NORML | St. Petersburg Times
FLORIDA–It is time for the Hernando County School Board to refocus superintendent Wendy Tellone’s curious fixation on testing students for drugs.

In the past two years Tellone and her staff have brought three proposals to the board that would randomly select certain groups of students to submit urine samples, which then are tested for a variety of drugs, including alcohol. After initially opposing the recommendation because it is fundamentally unfair and oppressive, the board eventually authorized the administration to pursue a $418,000 federal grant that would pay for a drug counselor to oversee the program.

At first, Tellone wanted to test all high school and middle school students who participated in any extracurricular activity or drove a motor vehicle on campus. Now she has cast a slightly smaller net in her exploitative fishing expedition: All high school students who are athletes, cheerleaders or drive on campus.

Media Awareness Project
The mayor, vice mayor and a police lieutenant visited a medical marijuana dispensary in Sacramento recently. Afterward, the vice mayor sprang for Junior Mints.

Seriously, afterward, they grappled with the idea of a medical marijuana dispensary in Stockton.

Their struggle with this issue is, to put it kindly, protracted. California voters approved the Compassionate Use Act in 1996.

Media Awareness Project
Judge Rules New Criminalization Definition Illegal

A Juneau judge on Monday struck down part of a new Alaska law criminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, saying it conflicts with past constitutional decisions made by the Alaska Supreme Court.

“No specific argument has been advanced in this case that possession of more than 1 ounce of marijuana, even within the privacy of the home, is constitutionally protected conduct under Ravin or that any plaintiff or ACLU of Alaska member actually possesses more than 1 ounce of marijuana in their homes,” Collins wrote.

Marc Kaufman | Washington Post
The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

Manchester Online | Media Awareness Project
MILLIONS of people could benefit if the world’s first trial to investigate the effects of cannabinoids on progression of multiple sclerosis is a success, it has been claimed.

The UKP 2million three-year trial, led by Professor John Zajicek, is being carried out in Britain with the help of 500 volunteers, nearly 20 of whom have already been recruited.

The aim is to discover whether cannabis derivatives could play a role in slowing the progression of MS, a chronic disease of the nervous system suffered by around 85,000 people in Britain.

Michael Hampton
The federal government wants to perform mental health screening on infants and get them started on drugs which they will take for their entire lives, if the drugs don’t kill them first. And you’re going to pay for it, whether you want to or not.

Already, children as young as 3, who wind up in the foster care system, are receiving psychiatric drugs for such disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression, with over 60% of foster children in Texas, nearly two-thirds in Massachusetts, and 55% of foster children in Florida on as many as 16 different psychiatric drugs.

Media Awareness Project
SANTA CRUZ - A federal judge will decide if medical marijuana patients and a proposed city-owned dispensary should be protected from federal prosecution.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys and other lawyers presented arguments to a San Jose federal court Friday in a case aimed at forcing the U.S. government to recognize California’s 10-year-old medical marijuana law and to allow Santa Cruz to establish an Office of Compassionate Use the nation’s first government-owned medical pot shop.

Vancouver 24hours
Local pot advocates and politicians say the United Nations is blowing smoke after a report stated marijuana could be as dangerous to use as cocaine and heroin.

According to the UN, the potency of marijuana has doubled in places such as B.C. due to indoor grow-ops and global popularity of smoking pot is cause for concern.

NORML
The White House Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP) has wasted billions of taxpayers’ dollars since its formation in 1988 on ineffective and counter-productive policies that fail to meet the agency’s core objectives, according to a report released this week by the non-partisan Washington, DC think-tank Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).

NORML
State-authorized patients and their caregivers who use or possess medical cannabis will continue to be subject to federal arrest and prosecution, after the House of Representatives rejected a proposed amendment today that sought to bar the US Department of Justice (DOJ) from prosecuting patients who use cannabis medicinally in accordance with the laws of their states.

NORML
A chemical compound found in cannabis, also known as hashish or marijuana, may help lower blood pressure, say scientists after testing it on rats.

Yehoshua Maor, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, has created a synthetic version of a minor cannabis constituent named cannabigerol, which has been shown to help in lowering blood pressure, reported science portal The News Medical.

Christopher Largen | Original Article
The truth really is stranger than fiction.  My best friend and co-author, George McMahon, is one of only seven citizens who can legally smoke marijuana in every state of the union.  In fact, the U.S.  government has provided George with 300 prerolled marijuana cigarettes each month for 14 years, through a program called Investigational New Drug, administered by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.