Articles

There was more alarming news. Use of illegal drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, and opioids by pregnant women increased significantly between 2015 and 2017. About 7 percent of pregnant women reported using marijuana. Three... Read More

New research suggests that marijuana users may be more likely than nonusers to misuse prescription opioids and develop prescription opioid use disorder. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Columbia University.

Executive Summary

CBD oil may potentially interact in a negative way with anti-epilepsy drugs. As of now, only in vitro (test tube) observations exist with no living organism testing proving safety. Drugs that may interact include: 

• carbamazepine (Tegretol)
• phenytoin (Dilantin)
• phenobarbital (Luminal, Solfoton, Tedral)
• primidone (anti-seizure)

A Canadian love-fest for Florida pot companies continues to blossom with a $93 million deal that includes a Ruskin-based grower yet to begin selling marijuana products.
 
In your recent article, Canadian firm strikes a deal to enter Florida marijuana market with Ruskin grower, you have a picture of medical marijuana in a pill bottle and with a prescription pad.  MEDICAL MARIJUANA in this form IS NOT A PRESCRIPTION AND IS NOT FDA APPROVED.. NOR DO ANY MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONS SUPPORT... Read More

First and foremost, marijuana is already associated with more abuse and dependency (now called substance abuse disorder) than all other illegal drugs combined. Roughly four out of seven problem usersof illegal drugs are using marijuana. This is a dangerous blind spot exploited by many legalization advocates (although ... Read More

Click on link for updated list of drug paraphernalia

The treatment, which GW Pharma hopes to market under the name Epidiolex, is produced in the U.K. from a plant that has been bred to have a high cannabidiol, or CBD, content, Chief Executive Officer Justin Gover said in an interview earlier this month. The chemical is purified and made into a strawberry-flavored oral solution, he... Read More

This report finds that legalization in Illinois, however, would cost at least $670 million, outweighing the projected tax revenue.

The Netherland’s attempt to divide markets into soft vs. hard drugs by allowing coffee shops to sell cannabis did not result in lower consumption of hard drugs. Overall it has been a social disaster.
The cannabis grown and sold today is not same drug as was available in the 1970s. The average THC has increased to more than 15%. Cannabis issue can clearly lead to addiction. The damage to the brain from chronic use is worse compared with chronic use of heroin. Among the negative effects... Read More

Note:  If you look at the blue bar you will see that opioid deaths have more than quadrupled since medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado (in 2000). And deaths rose from 377 in 2012 (year mj legalized) to 504 in 2016. No... Read More

Florida has lowered the original cost of the fee for doctors to be licensed to prescribe medical marijuana to $250 from $1,000 and reduced the training time to two hours from eight. It has increased the number of physicians able to recommend medical marijuana by 48 percent since the beginning of the year.
“We are looking at Florida as the biggest medical marijuana market in the United States,” he said. “As more dispensaries open and more doctors get qualified, you reach a critical mass... Read More

They also discovered that prenatal marijuana use was associated with a 50 percent increased chance of low birth weight regardless of tobacco use during... Read More

"Trust me, if the data was coming back and we saw spikes in violent crime, we saw spikes in overall crime, there would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in," he said. "It doesn't seem likely to me, but I'm not ruling it out."

Many novel psychoactive substances (NPS) have entered the recreational drug scene in recent years, yet the problems they cause are similar to those found with established drugs. This article will debate the psychobiological effects of these newer and more traditional substances. It will show how they disrupt the same core psychobiological functions, so damaging well-being in similar ways.

Conclusion: This study provides evidence that cannabis use, especially when initiated at a young age, may be associated with worse verbal memory and altered neural development along the UF. Reductions in cortical thickness in regions implicated in... Read More

Marijuana is the pathway to heroin.... He went on to say, “There is no FDA approved use of marijuana, a botanical plant. I just want to be very clear about that.”

Azar was responding to a question from the Yellow Springs News about what role he sees medical marijuana playing as an alternative to opioids for pain relief.

