The True Adventures and Misadventures of the Black Tuna.

This is a true account of the life of America's most written about marijuana smuggler. Between the accounts of his smuggling adventures, Robert tells his life story. Life as a member of "The South St. Gang", his years as an actor, a famous pitchman, a successful entrepreneur in America and England, Bull Fighter in Spain, TV producer, smuggling pilot, big game fisherman, and the celebrities and villains he met along the way. The last section of the book deals with his twenty-nine years in federal prisons. From the infamous Super-Max at Marion Illinois to Camp Fed in Florida, he takes the reader on a tour of the federal prison system and introduces him to the convicts.

On May 1, 1979 President Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, called a press conference in the nation's capital to announce the arrest and indictment of the Black Tunas. A gang of marijuana smugglers led by Robert Platshorn and his two partners Robby Meinster and Big Gene Myers. Bell called the Tunas the "slickest, most sophisticated pot smugglers of the 70's." He told the gathered reporters that the Tunas used a fleet of aircraft, and five yachts, to smuggle over a half-million pounds of Columbian marijuana into the United States in a six month period. Later, the DEA would claim the Tunas brought in anywhere from one million to three million pounds of high-grade grass and made over three hundred million dollars.

Twenty nine years later, the official DEA website still has a picture of the gold medallion they claim Black Tuna gang members wore as "a talisman and symbol of their membership in this smuggling group." They do not mention that no trace was ever found of the fleet of aircraft, the five yachts, or any fraction of the alleged three hundred million dollars. Now, after twenty-nine years in federal prison, Robert Platshorn, better known as The Black Tuna, breaks his silence and tells the true story of Americs' longest serving marijuana prisoner. From his first toke to his last ton, Platshorn accounts for every pound, every penny, every plane and every yacht, including a few that the government never knew about.

Meet the Black Tunas. Robby, Bobby, Big Gene and Chip's Army. The pilots, Captain Rivers ex CIA, El Gigante former NFL player, Captain Beercan famous soldier of fortune, Reverend Birchinal who could fly anything with wings, and Stealing Steve. The mariners, Captains Randy, Crunch, Tico, and Elm. Their crews, Barry the Stoner, Marty, and the Outlaws.

The South Street Gang. Robby, Bobby, Cooky Baumholtz, Pretty Boy Levine, Tony Ordile, Alfred and Pedro.

The Colombians. Raul Davila, El Loco, Julio, Chino, Johnny, Roger the Dodger, Louis the Louse and the Colombian Army, Navy, and Secret Police.

The Other Important Characters. Marcy the Yenta, Redd Foxx, Frank Sinatra, Donald Trump, Baron Rothschild, Red Dillon, Sunny Franchise, Joe Louis, The Queen of England, Prince Charles, Lynn Redgrave, Sir John Drage, Sir Donald Duck (for real), Astrid the Jewitch, Baron Von Putlich, The Rolling Stones, Ahmed Boob, Archie Morris the king of the Boardwalk, Footy, Benny the Bed Shaker, the Mad Swede, Scratch, and the Colombo brothers.

The True Adventures and Misadventures of the Black Tuna.

Randy Responds

Let me start by saying I am not a writer. I once thought I was but realized I am just a guy who writes.

I really enjoyed reading that last article. I'll be reading more about The Black Tuna guy. I liked the other views as well, except one. I got to one paragraph and moved on to the next, thinking I should have done it sooner. Here it is:

"If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?" - Whatshisname from previous post.

How many crashes were there from pilots who didn't smoke pot? How many from ones who had "just a bracer" of whiskey pre-flight or half a bottle the night before, "without reservations?"
How many pot related school bus accidents have you heard about in your community? How many non-pot related? And, isn't pot illegal? Then why are the police smoking up?

There. I already spent too much time on that guy. Skip him and read the rest. One thing came to mind. What I really want is to be able to grow my own plant(s). Maybe 10 to keep a constant supply. When they talk about taxation and government control, I still see a 6 month mandatory for growing even 1 plant. How else will they keep a majority of smokers from growing their own?

As far as school kids go. I don't think they drink as much until university or college. Is pot more detrimental to studies than say, Xbox or Sony? If decriminalized, perhaps more kids would be open about their pot use. Perhaps more parents could use it as a tool to increase attention at school. "If you want to toke and play Xbox AFTER school, you better get your grades up."

Maybe. That is where we stand. That is where we stand on many issues. Lots of maybees not enough let's see. I look around and see failure in many places. We complain about politicians, lawyers, the legal system and a sundry of issues that we just perpetuate with each election. Maybe we need a BIG CHANGE. Maybe we need a whole new breed.

I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I do read many an espionage novel that sprs many wnat-ifs. So what if "those really in control" decided that marijuana was worth much more to them legalized than not. What if word came down that pot was good? Would all the laws change overnight? Do we have those puppet masters? If so, they are the ones pro-legalizationists need to ne going after.

end of ramble..........................

Cheers,
Randy

What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized? A Freakonomics Quorum.

What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized? A Freakonomics Quorum
5/22/09|New York Times Blogs| by Stephen J. Dubner

Two years ago we ran a quorum debating the pros and cons of decriminalizing marijuana. Since then, a largely theoretical debate has moved quite substantially toward the realm of reality, with a growing number of states and municipalities having changed their laws. The details from place to place vary greatly and are very much a patchwork; the most prominent state to make a move is Massachusetts. The California legislature, meanwhile, is wondering whether marijuana could save its economy — which, as we read just this morning, is badly in need of saving.

