I think that the groundbreaking approach by an anti-legalization
group calling for a regulatory way to study medical marijuana under
academic supervision is the right way to evaluate the potential use of
this highly debated drug.
The group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, appears to be the first of
its kind to make moves that would hopefully allow for more efficient
research of medical marijuana and its component cannabidiol (CBD).
Smart Approaches to Marijuana is calling on the government to give
more entities than just the University of Mississippi the permission to
grow marijuana for federal research purposes. It also is asking the
Department of Health and Human Services to eliminate a review process
for marijuana research that critics say is needless, and it is calling
on the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to also get rid of certain
regulatory requirements for CBD research.
Proponents of medical
marijuana say purified CBD does not contain marijuana’s psychotropic
chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but the DEA classifies marijuana
as a Schedule 1 drug, which falls under the same bucket as heroin,
ecstasy and LSD— meaning that researching the drug requires federal
approval across multiple fronts.
While the group is calling for fewer barriers to marijuana research—
which critics argue is stalling the efficiency of studies that could
point to medical benefits from marijuana— we still need to proceed with
caution.
Yes, we have an incredible number of studies showing that for certain
medical conditions like epilepsy, pain control, and antiemetic effect,
medical marijuana seems to be doing a good job in treatment.
However,
those studies are anecdotal an thus not objective. We still are limited
by the knowledge of how the chemical is working and how it affects the
physiology of the brain, and more importantly how it can be used in
pediatric patients. Equally crucial, we need to figure out the best
extraction and dosing methods needed to effectively treat these
conditions.
Right now, the legalization of marijuana is being driven by
consumers. And in those 23 states, plus the District of Columbia, where
medical marijuana has been approved— and in those four states where
recreational marijuana is legal— it is the for-profit market that’s
leading the charge in its potential use for medical therapies.
In order for us to be ahead of the game, Washington has to create
appropriate, easy pathways for genuine scientists to be able to grow,
process and study marijuana under institutional board review protocols
so that ultimately we will be able to successfully evaluate the benefits
and safety of medical marijuana.
If the federal government does not do this, then we will continue to
have a partially regulated industry that right now seems to be a little
bit out of control.
By Roque Planas
Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic
that's making headlines around the world. Today, we speak with
investigative journalist Anabel Hernández.
As one of Mexico’s
leading investigative journalists, Anabel Hernández has dedicated the
past decade to investigating her country’s drug war -- one of the most
dangerous projects a reporter could ask for. Her 2010 book Los señores del narco, translated into English as Narcoland,
detailed the extensive government corruption that allowed Joaquín “El
Chapo” Guzmán and his Sinaloa cartel to become one of the most powerful
criminal enterprises in the world.
Working in partnership with journalist Steve Fisher at The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism , Hernández has also been at the forefront of one of the leading investigative reports into the case of the missing 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college who were attacked by Mexican police in September.
Hernández
spoke with The WorldPost about the misconceptions surrounding Mexico’s
drug war, the role the U.S. plays in Mexico's violence and why we
shouldn’t assume that drug cartels are behind the disappearance of the
missing 43 students.
Mexican
journalist Anabel Hernández is seen during a press conference in Mexico
City, Nov. 30, 2010. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)
I’ve been reading your book Narcoland,
and your vision of Mexico’s drug war caught my attention -- it’s very
different from what we’re accustomed to reading in the U.S. press. What
are the biggest misconceptions that you see in the media about the drug
war?
When I started to work on that book about Chapo
Guzmán back in 2005, I had the same misconceptions that most of the
media and journalists had in Mexico, the U.S. and the rest of the world.
I had swallowed the story that Chapo Guzmán was just a brilliant
criminal -- a man so intelligent that he was capable of subjecting the
governments of Mexico and the United States to his will. The Mexican
government constantly said they couldn’t catch him because he lived in a
cave in a mountain in the Sierra Sinaloa surrounded by people who
protected him.
And those of us in the media had only concentrated
on the legend of Chapo Guzmán, based on his violence, on the tons of
drugs he trafficked, without asking ourselves, “How does he do it? How
can this man be so powerful?" And the only way of explaining how the
Sinaloa cartel and Chapo Guzmán became so powerful is with the
complicity of the government.
It was that way, reporting on the
story of Chapo Guzmán and the power he was accumulating during the
Felipe Calderón administration, that I found that this so-called drug
war was completely false.
When I started investigating, I began
receiving information in documents and testimony in the U.S. courts and
interviews I did with drug traffickers that the Sinaloa cartel enjoyed
government protection since the Vicente Fox administration, and that
protection continued through the government of Felipe Calderón.
[editor's note: Former Mexican President Vicente Fox was in office from
2000 to 2006. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón served from 2006
to 2012.]
I starting doing public information requests in Mexico
to see if these things being said in [the U.S.] courts were true. What I
found was that during Felipe Calderón’s so-called drug war, the cartel
that was attacked the least, that had the fewest arrests, was the
Sinaloa cartel. And in government statistics, throughout the Felipe
Calderón administration’s six years, there were increases in marijuana
production, increases in opium production, increases in amphetamine
production, increases in drug consumption in Mexico. What kind of drug
war is this where a cartel gets stronger, becomes the most powerful
cartel in the world, and on the other hand, drug production reaches
historic levels in Mexico?
How has all this changed
during the transition from the Felipe Calderón government to that of
[current Mexican President] Enrique Peña Nieto?
When
Enrique Peña Nieto took office, he really took over a country that had
been destroyed. Instead of recognizing that and developing a serious
plan to confront it, Peña Nieto tried to sell the image to outsiders
that "no, Mexico is doing really well -- we’re passing political
reforms, social reforms, economic reforms, and everything is going very
smoothly." The international press believed it.
A February 2014 Time Magazine cover story sympathetic to President Enrique Peña Nieto was widely criticized in Mexico.
He
tried to silence the violence. If you follow official figures for
disappearances, for kidnappings, for homicide, you know that deaths
remain at very, very high levels in Mexico. They haven’t really dropped.
The only thing that has changed is that the press doesn’t talk so much
about the numbers. But the cartel violence is still there.
The
U.S. offers the Mexican government quite a bit of money to fight the
cartels. What’s the United States' role in all of this? What’s the
effect of the support the U.S. government offers to Mexico?
For
me, one of the truly pressing questions is: What does the government of
the United States want? What is really its objective? To end drug
production in Mexico? To destroy the drug cartels? Or to control them
and administer the business? I’ve found, for example, that in the case
of the Sinaloa cartel, there have been agreements between the DEA [U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency] and the Sinaloa cartel where they gave the cartel immunity -- You guys traffic what you want, and in exchange, give me the names of the leaders of your enemy cartels.
And that was how the DEA and the Mexican government went about
capturing many of Chapo Guzmán’s enemies during the Felipe Calderón
administration.
That’s one issue. On the other hand, I don’t
understand what the objective is behind the Merida Initiative [a U.S.
drug war military assistance plan launched in 2007]. The U.S. government
gave about $1 billion to the Felipe Calderón government and continues
to give money to the Enrique Peña Nieto government, along with arms and
technology to equip and train the Mexican navy, the army, the federal
police, as well as municipal and state police. But the army, the navy,
the federal police and the local and state police have been infiltrated
by the cartels. What the U.S. government did indirectly was to make the
cartels more powerful.
The media often relates the story
of the 43 disappeared students to the drug war, because the students
were supposedly handed over to a criminal group that killed them. You’ve
done one of the most detailed investigations on this subject, so what
do you think? Is this a drug war story, or some other kind of story?
What
happened the night of Sept. 26, 2014, in Iguala is a very complicated
subject. I think that it’s principally a political story, rather than a
story directly involved with drugs. Based on the information we’ve
obtained, on documents, and according to the most recent reports from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which have come to conclusions very close to ours -- many of these supposedly confessed killers were tortured. And now they’re refuting their confessions. They’re saying, We were forced to say this, but we didn’t have anything to do with it.
