of scientific evidence charting the multiple and significant health and mental health harms… there has been no government response to this violation of federal drug laws.  It seems President Obama’s Department of Justice has decided to put up the white flag to drug use. Such liberality may appeal to the human rights lobby but it is priming a public-health time bomb.

How can he not be aware of the risks associated with early initiation and regular use of marijuana by young people? Given the now hard scientific evidence concerning marijuana’s impact on young people’s cognitive ability, executive functioning and long term IQ, as well as its risk of inducing psychosis and violence in anyone who takes enough, to say nothing of its enhanced cancer risks – surely this recent ‘normalisation’ of cannabis use would be of considerable concern to the Obama administration? It seems not.

But how long can the president, with teenage children of his own, remain so casual about rising teen pot use under his watch? That is my question for 2014.

Source: www.addictiontoday.org   January 2014

Question: What are the real facts on marijuana, and can you be arrested for driving after smoking it? How bad is it really? I know some people want to legalize it to tax it and for medicinal purposes.

Answer: Yes, you can be arrested for impaired driving. Minnesota has already been taxing marijuana since around 1980 (and so we do not have to legalize it to tax it).

As far as the medicinal purposes go, we have already had it for several years in Minnesota, although in pill form. Also, there are several other already-legal existing drugs that are reported to have the same (or close to the same) effect as smoking the weed, probably making the legalization of it for that reason unnecessary.

There is much information available in reference to the actual physical harm to the human body and to society as a whole, from smoking marijuana. Marijuana produces a carefree state of mind and the illusion that senses are extra sharp. In reality, you are more likely to be preoccupied with unusual thoughts or visions than your responsibilities as a driver.

Relaxed inhibitions alter your sense of time and space, making it difficult to make quick decisions and judge distances and speed. Marijuana use causes slow, disconnected thoughts, poor memory and paranoia. Even hours after the effect seems to be gone, your ability to make driving decisions will still be impaired.

One of the last reports that came out showed that at least 17 percent of persons in addiction treatment are there because of the use of marijuana. It largely has a lot of the same hazardous chemicals that (legal) cigarettes do, and would continue to have those damaging effects even if made legal.

Some of the health effects of smoking marijuana are known to include: exposure to known carcinogens (marijuana smoke contains up to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke); impaired ability to create new memories; episodes of acute psychosis (from large ingested doses), which can include “hallucinations and a loss of personal identity”; and increased risk of chronic cough and bronchitis. New studies show much worse results for marijuana users.

Marijuana is known accurately as a gateway drug. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA), more teens were in treatment for marijuana than for all other illicit drugs combined in 2006.

Fact: According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2007, in some localities approximately 4 percent-14 percent of drivers injured or killed in crashes tested positive for marijuana use. More results from their studies show that at least 9 percent of all marijuana users will become addicted; 17 percent of all marijuana users who start using in their teens will become addicted and between 25-50 percent of daily marijuana users become addicted.

Other effects are known to include: lower work productivity and earning power, persons functioning at a reduced intellectual level all or most of the time, extra sick days from work; respiratory illnesses, lower grade point averages, lower yearly earnings, lower levels of educational attainment, poor school attendance, negative attitude toward school, absences, tardiness for school and work, accidents, workers compensation claims, job turnover.

In fact, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association examining a certain group of workers showed that the marijuana users (compared to non-marijuana users in that vocation) had 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries and 75 percent increase in absenteeism.

All figures were received from a marijuana fact sheet put out by the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD) of Washington D.C. in January 2012. They also cite numerous other sources for their publication.  A lot more information is available if you look for it. Just a few weeks ago, I saw in the news that a long term study was recently completed. Not surprisingly, it revealed even more harmful results from smoking marijuana than known ever before

Source:  www.meagemedia.co/aitkin/news   Nov.2013

A meta-analysis was conducted using nine epidemiological studies of motor vehicle collisions that measured recent cannabis use and also included control groups. Experimental and simulation studies were excluded.

The results indicated that driving under the influence of cannabis was associated with a 92% increased risk of vehicular crashes. Important is the fact that such driving was associated with a 110% increase in fatal crashes.

It appears that the public is generally unaware of the significant risk of marijuana use to traffic accidents and deaths.

We have made great strides in reducing alcohol-related traffic crashes and fatalities. We must continue doing so. But we must also be direct our preventive efforts to additional major causes of vehicular deaths, including marijuana use and cell phone use.

Source:www2.potsdam.edu  January 2014

The Knesset is moving to regulate the drug, though it might be a hazard without scrupulous supervision, the Pharmacists’ Association warns.

In the wake of new regulations concerning the use of medical cannabis, the Israel Pharmacists’ Association this week published a professional survey on the subject. The report discusses the side effects of cannabis, and the interactions between it and other medications.

The association is publishing this information in the midst of a process whereby the use of cannabis is being regulated, which is expected to be completed in the coming months. The new rules stipulate an increase in the number of doctors authorized to prescribe the drug to patients ranging in age from 20 to 30, and also relate to the composition of medical marijuana and the way it is locally grown, packed and distributed; eventually pharmacies will be responsible for the latter stage.

The purpose of the report, according to the association, is to provide various professional bodies with concise and up-to-date information that will help them to examine the benefits versus the possible damage involved in the use of medical cannabis.

“The effects of cannabis differ from one person to the next,” says the document, “and depend on the dosage, the method of delivery, the past experience of the user with the medication, the patients’ surroundings (his expectations of treatment, his attitude toward the effects of the substance, his mood and the social environment), and the amount of use.”

The effects of cannabis, the report continues, can be euphoria or dysphoria, calm, anxiety or even psychosis. Additional phenomena include heightened wakefulness followed by drowsiness, a sharpening of the senses followed by slower comprehension, and increased motor activity followed by problems of coordination. “Many of these side effects of cannabis stems from a high dosage or chronic use,” writes the pharmacists’ association.

In bold letters they state that patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorders should refrain from using medical cannabis. As for older patients who suffer from cardiovascular diseases, use of the drug can lead to increased risks of blood pressure fluctuations, heart attacks, ongoing cardiac distress and even sudden cardiac death, as well as such problems as strokes, damage to peripheral blood vessels, limping and even gangrene in the fingers.

