Free Republic

A Democrat running for Congress in Illinois' fifth congressional district showcased his support for marijuana legalization by smoking pot in a new campaign ad. Benjamin Thomas Wolf, a former FBI official turned Chicago restaurant owner, told the Chicago Sun-Times that it is important to be upfront about recreational cannabis use and the potential economic and social benefits of legalization. "As a cannabis user, I think it's important we get out front and talk about it," said Wolf, who is vying to defeat incumbent Rep.I Mike Quigley (D., Ill.) in this year's Democratic primary. "We realize that cannabis can bring billions...

Nearly all cannabis on Britain’s streets is now super-strength skunk that could be fueling the rise in mental health problems, scientists have warned. Researchers at King’s College London tested almost 1,000 police seizures from Kent, Derbyshire, Merseyside, Sussex and the capital in 2016, and found 94 percent were of a dangerously high potency. In 2005, just 51 percent of cannabis sold on the street was sinsemilla, also known as skunk. Dr. Marta Di Forti, Medical Research Council Clinician Scientist at King’s College warned that the powerful drug placed Britain’s 2.1 million cannabis users at risk of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression,...

Molson Coors Brewing Co. (TAP) voiced concerns about the potential impact that cannabis legalization could have on its beer sales, in its latest 13F filing. Although it has been a slow process, the legalization of cannabis across various parts of the United States has ushered in new business opportunities and provided legitimate alternatives to once-clandestine industries. (See also: The Economic Benefits of Legalizing Weed.)Supporters of the marijuana legalization movement contend that this has a beneficial impact on everything from individual growers and distributors to secondary markets and governments, which could benefit from taxes on sales. However, there are also detractors...

California’s war on the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution took a dramatic new step on Tuesday, as the city of Berkeley declared itself a “sanctuary city” for marijuana-related crimes. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to become a sanctuary city for legal adult-use marijuana, prohibiting city agencies and employees from turning over information on legal cannabis activities and assisting in enforcing federal marijuana laws. “I believe we can balance public safety and resisting the Trump administration,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “Berkeley is a sanctuary for people in our community.” The measure doesn’t prevent the...

OTTAWA, February 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — A pro-family group has blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bill legalizing recreational cannabis as “monstrous” and a “devastating attack” on society and families, and is urging Canadians to lobby the Senate to reject the legislation. Most egregiously, Bill C-45 or the Cannabis Bill, poses significant risks for children, REAL Women of Canada vice president Gwen Landolt said in a critique posted on the group’s website. The Liberal bill allows children over age 11 to “freely possess, use, and even share marijuana up to five grams [10 joints] at a time,” she pointed out. “There...

The Nickell family’s pastor told The Lexington Herald Leader that he had struggled with drug addiction for years...He and his parents attended morning and evening worship services together Feb. 4. That night, Nickell sat between his parents on the front pew, but was “out of it” on some substance, Caudill said.

Abstract Recent work finds that medical marijuana laws reduce the daily doses filled for opioid analgesics among Medicare Part-D and Medicaid enrollees, as well as population-wide opioid overdose deaths. We replicate the result for opioid overdose deaths and explore the potential mechanism. The key feature of a medical marijuana law that facilitates a reduction in overdose death rates is a relatively liberal allowance for dispensaries. As states have become more stringent in their regulation of dispensaries, the protective value generally has fallen. These findings suggest that broader access to medical marijuana facilitates substitution of marijuana for powerful and addictive opioids....

The Association of German Criminal Officers (BDK) has spoken out in favor of ending the ban on cannabis, and has called for the decriminalization of all use of the drug. “The prohibition of cannabis has historically been seen as arbitrary and has not yet been implemented in an intelligent and effective manner,” the head of BDK, André Schulz, told Bild newspaper on Monday. “In the history of mankind, there has never been a society without the use of drugs; this is something that has to be accepted,” he added. “My prediction is cannabis will not be banned for long in...

PHOENIX — A Lake Havasu City senator says he's still has yet to be convinced that marijuana has any legitimate medical uses. But Republican Sonny Borrelli said Monday the fact remains that voters did approve legalizing the drug for medical uses in 2010 and more than 150,000 Arizonans have state permission to buy and use it. So he figures it's the state's obligation to ensure that buyers are getting a product that's not tainted and, in fact, has the amount of psychoactive THC that buyers are promised. SB 1420 would give the state Department of Agriculture the same authority over...

