Man high on drugs arrested after falling asleep at wheel in Dubai petrol station

DUBAI // A man high on drugs was arrested after he fell asleep while getting his car filled at a petrol station, a Dubai court heard on Sunday.

Station staff tried and failed to wake the 29-year-old Emirati, who also fell asleep in a police patrol car.

Prosecutors told Dubai Criminal Court that he had stopped his car for fuel at Enoc petrol station in Ras Al Khor on March 21. When he fell asleep and could not be woken, staff were compelled to call police for help.

Police moved him to their patrol car, where he fell asleep again. Officers had to push his car into a parking spot after failing to find his car keys. But officers did find 51 grams of hashish and 48 drug capsules in his car, prosecutors said.

“We also found two knives, a stun gun and a glass pipe used in smoking hash," said a Pakistani police officer.

When asked his name, the defendant, who has a drug record in Abu Dhabi, gave his brother’s name. Police anti-narcotics department tests showed that he had consumed hashish and alcohol.

In court he denied charges of possessing and consuming drugs, and denied consuming alcohol and impersonation.

“I don’t know how the hashish was put in my car and, as for my confession to police officers, it was taken under force," the accused said. A vedict is expected on June 29.

Resource: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/man-high-on-drugs-arrested-after-falling-asleep-at-wheel-in-dubai-petrol-station

Spontaneous recombustion: how vapers have re-invented pipe-smoking in electronic form

A fascinating newcomer on the British high street is the vape shop. These were perfectly described by my friend Paul Craven as ‘like a cross between an Apple Store and an Elizabethan apoth-ecary’.

In the splendid All About da Vape in Deal, there is a glass cabinet full of new, hi-tech ‘mods’, ‘tanks’ and ‘coils’, while on rows of shelves behind the counter is a Cambrian explosion of coloured bottles containing e-liquid in many strengths and flavours, hipsterishly labelled Suicide Bunny, Jimmy the Juice Man or Miss Pennyworth’s Elixirs; I recently bought a bottle of something called Unicorn Puke.

Yet to anyone over 40 it all seems strangely familiar in a Proustian kind of way (and yes, a company called Bordo2 makes a flavoured Madeleine de Proust e-liquid — £12.99 for 20ml). The memories the shop brought back were of what a good tobacconist was like 30 years ago, when chaps still smoked pipes.

In a way, the whole vaping market has mutated in a way no one could have foreseen: rather than simply replacing cigarette smoking (sales of ‘cig-alike’ devices have peaked) the market has spontaneously reinvented pipe-smoking in electronic form.

Unlike cigarette-smoking, where a few huge brands dominated, the pipe-tobacco market was hugely fragmented (unless you smoked Clan or St Bruno, which nobody of any discernment did). Cigarette smokers had a repertoire of brands they would smoke in extremis, but pipe men were generally fiercely loyal to very few — which is what made old tobacconists’ shelves so magically varied. British pipe-smokers were also naturally insular because, once you left Blighty, all foreign pipe tobacco was unimaginably disgusting. The commonest French brand (St Claude, I think) was positively sulphurous.

All the old pipe-smoker behaviours are re-emerging. Always wearing a jacket (to carry your equipment); strongly divergent opinions on flavours; obsession with equipment and accoutrements; even the camaraderie between enthusiasts. When a friend was recently stopped at airport security because the X-ray had detected his device, the operator wanted to chat about his ‘mod’ — the modern equivalent of ‘I say, is that meerschaum a Dunhill White Spot?’

The reason the EU has a plan to ban these vastly superior devices and limit vaping to cig-alikes is to destroy the diversity of the e-cig market to make it easier to regulate: more cigarette-like and less pipe-like. This would be a disaster. Vaping belongs to an evolutionary category of innovation (see Matt Ridley’s new book, The Evolution of Everything) where variation and bottom-up selection create a solution which intentional design could never have achieved.

Had the e-cigarette been invented and patented by a pharmaceutical company and promoted by the government, it would have failed. Big Pharma would have called the device Niquo-Stop453, made it from plastic, packaged it in boring green and white and sold it in chemists’ shops. No bureaucrat or corporate lackey would have thought ‘What if we call it Unicorn Puke and sell it like a high-end electrical product?’ To smokers, switching to Niquo-Stop453 would have felt like a sad compromise: like being treated for a disease. Switching to Unicorn Puke feels like a choice.

There are many categories where enjoyment depends on variety. If Europe wants to rationalise our vaping industry, we should demand the same consistency of them. Rather than all those stupid varieties of wine, they should just stick to two variants — red and white; and instead of all those redundant cheese varieties they should stick to making Cheddar.