In other words, the idea that the students were handed over to a
criminal group, to a drug gang, for me is still very uncertain. I
wouldn’t claim it as a fact.
There’s no clarity about whether it
actually happened that way. The people [the Mexican authorities]
detained were small-time crooks from Iguala. They weren’t big-time
criminals or major drug traffickers. They were some poor devils who were
standing on the corner that the federal police or the military came
around to arrest. They were tortured to confess a bunch of things that
there’s no concrete proof they actually did.
But the story is
indirectly related to the drug war in this way: The documentation,
testimony and videos that we have show that the military, the federal
police and the state police, and to a lesser extent the municipal police
in Iguala, participated in the attack on the students. They were there.
The federal police have been trained and armed by the government of the
United States within the framework of the war on drugs. The U.S.
government offered arms, money and training to these corrupt entities
because of the drug war. And today, these corrupt entities use those
arms and that training to attack Mexican citizens.
Danielle Allen
The new visibility of police violence toward African-Americans in
the United States has stoked public debate about policing: What about
body cameras? Should we reform police training? Perhaps we should go
slow on all that military gear?
I find it almost impossible to sit through any of this while the
underlying issue goes unaddressed: It’s the drug economy, stupid.
It’s well past time to legalize marijuana.
But it’s also time to consider decriminalizing nonviolent crimes
involving other drugs, or at least to reclassify lower-level, nonviolent
offenses as misdemeanors. We should also expunge felony convictions for
many classes of nonviolent drug offenses — those involving marijuana
but for other drugs, too — to re-enfranchise, economically and
politically, those who have staffed the drug trade.
Before I make my case, let me pause to say that I write this as the
last living American, or so it sometimes feels, never to have smoked pot
or used any other banned substance. My motivation, in other words, is
not my own recreational freedom but justice.
What’s the picture of use these days? According to the 2014 National Drug Control Strategy Data Supplement,
as of 2009, more than 41 percent of people in the U.S. aged 12 to 64
had used marijuana sometime in their lifetime. In Canada, that figure
was 51 percent. This contrasts with Mexico, where the figure is 4 percent, and Colombia
(8 percent). Whereas in 2000, the United States consumed an estimated
3,000 metric tons of pot, in 2010 we inhaled or otherwise ingested 5,700
metric tons. And from 2011 to 2014, according to the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, half of high school students reported using illicit
drugs by 12th grade. This number is headed up.
Participation is pretty equal opportunity. According to the 2013 National Survey
on Drug Use and Health, in that year the rate of substance dependence
or abuse was 8.4 percent for whites and 7.4 percent for blacks. Yet, as
is widely recognized, African-Americans are incarcerated for both the
use and sale of drugs at far higher rates than whites. In 2011,
African-Americans were arrested for possession at three times the rate
as whites nationally and, for drug sales and manufacturing, at nearly
four times the rate of whites. In Chicago, the black-white arrest ratio
for marijuana is 15 to 1.
A memorial in Humboldt Park on
Chicago’s West Side for a September 2013 killing. The victim was among
more than 20 people shot in less than an eight-hour span in the U.S.
city.
Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP
According to researchers, marijuana constitutes about 80 percent of
illicit drug usage, and an estimated 40 to 67 percent of that pot came from Mexico
in 2008; most cocaine and heroin also passes through Mexico. Wholesale
distributors in the United States include Mexican criminal
organizations, Latino and African-American street gangs and domestic
producers of marijuana, a rapidly growing part of the drug economy that
includes plenty of non-ethnically-identified whites. Of course, other
groups also operate at the wholesale level — Russians, Israelis,
Italians, Chinese, Colombians and Jamaicans, to name a few. Producers,
wholesalers and retailers are tied together by brokers, smugglers and
couriers. It’s a commercial zone that looks pretty multicultural based
on the limited information available.
At the retail level, however, most drug users buy from people who
look like them. But this lets some white users turn a blind eye to the
supply chain. A major portion of the pot inhaled by a white smoker has
also passed through the hands of black or brown laborers in the drug
economy.
In 1984, the Drug Enforcement Administration initiated Operation Pipeline
to interdict drug trafficking on the nation’s highways through the use
of traffic stops; this operation launched and provided national training
for police in what we have come to know as racial profiling.
Thanks to
the racially disparate enforcement that was then set in motion, much
drug economy labor is, for all intents and purposes, not free. This is
especially true for the couriers, brokers and lower-tier wholesalers.
Young people are recruited to handle low-level tasks, setting them up to
be booked on a felony as an adult not long after they turn 18. Once
that happens, they find themselves broadly unemployable — with one major
exception: by the drug industry. How voluntary can we consider repeat
participation in the supply chain, then, when a criminal record
precludes other opportunities?
The libertarian vibe in the world of pot smokers and other drug users
makes these issues all the more stark. Freedom for those who want a hit
has been wrung from the exploitation of others. We have numbers for the
price of that freedom: 1.5 million African-American men missing from
U.S. cities. And this doesn’t count the men who are still in those
cities but are trapped by the felonies on their records.
In the mid-1970s, the DEA conducted an anti-heroin campaign in Mexico called Operation Trizo. The DEA website reports, with no apparent sense of irony, that the
campaign was called off at the request of the Mexican government because
“The large numbers of arrests that resulted from Operation Trizo caused
an economic crisis.”
Through decades of the war on drugs, we have indeed bought ourselves
our own economic crisis with the drug economy’s impacts on poverty and
education. But we’ve also delivered a human catastrophe, on par with the
worst of our bad American habits. One of the hardest challenges of
school reform in the context of low-income communities of color is to
protect students from exposure to violence, even on their daily walks to
school.
The precise pathway to a legalized, decriminalized and
nonviolent drug economy and to the reintegration of those formerly
barred from participation will take much collective discussion to
discern. But the general direction to pursue is clear.
Emancipation of our brothers and sisters requires both economic and
political re-enfranchisement. These forms of re-enfranchisement require
not only legalizing marijuana but also decriminalizing as many
nonviolent drug offenses as possible and expunging those convictions.
Call it Operation Equal Justice.
If
you live in the District or one of the 23 states that have legalized
marijuana and you work for the federal government, think twice before
lighting a joint.
Pot is still illegal for you.
New
guidance Wednesday from the Office of Personnel Management is
unambiguous and stern. Federal workforce rules remain unchanged for the
roughly 4.1 million federal employees and military personnel across the
United States. The U.S. government still considers marijuana an illegal
drug, and possessing or using it is a crime.
“Heads
of agencies are expected to advise their workforce that legislative
changes by some states and the District of Columbia do not alter federal
law, existing suitability criteria or Executive Branch policies
regarding marijuana,” OPM Director Katherine Archuleta wrote in a memo
posted on the agency’s Web site.
The District and 23 states have
authorized adult use of medical marijuana. Of those, four states and
D.C. also allow recreational use. Marijuana became legal in the District
in February, allowing anyone 21 and older to possess up to two ounces
of pot, although the drug is still prohibited on federally administered
properties.
Archuleta said these changes, a mix of
ballot measures and laws passed by legislatures, have “raised questions”
about whether federal employees in these areas are safe to smoke.
The
law makes “knowing or intentional” marijuana possession illegal for
federal employees, even if they do not intend to manufacture, distribute
or dispense it. Marijuana use also can be a basis for firing in some
situations, Archuleta wrote.
A 1986 executive order from
President Ronald Reagan requiring the federal workplace and workforce to
be drug-free remains in place and applies to medicinal as well as
recreational use of marijuana. It includes especially strict rules for
personnel who either hold security clearances or apply for them.
Reagan’s
directive says: “The use of illegal drugs, on or off duty, by Federal
employees in certain positions evidences less than the complete
reliability, stability, and good judgment that is consistent with access
to sensitive information and creates the possibility of coercion,
influence, and irresponsible action under pressure that may pose a
serious risk to national security, the public safety, and the effective
enforcement of the law.”
