By Jacob Sullum

Next Thursday I am scheduled to debate Robert White, co-author (with Bill Bennett) of Going to Pot: Why the Rush to Legalize Marijuana Is Harming America, on Glenn Beck’s radio show. Each of us will get half an hour or so to make his case before taking questions from Beck and each other. Here is what I plan to say:

Marijuana Prohibition Is Unscientific

Technology has already transformed the social fabric of life in the twenty-first century. It is now poised to profoundly influence disease management and healthcare. Beyond the hype of the 'mobile health' and 'wearable technology' movement, the ability to monitor our bodies and continuously gather data about human biology suggests new possibilities for both biomedical research and clinical practice. Just as the Human Genome Project ushered in the age of high-throughput genotyping, the ability to automate, continuously record, analyze and share standardized physiological and biological data augurs the beginning of a new era—that of high-throughput human phenotyping.

Over the past couple of years, attitudes towards cannabis have been changing – especially in the US. Colorado and Washington were the first two states to legalise the drug and extensive medical marijuana schemes exist in California. Now that you can buy the drug from your local chemist as opposed to a dark alley or shady street corner, you’d probably expect the product to be more thoroughly tested and safer. However, alarming research indicates that this might not be the case.

The Government intends to pull out all the stops to make Jamaica a world leader on the medical uses of marijuana.

Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Phillip Paulwell said marijuana is one of the most researched herbs, and evidence is pointing to a significant number of medical benefits from the plant.

"There is now convincing data and evidence to support beneficial effects in relation to glaucoma, epilepsy, eating disorders and several more conditions, especially those affecting the nervous system," Paulwell said yesterday at a ceremony to hand over a marijuana research licence to the University of Technology (UTech) at the institution's Papine campus.

A medical marijuana extract shows considerable promise as a treatment for epilepsy in young people that could reduce seizures in children with severe epilepsy that usually do not respond to other treatments, according to a study by the Langone Comprenhensive Epilepsy Center at the University of New York ( USA) and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
 
The study is based on the use of cannabidiol extract, the main component of this plant and which, unlike the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is not psychoactive, so it has no direct effect on the central nervous system or change its functions or perceptions.
 

If you're just joining us, Oregon's joint legislative committee that was assigned the task of implementing our recreational marijuana legalization got bogged down trying to restrict the medical marijuana program. Never mind that the Measure 91 recreational marijuana legalization initiative said, three times, that the existing medical marijuana program was not to be affected, and 56 percent of the voters agreed with that.

PotLocator.com and Bambu Rolling Papers, co-attendees only at that year’s 2015 Denver Cannabis Cup, need Denver’s best shared rollers showing down their skills and face-off against both to see having the quickest hands.

PotLocator.com is a site which provides directories to caregivers, collectives, co-operatives, associations, compassion clubs, distribution solutions, wellness facilities, resource facilities, cannabis dispensaries and physicians and was created as a method of linking medical marijuana patients to organizations into the cannabis business.

Legalization keeps rolling ahead. But because of years of government roadblocks on research, we don’t know nearly enough about the dangers of marijuana—or the benefits

Yasmin Hurd raises rats on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that will blow your mind.

Though they look normal, their lives are anything but, and not just because of the pricey real estate they call home on the 10th floor of a research building near Mount Sinai Hospital. For skeptics of the movement to legalize marijuana, the rodents are canaries in the drug-policy coal mine. For defenders of legalization, they are curiosities. But no one doubts that something is happening in the creatures’ trippy little brains.

A new kind of green economy could soon take root in Edmonton, if the city's first medical marijuana grow-op gets final approval.

A company called Alberta Green Biotech is behind the project, planned for a northwest industrial park.

The company is still waiting for a development permit, and said once that gets approved they plan to spend $4 million to $6 million to build a 125,000-square-foot facility.

From the outside it would look like any other warehouse. But inside, there will be 12 rooms called grow-pods: each big enough to generate $1.8 to million to $2 million worth of marijuana a year.

The company picked Edmonton because there is no medical marijuana facility in Alberta.

Pitkin County commissioners met privately with their attorney Wednesday to discuss their potential legal standing in the neighborhood flap over cannabis smells emitting from a Basalt-area grow facility.

Attorney John Ely could not comment about the half-hour talk but said a work session will be held for the public to chime in on the odors that originate from the High Valley Farms indoor grow center, which supplies Silverpeak Apothecary’s medical and recreational dispensaries in Aspen. The farm and the dispensaries share common ownership.

It’s not just High Valley Farms that’s responsible for the stench, said Mimi Trombatore, an employee of Gallegos Corp., which has offices in the Holland Hills Business Center.