Resource: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/spontaneous-recombustion-how-vapers-have-re-invented-pipe-smoking-in-electronic-form/

HUD seeks to snuff out smoking in housing

Public housing across the United States may go smoke-free in two years if a rule proposed by U.S. Housing and Urban Development takes effect.

The rule would require more than 3,100 public housing agencies to carry out policies prohibiting lighted tobacco products — including pipes, cigars and cigarettes — in living units, common areas, offices and outdoor areas within 25 feet of office buildings or housing.

HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy announced the proposal earlier this year, opening a 60-day public comment period that ends this spring. “We have a responsibility to protect public housing residents from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke,” Castro stated. “This proposed rule will help improve the health of more than 760,000 children and help public housing agencies save $153 million every year in health care, repairs and preventable fires.”

Cigarette smoking kills 480,000 people each year and is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Surgeon General has concluded there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke and cleaning the air, ventilating buildings and separating smokers from non-smokers cannot eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke.

The only way to protect nonsmokers is to stop indoor smoking. A web of federal, state and local laws has extinguished indoor smoking in many places. Yet, 58 million Americans — including an estimated 15 million children — remain exposed to secondhand smoke, mostly at home.

HUD’s rule would impact more than 940,000 housing units, expanding on a voluntary campaign initiated by HUD in 2009. Over seven years, more than 600 public housing agencies — including at least 51 of the 123 housing authorities in Wisconsin — have adopted smoke-free policies for buildings and common areas. HUD estimates that more than 228,000 housing units already are smoke-free.

With a caution, the National Association of Community Health Centers supports the goals of the proposed rule. The association’s chief concern, said Colleen P. Meiman, director of regulatory affairs, is whether the rule would lead to increased homelessness.

“Smoking is an addiction,” Meiman said in her public comment to HUD. If the ban is implemented, she said any violations “should result in progressive action, starting with referrals to smoking cessation service” and “violations should never result in fines or eviction.”

In Wisconsin, advocates for the rule include fire chiefs, the Wisconsin Asthma Coalition in West Allis, American Lung Association in Brookfield, Westlawn Partnership for a Healthier Environment in northwest Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.

The UW center cited a CDC study estimating that banning smoking in public and subsidized housing would save $310.48 million annually in health care costs associated with secondhand smoke, $133.77 million in costs for renovating and maintaining smoky apartments and buildings and $52.57 million in avoided fire damages.

The center encouraged HUD to expand the proposed rule to include e-cigarettes and other “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” with a reference to “growing evidence of carcinogenic and other harmful chemicals in e-cigarette liquid and vapor.

Many advocating a ban observed that secondhand smoke cannot be contained — that it travels through air leaks in ceilings, floors and walls.

The rule “has the potential to reduce health care costs, save lives and improve the quality of life for so many Americans,” according to Anne Dressel, project director for Westlawn Partnership for a Healthier Environment.

The partnership is a group of community stakeholders that has met regularly since 2008 to address health and environmental concerns at Westlawn, Wisconsin’s largest publicly subsidized housing development.

Dressel, in her comment on the proposed rule, said Milwaukee County ranks as the worst county in the state for asthma-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits. And the rate of asthma-related hospitalizations for children residing in the Westlawn community is about twice the county rate. The rate of emergency room visits for Westlawn is 1.5 times higher than the county rate.

Resource: http://wisconsingazette.com/2016/03/12/hud-seeks-to-snuff-out-smoking-in-housing/

E-cigarettes and hookah use among kids soars

There is good news and bad news in the latest report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on tobacco use in middle and high school students: Although adolescents have been smoking fewer cigarettes and cigars in recent years, their use of e-cigarettes and hookahs is on the rise.

The report used data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey that were collected from about 20,000 middle and high school students across the country every year from 2011 to 2015. The 2011 survey was the first year since the survey began that asked about e-cigarettes, which entered the market in the United States in 2007.

The number of high school students who said they used an e-cigarette at least once in the last month increased from 1.5% in 2011 to 16% in 2015, and the number of middle school students rose from 0.6% in 2011 to 5.3% in 2015. The use of hookahs also climbed from 4.1% to 7.2% among high school students and 1% to 2% among middle school students between 2011 and 2015.

During this period, the use of all other tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars and pipes, decreased. The number of high school and middle school students who reported smoking a cigarette in the last month dropped from 15.8% to 9.3% and from 4.3% to 2.3%, respectively.

However, the rise in e-cigarette and hookah use was enough to make up for these decreases, and the total number of adolescents using a tobacco or nicotine product was unchanged between 2011 and 2015. In 2015, 25.3% of high school and 7.4% middle school students said they used tobacco at least once in the last 30 days.

“Unfortunately, it was not much a surprise and it was consistent with the evidence we have seen in previous years,” said Brian A. King, deputy director of research translation in the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, who led the current research, which was published Thursday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. An earlier CDC report found that the rates of e-cigarette use among middle and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014.

