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For Immediate Release:
January 14th, 2020
CDC DATA: Over 130 Cases of Vaping Illness Victims Purchased Products Exclusively From \”Commercial Sources\”
(Alexandria, VA) – Today, in a massive release of data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), it has been confirmed that out of 809 patients reporting data on the source of the marijuana products use prior to becoming sick, 131 reported purchasing products exclusively from commercial sources.
What’s more, 627 reported products from “informal sources” such as friends, family, in-person, or online dealers. Given that it is a common issue for “legal” products to be purchased at dispensaries and redirected to the illicit market, the number of illnesses linked to \’legal\’ products could be much higher.
“The data are clear on two fronts: \’legal,\’ licensed products cannot be conclusively stated as safe — as Big Marijuana’s lobbyists have so desperately tried to do — and legalization has only served to make the underground market more dangerous,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration. “The significance of this data release cannot be understated.”
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About SAM – Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) is the nation\’s leading nonpartisan, non-profit public health alliance of concerned citizens and professionals who oppose marijuana legalization and support science-backed marijuana policies. SAM and its 30+ state affiliates have successfully prevented marijuana legalization in dozens of state legislatures and at the ballot box.
Guided by a Scientific Advisory Board of scientists from Harvard, Princeton, and University of Colorado, SAM educates the public on cutting edge science: marijuana is harmful, addictive, and legalization creates social injustice and expands illicit market activity.
For more information about marijuana use and its effects, visit www.learnaboutsam.org.
Media Contact:
Colton Grace
(864) 492-6719
[email protected]
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Denefield school pupils fall ill after eating cannabis cakes
December 2019
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The pupils ate cakes, not the one pictured, which contained \”cannabis or a cannabis-related product\”
Six children were taken to hospital and others had to be treated by paramedics after eating cakes laced with cannabis at a school.
The pupils, all aged 14, were taken ill at Denefield School in Tilehurst, near Reading, on Friday.
A student had taken the cakes onto the school premises and handed them to a \”small number of friends\”, West Berkshire Council said.
It added a pupil had been permanently excluded as a result of the incident.
The local authority said the students were treated at the school\’s first aid facility and then by paramedics before six of them were \”admitted to hospital as a precaution\”.
It said the \”adulterated\” baked goods had contained \”cannabis or a cannabis-related product\” and the incident had left the secondary school\’s staff \”deeply concerned by this isolated and unprecedented incident\”.
\’Committed to student welfare\’
For more go to https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-50814056
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We are grateful for your continued support in the fight against Big Marijuana. Today, and every day, we are thankful for the dozens of states where families sleep at ease knowing their state rejected commercialized marijuana and its consequences thanks in large part to your support!
My Son Was Addicted to Pot Vaping. Now, Congress Wants to Aid the Industry.
please click here to read
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this timely op-ed by Tiffany Davidson, founder of Moms Against Marijuana Addiction, on how the \”VAPE\” Banking Act will drastically impact marijuana addiction.
This needs to be shared far and wide.
Following up on her testimony about the consequences of marijuana addiction in her own family, Davidson blasts the industry for its attempts to push marijuana commercialization through Congress.
Be sure to share to your social media pages to spread the word about marijuana addiction.
S.A.M – Team
Pharmacists warning over safety of cannabis oil products, amid concern some contain illegal high inducing chemical
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DECEMBER 2019
Pharmacists have been told to check the safety of their cannabis oil products, amid concerns that some may contain illegal high-inducing chemicals.
As the market for cannabis derived products has grown rapidly in recent years, fears have been raised that some are being mislabelled and that users may unknowingly be ingesting illegal drugs.
Non-medicinal legal CBD products are available at many high street retailers but are classed as food supplements, rather than medicinal products because they should not contain the illegal psychoactive cannabinoid THC.
Despite current restrictions on marketing, the range of medicinal benefits claimed for CBD includes pain relief, overcoming insomnia and managing anxiety and stress.
Research carried out earlier this year analysed 30 products on sale in the UK in an attempt to verify their contents, and almost two thirds contained less than 90 per cent of the declared CBD ingredient. Some products contained more.
Worryingly, some 45 per cent had measurable levels of THC, making them technically illegal in the UK.
For more go to UK Telegraph
If that’s not enough?