Most
random and routine drug testing within the federal workforce occurs
with jobs related to national security and law enforcement, while other
employees are generally tested only when supervisors have reasonable
suspicion that they are using drugs at work.
Practically, the
government might have a hard time enforcing its rules for other
employees, since many agencies do not give them regular drug tests.
Even
outside the federal workforce, the U.S. government has refused to relax
its marijuana regulations. For instance, medical pot has been legal in
the District and several states for years, but the Department of
Veterans Affairs will not prescribe the drug or complete paperwork for
patients to enroll in state marijuana programs, despite heavy lobbying
from veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress and physical pain.
Archuleta’s
memo does note that the federal government offers prevention, treatment
and rehabilitation programs for civilian employees with drug problems.
We, Rx Harvest, are
writing this to try and clear up some of the false assumptions about
the use and dispensing of medical cannabis. One can always make an
argument against anything, but let’s stick to the facts and weigh the
pros and cons.One of the main
assumptions is the location of these dispensaries. Measure X clearly
states, “dispensaries may operate only in the ‘Industrial’ and ‘Old Town
Industrial/Commercial,” not residential.
Other location restrictions:
cannot be located within “600 feet of a school, licensed child care
facility or place where children regularly gather, church or house of
worship,” and cannot be located on highways 62 or 247. Please check out
“9.53.050 Location Restrictions” in Exhibit A of Measure X. The entire
measure and exhibit can be found on the town of Yucca Valley’s website
under the March 3, 2015, agenda.
The next issue, and probably the greatest, is the
children. Almost every article we’ve read from the opposition is:
“Children can get it.” “Protect our children.” Children cannot get
medical cannabis from a dispensary. Period. If children are getting
marijuana, they are getting it from drug dealers on the streets or their
parents. It’s hardly a valid argument to say that “it’s appealing to
children” and not also include those pretty pink, blue and yellow pills.
Those pills are far more accessible and far more dangerous.
Should we
ban all medications because children might get them? It is the parents’
responsibility to ensure their children are safe from all medicine. We
should not punish those who truly need this medicine, whose quality of
life is greatly increased, because of irresponsible parents.
Those pretty pills can kill. According to drugwarfacts.org,
no one has ever overdosed from marijuana! However, those same
statistics noted that pharmaceutical drugs killed more than 22,000
people in 2010 alone. These pharmaceutical drugs are far more harmful
and have extremely dangerous side affects.
Unlike those pretty pills, if
a child tries to eat a cannabis brownie, they won’t eat much because
they taste terrible and they certainly won’t need their stomach pumped.
They will need a nice, long nap. Again, I say that it is the
responsibility of parents to ensure children do not get any sort of
medicine they should not have.
Another argument we hear is, “People are already
getting it.” That may be true; however, there is no legal way for
patients to get this medicine in the Morongo Basin. Measure X would
allow two safe and legal dispensaries in Yucca Valley. There are
currently 13 mobile dispensaries operating in the Morongo Basin, all of
which are operating illegally due to the county-wide moratorium. We
continue to provide this medicine because we have personally seen the
difference it makes in people’s quality of life.
We, Rx Harvest, have provided much-needed
medicine to more than 1,000 patients. More than 70 percent of those
patients are over 45 years old and suffer from serious medical
conditions. They are our teachers, pastors, realtors, bankers, lawyers,
doctors, business
owners and soldiers who have fought for our freedom who are being
discriminated against because of fear and ignorance. They are not
teenagers abusing marijuana.
Vote yes on Measure X because patients have a
right to safe, legal access to medicine that has changed their lives for
the better.
In this Nov. 5, 2014, file photo, Shane McKee, co-founder of
Shango Premium Cannabis medical marijuana dispensary, pulls a sample
from their display of cannabis flowers in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Don
Ryan, File) — AP
By
Phil Luciano
Phil Luciano
Ted had a drifting eye, bad headaches and one leg — then his life got tough.
At
the core of a twisting story we’ll try to unravel below, he got an
early start on state-sanctioned medical marijuana. But his
self-prescribed pot — which he says had the verbal blessing of a family
physician — cost him the prescription drugs that ease the discomfort
from an amputation.
No one is asking you to feel sorry for Ted.
But he wants to offer a cautionary tale.
I’m
not sure how many people fit into the same drifting-eye, one-legged,
weed-smoking demographic. Then again, there’s a peculiar part of this
story — we’ll get to that at the end — that might affect a lot more
people than Ted.
Actually, Ted isn’t his real
name, which he doesn’t want in the newspaper, what with his marijuana
use and all. But Ted is in his mid-40s and lives near Peoria with his
wife.
Several years back, his motorcycle got
slammed by a car. The driver got a couple of tickets. Ted got an
amputation. Doctors cut off a mangled leg below the knee.
Eventually,
Ted was fitted with a leg prosthesis. But that didn’t stop leg and back
pain lingering from the wreck. For the past two years, his family
physician prescribed oxycodone, a powerful narcotic. The drug didn’t
stop the pain but made it bearable on tough days, Ted says.
Meanwhile,
another problem arose. The wreck also left Ted with nerve damage in one
eye, causing the pupil to wander. That nerve damage triggered migraine
headaches, he says. Because of that problem, he has been following
developments about medical marijuana in Illinois.
According
to the website for the Illinois Medical Cannabis Pilot Program
(http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/mcpp/Pages/default.aspx), almost 21,000
visitors have logged on to the online patient registry with the Illinois
Department of Public Health. Of those, about 3,000 have submitted an
application, a rigorous process that involves fingerprinting and a
physician’s prescription. So far, the state has issued 2,300 approval
letters to registered qualifying patients. After delays, dispensaries
are supposed to be in operation later this year.
Ted
has discussed medical marijuana with his family physician, who shied
away from writing a pot prescription. Though Ted says no clear reason
was given, migraines are not yet among conditions that allow a
medical-marijuana prescription.
Earlier this
month, an advisory board suggested 11 more medical conditions —
including migraines — be added to the 33 already legally acceptable.
However, the state has yet to approve those additions.
Ted decided not to wait. He started using marijuana for his migraines. The pain ebbed, he says.
He
reported this news to his family physician. The reply, according to
Ted: “I don’t agree with that, but if it helps, go ahead.”
Recently,
though, that doctor went on medical leave. A few weeks ago, when Ted
went to get a new oxycodone prescription, another doctor was filling in
for his usual physician. Instead of a new prescription, he got a drug
test.
See, two years back, Ted signed a
pain-management contract when he began taking oxycodone. These are
standard agreements, designed to protect the patient. Patients pledge to
not get similar prescriptions elsewhere, and allow a doctor to check
secured medical websites to make sure the patient doesn’t doctor shop.
Like
Ted’s, many of these contracts forbid the use of illegal drugs. And the
contracts allow random drug tests, one of which Ted was instructed to
do when he appeared before the substitute doctor.
“I knew my pee drop was going to be dirty,” Ted says.
Indeed,
the test showed cannabis use. Ted mentioned he’d been given verbal pot
approval from the other doctor. Still, Ted was told to hit the road: no
more oxycodone.
Granted, multiple-drug
experimentation is unwise among amateurs. That’s something you’d
probably want to leave to a medical professional, thus the
pain-management contract.
Even so, medical
marijuana might see an additional difficulty in Illinois, already deemed
the most regulated of medical-marijuana states. I learned this after
seeking background medical information from Shelli Dankoff, spokeswoman
for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center. We were talking about
pain-management contracts when she noted the typical prohibition against
illegal drugs.
“Marijuana is still illegal
according to the FDA,” she said. “States might call it legal, but the
federal government still says it’s illegal.”
Thus,
some doctors might balk at writing such prescriptions, while some might
find cannabis an appropriate addition to a pain-management regimen. Yet
others might look at the contract language, note the FDA ban and say,
“Nope. No pot for you.”
“That’s up to the individual doctor,” Dankoff says.
Tricky
stuff. I’m not sure why medical marijuana seems easier in other states.