The report also states that older people who suffer from impaired neuro-cognitive functioning and use cannabis could suffer further decline in memory and concentration, and a tendency to fall. The pharmacists also cite potential negative effects among persons with pulmonary disease, mainly when the cannabis is smoked, and write: “Long-term use of cannabis through aspiration increases the risk of inflammation of the jaw and the tonsils, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer.”

The report also warns that the process of growing cannabis at present is not monitored as carefully as development of other medical preparations. The cannabis is liable to contain pollutants such as bacteria, fungi and molds, heavy metals and so on; in addition, the concentration of its active ingredients is not fixed.  Source: http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.568591?v=36D3EAC732D590E09348654B6B03414B   14th January 2014

A deranged student cut off his own penis with a knife while apparently high on party drug meow meow.  The spaced-out teenager, 19, mutilated himself after stabbing his mother at their home, it was claimed yesterday.

Police raced to the scene after the injured 46-year-old woman called 999. Once there, they found her son hanging out of a bedroom window with blood pouring from his wounds.  Both were rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries in the early hours of December 29. Yesterday the mother was said to be in a stable condition at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton.

The young man was also stable at University College London hospital, where surgeons are thought to have successfully sewn his penis back on.  It is thought he took mephedrone shortly before the incident.

A source close to the family from Haywards Heath, West Sussex, said of the teenager: “He is normally a lovely lad and very bright. But unfortunately, he had started dabbling in drugs.  He had come home from university for Christmas. It looks like he took mephedrone and completely flipped out attacking his mum and then himself.

When the police arrived they found him hanging from a window and then discovered he had cut off his penis.”

Sussex Police were yesterday probing an allegation of assault on the mum. Det Insp David Springett said: “At this stage we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident.”

What is Mephedrone?

Party drug mephedrone is a synthetic, amphetamine-like stimulant which is also known by the names drone, meow meow and MCAT.

It produces similar effects to drugs such as cocaine, causing the user to feel euphoria but can also provoke paranoia and anxiety.

Other effects users on internet forums have noted include changes in body temperature, increased heart rate, breathing difficulties, loss of appetite, increased sweating, discolouration of extremities and depression.

Mephedrone – which is illegal to sell and possess in the UK – has been linked to a number of unconfirmed deaths in this country.

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/  Jan 9th 2014

An examination of drinking motives as mediators. Goldstein AL, Flett GL, Wekerle C. Author information

Abstract

Although the relationship between child maltreatment and alcohol use and drinking problems is well established, the mechanisms involved in this relationship remain largely unknown and research has focused primarily on women. Using the Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised (M-DMQ-R; Grant, Stewart, O’Connor, Blackwell & Conrod, 2007), drinking motives were examined as mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and alcohol consumption and consequences among male and female college student drinkers (N = 218, 60.6% women). Participants completed questionnaires assessing child maltreatment, drinking motives, alcohol consumption and alcohol consequences. Enhancement motives in particular mediated the relationship between childhood abuse and alcohol consequences for men, whereas coping-depression motives mediated this relationship for women. Implications of these findings for alcohol interventions and future research are discussed, along with limitations of the present study.

Source: Addict Behav. 2010 Jun;35(6):636-9. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2010.02.002. Epub 2010 Feb 10.

When teams hailing from Denver and Seattle solidified spots at Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVII, it wasn’t just talk of two No. 1 seeds duking it out or even Richard Sherman’s antics, but the states’ recreational marijuana sales policies that got the online world buzzing about the “Marijuana Bowl.”

Even the U-T San Diego polled readers online positing: “Should California legalize pot to help the Chargers get to the Super Bowl?” Some even took to social media with memes depicting a football with green laces in the shape of a pot leaf.  It’s getting such laughs that one might be quick to dismiss the documented harms of marijuana use, particularly among teens.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM, a national alliance of organizations and individuals dedicated to a health-first approach to marijuana policy, recently presented on the outcomes of Colorado’s policy, starting with legalizing marijuana for medical use in 2001.  The presentation focused on the years from 2006 to 2012, a span of time when the number of dispensaries grew to 532, thereby vastly increasing the access and availability of marijuana.

During that time, the use of marijuana among teens spiked, while the perception of harm plummeted significantly. In fact, marijuana use among Colorado teens is currently fifth in the nation — 10.7 percent compared with the national average of 7.6 percent, the report found. Drug-related referrals for high school students testing positive for marijuana increased 150 percent.

Diversion to young people was also commonplace. About 74 percent of Denver teens in drug treatment said they used someone else’s medical marijuana card an average of 50 times, according to SAM. Of serious public safety concern; Colorado traffic fatalities involving drivers testing positive for marijuana rose by 112 percent between 2006 and 2011.

Despite these public health and safety issues, as well as the Colorado State Auditor showing poor regulation or none at all, voters proceeded to legalize the drug for recreational use. But local governments in Colorado seem to understand they foot the bill for public safety — four of the 10 largest cities in Colorado have opted to prohibit the sale of recreational marijuana, and five others have moratoriums.

Today, nine more states, including California, could be facing recreational legalization initiatives on the ballot by 2016. Despite these steps toward legalization, San Diego County continues to succeed in pushing back against the pro-pot movement.

In 2012, voters across San Diego rejected ballot propositions in various cities to zone marijuana dispensaries where they are currently banned, and Californians defeated Proposition 19 to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

On a local level, the North Coastal Prevention Coalition (NCPC) recently led an evaluation of its efforts to counter pro-marijuana influences between 2004 and 2012. Conducted in partnership with California State University San Marcos, and funded through the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Service to Science Initiative, the evaluation compared student survey data from NCPC’s region and other areas of California.

The bad news — marijuana use in the past 30 days and over a lifetime increased in all regions studied from 2004 to 2010. The good news — the increase was significantly less in NCPC’s region, where the reported ease of access declined. Implementing a comprehensive set of strategies developed in collaboration with the HARM Initiative (Health Advocates Rejecting Marijuana) reduced the retail availability of drug paraphernalia and marijuana, as well as community and media messages that trivialized marijuana use.