Two-year old Maverick Hawkins sits on a red plastic car in his grandmother's living room in the picturesque town of Nevada City, Calif., in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. His playpal Delilah Smith, a fellow 2-year old, snacks on hummus and cashews and delights over the sounds of her Princess Peppa stuffie. It's playtime for the kids of the provocatively named Facebook group "Pot Smoking Moms Who Cuss Sometimes." Maverick's mother, Jenna Sauter, started the group after he was born. "I was a new mom, a young mom — I was 22 — and I was just feeling...

The hippies of the 70s are old. Time is merciless and none of us get out of here alive. My dad is a baby boomer born in 1944. He enjoyed his time as a 20 and 30 something in the '60s and '70s of America. It was a crazy time marked by free-love, tie-dyed shirts, pot-smoking, a free-wheeling youth, and the chaos of Vietnam. That was a long time ago. Until a year ago, my dad, now in his early 70s, was diagnosed with ParkinsonÂ’s Disease. My dad was a strong man who worked construction much of his life. His...

It was after his third mental competency test, all of which he passed, that Joseph Tigano started getting desperate. After all, by that point he had spent six years locked inside the Niagara County, N.Y., jail, awaiting trial on a charge of growing pot. It would be another year before the trial began. The wheels of justice are known for turning slowly, but they moved so sluggishly in Mr. Tigano’s case that on Tuesday, the United States Appeals Court for the Second Circuit issued a scathing opinion dismissing his indictment. In the opinion, the court said the case was the...

Gov. Phil Scott has signed Vermont's marijuana legalization bill into law. A Scott administration official tells WCAX the governor signed the bill shortly before 2 p.m. Monday. Scott is now the first governor in the country to sign marijuana legalization into law. Eight other states legalized marijuana through public referendums. In a letter to lawmakers, Scott said he signed the bill, H.511, with "mixed emotions." The bill allows Vermonters over the age of 21 to have an ounce of weed and to grow a few plants. Once signed, the new law goes into effect July 1.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A fifth-grade student at Albuquerque School of Excellence mistook her parent’s medicinal marijuana for candy and passed it out to other students at school. “She had this box, it had a label on it that said ‘Incredibles.’ We just thought it was ordinary gummies,” said one of the students who ate the edibles. The 9-year-old student said she almost immediately knew what she was given was not an ordinary gummy candy. “I started feeling really dizzy. I felt like the room was going to flip to the side,” said the 9-year-old. The Dean of Elementary Students,...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A 9-year-old girl unwittingly ate, and handed out to other classmates, THC-laced candy, school officials said. The girl brought the candies to school last Thursday and said she could not see...The student who brought them to school did not know they were medicinal...

PALISADE, Colo. - A new study shows that if you have a marijuana shop down the street from your home, it may actually be boosting your houses resale value. When it comes to marijuana, many say it's a topic of discussion nationwide. However, it also hits close to home. The town of Palisade opened its first recreational marijuana shop back in September of 2017. Those in favor say having these shops in our area may have its perks.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals. People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found. Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Two Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to make medical marijuana legal in Tennessee, but only in oil-based products.</p> <p>Sen. Steve Dickerson of Nashville and Rep. Jeremy Faison of Cosby announced the bill's filing Thursday amid wide support for medical marijuana in state polls.</p>

You would think that the Justice Department has better things to do than to restart a federal war on marijuana or that it would want to stay away from interfering with the will of the people in the 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow at least the medical use of marijuana. But you would be wrong. Thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, we have now an emerging conflict between federal and state laws. That conflict should be resolved in favor of the states. When he was a senator, Sessions once said during a Senate hearing, "Good people...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Services at the Coachella Valley Church begin and end with the Lord’s Prayer. In between, there is the sacrament. “Breathe deep and blow harder,” intoned Pastor Grant Atwell after distributing small marijuana joints to 20 worshipers on a recent Sunday afternoon. “Nail the insight down, whether you get it from marijuana or prayer. Consider what in your own life you are thankful for.” A middle-aged man wearing a “Jesus Loves You” baseball cap piped up. “Thank you, God, for the weed,” he called out. “I’m thankful for the spirit of cannabis,” a woman echoed from the...