A number of factors could be contributing to the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes. All but four states and the District of Columbia have placed age restrictions on buying e-cigarettes, but many youth are probably getting these products from older peers and family members, just like with conventional cigarettes, King said. On top of that, he added, there are no restrictions on buying e-cigarettes on the internet.

“The fact that we have a flavored product that is easier to access and possibly cheaper has created a perfect storm to lead to increased use,” King said.

Another factor contributing to the increase in e-cigarette use is that, “e-cigarettes have been heavily advertised using nontraditional media such as television,” King said. E-cigarette companies have employed celebrities and trendy accessories to market their products.

The number of youth using e-cigarettes will probably continue to grow unless tighter restrictions are put in place around their purchasing, taxation, flavoring and advertising, said Dr. M. Brad Drummond, associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the current research.

Another important way to stem the rise in e-cigarettes is to communicate to young people their potential harms. “The perception is that these are safer devices than combustible cigarettes but safer does not imply harmless,” Drummond said.

Some of the increase in e-cigarette use could be because young adults who never would have starting smoking conventional cigarettes, either because of health concerns or aversion to the smell or taste, are trying e-cigarettes, Drummond said. “They are now entering into a world of nicotine addiction,” he added.

Recent data suggest that using e-cigarettes, or vaping, could be a gateway to tobacco use. There have also been numerous studies suggesting the nicotine in e-cigarettes, just like tobacco products, could be harmful to brain development in young people.

Unlike e-cigarettes, hookahs are not new to the scene and have been around for hundreds of years, King said. “But it’s only become increasingly popular in the U.S. in the last decade,” possibly because of the different flavors that are now available and the fact that hookah bars are exempt from the Clean Indoor Air Act in some areas, so people can smoke in social settings, he added.

It is important to include both e-cigarettes and hookahs in smoke-free laws so they are prohibited from indoor areas, King said. These laws would also have the effect of denormalizing their use, making it seem less acceptable and desirable, he said.

Resource: http://q13fox.com/2016/04/14/e-cigarettes-and-hookah-use-among-kids-soars/

10 Ways to Reduce the Health Risks of Smoking Pot

The War on Drugs is losing, and pot is winning. Here in New England, every state has legalized medical marijuana; every state but New Hampshire has decriminalized recreational pot; and Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts now are poised to fully legalize pot use by adults. With cannabis use and its social acceptance growing, it’s high time for prohibitionists to stop fighting it and to learn to live with it. And it's time for us to learn how to reduce the health hazards of smoking pot.

SMOKE and MIRRORS

All drugs pose risks. Whether medicinal or recreational, whether herbal or pharmaceutical, whether legal or illicit, every drug produces undesirable side effects. Cannabis in itself may pose few risks, but inhaling its vape or its smoke can compromise your health. Smoke is the archetypal smoking gun. You might try fooling yourself, but no ploy of smoke and mirrors can fool your lungs. Even incense, which fools the nose, fouls the lungs.

Due to the inherent dangers of breathing any sort of smoke, many alternative methods of delivering cannabinoids to licensed patients now are sold in state-supervised dispensaries. These include oral sprays, alcohol tinctures, topical cremes, transdermal patches, sublingual strips, oil extracts, vape oils, eye drops, lip balms, capsules, waxes, salves, crumbles, and a whole smorgasbord of medibles (medical edibles). Despite this cornucopia, half of all patients still choose cannabis in its natural form as buds (flowers). Nearly all recreational users imbibe in bud because they are banished from legal access to more healthful alternatives (what’s wrong with this picture?). And both groups consume that bud by vaping or smoking.

COUGHS and COLDS

Cannabinoids contain the psychoactive and medicinal components of cannabis. Except for the palliative cannabinoids in cannabis and the addictive nicotine in tobacco, the smoke of the two herbs is quite similar. As smoke, both contain ash, tar, carbon monoxide, and a host of lesser known noxious fumes. As smoke, both can irritate the entire respiratory tract and cause coughing, wheezing, and spitting. As smoke, both can narrow air passages and thereby reduce lung capacity. As smoke, both can cause cellular damage to your lungs, which lowers your resistance to respiratory illnesses such as colds, flu, pneumonia, and bronchitis.

Studies link cannabis smoke to lung damage, but not to lung cancer. Statistical evidence indicates that Sixties hippies now in their sixties who continued lifelong casual smoking of pot, but never of tobacco, show no higher incidence of lung cancer than their peers who smoked neither. Preliminary evidence even indicates that cannabinoids can actually prevent or possibly reverse cancer. So among your average of 25,000 daily breaths of clean air, do not worry about cancer from 25 tokes of cannabis smoke. Because worrying can cause more harm than smoking.

