Israeli Orthodox Rabbi Efraim Zalmanovich: Medical Marijuana Is Kosher

Efraim Zalmanovich, the orthodox rabbi of the Israeli town of Mazkeret Batia, said Friday that distributing and smoking marijuana is kosher as long as it's for medical purposes, according to an article on NRG, the website of the Maariv newspaper.

Recreational use is another issue, according to Zalmanovich.

“Taking drugs to escape this world in any excessive way is certainly forbidden,” Zalmanovich said, according to the JTA.

The rabbi's comments are not the first made by a Jewish religious leader on the substance, the Times of Israel reports.

Zalmanovich’s ruling modifies an opinion by Rabbi Hagai Bar Giora, head of kitchens, bakeries factories catering and events at the Israeli chief rabbinate, who in March told Israel’s Magazin Canabis: “If you smoke it, there is no problem whatsoever.”
While marijuana is currently illegal under Israeli law, the nation's ministry of health has issued medical marijuana permits for some patients. Officials say the number of people prescribed cannabis reached around 11,000 this year, though they plan on tightening the application process. Activists are pushing for broader acceptance, however, as the nation makes bold strides on scientific research involving cannabis and THC, the psychoactive compound in the drug.

Zalmanovich’s comments add him to a list of people who are more liberal in their views on medical marijuana than President Barack Obama. While 18 states -- and soon to be 19 with the addition of New Hampshire -- as well as the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use, federal law still considers it a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it is judged not to have any medicinal qualities. Obama's administration has spent nearly $300 million to fund enforcement efforts against medical marijuana in these states.

Source -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/israeli-rabbi-marijuana-kosher_n_3518933.html?utm_hp_ref=world

Google Quietly Giving Aid To Marijuana Activists

Cancer patients who Google the words "chemotherapy nausea" today get a host of advertisements for treatment, including pills, skin patches and folk remedies used to prevent vomiting. Next month, however, the same search will turn up an ad for something a bit more controversial: medical marijuana.

The change comes courtesy of the charitable unit of Google, which last week gifted a Michigan medical marijuana advocacy group $120,000 worth of its services. As part of the grant, the group, Michigan Compassion, will be able to promote medical marijuana use through Google's popular AdWords platform -- the plain-text advertisements that pop up to the right side of any given search result.

Michigan Compassion does not sell marijuana but connects patients and growers, and it says the ads will appear alongside searches likely to be made by chemotherapy patients.
“The goal is to link the negative effects of chemotherapy and the positive effects of cannabis,” Amish Parikh, vice-president of Michigan Compassion, told The Huffington Post.
The ads' value is small in the scheme of Google's AdWords program, which brings in over $40 billion per year in revenue, but they represent a change for the Mountain View, Calif. firm, which has a strict policy against hosting ads for marijuana-related searches. 

Read more http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/google-marijuana_n_3511186.html

Marijuana-Fed Pigs Make 'Best Pork Chop You've Ever Had'

SNOHOMISH, Wash. -- The white van with tinted windows pulled up to the driveway with its cargo - cardboard boxes full of marijuana. And the customers eagerly awaited it, grunting and snorting.

The deal was going down for three hungry Berkshire pigs from a Washington state farm, and a German television crew was there to film it.

Part flavor experiment, part green recycling, part promotion and bolstered by the legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington state, pot excess has been fed to the hogs by their owners, pig farmer Jeremy Gross and Seattle butcher William von Schneidau, since earlier this year.

Gross and von Schneidau now sell their "pot pig" cuts at von Schneidau's butcher shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market at a premium price – bacon is $17 a pound while chops go for $16.90 a pound.

"He's like `let's see what kind of flavor it gives it.' So we ran it and it gave good flavor," Gross said. "It's like anything else, what you feed them is what they're going to taste like. It's almost like a savory alfalfa fed cow or alfalfa fed pig."

The meat, though, won't get people high.

It's just a flavor infusion.

While the passage of recreational marijuana inspired the experiment, Gross and von Schneidau get the marijuana excess – roots, stems, and other part of the plant that are grinded and not used for consumption – from a medical marijuana dispensary. At the butcher shop, cuts from the pot pigs are signed with a little drawing of a marijuana leaf stuck on them with a toothpick.

"It tastes like the best pork chop you've ever had," said Matt McAlman, who runs Top Shelf Organic, the dispensary that is providing the pot plant waste for the pigs to eat.

The idea has brought worldwide attention. On a recent afternoon, Gross hosted a crew from a German science show while von Schneidau has already been interviewed dozens of times.

