What Five Years in Prison Taught California Former Dispensary Owner Dale Schafer, and Why He's Thinking About Getting Back into the Marijuana Biz A judge sentenced Dale Schafer to 60 months federal prison in 2008, but now the attorney and celebrity drug-war is out - and getting back into marijuana. The 62-year-old resident of Roseville, a suburb just east of Sacramento, and his wife, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry, became a poster couple for outrage over the federal crackdown on medical pot when federal prosecutors indicted them for operating a clinic in the Northern California foothills. [continues 786 words]
Professional reformers, longtime activists, and stakeholders in the marijuana industry attended an invitation-only meeting at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland January 9 to discuss plans for a marijuana 'legalization' initiative to be on the ballot in California in 2016. The invitations came from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform (CCPR), a group led by Dale Sky Jones that was formed after the defeat of a legalization measure in 2010, and the Drug Policy Alliance, represented by lobbyist Jim Gonzales The keynote speaker was Bill Zimmerman, a Los Angeles campaign consultant who is widely credited with masterminding the 1996 Proposition 215 campaign, which legalized marijuana for medical use in California. [continues 3333 words]
Marian "Mollie" Fry, MD, and her husband Dale Schafer, an attorney, turned themselves to U.S. marshals Monday, May 2. They were taken to the Sacramento County jail, where they are awaiting transfer to federal prisons. They have begun serving five-year terms -ostensibly for the crime of Cannabis cultivation (growing plants), but actually for the crime of political organizing (educating people). Mollie Fry is a founding member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, the group organized by Tod Mikuriya, MD, in 2000 to enable doctors entering the field to share and publish findings and observations - and defend themselves against persecution. Law enforcement at the state and federal levels had loudly opposed Proposition 215, the measure enacted by voters in 1996, and has curtailed its implementation ever since. [continues 2702 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A drug deal plays out, California-style: A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there. An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different pot strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift. [continues 2449 words]
Medical Marijuana Becomes a Major Player in California Economy SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A drug deal plays out, California-style: A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there. An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different pot strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift. [continues 2424 words]
A Drug Deal Plays Out, California-Style: A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there. An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different pot strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift. [continues 2466 words]
Meet the Man Who Ran the Secret Program It was billed as a panel discussion on "the global shift in human consciousness." A half-dozen speakers had assembled inside the Heebie Jeebie Healers tent at Burning Man, the annual post-hippie celebration in Black Rock, Nev., where 50,000 stalwarts braved intense dust storms and flash floods last August. Among the notables who spoke at the early evening forum was Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, the Bay Area-based psychochemical genius much beloved among the Burners, who synthesized Ecstasy and 200 other psychoactive drugs and tested each one on himself during his unique, offbeat career. [continues 3865 words]
Does the VA Care? U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti will rule any day now on a suit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth. The vets want the judge to order the Department of Veterans Affairs to upgrade its mental-health services. Some 500 vets are committing suicide every month. There is a backlog of 600,000 disability claims, half of them involving post-traumatic stress and depression. The wait to have your claim adjudicated can be five years or more. Lawyers for the VA state that 1,300 therapists have been hired to solve the problem; and anyway, they contend, a judge can't tell the VA how to conduct itself, only Congress can. [continues 1055 words]
The Greatest Story Never Told Smoking Cannabis Does Not Cause Cancer Of Lung or Upper Airways, Tashkin Finds; Data Suggest Possible Protective Effect The story summarized by that headline ran in O'Shaughnessy's (Autumn 2005), CounterPunch, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Did we win Pulitzers, dude? No, the story was ignored or buried by the corporate media. It didn't even make the "Project Censored" list of under-reported stories for 2005. "We were even censored by Project Censored," said Tod Mikuriya, who liked his shot of wry. [continues 1288 words]
