• Use, production of medical cannabis may be legalized in Greece

    Ekathimerini (Greece)
    Sunday, April 23, 2017

    greece cannabis demoThe Health Ministry in Greece is set to propose changes to legislation covering the use and production of medicinal cannabis. Health Minister Andreas Xanthos suggested measures are on the way allowing doctors to prescribe drugs that contain cannabis purely for medical reasons. The government is also set to put forward draft legislation that would allow these types of medicines to be packaged and produced in Greece. The ministry’s decisions are based on a scientific study on the effectiveness of medicinal cannabis for treating certain illnesses.

  • Too much ‘dilly dallying’ around ganja issue, says minister

    No public official should be allowed to stand in the way of the industry’s careful development
    Jamaica Observer (Jamaica)
    Friday, April 21, 2017

    As the debate over the legalisation of ganja for medical use heats up, Minister of Science, Energy and Technology Dr Andrew Wheatley has thrown down the gauntlet to his colleagues to speed up the process. Dr Wheatley told the House of Representatives that there was too much “dilly dallying” around the issue. “We have to take a conscious decision where we want to go, as it relates to medical marijuana,” he said. “It is either that we support it or we are going to just sit by and let it pass by. We have to start leading from the front because we have a crop with significant medicinal nutraceutical value, which is lying idle because we are not serious in relation to the direction in which we would like to go with medical marijuana.” (See also: Stop wasting time with Jamaica’s ganja, Canadian urges)

  • World Cannabis Day: ‘Flying leaves’ defy stigma to soar to new heights

    South China Morning Post (China)
    Friday, April 21, 2017

    Ironically, in Asia where cannabis cultivation first began, cannabis laws remain the strictest. China will probably be the last country to relax such laws because of its painful history with drug use. But even here, the story is not straightforward. China is by far the world’s largest cultivator of industrial cannabis, or hemp, and a leading researcher on the medicinal use of cannabis, accounting for more than half of the patents filed globally last year. In 1985, China became a signatory of the International Drug Control Conventions. Under the heavy influence of the US, cannabis was included as one of the major banned plants. The Chinese government followed suit and started to crack down on marijuana. (See also: How difficult is it to get cannabis in China?)

  • Support for marijuana legalization at all-time high

    Sixty-one percent of Americans think marijuana use should be legal
    CBS News (US)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    Sixty-one percent of Americans think marijuana use should be legal, a five-point increase from last year and the highest percentage ever recorded in this poll. Eighty-eight percent favor medical marijuana use. Seventy-one percent oppose the federal government’s efforts to stop marijuana sales and its use in states that have legalized it, including opposition from most Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Sixty-five percent think marijuana is less dangerous than most other drugs. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asserted a connection between marijuana and violent crime, but few Americans see it that way: just 23 percent think legalizing pot increases violent crime.

  • Six things to know about weed in Germany

    As of the 2017 law, medical marijuana can be prescribed for seriously ill patients
    The Local (Germany)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    There's long been talk of fully legalizing cannabis in Germany, especially in the capital of Berlin. But how close is Deutschland actually to making marijuana mainstream? The debate about legalizing cannabis continues in Germany - the Bundestag (German parliament) in January 2017 passed a law to officially legalize medical marijuana. But that doesn't make things any more lax for recreational smokers. The amount that an individual can possess without generally being prosecuted varies across the 16 states. Here's a look at the basic facts. (See also: Researchers hope to recruit 25,000 Berlin weed-smokers for study)

  • Blunt talk: The racist origins of pot prohibition

    Race and money turned drugs from acceptable intoxicants to a scourge on our society – and that’s still affecting policy today
    Rolling Stone (US)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    Ius prohibition racismn the past year, 55 million Americans have used marijuana. The other 260 million are pretty divided in how they feel about that. It will probably not shock you to hear that a substance’s potential to cause addiction, health problems, and social harm has little to do with whether or not it’s legal. Instead, as law professor and criminologist Toby Seddon recently found in a wide-ranging study and historical review, there are two primary factors that influence what we consider to be drugs: race and money. These factors have long been deeply ingrained in how we view intoxication, from the origins of the War on Drugs in the 1970s to the responses to today’s opioid epidemic.

  • Canada’s plan to be the world leader in legal weed

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rushing to legalize recreational marijuana, which is already big business in Canada
    Bloomberg (US)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    Cannabis is already big business in Canada. The drug was approved for medicinal use 20 years ago, and almost 30 percent of young adults say they use it recreationally. The world’s biggest marijuana companies have grown up in Canada. While the recreational pot business in the eight U.S. states where it’s legal still deals almost entirely in cash, Canada is home to several large pot corporations that trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The biggest, Canopy Growth Corp., with a market value of C$1.67 billion ($1.24 billion), produces more marijuana than any other entity in the world.

  • Risk of psychosis from cannabis use lower than originally thought, say scientists

    Previous research at York showed that regulating cannabis use could result in more effective strategies aimed at helping drug users to access the right support and guidance
    University of York (UK)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    psychosisScientists at the University of York have shown that the risk of developing psychosis, such as hallucinations, from cannabis use is small compared to the number of total users. The research, published in the journal, Addiction, also showed for the first time that there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that for patients who already have schizophrenia, cannabis makes their symptoms worse. In order to prevent just one case of psychosis, more than 20,000 people would have to stop using cannabis, as shown by a previous study led by the University of Bristol.

  • Some of the parts: Is marijuana’s “entourage effect” scientifically valid?

    Industry players swear pot’s many chemicals work in concert, but most scientists hear a THC solo
    Scientific American (US)
    Thursday, April 20, 2017

    cannabinoidsIf you believe budtender wisdom, consuming a strain called Bubba Kush should leave you ravenous and relaxed whereas dank Hippie Chicken should uplift you like a dreamy cup of coffee. But if you take pure, isolated delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—you’ll experience “a high that has no specific character, so that seems boring,” says Mowgli Holmes, a geneticist and founder of a cannabis genetics company Phylos Bioscience. What gives cannabis “character,” in Holmes’s view, are the hundreds of other chemicals it contains. These include THC’s cousin cannabinoids such as cannabidiol, along with other compounds called terpenes and flavonoids.

  • Were peasant farmers poisoned by the U.S. war on drugs?

    A jury has the case
    The Washington Post (US)
    Wednesday, April 19, 2017

    After a 15-year legal battle, a U.S. jury will begin deliberations over whether a U.S. security contractor must pay damages to 2,000 Ecuadoran farmers who say they were poisoned by the U.S. and Colombian governments’ years-long, coca-eradication campaign. During a trial in Washington a lawsuit against McLean, DynCorp probed one of the bitter legacies of America’s war against Latin American cartels and its own insatiable drug appetite. The peasant farmers, represented by International Rights Advocates, say their families, animals and crops were collateral damage in recklessly executed aerial spraying efforts using glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, when aircraft or clouds of fumigant drifted south over the Colombia-Ecuador border.

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