But it wouldn’t surprise me to see doctors here advertise their (ahem)
flexibility regarding these contracts, maybe with a pot leaf behind a
thumbs-up sign.
Last week, Gov. Tom Wolf took the unprecedented step of
hosting a roundtable discussion on medical cannabis at the governor's
residence in Harrisburg.
Secretary of Planning and Policy John Hanger moderated the
panel, which included legislators, medical cannabis advocates, doctors
and a lawyer who serves as a consultant on the issue in other states.
Also in attendance were Secretary of Health Karen Murphy, Physician
General Rachel Levine, and the two sponsors of Senate Bill 3, which
would legalize medical cannabis in Pennsylvania, Sens. Mike Folmer
(R-Lebanon) and Daylin Leach (D-Delaware).
Following are some highlights from the roundtable:
During his introduction to the event, Wolf said there is "a lot of
misinformation and ignorance" about medical cannabis, and that it's time
to "get the facts" out about it.
"We need to get people to understand what we're missing by not having
access to this powerful and effective drug," he said. "We need to let
doctors treat patients with the medicine that they'd like to treat them
with."
Folmer, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, called medical cannabis "some
of the safest medicine we can give to people," adding, "If I can get a
prescription for OxyContin, why not a recommendation from a doctor for
cannabis?"
"We were misled about cannabis, and there's real medical evidence of this," he said.
Folmer noted that, as a conservative legislator in a conservative
district, he "never imagined" that he'd be supporting a bill to make
cannabis legal someday, but that he's glad to "continue this educational
journey."
He stressed that Pennsylvania should allow for continued research so it can "create real, medical-grade cannabis" and share its research and data.
Leach said that not approving medical cannabis for those who
desperately need it would be "cruel, heartless and irrational," adding,
"Every day this goes by without being passed is an injustice."
He pointed out that S.B. 3 recently received strong bipartisan
support in the Senate, gaining 40 votes in favor (the measure is now
being considered by the House of Representatives). Leach acknowledged,
however, that the bill's opponents warn that cannabis could be harmful
to children and lead to stronger drug use, but stressed that "fairly few
adolescents would use it." Leach also reiterated that the legislation
is "not about recreational marijuana."
"There's not much THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) in
medical cannabis, so it can't even intoxicate you," he stressed. "So
it's not going to alter your brain."
Leach said he hopes the industry's infrastructure will be up and
running in a year to 18 months, but that two years may be more
realistic.
Dr. Bruce Nicholson, chief of the division of pain medicine at Lehigh
Valley Hospital in Allentown, said that he had "no interest whatsoever"
in medical cannabis 10 years ago, but that he's "come a long way" since
then.
"Taking care of patients with pain is what I do on a daily basis," he
explained. He said cannabis has been used as a medicine for 2,000 years
and can treat "a large spectrum of conditions."
Nicholson also noted that common pain relievers — from
over-the-counter drugs like acetaminophen to opioids like OxyContin —
kill 32,000 people per year.
"The medicine we use for chronic conditions have significant side
effects," he said. "Cannabis has a much lower risk profile, but we can't
do additional studies until we pass intelligent legislation."
"Medical cannabis is, without a doubt, safe," Nicholson said. He
added that if physicians "would read the literature and understand the
science, they would come to same conclusion that others have and say,
yes, it should be legal."
Dr. William Trescher, a pediatric neurologist at Penn State Hershey
Medical Center, said that as someone who works with children with brain
disorders, he's always "looking for new forms of therapy." He noted that
some families of his patients wind up seeking help from numerous
physicians, medications and treatments but come away "without any
benefit."
Trescher said that for a child who suffers a hundred seizures a day,
reducing that number even by 50 percent with medical cannabis "is a big
deal."
"Cannabis may be a beneficial therapy, but we don't fully understand
it yet, so we need to study it," he noted. "We need to be allowed to
move forward and explore how these medications work."
Trescher also told attendees, "You can O.D. and die from opioids and alcohol, but not from cannabis."
Troy Kaplan, a New York-based attorney who consults on medical
cannabis issues, said the debate on whether the drug is beneficial "is
over." "The debate now," he said, "is how to regulate it."
He advised that Pennsylvania should look at proven models in other
states, "choose the best practices" and base its decisions "on science,
not hysteria." If it does, he said, the commonwealth "could become the
epicenter of cannabis research."
"The cost of running this business is high and full of risk," he
said. Pennsylvania's regulations "should leave nothing to the
imagination," he stressed, adding that "ensuring safe patient access" is
paramount.
Heavy cannabis use is consistently associated with poorer attention and memory, and increased rates of metal health problems.
Pe3k/F/Shutterstock
Governments and communities worldwide are softening their views on
cannabis use. Trials of medicinal cannabis have been approved in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. And the Australian parliament is currently debating legislation to introduce a government regulator of medicinal cannabis.
This follows decriminalisation of cannabis in Portugal and its legalisation in Uruguay and several US states.
Cannabis is still the product of choice for many illicit drug users in Australia. Five times as many people use cannabis rather than cocaine or methamphetamines.
But debate remains about the long-term effect the drug has on the
brain, cognition and mental health. Most cannabis users start as
teenagers and there is a widespread perception that this can disrupt
critical developmental processes to leave a lasting negative impact on
the brain.
Let’s look at what the latest research has to say about the long-term
harms, whether they can be reversed, and the possibility of making the
drug safer.
How does it affect the developing brain?
Studies have shown that individuals who begin regular and heavy cannabis use in their teenage years have a lower level of educational attainment and IQ,
earn a lower wage, and are more likely to engage in heavy alcohol or
hard drug use, suffer from metal health problems, or end up in prison.
Heavy cannabis use – defined as daily use for at least one year – is consistently associated with poorer attention and memory, as well as earlier and increased rates of metal health problems, especially psychotic symptoms.
Researchers have also identified differences in the brain associated with these cognitive and mental health impairments. It’s difficult to tell whether cannabis use or other factors caused the problems.Shutterstock
However, there are a range of factors that can influence cognition,
mental health and brain structure. These include age, use of other
substances, rate of exercise, education level, family history, childhood
abuse and neglect, pre-existing neurological differences, and the
chemical composition of the cannabis itself.
It’s often not possible to account for all these factors when
undertaking cannabis research. So it’s difficult to tell how much of the
difference in a participants' performance on a cognitive task, mental
health and brain structure is attributable to their level of cannabis
use and how much can be explained by other factors.
Are the impairments reversible?
We are only just beginning to understand how well-equipped the human
brain is for adapting to environmental demands or stresses. This
capacity, known as brain plasticity, means that our brain is constantly
striving to optimise its functioning, even when it is damaged or
injured.
A stroke, for instance, can harm certain areas of the brain but it is
possible that at least some functioning of that region may be restored
as neural connections are rewired in an attempt to compensate for the
damage.
Similar recovery mechanisms may operate in cases where the brain has
been harmed from long-term and heavy cannabis exposure. Though just a
handful of researchers have investigated this possibility in the context
of cognition.
One large-scale study
conducted over eight years found that heavy cannabis use was associated
with memory impairments, but individuals had shown improvements in
their memory once they stopped using the drug. Other studies have shown that as little as three to six weeks of abstinence was sufficient for memory improvements.
Yet another study found no cognitive deficits in former users after only three months of abstinence. The psychoactive substance THC is responsible for the ‘high’ associated with cannabis.Iriana Shiyan/Shutterstock
Heavy cannabis use has also been suggested to disrupt neural functioning associated with memory. But again, a six-week period of abstinence was sufficient to show some recovery at the neural level.
However, a large study
that followed cannabis users over nearly four decades found that there
are limits to the ability of the brain to recover in those who begin
using during early adolescence. Although cognition was improved in
long-term cannabis users after 12 months of abstinence, cognitive
impairments did persist, particularly in those who began using cannabis
early.
Surprisingly, no studies to date have investigated whether the
persistent effects of heavy cannabis use on brain structure can also
recover with abstinence.
Stimulating brain plasticity is a major interest to neuroscientists.
