Free Republic

As I go about my business around town and to various parts of the state and the country, everything looks so very different from the America I knew as a kid and young adult. Everywhere I go, people look weird. Girls in their early 20s with bright pink, green, purple or blue hair, have half their heads shaved, or their bangs cut straight across in a “bowl” cut that would have been embarrassingly ugly for even boys to have to wear when I was a kid.

As drug legalization groups and the cannabis industry lobby to legalize cannabis across the United States, with initiatives to legalize marijuana on the November ballot in five more states, many experts warn this will only increase the physical and mental harm from the unregulated, high-potency cannabis. President of the American Board of Pain Medicine and a vice president of the International Academy on the Science and Impacts of Cannabis, Dr. Ken Finn, said high potency cannabis use is being linked to poisonings in young children, as well as psychosis and schizophrenia in an increasing number of regular users. “A lot...

Big Pharma and Big Tobacco are helping market high-potency, psychosis-inducing THC products as your mother’s ‘medical marijuana’{Dr. Libby Stuyt], a recently retired addiction psychiatrist in Pueblo, Colorado, treated patients with severe drug dependency. Typically, that meant alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamines. But about five years ago, she began to see something new. “I started seeing people with the worst psychosis symptoms that I have ever seen,” she told me. “And the worst delusions I have ever seen.” These cases were even more acute than what she’d seen from psychotic patients on meth. Some of the delusions were accompanied by “severe violence.”...

“A few years ago, it was rare to see a young person enter Caron with marijuana-induced psychosis,” said Garbely. “Now we see it on a regular basis. Older teens and young adults — approximately ages 18 to 26 — are the most impacted. We see a significant misperception about the safety and efficacy of marijuana among our teen and young-adult patient population.”

This is an excerpt for discussion purposes, see article for full story. More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead. The proliferation of retail boutiques in California did not really bother him, Evan told me, but the billboards did. Advertisements for delivery, advertisements promoting the substance for relaxation, for fun, for health. “Shop. It’s legal.” “Hello marijuana, goodbye hangover.” “It’s not a trigger,” he told me. “But it is in your face.” When we spoke, he had been sober for a hard-fought seven weeks: seven weeks of sleepless nights, intermittent nausea, irritability, trouble focusing, and...

Colorado's experiment with marijuana legalization has been an epic disaster, according to one doctor seeing its effects on the front lines. Dr. Karen Randall, an emergency room physician certified in "cannabis science and medicine," said the legalization of marijuana has damaged, rather than helped, her home state. Randall, who spoke alongside former White House drug czar John Walters at the right-leaning Hudson Institute on Friday, said the public is being misled about the effects of recreational marijuana. "I think the public needs to know that we are not okay," Randall said. "The grand experiment is not going so well. I...

Industry experts say the diminished tax income reflects a somber reality: Most consumers are continuing to purchase pot in the illegal marketplace, where they avoid taxes...Newsom also recommended a sharp increase in spending for regulatory programs, although it’s an open question whether it will be enough to help steady the state pot economy. The budget recommends just over $200 million for marijuana-related activities in the fiscal year...

... The most obvious way that cannabis fuels violence in psychotic people is through its tendency to cause paranoia. Even marijuana advocates acknowledge that the drug can cause paranoia; the risk is so obvious that users joke about it, and dispensaries advertise certain strains as less likely to do so. But for people with psychotic disorders, paranoia can fuel extreme violence. A 2007 paper in the Medical Journal of Australia looked at 88 defendants who had committed homicide during psychotic episodes. It found that most of the killers believed they were in danger from the victim, and almost two-thirds reported...

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...

When it comes to spreading unfounded rumors, urban legends, and outright lies, the Internet is definitely the “Ignorance Superhighway.”  Obvious fallacies are allowed to breed and spread exponentially with just a click of a mouse.  As such, it’s fertile ground for the pro-marijuana crowd to disseminate their lies to gullible people who can’t seem to run a simple Google search in order to verify a claim. Recently, I read a ridiculous meme that claimed 1) marijuana cured cancer, and 2) the government was keeping it from us.  Of course, it had several “likes” and affirming comments about the alleged...

“I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from ... cigarettes.” This sentiment, expressed by Barack Obama in January and shared by millions, has once again been challenged — this time by an academic review of 20-years worth of research. The handiwork of Dr. Wayne Hall, a professor of addiction policy at King's College London and drug advisor for the World Health Organization, the review implicates cannabis in a whole host of health problems, but, in particular, in mental-health issues and addiction among habitual users — especially teenagers.

