Study: Legalization of marijuana would bring Israel NIS 1.6 billion in tax revenue, budget savings

The study reveals that Israel is expected to generate over $450 million in marijuana if legalized in Israel. This proved to be very promising for a nation that has ever since been suffering from political and economic crises for a very long time. Reports claimed the net worth of the marijuana's black market is $707 million annually.

As marijuana will be sold like cigarettes and taxed appropriately, a minimum of $268 million will be the government's income. In addition to this, it is expected to save $198 million spent on Israel's law enforcement for tracking mafias and marijuana peddlers.

The study further shows that about 275,000 Israelis used marijuana in 2012, consisting of 4 percent of the national population. About 64 percent Israelis are in favor of legalizing marijuana while 26 percent are against this move.

Meanwhile, similar reactions are seen in Canada but it already decided to establish a huge industry in the medical use of marijuana. Commercializing marijuana worries many Canadians who believe that this will ultimately worsen the effects of this popular weed. They expect marijuana will be much more expensive in the future. These are the Canadians who are licensed to consume marijuana for health reasons.

Eventhough Health Canada took the initiative of licensing companies to grow and sell medical marijuana in the country for greater quality control, some fear that things may turn out otherwise. Licensing medical marijuana has sparked controversies as many abuses are reported.

But the real effects of whether marijuana will have beneficial value to society has yet to be seen based on the guidelines that will be strictly imposed globally.

Source: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/510913/20131003/legalisation-marijuana-economy-israel-canada-abuse.htm#.Uk16BYZSiVQ

Mom Chooses Medical Marijuana Over Chemo As Treatment For 3-Year-Old Son's Cancer

One year ago, 3-year-old Landon Riddle was diagnosed with leukemia. Under doctors' orders, his mother Sierra Riddle began treatment for her young son: aggressive chemotherapy and radiation.

But while still living in Utah, Sierra watched her little boy become violently ill from the chemotherapy -- Landon suffered nerve-damage in his legs, nausea that led to vomiting dozens of times a day, intense pain and at one point went 25 days without eating following the treatment, according to CNN.

"Around the clock, he was usually on liquid morphine, Ativan, Promethexane," Sierra told CNN back in July. "And it just really didn't seem to be helping."

Feeling like her family "didn't have anything left to lose" she looked into medical marijuana treatment. She moved her family to Colorado Springs, Colo. to benefit from the state's marijuana laws and started to give Landon liquid forms of both Cannabidiol, or CBD, and Tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC.

"Within four weeks we could see the improvement," Sierra told KRDO.

Users of medical marijuana have said that THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that is associated with the "high" sensation, can also be an effective pain killer as well as inhibit feelings of nausea.

And research from a pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco suggests that CBD, the non-toxic, non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant, could actually stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer.

Sierra swapped chemotherapy for cannabis therapy and has seen her son return to his old energetic self and his cancer go into remission. Her decision to use medical marijuana as treatment for her son's cancer has raised some eyebrows in the traditional medical community -- so much so, that one Colorado doctor reported Sierra to Human Services for refusing chemotherapy for Landon.

“They are not only forcing me to do something against my will as a parent, they are forcing me to make my child sick,” Riddle said to CBS4.

Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children in the United States, according to Children's Hospital Colorado. In a statement to CBS4, they write that 25 percent of childhood cancers are acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The survival rate for these patients treated at Children's Oncology Group is over 90 percent and is attained with two-to-three years of chemotherapy.

Riddle says that no matter what people think about her decisions, the plain and simple truth is that marijuana has helped her son.

"As soon as we started taking the oil, his platelets have been a regular healthy person's level and [doctors] can't understand why," Riddle told CNN.

As unusual as it may seem, the Riddle family is not alone in choosing medical marijuana treatment for a child with a severe illness. In 2012, then 7-year-old Mykayla Comstock of Oregon, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, made headlines for her use of medical marijuana to combat the side effects of chemotherapy.

The family of 6-year-old Charlotte Figi was the subject of a CNN documentary earlier this year regarding their daughter's use of medical marijuana to help treat the debilitating seizures that result from her rare form of epilepsy.

Source and Video:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/marijuana-over-chemo_n_4017985.html?ir=Parents

A New Berlin Wall Made Of Pot?