Some of the interventions to induce plasticity may facilitate the
recovery from heavy cannabis use. Exercise is well established in promoting brain health,
including the growth and development of neurons. It is possible that
reversing cannabis-related harm through abstinence could be augmented
with interventions such as exercise.
But while there is some evidence for recovery of function, it’s an
area that remains inconsistent and under-studied. More research is
required before such an idea could bare any practical significance.
What’s in your cannabis?
Cannabis contains a wide variety of psychoactive substances. The most
prominent are the cannabinoids D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and
cannabidiol (CBD).
Police seizures indicate there has been a sharp rise
in the level of THC relative to CBD in smoked cannabis in recent
decades. This could be due to a number of factors such as changes in the
way people are growing the plant, using the different parts of the
plant, or how they are preparing it for use.
THC is responsible for the “high” associated with cannabis, but also causes psychotic symptoms and cognitive impairments. CBD is believed to limit the adverse impact of THC
on the brain. But we don’t know what proportion of CBD is necessary to
mitigate these adverse effects. Nor do we know the extent to which these
effects can be mitigated by CBD alone. We still don’t know whether the harm from cannabis use can be reversed.Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
The creation of a well-regulated cannabis market, as has occurred in
Colorado, may give researchers access to reliable information about the
chemical composition of the cannabis that an individual is consuming.
This will make it possible to directly investigate whether CBD has a
role to play in limiting the damage or even aiding recovery from the
cannabis-related harm to the brain from heavy use.
Establishing the long-term impact of cannabis on the brain is a
research priority for neuroscientists. Answers are needed to largely
untouched questions such as whether any potential harm could be reversed
(through exercise or other interventions) and whether increasing the
concentration of CBD can limit the negative impact caused by cannabis
high in THC.
The legislative changes poised to increase the availability of
cannabis are outpacing our understanding of the impact that the drug has
on the brain. Without addressing these shortfalls in our knowledge, a
fully informed debate about the likely consequences of increased
cannabis use, whether it be for medical or recreational use, will not be
possible.
Cancer patient Christopher Campbell takes an eye dropper to collect
hashish hemp oil, Thursday, June 24, 2004, in Portland, Ore.
Photo: RICK BOWMER, AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
HARTFORD -- Children would be allowed to join the
state's medical-marijuana program, but would be prohibited from smoking
or inhaling its vapors in a revised form of the legislation approved Tuesday.
In a bipartisan move that's the last hurdle before debates in the Senate and House, the General Law Committee agreed that allowing children to smoke would send the wrong signal.
The committee accepted an amendment from the Senate, then sent it
back for a vote. The limitations should have little effect on
Connecticut parents who want to try a liquid form that has been found to
reduce childhood seizures.
"We felt strongly that minors should not be perceived as smoking
marijuana where people might see it and not really understand that it
was being used (to treat) a medical condition and it might send a wrong
message to their peers," said Rep. David A. Baram, D-Bloomfield, committee co-chairman.
But Rep. Dan Carter,
R-Bethel, who supported the bill, warned that restricting doctors'
ability to allow the vaporizing of the drug might not be advisable at
this nascent point in marijuana research.
"I do believe there's a clear need with respect to younger patients,"
Carter said. "In a way, I think we're putting the political part of it
above the health part of it. I think there should be freedom for those
practitioners who are going to prescribe this to utilize any delivery
system they need to do. Clearly there are benefits, certain times, to
inhale certain products. If we shut it down and say you can't smoke it
or you can't vaporize it, I think in a way that retards to do some of the studies we need to do."
Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, chairman of the committee, concurred with Carter that more research is required.
"Only with the additional research would I then want to see medical
marijuana made available in a vaporized form, down the road, if the
facts justify it," Leone said.
Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, a committee member who is the ranking member of the powerful Judiciary Committee,
recalled "some heart-wrenching testimony" from parents who moved to
Maine so they could use that state's medical marijuana program to treat
their children's neurological ailments.
The state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
does not oppose the use of the drug for children in cases of terminal
illness and debilitating conditions including seizure disorders and
serious neurological diseases.
The bill, proposed by the state Department of Consumer Protection,
would license laboratories that test medical cannabis and allow for
marijuana research. It would also allow hospitals and hospices to
administer the drug.
"Connecticut is looked to as the state that has a very good system
and a system that lends itself not only to helping patients with these
horrific, debilitating diseases, but also a place where extensive
research can be done as well," Kissel said.
Under the rules of the General Assembly, which has until midnight June 3 to adopt the legislation, the committee was not allowed to amend the bill.
But the panel proposed several recommendations for adoption before
the final draft reaches a Senate vote, including the requirement that
the drug stays in its original packaging upon sale from Connecticut's
six medical cannabis dispensaries; and that a pediatrician be appointed
to the Board of Physicians that reviews new ailments for inclusion in the program.
There are 11 ailments for which patients may be certified for use of
medical cannabis. There are six more afflictions that have been
authorized for inclusion and are being reviewed for submission to the
legislative Regulation Review Committee.
Ellen
McCall gives her daughter Penelope, who suffers from seizures, a dose of
CBD oil. The medicine was illegal until a few weeks ago. Photo by Nick
Shepherd.
Inside her Greeneville home, Ellen
McCall sits on the couch with her daughter Penelope. She stands up and
walks into the kitchen to get Penelope's medicine.
Penelope
suffers from Infantile spasms, which are a specific type of seizure
occurring within the first year of life. They are seen in an epilepsy
syndrome of infancy, according to the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke.
Ellen walks back into the living room holding a red bottle and a syringe.
"Are you ready for your medicine?" she asks Penelope.
The
medicine Penelope is about to get was illegal to have in the state of
Tennessee just a few weeks ago. It is Cannabis Oil, a derivative of
marijuana that contains less than 1 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol, or
THC, the ingredient that gets users high.
In May, Governor Bill
Haslam signed into law a measure allowing people who suffer from
epilepsy or seizures to use cannabis oil, as long as they have a
recommendation from a physician.
The law, introduced by Jeremy
Faison, R-Cosby in the Tennessee House of Representatives, redefined
marijuana by removing the requirement that cannabis oil containing
cannabidiol and less than nine-tenths of 1 percent of THC be
transferred, dispensed, possessed or administered as part of a clinical
research study to be in legal possession.
Ellen and other families
from around the state advocated the legislature for months to get the
bill passed. When the time came for full legislature votes, the bill
passed unanimously.
Cannabis Oil cannot be sold in the state as
the plant it comes from is still illegal. But families or patients who
wish to use it and get a recommendation from a doctor can have shipped
from another state where marijuana is legal, whether medicinally or
recreationally.
Ellen ordered Penelope's medicine from Colorado.
The cannabis oil is in a red medicine bottle, similar to cough syrup. It
has a slight odor of marijuana and the label on the bottle says,
"Charlotte's Web."
Charlotte's Web was developed by six brothers
in Colorado for a young girl suffering from seizures. The brothers
crossbred marijuana to produce a strain that was low in THC and high in
CBD.
Out of that effort came the Realm of Caring Foundation, a
non-profit organization that provides cannabis to adults and children
suffering from a host of diseases, including epilepsy, cancer, multiple
sclerosis and Parkinson's.
Ellen had already registered with Realm of Caring before the CBD oil bill became law.
"You
have to give all your information about the diagnosis and general
health to them," she said. "Then they tell you how much to give her and
when."
She said the oil would normally cost more than $900, but where she signed up for the Realm of Caring, the oil cost about $250. Insurance did not cover any of the costs.
While
that may seem expensive, some of the shots and medicine Penelope was
taking cost in the thousands but was covered mostly by insurance.
The
plan right now is for Penelope to receive two doses of the CBD oil a
day, along with her other medicines. Though Ellen and her husband Andy
are going to ask their doctor about weaning Penelope off some of the
other drugs she is currently on to control her seizures over the next
few months and increase the dosage of CBD oil to three times a day.