Still, smoke of any kind can only impair, not improve, pulmonary function, so you should observe some precautions to minimize that risk. The ten safeguards addressed here regard: 1) The Breath; 2) Ignition Systems; 3) Rolling Papers; 4) Pipes; 5) Water Pipes; 6) Vaporizers; 7) Seeking Purity; 8) Seeking Potency; 9) Preserving Potency; 10) Green Diet

1. Don’t Hold Your BREATH!

Inhale deeply if you wish, but do not hold in that inhale. Once the delicate membranes of the cilia of your lungs are coated by the smoke-filled air, no length of holding your breath will promote any further absorption of the cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are quickly absorbed through the lungs. Tars, however, are absorbed more slowly. So holding your breath only further irritates your lungs with greater intake of those gummy tars, as well as yummy carbon monoxide. So take it easy, breathe easily, and don’t hold that hit!

Several scientific studies have proven the needlessness of the breathtaking experience of holding your breath. Ethnobotanic drug guru turned holistic health guru Andrew Weil, M.D., too, advocates not holding your breath. If you remain skeptical, perform some animals experiments, the animal being you. Guided by a stopwatch, go ahead and time yourself. A lifetime of smoking in your traditional manner might be a hard pattern to change. Yet the Number One heath safeguard you can apply to reduce lung damage is to not hold your breath.

2. IGNITION System Tune-Up Time

No scientific study sheds any light upon the health hazards of incendiary devices, commonly called lighters and matches. Still, the foul odors of these ignition systems convince us that they are unsafe. So beware that first toke!

LIGHTERS fueled by petroleum distillates do not belong in your face. Butane in itself is far more toxic than cannabis, so the fumes from its combustion surely are more harmful, too. Avoid lighter pollution.

MATCHES are potentially safer if you patiently wait for the flaming sulfur-tip to burn out before you hold the match to your bud. In practice, however, you inhale the burning sulfur when you strike the match. If you are smelling it, then you are breathing it. Hot air rises, so ignite that match high above your head.

PIPES can multiply the ignition problem. Smoked leisurely, especially during solo sessions, cannabis snuffs out easily, requiring several stokes per bowl. That's toxic buildup. So here's a hot tip about sulfur-tip matches and butane lighters. Use just one match or one flick, not to light your pipe, but to light a candle.

CANDLES are true drug paraffin-alia! Light a candle, set the tip of a toothpick afire on its flame, and toke up your pipe with the burning toothpick, not matchstick or candlestick. No sulfur or butane fumes in your face nor in your lungs. Natural fiber wood to the rescue. Note that thin flat toothpicks burn truer than thicker round ones.

SCREENS for the bowls of pipes should never be homemade from aluminum foil punctured with pinholes. After just one use, the foil disintegrates. Where did it go? Into your lungs! Use the round screens sold in smoke shops made of more durable metals. But beware a thin coating of wax sometimes applied to assure a grip to the blade that cuts those circles. So first toast a new screen over your candle before inserting it into the bowl of your pipe. If asked what you are doing, just say you are screening for drugs.

3. Take an Active Role with ROLLING PAPERS 

Rolling papers of joints (cannabis cigarettes) hold the cannabis, hold back its combustion, and aerate its smoke. The thinner the joint, the more the aeration. But offering no psychoactive nor medicinal effect, even paper-thin paper adds to the toxic load, especially of ash. So be frugal with rolling papers.

Research shows that the cannabis in the roach (the butt) filters out tars streaming from the cannabis on the ember end, and does so more effectively than does a water pipe. But that helps only if you throw the roach out rather than smoke it down, which makes for a very expensive filter. So instead fill the butt end with some other herb, for instance oregano, and discard that.

Whatever the herb, the burning ember dangles perilously close to fingertips and to lips, and numerous studies have proven that burns are not conducive to good health. To prevent such burns, use smoking tips are like filter tips without the filter. While smoking tips are marketed commercially, you can roll your own from strips of thin non-corrugated cardboard, such as used for packaging, guess what, rolling papers and matchbooks. Or cut a beverage straw into filter-tip lengths. Do not use the plastic straws sold in supermarkets, but rather paper straws sold only in health food stores.

A sort of exterior smoking tip not discarded with each joint is the long, slender cigarette holder, similar to pipe stems. But then you might as well skip the paper and go straight to a pipe.

4. PIPES are More than Just Pipe Dreams

Smoke is hot and dry. Same as does the desiccated air of indoor heating, smoke dries out your mouth and throat which makes you more susceptible to colds and flu. A pipe, especially its stem, cools down the smoke. The longer the stem, the cooler. Arm's length is long enough. That also keeps the burning match or lighter or toothpick far from your mouth. You inhale fewer of those fumes. And smoke never gets in your eyes.

