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In 2017, San Francisco’s top officials announced an audacious goal: Cut the city’s chronic homelessness number in half over the next five years. A few months earlier, the city had received support to help reach that goal — $100 million in pledged private expenditures from a nonprofit aiming for the same five-year reduction, complementing the city’s more than $250 million annual homelessness budget. “This is going to be huge,” then-Mayor Ed Lee told The Chronicle at the time about the initiative by nonprofit Tipping Point. “I do believe we’ll be able to cut chronic homelessness in half with this help.”...

Opioids are the gold standard for treatment of chronic and acute pain; however, their use may result in significant gastrointestinal side effects, including nausea, vomiting, and constipation. A new study is the first report of how opioids like morphine cause gastric inflammation and how this condition can be reversed through treatment with proton pump inhibitor drugs like omeprazole, an over-the-counter medication commonly used to reduce stomach acid. Opioid users, compared with non-users, have a higher incidence of gastric dysfunction, greater levels of gastric retention, worse quality of life, increased hospitalizations, and increased use of antinausea and pain medications. To investigate...

@NORML #Florida @GovRonDeSantis was asked about his position on legalizing #marijuana and he responded with this. This is what we are up against...

Think Legal Weed Cut Down On Crime? Think Again America Uncovered 470K subscribers 49,491 views Dec 16, 2021 If you thought legalizing weed would cut down on crime, think again. t did cut down on crime in a way—pot smokers were no longer being prosecuted for smoking, and some growers did come out of the shadows. But it also brought in the drug cartels who could hide their illegal growing operations amidst the tons of legal ones that sprang up. Watch this episode of America Uncovered for how the cartels are moving in where marijuana is legalized, the use of...

The Harris County sheriff said the three surviving children had been 'fending for each other,' with the oldest sibling caring for the other two.... The skeletal remains of a child, and three surviving siblings who appear to have been abandoned, were found inside an apartment in the Houston area, a sheriff said. One of the children, a 15-year-old, called the Harris County Sheriff's Office on Sunday afternoon and told authorities that his 9-year-old brother had been dead for a year and the body was inside the apartment, the office said in a statement. Deputies responded and found the teen, and...

Heavy marijuana users who are also vaccinated may be more susceptible to breakthrough cases of COVID-19, a new study found. The study, published last Tuesday in World Psychology, found that those with a substance use disorder (SUD) — a dependence on marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, opioids and tobacco — were more likely to contract the coronavirus after receiving both of their vaccination shots. Those without a SUD saw a 3.6 percent rate of breakthrough infections, compared to a 7 percent rate in those with a SUD.

Virginia, which for decades has sent thousands of people to jail for selling or using marijuana, is about to make it legal. In a historic shift for this traditionally conservative Southern state, the General Assembly voted Friday to allow its possession, manufacture and sale.

San Francisco Deadheads, you might just end up having the perfect school to enroll your children in. Jerry Garcia, the frontman of the Bay Area band that rose to fame as a part of the counterculture in the 1960s, is one of multiple figures in consideration to get a school renamed after them following the San Francisco Unified School District board’s decision Tuesday to rename 44 of their schools, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

About one in five Canadian adolescents uses cannabis and its recent legalization across the country warrants investigation into the consequence of this use on the developing brain. Cannabis use was linked to impairments in working memory and inhibitory control, which is required for self-control. Cannabis use was also linked to deficits in memory recall and perceptual reasoning. Alcohol use was not linked to impairments in these cognitive functions, suggesting cannabis could have more long-term effects than alcohol. Adolescent exposure to THC induces changes in specific a region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and in a brain circuit,...

The group of Florida teens who filmed and laughed at a drowning man will face charges for not reporting his death, according to officials. Authorities initially said there didn’t appear to be grounds to prosecute the teens caught on camera mocking 32-year-old Jamel Dunn as he drowned in Cocoa, Florida. 'Oh, he just died': Teens mock drowning man in disturbing video 'Oh, he just died': Teens mock drowning man in disturbing video None of the teens called 911 for help during the July 9 incident, but state law does not require a witness to help a person in need. However,...