One example of an effective strategy aimed at public events pushed a vendor policy prohibiting the sale of “tobacco, tobacco/drug paraphernalia, or any item that promotes the use of illicit drugs.” First adopted by Oceanside Harbor Days, the policy is now implemented at more than 20 events countywide, including the San Diego County Fair. These 20 North County events have an annual attendance of more than 2 million people.

Ultimately, we’re fighting for the health and public safety of San Diego County residents through comprehensive public policies, but it will take collective action to make it last.  The voices of our community leaders make a world of difference in the lives of so many. While it might be amusing to some, the downplaying of illegal drug use influences young people to falsely believe its harmless.

It’s crucial now, more than ever, that we stand firm rather than punt on the well-being of adolescents in San Diego County and throughout California.

Pearson, a Carlsbad resident, is vice president of the North Coastal Prevention Coalition, www.northcoastalpreventioncoalition.org

Source: http://www.utsandiego.com/   30th Jan. 2014

In 2012, 44.1 percent of 12th graders said there was a great risk in smoking marijuana regularly. These numbers had been steadily declining over the last six years.

Is it Addictive? Marijuana is often thought to not be addictive. However, marijuana—not alcohol— dependence is the number one reason why youth in the U.S. seek substance-abuse treatment. Youth are more likely than adults to become addicted to marijuana. About 4.5 million people in the U.S. meet clinical criteria for marijuana dependence. THC stimulates brain cells to release the chemical dopamine, which creates a euphoric feeling and can lead to a physical addiction. Similar to tobacco withdrawal, people trying to quit marijuana use report irritability, sleeping difficulties, craving, and anxiety.

What is Marijuana? Marijuana is a drug made from the dry, shredded parts of the Cannabis sativa hemp plant. It is usually smoked in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints, in pipes, or in water pipes called bongs. It is also smoked in blunts, which are hollowed-out cigars filled with a mixture of tobacco and marijuana. Marijuana contains a potent chemical called delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol, more commonly known as THC. It’s very similar to chemicals that the brain naturally produces, and disrupts the function of these chemicals in the brain. Marijuana today is more potent than marijuana of past decades. For a long time THC levels averaged 2.3 percent of the known compounds in marijuana. Today, average THC levels are higher than 8 percent and can go up to 35 percent in medical marijuana.

Tobacco vs. Marijuana

Like tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke contains cancer-causing chemicals. There are 33 cancer-causing chemicals contained in marijuana. Marijuana smoke also deposits tar into the lungs. In fact, when equal amounts of marijuana and tobacco are smoked, marijuana deposits four times more tar into the lungs. This is because marijuana joints are un-filtered and often more deeply inhaled than cigarettes. Marijuana smoke is also an irritant to the lungs, and frequent marijuana smokers can have many of the same respiratory problems experienced by people who smoke tobacco. These include coughing and on most days, wheezing, bronchitis, and greater risk of lung infection.

Other Health Effects

Marijuana has many effects on the brain. It impairs short-term memory and motor coordination; slows reaction time; alters mood, judgment and decision-making; and in some people can cause severe anxiety or loss of touch with reality. Because of these effects, marijuana use more than doubles a driver’s risk of being in an accident. Marijuana also affects the heart. The heart rate is raised 20-100 percent shortly after smoking, an effect which can last up to 3 hours and put users at an increased risk of heart attack. Marijuana use can affect the general quality of the user’s life as well. Daily marijuana users generally report poorer mental and physical health, more relationship problems and lower academic and career success compared to their peers.

Can Marijuana be Medicine?

While TCH has been approved by the FDA as a drug, smoking marijuana has not. This is because there’s no proof yet that the benefits of smoking marijuana outweigh the risks.

Youth and Marijuana

Marijuana use is particularly harmful to youth since the part of the brain that craves pleasure matures earlier than the area that controls our ability to understand risks and consequences. A national study by Monitoring the Future showed that in 2012, 6.5 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana daily. Marijuana is highly accessible, especially to older teenagers. In 2012, 82 percent of 12th graders reported marijuana as being fairly easy or very easy to get. Studies show that as availability increases, perception of harm decreases.

References

¨ Tomar, Rajpal C.; Beaumont and Hsieh (August 2009) (PDF), Evidence on the carcinogenicity of marijuana smoke, Reproductive and Cancer Hazard Assessment Branch Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Environmental Protection Agency, retrieved 24 January 201

¨ Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2013). Monitoring the Future national results on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings, 2012. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan.

¨ Thurstone, C. Understand the Big Deal: How Marijuana Harms Youth. Retrieved February 18, 2013, from http:// www.cde.state.co.us/DropoutPrevention/Resources/ How_Marijuana_Harms_Youth_brochure.pdf

¨ National Institute on Drug Abuse. (July 2012). DrugFacts: Is Marijuana Medicine? Retrieved February 18, 2013, from http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana-medicine

¨ National Institute on Drug Abuse. (December 2012). DrugFacts: Marijuana. Retrieved February 18, 2013, from http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana

¨ National Institute on Drug Abuse. (October 2002). Marijuana abuse (10-3859). Retrieved from http:// www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana -abuse

Please contact the American Lung Association in CO for more references.

Source:  www.lungcolorado.org

Fatal car crashes that involved marijuana tripled in the past decade, a new study concludes. One in nine drivers involved in a fatal crash tests positive for marijuana, according to the Columbia University researchers.

“If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving,” said study co-author Dr. Guohua Li.

The researchers analysed crash statistics from six states that routinely perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal crashes, HealthDay reports. The study included data on more than 23,500 drivers who died within an hour of a crash between 1999 and 2010. Throughout the decade, alcohol contributed to about 40 percent of crashes. Drugged driving accounted for about 16 percent of fatal crashes in 1999, and more than 28 percent in 2010.

Marijuana use contributed to about 4 percent of fatal crashes in 1999, and 12 percent in 2010. The combination of marijuana and alcohol is particularly dangerous, the researchers found. “If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol,” Li said. “But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person.” The findings appear in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

“Given the increasing availability of marijuana and the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic, understanding the role of controlled substances in motor vehicle crashes is of significant public health importance,” Li said in a news release.