Ellen
said she has already seen improvement from Penelope. She said Penelope
is starting to use her arms and legs more. She is starting to become
move vocal and is responding to noises and the voices of her parents by
looking in the direction of the noise.
While these things may seem
small, they are a remarkable improvement over where she was a few short
months ago. Ellen credits CBD oil.
"I am extremely grateful to
now have the opportunity to try a safer medication and to watch her
finally grow developmentally and soon see Penelope's personality to
come," she said.
Contrary to some popular beliefs, marijuana is harmful to
adolescent brains. Researchers at the University of Montreal and CHU
Sainte-Justine children's hospital have found that targeting at-risk
youth through school programmes can limit …more
Responding to rapidly shifting legal and cultural
environments, researchers at the University of Montreal and CHU
Sainte-Justine Children's Hospital have found a way to prevent, reduce
or delay cannabis use amongst some at-risk youth. Cannabis users are at
risk of neurocognitive deficits, reduced educational and occupational
attainment, motor vehicle accidents,
exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms, and precipitation of psychosis.
Adolescents are particularly at risk due to the developing nature of
their brain. Youth who have used marijuana have been shown to have less
ability to sustain their attention and control their impulse control and
have impaired cognitive processes.
"Marijuana use is highly prevalent among teenagers in North
America and Europe," explained Dr. Patricia Conrod, who led the study.
"As attitudes and laws towards marijuana are changing, it is important
to find ways to prevent and reduce its use amongst at-risk youth. Our
study reveals that targeted, brief interventions by trained teachers can achieve that goal."
The study involved working with 1,038 high-risk British students and
their teachers at 21 secondary schools in London. The children, who were
in ninth grade (Year 10), were identified as being at high-risk by
their responses to a clinically-validated personality assessment. People
who are sensitive to anxiety or negative thinking, or who are impulsive
or sensation-seeking are known to be at greater risk of substance
abuse. "The students voluntarily participated in two 90-minute cognitive
behavioural sessions that were adapted to their specific personality
type.
These sessions involved learning from real-life scenarios
described by other at risk youth, and were designed to show how people
manage risk. Cannabis was not directly mentioned but was discussed if
the students brought it up," explained Ioan T. Mahu, first author of the
study. "There were signs that the programme delayed onset and reduced
frequency of cannabis
use in all youth who participated in the interventions, but the results
also consistently showed that the programme was particularly effective
in preventing cannabis use among those most at risk of using - sensation seekers," said Dr. Conrod.
Approximately 25% of high risk youth took up cannabis use over the
course of this two-year trial. The intervention was associated with a 33
% reduction in cannabis use rates within the first six months after the
intervention and then reduced frequency of use another six months
later. "Within the group at greatest risk for cannabis use, sensation
seekers, the intervention was associated with a 75% reduction in rates
of cannabis use six months post intervention, as well as significant
reductions in frequency of use thereafter," Dr. Conrod exclaimed.
Drug
use was ascertained by the use of anonymous questionnaires that the
participants filled out every six months over the two years following
the start of the study. The assessment protocol included a number of
procedures to filter out students reporting incorrect information.
Sensation-seekers are people who require a lot of stimulation, and
they are willing to take greater risks than most people to obtain
experience excitement.
They also tend to be less inhibited and less
tolerant of boredom. "Sensation seekers are particularly at risk of
cannabis use amongst this young age group. It is possible that other
personality traits predict cannabis use at older ages," Mahu said.
"Future studies should look at the motivations for cannabis use amongst
people with other at-risk personality types in order to develop intervention programmes that are as effective as this one has been for sensation seekers.
According to Senior Author Dr. Conrod, "given the well documented and
deleterious effects of early-onset marijuana use among teens,
prevention and delay of this behaviour is of utmost importance for the
public, particularly as society experiments with different public
policies to regulate cannabis-related harm to society."
State
Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, will bring no shortage of firepower when he
presents his amended medical marijuana bill to the House Committee on
Health and Welfare on Wednesday morning, if facts, testimony, thoughtful
compromise and momentum create firepower.
This bill ought to pass.
Mills,
a pharmacist and former leader of the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy,
should have the power of the facts on his side, as medical marijuana has
been used with good effect in treating some specific ailments and
maladies including epilepsy, nausea, headaches and “brain situations.”
It has been used to some good effect for people with HIV or AIDS, for pain treatment and spasticity.
Mills
should have the force of compelling testimony on his side. Since Mills’
initial effort to pass medical marijuana legislation in 2014, he has
presented a steady stream of witnesses on behalf of his bill.
These
have included Michelle Hall, a Louisianian whose adopted 4-year-old
daughter has epilepsy and who has moved to Colorado, away from her
family, where medical marijuana was available to her child; Donald
Goodwin, a plumber from St. Mary Parish, who testified before the Senate
that he, too, went to Colorado for medical marijuana for severe pain
from arthritis but won’t move and leave behind his family; Tommy Mead,
graduate student in clinical rehabilitation counseling, who testified
from his wheelchair that he suffered from severe pain due to a spinal
cord injury eight years ago that might be mitigated by medical
marijuana; and Jacob Irving of East Baton Rouge Parish, who has suffered
from neurological damage since birth, who told senators he has learned
from personal research and from talking with medical experts that
medical marijuana might be part of a treatment that could improve his
condition.
Mills should bring the power of thoughtful compromise to the House committee.
An
opponent of Mills’ 2014 legislation, the Louisiana Sheriffs’
Association, was so moved by testimony from witnesses last year that its
leadership sought greater understanding of the medical marijuana issue
and offered
suggestions and compromises that would make the bill more palatable to
law enforcement. Those suggestions are part of the current bill.
Mills should bring momentum, too, before the House committee.
Two
dozen states have approved the use of medical marijuana in some form,
some as long as two decades ago. This year states such as Texas,
Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and more have some form of legislation about
medical marijuana before them.
What Mills should bring to the
House today is the good will of all Louisianians, people who believe
their neighbors, suffering from ill health and pain, ought to have
access to remedies their doctors believe might help.
We believe that, and believe the House committee members should.
New figures show nine-fold increase in number of people being treated
More people in Kirklees are seeking treatment for abusing cannabis, new figures have revealed.
The number of people being treated in the district has risen more than nine-fold in five years.
Figures
released by Public Health England after a Freedom of Information
request show 179 adults in the area had at least one episode of
treatment for cannabis misuse in 2013/14.
This is more than nine times higher than the 19 treated in 2008/09, and the highest level in nine years, up from 122 in 2012/13.
Chris
Lawton, service manager at drug and alcohol counselling service
Lifeline Kirklees, said the figures weren’t evidence that cannabis use
was becoming more of a problem but that there was greater awareness of
the treatment programmes available.
He said cannabis often went under the radar because it was seen as “socially acceptable” in the same way as alcohol.
“When people are affected by cannabis – or alcohol – they don’t always accept they have a problem,” he said.
“Cannabis is not demonised. Everyone knows heroin is a bad drug but cannabis and alcohol are socially acceptable.
“Yes, it’s an illegal drug but people think cannabis is not going to hurt, it’s not going to be a problem.”
Mr Lawton said that in recent years perceptions had changed and users had been seeking help.
“It’s
not necessarily a physical dependency with cannabis, it’s more
psychological. It starts as a joint on a night for fun, to help someone
relax or to sleep.
“But then they start having one when they get
home whereas before it was just before going to bed, then they start
popping out of work, and what started out as once a night becomes two or
three times a night.
“You wake up in the morning with cannabis head – still feeling out of sorts – and that starts to affect your day-to-day life.”
Mr
Lawton said cannabis affected people in different ways and could cause
mental health issues from feeling down more often to paranoia.
Cannabis
is often described as a “gateway drug”, a starting point towards an
addiction to hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine.
Mr Lawton said he believed that was a stereotyped view and there was no reason to think users progressed to other drugs.
“Users
can range from 14-year-olds to 90-year-olds,” he said. “It can be a
recreational drug taken because your mates are taking it or it can be
pain relief for older people or those with an illness or condition.
