Free Republic

A psychiatrist who has analyzed National Health Service data in the United Kingdom is warning that older users of marijuana are triggering a huge surge in demand for mental health services.The Christian Institute explained Dr. Tony Rao confirmed an "astonishing" 777% increase in people over the age of 55 accessing those mental health services "due to addition to the Class B drug…"Rao cited statistics from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities which confirmed the number of over-55s at treatment for cannabis addiction was 374 in 2005-06. The most recent statistics, from 2020-21, revealed 3,279 cases.He explained, "It is still...

Congressional Democrats are gearing up for a sweeping set of initiatives aimed at decriminalizing marijuana that they plan to take action on this spring. The federal proposals seek to establish 21st century banking services for the nearly $18 billion industry and purge the criminal records of thousands of marijuana offenders. “The growing bipartisan momentum for cannabis reform shows that Congress is primed for progress in 2022, and we are closer than ever to bringing our cannabis policies and laws in line with the American people,” Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) wrote in a memo to the Congressional...

When California made pot legal, the theory was that pot had become such a normalized part of California culture that it should be treated like alcohol: Adults should be able to buy and use it legally subject to restrictions. However, California also decided to turn pot into a profit center...for California. Therefore, it imposes a cultivation tax on growers as well as a 15% excise tax rate on consumers for any legal pot purchases. California also controls the allowed mark-up rate, which stands at 80%. With the state having imposed these stringent price controls on legal marijuana, is it any...

The industry leaders asked for an immediate lifting of the cultivation tax placed on growers, a three-year holiday from the excise tax and an expansion of retail shops throughout much of the state. It’s estimated that about two-thirds of California cities remain without dispensaries, since it’s up to local governments to authorize sales and production. Companies, executives and groups signing the letter included the California Cannabis Industry Association, the California arm of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Los Angeles-based United Cannabis Business Association, Flow Kana Inc., Harborside Inc., and CannaCraft. In a conference call with...

Among the more than a dozen smash-and-grab robberies in the Bay Area in recent weeks, cannabis facilities may have been the hardest hit. In San Francisco, at least four cannabis businesses have been robbed in the last two weeks, according to news reports. At least 20 have been hit in Oakland, where most of the Bay Area’s cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution facilities are located. “It’s proving to be unbearable for cannabis operators,” said Amber Senter at an Oakland press conference held by cannabis business owners on Monday. Senter owns multiple cannabis business licenses in San Francisco and Oakland, and...

Legalizing recreational marijuana was always bound to cause unintended consequences, including more traffic accidents, addiction, and worse mental health issues. But Jackson County, Oregon, has added another downside to the list: severe water shortages. It turns out that when Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, southern Oregon saw a surge of illegal marijuana farms posing as legal hemp farms. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission recently reported that nearly 50% of registered hemp farms inspected by the state grow marijuana with THC content above the legal limits. With marijuana “legal” in Oregon now, these illegal farms operate with near...

@RepMattGaetz Today I voted YES on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule 1 drugs, decriminalizing the substance at the federal level and enabling states to set their own policy. (1/2) Though not perfect (bad tax and spending provisions) the MORE Act is a step in the right direction as science has already proven the substance has healing properties in many chronic ailments. (2/2)

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich (FOX 2) - Sterling Heights police are investigating after a garbage truck crashed into a marijuana grow operation Wednesday morning. The truck was traveling south on Mound Road approaching 15 Mile Road around 5:30 a.m. when a vehicle turned south onto Mound from a turnaround just north of 15 Mile while the light was red, cutting off the truck. The garbage truck driver swerved but still hit the turning vehicle, police said. The garbage truck drove through the northbound lanes of Mound. No other vehicles were hit, but the truck struck a building at 35100 Mound. The...

Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell of Base Gagetown faces maximum of 5 years in prison New Brunswick soldier accused of giving cannabis-laced cupcakes to troops on a live-fire training exercise has been found guilty of nine charges. Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell was convicted Wednesday of eight counts of administering a noxious substance to soldiers without their consent and one count of behaving in a disgraceful manner, a charge under the National Defence Act, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to the prosecution. A 10th charge of committing an act to the prejudice of good order and discipline, which...

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...

Rapper Trap Beckham and manager TJ Chapman discreetly snapped pics of Obama’s high-end food, drink, and swag offerings and talked to their followers as the party unfolded, according to screenshots of the posts, which were later deleted under the event’s photography ban. The DJ posted stealth pics of Obama’s ‘epic’ birthday party — before being forced to delete them. He gave us the best inside look from the party full of “royalties” who imposed rules on the common folks’ but decided not to follow them. The recording artist and his handler posted themselves smoking cannabis. The New York Post reported...

A new study from Denmark reveals that the connection between people who experience schizophrenia and who smoke a problematic amount of weed is on the rise, CNN reports. The study, which was published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, shows that the link between the mental health disorder and cannabis use disorder in Denmark was two percent in 1995, four percent in 200, and eight percent in 2010. Cannabis use disorder is the clinical name for cannabis addiction. “I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is...

With the federal Resilient Federal Forests Act introduced this week with the support of more than 70 bipartisan Members of Congress and over 85 organizations, California Congressman Doug LaMalfa stressed that California is a poster-child for what not to do – little to no forest management, and illegal marijuana grows in those forests and rural areas. “Communities across the West are being devastated by wildfires and there will be long-term negative impacts to our forests, our water quality, and wildlife habitat,” LaMalfa said. He noted that it is Republicans in Congress proposing solutions to help prevent the catastrophic wildfires California...

<p>In 1995, 2% of schizophrenia diagnoses in the country were associated with cannabis use disorder. In 2000, it increased to around 4%. Since 2010, that figure increased to 8%, the study found.</p><p>"I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is not harmless," said Carsten Hjorthøj, an associate professor at the Copenhagen Research Center for Mental Health and an author of the study published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, via email.</p>

In May, a Northern California sheriff’s office asked on Facebook for volunteers to help bulldoze the marijuana greenhouses that have recently popped up by the hundreds on private property in one small area of the remote county. Less than a week later, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office got an unlikely volunteer: The local congressman

Analysts said 6,453 police-reported incidents of drug-impaired driving in 2019, the first full year of legalization, “a 43% increase over 2018.” Unlike drinking and driving charges that peak in twilight hours, “the rate of drug-impaired driving varies little from one time of day to another,” said the report. “Police reported just as many of these incidents between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., as between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m,.” wrote analysts. Cases also took twice as long to wind through the courts as alcohol-related charges.

The condition — officially called "cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome" but now known to health care workers as "scromiting," a mashup of "screaming" and "vomiting" — has popped up with increasing frequency at hospitals in Colorado, doctors say. “The only thing that convinced me was that it stopped when I stopped smoking,” said Gribbon, now 20. “We use up a lot of medical resources to see if there is anything more seriously wrong with them,” Scromiting cases have increased as pot has become far more powerful, according to doctors. Experts say the marijuana consumed 20 years ago had levels of THC, the...

Nearly five years after Californians voted to create a legal marijuana industry through Proposition 64, the illegal weed market is as big as or even bigger than it was before the ballot measure passed.The end of prohibition at the state level was supposed to be the beginning of a highly regulated marijuana market served by legitimate, taxpaying companies (even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law). Legalization was billed as a way to tame the Wild West-style marijuana industry, which often flouted environmental and health strictures and was a bastion for organized crime.It hasn’t worked out that way for a...

Before his corpse was dumped in a shallow grave 50 miles north of Los Angeles, Mauricio Ismael Gonzalez-Ramirez was held prisoner at one of the hundreds of black-market pot farms that have exploded across California’s high desert in the last several years, authorities say. He worked in what has become California’s newest illegal marijuana haven: the Mojave Desert. A world away from the lush forest groves of the “Emerald Triangle” of Northern California, this hot, dry, unforgiving climate has attracted more than a thousand marijuana plantations that fill the arid expanse between the Antelope Valley and the Colorado River. It’s...

“Cannabis is part of our Long Beach culture and to safely share a joint without contributing to the spread of COVID-19, we must all do our part to get vaccinated,” said James Suazo, Executive Director with Long Beach Forward. “With the delta variant becoming the dominant COVID-19 strain in Los Angeles County, we want our unvaccinated neighbors to catch a free marijuana strain instead so we can protect each other.”