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"Duane Stone is a veteran Seattle mental health specialist. He's seeing a surprising increase in patients experiencing psychotic episodes as well. Many have never had any mental health problems before. "I get lots of first break kind where this person doesn't have an experience with mental illness, they don't have a diagnosis, they're 30 or 40-years-old. And the only thing they've been doing has been smoking marijuana for the last year or two," Stone said. It's not just your stereotypical stoner. They're family people working at places such as Microsoft and Amazon."

A couple weeks ago, I posted about a case in Kansas in which a couple was wrongly raided by a police tactical team. Robert and Addie Harte and their two children were held in their home by armed officers for over two hours as the officers searched the house for marijuana. They found no drugs. After spending $25,000 to get a judge to order the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department to turn over documents related to the search and investigation leading up to it, the Hartes discovered that Robert Harte, along with hundreds of other people, became a suspect when Missouri...

An Alabama man remains in jail on drug and weapons charges two days after his wife was found dead after both are suspected of overdosing in the Cincinnati hospital room of their daughter... Cincinnati police were first called to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center at about 11:30 a.m. local time Thursday about a potential overdose... There they found Mary Ann Landers dead on the floor and her husband, Wesley, unresponsive in the bathroom, says Cincinnati police Lt. Stephen Saunders. Mary was found in the room with a needle in her arm, Saunders says; and though police believe that she...

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun.

A wild party at a Queens house rented for a night through Airbnb ended in bloodshed early Sunday when two men got shot, cops and witnesses said. One of them, identified by police sources as Tyree Walker, 27, underwent surgery at New York Hospital in Queens, and was in critical condition.

Marijuana is much safer than alcohol or tobacco, according to a new study Marijuana is roughly 114 times less deadly than alcohol, according to recent findings published in the journal Scientific Reports. Of the seven drugs included in the study, alcohol was the deadliest at an individual level, followed by heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, methamphetamines, and marijuana. Previous studies consistently ranked marijuana as the safest recreational drug, but it was not known that the discrepancy was this large. The researchers determined the mortality risk by comparing a lethal dose of each substance with the amount typically used. Not only was...

Critics of marijuana legalization love to argue about its repercussions for “the children”—paging Nancy Grace—but the American Academy of Pediatrics seems to disagree. The group has now appealed to the Drug Enforcement Agency to reclassify marijuana and allow them to research its medical benefits for children, the Wall Street Journal reports. They have also asked the federal government to permit marijuana use by children with serious conditions. Marijuana is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the federal government, classifying it with drugs like heroin. This scheduling prohibits research by ranking marijuana as having no acceptable medical use. “A...

Oregon and Alaska approved recreational pot use – following Washington State and Colorado, which did the same in 2012 – and the District of Columbia approved legal marijuana possession but not sales, though the move could still be halted by the new US Congress. Though medical marijuana was rejected in Florida, the steps by Oregon, Alaska, and the District add momentum to a movement that is eyeing California next. Recommended: How much do you know about marijuana? Take the quiz ... Yet marijuana remains prohibited by the federal government, and the issue could come to a head in the District...

Cultivation of the illegal poppy plant in Afghanistan has reached an “all-time high” following a $7.6 billion counternarcotics campaign paid for by the United States, according to government oversight investigators.

Former border patrol agent, convicted on drug charges, appeals to high justices after lower courts bar him from selling weapons. The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal prohibition on firearms for felons terminates all ownership rights. The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a Florida man convicted on drug charges and forced to give up his firearms under federal law could sell the guns or transfer ownership to his wife or a friend. The court agreed to hear an appeal filed by Tony Henderson, a former US border patrol agent who was convicted of distributing marijuana...

Colorado parents are being told to be on the lookout this Halloween for marijuana-laced candy, NBC News reported. The Facebook page of the Denver Police Department is warning that mass-produced candy can by sprayed with hash oil, and once the spray dries, there is no way to tell that the candy has been infused. The station reported that the Denver PD Facebook page features Patrick Johnson, owner of marijuana shop Urban Dispensary. In the film, Johnson urges parents to inspect any candy their children bring home after trick-or-treating on Halloween to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with..