Although President Obama doesn’t seem interested, arguments in favor of decriminalization are popping up everywhere, from the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition platform to the senior thesis of a graduating economics major at Brown named Max Chaiken, which finds that “a legally taxed and regulated marijuana market could generate upwards of $200 billion annually in excise tax revenues for the federal government … [which] would be enough to fund Medicaid.”

So we asked a group of people — Paul Armentano, Mike Braun, Joel W. Hay, Jeffrey Miron, and Robert Platshorn — to think about a national decriminalization of marijuana (unlikely, let’s be honest) and answer the following: What would be some of the most powerful economic, social, and criminal-justice effects?

Here are their answers. As you will see, consensus on this issue is now — and will probably always remain — elusive.

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Joel W. Hay is professor of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Southern California.

With all of our current problems, Americans do not need more marijuana. Pot combines mind-altering and judgment-clouding qualities (like alcohol) with carcinogenic, respiratory, and second-hand smoke qualities (like tobacco); it is emphatically not a safe or benign substance. Daily pot smokers have a 30 percent increased risk of accidents, and one study found that more emergency-department trauma admissions were associated with pot use than alcohol. We don’t need hundreds of billions of dollars in new medical-care costs, traffic and other accident costs, reduced worker productivity, and lower educational achievements in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

It is ironic that the public health community, who so vociferously decries the dangers of tobacco with reams of scientific evidence, falls strangely silent when voters in state after state are encouraged by the pot lobby to legalize marijuana specifically as a “medical therapy.” There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that marijuana is safe and effective for any medical condition. Moreover, THC, the active ingredient of pot, has been approved by the FDA and on the market in capsule form since 1985. As a further irony, while the Obama administration has put $1.1 billion behind scientific comparative effectiveness research to demonstrate whether medical treatments actually work, his Attorney General has decided to downplay federal prosecutions in California of medical marijuana distributors and users, apparently because state voters trump science when it comes to making medical policy for mind-altering substances.

It is a fallacy that pot legalization will provide badly needed state and federal revenue through taxation of decriminalized marijuana. A California Assembly decriminalization bill is currently being promoted as a $1 billion pot-tax cure for the state’s fiscal headaches. The problem with this logic, as alcohol and tobacco clearly demonstrate, is that economic costs will increase by amounts far greater than any possible revenue gains. Tobacco taxes only cover about 20 percent of tobacco-related costs, and alcohol taxes only cover about 10 percent of alcohol-related costs. Raising taxes on either tobacco or alcohol enough to merely cover their medical costs and other detrimental effects would create flourishing black markets in these commodities. Raising marijuana taxes high enough to cover medical and other costs associated with legalized pot use will mean both more potheads and continued marijuana narco-trafficking.

The final argument against decriminalization is that it would create powerful and legal marijuana business interests who then become entrenched in the system, contributing to politicians, advertising to consumers, and pushing for even more liberal drug laws. Alcohol and tobacco are safe as long as their business interests contribute to pot legalization, and marijuana will be safe after decriminalization as long as their merchants contribute to the inevitable next round of political campaigns to legalize heroin and cocaine.

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Robert Platshorn (a.k.a. The Black Tuna) is a former marijuana smuggler and was the leader of one of the largest marijuana-trafficking organizations in the 1970’s.

“I’m not against all wars, I’m against dumb wars.” – Barack Obama

On May 2, 1979, a New York Times headline read “$300 Million Drug Ring Reported Cracked in Florida.” The “ring” consisted of my two partners and myself. We hadn’t made 10 percent of that, but the government had reasons for turning a couple of small fish into “The Black Tuna Gang.” Those were the early days of the DEA, and they needed to justify their mission and their budget.

So for 29 years I lived in 11 prisons, costing you millions, as America’s longest-serving non-violent prisoner of the War on Weed. When Feds kicked in my door, I’d been retired from smuggling for two years. My ice cream and food concessions employed about 50 people. My Miami auto auction, body shop, and barbershop employed another 40. Good jobs and serious tax dollars — all gone in an instant, not to mention my freedom, my wife and children, and the life savings of my parents, who paid for years of fruitless appeals.

What was accomplished? The War on Weed that started in the 1970’s discouraged pot smuggling by small timers like me, and filled the void with drug cartels far more interested in the lucrative cocaine trade. Big profits bred violence, enough to make Miami the U.S. murder capital. Today, we see that same prohibition-fueled violence along our Mexican border.

Legalizing marijuana would deprive this dangerous black market of profits and relieve a ridiculous burden on taxpayers; it would allow police to focus on serious crime instead of arresting more than 800,000 Americans every year for pot at a cost to taxpayers of at least $14 billion, according to “The Budgetary Effects of Marijuana Prohibition,” which was endorsed by Milton Friedman and more than 500 other economists. One man, Harry Anslinger, was almost singlehandedly responsible for outlawing marijuana. Admitting in private it was harmless, he wanted to create a powerful tool to control “deviant minorities.” Our for-profit prison system continues that work.