BERLIN, Germany — Young parents push strollers through the sprawling green oasis of Goerlitzer Park in Berlin’s hip Kreuzberg district on a sunny afternoon. Yuppies in colorful windbreakers treat their pampered pets to a taste of freedom in the central dog run. And on the footpath surrounding them, every bench is occupied by young black men in baggy pants and baseball caps.

“Alles gut?” they ask passersby in accented German.

Meet Kreuzberg’s friendly neighborhood drug dealers, the reason behind a controversial proposal by the borough’s new mayor to legalize marijuana in the park.

Her drive is exposing friction between various ethnic and economic groups as older, mostly Turkish immigrants are supplanted by new foreigners and wealthy young Germans seeking a dose of Bohemian chic.

Although police have raided the park more than 60 times during the first half of this year and filed charges against some 170 people, the roundups have had little impact on the drug trade.

That’s why Mayor Monika Herrmann says the best way to remove Goerlitzer Park’s dealers is to legalize and regulate cannabis.

“If we want to gain control of the dealers and their products, we must manage the distribution,” the Green Party member told Agence France-Presse after taking office earlier this summer.

Herrmann’s plan envisions ending aggressive policing in favor of opening of state-owned coffee shops staffed by counselors who would advise buyers about the risks of smoking dope.

The plan has backing. Many residents say they’re keen to see the pot dealers disappear. Some say abandoning prohibition would also enable the police to better allocate resources and make drug treatment operations more effective by reducing the need for users to hide from the public.

“We have about 30 to 40 years experience of prohibition, and we have seen that it doesn’t work very well,” says Astrid Leicht, who heads a local drug treatment center.

But many immigrants worry that legalization would also mean they’d be evicted.

“It’s an atrocious way of saying, ‘We’re going to sell something so that they can’t sell it, so that they can’t make money, so that they leave,” says James Garner, an activist who works with an area nonprofit called Joliba that runs programs to help immigrants integrate into German society.

The differences over legalizing pot are highlighting a growing conflict over the neighborhood’s identity — a microcosm of the issues facing the entire capital, a city its mayor once christened “poor but sexy.”

Once a bastion of Turkish immigrants, anarchists, squatters and left-wing radicals where it was possible to rent a room for the equivalent of $60 a month, the neighborhood is being rapidly gentrified by young, white Berliners.

Although most moved for Kreuzberg’s multicultural flavor, liberal attitude and edgy vibe, they’re now growing older and starting families. That’s resulting in more calls for cleaning up Goerlitzer Park.

While left-wing organizations fight gentrification tooth and nail, well-established Turkish residents — many of whom settled here during the government’s drive to attract temporary cheap labor in the 1960s and ‘70s — resent newer migrants. They argue the government would never tolerate criminal activity in a predominantly white neighborhood.

Many of the newest arrivals are Africans who came here via Spain, Italy and other countries hard hit by the euro crisis — or directly from Africa.

German law allows refugees to stay and collect a modest 400 euros per month while the government evaluates whether they qualify for political asylum — which comes with a three-year visa that can later be converted to permanent residency. Bureaucratic delays and a shortage of official housing means that many remain in illegal squatters’ settlements such as an abandoned school on nearby Reichenberger street, which currently houses 200 to 300 mainly Africans.

Asylum seekers aren’t legally permitted to work for more than 1 euro per hour, which makes the marijuana trade an attractive option.

As Kreuzberg’s other residents continue to debate the proposal to legalize marijuana, Jah Rose, a Jamaican who sells CDs and knitted Rastafarian caps amid Goerlitzer Park’s dozens of drug dealers, wryly describes the status quo.

“They come from Africa and they land in prison.”

Source: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/130925/cannabis-kreuzberg-legalize

Health Canada presides over birth of billion-dollar free market in marijuana

OTTAWA — The Conservative government is launching a $1.3-billion free market in medical marijuana this Tuesday, eventually providing an expected 450,000 Canadians with quality weed.

Health Canada is phasing out an older system on Monday that mostly relied on small-scale, homegrown medical marijuana of varying quality, often diverted illegally to the black market.

In its place, large indoor marijuana farms certified by the RCMP and health inspectors will produce, package and distribute a range of standardized weed, all of it sold for whatever price the market will bear. The first sales are expected in the next few weeks, delivered directly by secure courier.

“We’re fairly confident that we’ll have a healthy commercial industry in time,” Sophie Galarneau, a senior official with the department, said in an interview.

“It’s a whole other ball game.”