New York state lawmakers and advocates of medical marijuana gathered in New York City on Sunday to discuss the implementation of a new state law authorizing medical marijuana. The event drew potential patients, policymakers and hundreds of people interested in working in the new medical marijuana industry. State lawmakers voted this year to make New York the 23rd state to authorize pot for patients with conditions including AIDS, cancer and epilepsy....

Canada’s largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity. In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores. “Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults,” said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH. “Canada’s...

This is marijuana: This is okra: Basically the same, right? If you agree, you may have a bright future as a Georgia drug warrior. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that heavily armed Broward County deputies, accompanied by a helicopter and a K-9 unit, showed up at the home of retiree Dwayne Perry in Cartersville on Wednesday after someone spotted his okra plants from the air. "They were strapped to the gills," Perry told the paper. "Anything could have happened." Fortunately, no humans or dogs were killed. Georgia State Patrol Capt. Kermit Stokes, whose agency is in charge of the anti-pot task...

Oregon has had a wink-wink, nudge-nudge relationship with recreational marijuana use since 1998, when legalization for medical purposes created a wide, open system that distributes pot cards to just about anyone with a vague medical claim and the signature of a compliant physician. We're not suggesting that marijuana has no palliative value to those with genuine medical problems. But let's be honest: Recreational marijuana is all but legal in Oregon now and has been for years. Measure 91, which deserves Oregonians' support, would eliminate the charade and give adults freer access to an intoxicant that should not have been prohibited...

Having grown up in Guatemala, IÂ’ve witnessed my countryÂ’s dramatic increase in crime due to the War on Drugs first hand. For most of my life, drug cartels used Guatemala as a natural pitstop for their smuggling routes. Unattended regions in the north provided the perfect space to refuel their vehicles and airplanes before transporting their products to major consumers in the north like the United States. This route had remained the same since the beginning of the Drug War, but recent developments over the past ten years has diverted even more narcotics and violence to my back yard, highlighting...

TALLAHASSEE (CN) - Florida sheriff's officers falsely arrested and imprisoned a woman with allergies for buying two boxes of Sudafed at a drug store, she claims in Federal Court.      Mickey Lynn Goodson claims she bought the two boxes of the over-the-counter drug because the pharmacist recommended it. She sued Gadsden County Sheriff Morris Young and the two officers who arrested her, Rodney Moore and William Buckhalt.      Charges of possession of a controlled substance were eventually dropped, Goodson says in the July 18 complaint.      In July 2010, Goodson says, she went to a Winn-Dixie store to get Sudafed "because she has...

Doctors in Macon, Georgia, told Janea Cox that her daughter, Haleigh, might not live another three months. That was the middle of March, when Haleigh's brain was being short-circuited by hundreds of seizures a day, overrunning the array of five potent drugs meant to control them. Worse, the drugs were damaging Haleigh's organs. "She was maxed out," Cox said. "She'd quit breathing several times a day, and the doctors blamed it on the seizure medications." Cox had heard that a form of medical marijuana might help, but it wasn't available in central Georgia. So a week after hearing the ominous...

After two days of working in the stifling heat, law enforcement officers and inmates have removed more than 100,000 pot plants from 29 fields in Polk County. The estimated street value of the marijuana is $175 million, one of the biggest busts in Texas history. They also found some cell phones in the fields that they’re hoping will lead to the ringleader of the massive operation.

On July 13, Josie Garcia’s husband was pulled over by Houston PD for failure to use a turn signal. The routine traffic stop lead to a search and prescription drugs belonging to the passenger were found. Both men were subsequently arrested and the SUV was impounded. Charges against her husband were dropped days later. Unfortunately, Garcia’s 14 year old chihuahua, Guero, was along for the ride. As the men were being taken into custody and the SUV towed, Guero was removed from the vehicle and left on the side of Highway 59. Garcia’s husband plead with the officer to let...