So, based on lies and distortions, we demonized a plant that’s proven effective in treating chronic pain, glaucoma, MS, arthritis, and the effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-wasting syndrome, and other chronic illnesses. Studies in at least five countries have shown marijuana to slow and often reverse the growth of cancer cells. All this from a plant less toxic than aspirin and less habit-forming than coffee or wine.

That’s why I’m working with the NORML and others on a new campaign called Geezers for Medical Weed. I have high hopes that the Obama administration will soon realize that for more than 70 years, the War on Marijuana has indeed been America’s dumbest war.

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Jeffrey A. Miron is the director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University’s economics department.

Marijuana legalization would mean repeal of federal and state laws that ban production, distribution, and possession. Legalized marijuana would likely be subject to the kind of regulation and taxation that currently applies to alcohol and tobacco — e.g., sin taxes and age restrictions — but it would otherwise be no different under the law than an espresso at Starbucks.

Legalizing marijuana would produce important benefits for the United States.

Legalization would allow people who use marijuana, without harm to themselves or others, to do so without fear of arrest or incarceration. This is exactly what occurs now for alcohol and tobacco.

Legalization would reduce violence. In underground markets, participants cannot resolve their disputes with lawyers, courts, or advertising, so they employ violence instead. Violence was common in the alcohol industry during alcohol prohibition, but not before or after; in gambling markets before state and federal governments legalized most forms of gambling; and in prostitution markets where prohibition forces these underground. Legalization would also reduce corruption, since producers and consumers would have no reason to bribe police, judges, and politicians.

Legalization would allow the medical community to evaluate marijuana’s medicinal effects without interference from law enforcement. Considerable evidence suggests marijuana has important medical uses, but prohibition has made controlled, double-blind studies all but impossible.

Legalization would diminish restrictions on civil liberties. Crimes like robbery or assault generate a victim who complains to the police, but neither party to a marijuana transaction wants to alert authorities. Thus police use intrusive tactics like warrantless searches or undercover buys, and the victimless nature of marijuana “crime” encourages racial profiling.

Legalization would increase respect for the law. No matter how draconian the penalties and how extensive the enforcement, many people produce and use marijuana. Thus everyone learns that laws are for suckers.

Legalization would benefit the public purse. My research indicates that legalization would save federal and state budgets approximately $13 billion in enforcement costs and allow collection of about $7 billion in tax revenues, assuming marijuana were taxed like alcohol and tobacco.

One thing legalization would not do is produce a major increase in marijuana use; existing evidence suggests prohibition has only a modest impact. Alcohol consumption declined moderately but not dramatically during alcohol prohibition, for example.

A second thing legalization would not do is eliminate the bulk of violence, crime, and corruption induced by drug prohibition, since much of that relates to cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. To achieve the full benefits of legalization, policy must legalize all drugs.

Marijuana legalization is thus not a panacea; rather, it is a significant step in the direction of saner drug policy.

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Paul Armentano is deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and co-author of the forthcoming book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?.

Last November, U.S. law enforcement made its 20 millionth marijuana arrest since 1965. Yet today, almost 90 percent of teens report that pot is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain, and nearly one out of two graduating high-school seniors admit to having tried it.

Clearly it’s time to try another approach.

The enforcement of marijuana prohibition is an archaic, overly punitive, and ineffective policy that carries with it a staggering array of social and economic costs. According to the FBI, in 2007 police made a record 873,00 marijuana arrests — 9 out of 10 of them for pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. A disproportionate number of those arrested were African Americans and Hispanic males. Some 75 percent of those arrested were under age 30. In short, our criminal justice policies are alienating millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens while creating widespread disrespect for the rule of law among minorities and young people.

It’s also costing us money we can no longer afford. According to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron, it costs taxpayers at least $7 billion per year to pay for the arrest and prosecution of pot offenders. Taxpayers pay another $1 billion per year to house the estimated 50,000 state and federal inmates serving time for pot, according to data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Conversely, a recent George Mason University report estimates that taxing the production and sale of marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol could potentially raise $31 billion in new revenue while reallocating existing police and prosecutorial resources toward more serious crimes. In California alone, data provided by the State Board of Equalization and Taxation — which has endorsed legalizing the adult use of cannabis — estimates that regulating pot would yield over $1.3 billion annually in new state tax revenue.

This policy would have the added benefit of removing the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of drug cartels and other criminal entrepreneurs and placing it under the control of state-licensed establishments — which would operate in accordance to government regulations and community standards.

Naturally, critics of this alternative inevitably argue that such a policy would increase Americans’ use of pot — an outcome that they believe negates the social, economic, and criminal justice benefits that would be associated with regulating cannabis like booze. NORML disagrees on both counts.

First, the use of pot by adults is objectively safer to the individual, and to society as a whole, than the use of either alcohol or tobacco, whereas the continued criminal prohibition of pot causes innumerable and far greater harms.

Further, the great irony of our existing policy is that nearly half of all Americans — including our nation’s three most recently elected U.S. presidents — have used, and many continue to use, pot despite the imposition of prohibition. Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely.

As noted in the opening paragraph, almost every U.S. teen (or adult for that matter) can already access pot if he or she wants to. Yet despite this practically unfettered access — many surveys now indicate that it’s harder for young people to acquire booze than weed — many Americans choose never to try marijuana, and most are not regular users. Similarly, in the Netherlands, where the sale and use of marijuana is legal to those over age 18, the use of pot by the Dutch is far less common than in America. In short, the use of marijuana is not for everybody — or even most people — and that fact is not going to change, regardless of American pot policy.