The long stem must be segmented for dismantling for efficient cleaning. The inside wooden walls of the bowl and stem are very efficient tar traps, yet another benefit of using a pipe. Even better, the sticky tar in turn traps relatively heavy ash. Usually only the first segment closet to the bowl ever needs cleaning, rarely the segment nearest you, an encouraging sign that your mouth is far from the tar .

Pipes are made of glass, metal, corn cob, stone, ceramic, and wood. Glass is fragile and breakable and difficult to clean. Metal imparts an unpleasing metallic taste to the smoke, and is heavy to lug. Corn cob with its varnished outer shell burns so easily that the entire bowl is flammable. The safest bowls are inert ceramic or stone dead stone. Smoke shops stock soapstone and sandstone pipes, but with virtually no stems. That leaves wood as the safest option for pipes.

Wood as a natural fiber even imparts an agreeable aroma to the smoke. Despite a plethora of pipes sold in smoke shops, segmented long-stemmed wooden pipes are more likely found in Asian Indian import stores. For a demonstration of short tokes from a long-stemmed segmented wooden pipe lit with toothpicks, view this Wall Street Journal (yes, Wall Street Journal) two-minute “instructional” video:

5. WATER PIPES and The Big Bong Theory

Water pipes, also called bongs, are used in the belief that the water cools and moistens the otherwise hot and dry smoke. Just hearing their bubbling sound can be reassuring to your ears that you are doing a favor for your lungs. The power of suggestion is strong, but chemical analysis of the smoke proves that while water pipes do cool the smoke they really do not moisten it.

Although smoke bubbles passing through the water gain no moisture, the water does trap some particulate matter (ash), some water-soluble toxins such as hydrogen cyanide and hydrocarbons, and some tar. Most smokers fill their water pipes with cold water. Cold water cools the smoke, yes. But research shows that hot water better traps the tar. So here’s a hot tip! Fill your water pipe with hot water, not cold.

Studies conducted with cannabis found that water pipes filter out proportionately more cannabinoids than tar, more than anyone would have suspected. Thus to compensate for the lost cannabinoids, bong users end up smoking more and therefore inhaling more, not fewer, tars. As this cancels out any potential benefit of using a bong, better to ban the bong.

6. VAPORIZERS Don’t Go Up in Smoke

So-called vaporizers do not create true vapor, but instead produce smolder, the semi-smoke that lingers from a snuffed out candle. The words smolder and smolderizer lack an appealing ring to them, so marketers coined the words vape and vaporizer. Cannabis burns and smokes at temperatures above 460 degrees F (238 degrees C), but volatizes and smolders between 266 and 446 degrees F (130 to 230 degrees C). Vaporizers volatize the herb, rather than burn it. While manufacturers promote their many vaporizers with much tripe and hype, vaping indeed is widely acknowledged to be less harmful than smoking.

In our new millennium, the latest model vaporizers offer features such as adjustable temperature controls, automatic shutoffs, and battery-operated portability. Depending upon the brand of vaporizer, analysis shows that compared to cannabis smoke, cannabis smolder delivers far less carbon monoxide and none of the tar or noxious gases such as benzene, toluene, and naphthalene. But there’s a catch.

THC is the crucial cannabinoid that produces cannabis’ psychoactive effects, but many models of vaporizers deliver low proportions of the available THC. Most models instead deliver high proportions of the available cannabinol (CBN) and cannabidiol (CBD), which provide many of cannabis’ medicinal effects. Thus most vaporizers are more useful to medical marijuana patients who then can vape less, but less appropriate for recreational potheads who then must vape more.

Vaporizers still can make you cough, especially if you are a novice vaper. Nevertheless the right models potentially can spare your lungs. Much depends upon what brand of vaporizer you’re using and what sort of relief you’re seeking. While many cannabis users still voice a clear preference for the effects of smoke over smolder, advocates for vaporizers suggest that such diehard smokers simply have tried the wrong models. Among many variables, this much is certain. Neither smolder nor smoke benefits human lungs. So even the best (and most expensive) of vaporizers are not total panaceas.

7. Seek PURITY

If given the choice, go organic. Compared to a melon or a mango fertilized with chemicals, sprayed with pesticides, and preserved with fungicides, an organically-grown fruit should taste better, and usually does. Ditto for organically-grown cannabis. Chemical fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate, which in its isolated form is the active ingredient in homemade bombs, can truly blow your mind.

Be especially vigilant for pesticides. Cannabis is a costly crop to risk loss to insects, so some gardeners insure against losses with heavy doses of insecticides. That is as true for indoor cultivation as for outdoor. Is your cannabis on drugs? If you do not purchase yours at a state-licensed dispensary whose product is routinely analyzed for contaminants, conduct some crude drug testing at home. Crush a raw bud between your fingers. Its aroma should be pleasing and should stir your imagination with images of the verdant rainforests of Hawaii, not the petrochemical refineries of New Jersey. Still, the proof is in the puffing.

