Magazine ROCK STARY MAYHEM FESTIVAL YOU BETTER GET TO A SHOW BEFORE IT’S TO LATE
Official Website of The 2010 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival — July 7, 2010 – August 14, 2010
Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival 2010: July 7, 2010 – August 14, 2010. KORN, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Five Finger Death Punch, Hatebreed, Chimaira, Winds of Plague, Shadows Fall, 3 Inches of Blood, In This Moment, Norma Jean, Atreyu…
The administration of the plant cannabinoids delta-8-THC and delta-9-THC inhibit cellular respiration and tumor growth in human oral cancer cells, according to preclinical trial data published in the June issue of the journal Pharmacology.
Investigators at the State University of New York (SUNY), Upstate Medical University in Syracuse assessed the anticancer properties of delta-8-THC and delta-9-THC in the human oral cancer cell line Tu183, which is highly resistant to conventional anticancer drugs.
Researchers reported that the administration of THC resulted in a “rapid decline” in cellular respiration in malignant cells. By contrast, investigators found that the administration of the endogenous cannabinoid anandamide was “ineffective” as an anticancer agent.
“These results show the cannabinoids are potent inhibitors of Tu183 cellular respiration and are toxic to this highly malignant tumor,” researchers concluded.
Last year, investigators from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island reported that the moderate long-term use of marijuana in humans “was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.”
A 2008 scientific review published in the journal Cancer Research previously reported that cannabinoids inhibit the proliferation of a wide range of cancers, including brain cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, and lymphoma.
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A New Jersey lawmaker who was instrumental in helping pass a medical marijuana law back in January is now suggesting that the state’s premier university become a national center for research and curriculum into the plant and its benefits.
Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer) is already cooperating with Republican Governor Chris Christie’s administration to delay implementation of the law by 90 days.
But even as the Assembly Budget Committee voted 7-0-2 to release the delayed implementation to the full Assembly for a full vote, Gusciora suggested his fellow legislators turn Rutgers into “a national academic leader in marijuana research and curriculum.”
In a news release, Gusciora said, “One such benefit could be patent rights from the development of new strains and treatments for medicinal marijuana.”
He added, “Students could also learn everything from pain management strategies to running a dispensary.”
However, Gusciora did not put any such language into the amended legislation to delay implementation that is working its way through the legislature.
And advocates for medical marijuana are skeptical.
“We don’t really think that’s realistic,” said Ken Wolski, executive director of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana NJ. “The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has been trying for the past nine years to get DEA approval” for such research, he noted — and has so far UMass has failed.
Gusciora also floated another trial balloon to allow Rutgers as well as hospitals across the state to become dispensaries for medical marijuana once the Christie Administration writes the rules and regulations that will put the law into effect.
Another advocate, Chris Goldstein, also of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana NJ, said “Rutgers University could be an important part of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program without being written into the law.”
Goldstein also noted the challenges UMass has been having with the DEA.
If the amended law is approved by both the Assembly and State Senate in the coming days, October 1st would be the new deadline for the Department of Health and Senior Services to draw up the rules that will govern medical marijuana use in New Jersey.
Advocates think that would mean the first sales at the Alternative Treatment Centers would start by early January.
Authorities raided a Westside medical marijuana dispensary yesterday for the second time and re-arrested its owner, a 32-year-old man who had posted bail and allegedly reopened the shop.
Sgt. Dan McGrew said Juan Carlos Solis was arrested on suspicion of cultivation and possession of marijuana for sale, the same charges he is facing in connection with a prior raid in February at the Healing Center, 1437 San Andres St.
Officers served search warrants at the dispensary and an apartment in the 700 block of W. Carrillo Street that Solis reportedly shared with Rudy Aragon Lopez, 28, an alleged dispensary employee who was arrested yesterday on similar drug-related charges.
Authorities offered few details about what led to yesterday’s raid, other than to note that an ongoing investigation, as well as evidence seized at the dispensary and residence, revealed that Solis was illegally operating the pot shop.