Source: www.drugfree.org  5th Feb 2014

Social anxiety is robustly associated with cannabis-related problems. This relation appears to be largely explained by coping-oriented motives for cannabis use. Yet, factors associated with coping motives among socially anxious individuals have yet to be identified. The current study tested whether experiential avoidance (i.e., unwillingness to experience distressing internal states) and its subfacets mediated the relation between social anxiety and coping motives for cannabis use. The sample consisted of current (past-month) cannabis-using adults (n = 103). Results indicated that social anxiety was robustly related to experiential avoidance, which was robustly related to coping motives. Follow-up analyses indicated that behavioral avoidance was the only experiential avoidance subtype to be related to both social anxiety and coping motives after controlling for theoretically relevant variables. Experiential avoidance (globally) and behavioral avoidance (specifically) mediated the relation between social anxiety and coping motives. Together, the results suggest experiential avoidance (especially behavioral avoidance) may play an important role in cannabis use behaviors, particularly among socially anxious users. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Source:  Psychol Addict Behav. 2013 Nov 25. [Epub ahead of print]

Abstract

We investigated the existence of a temporal association between age at initiation of cannabis use and age at onset of psychotic illness in 997 participants from the 2010 Survey of High Impact Psychosis (SHIP) in Australia. We tested for group differences in age at onset of psychotic illness and in the duration of premorbid exposure to cannabis (DPEC). Analyses were repeated in subgroups of participants with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder (SSD), a diagnosis of lifetime cannabis dependence (LCD), and a comorbid SSD/LCD diagnosis. The association between age at initiation of cannabis use and age at onset of psychotic illness was linear and significant, F(11, 984) = 13.77, P < .001, even after adjusting for confounders. The effect of age at initiation of cannabis use on DPEC was not significant (mean duration of 7.8 years), and this effect was similar in participants with a SSD, LCD, and comorbid SSD/ LCD diagnosis although a shift toward shorter premorbid exposure to cannabis was noted in the SSD/LCD subgroup (mean duration of 7.19 years for SSD/LCD). A temporal direct relationship between age at initiation of cannabis use and age at onset of psychotic illness was detected with a premorbid exposure to cannabis trend of 7-8 years, modifiable by higher severity of premorbid cannabis use and a diagnosis of SSD. Cannabis may exert a cumulative toxic effect on individuals on the pathway to developing psychosis, the manifestation of which is delayed for approximately 7-8 years, regardless of age at which cannabis use was initiated.

Source: Schizophr Bull. 2013 Mar;39(2):251-4. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbs188. Epub 2013 Jan 11.

By Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in the Reagan administration.

Three decades ago, President Ronald Reagan convened a group of Republican and Democratic leaders – known as the Kissinger commission – and charged it to make recommendations on how the United States could best help the countries of Central America thwart Soviet- and Cuban-supported guerrilla movements by promoting democracy and economic development. Reagan faced fierce opposition from some quarters in Washington, but his policies – and the sacrifices of many U.S. friends in the region – helped bring about three decades of relative peace and economic growth in Central America. Unfortunately, those gains are at risk. The region’s challenges today are less about ideology than about criminality and corruption that threaten to undermine democratic institutions, the rule of law and public security. The region’s misfortune is to be caught between two countries, Colombia and Mexico, that have recently cracked down on drug-trafficking syndicates. This is wonderful – except that it has pushed those criminal organizations to move their operations to more hospitable environments. Central America has borne the brunt of this onslaught. Its countries have been overrun and overwhelmed by criminal forces that far surpass their small police forces in resources, weaponry and ruthlessness. But this is more than an issue of wanton criminality. Narco-money is corrupting officials and institutions to create permissive environments for the cartels’ drug-smuggling operations. This corruption, at the highest levels of government, directly threatens democracy, regional security and U.S. interests. In Honduras, voters recently turned back former president Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to  return to power by rejecting the presidential candidacy of his wife, Xiomara Castro. Zelaya forfeited power in 2009 after illegal attempts to rewrite the country’s constitution. He is also dogged by  accusations of ties to drug trafficking. The statistics are staggering: The State Department estimates that ” as much as 87 percent of all cocaine smuggling flights departing South America first

land in Honduras.” Confronting this threat requires a government willing to cooperate with the United States and its neighbors to deny haven to the narcos. The new worry is El Salvador, which is to elect a new president Feb. 2. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2011 that ” The Mexican drug gangs rapidly infiltrating Central America call El Salvador ‘El Caminito’ the little pathway.” The State Department’s 2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report calls El Salvador ” a major transit country for illegal drugs destined for the United States from source countries in South America.” The presidential candidate of the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) party is former leftist guerrilla Salvador Sánchez Cerén. He faces Norman Quijano, the mayor of San Salvador and candidate of the opposition ARENA party. Four years ago, the FMLN won with a relative moderate, Mauricio Funes – but Sánchez Cerén and his allies are from the party’s toughest elements, and some of them have direct ties to drug traffickers and the government of Venezuela. Among the key participants in the Central American drug trade is the Colombian guerrilla group FARC, which has moved over the years from “armed struggle” to narcotics. “Experts estimate that FARC takes in between $500 million and $600 million annually from the illegal drug trade,” according to the United Nations. FARC files seized in a 2008 Colombian raid revealed intimate ties between the FARC and FMLN leader José Luis Merino, who is Sánchez Cerén’s right-hand man. Merino is “the FARC’s man in El Salvador,” according to veteran Latin America journalist José de Cordoba. The Spanish newspaper ABC reported last month how  Merino helped arrange a meeting between the Italian mafia and FARC drug lords. Merino, known as Comandante Ramiro during El Salvador’s wars, has long been a top official in the Communist Party of El Salvador and is the money man for the FMLN, directing its close ties with ALBA Petroleum, the Venezuelan government company that in El Salvador provides subsidized gasoline to FMLN-run towns. The profits from selling the gas at market prices are supposed to go into social projects, but it is widely believed that a good part of it goes to the FMLN. “There is enough information which clearly presents Merino as someone with strong connections to the FARC,” Michael Braun, a former director of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said last month. And with El Salvador now on a U.S. dollar economy and receiving nearly $4 billion in remittances from Salvadorans in the United States, the money-laundering opportunities are

enormous. The likely impact of a Sánchez Cerén victory on U.S.-Salvadoran security and counter-narcotics cooperation is dangerous. The United States has a key forward operating location in El Salvador to monitor and deter drug trafficking, and the FBI cooperates with local police against trafficking by Salvadoran gangs. Could such activities continue in light of the FMLN’s ties to the FARC and to the Venezuelan government? Thirty years after the Kissinger commission report, democracy and peace in Central America are again at risk. This time the foreign intervention is from immensely wealthy criminal gangs. The U.S. posture of neutrality in elections is right – but our tilt toward Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 and our failure today to state our concerns about the FMLN’s drug ties can tilt elections as well. If people like Comandante Ramiro come to power, Salvadorans’ hopes for democracy and peace, and our own hopes for continuing cooperation against narcotics trafficking, may be lost.