The varying aromas of the smoke from different strains is subtle, and smoke from any source tends to numb nasal passages. So don’t expect to smell it while you’re smoking it. Instead, trust your throat, lungs, and brain. If just a little puff causes you to cough or gives you a headache, don't blame the cannabis, blame the chemicals.

8. Seek POTENCY

Coughing while smoking? Then you’ve just smoked too much. Coughing after smoking? Then you’ve been smoking too often. And what you’ve been smoking may be of low potency. To reduce lung irritation, seek high power flower which medicates you or elevates you with less huffing and puffing. Sift out twigs and seeds, and save low potency leaves for modes of delivery other than vaping or smoking. The more potent your smoke, the less you will toke. Simple arithmetic.

The new math of medicinal marijuana has opened new horizons. Over decades, cultivators hybridized strains with higher levels of THC but unwittingly bred out the cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN). As the CBD and CBN provide relief of many medical ailments, their low potency accounts for mixed results in human trials. With marijuana’s medicalization, dispensaries now provide patients with access to cannabis with higher levels of CBD and CBN. Stay tuned as research rapidly advances regarding the ABC’s of THC and CBD and CBN.

9. PRESERVE Potency

To assure it retains its potency, you must properly store your herbal remedy or recreational therapy. If purchased illicitly, the herb probably came bundled in a plastic zipper-type food storage bag. Such bags are waterproof, but not airproof, else a sweet aroma would not seep out of the bag. If odor is leaking out, then air is leaking in.

Place that bag inside an “oven bag,” marketed for roasting dead meat. Such bags indeed are airproof. But bags do not protect the delicate herb from being crushed which exposes it to oxidation and therefore loss of potency. To keep the bud whole, stash it inside a rigid airtight container such as a glass jar. Next, store the jar in a cool, dark place. Refrigerators are fine, freezers even better. Kept frozen, herbs retain their potency for years. (I speak from years of experience.)

10. Green Diet

Some tobacco smokers consider “a good cigar” worth savoring after dinner and dessert. A more healthful chronology would be the after-smoke dinner. Include in your diet ample fresh fruits and raw vegetables rich in antioxidants that both prevent and reverse the cellular damage caused by free radicals released in smoke. From among fruits, berries are best. Among veggies, choose the Brassicas such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards and kale.

If you do not always eat a wholesome diet, then resort to nutritional supplements, though bitter pills to swallow. Two common combinations are especially helpful: a vitamin B-complex, and the ace vitamins A,C, and E. These are the skin vitamins, and the lungs are but skin turned outside-in.

An undervalued nutrient is water. Drink it straight, not diluted as a beverage. When you are fully hydrated, your respiratory tract stays moist and your mucus thin. And drink especially after smoking, when moisture in mouth and throat need to be replenished. A dry mouth and parched throat increase susceptibility to tooth decay, gum disease, and respiratory infections.

If water is not available, chew on a dark green leafy vegetable. A sprig of parsley, for instance, decorates a dinner plate, but its real function is to cleanse the palette. Its chlorophyll also freshens the breath. If you are outdoors, chew on a leaf or blade of grass. No greenery nearby? Oh yes there is. What do you think you’ve been smoking?

The Gateway Theory

And chew on this. The theory that cannabis is a gateway drug leading to addiction to cocaine and heroin has been resoundingly disproven, whereas in states still stuck in the 20th century the possession of cannabis still acts as a gateway to courtrooms and jail cells.

Smoking cannabis deserves much to commend when compared to smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol or popping pills. But smoking cannabis has less to commend when compared to breathing fresh air. Not smoking is better than smoking. But if light up you must, then follow some precautions to assure your good health, and you also will lighten up. So don’t get coughs. And don’t get caught

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nicholas V. COZZI, Ph.D., of the School of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,“Effects on Water Filtration on Marijuana Smoke: A Literature Review,” Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), 1993, Volume 4 Number 2. This 3 page summary of previous studies, with 10 citations, is itself very widely cited. Full text accessed in 2016 at: http://www.ukcia.org/research/EffectsOfWaterFiltrationOnMarijuanaSmoke.php


Mitch EARLEYWINE, Ph.D., of the State University of NY (SUNY) at Albany, 1) Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence, 2002, Oxford University Press, Chapter 7, “Marijuana’s “Health Effects – The Pulmonary System,” pages 154-158. This entire book should be read by everyone on both sides of the chasm who engage in the debate about marijuana. 2) “Decreased respiratory symptoms in cannabis users who vaporize,” Harm Reduction Journal, April 2007, Volume 4 Number 11. Full text accessed in 2016 at: http://harmreductionjournal.com/content/4/1/11
3) “Pulmonary Harm and Vaporizers,” Chapter 11 in The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis, edited by Julie Holland, M.D., 2010, Park Street Press. An update to what Earelywine first wrote about vaporizers in his book Understanding Marijuana, cited above