The sanctioned birth of large-scale, free-market marijuana production comes as the Conservatives pillory Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign to legalize recreational marijuana.

Health Canada is placing no limits on the number of these new capital-intensive facilities, which will have mandatory vaults and security systems. Private-dwelling production will be banned. Imports from places such as the Netherlands will be allowed.

Already 156 firms have applied for lucrative producer and distributor status since June, with the first two receiving licences just last week.

The old system fostered only a cottage industry, with 4,200 growers licenced to produce for a maximum of two patients each. The Mounties have complained repeatedly these grow-ops were often a front for criminal organizations.

The next six months are a transition period, as Health Canada phases out the old system by March 31, while encouraging medical marijuana users to register under the replacement regime and to start buying from the new factory-farms.

There are currently 37,400 medical marijuana users recognized by the department, but officials project that number will swell more than 10-fold, to as many as 450,000 people, by 2024.

The profit potential is enormous. A gram of dried marijuana bud on the street sells for about $10 and Health Canada projects the legal stuff will average about $7.60 next year, as producers set prices without interference from government.

Chuck Rifici of Tweed Inc. has applied for a licence to produce medical weed in an abandoned Hershey chocolate factory in hard-scrabble Smiths Falls, Ont.

Rifici, who is also a senior adviser to Trudeau, was cited in a Conservative cabinet minister’s news release Friday that said the Liberals plan to “push pot,” with no reference to Health Canada’s own encouragement of marijuana entrepreneurs.

Rifici says he’s trying to help a struggling community by providing jobs while giving suffering patients a quality product.

“There’s a real need,” he said in an interview. “You see what this medicine does to them.”

Tweed Inc. proposes to produce at least 20 strains to start, and will reserve 10 per cent of production for compassionate, low-cost prescriptions for impoverished patients, he says.

Patients often use several grams a day to alleviate a wide range of symptoms, including cancer-related pain and nausea. They’ll no longer be allowed to grow it for themselves under the new rules.

Revenues for the burgeoning new industry are expected to hit $1.3 billion a year by 2024, according to federal projections. And operators would be favourably positioned were marijuana ever legalized for recreational use, as it has been in two American states.

Eric Nash of Island Harvest in Duncan, B.C., has applied for one of the new licences, banking on his experience as a licenced grower since 2002 in the current system.

“The opportunity in the industry is significant,” he said in an interview.

“We’ll see a lot of moving and shaking within the industry, with companies positioning. And I think we’ll see some mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances formed.”

“It’ll definitely yield benefits to the consumers and certainly for the economy and society in general.”

Veterans Affairs Canada currently pays for medical marijuana for some patients, even though the product lacks official drug status. Some provinces are also being pressed to cover costs, as many users are too sick to work and rely on welfare.

Health Canada currently sells medical marijuana, produced on contract by Prairie Plant Systems, for $5 a gram, and acknowledges the new system will be more expensive for patients.

But Galarneau says competition will help keep prices in check.

“We expect that over time, prices will be driven down by the free market,” she said. “The lower price range will likely be around $3 a gram. ... It’s hard to predict.”

Saskatoon-based Prairie Plant Systems, and its subsidiary CanniMed Ltd., were granted the first two licences under the system and are already advertising their new products on the web.

Prospective patients, including those under the current system, must get a medical professional to prescribe medical marijuana using a government-approved form.

Health Canada only reluctantly established its medical marijuana program, driven by court decisions from 2001 forward that supported the rights of suffering patients, even as medical science has been slow to verify efficacy.

By Dean Beeby, THE CANADIAN PRESS

— with files from Ben Makuch

Source: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Health+Canada+presides+over+birth+billiondollar+free+market/8974288/story.html

University Lecturer Receives Prestigious Neuroscience Award for Work With Cannabinoids

UCC’s Dr Eric Downer has received a Neuroscience Ireland Early Career Investigator Award for his pioneering research into the cannabinoid system and how it can contribute to treating Multiple Sclerosis.

‘It is an important time in the field of cannabinoid-based scientific research, particularly in terms of cannabis-based therapies associated with MS’, says Dr Downer, a principal investigator and lecturer in the Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience, UCC.

‘My research has indicated that MS patient cells, and not cells isolated from healthy individuals, respond to cannabinoid therapy in terms of boosting protective intracellular signaling events. The current goal of my research group is to establish the precise cellular and molecular mechanism by which cannabinoids control such events in MS patients, and furthermore aims to establish the relevance of this to the progression of the disease.’