I’ve been to Amsterdam and the revolution is a lie. Troubled by the Netherlands failed social experiment on teenagers, however, the Soros-backed Cato Institute and other Woodstock libertarians have been singing the praises of socialist Portugal’s soft-on-drug ethos, and hoping to hell we wouldn’t ask too many critical-thinking questions. The faithful still claim that crime in Portugal has gone done since their nation went soft on drugs. But what’s gone down is their economy, an economic basket case. Moreover, the Portuguese have a history of fiddling with crime statistics. Or to quote my local newspaper: A Melbourne woman was murdered...

One of Britain's best known entrepreneurs – and a man who knows a thing or two about counterculture – Richard Branson is joining calls for an end to the War on Drugs

California is bankrupt. Ten weeks after a nasty budget fight concluding in a compromise everyone hates, the state is broke. They’ve legalized gambling and the state is still broke. They’ve raised the alcohol tax and the state is still broke. They’ve raised the tobacco tax and the state is still broke. So the new push: Legalize pot, tax it and we’ll all be saved. Don’t get me wrong: if you want to legalize Mary Jane, go ahead. I don’t have a problem with the drug or people who smoke it. But if you think this will be the magical fix-all,...

This Friday, Dec. 5, is the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the day America repealed its disastrous alcohol prohibition. Prohibition was the pièce de résistance of the early 20th-century progressives' grand social engineering agenda. It failed, of course. Miserably. It did reduce overall consumption of alcohol in the U.S., but that reduction came largely among those who consumed alcohol responsibly. The actual harm caused by alcohol abuse was made worse, thanks to the economics of prohibitions. Black market alcohol was of dubious origin, unregulated by market forces. The price premium that attaches to banned substances made the alcohol that made...

Feb. 19, 2008 -- Nabilone, a pain drug based on marijuana's active ingredient, may ease fibromyalgia pain. So say Canadian researchers, based on a preliminary, short-term study. The study included 40 fibromyalgia patients. First, they did three things: Rate the intensity of their fibromyalgia pain. The rating scale ranged from 0 (no pain) to 10 (the worst pain imaginable). Their average rating was about 6. Rate their quality of life. The rating scale ranged from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating worse quality of life. Their average rating was 66. Get a check of their tender points -- parts...

I've looked forward to interviewing the U.S. drug czar for years, and Tuesday afternoon I finally got the chance when current czar John Walters visited with the U-T editorial board. I'm happy to note that he took my libertarian griping seriously; many drug warriors seem amazed that anyone could suggest that the drug war is futile, costly, counterproductive and hypocritical, and often amounts to an assault on civil liberties. I said to Walters that by any possible statistical reckoning of deaths, car wrecks, suicides, drownings, crimes of violence, etc., alcohol is vastly more destructive in the U.S. than all illegal...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) recently said that, if elected president, he would end the federal raids on marijuana clinics in states that have legalized the drug for medical purposes. That makes the Democratic field unanimous now — all would end the raids and allow the states to craft their own medical marijuana policy, free from federal interference. By contrast, just two of the remaining GOP candidates — Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) and Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) — and none of the front-runners have promised to call off the raids. This is unfortunate for a party that once fancied itself the...

September 18, 2006 BREAKING: Largest U.S. Islamic Charity Raided by FBI Printer Friendly By Debbie Schlussel I've been writing about LIFE for Relief and Development for years, and I think my columns (especially this one), have finally made a difference. Ditto for my complaints about LIFE to Assistant U.S. Attorney for counterterrorism, Ken Chadwell. Less than half an hour ago, the FBI began raiding LIFE and hauling out documents. Well, it's about time. LIFE--the largest Islamic charity still open for business in America--openly admitted on its 1995-'97 taxes to be a major funder of HAMAS. Headquartered in the Orthodox Jewish...

Marijuana Amendment Will Be On Ballot Denver -- Coloradans are to decide this fall whether to make it legal under state law for anyone age 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana. Secretary of State Gigi Dennis said Wednesday that backers of that initiative had turned in enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 7 general election. The proposal will be Amendment 44 on the state ballot, Dennis said. Under Colorado law, anyone in possession of an ounce or less of marijuana can be charged with a Class 2 petty offense, punishable by a fine of...