Cannabis Hemp News

How many illegal marijuana grow operations would you estimate Vancouver police busted last week? Twenty? 30? Even 40? If you'll pardon the pun, the actual number is much higher. Last week -- in just a seven-day period -- officers uncovered more than 60 grow ops, part of a coordinated nationwide crackdown. The Vancouver raids were part of a massive operation targeting indoor marijuana cultivation. Across the country, 73,000 marijuana plants valued at $73 million were seized, and 163 people arrested. It's the third wave of Operation Greensweep, and police were touting the results Tuesday. But even the officers involved in the initiative wonder if such crackdowns are…

By Steve Hager founder of the cannabis Cup. ----------------------------------------------------------- I first visited the Netherlands in 1987 to write an article on the founder of Holland’s first cannabis-seed company. Titled “The King of Cannabis,” the article described how an Australian named Nevil got access to some of the world’s greatest known strains of cannabis, and established a mail-order company in Holland that eventually made him rich. He lived in a mansion filled with growrooms that I dubbed “Cannabis Castle.” While working on the article, I met the founders of Cultivators Choice, an almost defunct American cannabis-seed company. They told me about the spe…

The lucrative marijuana trade continues to expand in British Columbia, despite almost daily police raids to close down illegal growing operations. U.S. drug chief John Walters appealed to British Columbia authorities earlier this week to curb the province's marijuana trade. He said in Vancouver he had been told that the B.C. crop is worth as much as $6-billion a year and 95 per cent is sent into the United States. Police forces in B.C. have been aggressively pursuing marijuana-growing operations in the past five years. In the most recent campaign, which they called Operation Greensweep, Vancouver police raided several locations this week. Despite their efforts, pol…

Found this in Ninemsn's National Health News: Cannabis use rises in Indigenous areas Aborigines in remote Australia are increasingly using more cannabis than the rest of the community and there are fears amphetamine use might rise. New research published in the Medical Journal of Australia shows a dramatic rise in cannabis use in the Northern Territory and concerns about rates in central Australia. More than half the men in one area of Arnhem Land (55 per cent) and 13 per cent of women reported they used cannabis, compared to 31 per cent and eight per cent six years ago. The rises were blamed on the rapid development of trafficking to eastern Arnhem Land communi…

Top Story: British Lung Foundation Cons Media. Blaming Cannabis for Problems Caused By Prohibition. Tripping Over the Party Line. The Media Fell For It, As Usual, But UK Anti-Tobacco Group Does Not. Posted by Richard Cowan on 2002-11-19 13:50:04 Source: http://www.lunguk.org Top Story: British Lung Foundation Cons Media. Blaming Cannabis for Problems Caused By Prohibition. Tripping Over the Party Line. The Media Fell For It, As Usual, But UK Anti-Tobacco Group Does Not. Posted by Richard Cowan on 2002-11-19 13:50:04 Source: http://www.lunguk.org Posted November 15, 2002 Analysis by Richard Cowan This analysis is the intellectual equivalent of scooping up after the cir…

Drivers to face drug testing November 12 2002 By Padraic Murphy Police Reporter Victorian motorists could face random drug testing as early as next year after an alarming increase in the number of road fatalities involving illicit drugs. The Labor and Liberal Parties yesterday both pledged to introduce random drug testing of drivers after the November 30 state election. They promised to act after the publication of figures showing illicit drugs were now implicated in more Victorian road deaths than alcohol. Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Ray Shuey said yesterday that 29 per cent of drivers involved in fatal accidents in 2000-01 were drug-affected, up…

Source: Slate Magazine Marijuana lost big on Election Day. Nevada's pot legalization proposal took only 39 percent of the vote. An Arizona decriminalization initiative did little better with 43 percent. And a mere 33 percent of Ohioans voted for a measure to treat instead of incarcerate minor drug offenders. One reason for the ballot-box failure may have been the full-throttle, anti-marijuana campaign tour by White House Drug Czar John P. Walters. Walters, whose official title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, inveighed against the demon weed in campaign swings through Ohio, Arizona, and Nevada (twice). At the heart of Walters' sermon: "It i…

Flin Flon's underground marijuana farm has generated more than its share of headlines, but when it was reported this weekend that the operation's entire harvest was to be burned by Health Canada, Flin Flon Mayor Dennis Ballard had just one request: that he be allowed to stand close. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a political story, not a dope story," said Mr. Ballard, who has found himself alternately amused and appalled by the machinations that have surrounded the curious industry that came to his town two years ago: the first crop of marijuana to be grown by a private company under licence for the federal government. On Saturday, a Quebec newspaper reported that th…

Marijuana is not what it used to be. The Woodstock-era weed smoked by legions of baby boomers has morphed in recent years into a drug whose potency has more than tripled. And that has ignited a debate about whether America's most commonly used illict drug, a substance tried by an increasingly younger audience, has grown more dangerous. Public safety and health experts worry that many of the Bay Staters who voted two weeks ago in a nonbinding referendum to decriminalize pot were unaware of the drug's dramatic change and its potential to harm unsuspecting new users, particularly teens. ``I am sure voters are reaching back to the 1970s and saying, `Weed, it wasn't tha…

An estimated nine million Americans a year drive while under the influence of illegal drugs, but efforts to identify, arrest and treat them have been hampered by the weakness of state laws and, until recently, a lack of quick and reliable drug tests, a new report says. The report, issued yesterday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, calls on states to adopt criminal laws setting strict standards on the presence of drugs in a driver's body, just as they use blood alcohol content to determine that a driver is intoxicated. At present, eight states have laws, almost all passed in the last few years, that make it i…

It might be a bit tacky to suggest that Steven Epstein, Esq., of Georgetown, was riding "high" after last Tuesday's vote in more than a dozen area communities in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. Let's just say he was pleased. Very pleased. Not that he, or anybody else, will be allowed to go one toke over, or even under, the line on Main Street after the first of the year. The vote was only advisory. And even if that advice became state law, you still couldn't smoke a joint with the same freedom you can drink a beer. Pot would remain illegal. You just wouldn't get hauled off to jail for using it. Still, a 2-1 vote in favor of making the use and possession of smal…

Source: Guardian Unlimited It's been coming. The news that cannabis is more dangerous than tobacco, reported by the British Lung Foundation yesterday, should not really have come as a surprise to anyone. That it has shocked quite a lot of people is just another example of how the drug policy in this country doesn't add up. According to the research, smoking three "reefers" a day does as much damage to the lungs as a whole fat pack of 20 cigarettes. This is because, on average, joint smokers mix tobacco with weed, smoke it without a filter, and inhale more deeply and for longer than cigarette smokers. Next thing you know they will be telling us that smoking drugs w…

Last week, voters in San Francisco passed an initiative prompting city officials to study the logistics of growing and dispensing medical marijuana to qualifying patients. Such a measure, approved in the birthplace of the Grateful Dead, psychedelic culture and the Summer of Love, probably isn't so surprising. In reality, though, the concept of letting certain patients obtain medical marijuana has support in all corners of the country -- including Louisiana. As we reported in last week's cover story -- "The Best Medicine?" -- six state legislatures and three Louisiana governors approved medical-marijuana laws between the years 1978 and 1991 in our state Capitol -- whi…