TheBongPlace: The Marijuana Blog

Keith and Andrea Irelan’s 8 year old daughter got more then she bargained for when they bought a happy meal for her on Monday night. What started out as a planned trip to their local McDonald’s restaurant followed by a picnic in the park turned into a big surprise for the
Child Finds Marijuana in Her McDonald’s Happy Meal
Chicago area family according to WMAQ-Chicago.

It was after the Irelans got to the park with their three children that their daughter, who the parents did not want to identify, told her parents that she had received more then one toy in her Happy Meal. Andrea asked her daughter what she received and her daughter replied “A lighter, and another toy”. When her mother looked inside her Happy Meal box she found the Shrek toy that should be in there, but was shocked to find not only the lighter her daughter mentioned, but a small marijuana pipe and a small bag of marijuana.

The Irelans immediately called police who went to the McDonald’s where the meals were purchased to interview the employee’s. On Tuesday, with the help of fellow employees and managers at the McDonald’s, Ottawa police arrested 17 year old McDonald’s employee (now former) Brandon Scott. Ottawa Police Chief Brian Zeilmann said Scott has been charged with possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Police said Scott told them he had come into work for the day and forgot he had his marijuana and pipe in his pocket. He decided to hide the bag of weed, his lighter and the pipe in one of the Happy Meal boxes until he could get it at the end of his shift. Unfortunately for him though he forgot the box and left it where another employee could grab it and put the child’s food and toy into it. The employee was quickly throwing the contents in the box and never noticed the items that were in it.

McDonald’s released a statement saying the employee who was detained and subsequently arrest by police was immediately fired and they have offered a formal apology to the Irelans. The Irelans though say that is not enough for the pain and embarrassment they have had to go through on top of the effect they said the incident will have on their daughter and have planned to sue the McDonald’s corporation.

President Barack Obama brushed off a question about legalizing marijuana in his online town hall last month, but guitar god Carlos Santana says he wishes he would seriously consider it.

“Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education,” Santana said in an interview this week. “You will see a transformation in America.”

During his online town hall on March 26, Obama fielded a question about whether legalization of the illicit drug would help pull the nation out of recession. Obama said he didn’t think it was good economic policy, and also joked: “I don’t know what this says about the online audience.”

But Santana said making pot legal is “really way overdue, like the prohibition with the alcohol and stuff like that.

“I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a really good governor who won’t keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do ‘D’ movies and we can get an ‘A’ governor,” referring to former movie action hero and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Santana made the comments as he was promoting his upcoming rock residency in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. The show debuts May 27 and runs through 2010.

“It’s a milestone for me because I always said I would never do certain things,” Santana said, adding that the list included staying in one place for too long.

“Yet what is very different is this is the year I decided to do all the things that I said I would never do. It’s a way of coming into a room that I thought was dark and I would be afraid and I actually bring my light to it.”

Santana, whose hits vary from “Evil Ways” to “Maria Maria,” said he is also working on two upcoming albums.

While the 61-year-old has previously talked about a possible retirement, he’s decided to be more careful about predicting the future.

“Every time I tell God my plans he cracks up, he starts laughing. So I just decided to be quiet for a while and not say that I am going to retire and go to Maui and become a minister,” he said. “God was cracking up. He thought it was a good joke. So I said, ‘OK.’ Every time I want to make him laugh I tell him my plans. So we’ll see.”

- Article from The Associated Press.

New research out of Spain suggests that THC — the active ingredient in marijuana — appears to prompt the death of brain cancer cells.
The finding is based on work with mice designed to carry human cancer tumors, as well as from an analysis of THC’s impact on tumor cells extracted from two patients coping with a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.

Explaining that the introduction of THC into the brain triggers a cellular self-digestion process known as “autophagy,” study co-author Guillermo Velasco said his team has isolated the specific pathway by which this process unfolds, and noted that it appears “to kill cancer cells, while it does not affect normal cells.”

Velasco is with the department of biochemistry and molecular biology in the School of Biology at Complutense University in Madrid. The findings were published in the April issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Spanish researchers focused on two patients suffering from “recurrent glioblastoma multiforme,” a fast-moving form of brain cancer. Both patients had been enrolled in a clinical trial designed to test THC’s potential as a cancer therapy.

Using electron microscopes to analyze brain tissue taken both before and after a 26- to 30-day THC treatment regimen, the researchers found that THC eliminated cancer cells while it left healthy cells intact.