Dale GIERINGER, Ph.D., of California NORML, 1) Health Tips for Marijuana Smokers,  revised 1994, published by California NORML, is a 35 page anthology of several articles written by Gieringer about the health benefits of medicinal marijuana and the health hazards of smoking it. 2) “Marijuana Water Pipe and Vaporizer Study,” Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Summer 1996, Volume 6 Number 3. This 5 page report of research funded by MAPS & California NORML challenges many popularly held assumptions, but the research now is outdated, as testing needs to be applied to the latest generation of vaporizers. Full text accessed in 2016 at: http://www.ukcia.org/research/pipes.php

INSTITUTE of MEDICINE (IOM) of the National Academy of Science, Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, 1999, National Academies Press, Chapter 3, “Physiological Harms: Tissue and Organ Damage,” pages 109-121. Commissioned by the federal government’s IOM, this landmark book examined all the scientific studies of its time, and gathered evidence that casual cannabis use impairs respiratory function but does not cause lung cancer. Entire book download as a free PDF in 2016 at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/6376/marijuana-and-medicine-assessing-the-science-base

Alison MACK and Janet Joy, Marijuana as Medicine?, 2001, National Academies Press, Chapter 3, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Harm,” pages 38-43. This is a summary in layman terms of the IOM’s Marijuana and Medicine cited above. Entire book download as a free PDF in 2016 at:http://www.nap.edu/download.php?record_id=9586

Donald P. TASHKIN, M.D., of the UCLA School of Medicine, 1) “The Effects of Marijuana Smoke,” a noteworthy summary in a single 3 page article of all the research existing in 1995. Full text accessed in 2016 at:  http://www.drugscience.org/Petition/C2B.html, 2) “The effects of marijuana on the lung and its immune defenses” a lengthy article with 49 citations to other studies related to marijuana smoke was published in 1997. Full text accessed in 2016 at: http://www.ukcia.org/research/EffectsOfMarijuanaOnLungAndImmuneDefenses.php

J.P. ZACNY and L.D. Chait of the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, 1) “Breathhold duration and response to marijuana smoke,” in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 1989, volume 33, pages 481-484. Abstract accessed in 2016 at:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2554344, 2) “Response to marijuana as a function of potency and breathhold duration,” in Psychopharmacology, 1991, volume 103, pages 223-226. Abstract and first two pages accessed in 2016 at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02244207

Lynn ZIMMER, Ph.D., and John P. Morgan, M.D., of the City University of NY (CUNY) Medical School, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Literature, 1997, Lindesmith Center, Chapter 15, “Marijuana Smoking and the Lungs,” pages 112-116. A short chapter in a short book that says it all.




Mark Mathew Braunstein is a paraplegic whose cannabis use is medicinal for below the waist, and recreational above. He is the author of the books Radical Vegetarianism, Sprout Garden, and Microgreen Garden, and a frequent contributor to holistic health magazines. He wrote “Walking in the March of Time” in the Spring 2015 issue of Spirit of Change. You can read many of his previous articles at www.MarkBraunstein.org.

Resource:  http://www.alternet.org/drugs/10-ways-reduce-health-risks-smoking-pot

Police Beat: Speeder caught with pot

A Lake Havasu City man was pulled over for speeding, and police say they also found marijuana and multiple paraphernalia items.

Evan Fitzpatrick, 20 was pulled over for speeding on South Palo Verde Boulevard. When officers approached his car, they said they could smell marijuana.

Fitzpatrick allegedly told officers he had marijuana in the car and several paraphernalia items. A search revealed he had three glass smoking devices, numerous pipes with burnt residue, two grinders containing marijuana, rolling papers, lighters and a jar that smelt of marijuana.

Fitzpatrick was cited for speeding, marijuana and paraphernalia possession and released.

Cops find scale, drugs in woman’s car

A Lake Havasu City woman was arrested for drug paraphernalia and a misdemeanor warrant after police found numerous drug paraphernalia items.

Police contacted Jessica Fisher, 35 at her residence for an active warrant. When they searched Fisher’s car they found a digital scale with brown residue, a plastic tube with brown residue, two pieces of foil with burnt residue and a tube of super glue. The items tested positively for methamphetamine and heroin.

During questioning, Fisher allegedly told police she uses heroin and keeps a scale with her to weigh it when she makes a purchase.

Phoenix men cited for marijuana

Four Phoenix men were cited for marijuana and drug paraphernalia after police pulled their vehicle over on May 20.

