Free Republic

The evidence for keeping weed illegal keeps mounting — even as the laws get looser. A new, peer-reviewed study (on a significant data set of nearly 60,000 Canadians) has shown that adults who misuse pot have a 60% higher risk of experiencing their first heart attack, stroke, or other major cardiovascular event. In other words: Weed’s not a harmless vice. It’s a killer, like cigarettes. And unlike cigarettes, it literally drives people insane. A massive Danish study based on nearly 7 million health records drew a strong correlation between heavy cannabis use and increased risk of schizophrenia in young men....

Though tobacco use is declining among adults in the US, cannabis use is increasing. Laws and policies regulating the use of tobacco and cannabis are also moving in different directions. Tobacco policies are becoming more restrictive, with bans on smoking in public places and limits on sales, such as statewide bans on flavored products. In contrast, more states are legalizing cannabis for medical or recreational use, and there are efforts to allow exceptions for cannabis in smoke-free laws. These changes mean an increasing number of people are likely to get exposed to cannabis smoke. But how safe is direct and...

Jean-Pierre claimed President Biden "has always supported the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes..." Almost 14 months out till the 2024 Presidential election, the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on Tuesday to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substance Act at the request of President Biden. According to Bloomberg, a DEA spokesperson confirmed the department received a letter from HHS Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram with the request, and will now initiate its own review of the drug. When asked about the recommendation Wednesday, White...

In the last five years, the Hawaiian emergency alarm system mistakenly went off two different times, causing panic among residents. This week, the system fell short yet again but in a profound way — there was never a warning to the community about the latest wildfires set ablaze on the island of Maui. zp> Most survivors had little warning of the gaining fire until they smelled smoke or saw flames, reported The Associated Press. Dustin Kaleiopu, a resident of the city of Lahaina that’s in ruins, left his home with his grandfather when smoke started coming through the window,...

In Las Vegas, Nevada, it's come to this: climate change has helped make water ever more scarce, so under a new Nevada law, the grass has got to go. "When we look at outdoor water use in Southern Nevada, landscaping far and away is the largest water user, and of that, it's grass," said Bronson Mack of the Las Vegas Water Authority. The city's already pulled up about four million square feet of grass on public property so far this year, because thirsty green parkways are something they just can't afford anymore. "The grass that you see behind me is...

A unique confluence of archeology, molecular genetics and serendipity guided a collaboration of Mexican and Penn State researchers to a deeper understanding of how modern corn was domesticated from teosinte, a perennial grass native to Mexico and Central America, more than 5,000 years ago.There is much interest in how ancient agriculturists transformed the wild grass teosinte into modern corn, one of the most important and successful crops on earth, according to team leader Jonathan Lynch, distinguished professor of plant nutrition. For decades, his research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences has been uncovering how roots play a critical role...

Democrats in Washington state are cracking down on marijuana — not the actual drug, the word itself. The Evergreen State legislature recently passed a bill banning the word “marijuana” from official state law and documents over concerns that it is “racist.” At the same time, to help increase diversity in the cannabis business, a taxpayer-funded task force has been spending the last two years focusing on helping minorities in Washington state break into the marijuana business. “The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Washington state Representative Melanie Morgan (D) said during testimony regarding the piece of legislation officially known...

Next year's restaurant industry trend predictions are in, and they include avocado coffee (an Indonesian delicacy), gourmet egg sandwiches and Burger King Whoppers made with Halloumi cheese instead of burgers. Why it matters: As the pandemic lingers, it's shaping what ingredients are available as well as how we eat, with newfound habits that we once thought were temporary turning out to be permanent. Driving the news: A new forecast from Technomic, a food service industry consultancy, predicts that many trends of the past year — like ghost kitchens, meal kits and restaurants selling groceries — will likely persist. "We continue...

(CNN) - The 30 or so golf courses in the Salt Lake County of Utah drink up around nine million gallons of water a day to stay pristine green -- that's more than 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Managing the turf on golf courses also means using carbon-intensive fertilizers, plenty of mowing and, in many cases, clearing forests or trees that were soaking up carbon-dioxide to make way for long tracts of fairway. In other words, golf is a dirty sport that's wrecking the planet. But it doesn't have to be. The impact of golf on the climate and environment has...