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Mike Braun recently retired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as the Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations.

In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay.

In 1985, Stanford University conducted a study of airline pilots who each consumed a low grade marijuana cigarette before entering a flight simulator involving a stressful, yet recoverable scenario. The test resulted in numerous crashes. More alarming was the fact that the pilots again crashed the simulator in the same scenario a full 24 hours after last consuming marijuana, when they all showed no outward signs of intoxication, reported feeling “no residual effects” from the drug, and each also stated they had “no reservations” about flying! Part of the problem with marijuana is that Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gives the user his or her high, is absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body where it remains for at least several days, and can continue to have an adverse impact on one’s ability to act capably under stress days after the drug was last ingested.

If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?

Marijuana legalization advocates love to say that we can tax the sale of the drug and generate revenue to cover all the costs associated with legalization, but a few more questions need to be asked.

Will the taxes pay for the significant increases in health and casualty insurance the experts tell us will be levied if marijuana is legalized? Is the government going to hand out free marijuana to those who can’t afford it? If so, who pays for that? Is it O.K. with you if the government or corporate America opens a marijuana distribution center in your neighborhood, or should they only establish them in the economically depressed areas of town? Which government agency will be responsible for rigorous testing to ensure that marijuana sold in the marketplace meets the strictest of consumer standards and is free of pesticides and drugs such as LSD and PCP? Which government agency is going to be responsible for taxing your next-door neighbor when he starts growing marijuana in his back yard, adjacent to your prized roses, of course? What happens when the taxes on marijuana become so excessive from covering all the ancillary costs of legalization that the vast majority of users simply grow the product themselves? Then who will pay for all of this?

I can’t help but ask a couple final questions. What’s the legal age limit we attach to marijuana use? Is it 18; is it 21? And what do we do about the predatory narcotics traffickers who shift every “ounce” of their undivided and merciless attention to those under the authorized age limit once the drug is legalized? Folks, all we need to do is educate ourselves, ask the tough questions, and apply common sense and logic when making a decision on this issue. Most hard-working taxpayers with kids like me will come up with the same answer, which is no to legalization.

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London Ontario Collectors Research
It has nothing to do with pot, but might be fun to ponder while buzzed.

10 reasons why we need to decriminalize drugs

10 reasons why we need to decriminalize drugs
5/21/09|NOW Magazine| by Enzo Di Matteo


1. Drug laws are unconstitutional.

Yeah, you’re reading right. Courts at every level have ruled on the fact that drug use and addiction are health issues, not legal infractions. It’s image-conscious politicians who have chosen to wilfully ignore those rulings. Yet the courts have been unwilling to hold lawmakers accountable. It’s a vicious circle – a conspiracy even.

It’s not clear how marijuana even got on the list of prohibited drugs back in 1923. It mysteriously appeared on the schedule without a debate in Parliament.

2. Drug laws are rooted in racism.

Drug use has been used to demonize whole races of people. From musings about “lazy” Hispanic migrant farm workers partaking of the weed to Chinese opium dens and the accusation by suffragist Emily Murphy – she claimed pot smoking renders users “completely insane… raving maniacs liable to kill” – the earliest drug laws were sold as solutions to a crime problem created by blacks and browns. The ripple effects are being felt today. The 1995 Commission on Systemic Racism in the Justice System identified a continued pattern of racism in drug enforcement: blacks are 27 times more likely to end up in jail to await trial on drug charges than whites, and three times more likely to be charged with trafficking than whites.

3. Drug laws = war, corruption and terrorism.

Think the war in Afghanistan is about the Taliban and al Qaeda? You’re only half right. The war on drugs and the war on terror are often one and the same.

The propaganda fed us by the self-interested, i.e., cops and politicians, is that drug use is what fuels the drug trade. Reality check: smart policy-makers know it’s prohibition that creates the black market that makes the drug trade so lucrative. See Colombia, where the illegal cocaine trade has fuelled a five-decade civil war. And what about 9/11?

According to a report by John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute, money from drugs is “probably the single biggest money earner” for Muslim fundamentalists.

4. Drug laws encourage the spread of disease.

Nearly two-thirds of offenders entering the federal corrections system have drug abuse problems. Sending addicts to jail on minor drug charges is a death sentence for many. The spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases like hep C only accelerates behind bars.

About 15 per cent of the jail population reports injecting heroin or cocaine behind bars. Former inmates say they’ve seen as many as 40 fellow inmates sharing one needle. If that isn’t a recipe.... The feds’ proposed mandatory minimum drug sentences would only jail more people who shouldn’t be there and increase the spread of disease, says the Canadian HIV/AIDS Network.

5. Drug laws are compromising our sovereignty.

DEA agents stationed in Canada, U.S. drug czars threatening trade sanctions for all that BC bud making it over the border.

The U.S. propaganda machine hasn’t stopped snorting about our liberal enforcement of drug laws.

Blame our own lawmakers for pushing the big lie that we can’t reform our drug laws because international conventions keep us tied to the will of other countries (read the U.S). Canada is under no obligation to continue criminal prohibition of drug use. The stated goal of Canada’s Drug Strategy is to reduce harm. The feds have been lying to us.

