url: hMPp://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2013/story/_/id/10375220/brendan-ayanbadejo-says-players-smoked-marijuana-super-bowl




Ayanbadejo: Pot before Super Bowl



Former Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo says teammates smoked marijuana ahead of one of his two Super Bowls.

Ayanbadejo did not identify which players or even which team was using the drug in a podcast for Fox Sports.

Ayanbadejo played for the Bears in Super Bowl XLI after the 2006 season and the Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII last season, but he would not reveal which year the incident took place.

"I'm not going to say which Super Bowl it was, but I just remember getting off the elevator one night -- it was early on in the [Super Bowl] week, just to start the week off -- and all of the sudden I just got hit over the head with fumes of marijuana on the entire floor of the hotel that the team was staying on. ... I could just imagine there were a few young guys just toking it up in more than one room."

Ayanbadejo, who did not play in the NFL this season, said he was surprised his teammates would use marijuana days before the Super Bowl.

"I was like, 'Man, this is the week of the Super Bowl and you're just going in?'" Ayanbadejo said. "So then I was looking around, and I'm like, 'OK, where is the security?' I looked, and for some reason we didn't have regular police. Coach was smart enough to have rent-a-cops on our floor instead of regular police like we usually do."

Marijuana has been a topic of discussion this week as the Super Bowl features two teams from states to recently legalize the drug for recreational use.

Medicinal marijuana is legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia, and Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll agreed with the notion that the NFL should look into allowing players to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"I would say that we have to explore and find ways to make our game a better game and take care of our players in whatever way possible," Carroll said at a news conference Monday after his team's first practice of Super Bowl week. "Regardless of what other stigmas might be involved, we have to do this because the world of medicine is doing this."

Marijuana remains on the NFL's banned substances list, and two members of the Seahawks' secondary -- cornerbacks Brandon Browner and Walter Thurmond -- have served drug suspensions this season. Browner's suspension is ongoing.

Who cares if a player smokes or ingests cannabis before a game, or before anything else they do in their life.

Some of the best hikes I have ever been on, and some of my most intense work-outs have been done while under the influence of our beloved mary jane.

I look forward to the day we can all watch a SuperBowl where all players are "required" to get stoney right before the kick off!

smoke em if ya gottem!

And thanks for always providing the news 7 !

url: hMPp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2548669/Devout-Christian-mother-three-31-woman-Britain-DIE-cannabis-poisoning-smoking-joint-bed.html




Devout British mother-of-three, 31, dies from cannabis poisoning after smoking a joint in bed



A mother-of-three is believed to have become the first woman in Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning.

Gemma Moss, a 31-year-old churchgoer, of Boscombe, in Bournemouth, Dorset, collapsed in bed after smoking a cannabis cigarette that led her to have moderate to high levels of the class B drug in her system.

Tests of her vital organs found nothing wrong with them although it was suggested she might have suffered a cardiac arrest triggered by cannabis toxicity.

Miss Moss' death was registered as cannabis toxicity and a coroner has recorded a verdict of death by cannabis abuse.

Deaths directly from cannabis are highly unusual. In 2004 a 36-year-old man from Pembrokeshire became the first person in the UK to died from cannabis toxicity.

David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, said: 'It is extremely rare and unusual for a coroner to rule death from cannabis abuse.

'In 40 years I have never come across deaths from cannabis alone. There have been cases where it has been combined with other drugs or alcohol.

'It has often been said that cannabis doesn’t cause death. Users usually pass out before they can take enough cannabis to kill them.

'This case serves as a warning that cannabis can cause immense harm.

'Cannabis is know to increase heart rate and blood pressure. Cannabis these days is designed to be much stronger than cannabis used in the sixties to meet demand of users who want a stronger hit.'

Miss Moss, a devout Christian, had frequently used cannabis during her adult life but had stopped for two years before her death last October.

She started using it again to help her sleep after becoming depressed and anxious due to breaking up with her boyfriend.

An inquest heard Miss Moss smoked half a joint a night to help get her to sleep.

Her friend, Zara Hill, said she and Miss Moss smoked cannabis worth about £20 together in the week before her death.

Miss Hill told police that Miss Moss smoked as much as £60 of the drug a week, although this was disputed by her family.

On the night of October 28 last year, Miss Moss, who had two sons, Tyler, 15, and Tessiah, eight, and a daughter, went to bed after rolling a joint.

She was found unresponsive in bed the following morning by Chloe Wilkinson, the girlfriend of Miss Moss’ teenage son.

She summoned an ambulance to the flat in Boscombe but Miss Moss was pronounced dead at the scene.

Half of a joint was found underneath her body and a wrapper containing brown and green leaves of the class B drug was discovered in her handbag.

