How far can a school go in regulating what students say, even off campus? That's the question the Supreme Court is wrestling with in the case of Morse v. Frederick, also known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. The case dates back to 2002, when the Olympic Flame was making its way to Salt Lake City. When the torch run passed through Juneau, Alaska, students from Juneau-Douglas High School were given a break from class to watch. Joseph Frederick, then a senior, was across the street from the school holding up a sign that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" (whatever that means) as the torch passed. [continues 858 words]
Justices in the Supreme Court's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case appear to be interested in turning "Just Say No" into "Don't Even Say It," curtailing free speech rights. On Monday, March 19, the Supreme Court heard a case concerning the scope of student speech in public high schools. The case, Morse v. Frederick, involved an 18 year old high school student who was punished by school officials for displaying a banner on a sidewalk across the street from his school. The banner was destroyed and the student was suspended because officials believed the banner, which read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," touted a pro-drug message in violation of the school's anti-drug policy. [continues 763 words]
The message connected drug use and religion in a nonsensical phrase that was designed to provoke, and it got Joseph Frederick in a heap of trouble. After he unfurled his 14-foot "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a Juneau, Alaska, street one winter morning in 2002, Frederick got a 10-day school suspension. Five years later, he has a date Monday at the Supreme Court in what is shaping up as an important test of constitutional rights. Students don't leave their right to free speech at the school door, the high court said in a Vietnam-era case over an anti-war protest by high school students. [continues 667 words]
Cannabis for the Wounded Screaming Chris Mathews and the corporate media would have us believe that it's only the living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that are deplorable, not the medical care itself. Donna Shalala and Bob Dole have been assigned to investigate the situation. A superficial clean-up will ensue -rodents poisoned, moldy drywall replaced-while the quality of care gets lauded and prosthetic limbs are presented as proof that all is state-of-the-art. Out in California, however, doctors in the Society of Cannabis Clinicians question the care doled out at Walter Reed and other military hospitals where wounded soldiers and vets are treated with toxic medications* while the safest painkiller known to man is systematically withheld. "If anybody needs and deserves cannabis-based medicine, it's the thousands of soldiers who have been seriously wounded in Iraq," says Philip A. Denney, MD. "Cannabis would help in treating insomnia, pain, PTSD, and a whole array of symptoms that wounded vets typically face." [continues 1016 words]
In addition to DEA Administrative Judge Mary Ellen Bittner's non-binding recommendation that Professor Lyle Craker be allowed to grow cannabis for research purposes ( see http://www.doctortom.org/archives/2007/02/a_little_known.html ), a second cannabis-related medical milestone was reached this week: a paper from the University of California Medical School in San Francisco reporting that inhaled cannabis significantly reduced AIDS-related neuropathic pain in a small, but carefully controlled series of human subjects, was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Neurology ( see http://www.aidsmeds.com/articles/1667_11275.shtml ). Of the two events, the latter seems more likely to have both immediate and lasting impact on drug policy. There is also a decent possibility that the almost simultaneous announcement of the two events might have a synergistic effect by deterring Bittner's DEA superiors from rejecting her recommendation as they would otherwise be certain to do. [continues 499 words]
Advocates Say Continuing Treatment For Short-Term Inmates Cuts Recidivism With critics long holding that methadone is nothing more than a legal replacement for an illegal heroin addiction, few prisoners nationwide have received the bitter medicine in jail unless they were pregnant and at risk of losing an unborn child to withdrawal. But that is changing. Lehigh County Prison has agreed to join Northampton and Berks county prisons in taking the next controversial step: continuing methadone treatment for short-term inmates who had been taking the medicine before incarceration. [continues 1491 words]
TEN years ago, California voters were first in the nation to legalize the medical use of marijuana. We managed the Proposition 215 campaign, and later had similar success in six other states. When Proposition 215 appeared on the California ballot, political leaders and pundits of all stripes urged voters to oppose it. They made some dramatic predictions about what would happen if it passed. Let's go back and see how right, or wrong, they were. President Bill Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, was blunt: Legal acceptance of the medical use of marijuana would "cause drug abuse to increase among our children." [continues 616 words]
Despite hysterical claims that the legalization of medicinal marijuana for use by the seriously ill would somehow kick-start a juggernaut of seemingly state-sanctioned drug use and abuse - a tired-ass hand-wringing worry brought, primarily, by your drug war pals at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, starting with Nineties czar Barry McCaffrey - it appears that, a decade after California voters passed the nation's first medi-pot law, the sky has not fallen. [continues 399 words]
"The war on drugs has failed." Those are the words of retired newsman Walter Cronkite from a March Huffington Post blog. Some argue that Cronkite single-handedly sparked the movement against the Vietnam War -- when he speaks, people listen. I did too. Twenty-four years ago, former President Ronald Reagan perpetuated an American convention of the Oval Office: proclaim a war on drugs. In his Oct. 14 yearly radio speech, the 40th president repeated words used by the successive administrations of Bush I, Willie I, Willie II and Bush II. The American government's encounter with drugs began before Reagan, and the first inklings of hostility date back to the '70s, with former President Richard Nixon's founding of the Drug Enforcement Agency. [continues 833 words]
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fuelling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once-unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide. Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes. But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops -- even with airborne crop-dusters -- if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop. [continues 318 words]
U.S. Wants To Eradicate Opium Fields With Airborne Crop Dusting JALALABAD, Afghanistan - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fuelling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once-unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide. Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes. [continues 436 words]
Drug Czar Notes Sierra Nevada Rife With Growers on Public Land WASHINGTON -- The White House is sending money and some momentary manpower to reinforce the fight against Central Valley marijuana growers. When national drug czar John Walters lands in Fresno on Tuesday, he'll be bringing a commitment of an additional $2.2 million in law enforcement funding. The money will include $100,000 grants for Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as more support for a coordinated anti-pot campaign. [continues 592 words]
Extra $2.2 Million Is Pledged to State by U.S., in Part to Combat Pot Growing on Public Lands. WASHINGTON -- The White House is sending money and its national drug czar to reinforce the fight against California marijuana growers. When John Walters lands in Fresno on Tuesday, he'll be bringing a commitment of an additional $2.2 million in law enforcement funding. The money will include $100,000 grants for Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as more support for a coordinated anti-pot campaign. [continues 515 words]
"This is to keep Big Brother out of my exam room," says Philip A. Denney, MD, explaining the civil suit that attorney Zenia Gilg filed on his behalf Aug. 3 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern California. Denney had been sent documents by a sympathizer revealing that in the Fall of 2005, two individuals -an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau, and an informer controlled by the Redding Police Department-had obtained his approval to medicate with cannabis by providing false histories. [continues 1312 words]
In 1996, August 4 fell on a Sunday. That morning, in the wee small hours, some 100 agents from the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, supervised by John Gordnier, the Senior Assistant Attorney General, raided 1444 Market Street, a five-story building that housed the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club and Proposition -215 campaign headquarters. Five smaller BNE squads simultaneously raided the homes of Buyers Club staff members in and around the city. The raiders wore black uniforms with BNE shoulder patches. [continues 1491 words]
Raids on July 6 targeted 11 San Diego cannabis dispensaries. Owners of some of the dispensaries not raided that day were heard to say that they were spared because they were running proper establishments. As if the DEA made such distinctions! On July 21 the remaining clubs were visited by law enforcement and told to close or else. They have all complied. "Two DEA agents accompanied by one local cop went around to the clubs," says organizer Dion Markgraff. "They didn't have search warrants. They threatened to arrest everyone if they didn't shut down. Places that let them in had all their medicine stolen. One or two places didn't let them in. Two or three others got word and shut down before they came around. At one of those places the DEA called the landlord and pressured him to make sure they wouldn't re-open." [continues 1404 words]
In Response to More Aggressive Taliban, Attacks Are Double Those in Iraq War As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs. Save & ShareTag This Article Saving options1. Save to description: Headline (required) Subheadline Byline 2. Save to notes (255 character max): Subheadline Blurb None 3. Tag This Article [continues 1181 words]
Unit Accused of Abusing Drugs and Alcohol Officers Relieved of Duty After Killing of 24 Iraqis The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a "total breakdown" in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion's staff sergeants. The allegations in Newsweek magazine contribute to an ever more disturbing portrait of embattled marines under high stress, some on their third tour of duty after ferocious door-to-door fighting in the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Falluja and Haditha. [continues 659 words]
Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for reasons that are far from clear, chose to enter the debate over medical marijuana with a thoroughly unscientific -- one might even say anti-scientific -- blanket denial that marijuana has any medical value at all. Specifically, the grandiosely titled "Inter-Agency Advisory Regarding Claims That Smoked Marijuana Is a Medicine" referenced a "past examination" that "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." [continues 295 words]
It's no coincidence that the new O'Shaughnessy's includes five articles on post-traumatic stress disorder and three on forgotten aspects of the history of cannabis as medicine. When Tod Mikuriya first became interested in cannabis as a medical student c. 1960, he realized that understanding might be found in two directions: clinical experience (input from patients, then unavailable) and the pre-Prohibition medical literature. So it makes sense that some 40 years later the journal Mikuriya founded would focus on a psychiatric condition that cannabis is being used to treat, and would publish documents filling in the gaps in our historic miseducation. [continues 1288 words]