Following the previous raid in February, police officials said the dispensary was obtaining its marijuana illegally and was not operating within the guidelines of the Compassionate Use Act, the state law that regulates medical marijuana use.
Despite the earlier raid, the dispensary apparently reopened the following day, as evidenced by an employee who answered the phone and denied any law enforcement action had taken place at the Westside location.
Solis and another alleged dispensary employee, Sinthia Alba Martinez, 24, were scheduled to appear in court on July 16 to set a date for a preliminary hearing in connection with the February raid.
City officials have been struggling to quell community unrest on the issue of medical marijuana dispensaries for years. Earlier this week, city leaders introduced a set of stricter regulations on marijuana shops that, among other restrictions, will allow only three dispensaries to operate in Santa Barbara.
While the city has approved permits for several dispensaries in recent years, the Healing Center has been subject to repeated enforcement efforts, City Attorney Steve Wiley said in a previous interview in February.
“It’s not even close to being nonconforming,” he said during the interview. “It’s always been an illegal operation — illegal from a zoning standpoint — and we’ve been enforcing on it.”
McGrew noted that a superior court judge issued civil penalties of $55,000 earlier this month against Jose and Patricia Solis, the parents of Juan Solis and owners of the property at 1437 San Andres St.
The city attorney had reportedly requested the fines after the defendants allegedly violated a court order prohibiting the operation of a dispensary on their property.
“Additionally, Jose and Patricia Solis are facing arraignment on charges of contempt for violating the court order prohibiting them from operating a marijuana dispensary on their property,” McGrew said in an email.
Authorities had yet to release any details about evidence or drugs seized yesterday. In February, police seized 12,000 marijuana plants, 45 pounds of processed marijuana and $8,000 in cash from the Healing Center and another local dispensary, Pacific Coast Collective at 331 N. Milpas St.
While serving the search warrant at the Westside dispensary yesterday, police also detained a 41-year-old woman who entered the pot shop. The woman, identified as Sandra Hall, allegedly provided false information about her identity in an apparent attempt to avoid being arrested on an outstanding warrant.
The walls are bright white and patched with red construction tape. Fluorescent lights — mimicking sunlight — shine down on 20 flowering plants of varying strains.
Two giant pails of water being aerated fill the room with a low hum, as Jason Hiltz stands above rows of flowering herbs in the converted garage greenhouse.
There, just off the main drag in a small town outside Saskatoon, sits one of 94 legal medical marijuana grow operations in the province and one of the many Hiltz helped get off the ground.
It’s unsophisticated, but it works, he said.
“This has a few glossy spots,” Hiltz tells James Francis, 52, who says he’s the longest licensed user of medical marijuana in Canada.
“When did you last water?”
Hiltz, a horticulturist and Saskatchewan’s best known pot advocate, is Francis’ cannabis consultant, helping him and 12 other local medical marijuana growers cultivate their crops.
Hiltz, who is also a licensed user after a car crash left him with chronic pain, helps everyone from family friends to elderly people on their death beds access medicinal marijuana and advises a number of growers on how to wind through Health Canada’s bureaucratic morass.
“It’s about compassion,” Hiltz says. “Honestly, it’s probably easier being an illegal grower than a legal grower.”
More research is supporting previous anecdotal evidence that cannabis may have a wide range of therapeutic uses, such as the treatment of Alzheimer’s, depression, glaucoma, epilepsy, cancer, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.
However, the medical growers in the Saskatoon area say the government’s program has artificially depressed the medical market by making it difficult for patients to qualify, supplying what many consider poor-quality marijuana and restricting qualified licensed growers to supplying a maximum of two patients.
Growers say they live in fear of break-ins, some say they’re discriminated against by police who still view their grow-ops with an air of suspicion and struggle against the insurance industry, which wants absolutely nothing to do with the risks.
“We’re still treated as criminals,” says Jeff Lundstrom, the owner of Skunk Funk, a head shop that he says has become the local headquarters for the medical marijuana community.