The men, though, are relishing the spotlight to advertise von Schneidau's idea of locally sourced food. Gross' hogs at his Snohomish, Wash., farm were being fed recycled byproduct before the marijuana idea.

While Gross raises pig on his property, he works full time as a construction foreman. The only way he can stay in the pig business, he said, is the free feed he collects from a local distillery and brewery. He feeds his pigs barrels of the distillery wheat "mash" every day, fortified by a nutrient mix his veterinarian created. Gross gets his free pig feed, while the distillery and brewery get rid of waste.

Gross is applying that model to the medical marijuana excess and von Schneidau hopes it's an example people use as production of marijuana ramps up under the state-approved system.

"Absolutely, it's a good opportunity to help people get rid of their waste," said von Schneidau, who is also attempting to start a privately-owned mobile slaughterhouse.

But currently the state draft rules say pot plant waste must be "rendered unusable" by either grinding it or mixing it with non-consumable, recycled solid waste, such as food waste, compost, soil and paper waste. The state's rules for medical marijuana do not say how to get rid of marijuana byproducts.

John P. McNamara, a professor at Washington State University's Department of Animal Sciences, doesn't find the experiment amusing.

"Of all the crazy things I've seen in my 37-plus years, this is the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life," he said.

McNamara said in order to introduce a drug or medicine to feed that's being given to animals that make part of the food supply, the federal government must sign off on it after extensive review. He adds that research has shown that cannabis ingested can be transferred onto tissues.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the agency that oversees the nation's food supply. The agency, on its website, says it "approves the additives or drugs that are used in feed products."

Currently, Gross is only feeding three pigs the marijuana mix, which on a recent afternoon the chopped down on with fervor, sticking their snouts into the pile of mash.

Asked if feeding marijuana affects the pigs, such as perhaps giving them munchies, Gross said can see no effect on the pigs.

Already all pigs do is sleep and eat, he said.

But his farm manager mentioned that one of the more salty sows mellows out after a feeding.

___

Source and Video -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/marijuana-pigs_n_3509206.html?utm_hp_ref=business

How Marijuana Is Tested

Marijuana testing is becoming more and more common, and I don’t see that trend ending anytime soon. As states pass medical marijuana reform laws, it is almost certain that marijuana lab testing will be a requirement. It’s a good thing for patients too, because they should know what they are consuming. Long gone are the days when you had your friend try your marijuana to see how good it is. Objective data and analysis can provide information that even the most veteran marijuana consumer cannot. Below is a video from long time friend of TWB Masterbong taking us inside a marijuana testing laboratory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YF8Obx4TMdI

Source- http://www.theweedblog.com/how-marijuana-is-tested-2/

Spain Study Confirms Cannabis Oil Cures Cancer Without Side Effects

The medical science is strongly in favor of THC laden hemp oil as a primary cancer therapy, not just in a supportive role to control the side effects of chemotherapy. The International Medical Verities Association is putting hemp oil on its cancer protocol. It is a prioritized protocol list whose top five items are magnesium chloride, iodine, selenium, Alpha Lipoic Acid and sodium bicarbonate. It makes perfect sense to drop hemp oil right into the middle of this nutritional crossfire of anti cancer medicines, which are all available without prescription.

Hemp oil has long been recognized as one of the most versatile and beneficial substances known to man. Derived from hemp seeds (a member of the achene family of fruits) it has been regarded as a superfood due to its high essential fatty acid content and the unique ratio of omega3 to omega6 and gamma linolenic acid (GLA) – 2:5:1. Hemp oil, is known to contain up to 5% of pure GLA, a much higher concentration than any other plant, even higher than spirulina. For thousands of years, the hemp plant has been used in elixirs and medicinal teas because of its healing properties and now medical science is zeroing in on the properties of its active substances.

Both the commercial legal type of hemp oil and the illegal THC laden hemp oil are one of the most power-packed protein sources available in the plant kingdom. Its oil can be used in many nutritional and trans-dermal applications. In other chapters in my Winning the War on Cancer book we will discuss in-depth about GLA and cancer and also the interesting work of Dr. Johanna Budwig. She uses flax seed oil instead of hemp oil to cure cancer – through effecting changes in cell walls – using these omega3 and omega6 laden medicinal oils.
Actually there is another way to use medical marijuana without smoking the leaf. According to Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, “The usual irritating and toxic breakdown products of burning utilized with smoking are totally avoided with vaporization. Extraction and inhaling cannabinoid essential oils below ignition temperature of both crude and refined cannabis products affords significant mitigation of irritation to the oral cavity, and tracheobronchial tree from pyrollytic breakdown products.Read more at  http://www.realfarmacy.com/spain-study-confirms-cannabis-oil-cures-cancer-without-side-effects/

Rihanna boldly promotes legalising marijuana while smoking rolled-up cigarette and wearing customized veiled pink beanie

Rihanna has once again gone public about being in favour of legalizing marijuana.