Source: The Washington Post January 3rd, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration recently sounded the alarm over rising marijuana use among the nation’s youth, saying softening attitudes about the perceived risk of the drug are responsible for the increase.  Sixty percent of 12th-graders do not view regular marijuana use as harmful, and more than 12 percent of eighth-graders said they’d used the drug in the past year, according to a survey released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“Making matters worse, more teens are now smoking marijuana than smoke cigarettes,” said Gil Kerlikowske, President Barack Obama’s drug czar. “Well, this isn’t a recipe for raising a healthy generation of young people who are prepared to meet America’s challenges.”  He criticized the legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado, calling the plans “a very large social experiment.” And he delivered a shot aimed at pro-legalization advocates who argue marijuana is safer than alcohol, saying: “For some to say that it is less dangerous than other substances is a ridiculous statement.”

The survey found 23 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the past month, compared with 16 percent who smoked cigarettes.  Among 12th-graders, 6.5 percent said they smoked pot every day, and more than 36 percent said they had smoked it in the past year. Among 10th-graders, 4 percent said they used marijuana daily, with 18 percent reporting past month use, and 29.8 percent said they had used it in the previous year.

“These are very high numbers, considering that these are kids at school,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which conducts the study as part of a project with the University of Michigan.  Volkow said this year’s survey carried some bright spots: Alcohol and tobacco use declined, and fewer students said they were using synthetic marijuana.

But the survey cited the misuse of prescription stimulants as another “cause for concern.” The percentage of 12th-graders who said they used amphetamines for non-medical reasons in the past year rose from 6.8 percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2013, and officials said many of them said they were using them not for fun but before exams hoping to boost their performance.

Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who now serves as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy for the White House, called the marijuana results both “a serious setback” and a disappointment.   He said schools have done a poor job on dealing with drug education, eliminating it or making it an inconsistent part of their health curriculum.

And he predicted that Washington state and Colorado, the two states that last year voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, will face “a very difficult time” as they move forward with their plans to sell the drug in retail stores beginning in 2014.   “It’s an important issue and … clearly these two states are engaging in a very large social experiment,” Kerlikowske said.

He said kids who live in states with medical marijuana laws already are finding it easier to obtain the drug, proving that state-regulated systems are having trouble confining the marijuana to adults. Kerlikowske said the survey found that 34 percent of high school seniors who live in states with medical marijuana laws say that one of the ways they’ve obtained the drug is from others who have gotten prescriptions to buy the drug.

Volkow said marijuana use among school-age children could hinder their brain development and put them at increased risk of addiction in later years.  “We should be extremely concerned that 12 percent of 13- to 14-year-olds are using marijuana,” Volkow said. “The children whose experimentation leads to regular use are setting themselves up for declines in IQ and diminished ability for success in life.”

Source: http://www.sunherald.com   2014/01/04

Good luck to the people of Colorado. They’ve made it easier for drug cartels to tap into their children’s latent desire to experiment with marijuana.

Adults 21 and older now can buy marijuana legally for recreational use in Colorado. As of Thursday, residents and visitors can go to a state-regulated pot center, ask for an ounce or less, and pay the over-the-counter price. Just like the Obamacare rollout, no one knows exactly what they’re getting; Colorado hasn’t established a price structure, leading one Denver shop to sell one-eighth of an ounce of “high-quality” marijuana for $70. That’s in sharp contrast to state-licensed pot centers filling medical prescriptions at $25 an ounce.

It also creates a new governmental bureaucracy of state-paid pot shop inspectors, and all the expenses that come with it. Anyone who thinks tax revenue from pot sales will pay for Colorado’s new schools and roads is seriously deluding themselves.

So while the adults turn to pot for recreational purposes, what are the kids to think? In this case, they might be just as confused as their pot-smoking parents.

No doubt, kids below the age of 21 will be out to experiment with marijuana, knowing the worst that can happen is a civil penalty and small fine.

And since they can’t buy it legally like their parents, they’ll get it from drug dealers who now have a better mass market than previously when pot was outlawed. Why’s that? First, drug dealers will set prices that undercut the Colorado-regulated market. Second, the drug dealers probably will be kids themselves, taking advantage of a loosey-goosey situation to make a few bucks. Third, there will be parents who, believing they are protecting the children, will insist that the kids smoke pot at home under adult supervision.

This is a Colorado crisis in waiting. Over time the legalized use of a drug that impairs judgment will lead to dangerous consequences and have a deleterious impact on society. It’s too bad the children are caught in the middle of the adults’ urge for getting high for fun.

Massachusetts must resist the temptation to follow Colorado’s delusion. We’ve already legalized medicinal marijuana and that should be the extent of it.

Source: www.sentinelandenterprise.com  5th Jan.2014

Naturally-occurring hormone could block its effects

University of Bordeaux researchers found the hormone pregnenolone cuts the brain’s sensitivity to THC – the high-inducing compound in cannabis

Discovery could lead to new approaches to treating cannabis dependence

People taking the drug medicinally could skip its psychoactive effects

A naturally occurring hormone can be used to stop the ‘high’ produced by cannabis, research has shown.  The discovery could lead to new approaches to treating cannabis intoxication and dependence.   It may also assist in the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes while blocking its psychoactive effects.