6. Drug laws have been a complete failure.

Alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and certain prescription drugs are linked to more than 47,000 deaths and many thousands more injuries and disabilities every year in Canada, according to the Health Officers Council of British Columbia paper Regulation Of Psychoactive Substances In Canada: Seeking A Coherent Public Health Approach. That’s not counting the $40 billion blown every year on what the report terms “inadequate, inappropriate and ineffective regulation.” Bottom line: we’re blowing it.

7. Drug laws are killing the economy.

The feds estimate total sale of drugs in Canada at about $18 billion annually. BC’s annual marijuana crop alone, if valued at retail street prices and sold by the cigarette, is worth more than $7 billion annually, according to a 2004 study by the Fraser Institute. That’s bigger than mining, logging, manufacturing, construction and agriculture in that province. Do the math. Canada spends $2.3 billion on enforcement every year and another $1.1 in health care costs directly related to illegal drug use – when $1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3 spent on enforcement.

8. Drug laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Sending people to jail for the relatively benign act of taking drugs, a victimless “crime,” only exposes them to physical and other forms of abuse behind bars. Now the Harper Tories want to introduce new mandatory minimum sentencing that will only fill prisons with more small-time addicts. Prison admission trends for drug offences are showing dramatic increases. Ontario’s crime rate is comparable to Quebec’s, but our incarceration rate is about one-third higher.

9. Drug laws are not reducing drug use.

Governments are slowly coming around to the view. Portugal’s experiment with decriminalization, which started almost a decade ago, has resulted in decreased drug use among teens and a marked reduction in HIV/AIDS infections caused by the sharing of contaminated needles. Portugal’s rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 is now the lowest in the EU: 10 per cent. The EU seems to be coming around on decrim. More than a dozen countries have agreed on a draft resolution urging the UN and its member states to establish a “system for the legal control and regulation of the production, sale and consumption of substances which are currently illegal.”

10. The majority of Canadians oppose drug laws.

Calls to end prohibition aren’t just coming from weed advocates. The Globe and Ottawa Citizen called for the decriminalization of drugs more than a decade ago. The right-wing Fraser Institute has advocated legalization, calling the war on drugs a “complete failure.” A majority of Canadians support the legalization of pot, according to an Angus Reid poll last year. More than 90 per cent believe it should be legal for medical purposes. The powers that be are messing with the will of the people.

Legalize it? Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways.

Legalize it? Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways
5/17/09|Sacramento Bee| by Sam McManis



Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.

Such recitation of conflicting marijuana studies can be manipulated and selected buffet-style to serve whatever political and health agenda is being touted.

Even governmental findings can be contradictory. In 1999, for instance, the Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine to review evidence. The institute found that, "except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."

Yet in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that marijuana has no health benefits and has known and proven harms. It is classified a Schedule 1 drug – the highest risk of addiction – in the Controlled Substances Act.

Wading through the medical literature, though, makes those conclusions less cut and dried.

"When I was a resident in Kaiser in San Francisco in 1978, I gave a lecture to physicians on marijuana, and I remember my conclusion at that time was that you can find in the literature whatever you were looking for," says Dr. Donald Abrams, a University of California, San Francisco, oncologist and leading medical marijuana researcher. " 'Marijuana is good for asthma.' 'Marijuana's bad for asthma.' 'Marijuana causes schizophrenia.' 'Marijuana (decreases) schizophrenia.' And, you know, the evidence is still like that."

There are many factors, of course. As noted by UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana's effects on the lungs for three decades, "That's just the nature of medical science. You have to deal with variability. The population studied may be different or the methods used to study may differ."

Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.

"Although we like to say we separate politics from science, with medical marijuana, that's really difficult," Abrams says. "It depends on who does the study, where it's published and what their agenda is."

Bearing in mind those caveats, here is a look at the research on marijuana's effect in areas critical to health.

Lungs

UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He had hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, yet the results proved otherwise.

"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function. Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an "anti- tumoral effect" in which "cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer."

However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.

"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says.

"But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances, because of the potential for harm. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance.

"Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm."

Cognitive function

A 2006 study in the journal Neurology found that speed of thinking, attention and verbal fluency were affected as much as 70 percent by long-term heavy use (four or more joints per week).

But a 2003 review of literature in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society found that marijuana smoking had a "small effect" on memory in longtime users.

However, users had no lasting effects in reaction time, attention or verbal function.

"Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects," Dr. Igor Grant, researcher at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Other studies: A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heavy users did worse on recall memory tests. A 2006 study in Greece showed users had slower mental-processing speed than the control group.

Then again, a 2007 study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that students who smoked marijuana had better grades than those who used only tobacco or those who did not smoke any substance.

In terms of brain development, a 2000 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found changes in brain structure in those who started using marijuana before age 17 but not in those who started at an older age.

A 2009 Children's Hospital of Philadelphia study used brain imaging to show that heavy adolescent users are more likely to have disrupted brain development in regions involving memory, attention, decision making and language.

But a 2008 Ohio State University study found that marijuana can reduce brain inflammation and perhaps reduce memory impairment that could delay Alzheimer's disease.

Psychosis

Yes, there is an increased risk in psychotic behavior and long-term risk of mental illness from marijuana use, according to a 2007 review of literature commissioned by Great Britain's Department of Health and published in the Lancet.