The team also was able, in what it described as a “novel” discovery, to track the signaling route by which this process was activated.

These findings were replicated in work with mice, which had been “engineered” to carry three different types of human cancer tumor grafts.

“These results may help to design new cancer therapies based on the use of medicines containing the active principle of marijuana and/or in the activation of autophagy,” Velasco said.

Outside experts suggested that more research is needed before advocating marijuana as a medicinal intervention for brain cancer.

Dr. John S. Yu, co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program in the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the findings were “not surprising.”

“There have been previous reports to this effect as well,” he said. “So this is yet another indication that THC has an anti-cancer effect, which means it’s certainly worth further study. But it does not suggest that one should jump at marijuana for a potential cure for cancer, and one should not urge anyone to start smoking pot right away as a means of curing their own cancer.”

But that’s exactly what many brain cancer patients have been doing, said Dr. Paul Graham Fisher, the Beirne Family director of Neuro-Oncology at Stanford University.

“In fact, 40 percent of brain tumor patients in the U.S. are already using alternative treatments, ranging from herbals to vitamins to marijuana,” he said. “But that actually points out a cautionary tale here, which is that many brain cancer patients are already rolling a joint to treat themselves, but we’re not really seeing brain tumors suddenly going away as a result, which we clearly would’ve noticed if it had that effect. So we need to be open-minded. But this suggests that the promise of THC might be a little over-hoped, and certainly requires further investigation before telling people to go out and roll a joint.”

How to create your very own light bulb vaporizer.

This is an advanced project, but if you’re a creative smoker, this could be fun for you. Mind you, the recreational smoking of marijuana is illegal. Use this how to at your own risk.

Step 1

First take your light bulb and wrap it snuggly in the t-shirt to avoid injury, just in case it breaks.

Therapeutic use of marijuana has a history spanning over 4,500 years.
The most humane and just approach to helping the sick requires that we continue the availability of medical marijuana. Evidence supporting medical marijuana for appetite loss, glaucoma, nausea, vomiting, spasticity, pain, and weight loss is quite impressive. Evidence for its use for arthritis, dystonia, insomnia, seizures, and Tourette’s syndrome is also very promising.

Opponents of medical marijuana mention that other drugs are available for each of these disorders. Nevertheless, people differ. We have multiple treatments for almost every human problem. Some patients do not respond well to other medications and need medical marijuana to alleviate their symptoms. Many pharmaceutical drugs create aversive side effects that these patients cannot endure. In addition, medical marijuana is often markedly cheaper than these other medications.

Opponents of medical marijuana often point to dronabinol, the synthetic version of one of marijuana’s active ingredients that is available in pill form. The use of only one active ingredient makes dronabinol less effective than medical marijuana. Many ailments respond better to a combination of marijuana’s active ingredients rather than just one. In addition, because dronabinol is a pill, it is difficult for people with nausea and vomiting to swallow. Finally, like any medication that’s swallowed, dronabinol takes a long time to digest and have its effects. Inhaled marijuana vapors can work markedly faster.

Concern over marijuana’s impact on respiratory health is easily remedied. There are no links between marijuana use and lung cancer or emphysema. The associations between smoked marijuana and symptoms like coughing and wheezing can be remedied with the vaporizer. The vaporizer heats the plant so that active ingredients boil off into a fine mist but the plant itself never ignites. The mist contains no tars or noxious gases, making respiratory complications a thing of the past.

There is an initiative in the works that could end up on the November ballot that allows for marijuana to be sold to anyone, and anywhere that already sells alcohol. Its being called The Inalienable Rights Enforcement Initiative. From the full text of the measure:

This initiative will amend the Constitution of California to defend and safeguard the inalienable rights of the People against infringement by governments and corporations, providing for the lawful growth, sale, and possession of marijuana. Marijuana will be taxed through a system of stamps and licenses–a $5 stamp will be required for the sale of an eighth ounce of marijuana and a $50 annual license will be required for the growth of one marijuana plant. To protect participants and encourage participation in the system, such licenses and stamps will be available anonymously in stores where marijuana is sold.

So instead of getting some quack doctor to give you a prescription for $100 because of your supposed “anxiety” or alleged “insomnia”, you will just pay an extra tax each time you buy yourself another 8th.

Aside from allowing all willing adults to be able to buy weed easily, this initiative will start to generate revenue for California, and stimulate our struggling economy. More weed stores means more jobs for Californians, more taxes to be collected, and more people enjoying better weed. And finally marijuana will be put into the same file as Alcohol and Cigarettes where it belongs, instead of it being equated with crack-cocaine and heroine.