A post-mortem examination revealed that there were no obvious signs of abnormality in Miss Moss’ body.

But Dr Kudair Hussein, a pathologist, told the inquest in Bournemouth, that there were moderate to heavy levels of canabinoids in her blood.

He said: 'The physical examination and the examination of various organs including the heart and the liver showed no abnormality that could account for her death.

'The level of canabinoids in the blood were 0.1 to 0.15 miligrams per litre, this is considered as moderate to heavy cannabis use.

'I looked through literature and it’s well known that cannabis is of very low toxicity.

'But there are reports which say cannabis can be considered as a cause of death because it can induce a cardiac arrest.'

Mr Sheriff Payne, the Bournemouth coroner, asked Dr Hussein: 'You are satisfied it was the affects of cannabis that caused her death.'

Dr Hussain replied: 'Yes sir.'

The inquest heard Miss Moss grew up in London but moved to Bournemouth about five years ago.

She was said to have changed her lifestyle and found faith since relocating to the south coast.

She regularly attended the evangelical Citygate Church in Bournemouth and was baptised there last year.

Her mother, Kim Furness, told the inquest her daughter struggled to sleep and had admitted that she had started smoking a 'small amount' of cannabis at night.

Miss Furness said: 'For years she smoked it (cannabis) every day.

'When she moved to Bournemouth she stopped for two years and then had a break up with her relationship and started again.

'It was one half of a joint to get to sleep. She never smoked in the day. She was really honest about cannabis because from where we come from its normal to smoke cannabis.

'She was trying to stop again. She rang me and said "mum, I have just started again, I will stop but I needed half to get to sleep".'

'She said she would go to the doctors to get something to help her sleep to stop her doing it. She wasn’t excessively smoking.'

Detective Inspector Peter Little read a statement from Miss Hill.

She also Miss Moss was stressed about her benefit money being stopped and because her son had been excluded from school.

In recording a verdict that Miss Moss died from drug abuse, Mr Payne said: 'Gemma had been a long term user of cannabis.

'She suffered from depression and was on prescription drugs to try and deal with that although it would not appear she was taking them at the time of her death.

'She usually used it (cannabis) in the evenings to try and help her to get to sleep and did not use it in the day time.

'The post mortem could find no natural cause for her death.

'With the balance of probability that it is more likely than not that she died from the effects of cannabis.'

Carolyn Stuart, a coroner’s officer, said: 'It is very rare to have cannabis toxicity as a cause of death. She was a healthy 31-year-old woman who had nothing wrong with her.'

Russell White, a leader at the Citygate Church, said: 'Gemma was a good mother and brought up her children mainly on her own.

'She was full of fun and loved life and loved coming to church. She was a committed member of the church and brought her children along.

'I think she came from a difficult background but she I think she was clean to a large degree in terms of drugs.

'She is very much missed and her death was a real shock to us.'

Miss Moss lived with her two sons but it believed her daughter lived with her father in Jamaica.

Last October Miss Moss posted on her Facebook page about how excited she was about travelling to the Caribbean to visit her daughter over Christmas.

Lucy Dawe, from the anti-cannabis group Cannabis Skunk Sense, said: 'People who are pro-cannabis will say it won't kill any body but unfortunately it does.

'It is very upsetting because we now have three young people with no mother and the mother probably thought she was doing something perfectly safe.

'Along with death, cannabis can also cause a lot of other problems like psychosis, chronic depression, strokes, and anxiety.

'These effects need to be something that are generally well-known. People think because cannabis is a plant it won't be dangerous but it leads people to a false sense of security.'

But Peter Reynolds, president of CLEAR Cannabis Law Reform, a group that campaigns legalising the class B drug, said he doesn't believe anyone can die from taking it.

He said: 'It is popularly believed that there has never been a death because of a toxic effect of cannabis on the body.

'Clearly, it is possible that somebody may have had an accident while intoxicated through cannabis use but that would be an indirect cause.

'Unlike opiates, alcohol or other drugs, cannabis cannot depress basic life functions to the point of death.

'Cannabis is probably the least toxic therapeutically active substance known to man.

'In conclusion, I would say that it is pretty much unbelievable that anyone's death could be directly attributable to cannabis.'

