Dr. Timmen Cermak, president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine, wrote this guest opinion column for the San Francisco Chronicle. For more information on the scientific evidence behind cannabis, visit the California Society of Addiction Medicine’s website. ========== Like so many political debates in our society, the argument over Proposition 19, the initiative to legalize marijuana in California, is portrayed as good vs. evil, black vs. white, us vs. them — while nobody is looking objectively at the medical science of marijuana. If research does enter the debate, each side touts the scientific bits [...]
Northern California’s status as the home of high-quality marijuana didn’t need much reinforcement, but the region dominated the competition at the first High Times Medical Cannabis Cup in San Francisco. Mr. Natural Inc. took home top honors Sunday night as best Indica with its Cali Gold, while first place for Sativa went to Green Bicycle collective of Crescent City with its God’s Pussy varietal. (With a name like that, it’s good to know it’s grown organically.) The best concentrate also hailed from NorCal, with Leonard Moore Cooperative of Mendocino getting the trophy for its Ingrid-derived [...]
Being young involves quite a bit of exciting change. There’s the end of high-school, the start of college and some measure of independence, and a whole slew of new experiences. A recent study conducted by Judith Brooks at NYU School of Medicine has revealed that one of those experiences, smoking marijuana (weed) may be associated with more relationship conflict later in life, Adi Jaffe writes in his Psychology Today blog. What’s amazing about this study is that the drug use here occurred earlier in life for most of the 534 participants, while the relationship trouble [...]
Rickey Yuhre didn’t need an $8.7 million California medical marijuana study to tell him that pot eased his suffering. The 53-year-old former diesel truck mechanic and welder has pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic and debilitating disease of the lungs. He has fused vertebrae in his neck due to severe nerve damage, “Weed Wars” blogger/reporter Peter Hecht writes in the Sacramento Bee. Pain meds and relaxants – Oxycontin, Vicodin, Neurontin, Valium – only turned his insides out with nausea. And so he started using a special “vapor box” to medicate with marijuana without smoking. “It brought things [...]
California’s medical marijuana dispensaries generate as much as $1.3 billion in sales and $105 million dollars in state sales taxes, according to new — and dramatically increased — state sales estimates. The new calculations by California’s Board of Equalization reflect both a burgeoning legal medical pot trade and improvements by the state in calculating the scale of the industry. “It’s based on further research in the last year,” said BOE spokesman Anita Gore. “We just have better data.” The BOE earlier this year estimated medical marijuana transactions at only $98 million, the Sacramento Bee reports, [...]
Teenagers short of sleep are more likely to become marijuana users, according to a recent study led by a researcher from UC San Diego. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, mapped the social interactions of 8,349 adolescents in grades 7 through 12. It concluded that drug use among teens increased by 19 percent among those who sleep less than seven hours a night, the Sacramento Bee’s “Weed Wars” blog reports. It also noted that sleep behaviors of teens [...]
Mar 032010
I’m sorta glad that I delayed posting anything sooner about new research showing long-term cannabis use in youth can be linked to psychosis later in life. This well-written article arrives courtesy of L.A. Times Health and Science Editor Tami Dennis; careful reading is recommended. ================ Early, and then continued, use of marijuana does seem to be associated with an increased risk of psychosis and hallucinations, but allow us to quell some incipient panic. Caveats, after all, are our specialty. Previous studies had found a link (not necessarily a cause or effect) between cannabis use and [...]
The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat urges tighter regulation of medipot in this editorial, but its proposed solutions are every bit as vague as the law itself. Strangely absent is any mention of legalization, perhaps the most useful tool available to cure what ails the medipot industry. Guess I’ll have to write my own editorial… ==================== Anecdotal evidence of marijuana’s medicinal value is nothing new. People with debilitating diseases including AIDS, cancer, glaucoma have long said that marijuana relieves pain and eases other symptoms in ways that conventional drugs don’t. Their stories moved voters in 1996 when [...]
Chris Roberts offers this enjoyably pointed blog post in S.F. Weekly, which provides useful context about the landmark medicinal marijuana report released last week. ================= It’s not news that marijuana may have healing qualities: after all, medicinal cannabis has been (sort of) the law of the land since 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215 . Still, it was a very big deal when the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research released the results last Wednesday of its 10-year, $9 million study on pot’s medical efficacy. The good news? The tests were the first clinical trials [...]
Feb 222010
MIAMI — In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana. Long a fixture among young people, use of the country’s most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, according to this Associated Press story picked up by the San Jose Mercury News. The number of people aged 50 [...]
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