“Cannabis
is quite addictive and it is easy to move from one joint to 10. It’s an
easily accessible drug and relatively cheap. You will get a bag of
cannabis for a fiver.”
Mr Lawton urged people who believed they
had a problem to get help. He said there was no physical withdrawal
symptoms with cannabis and in around six to eight weeks people could
change their habits or even change their lives.
Across England,
almost 200,000 adults were treated for substance misuse in 2013/14. The
number being treated has been falling slowly over the past few years,
from 210,815 in 2008/09 to 193,198 in 2013/14.
Jeff Mizanskey has been in prison for more than twenty years.
Governor
Jay Nixon has commuted the sentence of Jeff Mizanskey, a 61-year-old
grandfather serving a life sentence for three non-violent marijuana
convictions.
"The executive power to grant clemency is one I take with a great
deal of consideration and seriousness," Nixon said in a press release
announcing the commutation of Mizanskey's sentence. He also pardoned
five other non-violent offenders.
Regarding Mizanskey, Nixon's remarks imply that he will be given a parole hearing:
"In the case of the commutation, my action provides Jeff Mizanskey
with the opportunity to demonstrate that he deserves parole," Nixon
said. Riverfront Times broke the news that Mizanskey has been
rotting in jail in a 2013 feature story that investigated the relatively
minor (and non-violent) pot busts that preceded his 1993 arrest for
being involved in the sale of a six to seven pounds of marijuana.
Because it had been his third drug offense, Mizanskey was sentenced to
life without parole under the state's Prior and Persistent Drug Offender
statute, a law that was repealed last year.
"It's wonderful. Thank Jay Nixon for doing that, for finally looking
at his case and doing the right thing," said Michael Mizanskey, Jeff's
brother.
When we spoke to Aaron Malin, a researcher with Show Me Cannabis who
has helped publicize demands for Mizanskey's release, he was running out
the door to drive to the prison to tell Mizanskey the news before
visiting hours end today.
"I am still in shock but obviously thrilled," Malin says. "My understanding is Jeff doesn't know."
Mizanskey will of course have to apply for parole and be approved for
release. Malin says he should be eligible to apply immediately but
wasn't sure how soon he could get a hearing.
Neither Malin nor Michael Mizanskey had any idea that this decision
was coming down today. Michael, who lives in Chicago, is actually on
vacation in Florida with his family.
"I'm very emotional. I'm overjoyed he has a chance," he says. "In
almost 22 years he had two write-ups, one for putting mail in the wrong slot and one for a messy floor. Tell me that's not a model prisoner. No fights, no nothing. Tell me that's not a model prisoner."
Reached for comment via email, Missouri Department of Corrections
spokesman David Owen says Mizaneky's parole hearing date will be set for
"sometime this summer." In general, an offender up for parole will
receive written notice of the parole board's decision three to six weeks
after the hearing.
For the full background, make sure to read former RFT staff writer Ray Downs' incredible feature story,
Here's Nixon full press release:
Gov. Nixon grants pardons to five non-violent offenders;
commutes Jeffrey Mizanskey's sentence to make him eligible for parole
consideration
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Jay Nixon today announced that he has granted
pardons to three men and two women convicted of non-violent offenses.
Each of the individuals has completed his or her sentence and has become
a law-abiding citizen. In addition, the Governor has commuted the
sentence of Jeffrey Mizanskey to make him eligible for parole
consideration. In 1996, Mizanskey was sentenced as a persistent drug
offender to life without the possibility of parole.
"The executive power to grant clemency is one I take with a great
deal of consideration and seriousness," Gov. Nixon said. "In each of the
cases where I have granted a pardon, the individual has demonstrated
the ability and willingness to turn his or her life around and become a
contributing member of society."
In addition to the pardons, Gov. Nixon today also commuted the
sentence of Jeffrey Mizanskey, who was convicted on a charge stemming
from Pettis County in 1996 for possession of a controlled substance with
intent to deliver/distribute. Because of Mizanskey's prior drug-related
convictions, he was sentenced as a persistent offender under the laws
in effect at the time to a sentence of life in prison without the
possibility of parole. The Governor's commutation changes that sentence
to include the possibility of parole, effective immediately.
"In the case of the commutation, my action provides Jeff Mizanskey
with the opportunity to demonstrate that he deserves parole," Gov. Nixon
said.
Those granted pardons are:
Michael Derrington has been a substance abuse counselor for almost 30
years and received the Helen B. Madden Memorial Award from the National
Council of Alcohol and Drug Abuse in 2008 for his work in the field. In
1979, he was convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession in St. Louis
County and paid a $100 fine.
Nicole Lowe lives in Tennessee and has been employed as a loan
officer with various banking and mortgage companies. In 2000, she was
given a suspended execution of sentence in St. Francois County after
being convicted of misdemeanor stealing for taking two deposits from her
employer. Lowe returned the amount she stole and successfully completed
a two-year term of probation.
Bill Holt worked as a school bus driver for nearly three decades. In
1958, he was convicted of misdemeanor non-support in Douglas County and
spent less than two weeks in the county jail before being placed on
probation. Holt successfully completed his probation.
Doris Atchison has completed a vocational heating and air condition
program. In 1970, she was convicted in Cape Girardeau County of
misdemeanor stealing of items valued at $1.46 from a local store. For
the crime, she paid a $45 fine.
Earl Wolf has worked as a carpenter and as a truck driver. In 1961,
he and two others broke into a grocery store in Mercer County and stole
several items. He was convicted on misdemeanor burglary and larceny
charges and received a three-year term of probation, which he
successfully completed.
Addyson Benton, a 3-year-old girl who has epileptic seizures has
made a dramatic improvement since moving to Colorado to be treated with
medical marijuana, her parents say. (Photo: ABC News via Addyson's
Warriors/Facebook)
Addyson Benton, a 3-year-old girl who has epileptic seizures has
made a dramatic improvement since moving to Colorado to be treated with
medical marijuana, her parents say. (Photo: ABC News via Addyson's
Warriors/Facebook)
DENVER (ABC News) -- An Ohio family moved 1,200 miles to get a
medical marijuana derivative for their 3-year-old to give her some
relief from her seizures, and they say it's working.
Addyson Benton began having tiny seizures when she was
just 9 months old, her mother, Heather Benton, told ABC News. Her eyes
would glaze over and she would jerk as if she was catching herself
falling asleep. Soon, the seizures got worse, doctors learned that
Addyson was having more than 1,000 a day, and they diagnosed her with
severe intractable myoclonic epilepsy, Benton said.
"It was just a nightmare," Benton said, adding that the seizure
medications didn't work and made Addyson strangely aggressive or sleepy.
"We could not find anything to control them and they were getting
worse."
The Bentons were watching a documentary about marijuana that prompted
them to move to Colorado to get medical marijuana for Addyson in the
hopes that it would give her some relief. At the time they moved in
March, Addyson, 3, couldn't say her name and was developmentally
delayed, Benton said.
In consultation with Dr. Margaret Gedde in Colorado, Benton said,
they tried a few marijuana-derived products and found that a patch that
they put on Addyson's ankle each morning reduced her seizures.
"Six hours after we put it on her, she lit up," Benton said. "She
stared mimicking hand gestures, talking, mimicking words on TV," Benton
said.
Gedde said she's specialized in medical marijuana for adults and
children since about 2010, and she's neither a pediatrician nor a
neurologist, but she's part of her patients' overall care team. She said
she's one of a small number of doctors willing to sign medical
marijuana cards in Colorado, where medical marijuana is legal, but she
said there's still stigma around it.
"As long as cannabis is listed as schedule 1 substance, it continues
to make nothing straightforward," Geddee said. Schedule 1 drugs include
heroin and ecstasy, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
On Monday, Benton said she only counted three visible seizures from Addyson all day.
"I was just blown away," Benton added. "I never thought we would be here."
Addyson's doctors were unavailable for comment.
