Show Me the Facts

Via: I recently came across some Handspun Antique Hemp Nightgowns – I now know why Pot is illegal – Democratic Underground:

My fiancee deals in antiques & I help him on the side. I went to an estate sale & purchased a bunch of handspun cloth nightgowns from the 1820s/30s era. The woman at the sale was telling me about the process of how the woman made the cloth from hemp & showing me the beautiful tiny details of their work.

There was not a hole in ANY of the fifteen I purchased. They were thick & sturdy. I brought them home & gently washed them with some oxyclean & put a little fabric softner in with them. They came out white & beautiful.

I was awe-struck. I have always known, intectually, that hemp was suppossed to make great clothing & it has a million & one other uses as well. But, it wasn’t until I put my hands on these nearly 200 YEAR OLD pieces of fabric that I realized why industry would want to fight this plant. It lasts, if not forever, then for a couple of life-times or more. How on earth would they be able to generate profit, if we weren’t wearing holes in our Chinese factory made clothing every two weeks? And, of course, this is a plant that anyone could grow, it is a WEED. If it was used as fuel source (as I was told it would be a excellent use for…), how would they ever profiteer once the average person figured out how to make hemp oil, or each local community had a grower who would supply the fuel. Where would the oil billionaires be?

(Pictures after the break)

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From: Decriminalization is a Huge Success in Portugal | Stop the Drug War DRCNet:

On Friday, I had the opportunity to hear Glenn Greenwald speak at the Cato Institute regarding his Cato-sponsored report, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies. You can read the report here and Cato also has a downloadable MP3 of the event.

The back-story here is that Portugal implemented an across-the-board drug decriminalization policy back in 2001. There’s been very little discussion and research regarding its impact, hence Cato recruited Greenwald (a genius and extremely popular political blogger) to study Portuguese drug policy. His findings thoroughly illustrate the efficiency of decriminalization towards addressing key drug policy goals, while refuting the myth that removing harsh penalties will lead to increased consumption.

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Original post by Ron Paul is copied below, but can be found HERE.

End the War on Drugs

We have recently heard many shocking stories of brutal killings and ruthless violence related to drug cartels warring with Mexican and US officials. It is approaching the fever pitch of a full blown crisis. Unfortunately, the administration is not likely to waste this opportunity to further expand government. Hopefully, we can take a deep breath and look at history for the optimal way to deal with this dangerous situation, which is not unprecedented.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s brought similar violence, gangs, lawlessness, corruption and brutality. The reason for the violence was not that making and selling alcohol was inherently dangerous. The violence came about because of the creation of a brutal black market which also drove profits through the roof. These profits enabled criminals like Al Capone to become incredibly wealthy, and militantly defensive of that wealth. Al Capone saw the repeal of Prohibition as a great threat, and indeed smuggling operations and gangland violence fell apart after repeal. Today, picking up a bottle of wine for dinner is a relatively benign transaction, and beer trucks travel openly and peacefully along their distribution routes.

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While I had no real assumptions that Obama would completely legalize marijuana, I had hoped that a man in his position would respect something that he himself started (the interactive town hall). A few of the top questions posted to the White House’s website referred to legalization of marijuana; asking not only if the President would support legalization or not, but why he wouldn’t.

Obama took time to go over many of the top questions, yet when it came time to answer the most popular one:

“There was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation, and I don’t know what this says about the online audience ,” Mr.Obama said, drawing a laugh. He said he wanted to make sure the question got answered. “The answer is no, I don’t think that was a good strategy.”

(NY Times)

I personally don’t understand why he did not take it as a serious question and–even worse–seemed to alienate much of his audience by saying, “I don’t know what this says about the online audience”.

You know what it says, Obama? It says that the internet audience is curious why you will continue to allow corporate needs and greed outweigh the will of the people. Marijuana as a drug aside, Hemp is aboslutely, unquestionably a non-issue when it comes to the “health and safety” of the American public.

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A snippet from an article I came across today on CNN.com:

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it’s permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

Full article can be found here.

(Update regarding the school which released this “study” posted at the bottom of article.)

I really must admit that twitter is becoming more and more an asset to really get an idea of what type of fear mongering is popping up regarding Marijuana.

The newest “study” comes to us from Creighton University of Omaha, NE:

Marijuana, a commonly abused drug among high school and college students, is linked to a severe form of vomiting syndrome and compulsive bathing behavior. This form of severe vomiting sickness is increasingly recognized with widespread abuse of marijuana. The syndrome usually subsides with strict abstinence from marijuana abuse.

(ScienceDaily.com)

So is there really a risk of developing this horrible sounding sickness? Is there merit to this study? Should we all run and hide from the horrors of marijuana? Are these rhetoric questions doing a fine job at foreshadowing the article to come? Let’s take a moment to examine these claims.

