Free Republic

Starting in the fall, pharmacies in British Columbia will sell marijuana for medicinal purposes, without a prescription, under a pilot project devised by Canada's national health service. The plan follows a 2002 report by a Canadian Senate committee that found there were "clear, though not definitive" benefits for using marijuana in the treatment of chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and other ailments. Both Prime Minister Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, leader of the opposition conservatives, support the decriminalization of marijuana. Oddly, the strongest criticism of the Canadian proposal has come from patients already using medical marijuana who think the government,...

High on Hemp America’s Most Controversial Crop May One Day Fill Supermarkets and Fuel Automobiles Even if you "Just Say No" to drugs, you've probably crossed state lines many times with large amounts of hemp. And if you haven't, no doubt one day you will. Hemp, a member of the cannabis family of plants, is related to marijuana and illegal to grow in the United States. Nevertheless, hemp is everywhere — in clothing, cosmetics and even in the door panels of more than a million Ford, Chrysler and General Motors cars. Advocates call hemp a miracle crop. It can be...

The Founders did not Grant the Federal Judiciary the Power to Interpret the Constitution By Robert Greenslade © Nitwit Press March 29, 2004 Several prominent conservative commentators have stated that it is critical to re-elect George W. Bush because presidents have a direct voice in the appointment of federal judges and these judges “have the power to interpret the Constitution.” Since most Americans have been carefully indoctrinated in a federally funded education camp masquerading as an institution of higher learning, most people, including conservative media pundits, only have a vague understanding of the system of government established by the Constitution....

You Can't Trust The Drug "Experts" Research on Illicit Substances Is As Biased As Its Funding Source "One night's ecstasy use can cause brain damage," shouted a newspaper headline in September 2002, after the journal Science published a study that found a single dose of the drug ecstasy injected into monkeys and baboons caused terrible brain damage. Two of the 10 primates in the study had even died. The media trumpeted the news around the world and drug enforcement officials held it up as definitive proof of the vileness of ecstasy. But a year later, an odd thing happened. The...

Canada is a major exporter of high-potency marijuana, according to the man who leads the US war on drugs. White House "drug czar" John Walters says new cultivation methods mean marijuana sold today in the US is much stronger than in the 1960s. "We have a growing problem with the expansion of particularly high-potency marijuana coming from Canada," he said. Last year the drug produced in British Columbia alone was worth $9bn and most of it was exported to the US, he added. High-grade marijuana is grown in nutrient-rich solutions rather than soil, and sells for as much as...

FREDERICK, Md. -- A Frederick County judge has granted probation before judgment for a Frederick woman caught with marijuana because she was able to prove she needed it for medicinal reasons. It was the first Frederick County case since the state adopted a new law ending jail time for people who use the drug out of medical necessity. A lawyer for Jodi Delli, 32, said his client had a letter from her doctor explaining that smoking the drug had done more to ease her pain than prescription pills. She was arrested in November after her neighbors told police they smelled...