URL: hMPp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunil-kumar-aggarwal/cannabis-depedency-drug-war-bad-science_b_4675961.html




'9 Percent of Those Who Use Cannabis Become Dependent' Is Based on Drug War Diagnostics and Bad Science



Recently, on a segment with Anderson Cooper on CNN that aired one week into the overall excitement after legal adult cannabis sales had started in Colorado, famed addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky expressed shock about the oft-cited figure that 1 in 11 people who ever use cannabis becomes dependent. In a moderated conversation with renowned Columbia psychopharmacologist Dr. Carl Hart, Dr. Drew noted that cannabis dependence is "very uncommon" and stated, "They said 1 in 11; it's nowhere near that." By "they" he is likely referring to the establishment, headed up by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the federal drug abuse research institute, and related federal agencies. This figure for cannabis dependence prevalence has been around for some time and is often accepted as objective fact and widely reported. It was even used by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in that famous piece on CNN.com in which he apologized for misleading the public on the harms of cannabis while underplaying and ignoring its medicinal benefits. Dr. Gupta writes matter-of-factly, "We now know that while estimates vary, marijuana leads to dependence in around 9 to 10% of its adult users."

Do we really "now know" this? Where does this figure come from? And how good is the science behind it? Pretty lousy, it turns out.

The origin of this figure is indeed NIDA research first published in a 1994 article in the journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Researchers sought to use data from a national government-funded survey called the National Comorbidity Survey to estimate the prevalence of drug dependence by drug type. It sounds like a reasonable plan, except that if the measuring stick that you are using is flawed, the measurements will be flawed as well.

The survey was based on diagnostic definitions for cannabis dependence that were published in 1987 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (3rd edition, revised) put out by the American Psychiatric Association. This manual has an inherent bias against non-problematic cannabis use and privileges the normalcy of alcohol use. In its introduction to the section "Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders," it notes:

These conditions are here conceptualized as mental disorders, and are therefore to be distinguished from nonpathological psychoactive substance use, such as the moderate imbibing of alcohol....
Later it notes:

For example, social drinking frequently causes loquacity, euphoria, and slurred speech; but this should not be considered Intoxication unless maladaptive behavior, such as fighting, impaired judgment, or impaired social or occupational functioning, results.
Note how much effort is put into selectively polishing the appearance of an alcohol user, even one who is slurrrring wordssss!

Back to the survey. One hundred fifty-eight professional field staff of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, after seven days of training in how to conduct structured interviews, carried out the surveys between Sept. 14, 1990, and Feb. 6, 1992. The sample consisted of 8,098 subjects between the ages of 15 and 54, residing across the lower 48 states. Regarding use frequency and pathology, research was conducted "under the assumption that even as few as six occasions might be sufficient for development of drug dependence."

A respondent would get a diagnosis of cannabis dependence if at least three of the following statements regarding their cannabis use applied to them in at least a one-month period:

(1) it was taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended
(2) they had persistent desire or one or more unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control use
(3) a great deal of time was spent in activities necessary to get the substance, taking the substance, or recovering from its effects
(4) experienced frequent intoxication or withdrawal symptoms when expected to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home
(5) important social, occupational, or recreational activities given up or reduced because of use
(6) continued use despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent social, psychological, or physical problem that is caused or exacerbated by use
(7) marked tolerance: need for markedly increased amounts
The problem is that these criteria are chock-full of bias that ignore the reality of non-problematic or beneficial cannabis use. In the early '90s in the U.S., all cannabis use was seen as illegal, even for medicinal purposes. Cannabis use could be causing problems for a subject more because of its illegality than anything else, and this is not accounted for in the measuring tool.

Let's look at some of these criteria in greater detail. Criterion 3 could be accounted for solely by the fact that cannabis is prohibited and therefore is unavailable for local or home production or distribution, necessitating more time and work to obtain it. Furthermore, if cannabis is being used medicinally or therapeutically, it could certainly be the case that "it was taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended" (criterion 1), or that it could lead to a "need for markedly increased amounts" (criterion 7). Often, individuals "discover" the therapeutic benefits of cannabis after initially intending to be consume it sparingly under an environment of prohibition. Once this therapeutic discovery is made, more cannabis will be needed than was previously intended. Moreover, one may go to greater lengths to obtain it, similar to the lengths that people may go to in order to obtain any good medicine, even if the medicinal benefit is palliative rather than curative, or complementary rather than central. Given the environment of prohibition and the importance of the consumption to the maintenance of one's health, the time and effort involved in procurement may cut into time that could be used for doing other activities, such as those enumerated in criterion 5. Certainly, given the prevalence of employment drug testing and legal consequences related to being caught with cannabis, it would not be surprising that cannabis use, by virtue of its illegality alone, could cause "a persistent or recurrent social ... problem" (criterion 6) or lead to giving up "important ... occupational ... activities" (criterion 5).

