Free Republic

High on Hemp America’s Most Controversial Crop May One Day Fill Supermarkets and Fuel Automobiles Even if you "Just Say No" to drugs, you've probably crossed state lines many times with large amounts of hemp. And if you haven't, no doubt one day you will. Hemp, a member of the cannabis family of plants, is related to marijuana and illegal to grow in the United States. Nevertheless, hemp is everywhere — in clothing, cosmetics and even in the door panels of more than a million Ford, Chrysler and General Motors cars. Advocates call hemp a miracle crop. It can be...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A judge on Wednesday ordered the federal government not to raid or prosecute a California group that grows and distributes marijuana for its sick members. The decision by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose was the first interpretation of an appeals court's December ruling that federal prosecutions of medical marijuana users are unconstitutional if the pot isn't sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes. Nine states including Cali fornia and Washington allow medical marijuana use, but the Justice Department contends that federal drug laws take precedence. Fogel ruled that the federal government...

You Can't Trust The Drug "Experts" Research on Illicit Substances Is As Biased As Its Funding Source "One night's ecstasy use can cause brain damage," shouted a newspaper headline in September 2002, after the journal Science published a study that found a single dose of the drug ecstasy injected into monkeys and baboons caused terrible brain damage. Two of the 10 primates in the study had even died. The media trumpeted the news around the world and drug enforcement officials held it up as definitive proof of the vileness of ecstasy. But a year later, an odd thing happened. The...

<p>WASHINGTON — As a California pediatrician and 49-year-old mother of two teenage daughters, Claudia Jensen says pot might prove to be the preferred medical treatment for attention deficit disorder (search) — even in adolescents.</p>

Canada is a major exporter of high-potency marijuana, according to the man who leads the US war on drugs. White House "drug czar" John Walters says new cultivation methods mean marijuana sold today in the US is much stronger than in the 1960s. "We have a growing problem with the expansion of particularly high-potency marijuana coming from Canada," he said. Last year the drug produced in British Columbia alone was worth $9bn and most of it was exported to the US, he added. High-grade marijuana is grown in nutrient-rich solutions rather than soil, and sells for as much as...

FREDERICK, Md. -- A Frederick County judge has granted probation before judgment for a Frederick woman caught with marijuana because she was able to prove she needed it for medicinal reasons. It was the first Frederick County case since the state adopted a new law ending jail time for people who use the drug out of medical necessity. A lawyer for Jodi Delli, 32, said his client had a letter from her doctor explaining that smoking the drug had done more to ease her pain than prescription pills. She was arrested in November after her neighbors told police they smelled...