Climate change is back in the news probably because a new report declared that this is a make-or-break decade to curb global warming. This is what—the seventh time we were told this was a critical decade for climate change. In 2007, these experts said that the Arctic Ice Cap would be gone by 2013. It ended up growing by over 533,000 square miles. And then, they said in the 1970s that global cooling was an existential issue as we undergo periods of glaciation. They were wrong again. As the environmental Left goes haywire over carbon emissions, everything has been slated...

An Old Golfer was hitting his ball from near a water hazard and his club fell into the water. When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?" The golfer replied that his club had fallen into the water and he needed the club to have a chance to win the tournament and supplement his meager pension. The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden club. "Is this your club?" the Lord asked. The golfer replied, "No." The Lord again went down and came up with a silver club. "Is this your...

A group of first responders in Florida went above the call of duty after responding to a home to help an elderly Army veteran suffering from heat exhaustion. Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue shared on Facebook that Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Station 47 was dispatched to a report of a man passing out at his home. "Upon arrival they found an 80-year-old Army veteran suffering from heat exhaustion while working in his yard," officials said.

A hemp field near Fresno, Calif., is marked with a no trespassing sign that indicates the plant growing here is hemp, not marijuana. Photo courtesy of Fresno County Sheriff's Office =================================================================== EVANSVILLE, Ind., Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Across the country, newly legal hemp plants are being mistaken for their close cousin, marijuana. And they're attracting thieves. "They thought they stumbled upon the field of dreams," said Ashleigh Baldwin, a hemp grower in Coopersburg, Pa., who experienced two people stealing hemp from her fields last summer. "It really does look, smell and feel a lot like marijuana." While a hemp is...

Grasses, shrubs and mosses are growing and expanding around Mount Everest and across the Himalayan region as the area continues to experience the consequences of global warming, researchers have found. Scientists from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom used satellite data to establish increases in subnival vegetation -- plants that grow between the tree line and the snow line -- in the Himalayas. Using NASA Landsat satellite data from 1993 to 2018, remote sensing scientists measured "small but significant" increases in vegetation cover across four height brackets between 4,150 and 6,000 meters (13,615-19,685 feet) above sea level. "There...

The supply of legal cannabis in California promises to start drying up by spring unless a quick fix becomes law. On Tuesday, Feb. 19, the California Legislature published Senate Bill 67, to keep cannabis farms open as they await permanent licensing. Right now, thousands of farms operate under temporary licenses from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). Those 6,924 temp licenses are expiring faster than the CDFA can issue permanent annual licenses. Those temp licenses also can’t be extended unless existing law is tweaked. It’s been 834 days since California voters approved cannabis legalization in November 2016. So...

PGA RULE CHANGES IN EFFECT 1/1/2019 FOR GOLFERS AGE 65+ Rule 9.k.34(a) - If a tree is between the ball and the hole, and the tree is deemed to be younger than the player, then the ball can be moved without penalty. This is so because this is simply a question of timing; when the player was younger, the tree was not there so the player is being penalized because of his age. Rule 1.a.5 - A ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed on the fairway at a point equal to the distance it...

Cannabis is responsible for 91 per cent of cases where teenagers end up being treated for drug addiction, shocking new figures reveal...The findings also back up academic research, revealed in The Mail on Sunday over the past three years, that skunk is having a serious detrimental impact on the mental health of the young. At least two studies have shown repeated use triples the risk of psychosis, with sufferers repeatedly experiencing delusional thoughts. Some victims end up taking their own lives.

Woman who is allergic to grass could get 20 years in prison for not having grass in her yard Janice Duffner lives in St. Peters, Missouri, where she owns a house. Because she is allergic to grass, she does not have any in her yard. She does have other plants, which she is not allergic to. The Kansas City Star published this photograph of her yard: Six years after Ms. Duffner bought her house, the city passed a law that requires all houses to have grass in their yard. After Ms. Duffner told the city that she was allergic to grass,...

Senator Rand Paul's neighbor Rene Boucher has pleaded not guilty after being charged for attacking the Senator at his Kentucky home. Paul is currently recovering after he was allegedly tackled from behind by Boucher for what Boucher's attorney told CBS News in a statement "was a very regrettable dispute between two neighbors over a matter that most people would regard as trivial." But Paul appears to be disputing claims made by his next-door neighbor's lawyer that a "trivial" dispute over landscaping issues were at the root of a recent dust-up that left the senator with six broken ribs. The statement...

Eleven-year-old yard services entrepreneur Frank Giaccio locked down his biggest client ever Friday morning, mowing the White House lawn on the invitation of President Trump. (excerpted)