While most think of cancer and AIDS when hearing of medical marijuana, in recent years most marijuana recommendations have been issued for far less serious illnesses by a small cadre of "pot docs." Medical marijuana recommendations seem to be evolving into Get Out of Jail Free cards rather than treatment for serious medical conditions. An estimated 95 percent of patients visiting "pot docs" are already significant pot users seeking approval for their drug use, and a small group of physicians are willing to fulfill their request. [continues 680 words]
Marijuana activists, advocates and adventurers will converge on Madison Oct. 5-7 for the 37th Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival. Political activist Ben Masel has been involved with the annual festival from the beginning. He was a fresh-faced freshman from New Jersey when he arrived in Madison to attend UW in 1971. "I just got to town as a freshman for that first one," he said. "It was more closely in context with the anti-war movement then." The Vietnam War ended and we've moved on to conduct wars in other parts of the world, but our internal war with marijuana goes on. [continues 753 words]
Ignorance Marches On Of all the men in the world, the one who happens to be best suited to our daughter lives in Bristol, England. This afternoon we were in the nearby town of Wells, drinking Guiness at a pub in front of which the Quaker leader William Penn used to address thousands of people and was once arrested for doing so. "Must remember to tell Tod about that," I thought (Tod Mikuriya, MD, being a Quaker from Pennsylvania who ran afoul of law enforcement himself). But of course Tod won't be there to tell about Penn when we get back. [continues 2359 words]
Like a lot of people who support marijuana use, psychiatrist Tod Mikuriya had detractors. (His work was called "the Cheech and Chong show" by Bill Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey.) The longtime Republican believed in the therapeutic effects of the drug on more than 200 ailments and in 1996 saw a bill he crafted, Proposition 215, pass in California, legalizing the use of pot for the seriously ill. The "grandfather" of the medicinal-marijuana movement said his fight to "restore cannabis" stemmed from a backlash against its medical use following the late-'30s film Reefer Madness. He was 73 and had cancer. [end]
Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. Sometimes Mikuriya's work found little favor. In 1996, General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy derided the doctor's medical philosophy as "the Cheech and Chong show," referring to two Hollywood movie characters known for their marijuana-themed humor. [end]
DR. TOD MIKURIYA: 1933 - 2007 Advocate for Use of Medical Marijuana California Psychiatrist Helped Create State Ballot Measure That Legalized Cannabis Use for Seriously Ill Patients NEW YORK -- Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was cancer complications, his family told California news organizations. Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. [continues 357 words]
Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died on May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. [continues 608 words]
Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medicinal marijuana movement in the United States, died May 20 at home in Berkeley. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations. Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the past four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject. He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. [continues 429 words]
Tod Mikuriya, M.D., died Sunday at his home in the Berkeley Hills. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer. In the final days he'd been in the care of his sisters, Beverly, an M.D. from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mary Jane of San Francisco, and his longtime assistant, John Trapp. Cancer had been diagnosed originally in his lungs, and as of last March it had been detected in his liver, too. Dennis Peron and Dale Gieringer threw farewell parties for him. He canceled a trip to Hungary where he was to present a paper at the International Cannabinoid Research Society meeting. His office began steering patients to other doctors. [continues 1391 words]
Berkeley, Calif.- Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a psychiatrist who was a leading figure in California's medical marijuana movement, died from complications of cancer Sunday. He was 73. He helped draft a state ballot measure that legalized marijuana for the seriously ill who have a doctor's recommendation. Since its passage in 1996, Mikuriya had written approvals for close to 9,000 patients, said his friend, Fred Gardner. Mikuriya had studied the drug's therapeutic potential since the 1960s and briefly directed marijuana research at the National Institute of Mental Health. He left when he realized the government only "wanted bad things found out about marijuana," he told the online newsmagazine AlterNet in 2004. [continues 119 words]
