by Jill Ettinger
 

 
A document signed by more than 50 civil society organizations (CSOs) is asking the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development scheduled to take place in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012, to ban the use of genetically modified foods.
2012 will mark 20 years since the last Rio Earth Summit, and the planet is worse for the wear, cites the document, stating that environmental, energy and financial issues are all at critical crisis levels. And the excessive financial burdens purchasing GMO seeds has on the world’s poor, in addition to the damaging health and environmental effects of biotechnology, makes the proposed ban a top priority for the world, cites the CSO-hub website, timetoactrio20.org.
Despite biotech companies’ promises of increased crop yields, drought and pest resistant seeds that can relieve the world’s hungry, genetically modified foods have yet to fulfill those promises. Pesticide resistant “superweeds” and insects are on the rise causing more use of the Monsanto pesticide, Roundup, which is now being found in ground and rain water. Farmers, including the planet’s poorest, are spending more money than ever before on buying Roundup Ready GMO terminator seeds instead of traditional and economical methods of saving seeds from each crop season.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.organicauthority.com/blog/organic/are-monsantos-day-numbered-50-organizations-urging-international-ban-on-gmos/

by Norm Stamper – 34-year veteran police officer who retired as Seattle’s chief of police in 2000
 
Ken Burns’ new documentary on alcohol prohibition, premiering on PBS this week, reportedly begins with a Mark Twain quote: “It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.”
As a retired police officer who worked to enforce today’s prohibition — the “war on drugs” — I think it’s a lesson we would do well to remember.
It was the prohibition of alcohol that made it so valuable to criminals, providing the tax-free dollars that turned neighborhood street gangs into national crime syndicates headed by the likes of Al Capone and Charles (“Lucky”) Luciano.
Prohibition did little to curb liquor consumption, particularly among young people. Moreover, as otherwise law-abiding citizens were suddenly deemed criminals, the resulting hypocrisy significantly undermined respect for authority.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/ken-burns-prohibition-pro_b_993015.html

By Katerina Gribkoff ‘12, News Writer   
 
For 10,000 years, people have been smoking cannabis: it’s only been illegal for the past 100. But tobacco is the number one killer in America, beating out aids, heroine, alcohol, coke, car accidents, fires, and murders, combined. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists that cigarettes claim over 400,000 lives per year, and alcohol follows with 80,000. Even too much caffeine can help kill up to 10,000 a year, while common pain medicine kills 7,000, according to filmmaker Brett Harvey in the documentary, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. Surprising, isn’t it? So how many deaths are caused by marijuana use each year? Hundreds? Thousands?
How about none?
Not a single death has ever been attributed to smoking marijuana, according to Dr. Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School and Daniel Denoon of WebMD, but not many people know that. Just as not many people know that smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer, though cigarettes remain the number one cause of cancer today and are sold at pretty much every gas station in America. According to COED magazine, marijuana has actually been proven to have health benefits, relieving symptoms of PMS and migraines, and helping treatment of glaucoma, tumors, and ADD/ADHD. Biochemist Dr. Hornby tells us in The Union: The Business Behind Getting High that for marijuana to kill, someone would have to smoke about 15,000 joints in 20 minutes. That’s quite a challenge.
 
Read complete article here:
http://thenews.choate.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1010%3Aim-sorry-what-health-dangers&catid=3%3Aopinion&Itemid=2

Obtaining weed from the government? That’s a lot harder.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its kind study to test whether marijuana can ease the nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks common in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But now another branch of the federal government has stymied the study. The Health and Human Services Department is refusing to sell government-grown marijuana to the nonprofit group proposing the research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/52668614-68/marijuana-drug-veterans-doblin.html.csp

New animal experiments show that a marijuana extract called ‘Cannabidiol’ could help prevent painful neuropathy in patients receiving the chemotherapy drug Paclitaxel.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.medindia.net/news/Nerve-Pain-After-Chemotherapy-may-be-Prevented-by-Marijuana-Extract-91183-1.htm#ixzz1ZUaQVgOr

By Phillip Smith
 
In a memo released last week, the US Department of Justice has notified federal firearms dealers that medical marijuana patients are “addicts” or “unlawful drug users” who cannot legally own weapons or ammunition. A medical marijuana registration card is proof enough to deny a weapons sale, the memo said. That has medical marijuana advocates crying foul, but national gun rights groups — not so much.
 
Read complete article here:
http://cannabis.hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/09/29/atf-says-no-guns-for-medical-marijuana-patients-feature/

FERNDALE (WWJ) – A Ferndale man claims he’s found a cure for his cancer and it’s now legal in Michigan.
WWJ’s Sandra McNeill spoke with Michael McShane who claims he’s been using a topical oil made from medical marijuana on the skin cancer on his forehead and in just over two months it’s nearly gone.
“I’ve got biopsies, chart notes, photographs … in about three weeks I’m going to go back  and really wrap this part of the case up,” said McShane. “It’s made the same way a lot of the fragrances and perfumes are made, and the oil is applied, in my case, directly to the skin, and within 10 weeks my cancer is gone.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/08/29/skin-cancer-patient-says-oil-from-medical-marijuana-is-a-cure/#photo-1

 
A new internal operations memo from New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly orders officers to stop arresting people carrying small amounts of marijuana, as long as it’s not out in the open. Under New York law, pot possession up to 25 grams is a criminal offense only if it is being burned or in plain view; whereas, if the drug is concealed, the violation is simply a ticketable offense. Kelly’s note this week reminds officers that if they take out the drugs during a search or demand that someone empty their pockets, it should not result in an arrest.
 
Read complete article here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/nypd_told_to_stop_arresting_pe.html

 
Russia may soon authorize the cultivation of hemp – otherwise known as cannabis sativa – for agricultural and industrial needs, Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service said on Friday.
On September 28, the country’s State Anti-drug Committee will decide whether to allow the cultivation of hemp, currently prohibited in Russia.
Russia was a world leading producer of hemp, used as a source of oil, food, fibers, housing and industrial materials, until 1961 when the Soviet Union ratified the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which declared cannabis – along with heroin – a highly toxic narcotic.
Russia is currently one of the world’s biggest importers of hemp fibers and oil, the country’s drug control watchdog said in a statement.
 
Read complete article here:
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20110923/167070332.html

By Nick Schou
 
Why Joe Byron and Joe Grumbine, the operators of two shuttered cannabis clubs in Long Beach as well as Garden Grove‘s Unit D collective, were ever charged for selling marijuana in the first place is a mystery. After all, Long Beach not only does not have any laws banning marijuana clubs in the city, but it actually has an ordinance allowing them to operate, which is why there are now numerous clubs that, for a tidy $15,000 permit fee, are currently doing exactly the same thing that Byron and Grumbine now face prison time for doing: selling weed to patients qualified to smoke the stuff under state law.
But yesterday, this weird case got even more bizarre when Long Beach Superior Court Judge Charles D. Sheldon ruled that Byron and Grumbine could not wage a so-called “affirmative defense,” meaning that jurors will have no choice but to view them as regular drug dealers rather than medical marijuana purveyors who were arguably carrying out the law rather than breaking it.
 
Read complete article here:
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/09/joe_grumbine_and_joe_byron_den.php