A naturally occurring hormone called pregnenolone can be used to stop the ‘high’ produced by cannabis and the discovery could lead to new approaches to treating cannabis intoxication and dependence, according to new research.

Pregnenolone is a hormone that is found in our bodies and can be made in the lab.

The chemical is used for fatigue and increasing energy, Alzheimer’s disease and enhancing memory, trauma and injuries, as well as stress and improving immunity.

It is also is used for skin disorders including psoriasis. In the body, pregnenolone is used to make all steroid hormones. Because of this, it was studied studied for stress, fatigue, and arthritis in the 1940s before lab-made hormones became available.

Researchers found that the steroid hormone pregnenolone reduces the brain’s sensitivity to THC, which is the chief high-inducing compound in cannabis. Scientists led by Dr Monique Vallee, from the University of Bordeaux in France, studied mice and rats to see how recreational drugs such as cocaine, alcohol and cannabis affected the production of steroids in the brain involved in nerve function. They found that THC triggered a dramatic spike in pregnenolone through activation of the cannabinoid receptor (CB-1) – a molecule that facilitates cannabis stimulation. This in turn had a ‘negative feedback’ effect leading to a blunting of THC activity, reducing the ‘high’ from the drug.

‘This new understanding of the role of pregnenolone has the potential to generate new therapies for the treatment of cannabis dependence,’ the scientists said.

The findings, published in the journal Science, follow the decision to legalise the recreational use of cannabis in the U.S. state of Colorado.

A recent study found teenagers who use cannabis regularly risk damaging their memory as structures in their brains appeared to shrink and collapse inward, possibly reflecting a decrease in neurons. However, while some people believe the legalisation of the drug will cut criminal activity surrounding it, others believe it will expose more people to drugs, which have been linked to health issues. A recent study found teenagers who use cannabis regularly risk damaging their memory, which can lead to poor academic performance.

They believe the brain abnormalities last for ‘at least a few years’ after users have stopped taking the drug. The researchers also said there was fresh evidence the habit may cause mental health problems in youngsters predisposed to schizophrenia.

Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug among adolescents in the UK, with more than four in ten admitting having taken it.

Almost 100 teenagers took part in the U.S. research examining the effects of cannabis deep in the brain. It found teenagers who smoked it daily for about three years had abnormal changes in the brain structures related to remembering and processing information and they performed poorly on memory tasks. The brain abnormalities and memory problems were found on MRI scans when study participants were in their early twenties – two years after they had stopped smoking the drug. Memory-related structures in their brains appeared to shrink and collapse inward and the researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, said such damage was linked to poor academic performance and everyday functioning.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2532762/Pregnenolone-hormone-block-marijuana-effects-scientists-discover.html#ixzz2pM00foLq   2nd January

Global FX Smoking Tobacco Quitting Taxing Tobacco – Click here for full pdf file which contains graphics.

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On the basis of current smoking patterns, with a global average of about 50% of young men and 10% of young women becoming smokers and relatively few stopping, annual tobacco-attributable deaths will rise from about 5 million in 2010 to more than 10 million a few decades hence,1-3 as the young smokers of today reach middle and old age. This increase is due partly to population growth and partly to the fact that, in some large populations, generations in which few people smoked substantial numbers of cigarettes throughout adult life are being succeeded by generations in which many people did so. There were about 100 million deaths from tobacco in the 20th century, most in developed countries.2,3 If current smoking patterns persist, tobacco will kill about 1 billion people this century, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. About half of these deaths will occur before 70 years of age.1-4

The 2013 World Health Assembly called on governments to reduce the prevalence of smoking by about a third by 2025,5 which would avoid more than 200 million deaths from tobacco during the remainder of the century.2,3 Price is the key determinant of smoking uptake and cessation.6-9 Worldwide, a reduction of about a third could be achieved by doubling the inflation-adjusted price of cigarettes, which in many low- and middle-income countries could be achieved by tripling the specific excise tax on tobacco. Other interventions recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the WHO six-point MPOWER initiative4 could also help reduce consumption7,8 and could help make substantial increases in specific excise taxes on tobacco politically acceptable. Without large price increases, a reduction in smoking by a third would be difficult to achieve.

The WHO has also called for countries to achieve a 25% reduction between 2008 and 2025 in the probability of dying from noncommunicable disease between 30 and 70 years of age.10 Widespread cessation of smoking is the most important way to help achieve this goal, because smoking throughout adulthood substantially increases mortality from several major noncommunicable diseases (and from tuberculosis).1-3,11-19

To help achieve a large reduction in smoking in the 2010s or 2020s, governments, health professionals, journalists, and other opinion leaders should appreciate the full eventual hazards of smoking cigarettes from early adulthood, the substantial benefits of stopping at various ages, the eventual magnitude of the epidemic of tobacco-attributable deaths if current smoking patterns persist, and the effectiveness of tax increases and other interventions to reduce cigarette consumption.

January 1, 2014, should be remembered as the day that legalized the doping of the American mind. But it’s hard to tell how many Colorado residents, where “recreational” use of marijuana becomes legal at the stroke of midnight, will be able to remember the day because their “memory-related structure will shrivel and collapse.”

Memory loss is but one effect caused by frequent marijuana use, as proven by researchers at Northwestern University. The study also found “evidence of brain alterations … significant deterioration in the thalamus, a key structure for learning, memory and communications between brain regions.”  If this were not enough, the study concluded, “chronic marijuana use could boost the underlying process driving schizophrenia.

This study is the latest to document scientifically the devastating long term harm caused by marijuana use. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), “marijuana smoke contains 50% to 70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke … which further increases the lungs’ exposure to carcinogenic smoke.” Moreover, “marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour after smoking the drug. … This risk may be greater in aging populations or those with cardiac vulnerabilities.”

In addition, marijuana use (whether obtained legally or not) causes “distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory,” lasting weeks after the initial use. “As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time.” In conclusion: “Research clearly demonstrates that marijuana has the potential to cause problems in daily life or make a person’s existing problems worse. In fact, heavy marijuana users generally report lower life satisfaction, poorer mental and physical health, relationship problems, and less academic and career success compared to their peers who came from similar backgrounds. For example, marijuana use is associated with a higher likelihood of dropping out from school. Several studies also associate workers’ marijuana smoking with increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers’ compensation claims, and job turnover.”