But the risk is small, because the risk of developing psychosis in the general population is 3 percent over a lifetime and rises to 5 percent for marijuana users, lead researcher Stanley Zammit told the Los Angeles Times. "So 95 percent of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis," he told the paper.

In 2005, New Zealand researchers studied a group of people with a gene variant the researchers believe predisposes that group to developing psychosis. Those in the group who smoked marijuana as teens had a tenfold increase in risk of psychosis than those who abstained.

Depression

A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed nearly 2,000 adults over 15 years. It found that marijuana users who had no symptoms of depression at the start were four times more likely than non-users of developing symptoms during that time frame.

In 2008, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that early marijuana use could increase the likelihood of mental illness by as much as 40 percent later in life.

However, researchers at McGill University in Montreal in 2007 reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that THC in low doses actually serves as an antidepressant similar to Prozac, producing serotonin. At higher doses, however, they found it could lead not only to depression but psychotic episodes.

Is U.S. high on pot legalization?

Is U.S. high on pot legalization?
5/13/09|Edmonton Sun| by Mindelle Jacobs

Canada has been terrified of liberalizing our drug laws for fear of angering Uncle Sam. Ironically, the United States is now closer to legalizing pot than we are.

While the federal Conservatives in the Great White North are poised to bring in mandatory jail time for producing and selling illicit drugs, the sweet smell of drug reform is wafting across America. Wouldn't that be a weird buzz? Canada as the uptight, anti-pot zealot and America as the laid-back, rational progressive.

In some states, the simple possession of marijuana has been effectively decriminalized (although more than 800,000 Americans were still arrested for pot possession last year). And in Alaska, possession of a small amount of weed in your own home is legal.

Thirteen states allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. And a California legislator has introduced a bill to legalize the adult use of pot. He proposes a $50-an-ounce tax which would bring in an estimated $1.3 billion for the state, which has a staggering multibillion-dollar deficit.

Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that it's time to debate whether to legalize and tax marijuana.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Conservatives' proposed amendments include a mandatory six-month jail sentence for growing even one pot plant for the purpose of trafficking.

And our medical pot regulations are so complex -- thanks to the constant tug of war between the government and the courts over how the scheme should be run -- that no one really has a clue how it's supposed to work.

Head to the rec room

It's enough to make you want to head to the rec room to partake in the consciousness-altering substance of your choice.

A number of factors have converged to prompt the U.S. to seriously consider drug reform, says Bruce Mirken, of the U.S. Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates the legalization and regulation of pot.

Mainstream figures in politics and the media are talking about it, polls support legalized pot and there's an increasing realization that Americans' taste for drugs is fuelling the ultra-violent drug cartels in Mexico.

More than half of Americans surveyed in a recent poll commissioned by the conservative O'Leary Report, for instance, support legal pot.

"This is an issue where, all along, the public has been two or three steps ahead of the politicians," says Mirken. "The public will basically drag the politicians kicking and screaming into the 21st century."

The February photo of Olympic swimming dynamo Michael Phelps inhaling from a bong pretty much drew a "collective shrug" from Americans and Kellogg's attracted more heat over the issue than Phelps because the company dropped his endorsement deal, adds Mirken.

Shifting attitudes

All in all, polling has shown pronounced shifts in public attitudes, he says. "Everybody is up to their eyeballs in budget deficits and there's this realization that there's an enormous industry out there that pays no taxes because we've indulged in the fantasy that we can just make it go away."

It's possible, he figures, that marijuana could be legal in the U.S. within a few years. "We may be near a ... tipping point where marijuana prohibition is a bit like the Soviet Empire circa 1987-88," he says.

"It was actually rotting from inside and it didn't take very much for the whole structure to collapse."

Americans seem to be finally admitting the futility of demonizing pot. Canadians? We await saner politicians.

Dutch company eyes medical marijuana market in Canada

Dutch company eyes medical marijuana market in Canada

WINNIPEG — A Dutch company that wants to supply marijuana for Canada's medical pot users has some advice for the federal government - offer users a variety of weed that would give them anything from a relaxing sedative to a higher-concentration kick.

Bedrocan B.V. has been producing three types of medical pot, with different amounts of such active components as THC, for the government of the Netherlands for six years now. The company is contemplating bidding for a similar contract with Canada, where the government drug supply has been criticized by users as weak and of poor quality.

"Offering more varieties is the first thing," Bedrocan director Tjalling Erkelens said this week from Veendam.

"I think that's very important to patients, that they have this possibility to choose different varieties."

Bedrocan's most potent, and most popular, variety contains 18 per cent THC - much higher than Canada's 12.5 per cent. It's the main intoxicating ingredient in marijuana that has been shown to reduce nausea and increase appetite in cancer and AIDS patients. It has also been shown to reduce pain in people with such diseases as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

Another Bedrocan variety has very little THC but has more cannabidiol (CBD), which is not intoxicating. It acts as a sedative.

"In Europe, many medical doctors are more interested in the CBD part," Erkelens said.

The call for a variety of medical pot has already come from within Canada's medical cannabis community.

"Different strains have different effects on different symptoms, said Philippe Lucas of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, which supplies several strains of cannabis to about 900 people.

"The same way we have not just one type of antidepressant, but a number of different antidepressants .... we need to recognize that the different chemical constituents of individual cannabis strains have different effects."

