Marijuana Cloud Hangs Over Town

[icyfroth]

A huge plume of marijuana smoke is hovering over an Albanian town after a police crackdown on its notorious drug trade.

Heavily armed police were pelted with gunfire, grenades and even mortars as they tried to rid the town of Lazarat, Europe's biggest producer of marijuana, of its main crop, the Associated Press reports.

The hills of the village in the country's south yields around 900 tons of cannabis a year, worth close to $6.5 billion – or nearly half the small country's GDP.

The operation in the village, population 5000, is in its fifth day has seen the destruction of 80,000 plants and more than 12.8 tons of cannabis while 80 houses have been searched.

Residents have reportedly seen the events unfold on live television, burning their own crops as authorities close in.

"What did I do wrong? I just wanted five plants like everybody else," Lumturi Koli, a 42-year-old widower, told Reuters.

"I should have been first to plant them because I have to care for my children."

While thirteen people have been arrested for drug offences and firing on police, miraculously no-one has been killed despite long blasts of gunfire.

Four have been slightly wounded, including two shepherds who were hit by stray rounds.

The raids have been part of an overhaul push by Albania and its new Socialist government to gain entry into the European Union.

Read more Here

Heavily armed police were pelted with gunfire, grenades and even mortars

People living in small towns have guns, grenades and mortars? So they really are protecting their plantations!

"What did I do wrong? I just wanted five plants like everybody else," Lumturi Koli, a 42-year-old widower, told Reuters.

"I should have been first to plant them because I have to care for my children."

Sheesh, what happened to using land for growing food crops and keeping goats and chickens?

[cherples]

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@icyfroth wrote:

However, most mj plantations supply the illicit drug trade with it's inherent criminality.

That's probably why that planation in Algeria was destroyed by officials.

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And therein lies the problem.  Because it is illegal the criminal element is involved. If it were legal to grow and legal to prescribe in controlled doses there is no illicit trade.

[the_great_she_elephant]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2667253/Not-Afghanistan-Hampshire-How-opium-poppies-grown-UK...

http://www.launc.tased.edu.au/online/sciences/agsci/alkalo/popindus.htm

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

Yet, marijuana would be a safer alternative to opiates.

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/27/medical-marijuana-crime-study_n_5044397.html

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

but this study provides data to show that crime rates, particularly certain violent crimes, actually decrease in areas with legal medical

marijuana.http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140331-906672.html

New Study Shows Legalizing Medical Marijuana May Reduce Crime

[colic2bullsgirlore]

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@punch*drunk wrote:

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@siggie-reported-by-alarmists wrote:

The Epilepsy Foundation supports the rights of patients and families living with seizures and epilepsy to access physician directed

care, including medical marijuana. Nothing should stand in the way of patients gaining access to potentially life-saving treatment. If a

patient and their healthcare professionals feel that the potential benefits of medical marijuana for uncontrolled epilepsy outweigh the

risks, then families need to have that legal option now -- not in five years or ten years. For people living with severe uncontrolled

epilepsy, time is not on their side. This is a very important, difficult, and personal decision that should be made by a patient and family

working with their healthcare team.

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Is there a source for that?

I checked the Epilepsy Foundation website and it says this,

Antiepileptic drugs with other drugs

In addition to being illegal, it is strongly recommended that people with epilepsy refrain from taking recreational drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, amphetamines or marijuana because these drugs can provoke seizures. Even though marijuana has been shown to have anti-seizure properties suited to some forms of epilepsy, the risk of psychosis in young people, its irregular supply, imprecise dosage and varying side-effects – as well as the criminal penalties that apply in some parts of the world for using it – make it problematic. Should you be unable to continue to use such a drug to control your seizures, you are at a significantly increased risk of having breakthrough seizures.

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http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/chapter-twelve/

Yet from 1842 until the 1890s, marijuana, generally called Cannabis Indica or Indian Hemp extractums, was one of the three items (after alcohol and opium) most used in patent and prescription drugs (in massive doses*, usually by oral ingestion).

*Doses given during the 19th century to American infants, children, youth, adults, women in childbirth, and senior citizens, in one day, were, in many cases, equal to what a current moderate-to-heavy American marijuana user probably consumes in a month or two, using U.S. government’s 1983 guidelines for comparison.

So  why then were not a greater proportion of all our ancestors overtly psychotic...given that the daily doses gien to

children insome cases is as much as a medium to heavy mj user would cosnumed in a month?????

ie specifically women in childbirth and infants....... how come way back when the asylums were not full to overflowing

when mj was the third most prescribed drug and prescribed in daily doses that exceeded a moderate to heavy users

monthly intake???

Dr Lester Grinspoon...appears really worried about the psychosis............not... but he is only "senior psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. a postion held for 40 years

Dr. Lester Grinspoon (born June 24, 1928) is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.[1] Grinspoon was senior psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston for 40 years.[2] Dr. Grinspoon is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association.[2] He was founding editor of the The American Psychiatric Association Annual Review and the Harvard Mental Health Letter.[2] Grinspoon was editor of the Harvard Mental Health Letter for fifteen years.

Did you listebn to Alan Jones and Dr Grinspoon discussing medical MJ. I wondered why a emeritus  psychiatrist would

advocate the use of a drug that has the apparent massive potential for mental collapse????

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

"IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no

doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and

marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body."

http://www.economist.com/node/6849915

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

For Colic....

Author:Lester Grinspoon, M.D.

," Cannabis Culture In 1967, because of my concern about the rapidly growing use of the dangerous drug marijuana, I began my

studies of the scientific and medical literature with the goal of providing a reasonably objective summary of the data which underlay

its prohibition.

Much to my surprise, I found no credible scientific basis for the justification of the prohibition. The assertion that it is a

very toxic drug is based on old and new myths. In fact, one of the many exceptional features of this drug is its remarkably limited

toxicity. Compared to aspirin, which people are free to purchase and use without the advice or prescription of a physician, cannabis is

much safer: there are well over 1000 deaths annually from aspirin in the United States alone, whereas there has never been a death

anywhere from marijuana."

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

Lester Grinspoon, M.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School 

Not only is he pro medical marijuana, he has proved it is safer than taking aspirin.

[icyfroth]

did you happen to click through this link?

Toddler drowned 'after being left in 45C scalding bath for two hours after his mother fell asleep while high on cocktail of drugs'

"And on the day of her son’s death she had taken methadone, tramadol, her partner’s diazepam, and the painkiller pregabalin. There were also traces of heroin, cocaine, and cannabis in her blood.

 "But she had not been able to get her regular dose because it was 'lost in the system', the court heard.

She was given an emergency dose on January 2, but failed to collect her prescription the following day."

"The court heard pregabalin produces a 'euphoric' effect and Miss Abel described it as 'a popular drug on her estate', Mr Wright said.

She had tried and failed to get her doctor to prescribe it."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2666921/Toddler-drowned-left-45C-scalding-bath-two-hours-mot...

There's your drugs for medicinal purposes.