Of course, the Compassionate Care bill is neither compassionate nor caring for the vast majority of South Carolina citizens, but is a poorly veiled attempt to legalize recreational marijuana.
The collateral damage of legalizing marijuana is far-reaching, as exhibited by the states that have passed such law: decreased productivity among workers, huge spikes in traffic deaths, increase in homeless populations, criminal activity, rise in drug cartels, loan sharking, social service burdens... Read More

Does this sound like medicine?
Still, the Florida trend is an indication that home delivery options are likely to prove a lucrative field in the future for cannabis retailers – as long as their local jurisdictions allow for it.

The five most frequently occurring drugs found in decedents were ethyl alcohol (5,318), benzodiazepines (5,167, including 1,851 alprazolam occurrences), cocaine (2,882), cannabinoids (2,292), and morphine (2,040).

“Pharmacies attract people who live in the neighborhood or maybe work nearby. If you need a prescription, you’re not going to go across town to fill it – you’re going to go to the pharmacy closest to where you live. That’s what we should be seeing with medical marijuana dispensaries.”
Instead, these dispensaries are acting more like bars, which develop niche markets like sports bars or biker bars, she said.
“From a public health standpoint, it is concerning.... Read More

1. 

2. Marijuana classification... CESAR

Cryptococcal meningitis in a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency.
Cryptococcal meningitis is a life-threatening condition most commonly observed in immunocompromised individuals. We describe a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency presenting with confirmed Cryptococcus neoformans meningitis. An investigation of cannabis samples from the patient's preferred dispensary demonstrated contamination with several varieties... Read More

Young people with cannabis dependence have altered brain function that may be the source of emotional disturbances and increased psychosis risk that are associated with cannabis abuse, according to a new study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 
"Interestingly, the hyperconnectivity was strongest in the individuals who began using cannabis in early adolescence," said Dr. Manza, which lines up with reports of a higher risk of psychiatric... Read More

Hickenlooper, Gardner, and other politicians tell us everything is rosy, but that's not what we hear from educators, cops, social workers, doctors, drug counselors, parents, and others in the trenches of the world's first anything goes marijuana free-for-all. It is not what we see in the streets.
Condit said the black market invading Colorado's national forests has grown so large the entire budget for the Pike and San Isabel forests would not cover the costs of removing and remediating... Read More

“Every statistical study has seen an increase in marijuana use,” he said. “There has been an increase in youths going to rehab for addiction to marijuana. There have been increases in car accidents. There has been an increase in fatalities related to marijuana. There has been an increase in workplace incidences related to marijuana and a decrease in productivity. And there has been an increase in robberies.”
“There has been nothing good for Colorado, except for maybe the increased tax... Read More

A team of law enforcement agents from the U.S. Forest Service, local police and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hike deep into the Plumas National Forest to help with cleanup and protect scientists who are studying illegal marijuana grow sites. Even after a site has been raided, growers can return. The nets are for helicopters that will lift tons of garbage out of the site. On this reclamation trip, teams ultimately cleaned up about 7 tons of garbage, 4,000 pounds of fertilize, and 4... Read More

Please note that the 2015 crash report included "alcohol-suspected" crash data. In the 2016 crash report, only alcohol confirmed data is used. Hillsborough is #2 in alcohol confirmed fatalities and Orange County is #1. Hillsborough is #1 in alcohol confirmed crashes AND drug confirmed crashes. :-(
Florida
Fatal crashes up 8.74% from 2015
Alcohol confirmed fatalities down 9.25%
Hillsborough
Alcohol confirmed crashes 546
... Read More

bstract

Although recent Cannabis use is widely reported to be associated with drug-related traffic accidents, the evidence that Cannabis users show an increased risk of being involved in road crashes is still not unequivocally proved. The purpose of the present work is to provide an objective assessment of this hypothesis, by comparing the frequency of occurrence of positive urine analyses in drivers involved in traffic accidents (n = 1406) with that observed in a control population... Read More