The federal government currently gets its medical pot from an old mine in Flin Flon, Man., run by Prairie Plant Systems Inc. The company is required to follow a strict set of conditions and use one strain only.

"It's a very tight, specific product that's highly tested ... it has to be highly consistent," company president Brent Zettl said from Saskatoon.

The federal supply is so unpopular that only about 20 per cent of Canadians who are allowed to use medical pot rely on it. Others grow their own under federal licence. Many also buy on the black market or share with friends, risking fines or jail time.

The federal near-monopoly was dealt a setback by the Federal Court of Appeal last year, which upheld a lower court ruling that said it was unfair to limit medical pot growers to supplying only one user each.

The federal government has extended a contract with Prairie Plant Systems to 2011. In the meantime, it has also called for contract bids from other potential suppliers. Bedrocan is contemplating submitting a bid but is asking the government for more details, including the length of any contract.

"I'm waiting for more information at this moment, and we'll see what we do," Erkelens said.

Drugs, Elephants and American Prisons

Drugs, Elephants and American Prisons
4/30/09|Reuters| by Bernd Debusmann

Are the 305 million people living in the United States the most evil in the world? Is this the reason why the U.S., with 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and an incarceration rate five times as high as the rest of the world?

Or is it a matter of a criminal justice system that has gone dramatically wrong, swamping the prison system with drug offenders?

That rhetorical question, asked on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, fits into what looks like an accelerating shift in public sentiment on the way that a long parade of administrations has been dealing with illegal drugs.

Advocates of drug reform sensed a change in the public mood even before Webb, a Democrat who served as secretary of the Navy under Republican Ronald Reagan, introduced a bill last month to set up a blue-ribbon commission of “the greatest minds” in the country to review the criminal justice system and recommend reforms within 18 months.

No aspect of the system, according to Webb, should escape scrutiny, least of all “the elephant in the bedroom in many discussions … the sharp increase in drug incarceration over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison; today we have more than 500,000, an increase of 1,200 percent.”

The elephant has ambled out of the bedroom and has become the object of a lively debate on the pros and cons of legalising drugs, particularly marijuana, among pundits on both sides of the political spectrum, on television panels and in mainstream publications from the Wall Street Journal to TIME magazine.

True watersheds in public attitudes are rarely spotted at the time they take place but the phrase “tipping point” comes up more and more often in discussions on the “war on drugs”.

“Something has changed in the past few months,” says Bruce Mirken, of the Marijuana Policy Project, one of a network of 30 groups advocating the legalisation of the most widely-used illegal drug in the United States. “In the first three months of this year we’ve been invited to national cable news programs as often as in the entire year before.”

SHIFTING MOOD

Allen St. Pierre, who leads the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), also feels that the most serious public discussion in more than a generation is getting under way. “In mid-March,” he said in an interview, “there were 36 separate marijuana bills pending in 24 states — on legalization, de-criminalization, medical marijuana. Not all the bills will make it, but they are a sign of change.”

So are public opinion polls. On a national level, they show an increase from about 15 percent in support of marijuana legalization four decades ago to 44 percent now. The numbers differ from state to state. In California, the most populous, a recent survey showed 54 percent in favour.

St. Pierre sees a confluence of reasons for the shift in attitudes — baby boomers, a generation familiar with drug use, are in charge of the country’s institutions; the dismal economy makes people question public expenditures that do not seem essential; and the drug violence in Mexico that has begun spilling across the border.

Contrary to widespread perceptions, marijuana accounts, by many estimates, for considerably more than half the illegal drugs smuggled from Mexico to the United States.

The argument for legalizing marijuana, and eventually other drugs, is straightforward: it would transform a law-and-order problem into a problem of public health. A side effect of particular importance at a time of deep economic crisis: it would save billions of dollars now spent on law enforcement and add billions in revenues if drugs were taxed.

If drug policies were decided by economists, the debate would have begun earlier and might be over by now. Four years ago, 500 economists including three Nobel prize winners urged the administration of George W. Bush to show that marijuana prohibition justified “the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences…”

Such as prisons holding, in the words of Senator Webb, tens of thousands of “passive users and minor dealers.”

While they contribute to prison overcrowding in some states, they have little to fear in others. To fully grasp the bizarrely uneven treatment of marijuana use, consider the annual “smoke-out” on April 20 in Boulder, Colorado.

There, on a sunny Monday, a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 converged on the campus of the University of Colorado to light up marijuana joints, whose smoke hung over the scene like a grey blanket. Overhead, an aircraft dragged a banner with the words “Hmmm, smells good up here.” Police watched but made no arrests and issued no fines.

Even the most optimistic of reform advocates do not see an end to prohibition in the near future. President Barack Obama endeared himself to reformers during his election campaign by an honest answer to a question on past drug use: “Yes, I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point.” But his spokesman recently said Obama opposed legalization.

It remains to be seen whether that stand remains the same if Webb’s proposed commission, assuming it will be established, came up with recommendations for deep change. That happened to the last report by a blue-ribbon commission on the subject.

The so-called Shafer report, whose members were appointed by then-president Richard Nixon, found in 1972 that “neither the marijuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that there should be no criminal penalties for personal use and casual distribution.

Nixon rejected the report. He had already declared “war on drugs”, and American prisons soon began filling up.