Massachusetts voters are evenly divided over a proposed ballot question that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but they strongly support another proposed referendum that would allow more charter schools in the state, according to a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll. Voters also overwhelmingly back legislation that would protect transgender people from discrimination in malls, restaurants, and other public accommodations — and allow people to use the public restroom that matches their gender identity. Even more popular was a proposed “millionaires’ tax” that would raise rates on residents with annual incomes of $1 million or more. It garnered runaway...

He gave the voters a good look at him -- and now it looks like he's gone.Last October, for the third time in three years, Sen. Rand Paul made the cover of Time magazine. The headline: "The Most Interesting Man in American Politics." The New York Times Magazine had just put him on the cover that August, with a lot of edgy graphics proclaiming him a "Major Threat" to the Republican establishment. It made sense, or it seemed to. In the very, very early polls, the Kentucky senator was running neck-and-neck with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for the top...

DENVER – A college student eats more than the recommended dose of a marijuana-laced cookie and jumps to his death from a hotel balcony. A husband with no history of violence is accused of shooting his wife in the head, possibly after eating pot-infused candy. The two recent deaths have stoked concerns about Colorado’s recreational marijuana industry and the effects of the drug, especially since cookies, candy and other pot edibles can be exponentially more potent than a joint. “We’re seeing hallucinations, they become sick to their stomachs, they throw up, they become dizzy and very anxious,” said Al Bronstein,...

<p>On one tour we joined, smoke wafted out windows. Strangers shared pipes and exchanged samples of weed and wax, a concentrated form of marijuana. Canisters of buds bearing names like "tangerine haze" and "strawberry cough," were passed around to smell. Nutella pancakes came up in conversations at least three times.</p>

Every day, the push toward national legalization of marijuana seems more and more inevitable. As more and more politicians and noted individuals come out in favor of legalizing or at least decriminalizing different amounts of pot, the mainstream acceptance of the recreational use of the drug seems like a bygone conclusion. But before we can talk about legalization, have we fully understood the health effects of marijuana?

The Justice Department should cross marijuana off the government's list of most dangerous drugs, says a House Democrat now trying to build congressional support for the action. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is making the case to remove pot from the list of "Schedule I" drugs, a day after Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that the Justice Department would adjust existing rules to allow legal marijuana businesses to access the banking system. Recreational pot use became legal in Colorado this month, and 20 other states allow it for medicinal purposes. Blumenauer said the Obama administration was “unquestionably making the right call”...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – A new study finds that longtime marijuana use lowers motivation and reward-seeking behavior as the brain produces less dopamine. In a small sample test, researchers in the United Kingdom scanned the brains of 19 long-term marijuana smokers along with 19 nonusers of the same age and sex, measuring the distribution of chemicals throughout the brain via positron emission tomography. Marijuana smokers were found to produce less of the “feel good” chemical dopamine than their counterparts over time.

New Zealand Are addictive medicines cures or problems? “Legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes would be the thin end of the wedge towards increasing drug use in New Zealand, according to a former detective who now manages a drug education company.” APN News and Media also reports: “Dale Kirk, managing director of MethCon, said taking a softer line on drug offenders would do more harm than good.” “I think we'd see people suddenly developing medical problems to source the drug,” asserts Kirk. The former detective is also concerned about impressionable children and vulnerable teenagers, but especially the many ways in which...

Former New Mexico Republican Gov. Gary Johnson is a teetotaling triathlete who looks the part of the laid-back Mountain West politician. But don’t let the jeans and black mock turtleneck he's sporting on his new website fool you: Johnson is starting to sound like a mad-as-hell populist with an eye cast on 2012 and the building fury aimed at Washington. “I’m finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit,” he said in an interview with POLITICO this week. “I’m finding myself really angry over what’s happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I’m angry...

'Record' Afghanistan drugs bust International and Afghan troops have killed 60 militants and made a record drugs haul in an operation in southern Afghanistan, the US military has said.