Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is basically an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce apprehension, fear, uneasiness or worry by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety. Unnecessary repetition of activities such as washing, cleaning, and hoarding during the day or being preoccupied with thoughts of coitus, violence, and religious ideologies as well as disgust of specific numbers are the main hints of a person suffering from OCD.
Treatment
OCD is a treatable disease. With adequate therapy and correct counseling by experienced psychiatrist and physicians, the intensity of the disease can be decreased in little time. Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder are now easily available, and fresh researches are yielding new and improved therapies that can help people with OCD and other anxiety disorders lead productive, fulfilling lives.
Some doctors even say that Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) can also help in eliminating the disease. Dr. Breen of Southern California insisted that he has been successful in treating two patients with OCD via medical Marijuana. He shared, “Today I had two patients who have been successfully treating their symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder with medical marijuana. One was a 46-year-old man whose symptoms are primarily having ‘to check things all the time.’ He explained having to walk back to his car all the time to check his door locks etc. The second was an 18-year-old male who had the compulsion to try and touch the ceiling in a room. In both cases their symptoms were disruptive to their daily lives.
Amazingly both had been using cannabis with god results to control their symptoms.”
Read complete article here:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9506003-ocd-can-be-treated-with-medical-marijuana-cannabis

By Tafline Laylin

Read more: Hemp House: South Africa’s Most Sustainable Home Made From An “Illegal Narcotic” | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World

Substances harvested from cannabis plants could soon outshine conventional antibiotics in the escalating battle against drug-resistant bacteria. The compounds, called cannabinoids, appear to be unaffected by the mechanism that superbugs like MRSA use to evade existing antibiotics. Scientists from Italy and the United Kingdom, who published their research in the Journal of Natural Products last month, say that cannabis-based creams could also be developed to treat persistent skin infections.
Cannabis has long been known to have antibacterial properties and was studied in the 1950s as a treatment for tuberculosis and other diseases. But research into using cannabis as an antibiotic has been limited by poor knowledge of the plant’s active ingredients and by the controversy surrounding its use as a recreational drug.
Now Giovanni Appendino of the Piemonte Orientale University, in Italy, and Simon Gibbons of the School of Pharmacy at the University of London, U.K., have revisited the antibiotic power of marijuana by systematically testing different cannabinoids’ ability to kill MRSA.
MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a bacterium that can cause difficult-to-treat infections since it does not respond to many antibiotics. Many healthy people carry S. aureus on their skin, but problems arise when multi-drug-resistant strains infect people with weak immune systems through an open wound. In the worst cases, the bug spreads throughout the body, causing a life-threatening infection.
To make matters worse, resistance to antibiotics is rapidly increasing, and some strains are now even immune to vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic that is normally used only as a last resort when other drugs fail.
But when Appendino, Gibbons, and their colleagues applied extracts from five major cannabinoids to bacterial cultures of six strains of MRSA, they discovered that the cannabinoids were as effective at killing the bugs as vancomycin and other antibiotics.
“The cannabinoids even showed exceptional activity against the MRSA strain that makes extra amounts of the proteins that give the bugs resistance against many antibiotics,” says Gibbons. These proteins, he explains, allow the bacteria to “hoover up unwanted things from inside the cell and spit them out again.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5787866&page=1

By Sian Herbert

Thousands took to the streets across Brazil recently in the country’s second “March for Freedom”, which saw a colourful collective of organisations protest together for the right to free speech, freedom of choice and, some, for the legalisation of marijuana. The mood was a mix of protest and celebration, in an event that marks a pivotal moment in the struggle for liberal values in Brazil.
Read complete article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/26/brazil-marijuana-march-drugs

Hemp Shield Deck Sealer Intro

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Gov. Paul LePage has signed into law a bill that’s aimed at protecting the privacy of medical marijuana patients.
The governor signed Rep. Deb Sanderson‘s bill in his office Friday morning. The Chelsea Republican’s bill changes Maine’s medical marijuana law to ensure access and clarify and enhance law enforcement protections for patients, caregivers, doctors and dispensary employees.