TABLE OF CONTENTS: * This Just In http://drugsense.org/nl/show_dsw.php?the_file=2007/ds07.n500#sec1 (1) Study Backs Safe-Injection Site's Work (2) Mexico To Boost Tapping Of Phones And E-Mail With U.S. Aid (3) Researchers Press DEA To Let Them Grow Marijuana (4) Medical Marijuana Bill Passed * Weekly News in Review http://drugsense.org/nl/show_dsw.php?the_file=2007/ds07.n500#sec2 Drug Policy (5) Drug Rumors Spur National Alert (6) Put To The Test (7) No Help For Needle-Exchange Legislation (8) Governor Undecided On Medical Marijuana [continues 278 words]
NPR did an excellent story on industrial hemp today. You can go to the following link and listen to the audio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10395113 The power and peril of religious exemptions from drug prohibition. By Jacob Sullum http://www.reason.com/news/show/119721.html HOW MUCH FOR ALL THAT HEROIN? The Art And Science Of The DEA's Drug Valuations By Michelle Tsai http://www.slate.com/id/2166980/?nav=fix [continues 99 words]
When the Medical Marijuana Patients Union held a symposium in Fort Bragg in August, 2004, Sheriff Tony Craver asked an organizer to please introduce him to Dr. Tod Mikuriya. It turned out that Mikuriya had left after participating in a morning panel. "That's one man I've always wanted to meet," said Craver, looking down in disappointment. The sheriff knew there was something unique about Mikuriya, and so did half the cops and prosecutors in California, who, unlike Tony Craver, fiercely resented him for legitimizing people previously considered criminals. [continues 1503 words]
Tod H. Mikuriya, a Berkeley psychiatrist who helped draft California's medical marijuana law, died at his home Sunday of complications of cancer. He was 73. Dr. Mikuriya was a well-known medical marijuana advocate whose practice made him the physician of last resort for patients throughout California who said marijuana eases their suffering. He was the founder of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and an architect of Proposition 215, the initiative approved in 1996 by state voters that legalized growing and using marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's recommendation. [continues 484 words]
Pioneering researcher on marijuana and cannabis therapeutics dies at 73. Tod Hiro Mikuriya, MD, prominent psychiatrist and advocate for the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes, has died at the age of 73. After earning his medical degree at Temple University he completed a psychiatric residency at San Francisco's Southern Pacific General Hospital. This was followed by service in the US Army Medical Corps and at state hospitals in California and Oregon. He was Director of the Drug Addiction Treatment Center of the New Jersey NeuroPschiatric Institute. In the 1960's he directed marijuana research for the National Institute of Mental Health's Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse Studies (predecessor of today's National Institute on Drug Abuse) but when the research failed to support the government's view of marijuana as a dangerous drug, he believed the evidence instead of the politicians. That ended his career with the federal government. [continues 274 words]
The U.S. Army, in a search for "nonlethal incapacitating agents," tested cannabis-based drugs on GI volunteers throughout the 1960s according to Dr. James Ketchum, the psychiatrist who led the classified research program at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Ketchum retired as a colonel in 1976 and lives in Santa Rosa. He has written a memoir, "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten," in which he describes experiments conducted at Edgewood and defends the Army's ethical standards. In a talk to the Society of Cannabis Clinicians in Los Angeles last month, Ketchum recounted to 20 doctors the Army's experiments with cannabinoid drugs. [continues 766 words]
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream The U.S. Army, in a search for "non-lethal incapacitating agents," tested cannabis-based drugs on GI volunteers throughout the 1960s according to James Ketchum, MD, the psychiatrist who led the classified research program at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Ketchum retired as a colonel in 1976 and now lives in Santa Rosa. He has written a memoir, "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten," in which he describes experiments conducted at Edgewood and staunchly defends the Army's ethical standards. In a talk to the Society of Cannabis Clinicians March 9 in Los Angeles, Ketchum recounted the Army's experiments with cannabinoid drugs. [continues 1034 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]
The extent to which medical cannabis users discontinue or reduce their use of pharmaceutical and over-the-counter drugs is a recurring theme in a recent survey of pro-cannabis (PC) California doctors. The drug-reduction phenomenon has obvious scientific implications. Medicating with cannabis enables people to lay off stimulants as well as sedatives -suggesting that the herb's active ingredients restore homeostasis to various bodily systems. (Lab studies confirm that cannabinoids normalize the tempo of many other neurotransmission systems.) The political implications are equally obvious. Legalizing herbal cannabis would devastate the pharmaceutical manufacturers and allied corporations in the chemicals, oil, "food," and banking sectors. Put simply, the synthetic drug makers stand to lose half their sales if and when the American people get legal access to cannabis. [continues 1392 words]
Despite Setbacks, Veterans Of California's Pioneering Movement Will Celebrate. SACRAMENTO -- With pomp and a bit of pot-inspired pageantry, the battle-tested veterans of California's medical marijuana movement will come together this weekend to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Proposition 215, the milestone ballot measure that redefined cannabis as medicine. Those planning to gather today at the Gay Community Center in San Francisco include former cannabis club impresario and Proposition 215 author Dennis Peron, celebrated medical marijuana physician Dr. Tod Mikuriya and former San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan. [continues 388 words]
What Have California Doctors Learned About Cannabis? It has been 10 years since California voters enacted Proposition 215, making it legal to grow and use cannabis, with a doctor's approval, for medical purposes. Prop 215 didn't create a record-keeping system because the authors didn't trust the government and didn't want to generate a master list of cannabis users. So, over the course of the past decade, a vast public health experiment has been conducted in California but no state agency has been tracking doctors who approve cannabis use or patients who medicate with it. [continues 1605 words]
Born and raised in Chisholm, Minnesota on the Mesabi Iron Range, I attribute my activist leanings to the radical elements there, best illustrated by the movie 'North Country.' Born in 1940, I am now 66. At age four, I played with a boy named Bob Zimmerman, but I knew him best during his last years in high school. Today, he is better known as Bob Dylan. Graduating with high honors from Bemidji State, I completed a year of grad work at Northern Michigan U. There, I helped start two opposing 'underground' student newspapers to scare the administration into changing various student policies. It worked! [continues 371 words]
Tokers Say Weed Works Wonders, But Science Divided On Pot For The Blues Things not going so well? Bummed? Living life in an endless D minor? There's therapy, of course, and a whole pharmacopoeia of mood changers ready to pump your serotonin levels. Or there's marijuana. Maybe. Two months ago, the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS) held its annual huddle in Budapest, Hungary, where participants reviewed, among other items, the latest studies on pot's effect on mood. A quick perusal of the conference agenda, however, gives an idea of the yawning gap that now exists between what scientists are able to prove and what tokers are experiencing. [continues 1533 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]
The San Diego District Attorney doesn't know -or just can't stand it- that California law authorizes doctors to approve the use of marijuana as a treatment for "any condition for which marijuana provides relief." After raids that closed five local dispensaries July 6, DA Bonnie Dumanis said "Our office has no intention of stopping those who are chronically ill with AIDS, glaucoma and cancer from obtaining any legally prescribed drug, including medical marijuana, to help them ease their pain." Deputy DA Dana Greisen complained to Channel 10 News that profiteering doctors were approving marijuana use too readily: "The doctors, because they're giving it to so many people, are basically legalizing marijuana one doctor and patient at a time... It's being recommended for insomnia, depression, anxiety... The law is being abused on a massive scale." [continues 1506 words]
Cannabis Without Euphoria? The International Cannabinoid Research Society held its 16th annual meeting June 24-28 at a hotel on the shores of Lake Balaton, about 80 miles southwest of Budapest. Most of the 350 registrants were scientists -chemists, pharmacologists-employed by universities and/or drug companies. The sponsor given top billing was Sanofi-Aventis, manufacturer of a synthetic drug, known variously as "SR-141716A," "Rimonabant," and "Acomplia," that blocks cannabinoid receptors in the brain. Additional support came from Allergan, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Cayman Chemical, Eli Lilly, Elsohly Laboratories, Merck, Pfizer, two Hungarian companies -Gedeon Richter Pharmaceutical and Sigma-Aldrich- and G.W. Pharmaceuticals. Researchers affiliated with other drug companies presented papers and posters and audited the proceedings. For most the holy grail is a product that will exert the beneficial effects of cannabis without that bad side-effect known as "euphoria." [continues 657 words]
Cannabis as a First-Line Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders In 1996, California legalized cannabis as a treatment for "any... condition for which marijuana brings relief." Although the law does not constrain physicians from approving the use of cannabis by children and adolescents, the state medical board has investigated physicians for doing so, exerting a profoundly inhibiting effect. Even doctors associated with the Society of Cannabis Clinicians have been reluctant to approve cannabis use by patients under 16 years of age, and have done so only in cases in which prescribable pharmaceuticals had been tried unsuccessfully. The case of Alex P. suggests that the practice of employing pharmaceutical drugs as first-line treatment exposes children gratuitously to harmful side effects. [continues 1456 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]
Tod Mikuriya, MD, his energy on the upswing, plans to appear at the "Patients Out of Time" conference April 7-8 at Santa Barbara City College. Last-minute arrangements to attend can be made by contacting organizer Al Byrne at 434-253-4484 or emailing Al@medicalcannabis.com. Dr. Mikuriya strongly suspects that Lipitor, Pfizer's blockbuster statin drug, had a deleterious effect on the lining of his biliary tract. He was put on Lipitor three years ago to lower his cholesterol following coronary bypass surgery. [continues 931 words]
"There is no such thing as laziness. Laziness is only lack of incentive." A graduate student in the psychology department at the University of Southern California, Sara Smucker Barnwell, has conducted a survey to assess whether or not cannabis use undermines motivation. She emailed a questionnaire to 200 undergraduates who had taken a course on drugs and human behavior, and to 100 acquaintances of a co-author, Mitch Earleywine, PhD, who in turn were asked to forward it to others. She got responses from some 1,300 people. She then analyzed the responses of everyday users (244) and those who had never used (243). [continues 1497 words]
In a series of raids March 16 the DEA took down several East Bay facilities -indoor grow sites and kitchens- at which cannabis-laced candies and sodas were produced for distribution through dispensaries. Twelve people were arrested, including the alleged honcho, Ken Affolter. Considerable care and skill had gone into the preparation and packaging of their "Pot Tarts," "Munchy Way" bars, "Toka-Colas," etc. The labels stated, "contains cannabis... for medical purposes only." The confectioners were arraigned in federal court and are being held pending a bail hearing next week. [continues 1447 words]
Last week C-Notes described the unmitigated gratitude with which pro-marijuana activists greeted an anti-prohibition op-ed by George Melloan in the Wall St. Journal. I questioned Melloan's motives and his decency, quoting a subsequent op-ed in which he made light of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the U.S. bombing and embargo of Iraq between 1991 and 2003. I did not anticipate that knocking George Melloan in the Anderson Valley Advertiser would annoy "progressive" activists back East, but it did, thanks to the Internet. A participant in the Alliance of Reform Organizations' chatroom forwarded this sigh of contempt from Doug McVay, Director of Research, Common Sense for Drug Policy, and Editor/Webmaster, Drug War Facts: [continues 1654 words]
(Our Tax Dollars At Work) "I feel invaded," said Philip A. Denney, MD, on Monday. "I feel violated and I'm trying to figure out what to do about it." He had just received from an anonymous concerned citizen documents revealing that two of the patients he examined last Fall were actually taking part in an investigation of him. One was a federal agent -Steve Decker of the Alcohol, Tobocco and Firearms Bureau- and one was a Confidential Informant assigned by the Redding Police Department. The documents reveal involvement by DEA agents named DeFreece and Hale, FBI agents Modine and McQuillan (from "Operation Safe Streets," which is supposed to focus on violent crime), and Redding PD officers Miller and Wallace. [continues 957 words]