Marijuana has both short- and long-term effects on the body.
Within a few minutes of smoking marijuana, a person feels the effects of pot, as THC is rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream, making its way to the brain and other organs.
What causes the “high” people experience is marijuana’s effect on over-activating parts of the brain containing specific brain cell receptors. This leads to feelings of an altered sense of time, other altered senses, changes in mood,... Read More

RESULTS:
Alcohol/cigarettes followed by marijuana was the most common sequence. NMPO or cocaine use after marijuana, and heroin use after NMPO or cocaine, differed by generation. Among successively younger generations, NMPO after marijuana and heroin after NMPO increased. Millennials were more likely to initiate NMPO than cocaine after marijuana; Generation X and Baby Boomers were less likely (odds ratios = 1.4;0.3;0.2). Millennials were more likely than Generation X and Baby Boomers... Read More

“Legalization will NOT stop the crimes committed by users who have no jobs to support their habits and prey upon you and I to get that money for their hit/fix.”
And while marijuana may very well have medicinal purposes, it’s not just the drug that makes our controlled substances dangerous and a significant crime and socio-economic issue in our country. The people involved in the illegal operations where drugs (including marijuana) are grown/produced, trafficked and transported,... Read More

At low doses, kratom produces stimulant effects, making people more talkative, alert and energetic, according to a DEA fact sheet. At high doses, kratom users can experience the drug’s sedative effects, the report shows.

Major self-mutilation (amputation, castration, self-inflicted eye injuries) is frequently associated with psychiatric disorders and/or substance abuse. A 35-year-old man presented with behavioral disturbances of sudden onset after oral cannabis consumption and major self-mutilation (attempted amputation of the right arm, self-enucleation of both eyes and impalement) which resulted in death. D

CONCLUSION:
Cannabis abuse can increase injury severity and prolong workdays lost. Drug testing is recommended for at-risk construction workers with inadequate safety measures.

According to research published earlier this month in the American Journal of Public Health, Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014 coincided with a 6.5 percent reduction in opioid overdose deaths. The researchers studied the opioid overdose rate in the state from 2000 to 2015, and found that after 14 years of a steady rise in opioid overdose deaths, the rate decreased by an average of 0.7 deaths per month.
 
My response:
The  study failed to account for... Read More

... Read More

The overlapping endocannabinoid and endogenous opioid systems may explain this patient's response to therapy, and this synergistic relationship is discussed.
The endocannabinoid and endogenous opioid systems are syngergistic, which may explain the effect of naloxone in cannabis toxicity. Cannabinoid and opioid receptors belong to the rhodopsin subfamily of G-protein-coupled receptors which, when activated, reduce cellular levels of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) by inhibiting... Read More

Even after less than six years of smoking the drug, the ill effects were already being seen on their breathing, according the research presented at the British Thoracic Society (BTS) winter meeting.
 
"It is vital that young people understand the dangers of both cigarette and cannabis smoking since these habits can start having a serious impact on their lungs at an early stage."
 
 

City leaders felt treating dispensaries as they do pharmacies would allow them across large swaths of the city, so they voted to outright ban them until planners could devise an alternative.  City leaders got their first glimpse at that alternative Monday night and unanimously endorsed a plan to craft rules that they call a kind of “middle ground” between the ban and current pharmacy rules.

Drug Free America and National Drug-Free Workplace Alliance 

A native of New Mexico, Markowski, 23, started doing drugs while living and working in Germany. First, smoking marijuana, then snorting methamphetamine.

The Post reported a 40 percent increase in the number of all drivers, impaired or otherwise, involved in fatal crashes in Colorado between 2013 and 2016. That’s why the Colorado State Patrol posts fatality numbers on electronic signs over the highways.
“Increasingly potent levels of marijuana were found in positive-testing drivers who died in crashes in Front Range counties, according to coroner data since 2013 compiled by The Denver Post. Nearly a dozen in 2016 had levels five times... Read More

Kissimmee commissioners voted 4 to 1 to ban the dispensaries from opening in town. They don’t believe there is room to regulate effectively the way the law is currently written.