Because all of this was summarily ignored, subjects who were not cannabis-dependent were likely counted as such, and it is not surprising that they arrived at an inflated figure of 9.1 percent (plus or minus 0.7 percent), or approximately 1 in 11 people, for the prevalence of cannabis dependency among self-identified cannabis users. The latter figure is itself problematic given that it's illegal behavior that you may not want to tell a stranger about, even if they are a surveyor. This causes an artificially low denominator, which would also hike up the figure.

That's why this idea that 9 percent of cannabis users become dependent is based on bad science and is way over the mark. As Dr. Drew says, "it's nowhere near that." Now let's see how long this false factoid continues to be repeated in the media echo chamber.

url: hMPp://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57466210-78/hemp-bill-utah-marijuana.html.csp




Bill would OK use of cannabis supplements in Utah



Makers of "hemp supplements" would be free to ship to Utah buyers their extracts, oils and pills — at least, the kind that can’t get people high — under soon-to-be-released legislation.

Hemp, marijuana’s non-intoxicating cousin used to make rope, lotions, textiles and food products, is already freely available (with no restrictions or age limits) at retailers throughout the state.

But the nation’s patchwork of marijuana laws prohibits medical marijuana producers from shipping across state lines — a hurdle that Rep. Gage Froerer, R-Huntsville, has promised to address.

Froerer, the lawmaker who once pushed a ban on synthetic marijuana, or spice, was moved by the plight of parents of children with epilepsy.

Cannabis oils high in cannabidiol (CBD) but low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical that produces a high in users, have been shown to have powerful anti-seizure properties. But, to obtain the oil, Utah families must move to states like Colorado, where medical marijuana is legal, forcing many to leave jobs and social supports behind.

Froerer’s bill, which is expected to be numbered and released this week, would permit any health consumer of any age in Utah to buy CBD supplements without fear of prosecution — after meeting certain requirements.

Those strings would likely limit access to epilepsy patients, at least temporarily.

"My primary objective was to get access to these moms," said Froerer, referring to the grass-roots group, Hope 4 Children With Epilepsy.

The bill would allow only finished hemp products to be brought across state lines, not raw hemp in its plant form, and only those products with less than 0.3 percent THC by volume.

Cannabis products favored by cancer patients to ease nausea and pain or to reduce intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma tend to be high in THC, said Froerer.

The bill would further require consumers to obtain a physician’s signature and a waiver from the Utah Department of Health before legally purchasing CBD supplements. Children under 18 would also need a parent’s consent.

"The only evidence I’ve seen is that CBD oil is effective for some forms of epilepsy and seizures," Froerer said. "But if research shows it works for other health problems, that’s great."

His measure contains no quality-control mechanisms to ensure THC limits aren’t exceeded, leaving it to consumers to scrutinize manufacturers’ claims.

But that’s the case now with CBD oils sold on the Internet, all with different CBD to THC ratios and prices. Hemp-based beauty products and foodstuffs found on Utah grocery store shelves — including hemp milk or hemp seed, a high-protein snack for sprinkling on yogurt or salads — aren’t held to labeling requirements disclosing how much THC they contain.

Froerer said researchers at the University of Utah are analyzing the potency of several CBD oils. He hopes to share the findings when his bill is first aired before a committee.

Under his bill, Utah’s health department would survey hemp-waiver holders to help document their chosen supplement’s effectiveness. Their identities would be kept confidential, in line with federal patient-privacy laws.

The agency would be encouraged to charge a "reasonable" fee to cover its costs, making the measure budget-neutral, said Froerer.

Substance-abuse experts haven’t opposed it outright but have voiced concern about the unproven benefits and safety of "artisanal" cannabis oils, which aren’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"We feel the public discussion has gotten away from the research findings and focused on the emotional difficulties parents of epileptic children are experiencing," wrote Utah County Drug and Alcohol Prevention Director Pat Bird in a guest editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Bird fears marijuana growers, which he refers to as "big marijuana," are exploiting epileptic children to push a larger legalization agenda. And he believes any step toward decriminalization sends the wrong message to youths, that weed and pot are harmless.

Froerer and Hope 4 Children With Epilepsy say they have no connection to the marijuana movement. Nevertheless, public opinion and the legal landscape on marijuana are changing rapidly in America.

A federal farm bill, approved Wednesday by the U.S. House and expected to pass the Senate, would allow colleges and universities to grow hemp for research purposes in 11 states that permit growth, including Colorado, Montana and Oregon.

Hemp and marijuana are the same species of Cannabis sativa, but hemp is cultivated to be low in THC.

The farm bill defines "industrial hemp" as "the plant, and any part of such plant, Cannabis saliva L. ... with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis."

The federal measure means little to Utah, Froerer said, except that "it takes away any objection that we’re bumping up against federal law" with his bill.