The superstar - who had been performing in Ireland - posted a picture on Instagram which showed her smoking a rolled up cigarette with '#legalizeit' written below the image on Saturday.

And now she has moved on to Amsterdam where she posted new Twitter images holding two huge cigarettes that look like joints.

In Amsterdam: Rihanna posed with two suspicious looking rolled-up cigarettes on Saturday in Holland

 Ready to light: Rihanna gets ready to ignite some serious looking rolled-up cigarettes in Amsterdam

One reads: Where am I ??? At Heauxm !!! - while in the other she writes: I'm just a girl ...#Amsterdam.

The Umbrella singer has posted numerous images on social media of herself smoking suspicious looking cigarettes before but this is a clear indication on where she stands on the issue.

Dressed in a trendy white mermaid sweatshirt, baggy jeans with converse sneakers, the performer is also seen dripping in diamond jewellery.

Her heavily made-up face is hidden behind a veil attached to her customized pink beanie hat as she sits in what appears to be a hotel room alone.

In another image released on Twitter she blows some thick smoke from her mouth with the message:  Naked mermaid on my shirt #WAVES #silverspoonattire.

 Blowing smoke: Rihanna Tweets image of her smoking rolled-up cigarette

 Smoking gun: Rihanna posts Instagram message on Saturday backing legalizing marijuana

Face to face: Rihanna poses with her father Ronald Fenty after her concert in Dublin

Yet the superstar did show a gentler side to her personality when she posted an image sitting opposite her father Donald Fenty while writing: 'Pops giving me word last night #dublin'.

Rihanna is no stranger when it comes to controversy over pot smoking - back in April she celebrated 'US weed day' by posing with four girlfriends on bicycles.

As she sat beside her friends smoking another rolled up cigarette the Barbadian crooner wrote 'Our ~420 #clique' referring to the day which was founded by a group of High School students in 1971.

Mona Lisa smile: Rihanna smiled demurely as she held a pair of black Ray Ban sunglasses 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2346556/Rihanna-boldly-promotes-legalising-marijuana-smoking-rolled-cigarette-wearing-customized-veiled-pink-beanie.html

You Could Build a Border Fence Out of Seized Marijuana

If you've always wanted to roll a spliff the size of the Washington Monument, the Border Patrol may be able to help.

Border agents and related workers at ports of entry seized 17 million pounds of marijuana on the Southwest border between January 2005 and October 2011, according to records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

If you stacked all that pot on a baseball diamond, not only would it make a certain San Francisco Giants pitcher very happy, it would be 100 feet tall and 100 feet wide.

There's a lot of other fun stuff you could do with it, according the news outlet, which actually did math and stuff to figure this out.

If you rolled up all that mary jane, you could invite everyone on Earth over, give them two joints apiece (14.2 billion joints) and still have 2 billion joints left over for late night.

Perhaps most fitting of all, you could take those same joints and build an 11-foot tall fence along the entire expanse of the U.S.-Mexico border. Actually you could span it 359 times if you lined it with one single marijuana cigarette after another, according to CIR.

Funny as it all might seem, this is actually important.

A deal made with some Republican senators yesterday on immigration reform would call for doubling the size of Border Patrol's staff.

Illegal immigration has dropped off substantially since the 1990s and early 2000s. But all the same, Border Patrol staffing levels have doubled since 2005, and so has the annual budget for their parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (see these charts for more).

If immigration reform passes, one estimate says it will reduce illegal immigration by 25 percent overall. If border measures are successful, there will probably be more people overstaying visas than crossing illegally at the border.

So what will all those extra agents do with their time? If nothing else, they can always seize enormous amounts of marijuana.

Border Patrol actually goes after drugs of all types, but marijuana makes up the vast majority of seizures by weight. In the 2011 fiscal year, the 2.5 million pounds of pot the agency netted made up 99 percent of its total haul.

Of course, popular opinion tends to reject that war against marijuana.

More than half of Americans think marijuana should be completely legal, and two states -- Washington and Colorado -- have already legalized it. But the federal government still considers pot a "dangerous drug" on par with heroin.

So unless the "legalize it" movement figures out how to capitalize on that state-level momentum and counter the feds, don't expect the Border Patrol's marijuana seizures to stop any time soon.

Source -- http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/border-agency-seized-17-million-pounds-marijuana/story?id=19455771#.UcWpwztNFFs