- -A Last-Minute Twist Led by doctors who learned nothing about cannabis in medical school and never employed it in clinical practice, the Medical Board of California decided in April 2004 to discipline the state's leading authority on the subject. Tod Mikuriya, MD, was put on probation for five years, subjected to supervision by a "practice monitor," and fined $75,000 for the cost of his own prosecution. Instead of accepting the punishment, Mikuriya, 74, a Berkeley-based psychiatrist, has gone to great expense to appeal in Superior Court. "It's the principle of the thing," he says without irony. [continues 1601 words]
Even before Eli Lilly began selling Prozac in December, 1988, the company was selling the concept of "clinical depression" (the alleged disease that Prozac allegedly cures, or helps people cope with. Lilly also began educating doctors and the public about "selective serotonin reuptake inhibition," the mechanism by which Prozac allegedly works. Sanofi-Aventis, the world's third-largest drug company, is pursuing a similar strategy as it awaits approval to market a drug called Acomplia to treat a condition called "metabolic syndrome." In recent years Sanofi has been educating doctors and the public about "metabolic syndrome" (high glucose levels, obesity, and other risk factors for diabetes) and Acomplia's mechanism of action, which involves blocking the body's own (endo-) cannabinoid system. [continues 1252 words]
"all he believes are his eyes, And his eyes just tell him lies..." -Bob Dylan The corporate media has created a totally false impression about the extent to which California's medical marijuana law has been implemented. They use a simple trick: show "how easy it is to get a card" and ignore the fact that relatively few people have done so, due to countervailing pressures. This Spring, Oakland's KTVU did a pseudo-expose along these lines, and in the ensuing months a reporter from every other station in the Bay Area has gone "undercover" into a doctor's office, described a medical problem (real or faked), gotten a letter of approval and then a card, taken it to a dispensary, and obtained marijuana. [continues 1082 words]
I met David Moore in the spring of 2000 at a UC San Francisco conference on cannabis therapeutics sponsored by G.W. Pharmaceuticals (the British company that is developing strains with differing cannabinoid ratios to achieve different medical effects). Moore, who was then in his early 40s, said he had a personal interest in medical marijuana and wanted to advance the cause. He had loved ones with AIDS and schizophrenia, and he was a medical user himself. I gathered that he had a background in business and that he had done time (marijuana-related, small-time). He played the bass. He seemed affable, calm and serious. [continues 1357 words]
Advocates for legalizing marijuana for medical use in Wisconsin are rallying support at this weekend's Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival for a bill they say is expected to be introduced by Rep. Gregg Underheim, R-Oshkosh. Underheim, who chairs the Assembly's Health Committee, said in June that after talking with cancer survivors while he was receiving treatment for prostate cancer, he planned to introduce legislation to allow limited use of medical marijuana when prescribed by a doctor. He could not be reached for comment on Saturday. [continues 626 words]
Marijuana use may confer health benefits by lowering overall body temperature, according to Tod Mikuriya, MD. It has been observed by his office staff -and confirmed anecdotally by colleagues-that people seeking physician approval to medicate with cannabis usually register body temperatures markedly below 98.6. Just as lower calorie consumption is associated with greater longevity, lower temperature could confer an advantage by slowing down metabolism! (Sometimes "great ideas" are simple and obvious. All history is the story of class struggle. In addition to our conscious thoughts we have unconscious thoughts that can be glimpsed in dreams...) Mikuriya writes in the new O'Shaughnessy's: [continues 1992 words]
Section 885(d) of the federal Controlled Substances Act entitles undercover police officers to obtain, handle, and sell illicit drugs. It states that "no civil or criminal liability shall be imposed" on any "authorized officer... who shall be lawfully engaged in the enforcement of any law or municipal ordinance relating to controlled substances." Section 885(d) applies to officers employed by cities, counties, and states, as well as to federal agents. After Prop 215 legalized the medical use of marijuana in California, an astute defense specialist named Amitai Schwartz suggested to Jeff Jones of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-op and his attorney, Robert Raich, that Section 885(d) might afford protection if the city officially endorsed distribution through the OCBC. Raich convinced the city council that 885(d) would apply if they deputized Jones to make the herb available to patients qualified to use it under California law. And so they did, by a unanimous vote on July 28, 1998. [continues 1262 words]