The initiative goes on to say why they believe this to be a necessary measure:

We also hold these truths to be self-evident-That, as an intoxicant, marijuana is far less harmful to the health and safety of the People than alcohol–That, as a smoking substance, marijuana is far less addictive or harmful to the health of the People than tobacco–That, even though alcohol is harmful to the health and safety of the People, the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 only increased the harms associated with alcohol use: criminals seized control of the alcohol market, crime and violence increased greatly, and poverty, unemployment, and corruption flourished, while otherwise lawful alcohol drinkers were treated as “criminals” subject to detention, arrest, and incarceration, even though they had not harmed the rights of anyone–That, as with alcohol prohibition, the prohibition of marijuana has only increased the harms associated with the use of marijuana: criminals control a multi-billion dollar market, crime and violence have increased greatly, and poverty, unemployment, and corruption flourish, while otherwise law-abiding marijuana smokers are treated as “criminals” subject to detention, arrest, and incarceration, even though they have not harmed the rights of anyone-That the history of marijuana prohibition is a history of repeated injuries and infringements upon the inalienable rights, powers, and best interests of the People.

Fuck Yes! Preach on, brothers! They go on to point out that alcohol, tobacco, and big-pharma lobbyists have the politicians that are supposed to represent the People in their back-pockets and serving the interests of the alcohol, tobacco, and big-pharma industries.

Despite the harms of marijuana prohibition, politicians persist in imposing and upholding marijuana prohibition, because these politicians are not working for the People–they are working for the corporate executives who financed their campaigns, such as corporate executives in the alcohol industry who want to protect their monopoly on intoxication, corporate executives in the tobacco industry who want to protect their monopoly on smoking, corporate executives in the pharmaceutical industry who want to protect their monopoly on expensive medicines, and corporate executives in the many industries threatened by competition with hemp. These corporate executives pull the strings of the government to perpetuate marijuana prohibition despite its harms, because they do not care about the inalienable rights and best interests of the People–they care about taking as much money from the People as possible. These corporate executives also use their control of the mainstream media to make it seem like marijuana prohibition is a failed attempt to serve the interests of the People, censoring the idea that marijuana prohibition is a successful attempt to serve corporate interests at the expense of the People. For these corporate interests, politicians sacrifice the inalienable rights and best interests of the People. This corruption and corporate influence is worse at the national level, where the People can least afford political influence and the media is most effective at manipulating public debate. Because of this corruption, it is futile for the People to turn to the federal government for protection–because the federal government is the source of the harm. The repeated attempts by the People to reduce the harms of marijuana prohibition have been answered only by repeated injury. The harm from marijuana prohibition is ongoing and the need for relief is urgent. Such is the suffering of the People, and such is the necessity that constrains us to alter our former systems of government. A government with a character marked by every act that defines a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Therefore, appealing to humankind for the rightness of our intentions

They need 694,354 signatures by September, 5, 2008. I think it’s totally do-able. Its been over a decade since Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, was passed with over 5 million votes in favor.

So 12 years later… are we more or less tolerant of recreational use of marijuana? For now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Via LAist

On-going medical marijuana busts through-out Mendocino County have been arresting local residents daily. I was one of five busts made and charged with two felonies (cultivation and intent to sell/distribute) last Friday, February 20, 2009, even though I had my doctor recommendation and was growing with the guidelines published at the Mendocino county web site.
My name is Laurel Krause. Last Friday (2/20/09) as I looked out my kitchen window I was shocked to see 25 Mendocino County Sheriffs/Deputies coming through my gate very quickly. The lead man, Sheriff (don’t know deputy, or what class) Jonathan Martin, showed me a search warrant, hand cuffed me and read me my rights. I was cooperative (I actually cried and begged for mercy, but that didn’t work) as they searched my home, my grow area on my five acres (behind my locked gate–so no probable cause) and seized all grow equipment related to 24 medical marijuana plants in full bloom. They chopped down the plants and hauled them away as I was being grilled and bullied in my home. This number is significant because if you google the Mendocino County Sheriff’s web page on MedMari guidelines it says 25 plants. You are probably aware of the ‘fuzziness’ of these guidelines. I have a recommendation from my doctor to allow me to grow med marijuana. They charged me with two felony counts, one for marijuana cultivation and another for intent to sell/distribute, carted me to Ukiah, CA to jail in handcuffs.

