Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Marijuana Buffers Pain of Social Exclusion

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Why smoke marijuana? Users would probably reply that numbed-out bliss is its own reward. But if smoothing out the harsh edges of reality is your goal, what bruises are you attempting to avoid? Newly published research suggests that, at least for some, the answer is: The intense discomfort of social exclusion. “Marijuana has been used to treat physical pain,” reports a research team led by University of Kentucky psychologist Timothy Deckman, “and the current findings suggest it may also reduce emotional pain." Given the drug's long-term health effects, “This may reflect a poor ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Science
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The Big One

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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One percent of all U.S. dairy farms produce 35 percent of America's milk. One American milk cow produces an average of 22,000 pounds of milk per year—up from 8,000 pounds per year in 1965. One percent of patients account for 22 percent of all health care spending in the U.S., costing more than $90,000 per person. One percent of all drivers on weekend nights have blood alcohol levels above 0.15, nearly twice the limit; such drivers are involved in over 20 percent of all fatal crashes. One percent of U.S. electricity consumption—the output of seven large electric power ... Read More

More like this: May-June 2013
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Weed Makes Kids Better Drivers, According to Kids

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Teens are teens. They smoke weed—and duuuude—they think it makes them better drivers because, like, my haaaaands are clear bro, and it feels like I'm one with the car—yoooooo—does that say something about the human-industrial-car complex or am I just suuuuuper high, according to a recent survey of high school juniors and seniors from Liberty Mutual. Zachary Tracer—Churnalism disclaimer: Zach is a friend—has the report over at Bloomberg: Thirty-four percent of those who have driven while high say the drug makes them a better motorist, and 41 percent said it had no effect, ... Read More

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Marijuana: the Gateway Drug (to Nicotine)

February 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: ALESKEY KLINTS/SHUTTERSTOCK)

High school stoners have all kinds of pseudo-scientific theories about the harmlessness of cannabis. You can’t smoke yourself to death, the argument goes, the way an alcoholic can drink herself to death. Unlike meth, pot is a natural gift of Mother Gaia; unlike heroin, it’s not physically addictive; and unlike cigarettes, it’s not laced with formaldehyde. Some of these ideas are valid—it’s true that fewer than 10 percent of pot smokers will become clinically addicted—while others are, ahem, rather “doobieous.” As legalization efforts gain traction around the country, ... Read More

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Smoking Pot May Not Make You Dumber After All

January 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Long-term users of marijuana, for purposes medicinal or mundane, take heart: though a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that consistent pot smoking erodes cognitive functioning, a brand-new study of the same data, published in the same journal, finds no such link. As the Smithsonian's Surprising Science blog explains, the data comes from a years-long tracking survey of over 1,000 people in New Zealand. Some of those folks are chronic potheads, and some of them showed drops in IQ over time, leading the first study's authors to posit a link. But ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Marijuana Machine Maker’s Stock Price Goes Up in Smoke

November 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It sure seems like investors in the burgeoning quasi-legal marijuana industry are enthusiastic consumers of the product, too. How else to explain the fact that share prices for Medbox, makers of what amounts to a medical-marijuana vending machine, shot up 3,000 per cent last week, briefly sending the company's market capitalization from $45 million to $2.3 billion? OK, Medbox got a nice endorsement from the Wall Street Journal in a fascinating/hilarious piece on companies that stand to profit from the growing acceptance of weed, but still. Anyway, the greed-high seems to be wearing off, since ... Read More

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750,000 Arrested for Marijuana – Though Most Americans Want It Legalized

November 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Here are a few numbers that don't add up. Just-released stats from the FBI show that about three-quarters of a million Americans were arrested on marijuana charges last year—most of them for simple possession, as StoptheDrugWar.org reports. Meanwhile, a brand-new Huffington Post poll finds that nearly 60 percent of Americans want the weed legalized. Okay, you might expect such news from the liberal cabal at HuffPo, but their survey comes on the heels of a Gallup poll that declared 50 percent—the highest total ever—supported legalization. The gap between public policy and public ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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The Biblical Case for Pot Legalization?

August 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

There are lots of arguments for legalizing marijuana. Like, um, for instance, this one: [Cannabis prohibition] unnecessarily proscribe[s] consumption of a 'herb bearing seed' given to humanity in Genesis 1:29, thereby violating their unqualified religious rights under Article 1, Section 3 and their Natural Rights under Article 1, Section 33 of the Oregon Constitution." That's from the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, otherwise known as Measure 80 on this November's ballot in the Beaver State. The marijuana legalization movement has long drawn from a loose coalition between libertarians and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture & Society, Legal Affairs, The 101
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California’s Medical Marijuana Morass

January 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In California, annual retail sales of medical marijuana may be as high as $1.3 billion. But to use it, people have to grow it, and deliver it, and the laws governing the substance are anything but clear. What’s more, the feds’ official position is: no marijuana is legal. And they’re cracking down. Writer David Freed takes us on a road trip through the medical marijuana morass as part of the “Medicine on the Front Lines” report in the January-February 2012 issue of Miller-McCune magazine. We’re riding south out of Northern California’s Humboldt County, pushing 75 miles an ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, January-February 2012, Legal Affairs
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U.S. Crackdown Highlights Mixed-Up World of Medical Marijuana

October 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

“The problem is that this is a multibillion dollar industry that literally has no guidelines. … Every time anybody goes before some city council somewhere or the county, nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. And every time the elected officials change, it’s all new. It’s a friggin’ nightmare.” So explains certified master gardener and marijuana farmer Kevin Jodrey, the cultivation director for the nonprofit Humboldt Patient Resource Center in Arcata, California, a city-regulated dispensary that distributes to its patients medical marijuana grown in the center’s own ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs
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