The first step, just like in our dealings with the NIDA propaganda, is to de-filter and really look at the meat of the study which is being reported on. To do this, let’s take a look at the study’s abstract. It is a fairly straightforward peice of text, but let’s examine some of it in detail. First up, how about the introductory statement:

Cannabis is a common drug of abuse that is associated with various long-term and short-term adverse effects.

While I am no scientist, I know enough to understand that when you write an abstract for a study, it is not your job to make assumptions or claims outside the realm of your study which are not backed up by sound documentation, supplementary research, or just anything other than personal opinions.

The author clearly has a bias against marijuana, claiming not only that it is “abused” (yet failing to define or backup claims of said abuse), but that it is associated with “various long-term and short-term adverse effects.”

On what authority does the author base these claims on?

If we move on a bit more, we can see the scope and range of this study’s sample size… a single 22 year old male:

In this case report, we describe a twenty-two year-old-male with a history of chronic cannabis abuse presenting with recurrent vomiting, intense nausea and abdominal pain. In addition, the patient reported that the hot baths improved his symptoms during these episodes. Abstinence from cannabis led to resolution of the vomiting symptoms and abdominal pain.

In other words, this was a study of a man who had some sort of abnormal condition which caused him to have “severe vomiting” and abdominal cramps. Also, it just so happens that this man was a frequent marijuana user and upon abstaining from marijuana his symptoms were alleviated.

To a layman, it may appear that you can indeed blame the marijuana for this individual’s condition, however, science doesn’t rely on assumption, it relies on facts. One of the first things learned in a psychology or statistics class is correlation does not imply causation.

What this means is one possible scenario could be that marijuana directly caused this man’s condition, however, there are other possible causes as well, such as the possibility that the individual had a sensitive respiratory system and repeated inhalation of combusted material contributed to this type of nausea.

To be fair, there have been other studies done on Cannabinoid Hyperemesis (otherwise known as “Marijuana Morning Sickness”)… but it isn’t by any means proven or completely accepted in the medical world.

However, if it is an actual condition, is it a legitimate concern? That is a fair question; after all, this website is not about touting beliefs but rather reporting facts. In another study done on the condition, the doctor who carried out the study remarked that the illness was “reasonably rare” affecting perhaps 1% of all users.

Other doctors seem to disregard the condition as over presumptuous, claiming that the study was flawed:

The title of the paper, “Cannabinoid hyperemesis” is unduly presumptive. Some of these cases appeared to improve with abstinence and then relapsed when patients were “rechallenged” with cannabis, but neither the patients nor the authors appear to have been blinded in the rechallenge. The proposed biological explanation is weak.

We suggest that alternative explanations need to be sought for these cases. This syndrome should not be accepted as being caused by cannabis without additional reports and other evidence.

In short, there are billions of human beings on this earth and most of them fall within the average of the bell-curve of life. However, with any system there will be outliers who react differently than others to various situations and substances; this is just reality.

While Cannabis Hypermesis may indeed exist, it appears to exist on a very small scale. Small enough that despite the millions upon millions of marijuana users, scientists must cherry-pick test subjects in order to find those “suffering” from ailments believed to be initiated by cannabis use.

I completely support more research into this area, however, at the moment it is simply not something worth worrying about, nor is it worth headlines.

Update: Thanks to Digg.com user fandyllic, apparently it is worth noting and considering the Creighton University’s reputation before allowing their research to weigh heavily on your opinions:

“The environment is really conservative, and for someone with more liberal views, it can be really difficult here.”

“There are a lot of people here who don’t really care about their academics. They’re just here to party and skate on through.”

Apparently a woman who worked as a police dispatcher in Illinois was fired after she bought marijuana for her aunt who is a victim of breast cancer.

I am not posting this to argue the merits of her being fired… after all, she knew the risks (or should have) when she bought the marijuana. God bless her for taking those risks to help her Aunt, and it is a shame that she got caught (although, I am not clear on whether or not she was “caught” or if she just admitted to doing it when asked… kind of hard to beleive she just randomly confessed).

Aside from the dozen or so articles showing marijuana to be an amazing treatment for breast cancer, it appears that there is a no-tolerance policy–which is expected–at her department.

But still, firing a woman for buying such a small amount of marijuana to help her sick aunt? According to the article it was enough to make 3 joints, which would be about 3 grams worth of marijuana.

Is there anyone reading this who beleives it is worth it to fire someone over something like this? I would love to hear from you.

Why Stephen Baldwin is put into any type of authoritative position when it comes to marijuana, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is Ron Paul does an excellent job at logically debunking Baldwin’s fallacious claims.

I will definitely make sure to personally address the various claims made by Baldwin, but to be honest, Paul said it better than I ever could have.