Cannabis Science Inc.

Reports on Prospective Life Saving Treatments for H1N1 Swine Flu and H5N1 Bird Flu in View of the Current Global Threat.
4/27/09|Market Watch| Press Release

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Cannabis Science Inc. (GFON 1.40, -0.01, -0.7%) , , an emerging pharmaceutical cannabis company, reported today on the current state of development of its whole-cannabis lozenge in response to Homeland Security Administration Secretary Janet Napolitano's declaration of a public health emergency to deal with the emerging Swine Flu pandemic. The Company's non-toxic lozenge has properties that could alleviate many of the symptoms and harmful effects of the H5N1 bird flu and H1N1 swine flu viruses, and has offered its assistance to HSA today in a letter to Secretary Napolitano. The Company has offered to produce up to 1 million doses of its whole-cannabis lozenge, and provide them to HSA for distribution at cost. 

Cannabis Science Inc., President & CEO, Steven W. Kubby said, "We have the science and preliminary anecdotal results confirming the anti-inflammatory properties of our new lozenges and indicating they may present an effective and non-toxic treatment for minimizing the symptoms and harm from influenza infections. Our lozenges appear to down-regulate the body's excessive inflammatory response to the influenza virus, which could reduce the deadly consequences of an infection into something that is more like a common cold. Because of my cancer and diminished auto-immune functions, even common influenza is a deadly threat, and I've had incredible symptomatic relief with the lozenge." 

Dr. Robert J. Melamede, Director and Chief Science Officer, stated, "The influenza virus has a unique genetic make up that, in combination with its replicative machinery, has an extraordinary capacity to mutate. As a result, the high lethality of some strains can be attributed to the resulting adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). ARDS is caused by an excessive immune inflammatory response driven by Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) that leads to the death of respiratory epithelial cells and resulting organ failure. Endocannabinoids are nature's way of controlling TNF activity. Existing peer reviewed publications have shown that phytocannabinoids can prevent this cell death by mimicking the endocannabinoids that nature has selected to prevent excessive inflammatory immune responses." 

Dr. Melamede, who is also a researcher and past Chairman of the Biology Department at the University of Colorado Springs (UCCS), cautioned, "Smoked marijuana will not effectively prevent the excessive inflammatory response, despite delivering the beneficial pharmacological agents, due to the irritating, pro-inflammatory nature of smoke. In fact, I believe it will make things worse and should be avoided by infected individuals." 

Mr. Kubby added, "If a swine or bird flu pandemic emerges -- and everyone seems to think that it is just a matter of when, not if --, there is simply no time for the usual bureaucratic process. With emergency government approval, we can legally access the huge supply of medical cannabis available in California to produce millions of life saving doses within a relatively short period of time." 

Dr. Melamede furthermore stated, "Based upon recent discoveries regarding the role that endocannabinoid system plays in maintaining human health, we have a unique solution to the looming threat posed by deadly influenza strains that we believe, if implemented, could save millions of lives. We will strive for an emergency review of our cannabis extract-based lozenge because we believe its availability will prevent many of the deaths associated with the hyper-inflammatory response associated with known lethal strains of the influenza virus. Current anti-influenza medications have a demonstrated decreased effectiveness against some of these lethal variants. Mankind cannot wait for the emergency situation to materialize. We must be proactive in gaining the necessary governmental approvals to test, and pending the outcome of our studies, produce our lozenge." 

Mr. Richard Cowan, Director and CFO, who recently spoke in Mexico City to a conference sponsored by the Mexican Congress, stated, "I believe the Mexican Congress recognizes that doctors should be able to prescribe medical cannabis. We are prepared to work with the government of Mexico to produce similar medical cannabis products to help fight the outbreak there. We look forward to working with Government officials, including Homeland Security, to help advance our treatments for these outbreaks in Mexico, Canada, the USA, and around the world." 

About the H5N1 Bird Flu and H1N1 Swine Flu Strains 

The H5N1 bird flu currently has 63% lethality. A swine-derived H1N1 strain was responsible for 20,000,000 influenza associated deaths in 1918 (more than killed by World War I). The current lethal outbreak of swine flu (H1N1) in Mexico has killed over 80 people and infected more than 1,400 others. There are 20 confirmed cases in the United States, with reports of infections in Texas, New York, Ohio, California and Kansas. Additional reports identify possible cases in New Zealand, Canada, Spain, France and Israel. The H1N1 Swine flu is a porcine respiratory disease caused by type A flu viruses. Human cases occur in people who are around pigs, but an infected person can transmit the disease to another person. Symptoms include a high fever, body aches, coughing, sore throat and respiratory congestion. 

About Cannabis Science, Inc. 

Cannabis Science, Inc. is at the forefront of medical marijuana research and development. The Company works with world authorities on phytocannabinoid science targeting critical illnesses, and adheres to scientific methodologies to develop, produce, and commercialize phytocannabinoid-based pharmaceutical products. In sum, we are dedicated to the creation of cannabis-based medicines, both with and without psychoactive properties, to treat disease and the symptoms of disease, as well as for general health maintenance. 

Forward-Looking Statements 

This Press Release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. A statement containing works such as "anticipate," "seek," intend," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," or similar phrases may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements may not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations regarding the use and development of cannabis-based drugs. Cannabis Science, Inc. does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements.