Free Republic

The Republican Party in Arizona’s largest county voted Saturday to censure the widow of the late Sen. John McCain after she endorsed Democrat Joe Biden. The state GOP is planning a similar vote later this month. The Maricopa County GOP’s censure resolution called Cindy McCain a "troubled individual, with a past riddled with drug abuse and illegalities associated with such behavior." The measure also accused Cindy McCain of supporting "leftist causes" including gay marriage, larger government and "others that run counter to Republican values." Cindy McCain has acknowledged suffering a three-year addiction to pain medicine from 1989 to 1992 and...

Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, Justice Department officials announced Wednesday. The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said. The resolution will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court. Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son to an OxyContin overdose nearly 20 years ago, said he wants to see people...

After telling Variety that she’s contemplating leaving the United States if President Donald Trump wins re-election, rocker Stevie Nicks says there wouldn’t have been a Fleetwood Mac if she had not had an abortion. “If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” said Nick in a recent interview with The Guardian. The singer ended her unborn child’s life in 1979 while she was dating Don Henley of The Eagles. “There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were...

I wonder if getting caught passed out in your own vomit, in a hotel room with a male prostitute also passed out, with drugs all over the place along with blood and feces on the bed had anything to do with this announcement....Florida dodged a real bullet....

Newly-released data shows the majority of Colorado’s youth are participating in healthy behaviors and that marijuana use among school-aged children has not significantly changed since legalization. The data comes from the bi-annual statewide Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) conducted last year with more than 100,000 students participating. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) released the results of the survey Monday. The survey shows marijuana use among school-aged kids has stayed relatively flat since legalization, but the way kids are using marijuana has changed. In 2019, 20.6% of youth said they use marijuana compared to 19.4% in 2017....

'You take rehab.com—our website traffic is up 382 percent in the past 30 days with people looking for treatment for either substance abuse or mental health.' This is a “pandemic within a pandemic,” according to addiction expert Tim Ryan, who’s watched the coronavirus outbreak exacerbate the preexistent opioid and mental health crises with devastating effect. Ryan, the star of A&E’s 2017 “Dope Man” special, is the founder of “A Man In Recovery Foundation,” which partners with Rehab.com. A former heroin addict, his mission is to assist others struggling with substance abuse.In a Friday interview, Ryan explained how the stresses of...

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...

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. - A 22-year-old granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy died Thursday at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, the family said in a statement. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, 22, was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy's fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill, who was one of four falsely convicted in the 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings of two pubs. The Kennedy family released a statement on Thursday night, following reports of a death at the family's compound in Hyannis Port. The statement was issued by Brian Wright O'Connor, a spokesman for former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II....

U.S. suicide rates are at the highest level since World War II, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, per Bloomberg's Cynthia Koons. By the numbers: From 2000 to 2006, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased by an average of about 1% a year. From 2006 through 2016, it increased by 2% a year. There were 1.4 million suicide attempts in 2017 and 47,000 deaths. Why it matters: Despite an improvement of material well-being, emotional distress in the U.S. has reached "crisis levels," according to the CDC. Koons reports that the national mental health epidemic...

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) — Colleges are now adding cannabis to their curriculum. Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she’s majoring in marijuana. “My friends make good-natured jokes about getting a degree in weed,” said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University. “I say, ‘No, it’s a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and foremost. It’s hard work. Organic chemistry is a bear.'” As a green gold rush in legal marijuana and its non-drug cousin hemp spreads across North America, a growing number...

SCIENCEDIRECT.COM A mid-2000’s study linking anti-gay prejudice to shorter lifespans for lesbians, gays, and bisexual individuals has been retracted on grounds that it was an “erroneous” finding.The study “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations” was conducted by researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Social Science & Medicine in February 2014.The study purported to have found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who live in communities with high levels of anti-gay sentiment tend to die earlier than lesbians, gays and bisexuals who live in communities that are...

‘My dear departed grandmothers... as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.” That’s professor Donald Harris, the Jamaican father of Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, reportedly sounding off this week in a statement to Jamaica Global Online about his daughter’s interview on the New York Breakfast Club radio show.

Times change, attitudes change, and (thankfully) hairstyles change. In the last few years we’ve been witness to one amazing change that is surprising in its speed – the idea that adults should be allowed to smoke marijuana, either for medical purposes or because they want to. There’s no reason to think this trend will ever reverse itself. In the interest of full disclosure, while it’s been more than a decade, I am intimately familiar with marijuana. I didn’t experiment with it, I majored in it in college. But, like most people, I grew out of it. I didn’t make a...

Citizens in four states vote Tuesday on ballot initiatives to legalize some form of cannabis. Residents of Missouri and Utah will decide on its medical availability, Michigan and North Dakota on recreational consumption for adults. If all four measures pass, the tally of states that allow some sort of cannabis use will jump to 32, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. The trend could not be clearer: Cannabis prohibition is coming to an end. A Gallup poll last month found 66% of Americans favor legal marijuana. I am now one of those Americans. It began when a friend of mine who...

FULL TITLE: Court hears how four-month-old boy's maggot-infested body was found in a baby swing after he went unchanged for a week and died of extreme 'diaper rash' as his father faces trial for murder An Iowa father's murder trial has begun after his infant son's body was found maggot-infested in a baby swing after dying from diaper rash last year. Four-month-old Sterling Koehn had been in the same diaper for nine to 14 days when his body was found in the swing August 30, 2017, at his parents' apartment in Alta Vista. The baby's father, 29-year-old Zachary Paul Koehn,...

DALLAS, Texas (CBS Local) – A Texas teen’s mugshot has unexpectedly launched her career as a makeup artist. Marshala Perkins of Dallas was arrested in February and charged with possession of marijuana. The 19-year-old was reportedly questioned by police after finishing a makeup tutorial. The teen told reporters she was sitting in her car waiting for friends when officers found two grams of marijuana in the vehicle. After the incident, Greenville police posted the mugshot on their Facebook page, leaving Perkins embarrassed over the arrest. What the teen didn’t expect was her mugshot to get re-posted by a Twitter account...

A resident of Mexico has been charged for conspiracy to grow marijuana with the intent to distribute it and damage to public lands and natural resources, according to federal prosecutors. Everado Cuadro Campos, 49, who is from Michoacan, Mexico, was arrested July 17 at a “marijuana garden” in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Shasta County, according to a news release by the United States Department of Justice. U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife agents found a marijuana cultivation site near Rock Creek, according to a Department of Justice criminal complaint, and entered through a “well-worn” path....

(Javonnie McCoy and Atlanta attorney Catherine Bernard after his acquittal) Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine. The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison. The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a...

Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine. The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison. The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been...

Ventura County sheriffs said they were called to a home in the 4900 block of Summit View Drive in Thousand Oaks for a medical emergency and one person was taken to the hospital. “I think the family did the right thing,” said board certified psychiatrist Charles Sophey. “They were smart enough to call for help.” Sophey doesn’t treat Locklear but knows her history. Locklear has been in rehab numerous times including a treatment facility this past March, weeks after being arrested for domestic violence against her fiance and striking officers when she was in custody. “Clearly when she’s in these...