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at University Hospitals
Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, said that while he
doesn't doubt that marijuana-based products can have a positive effect
for some epileptic patients, there isn't enough data to show that the
benefits outweigh the risks. Wiznitzer has not treated Addyson.
He said without good studies, it's impossible to know what such products will do to developing brains.
"Is the use of this product going to have some
not-well-recognized-now effect on brain development that might be worse
than what the underlying condition was?" he asked. "You're not talking
about some 50-year-old person smoking marijuana."
Wiznitzer said it's not clear whether these non-hallucinogenic
products truly don't cause hallucinations, and that that a recent study
of anecdotal information revealed that parents who moved to Colorado
with their epileptic children were more likely to report positive
effects from medical marijuana products than parents who lived in
Colorado to begin with. But they didn't have the same diagnosis as
Addyson, and they weren't using the same products.
The designer drug Spice has been
blamed for five university students being admitted to hospital, two of
whom were left in a critical condition. But what is it and why is it so
popular?
Two students at Lancaster University are recovering
having been admitted to hospital in a critical condition after taking an
"unknown" substance. Police are looking into what this was, but initial
reports suggest it was Spice, the name commonly used to describe a
laboratory-created cannabis substitute.
While simulating the
effects on the brain of cannabis, which is banned in many countries,
including the UK, its chemical make-up is different and its
side-effects, as yet, little studied. Some experts say it can be up to 100 times as potent as the drug it mimics.
The
European Union has warned of "acute adverse consequences" for users'
health, which are said to include increased heart rates, seizures,
psychosis, kidney failure and strokes. Deaths have been reported in Australia and Russia.
In
the US, 19-year-old Connor Reid Eckhardt fell into a coma and died
after taking some last year. "Parents, educate yourself on synthetic
drugs," his family has urged. "They are taking the world by storm. Do it for Connor. Do it for your kids. Because every life matters." But some users say in online forums that they have not experienced severe side-effects.
Cannabis-simulating
substances - or synthetic cannabinoids - were developed more than 20
years ago in the US for testing on animals as part of a brain research
programme. But in the last decade or so they've become widely available
to the public.
In the UK, part of the popularity of Spice is that,
with slight tweaks of the chemicals used, suppliers can stay ahead of
the law, with the authorities having to respond by banning the latest
incarnation.
Usually synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed on to
herbs, which are smoked in the same way as ordinary cannabis. Supplies
of these are available online or in "head shops". Spice was originally a
brand name but has become a generic term applied to such products. The
substance also comes in tablet form and as a liquid to use in
e-cigarettes. The Home Office is looking at imposing a blanket ban
on all synthetic cannabinoids to end what Trevor Shine, commercial
director of the drug-identification company Tic-Tac, calls "a constant
game of cat and mouse" with suppliers. "When they ban one type, other
ones that are outside the ban are created," he says. "It may be more so
with synthetic cannabinoids than with any other drug."
Home Office
minister Mike Penning says more than 500 new drugs have already been
banned and that "early-warning systems" have been upgraded. "A blanket
ban would give our police and law enforcement agencies greater powers to
tackle the trade in these harmful substances as a whole, instead of a
one-by-one approach," he adds.
Most are thought to originate in
China. During 2013, the European Union's Early Warning System identified
81 new psychoactive substances, of which 29 were synthetic cannabinoids. A survey in Michigan suggests they are the second-most-popular drug among high school students, after cannabis.
And yet many believe that synthetic cannabinoids are significantly more dangerous than cannabis.
It's been suggested that some artificial cannabinoid compounds found in Spice act more strongly on, and bind more closely to,
the brain's receptors than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical
responsible for most of the psychological effects of ordinary cannabis.
This leads, scientists say, to more powerful and unpredictable
side-effects, because of links to the heart, breathing and digestive systems. Another
concern, according to the US government, is that there may be harmful
heavy metal residues in mixtures. But there has been little testing to
establish this.
The authorities in many countries are struggling
to deal with what has become a big business, while purchasers often
suffer from a lack of reliable information.
"You don't know what's
in them and what quantities of chemicals are used," says Mark Piper of
the toxicology test provider Randox Testing. "It's very much backroom
and underground chemistry that's behind all this. There's no
pharmaceutical use for them. They weren't even designed to be used on
humans."
Recreational cannabis use has been illegal in the UK
since 1928, so the appeal of legal highs, despite appearing to pose
greater health risks than cannabis itself, is obvious. "Why would you
risk buying an illegal drug when there are 20 legal varieties
available?" says Shine.
Piper worries that users are confusing
legality with safety. In fact, some older drug-takers, who would have
tried cocaine, amphetamines or cannabis in the 1980s, are trying
synthetic cannabinoids because "the kids are doing it, so it must be all
right", he says. "But it certainly has addictive qualities," Piper
adds. "It's incredibly dangerous."
Senator Mark Madsen (Republican – Sartoga Springs)
by Curtis Haring
Lawmakers appeared to thaw the idea of
medical marijuana Wednesday, when Senator Mark Madsen (Republican –
Saratoga Springs) spoke to the Health and Human Services Interim
Committee Wednesday.
Madsen made waves this past legislative
session when he introduced and advanced SB 259 – Medical Cannabis
Amendments, which would have allowed specialists to prescribe marijuana
to patients.
The bill died in the Senate as many on
the Hill felt that the legislation was railroaded through the process
during the final days of the session. After suffering that initial
defeat, Madsen vowed that he would return during the off-season to hone
the bill, present data, and get support from stakeholders.
The Utah County Republican would start
by encouraging lawmakers to look into the recent history of marijuana
being criminalized to guide the committee’s decisions.
Madsen may be referring to the fact that modern marijuana laws go hand-in-hand with anti-Mexican sentiment
in the early 1900’s, when Mexican immigrants came to the country after
the Mexican Revolution. Cannabis, the Latin phrase for the plant, was
familiar to many American’s and often prescribed by doctors whereas
marijuana was a cultural term used by immigrants.
The choice by the
government to use the phrase “marijuana” when attempting to ban the drug
was seen as a way to take advantage of racist feelings permeating the
country and pass the law. Some feel that
the ban also came as a way to justify large police forces after
prohibition had been overturned, knowing that the drug would be
widespread among minority populations across the country.
Before ending his initial testimony,
Madsen acknowledged that the legal and medical communities are divided
on the issue of medical marijuana, but that the state should focus on
being compassionate towards residents who might benefit from partial
decriminalization of the drug. He also cautioned that the committee
needs “to be meticulous about getting to the facts and not just
listening to the soundbites.”
The committee also heard from
Representative Gauge Froerer (Republican – Huntsville), who sponsored
the state’s first medical marijuana type law with the passage of his
bill that would allow children to take advantage of cannabinoid oils in
an attempt to treat seizures. During his testimony, he told that body
that he is constantly asked by constituents with medical conditions if
Froerer’s law applies to them too.
At one point the debate became heated
when Senate Committee Chair, Evan Vickers (Republican – Cedar City)
questioned Madsen on his claim that one can not overdose and die on
medical marijuana. Vickers responded that “such a high concentration,
[states with medical marijuana] are seeing some serious side effects and
serious deaths because of the concentration.”
“I would be very interested in seeing
the studies that show that death was caused by the amount of substance
in the bloodstream,” Madsen shot back.
Senator Brian Shiozawa (Republican –
Salt Lake City), an emergency room doctor, took keen interest in
Madsen’s statement that nearly 30 people in the state die each month due
to prescription drug overdose.
“Key to this discussion as you weigh the
pros and cons is the urgency…every day when I am at work, I look
through the controlled substance database on patients and am appalled to
see the number of prescriptions of controlled substances – and I have
seen firsthand these deaths.” Shiozawa would add.
Ultimately Vickers, a pharmacist by
trade, was cautious towards the entire discussion, but was willing to
hear Madsen out – a promise struck during the session between the two
lawmakers. Vickers went on to state that he expected the discussions to
continue on for, at minimum, two more interim sessions between now and
the start of the legislative session next year.