The Online CBD Industry Unmasked
Hard Truths About Today\’s CBD Products, Websites, and Financial Activity Potency Gaps, Carcinogens, High Heavy Metal Levels – LegitScript Study Reveals Even More
LegitScript reviewed hundreds of CBD websites for regulatory compliance, tested dozens of products for potency and safety, and investigated financial activity behind the transactions.
A peek at just some of the findings revealed:
– 67% of tested CBD products had massive potency deviations
– 7% of tested CBD products contained harmful heavy metals or solvents
– 98% of surveyed CBD merchants were operating out of compliance
Download the full 40-page report today to get all the details, including types of noncompliance, actual potency amounts, and high-risk financial activity happening behind-the-scenes. Check it all out here
LIES AND PROPAGANDA DESIGNED TO GET FULL MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION
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These claims aren’t based on fact, but they’re propaganda points commonly used to get public support for legalization.
- Marijuana needs to be rescheduled in order to explore its medical properties. (The National Academy of Medicine Report of 2017 considered at 10,000 scientific abstracts to reach 100 conclusions. There’s no shortage of research studies on marijuana.)
- Marijuana is safer than alcohol. (The risks of marijuana use are somewhat different from those of alcohol. Seth Leibsohn’s article, When a Lie Travels, demonstrates why it’s inappropriate to compare these two substances. Both are dangerous, but marijuana is far more toxic to the brain than alcohol. Keeping marijuana illegal keeps usage down which is a form of “harm reduction.”)
Strangely, pot advocates often talk about the dangers of alcohol as a reason to legalize marijuana.
- Legalization is “inevitable.” (In 2009, nine state legislatures rejected the legalization and commercialization of marijuana.)
- Millions of people are in jail for possessing small amounts of marijuana. (The number of people in federal and state prisons for minor marijuana infractions is less than 1%. There is truth to the claim that blacks and Hispanics are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system. True before and after legalization, this issue cannot be resolved by legalization and it isn’t limited to drug policy.)
Not good substitute for opioids
- Marijuana can be used to replace opioids and solve the current opioid addiction crisis. (No, any marijuana use primes the brain for more addiction, especially in youth. Pain patients who also use marijuana are less likely to get off opioids.)
- The black market goes away when states legalize marijuana. (Black markets increase after legalization, and even in-state buyers continue to buy on the black market.)
- Legalizing marijuana frees police to concentrate on more serious crimes. (FBI data from the first four states to legalize, Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon, shows that crime increases significantly after legalization. Those four states had about 450 murders and 30,300 aggravated assaults in 2013. In 2018, they had almost 620 murders and 38,000 aggravated assaults–an increase of 37 percent for murders and 25 percent for aggravated assaults, far greater than the national increase.
- Regulation works. (Despite the fact that states have costly regulatory bodies, much dispensary marijuana is tainted with mold, fungus and pesticides. Some of the vaping illnesses and deaths can be traced to legal, regulated marijuana stores. In other words, it’s not only bootleg marijuana vapes that are causing deaths.)
Not a tax windfall
- Legalized marijuana brings billions of tax dollars into the states that have legalized. (In all the states that have legalized, marijuana tax money represents less than 1% of state revenue. We don’t have detailed analysis of the social costs: crashes, traffic deaths, butane hash oil explosions, mental health and emergency room costs related to cannabis.) States that have legalized faced a huge increase in homelessness.
- People do not drive better under the influence of marijuana, as pot advocates claim. (Traffic deaths rose in the first states to legalize marijuana. Although data is preliminary, insurance company statistics suggest this outcome, too. Mixing marijuana and alcohol, and multi-drug impairment is a rising problem that coincides with marijuana legalization. Drugged driving surpassed drunk driving as a cause of traffic deaths a few years ago. Marijuana is the number one drug associated with drugged driving.)
- Marijuana isn’t addictive. (Roughly 30% of regular marijuana users in the US are classified as having a cannabis use disorder, versus 10-20% of alcohol users. A study from UC Davis found that adults dependent on cannabis had more financial and social problems than those dependent on alcohol. Addiction studies show that 9% of adult users and 17% of those who begin pot use as adolescents become addicted. These statistics come from the last century and don’t account for today’s high potency cannabis.)