The impresario who staged the unfolding scenario of how best to dope the American mind is George Soros.

His first foray into U.S. domestic politics began in earnest in 1993, after he allegedly made $1-$3 billion “raiding the Bank of England.” Soros launched his drug-legalization crusade declaring, “The war on drugs is doing more harm to our society than drug abuse itself;” and he proceeded with “checkbook advocacy” through his Open Society Institute (OSI). He started by giving some $15 million to establish and fund several pro-drug-legalization organizations. Since then, Soros, whose motto is, “If I spend enough, I make it right,” has been funding campaigns for drug legalization and “medical marijuana,” which is described as a “compassionate drug.”

On February 7, 1996, I opined in The Wall Street Journal that Soros’s “sponsorship unified the movement to legalize drugs and gave it the respectability and credibility it lacked.” I suggested that unchallenged, Soros would change the political landscape of America. It took 20 years and lots of his money to achieve what he set out to get. For him, legalizing marijuana was a necessary stepping-stone to advancing drug policies in the U.S. and elsewhere toward legalizing the use of all drugs.

Pretending to support an “open society,” Soros has been working diligently to advance the greatest slavery ever–drug addiction.

Making money is but one of the many possible speculations on Soros’s motivation to legalize drugs. If asked, he’ll respond with gibberish that makes no sense.  However, the revenues from the illegal drug trade are enormous. There are no other commodities on the market that yield such high and fast a return. In 2014, legally listed marijuana producing and distributing companies will generate huge revenues. Soros seems to believe that state-controlled drug distribution will best serve to increase dependency on the state, while controlling the doping. Indeed, moving in that direction, Soros’s emissaries “made history” on December 10, 2013, making Uruguay “the first country in the world to establish a legal, government-controlled marijuana market.”

It has to be emphasized here that legalizing marijuana as a “medicinal” and “recreational” drug in various U.S. states effectively renders the federal law that criminalizes it null and void.

An August 29, 2013, a Department of Justice memo clarified the government’s prosecutorial priorities and stated that the federal government would rely on state and local law enforcement to “address marijuana activity through enforcement of their own narcotics laws.”

A good example of how this works is the TSA announcement that beginning January 1, 2014, there will be no drug-smelling dogs in Colorado airports, even though these dogs are usually trained to smell also heroine, ecstasy, cocaine, peyote, crystal meth, and more. Was this statement anything other than an open invitation to carry/transport these drugs also?

Given all of the above, it seems that the Obama administration’s efforts to hook Americans on the opiates of social welfare (food stamps, government health care, a greater share of the wealth through minimum wage increases, public housing, free cell phones, and other services) is now extending to allowing the use of and facilitating addiction to mind-altering drugs. Marijuana today, opiates, and the rest, tomorrow.

What better way to assure a large number of dependent, ready-to-oblige voters? Unlike drug-free citizens who maintain their potential to think independently and even protest to demand this or that, the large numbers of new drug addicts with compromised brain functions will be ready to do anything to get their next drug supply.

This is real, and this will be coming soon to your neigborhood.

New Year’s 2014 should be remembered as the year in which the Obama administration moved one step closer to obscuring the memory of many unhappy duped Americans by making dope so easy to obtain and use.

Give him drugs and give him candy

Anything to make him think he’s happy

And he won’t ever come for us

And he won’t ever come.

– Tracy Chapman –  A pop singer.

Source: www.americancenterfordemocracy.com  January2014

China is the most active nation in showing leadership in international cooperation on drug control, said Giovanna Campello, program management officer of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Section.

Campello made the remarks at the three-day “Prevention Strategy and Policy Makers” Regional Seminar held by the UNODC which concluded on Nov 28 in Guiyang, Guizhou province.

Twenty officials from anti-drug agencies of nine ASEAN members attended the event.

As the problem of drugs spreads around the world and more people commit drug crimes at a younger age, a focus on drug prevention from childhood is critical in tackling the problem, Campello said.

“It’s the first time for UNODC to hold the seminar in China and it is of great importance for us to promote drug control work,” said Li Xianhui, deputy secretary-general of the China National Narcotics Control Commission.

Drug use in China was largely due to the worsening global drug situation, leading to a complicated scenario, Li said. Diversified drug sources, types and consumption at a young age are becoming more evident.

According to a report released by the China National Narcotics Control Commission, 4,334 school students in China were registered drug users. Of these 2,127 were methamphetamine abusers (accounting for 49.1 percent), 665 were ketamine users (15.3 percent) and 1,164 were opiate addicts (26.9 percent).

In tackling drug crimes, it’s hard to say whether a focus on prevention from an early age or turning to law enforcement is more important. Campello said people should put more focus on law enforcement.

“More and more countries are realizing the present situation,” Campello said. “China and other countries in the region can really show leadership, implement evidence-based programs and evaluate them with scientific evidence, so I think we are on the right path though there are still a lot to do”.

Source: ecns.cn   3.12.13

It  is not surprising that many young people believe many drugs to be harmless when much of the media publishes articles which glamourise and normalise drug use.  The money that George Soros has given to the media has had an enormous influence as the article below shows.

George Soros: Media Mogul: Executive Summary

George Soros is arguably the most influential liberal financier in the United States, donating more than $8 billion just to his Open Society Foundations. In 2004, he spent more than $27 million to defeat President George W. Bush and has given away millions more since to promote the left-wing agenda. But what goes almost without notice is Soros’ extensive influence on and involvement with the media.

Since 2003, Soros has donated more than $52 million to all kinds of media outlets – liberal news organizations, investigative reporting and even smaller blogs. He has also been involved in funding the infrastructure of supposedly “neutral” news, from education to even the industry ombudsman association. Many other operations Soros supports also have a media component to what they do.

His media funding has helped create a liberal “echo chamber,” in the words of one group he backs, “in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.” The goal is “Taking Down Fox News,” as the Soros-supported “Mother Jones” described it.

Despite his denials, Soros has extensive reach into the media. The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute conducted a detailed analysis of George Soros and his influence on the media. It found:

Soros Spends More Than $52 Million on Media: Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $52 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations. That’s a low estimate because many organizations have a media component to what they do but it is impossible to separate the operations.