Dr Downer, who was appointed to a UCC lectureship in January 2013, received the award at the eighth Neuroscience Ireland Conference, hosted recently by UCC. He is currently involved in teaching anatomy and neuroscience modules for Dental, Science, Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy students.

Dr Downer’s research interest is rooted in Neuroimmunology, with emphasis on the role of the innate immune system in neuroinflammatory conditions. He has a particular interest in the cannabinoid system, and its role in regulating neuroinflammation.

His research in this field has made significant contributions to our understanding of cannabinoids as anti-inflammatory therapies, particularly in Multiple Sclerosis. He leads an active research group, and his research has been funded by the Irish Research Council for Science and Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), the Health Research Board (HRB) and the Translational Research Access Programme (TRAP).

Dr Downer has published 21 research articles and book chapters, and acts as an expert reviewer for 13 journals, and as Editor for the British Journal of Pharmacology, Advances in Medicine, International Journal of Cell Biology and Neuroscience Journal.  He is the current secretary of the Cannabinoid Ireland Research Committee, and acts a council member for the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (Biomedical Sciences section).

Dr Downer has been previously honoured with the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Early Career Award (2009).

Source: http://www.southernstar.ie/News/Multiple-Sclerosis-pioneer-wins-prestigious-award-26092013.htm

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Cannabis Consumption Has No Negative Effect on Health, According to New Study

A new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and conducted by researchers at Boston Medical Center and the Boston University School of Medicine, has found that even heavy cannabis consumption has no negative effect on a person’s health status, or their use of health care services (such as emergency room visits).

For the study, researchers studied 589 adults who screened positive for drug use during a primary care visit. Data was then collected on these patients, examining their drug use, their emergency room use and hospitalizations, and their overall health status. In addition, further information regarding past medical diagnoses was obtained from their medical records.

After conducting the study, researchers found absolutely no differences between the health and hospitalization of daily cannabis consumers, compared to those who use no cannabis at all.

“Our findings suggest that marijuana use has little measurable effect on self-reported health or healthcare utilization in adults using drugs identified in a primary care clinic,” says Daniel Fuster, MD, the lead author for the study.

This study combats the prohibitionist argument that tax revenue brought in through cannabis legalization will be offset by increased healthcare costs.

The study can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130923143638.htm

Source: http://thejointblog.com/cannabis-consumption-negative-effect-health-according-new-study/

At a Michigan Howard Johnson, Guests Can Smoke Marijuana Freely

by  marijuana.com

When vacationing, it’s tough to quell the urge to get high. When staying at a Howard Johnson hotel, you better be high to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, in most parts of the countries, getting high in a hotel could get you locked up or hit with a hefty find–this author had this buzz kill occur in, of all cities, Miami (where cocaine flows like a river). Yes, in most cases (and in MMJ friendly states like Cali and Colorado), toweling your door or boofing it will keep the 5-0 off your trail and no one at the hotel will care if you’re getting high.

But it’s a stress no one on vacation (better yet, in life) even wants to remotely deal with. In Michigan, one wise, 83-year old owner of a Howard Johnson knows this better than anyone in the country and is catering his chain hotel to cannabis consumers:

Twenty rooms already have been renovated to accommodate smokers. And by the time Sullivan’s done, 60-80 of the hotel’s 155 rooms will allow smoking — accommodating medical marijuana patients as well as tobacco smokers.

Michigan legalized medical marijuana in 2008, and Grand Rapids decriminalized marijuana last year — making possession of a small amount a civil infraction, similar to a parking ticket.

Occupancy at the Howard Johnson “has seen an increase every weekend,” Sullivan said. “Every weekend, every one of those rooms is sold.”

Sullivan, who himself does not smoke cigarettes or marijuana even for medicinal use, estimates occupancy is up 50 percent since he started renovating the rooms.

Renovations have included opening each room up with sliding doors and installing a patio with a tall fence around it to provide privacy — “a little smoking area for each room right at the door,” Sullivan said. “Otherwise, people have to go outside the lobby doors.

“If you’re a marijuana smoker, it’s nice to have that privacy, wouldn’t you say so?” [Crains Detroit]

Damn straight.

Source: http://www.marijuana.com/news/2013/09/at-a-michigan-howard-johnson-guests-can-smoke-marijuana-freely/