Nelson D. Schwartz
Tuesday, 25 Jul 2017 | 11:53 AM ETThe New York Times
![\"Economy](\"https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2017/07/25/104608228-3ED5-BL-DrugTests-072517.600x400.jpg?v=1501008910\" "\\"Economy")
Just a few miles from where President Trump will address his blue-collar base here Tuesday night, exactly the kind of middle-class factory jobs he has vowed to bring back from overseas are going begging.
It\’s not that local workers lack the skills for these positions, many of which do not even require a high school diploma but pay $15 to $25 an hour and offer full benefits. Rather, the problem is that too many applicants – nearly half, in some cases – fail a drug test.
The fallout is not limited to the workers or their immediate families. Each quarter, Columbiana Boiler, a local company, forgoes roughly $200,000 worth of orders for its galvanized containers and kettles because of the manpower shortage, it says, with foreign rivals picking up the slack. For complete article https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/economy-needs-workers-but-drug-tests-take-a-toll.html?__source=Facebook
New Brunswick Medical Society launches campaign cautioning against marijuana use
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The Canadian Press July 24, 2017
FREDERICTON – The president of the New Brunswick Medical Society issued a warning Monday that the coming legalization of marijuana in Canada doesn’t mean that it is safe and the public needs to know the risks of consuming pot.
“There’s somewhat of a normalization around marijuana use and I think some of the public really don’t understand there are significant health concerns associated with marijuana use,” Dr. Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck said Monday.
The medical society is launching a public education campaign on the health risks associated with marijuana consumption, ahead of Ottawa’s commitment to make pot legal across Canada by July 2018.
Murphy-Kaulbeck said too often governments only look at the financial gains without looking at the long-term impact.
“It’s very much like smoking or alcohol – you have your tax and your revenue from that, but down the road there’s great cost that comes with treating all the effects that come from these substances,” she said.
She said the health risks inherent with the use of marijuana are clear, particularly for people under the age of 25, and include addiction, worsening of substance abuse and attention deficits.
“Marijuana use up to that point does have the potential to affect brain development. As well, the research does show the use of marijuana can be related in young people to psychiatric disorders,” she said.
The society has created a new web site – http://www.LegalNotSafe.ca – to highlight the various health impacts associated with marijuana consumption.
The 2017 Drug Strategy
The seven year itch
After seven years, England finally (published on 13 July 2017) has a new Drug Strategy simply, if somewhat strangely entitled “2017 Drug Strategy”. Although some parts of the strategy apply to other parts of Great Britain, the healthcare, education, housing and social care strategies apply only to England and the criminal justice ones only to England and Wales.
The strategy is similar to many of its predecessors and announces no new radical change of direction despite an international growth in opposition to the war in drugs over the last decade with a growing number of countries who have either legalised or are planning to legalise at least cannabis use in some form or other.
Despite calls for drugs to be treated primarily as a health issue, the Home Office retains ownership of the drug strategy and will chair a newmulti-departmental Drug Strategy Board. The strategy says that a new national Recovery Champion will be introduced (which I guess, is the 2017 term for Drug Czar) who will sit on the board with a remit to:
- provide a national leadership role around key aspects of the recovery agenda that support sustained recovery, in partnership with PHE;
- support collaboration between local authorities, public employment services and the Health and Work Programme, housing, criminal justice agencies, and other partners;
- seek to address the stigma faced by people with drug or alcohol dependency issues; and
- act as a ministerial envoy visiting different communities, providers and local recovery champions.
For complete article http://www.russellwebster.com/2017-drug-strategy/
Marijuana use linked to poorer school performance, major new research reveals
Teenagers who started smoking cannabis regularly were likely to be dissuaded from going on to university, despite previous ambitions
Rachael Pells Education Correspondent@rachaelpells Thursday 11 May 2017 11:15 BST
![\"weed.jpg\"](\"https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2017/05/11/12/weed.jpg\" "\\"weed.jpg\\"")
As many teenagers smoke cannabis as tobacco in Canada, according to researchers Getty
It\’s Time to Hold a SAM Boot Camp!Now that the legislative session is over, it\’s time to start training to continue to beat Big Marijuana and the threat that this industry poses to our kids and communities! We beat pot legalization in every state in 2017 but it\’s time to refresh and learn about new strategies to have another successful 2018!
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Movers and shakers behind “medical” marijuana use the term “compassion” as a marketing scheme. To avoid FDA scrutiny, they devised a scam, recorded on videotapes, to bring about full legalization. Perhaps they’re pushing new “medicinal” uses for hallucinogenic drugs for similar reasons.
Ethan Nadelmann, formerly executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, explained the underlying plan on Reddit. “Michael Pollan’s forthcoming book on psychedelics and medicine will take media interest to yet another level. The more people know about this, the faster psychedelics will be legally accepted as medicines.” Nadelmann engages his followers with wishful thinking. In a TED talk, he said: “Our desire to alter our consciousness may be as fundamental as our desire for food, companionship, and sex.”
When Pollan has spoken to the press, he mentions psychedelics as “palliative” care in people facing the end of life. It sounds familiar, because the pot lobbyists initially promoted medical marijuana for end-of-life care. In reality, it’s mostly young men with pain who use “medical” marijuana, not the cancer and AIDs patients for whom it was intended. More recently pot advocates promote it to treat psychiatric disorders.
For complete article
FOODIES, DON’T BE FOOLED IF MICHAEL POLLAN WRITES ABOUT PSYCHEDELICS
Young Canadians targeted in new Liberal ads warning of the risks of cannabis behind the wheel
By Dean Beeby, CBC News Posted: July 06, 2017
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The Liberal government is planning a $2-million ad campaign targeting Canadians ages 16 to 24, to dispel the myth that cannabis does not impair driving. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
The Liberal government is preparing an ad campaign especially targeting young Canadians who think that driving under the influence of marijuana is acceptable.
Public Safety Canada is looking for a creative agency to produce spots for the $1.9-million campaign, to be rolled out before recreational cannabis becomes legal next summer.
The ads also aim to \”reduce [the] percentage of Canadians that say they would be likely to accept a ride from someone under the influence of marijuana.\” For more http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cannabis-marijuana-legalization-driving-impaired-1.4191409
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Marijuana club operator Marco Algorta is seen growing a strain known as \”Colombian Red\” in a rooftop greenhouse on June 22 in Montevideo, Uruguay, the world\’s first nation to fully legalize cannabis. (Nick Miroff/The Washington Post)
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – In coming weeks, cannabis-seeking citizens in this small South American nation will be able to walk into a pharmacy and buy government-approved marijuana for the state-mandated price of $1.30 a gram. No questions asked. No doctor’s note required.
If that sounds like an attempt to create a stoner republic on the South Atlantic, would-be tourists should know a few things.
Uruguay is the world’s first country to fully legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana. But under its strict rules, there will be no Amsterdam-style smoking cafes, and foreigners won’t have access to the national stash.
Nor will there be shops selling ganja candies, psychedelic pastries or any of the other edible derivatives offered in pot-permissive U.S. states such as Colorado and Washington, where entrepreneurial capitalism fertilizes the United States’ incipient marijuana industry.