Workers distracted by email and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers, new research has claimed.
The study for computing firm Hewlett Packard warned of a rise in “infomania”, with people becoming addicted to email and text messages.
GW Pharmaceuticals Plc, a U.K. company developing cannabis-based drugs, said it won Canadian approval to market its Sativex spray for pain related to multiple sclerosis. Shares jumped as much as 14 percent.
Health Canada is the first regulatory agency to approve Sativex, Salisbury, England-based GW Pharmaceuticals said in a Regulatory News Service statement. GW and its marketing partner, Bayer AG, expect to introduce the product in Canada in late spring.
April 6, 2005—The active ingredient in marijuana that produces changes in brain messages appears to fight atherosclerosis—a hardening of the arteries.
But puffing pot probably won’t help. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, “should not be taken to mean that smoking marijuana is beneficial for the heart,” says Michael Roth, MD, a professor of medicine at UCLA medical school.
Washington, DC: US marijuana policies, which rely primarily on criminal penalties and law enforcement, are wholly ineffective at controlling the use and sale of marijuana, concludes a comprehensive report issued today by the NORML Foundation. The report, entitled “Crimes of Indiscretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States,” includes a detailed examination of the fiscal costs associated with the enforcement of marijuana laws at the state and county level, as well as a complete demographic analysis of which Americans are most likely to be arrested for violating marijuana laws.
Among the reports’ findings:
A synthetic mimic of the active component in marijuana reduces inflammation and prevents mental decline in an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that similar compounds?and perhaps marijuana itself?might do the same in humans.
The finding focuses on cannabinoids, compounds in marijuana that bind to cannabinoid receptors in the brain.
Regular users of cannabis could be putting themselves at risk of stroke, while they are still young, indicates a case report, published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
[...]
They are at pains to point out that despite the widespread use of cannabis, there have only been 15 other cases of stroke, which have been linked to cannabis consumption.
The active ingredient in marijuana may stall decline from Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests.
Scientists showed a synthetic version of the compound may reduce inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s and thus help to prevent mental decline.
They hope the cannabinoid may be used to developed new drug therapies.
The research, by Madrid’s Complutense University and the Cajal Institute, is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Arrests for possession of cannabis fell by a third in the first year since it was downgraded to a Class C drug, official Home Office figures show.
An estimated 199,000 police hours were saved, according to data from 26 of the 42 English and Welsh police forces.
From BBC News
In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people—all of them black—and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.
From The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON—Liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices expressed doubt Monday that sick patients should be allowed to use doctor-recommended marijuana to relieve pain.
From Red Nova
After watching several friends suffer the side effects of cancer treatment, state Sen. Steve Cohen said he plans to make the legalization of medical marijuana one of his top priorities next year.
From NORML
ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss teenagers smoke more cannabis than their peers in every other European country, a survey has said, casting a pall over the country’s prim and wholesome image.
One in three Swiss 15-year-olds has lit up a joint within the past year, while the number of teenagers regularly smoking or getting drunk rose 10 percent between 1998 and 2002, the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse said in their survey.
From Yahoo News via Rueters
COLUMBIA, Mo. – It ain’t Amsterdam, and it’s still got nothing on Berkeley.
But when voters in Columbia passed two propositions decriminalizing marijuana, they made this mid-Missouri college town about the closest thing the Midwest has to offer.
From NORML