Free Republic

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.

Marijuana has been called a “Gateway” drug. The thinking is that once a person experiences the effects of pot, they will have lost their reluctance to try stronger drugs such as cocaine, meth and heroin. “I smoked pot and lived through it. I kind of liked it. Maybe the stronger drugs won’t hurt me. Maybe they will be like pot, only better. They probably won’t kill me. Plus, it’s kind of exciting.” We sit after this election wondering how so many of our fellow citizens feel the need to cheat to achieve a political goal. Cheating is against the rules....

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is proposing that the state legalize recreational marijuana in an effort to raise tax revenues lost during the Covid pandemic. Ironically, his draconian shutdown of much of the state over the past six months has seriously impacted the PA economy, and hence the state’s tax revenue. But it’s a pipe dream. In Colorado, for every dollar gained from marijuana taxes, taxpayers spend $4.50 to mitigate the effects of legalization. For Pennsylvania, any short term revenue increase will be swallowed up by the serious long term social and economic effects of legalization.In fact, if the governor is...

President Donald Trump hosted a campaign rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the same night the Democratic National Convention was scheduled to kick off in Milwaukee. While Democrats instead opted for a virtual conference to avoid spreading the coronavirus, Trump drew a crowd of at least 1,000 people. In off-the-cuff remarks, Trump suggested to Republicans that if they wanted to win elections, they had to keep cannabis legalization off the ballot. Though the Trump Administration has attacked cannabis reform in behind-closed-doors proceedings and by blocking legislative action, this is the first time the President has made negative comments about cannabis in public....

If you're smoking weed to ease your stress during the coronavirus pandemic, experts say it's time to think twice. Smoking marijuana, even occasionally, can increase your risk for more severe complications from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. "What happens to your airways when you smoke cannabis is that it causes some degree of inflammation, very similar to bronchitis, very similar to the type of inflammation that cigarette smoking can cause," said pulmonologist Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association. "Now you have some airway inflammation and you get an infection on top of...

George Soros's first major effort to reshape America was undertaking the legitimization of illegal drug use, especially marijuana. Soros initially said his overarching goal was to promote informed discussion of drug policy. But debate and discussion are not his style and were not his objects. Instead, he used his resources to fund think-tanks, foundations, and public policy action groups that successfully muddled public opinion enough to change public laws, making illegal drug use legal. In the early 1990s, the notion of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. was unthinkable and unacceptable. The voices to legalize drugs were marginal and not in...

Facing a potentially historic vote on whether to legalize medical marijuana in Kentucky, Republican lawmaker John Schickel is conflicted. A retired law enforcement officer, Schickel once steadfastly opposed medical cannabis, but his stance has softened. Now he says he’s approaching the question with an open mind. […] Schickel’s dilemma stands as yet another sign that views about marijuana are changing across the South, where efforts to legalize it have long been stymied by Bible Belt politics. While medical cannabis is legal now in 33 states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, other Southern states remain among the holdouts. Whether wavering resistance...

“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.”

When the most popular medical marijuana dispensary in Chicago begins selling recreational pot on New Year’s Day, it will operate like a busy restaurant. Dispensary 33 plans to take names from those in line and page customers by phone when they can get in. The North Side cannabis shop will take that unusual step due to the huge crowds expected when weed sales become legal under state law at 6 a.m. Jan. 1, 2020. The celebration will be similar to the unofficial pot holiday of April 20, or 4/20, when a Dispensary 33 street fest and special deals this year...

NEGAUNEE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WJMN) — Michigan marijuana businesses now have a date when legal sales of recreational marijuana will start. According to The Michigan Regulatory Agency, recreational marijuana businesses can begin selling their products on Dec. 1. However, some businesses may not be ready by then. “As for us, we have gotten in our recreational license, however, it does not mean we’ll be ready on the first we’re still waiting to hear back from LARA, so when they process our paperwork we’ll know more, ” says Logan Stauber, owner of The Fire Station Provisioning Center. The Michigan Regulatory Agency says...

Two-thirds of Americans say the use of marijuana should be legal, reflecting a steady increase over the past decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The share of U.S. adults who oppose legalization has fallen from 52% in 2010 to 32% today. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (91%) say marijuana should be legal either for medical and recreational use (59%) or that it should be legal just for medical use (32%). Fewer than one-in-ten (8%) prefer to keep marijuana illegal in all circumstances, according to the survey, conducted Sept. 3 to 15 on Pew Research Center’s...

He said he found three bags of weed in his cup after drinking the beverage. "Well, I was high and panicking and at work, so I called my dad,"...Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Maj. Bob Bromage said an investigation is ongoing.

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...

The frightening pages were revealed by a former friend who paints a confounding picture of Betts as a frequent methamphetamine smoker who played violent video games - but was never a racist or interested in weapons...Himes can testify, however, to the fact that Betts was a frequent drug user, taking methamphetamine, cocaine - or 'whatever upper he could get his hands on' in days-long binges...'But he was very consistent with the methamphetamine. I don't know if he got into slamming with needles, but he was pretty much smoking it every day when we were hanging out. 'Coke was also a...

Legalizing pot does not appear to encourage teen use and might actually discourage it, a study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics suggests. Researchers analyzed data from more than 1.4 million high school students between 1993 and 2017, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its Youth Risk Behavior survey. The results show teen pot use both before and after medical marijuana laws were adopted in 27 states, seven of which also legalized recreational marijuana during the survey period. Teen marijuana use didn’t change much after medical marijuana was legalized, they found. In states that legalized recreational use,...

The returns are in on Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana: (1) Large amounts of money are being made thanks to legalization, privately and by the state; (2) “horrible things are happening to kids.” The quotation is from psychiatrist Libby Stuyt. She treats teens in southwestern Colorado and has studied the health effects of high-potency marijuana. Stuyt says: “I see increased problems with psychosis, with addiction, with suicide, with depression and anxiety” stemming from legalization in the state. Stuyt’s report won’t surprise anyone who has read Alex Berensen’s book Tell Your Children, which I discussed here. Berensen noted that over the...

A bill to legalize recreational marijauna in Illinois needs only the signature of Gov. J.B. Pritzker to become law. Colorado has had legal recreational marijuana since 2014. The Colorado Division of Criminal Justice last year came out with an analysis of the effects of the state's legalization of retail sales of marijuana since it went into effect in 2014. It found teen use had not increased, but hospital visits and fatal accidents associated with marijuana use increased. The authors cautioned that many factors can influence the statistics in the report, including people's willingness to admit marijuana use now that it's...

Most of all, advocates have told you that marijuana is not just safe for people with psychiatric problems like depression, but that it is a potential treatment for those patients. On its website, the cannabis delivery service Eaze offers the “Best Marijuana Strains and Products for Treating Anxiety.” “How Does Cannabis Help Depression?” is the topic of an article on Leafly, the largest cannabis website. But a mountain of peer-reviewed research in top medical journals shows that marijuana can cause or worsen severe mental illness, especially psychosis, the medical term for a break from reality. Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly...

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,...

Both groups were surveyed on a host of factors, including their use of marijuana and other drugs. The study’s authors concluded that “people who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times."