Free Republic

An influential New Jersey lawmaker said this week he’s concerned that legalizing marijuana would result in stores selling intoxicating lipsticks, candies, and cupcakes — as well as “sex toy oils with marijuana.” State Sen. Ron Rice, a Democrat, made the remark in a videotaped interview with NJTV. He told the Washington Examiner in an email he is concerned about “marijuana infused oils, not toys.” Rice is chairman of the New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus, a group described by NJTV as the “chief obstacle in Trenton to marijuana legalization.”

Jersey City is implementing a marijuana decriminalization policy that its mayor and new chief municipal prosecutor believe will increase racial justice while protecting public safety. The policy, which is excepted to begin officially tomorrow, will downgrade some marijuana charges to non-criminal offenses; encourage prosecutors to seek dismissal of low-level marijuana charges; and recommend diverting defendants with a criminal past and signs of addiction to the city's community court. The city's action comes as New Jersey is moving slowly toward approving recreational marijuana. Philadelphia decriminalized marijuana in 2014 and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced in May that he...

Nearly one hour of Nigel Farage and callers discussing cannabis legalization in the UK. He is in favor of it.

Gannett rules.

Elizabeth Warren, meet Clarence Thomas. Senator Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, was in the headlines recently for joining with Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican who represents Colorado, to introduce the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States Act. That legislation would, as Warren put it in a tweet, “let states, territories, & tribes decide for themselves how best to regulate marijuana — without federal interference.” Justice Thomas is Warren’s natural ally on the issue. He wrote an emphatic dissent in the 2005 Supreme Court case Gonzalez v. Raich. Gonzalez was President George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzalez, and Angel...

Di Blasio’s an elected official whose wife is all for legalizing marijuana. Prime Minister Trudeau is an elected official who is nationalizing the drug in all of Canada on October 17 Though mainstream media attention was riveted on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pricey plane ride getting him back to New York from Quebec, mid-holiday for the street renaming for NYPD Detective Miosotis Familia on the $3 million NYPD counterterrorism plane on Thursday, and though there are no media reports of his having met privately with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was discussion of legalized marijuana the lure for...

Summary Background Interest in the use of cannabis and cannabinoids to treat chronic non-cancer pain is increasing, because of their potential to reduce opioid dose requirements. We aimed to investigate cannabis use in people living with chronic non-cancer pain who had been prescribed opioids, including their reasons for use and perceived effectiveness of cannabis; associations between amount of cannabis use and pain, mental health, and opioid use; the effect of cannabis use on pain severity and interference over time; and potential opioid-sparing effects of cannabis. -SNIP- Interpretation Cannabis use was common in people with chronic non-cancer pain who had been...

For those of us living in cities, the memories of the 2007 economic crash are a distant memory. But for our neighbors in rural counties, the ghosts of the depression are still haunting vacant towns where farming and manufacturing used to thrive. According to the Economic Research Service arm of the USDA, rural and metro employment equalized in the early part of 2008 before bottoming out, but while metro employment has more than recovered, rural employment has yet to achieve parity with its pre-crash levels. Farmers are suffering especially hard, and many are having to find supplemental work off the...

JESUS used cannabis and was an early champion of its medicinal properties, a growing consensus of experts agree. And acceptance of this theory could help promote the controversial drug’s use in treating a range of illnesses. Cannabis historian, author and journalist David Bienenstock is one who believes cannabis oil even explains the “miracles” attributed to Jesus. Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Online, he said: “Historical records show that cannabis was widely available at the time – they would’ve known how to grow it and exploit its medicinal properties. “There is nothing different in the efficacious cannabis oil used today that...

Tariff Trade War, Opiod Epidemics, Legal Marijuana, November Mid-Terms, Obama Resistance Although President Donald Trump is doing anything but ducking, it’s Canada Day, the day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose to send RETALIATORY tariffs at the media-reviled American president—but only at products from swing states— to help ‘Resistance’ leader Barack Obama claw back all that was lost by Hillary Clinton, in upcoming Midterm elections. So far it’s mostly bourbon from Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky, toilet paper from Wisconsin, and our favorite—pickles from North Carolina.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma voters on Tuesday backed the medicinal use of marijuana, overcoming a late opposition campaign from law enforcement and business, faith and political leaders. State Question 788 , the result of an activist-led signature drive launched more than two years ago, makes it legal to grow, sell and use marijuana for medicinal purposes. The proposed law outlines no qualifying conditions, which would allow physicians to authorize its use for a broad range of ailments — a fact that sparked bitter opposition, particularly from law enforcement. Under the proposed law, a two-year medical marijuana license would allow...