It gets worse. I was the #4 bust of 5 that day (Friday, Feb 20) and the guys let us know that they had five more for Saturday (yesterday) and five more on Sunday (TODAY!). Not individuals, but actual grows that might arrest multiple people. And most of the growers are women with kids (so now the children are possibly being taken away and bank accounts frozen). Real emotional and economic despair.

As I met others that were arrested in Ukiah, the county seat to jail (never before, first offense for everything for me) I learned they were my neighbors and not one had a ‘commercial’ size grow. So this Mendocino County Sheriff’s dept sweep is coming up short as the take is not producing the kind of busts they claim they are after (i.e commercial, 500 plants & up), unenvironmental grows that scar the land (we all grow organic), we all have our recommendations that we paid for and actually care about the quality of medicine we are growing (it’s in the past for me now).

I am in shock, but then I started getting mad yesterday. What is motivating this gestapo situation all of the sudden? DA Meredith Lintott or Sheriff Allman? NeoCons?

I keep to myself mostly so did not hear about this happening all over the county of Mendocino. Furthermore, most growers don’t let others know their business so as not to get busted. I’m coming forth as I have nothing to loose and I’m not backing down. I am a little afraid that if this doesn’t become a big story that I might be unsafe though……….so bust this story wide open. Help us in Mendo!!!

Since getting busted, I’ve learned that they were up and down my street (just outside Fort Bragg city limit, so in Mendocino County) busting and getting this sweep in order over the last month and logging on the computer even (wish I had known!). That they have also had busting sweeps in the towns of Covelo, Ukiah, Willits…….all within Mendocino county.

I’m sure you’re asking what is motivating me to come to you. This is truly an American story of our time right now, a devestating economic massacre for us personally and it has county-wide ramifications as at least 70% of the Mendocino economy is based on growing marijuana. Maybe even California as it’s the state’s largest crop. During these times of extreme economic hardship and 10% unemployment in Ft. Bragg, it just doesn’t make any sense to be busting and criminalizing tax-paying citizens, my neighbors and me operating within state and county guidelines.

We are considering moving forward with a class-action suit. I have calls out.

I am sounding this alarms as far and wide as I can. Please feel free to forward this to any of your interested colleagues. I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Laurel Krause

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation on Monday to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.

Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press secretary, confirmed to SF Weekly that the assemblyman’s 10 a.m. Monday press conference regarding “new legislation related to the state’s fiscal crisis” will broach the subject of reaping untold — and much-needed — wealth from the state’s No. 1 cash crop.

Mecke said Ammiano’s proposed bill “would remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21.”

The bill would additionally prohibit state and local law officials from enforcing federal marijuana laws. As for Step Two — profit — Ammiano’s bill calls for “establishing a fee on the sale of marijuana at a rate of $50 per ounce.” Mecke said that would bring in roughly $1 billion for the state, according to estimates made by marijuana advocacy organizations.

article by Joe Eskenazi

There still seems to be a lot of confusion with growing medical marijuana in the states, the growing laws seem to vary significantly.

To make things more confusing we need to consider state and federal law as well.

San Francisco was considered to be a safe state for medical marijuana growers. Unfortunately Stephanie Lander has been sentenced to 41 months for growing medical marijuana in San Francisco.

Stephanie was under the impression she had approval from the police to grow medical marijuana in San Fransisco, to help people with a range of illnesses.

Please watch the following growing medical marijuana video which reviews the plight of Stephanie Lander.

via medical marijuana blog

Found this on CraigsList recently and it’s just amazingly awesome! -

You: the guy who answers the phone at cottage inn pizza
Me: Hungry and stoned out of my gourd

I called you from my cell phone but had completely forgot who I was calling by the time you answered the phone. Of course, you were also baked to bajeezus and forgot to tell me that I had called Cottage Inn.

When you answered and said, “Whatsup?” I thought about it, and after a 20 second pause I told you that was hungry. You suggested I try a pizza, and I agreed that it was probably a good idea.

Then I asked you if you sold pizza and you said that you could make me one. I said I wanted anchovies and something else on my pizza. You asked me what that something else was.

We spent five minutes listing toppings until we figured out that I was trying to remember how to say: “Sun dried Tomatoes.” When you said: “We’ll bake that right up for you,” we both started laughing uncontrollably.

It was the best pizza I ever had; I just wanted to thank you for helping me out.