The most devious lie
- Marijuana never killed anyone. The most pernicious lie is that marijuana never killed anyone, which advocates repeat because marijuana doesn’t cause overdose deaths by crossing the blood-brain barrier. (In addition to those killed by marijuana-impaired drivers, we have a long list of those whose marijuana use caused mental illness and led to other drugs or suicide. Young people have also died from cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, heart arrhythmia and from vaping marijuana. Not to mention when people do foolish and stupid things when under the influence, causing accidental death.)
When asked in polls, about 65% of the people claim to favor legalization, but these polls don’t ask about decriminalization. When polls ask about decriminalization, the answers change.
The Drug Policy Alliance, an organization at the forefront of drug policy reform, pushes for the legalization of all drugs.
For complete story to Proactive and Protective Parents Opposed to Pot
Toward Healthy Drug Policy in the United States – The Case of Safehouse
In finding an overdose-prevention site to be a legitimate public health measure, he relied on the consistent scientific evidence that such facilities have both therapeutic value for participants and public health benefits. This respect for international evidence was striking, given how great a barrier the CSA has been to applying health services innovations and research findings from peer countries in the United States.
The judge’s next step was to reject the U.S. attorney’s restrictive interpretation of the law. McHugh started by observing that “no credible argument can be made that facilities such as safe injection sites were within the contemplation of Congress either when it adopted § 856(a) in 1986, or when it amended the statute in 2003.” Adopting a conservative approach to statutory interpretation, McHugh was disinclined to stretch the law to prohibit an activity that Congress had not considered. He used the rest of his opinion to consider whether the statute’s language was even applicable to Safehouse.
Dalgarno Institute Comment:
Safe and Drug Use Consumption – The misappropriated nomenclature
The lens for both investigation and interpretation for drug use \’management\’, must have demand, supply and harm reduction filters, not simply the latter.
The continuing growth in the misuse of harm reduction only vehicles that end up endorsing, empowering, equipping or enabling ongoing drug use (thus both undermining the two other vital pillars of harm minimization – being Supply and Demand Reduction) is not simply an emerging phenomena, but a now entrenched one.
All harm reduction vehicles, whether pharmacotherapy or consumption mechanisms such as injecting rooms and needle/syringe programs, MUST have a sunset clause on them to be an effective drug policy tool. The exiting of the harm causing enterprise of drug use IS supposed to be the goal of harm reduction, not the continuation of it, and particularly at the expense of the non-drug using public.
There is no argument that more needs to be done, but it is the effective and uncompromising collaboration of all three pillars of Harm Minimization that will see the change needed. However, as long as harm reduction ONLY mechanisms are used to \’re-interpret\’ drug policy and implementation, then cessation of drug use is perpetually sabotaged, and harms grow!
For complete article https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1913448?query=TOC
See also
Needle & Syringe Program – An Australian Overview
Dealing With Addiction – Research Report
Charges against man who killed Jewish kindergarten teacher while chanting verses from the Koran are DROPPED after it is ruled he suffered a psychotic episode by smoking cannabis
- Kobili Traore, 29, believed to have tortured Sarah Halimi in her Paris flat in 2017
- Mali immigrant shoved the 65-year-old mother from eleventh arrondissement
- He has admitted killing her but claimed he was not aware of his actions at time
- And the senior procureur général said that the killer should be sent to hospital
Traore confessed to the murder of Halimi at her Paris apartment (stock image). Psychiatric examinations of the defendant, who claims to smoke up to 15 joints per day, found his mental functioning was impaired due to his cannabis intake
The Mali immigrant then shoved the 65-year-old mother-of-three from the eleventh arrondissement building before reportedly yelling: \’I\’ve killed the Shaitan (devil)!\’
Psychiatric examinations of the defendant, who claims to smoke up to 15 joints per day, found his mental functioning was impaired due to his cannabis intake.
Although three assessments determined Traore\’s long-term drug habit had not inflicted him with mental illness, their verdicts differed insofar as his mental capacity during the killing.
(These continuing and growing behaviours are what generate stigma for the drug user, and rightly so! The pro-drug lobby continue to ignore or playdown these shocking and disturbing behaviours as they promote the ‘don’t label me, I have sickness that I will continue to grow by failing to be accountable for my actions or stopping drug use!’)
For complete article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7739949/Charges-against-man-killed-Jewish-kindergarten-teacher-chanting-Koran-DROPPED.html
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