Ties to Major Media: Soros has connections to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, CNN and ABC.

Breach of Ethics: Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson and former Post editor and now Vice President Len

Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. But according to the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code, journalists should ‘avoid all conflicts real or perceived.’ Reporters and editors serving on boards of groups funded by Soros openly violate both aspects of this guideline.

Reaching More Than U.S. Population: Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets Soros funds – from big players like NPR to the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which claim to reach millions of readers – easily reach more than 332 million people around the globe. The population of the entire United States is less than 310 million.

Fox News is Target No. 1: Nearly 30 groups funded by the liberal billionaire have attacked Fox News in the six months since the beginning of December, 2010. Soros-funded media operations claim Fox News has a “history of inciting Islamophobia and racial and ethic animosity” and that it tries to “race bait its viewers.”

Recommendations

The Business & Media Institute has some recommendations for the media to better handle their obvious conflicts of interest when it comes to Soros:

Just Say No to Soros Cash: No purportedly “objective” journalist should serve on a board or advise any outlet that is financed by Soros. If academics do so, they should be open about their affiliations. But working journalists like Downie, Amanpour and Abramson should divorce themselves from the conflict.

Question Motivations of News Sources: Reporters and editors should be aware when a story is being deliberately hyped by a web of linked organizations. Such times should always have reporters questioning not just the motives, but the facts of the case – whether it’s on the right or the left.

Spend Time Investigating the Left: Journalists have no trouble finding incentive to do detailed analysis of conservatives, but spend little time questioning the motives or funding of liberal organizations. Reporters should do a more detailed investigation into the Open Society Foundations and their influence throughout the media.

Source:  www.mrc.org     8/15/2011

Each day almost 600 children are taking up the habit, putting themselves at a much greater risk of lung cancer and other diseases.

More children are starting to smoke in London than anywhere else

Almost 600 children aged under 16 take up smoking every day in the UK, research has suggested.  A survey of secondary school pupils in years 7 to 11 (children mostly aged 11-15) estimated there were 207,000 new child smokers between 2010 and 2011.  The Health and Social Care Information Centre said the figures, published in the journal Thorax, were particularly high in London.

“Each day, 67 children, more than two classrooms full, start smoking in London,” said the experts, who included specialists from Cancer Research UK and Imperial College London.

An estimated 463 children start smoking every day in England, with 50 in Scotland, 30 in Wales and 19 in Northern Ireland.

The experts said: “Smoking is among the largest causes of preventable deaths worldwide. The present data should help to raise awareness of childhood smoking and to focus attention on the need to address this important child protection issue.”

People who start smoking before the age of 15 have a higher risk of lung cancer than those who start later, they said. The team also pointed to “compelling evidence” that young people are susceptible to branding and advertising and are influenced by the depiction of smoking in films. The experts said: “Legislation is needed to counter the efforts of the tobacco industry, but this requires political will by legislators at both national and local levels.” Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “Although the thought of nearly 20 classrooms full of children taking up smoking every day should be shocking, the sad thing is that it comes as no surprise.

“It is even sadder to think that, at current rates, half of these children are likely to eventually die as a result of their habit if they continue smoking.”

Source:  news.sky.com  Thursday 05 December 2013 

Abstract

Background

Exposure to tobacco and alcohol imagery in films is strongly associated with uptake and consumption of both tobacco and alcohol in young people. In an analysis of popular UK films over the 20 years from 1989 to 2008, we have previously documented substantial tobacco and alcohol content in films marketed to children and young people. In view of increasing awareness of the potential harm of this exposure, this study was undertaken to assess whether these exposures continue to be prevalent in more recent films, by analysing the most popular films in the years 2009—11.

Methods

Occurrence of tobacco (tobacco use, implied use, tobacco paraphernalia, and tobacco brand appearances) and alcohol (alcohol use, inferred alcohol use, other alcohol reference, and alcohol brand appearances) imagery was measured by 5-min interval coding in the 15 most commercially successful films in the UK in each year from 2009 to 2011. Each 5-min period of film was coded as positive for each category of tobacco or alcohol imagery, or both, if at least one such incident occurred during the 5-min period.

Findings

All of the 45 most popular films for 2009—11 were rated by UK film classifiers as suitable for youth audiences (those aged younger than 18 years). Any tobacco was present in a third of all films (15 of 45), whereas any alcohol was present in more than four-fifths (37 of 45 [82%]). Tobacco use occurred in 11 films, and alcohol use occurred in 26. Tobacco branding was infrequent, but two brands, Marlboro and K & J, were clearly identifiable. Alcohol branding was far more frequent, occurring in 22% (ten of 45) of films, with the most frequently occurring brands being Jagermeister, Singha, and Budweiser. When combined with earlier findings using the same methods in films from 1989 to 2008, tobacco was present in 65% (225 of 345) of films, and alcohol in 86% (295 of 345) of films. Tobacco content in each of the coded categories decreased between 1989 and 2010, but increased again in 2011, largely as a result of two films: The King’s Speech and Sherlock Homes: a Game of Shadows. Alcohol content fluctuated over the 23 years, without any significant decline overall (p>0·05). Overall, the most commonly represented tobacco brands were Marlboro, Silk Cut, and Embassy, and the most common alcohol brands were Budweiser, Miller, and Coors.

Interpretation

Although conventional tobacco promotion is heavily restricted in the UK, tobacco imagery continues to be evident in films classified for and popular with youth audiences. The amount of tobacco content in films has decreased over the years but increased again in 2011. Alcohol advertising and promotion remains largely self-regulated in the UK, and there has been no appreciable reduction in any alcohol depictions in youth classified films. UK film regulators are aware of the effects of film content on youth audiences, but in practice do not seem to consider either tobacco or alcohol imagery in the age classification process of films suitable for young people.

Funding

This research was done as part of the research undertaken by AL as part of a research fellowship funded by the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, which is a UKCRC Centre of Public Health Research Excellence. Funding was from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, and the Department of Health.

Source:  The Lancet, Volume 382, Issue , Page S66, 29 November 2013