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Former Beatle Paul McCartney has told a British newspaper he believes he once saw God during a psychedelic trip. The 76-year-old star told The Sunday Times he was “humbled” by the experience. He said that “it was huge. A massive wall that I couldn’t see the top of, and I was at the bottom. And anybody else would say it’s just the drug, the hallucination, but we felt we had seen a higher thing.” …

Do not be surprised if legal cigarettes made from ganja (cannabis) hit the streets soon. Major producers like Carreras are probing that and other cannabis possibilities, as increasing competition from illegally imported cigarettes continues to burn deeper into the profits of the legal trade. It is no secret that British American Tobacco (BAT), the parent company of Carrerras, has, like other major US tobacco dealers including Phillip Morris, been looking at the cannabis market and the possibility of producing mild cigarettes restricted by the legal content of the main cannabinoids — cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), although only THC is...

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...

About half of marijuana users in states where it's legal say they've gone to work while under the influence of the drug ... Instamotor polled 600 self-identified marijuana users in states where recreational marijuana is legal ... Almost half -- 48 percent -- of respondents said they have gone to work high, with 39 percent stating that they go to work under the influence at least once per week. ... 50 percent said they would likely be fired if their boss knew they were high at work.

Laura Ingraham did a segment on her show tonight. One of the guests was a pro-pot lawyer from Denver. Segment starts at the 40:18 mark, guest comes on at the 42:11 mark. Hilarity ensues.

The City of Miami Beach in Florida is so annoyed by the army of spring breakers descending on its beaches for wild parties fueled by alcohol and drugs that it’s considering a drastic, if a little bizarre, countermeasure. One elected city official suggested playing classical music, such as Mozart, at loud volumes to break up parties on the beach. That's according to a report in The Miami Herald, which said the city's commissioners were juggling ideas on how to tackle spring break partygoers after a chaotic weekend.

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,...

Do I smoke too much pot? It’s a question I’ve asked myself over the years, and it raised its uncomfortable head this week as I absorbed the results of the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The first thing to note about the report is the good news. One of the major and legitimate fears of those who have opposed legalization is that teen use would increase. Weed is genuinely harmful to the developing adolescent brain and those of us who passionately advocated legalization argued that making it legal would actually make it harder for teens to get...

This Thursday, April 20, marks the annual unofficial holiday celebrated around the world by marijuana users. And this year, "4/20" will be observed while America's burgeoning legal cannabis industry sits at a crossroads. Public opinion polls indicate that support for marijuana legalization is at an all-time high in the U.S., and November's election saw four new states vote to legalize recreational cannabis while another four states legalized medical pot. As a result, a majority of the U.S. population lives in a state with some access to legal marijuana. However, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level, and the new administration...

Patients will technically be able to receive medication as of Jan. 3, but the state still has months to go before full legalization and implementation of the medical marijuana law. Patients in Florida suffering from a variety of ailments will technically be eligible to use legal medical marijuana as a form of treatment on Tuesday. However, the state still has months to go before dispensary rules and regulations must be officially implemented, which could potentially leave patients without access to medical cannabis for quite some time. On Election Day, 71 percent of voters approved Florida’s Amendment 2, a measure legalizing...

This Thanksgiving, Californians may have been tempted to include an additional ingredient in their pumpkin pies. Marijuana was legalised in the US’s most populous state this month, reflecting a mellowing of social attitudes towards the drug. Alongside the presidential election, five states voted on whether to legalise the recreational use of cannabis, with Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada, voting in favour, along with California. But one sector is watching the spread of legalisation with a degree of trepidation: the $200bn US alcohol industry. Though alcohol and weed might seem eminently compatible to some, a number of brewers fear cannabis as a...

New research from the University of British Columbia suggests there may be some truth to the belief that marijuana use causes laziness— at least in rats. The study, published today in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, found that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, makes rats less willing to try a cognitively demanding task. "Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that when we gave THC to these rats, they basically became cognitively lazy," said Mason Silveira, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate in UBC's department of psychology. "What's interesting, however, is that their ability to do the...

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama never tried to say he didn't inhale. In his 1995 memoir "Dreams of My Father," Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke "in a white classmate's sparkling new van," he would smoke "in the dorm room of some brother" and he would smoke "on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids." He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere. Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled "Barack Obama: The...

The patients taken to the hospital ranged in age from 6 to 18.The gummy rings that sickened 19 people - including a 6-year-old - at quinceañera in the Mission District were laced with pot, the San Francisco Public Health Department announced Monday, after a dozen patients tested positive for the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Spokeswoman Rachel Kagan said that the final lab tests on the gummy rings have not yet come back yet from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. But she said that 12 of the 19 people hospitalized after the party at the Women's Building on 18th Street...

Officials have urged residents in a small Colorado town not to consume their water after several wells tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. So far no illnesses have been linked to the water in Hugo -- a town of around 700 people located roughly 100 miles southeast of Denver -- according to officials. The announcement comes after a local company was testing its own water and got a positive result. Local law enforcement was then notified and further testing in other locations took place, which revealed additional positive results, reports ABC Denver affiliate, KMGH. "At this point...

Officials told residents of a small Colorado community not to drink or shower in tap water Thursday because one of the town’s wells may have been contaminated with THC, marijuana’s intoxicating chemical. No illnesses have been linked to the water in Hugo, a town of about 730 people some 100 miles southeast of Denver, said Lincoln County Public Health Director Susan Kelly. THC was detected in tests conducted with field kits, although other field tests were negative, sheriff’s Capt. Michael Yowell said. More definitive laboratory tests were underway, he said. …

Marijuana compound removes toxic Alzheimer's protein from the brain An active compound in marijuana called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has been found to promote the removal of toxic clumps of amyloid beta protein in the brain, which are thought to kickstart the progression of Alzheimer's disease. The finding supports the results of previous studies that found evidence of the protective effects of cannabinoids, including THC, on patients with neurodegenerative disease. "Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer's, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid...

Hawaii lawmakers are asking how much marijuana a driver can safely consume before getting behind the wheel of a car. It’s an issue they want to tackle now that Hawaii is setting up medical marijuana dispensaries. So Rep. Cindy Evans and 15 other lawmakers introduced a resolution asking the state Department of Health to study whether a person can safely drive while under the influence. Marijuana is the illicit drug most frequently found in the blood of drivers who have been involved in accidents, including fatal ones, but the role marijuana plays in those accidents is often unclear because it...

Dazzan said that when they looked at the corpus callosum of those who smoke high-strength cannabis, they found that there was a significant difference in the white matter compared to people who have never tried the drug, and people who smoke low-strength cannabis. The THC chemical acts on cannabinoid receptors which the corpus callosum contains. The team utilized two scanning methods to examine the corpus callosum in the brains of 56 patients who reportedly experienced a first episode of psychosis, and 43 healthy participants from the local community. One method required the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) while the...

Teens are increasingly turning to electronic cigarettes not to get their tobacco fix, but instead to inhale pot. A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics found that teens have devised ways to turn e-cigarettes into devices for hashish oil, marijuana, wax and other cannabis products. Researchers surveyed 3,847 Connecticut high school students about their drug and e-cigarette use and found that students using e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis was 27 times higher than the adult rate. According to the study, 5.5 percent of the students surveyed had used an e-cigarette to vaporize cannabis. In total, nearly 30 percent of...