Lundstrom, who is authorized to grow for two users under the federal program, had his garage-based grow room broken into over winter. Someone caught wind of the operation, drove a vehicle through his garage and made off with two plants he was pollenizing. The legal operation wasn’t covered by insurance and he was forced to pay for the repairs — the thieves were never caught.
“Now, you don’t worry about the police kicking in your door,” Lundstrom says, “you worry about some thug kicking in your door and stealing the medicine.”
Saskatoon Police Const. Dean Hoover, head of the integrated drug unit, says Saskatoon hasn’t yet seen the problem, cited by the RCMP in several jurisdictions, where medical growers traffic excess marijuana to make a profit.
The major issue for police is the lack of available information from the Health Canada program. The police aren’t given a list ahead of time on where medical grow-ops exist. They’re not informed until they want to do a search warrant, he said. If police agencies knew the addresses they may also be able to help with enforcement, he says. Grey is not a good colour for the law, he says.
“Until they get some type of system where they give us lists of who’s got them to ensure they’re not going above their quotas, what are we going to do?” Hoover says.
A Health Canada spokesperson, in an email interview, says the government will only disclose information to police if a person is suspected of illegal activity. Otherwise, it’s seen as a privacy breach.
The legalization of marijuana or even the over-the-counter sale in a compassion club in Saskatchewan, where weed is given out to those with a medical card, is a pipe dream because the acceptance of the drug, from a cultural perspective, doesn’t come close to matching that of British Columbia, where several dispensaries exist, Hoover says.
Marijuana is the most prolific drug in Saskatoon and its risks shouldn’t be downplayed due to the potency of modern pot, he says. With the advent of THC pills, there’s no need for smoking medical marijuana, he says.
“I’ve never talked to a ******* user or morphine addict that didn’t start off by smoking marijuana,” Hoover says. “Anyone that says it’s not a gateway drug is full of shit.”
Lundstrom sits behind a desk at the back of his store, hemp posters adorning the walls and pot paraphernalia strewn around his desk.
He has tried to get a medical exemption himself because of chronic back problems suffered when he fell off scaffolding, but has been denied four times by wary doctors. He left the doctor’s office in tears recently after he was told cannabis stimulates appetite, a side-effect that would not help with his weight. Like the vast majority of patients who say they need marijuana as a medicine, Lundstrom continues to buy pot on the black market.
The market exists in Saskatchewan to start a compassion club or dispensary similar to those in B.C., but those looking to grow or use for medical reasons are stilted by doctors unwilling to prescribe, Lundstrom says.
Several advocates say their goal is to start a sustainable commercial agriculture operation in Saskatchewan to provide medicinal marijuana to those with exemption cards if the Health Canada restrictions are lifted.
“There’s 50 people I could be growing for right now and I’m only allowed to grow for two. It’s a headache, plain and simple,” Lundstrom says.
“It’s still illegal and to many people medical marijuana is just simply a loophole to an illegal system and that’s how it’s being treated.”
The limit of growing for two users, however, doesn’t appear set to change any time soon. It was established “in order to reduce the risk of diversion and to protect the health and safety of Canadians,” Health Canada’s spokesperson writes.
Francis, the long-time medical marijuana user whose name has been changed because of fear of break-ins and the stigma he faces in the small town, says he’s been working out daily, awaiting the day a burglar comes through the door.
He decided to build his own grow-up — at a substantial cost — because product from Health Canada wasn’t potent enough and the supply from growers in B.C. was inconsistent.
A collision in Saskatoon 12 years ago crushed half of Francis’ spinal chord, leaving him unable to feel his legs for three years. A long-time recreational user, he turned to cannabis, which he smokes or ingests up to 10 times a day, because heavier prescription pain killers zapped his energy, left him constipated and unable to sleep.
Slowly, Francis has been able to wean the amount of morphine he uses down to almost zero, which he credits to medicinal marijuana.
