Freedom is on the march!
Some people are probably getting tired of the cannabis diaries.
Tough.
The issue has hit the mainstream and is now here to stay. It is not getting stuffed back into the bottle. It may not get on TV as soon as it should - which should have been 40 years ago - but it's politics, which means the right thing to do must be done last.
We are reaching that stage now.
Why Marijuana Legalization is Gaining Momentum
by Nate Silver @ 7:33 PM
More important to the policy debate, however, may be the fraction of adults who have used marijuana at any point in their lifetimes. This is a dual-peaked distribution, with one peak occurring among adults who are roughly age 50 now, and would have come of age in the 1970s, and another among adults in their early 20s. Generation X, meanwhile, in spite of its reputation for slackertude, were somewhat less eager consumers of pot than the generations either immediately preceding or proceeding them.
The key feature of this distribution is how rapidly lifetime usage rates decline after about age 55 or so. About half of 55-year-olds have used marijuana at some point in their lives, but only about 20 percent of 65-year-olds have.
There is not, of course, a one-to-one correspondence between having used marijuana and supporting its legalization; one can plausibly support its legalization without having ever inhaled, or vice versa. Nevertheless, I would venture that the correlation is fairly strong, and polls have generally found a fairly strong generation gap when it comes to pot legalization. As members of the Silent Generation are replaced in the electorate by younger voters, who are more likely to have either smoked marijuana themselves or been around those that have, support for legalization is likely to continue to gain momentum.
Medical Marijuana begins in Michigan
Then we have Medical marijuana program sign-up is today in Michigan. Michigan is the latest state to go medical marijuana, although there are pockets of decrim in Michigan that have been there since the mid-1970's.
"In a year, we're going to look back and say, 'What was the fuss all about?' " said Francisco, executive director of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association. "People have been using medical marijuana in this state all along. All this does is give them some legal protection."
Rules for Michigan's medical-marijuana program went into effect Saturday, and the state begins taking applications today. The first cards will be issued to patients later this month. But questions linger about how the program will work, and resolving the confusion may require more legislation or intervention by the courts.
Michigan residents can get a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana to relieve pain and other symptoms. Patients can register with the state and receive a card protecting them from arrest for growing, using or possessing the drug, which remains illegal under federal law.
An analysis by the House Fiscal Agency estimates between 2,000 and 55,000 patients may sign up for Michigan's program.
Cannabis holds a key to cancer treatment
Last, but not least, the antineoplastic activity of cannabis, LONG blacked out of public discourse and hippie bullshit, is now filtering to the public discourse: Active Ingredient in Marijuana Kills Brain Cancer Cells
WEDNESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- 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."
Marijuana is safer than water as evidenced by water killing more people than cannabis smoking: nobody EVER dies from ingesating cannabis. Nobody. Ever. This renders any argument for maintaining prohibition essentially inert so long as tobacco and alcohol are tolerated. Opponents of reform have no leg to stand on.
America is theoretically a "free country". People are free to smoke tobacco and drink alcohol until they have illnesses, burden the healthcare system and die in droves every year leaving traumatized families across the nation.
But who actually cares? There is PRECIOUS LITTLE done to deter tobacco and alcohol habits, but how many tens of billions of dollars per year to tell lies about marijuana???
There is no possible resistance to cannabis reform that is not poorly-informed or essentially emotional. There is no factual reason for cannabis to be so vehemently prohibited and all the "health-based" objections are inert nonsense.