As the Justin Trudeau regime lurches toward its promise of legalizing cannabis use in Canada, a steady stream of products and services meant to help the public exploit the new freedom in as many ways as possible hits the marketplace. Legalization may be a case of opening the barn door decades after the horse has already gone (since millions of Canadians supposedly use the stuff already) and even though the evil weed isn't yet legal, you can go to many places right now and pick up both the consumables and the accessories with which to exploit them. My best friend...

Last year, the white nationalist Richard Spencer was kicked out of his Virginia gym after another member confronted him and called him a Nazi. This incident did not generate a national round of hand-wringing about the death of tolerance, perhaps because most people tacitly agree that it’s O.K. to shun professional racists. It’s a little more complicated when the professional racist is the president of the United States. The norms of our political life require a degree of bipartisan forbearance. But treating members of Donald Trump’s administration as ordinary public officials rather than pariahs does more to normalize bigotry than...

LINDSAY, Okla. (AP) — Danny Daniels, an evangelical Christian in the rural Oklahoma town of Lindsay, is reliably conservative on just about every political issue. The 45-year-old church pastor is anti-abortion, voted for President Donald Trump and is a member of the National Rifle Association who owns an AR-15 rifle. He also came of age during the 1980s and believed in the anti-drug mantra that labeled marijuana as a dangerous gateway drug. But his view on marijuana changed as his pastoral work extended into hospice care and he saw patients at the end of their lives benefiting from the use...

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - For as long as most residents can remember, smoking marijuana has been a part of life here. The fact that California legalized the practice in January went practically unnoticed in this quiet town a half-hour's drive north of San Francisco, where some say the normalization of America's marijuana culture got its start. For Quintin Pohl and other teenagers before him, smoking pot was a rite of passage. It was a diversion from the loneliness he felt at home when his parents were splitting up and a salve for middle-school angst. It was his entire social life...

Some day soon, even as sweet, skunky smoke drifts in from the streets outside, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other staunch opponents of marijuana may draw inspiration from a true believer named Morris Sheppard. After the repeal of national Prohibition in 1933 and until his death in 1941, the Texas senator embraced a yearly custom. A progressive Democrat often considered “the father of Prohibition,” Sheppard would rise on the Senate floor to rail against alcohol and call for a repeal of Repeal. “It was a ritual,” Daniel Okrent, author of the 2010 book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall...

The drug, which is legal for medical use in the majority of US states, is mainly prescribed to ease pain. But this new research conducted in Colorado - which was the first state to legalize - suggests that short-term pain relief could weaken the body's resilience to pain over time. The researchers, from the Swedish Medical Center, Colorado, analyzed around 260 people who were involved in minor vehicle accidents and admitted to trauma centers. Of these, 54 tested positive for recent marijuana use while 16 claimed they used the drug more or less every day.

Canada has passed a landmark law that legalises the recreational use of marijuana nationwide. The Cannabis Act passed its final hurdle on Tuesday in a 52-29 vote in the Senate. The bill controls and regulates how the drug can be grown, distributed, and sold. Canadians will be able to buy and consume the drug legally as early as this September. The country is the first in the G7 to legalise the drug's recreational use.

Canada is one step closer to full marijuana legalization. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month, “We are very much focused on the control and legalization of marijuana, because the current system is not working.” This past Thursday marked a day in Canadian history... The Canadian Senate passed legislation that would legalize recreational use of marijuana. The Senate approved the legislation 56 to 30 in a late-night vote. This vote has cleared one of the biggest obstacles for full legalization. Now the country is on the path to permitting national use of marijuana. It’s still unclear when recreational weed...

Delegates at the Republican Party of Texas convention on Saturday voted to approve platform planks endorsing marijuana decriminalization, medical cannabis and industrial hemp. They are also calling for a change in cannabis's classification by the federal government. "We support a change in the law to make it a civil, and not a criminal, offense for legal adults only to possess one ounce or less of marijuana for personal use, punishable by a fine of up to $100, but without jail time," reads one of the party's new positions. "Congress should remove cannabis from the list of Schedule 1," says another....