“It doesn’t kill the pain, but it deflects it,” he says. “It helps your mind carry on.”
State Senators Jim Ferlo (D-38) and Larry Farnese (D-1) recently signed on as co-sponsors to SB 1350, a bill to legalize medical marijuana for ill patients in Pennsylvania. A Franklin&Marshall poll conducted in May found that 80% of residents support the bill. The issue is the most strongly backed public policy topic among Democrats and Republicans in PA.
The Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was first introduced by House Representative Mark B. Cohen in April of 2009 and has bill number HB 1393. Senator Daylin Leach introduced the companion bill on May 4, 2010 bill number SB 1350.
The House Health and Human Services Committee held public hearings last December. This was the first time in Pennsylvania history that legislators addressed the subject of medical marijuana.
SB1350 has been referred to the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee chaired by Senator Patrician Vance (R-31). So far, no hearings have been scheduled.
Both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly should have committee hearings on the bills in 2010. The House may opt for hearings outside of the Capitol with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia mentioned as possible locations. The Senate hearings will likely take place in Harrisburg.
Many mainstream political analysts in the Commonwealth put long odds on the chances of medical marijuana passing this law year. Still, the F&M as well as Quinnipiac University polling indicate unparalleled bi-partisan support compared to any other issue or individual candidate.
Outgoing Governor Ed Rendell has voiced support for the concept of state authorized medical cannabis. The top contenders to replace him next year seem likely to offer more friction.
Medical marijuana advocates are looking forward to a summer of strong awareness for the issue. Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana and NORML Chapters are planning information seminars and events across the state.
Guam cannot “legalize” cannabis/marijuana for any purpose. Federal laws identify it as a controlled substance, so only they can “legalize” its use. Guam should pass a law permitting the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes and under strict conditions, as proposed in my Bill 423.
A U.S. jurisdiction desiring to allow for medicinal cannabis must follow the Ninth Circuit Court ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld: doctors can legally recommend, but not dispense, cannabis to patients. To stay within the boundaries of law, doctors that recommend cannabis must certify that patients have been diagnosed with a debilitating condition or disease, and cannabis can help them.
Cannabis has been proven to benefit individuals with cancer, HIV/AIDS, cachexia (wasting syndrome), Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, epilepsy/seizures, hepatitis C, severe migraines, multiple sclerosis/muscle spasms, Tourette’s Syndrome and severe pain. Many veterans suffering from a variety of combat-related conditions, and the terminally ill, have been assisted and comforted by its use.
Despite many years of efforts by medical professionals to properly treat their patients, it wasn’t until Oct. 19, 2009, when the Department of Justice issued a memorandum to U.S. Attorneys expressing a coherent federal government policy, allowing for the sick to be treated without legalizing cannabis. It states:
“As a general matter, pursuit of (significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, and the disruption of illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking networks) should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources. On the other hand, prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department.”
Bill 423 would allow doctors to recommend and certify that a medical condition could be relieved by using cannabis. A certified patient or caregiver could then purchase cannabis from a licensed Compassionate Care Center. Only three proposed nonprofit Care Centers will be permitted, which will be regulated under Guam law.
As an option, qualified patients/caregivers will be allowed to grow up to three cannabis plants for medicinal use, if they choose. Neither pharmacies nor doctors’ offices will have cannabis for sale, and it will NOT be available at supermarkets or village stores.
Cannabis substitutes such as Marinol (a synthetic cannabinol) are too expensive for those without insurance. Patients concerned about carcinogens from smoking can use cannabis in cooking, in a vaporizer, or even to make tea.
This issue is about patient access to needed medicine. Scientists and medical professionals around the world have encouraged the use of cannabis for those truly in need. I urge our doctors to look carefully at the facts so they can support Guam in doing the same.
Rory J. Respicio (D-Agana Heights) is the majority leader and chairman of the Committee on Rules, Natural Resources and Federal, Foreign and Micronesian Affairs.
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