The following is a full, unedited statement issued Wednesday by ACLU of Washington director Kathleen Taylor:
The ACLU of Washington hails the initiative campaign being launched by New Approach Washington. Our current marijuana laws are ineffective, unreasonable, and unfairly enforced. They have done much damage to civil liberties – eroding protections against unwarranted searches and seizures by government, putting large numbers of non-violent individuals behind bars, and being enforced disproportionately against communities of color.
It is time for Washington to address this reality and to take a new approach. The initiative is comprehensive and carefully drawn. The initiative calls for Washington to treat marijuana essentially the way we currently treat hard alcohol – with clear distribution and use restrictions – and to earmark a portion of the state’s revenues for drug education and prevention programs. Further, its passage can help lead to much-needed change at the federal level.
The ACLU-WA is providing strategic support to New Approach Washington, and, as an in-kind donation, our Drug Policy Director Alison Holcomb is serving as campaign director.
http://www.kirotv.com/news/28323030/detail.html

Steves and former U.S. Attorney John McKay are part of a group launching an initiative that would legalize marijuana in Washington state.

By Heidi Dietrich

Travel guide and Edmonds resident Rick Steves has teamed up with former U.S. Attorney John McKay, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington to campaign for an initiative that would legalize marijuana in Washington state.
The initiative would allow people older than 21 to purchase a limited amount of marijuana. The state Liquor Control Board would have the authority to regulate and tax the drug. Initiative backers estimate marijuana taxes would bring the state $215 million a year.
Read complete article here:
http://edmonds.patch.com/articles/rick-steves-and-former-us-attorney-lead-effort-to-legalize-pot

by Samantha McCann

Marcy Dolin, of Rohnert Park, California, smokes eight joints (marijuana cigarettes) every day, and eats a marijuana cookie before he goes to bed every night.  He prefers the peanut-butter cookies.

A 71-year-old man who has struggled with multiple-sclerosis for over half his life, Dolin is not the typical drug user often parodied in popular culture.  He does not smoke recreationally, but rather because marijuana is the only thing that takes away the pain and stops the muscles spasms.

“I would be living on morphine and other horrible drugs.  I couldn’t do that to my family,” he recently told The New York Times, “That’s no life, and I would have ended it. That’s the truth.”

Dolin is not alone.  Across the United States, people struggling with chronic illness increasingly are questioning US policy toward marijuana, a homeopathic substance that until 1937 was, for the most part, legal nd regulated.  Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the “war on drugs.”   And what do we have as a result?

Hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in the midst of a fragile economy, the financial and social cost of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of offenders annually, and patients like Dolin who continue to suffer due to our failed policies.   When compared to other drugs, recent clinical trials have shown that marijuana is exceedingly successful in relieving pain, without the serious side-effects that often plague users of other medications.

“I used to take a drug called Neurontin, and I just never stopped crying,” Dolin continues.  “I was in a fog, totally depressed. I told my doctor that I was going back to just marijuana; he said he would have me arrested if he could. What are they going to do?  I’m 71 years old. Are they going to put me in jail? I’m not hurting anybody. It’s just here in my own house.”

Debilitating pain in the nervous system can be caused by cancer, HIV/Aids, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes; this pain can also be a side-effect of the recommended treatments for these various conditions.  About a third of patients with HIV/Aids suffer from this excruciating pain in their nervous system – much of it a response to the antiretroviral therapy that is the initial treatment for HIV patients.  Yet there is no adequate approved treatment to mitigate the pain.  As a result, some patients reduce or discontinue treatment because they can neither tolerate nor eliminate the debilitating side-effects. Marijuana has been proven to alleviate the effects of both the illness itself, and the prescribed medication used to treat it.

Read complete article here:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151377/hemp_hero%3A_how_marijuana_could_save_the_economy