Omar Lopez, 20, Jesus Lopez 21, Miguel Rodriguez, 24 and Homero Navarro 21 were all charged after police said they could smell marijuana coming from the car.

During a search, police found one bag of 1.9 grams of marijuana and another containing .8 grams of marijuana. Officers also found a grinder.

Transient arrested

A man was arrested for trespassing at a residence on Coconino Drive when he illegally entered the victim’s fenced yard on May 17.

Jere Simmons, 53 was arrested after the homeowner called police. The victim told police his wife was watching TV and heard talking in the backyard. She turned on exterior lighting and then allegedly saw Simmons looking into their kitchen window.

Havasu couple cited for child neglect

A Lake Havasu City couple was cited after a Department of Child Safety Officer placed their seven-month-old child in protective custody.

Jessica Foxworthy, 21 and Caleb Bonsang, 28, both of Lake Havasu City were cited for endangering the health of a minor on May 19.

Police say a welfare check of the couple’s residence revealed the home was in a “soiled and unlivable condition.”

A DCS officer told police she noticed animal feces and urine on the child’s car seat and the child had not been recently bathed.

When police arrived at the residence they said the home smelled of old or rotting trash and animal urine. The floors throughout the home were covered in clothing, trash receptacles and half-eaten food containers.

Officers also found a gallon jug of yellow liquid that was believed to be human urine in the couple’s bedroom, which they shared with the child.

Man arrested for assault

A Lake Havasu City man was arrested for assault after he hit a victim in the face when the victim told him to leave the residence on May 19.

Police say as they were arresting Raul Bon, 19 he fell asleep several times during conversations and told officers he was not in a fight.

Havasu ‘light weight’ arrested for trespassing

A Lake Havasu City man was arrested for underage drinking and three counts of criminal trespassing on May 15.

Austin Piacitelli, 20, was taken into custody after he allegedly entered a residence on Winstron Drive through the back door and sat on the victim’s couch as they were eating dinner. When the victim escorted Piacitelli out the front door, Piacitelli entered the neighbor’s back yard and tried to enter the residence several times through a locked door.

Police located Piacitelli on Oro Grande Boulevard and he allegedly tried to run from police and ran into the victim’s yard again.

During questioning, Piacitelli told police he had about four or five beers and was, “pretty messed up because he is a light weight.” He added he may have had a shot of some hard liquor at one point.

Piacitelli’s blood alcohol content was .231 percent.

Other arrests

Jennifer Cramer, 30, of Lake Havasu City was arrested for criminal speeding after she was clocked driving at 70 miles-per-hour down a 30 mile-per-hour section of Acoma Boulevard on May 20.

James Decker, 45, of Lake Havasu City was arrested on May 16 for failing to comply with a court order after contacting an individual who has a protective order against him.

Resource:  http://www.havasunews.com/news/police-beat-speeder-caught-with-pot/article_b7376fe0-23c4-11e6-86cc-7b6e061b2cd0.html

Here’s the Most Beautiful Pot Paraphernalia You Ever Did See

Browse the shelves of your neighborhood headshop and you’ll notice a few themes. Deadhead stuff. 420 aliens. Rasta. It all looks like something you’d see perched on a milk crate in a frat house. The dude vibes are strong.

Granted, smoking accessories have gone upscale as marijuana moves ever further into the mainstream. Some are so highly designed they don’t even look like smoking accessories. But Luren Jenison still saw a problem. “We noticed a lack of female-driven retail experiences for smoking accessories,” she says.

That prompted Jenison and a friend to launch Sweetflag, a woman-owned online retailer of gorgeous high-end pot paraphernalia with a feminine bent. You’d find some of the stuff in any headshop, but Sweetflag also offers an assortment of pipes and accessories made by artisans who work with porcelain, wood, quartz, and horn. “They’re not something you’re going to hide away in a drawer,” Jenison says.

Sweetflag brings an element of fun to the genre—ceramic apple pipe, anyone?—and some unexpected surprises like miniature zen gardens and a stash tin with a magnifying glass you can use to spark a flame if you’ve lost your lighter. (Happens to everyone.)

To keep you entertained after using its other products, Sweetflag has a web-based stoner playground called Experience. It features kaleidoscopic imagery, looping GIFs, and snippets of sound in a pop cultural stew sure to bring your chill to the next level.

Resource: http://www.wired.com/2016/04/sweetflag-pot-pipes/

New Plymouth woman gets a fail mark for using P to celebrate passing course

 A New Plymouth woman found smoking P in her parked car told police she was celebrating getting good grades.

Francine Mereana Nathan was snapped smoking methamphetamine with an associate in a Buller St carpark about 8.50pm on May 5.

Detective Sergeant Dave McKenzie told the court an off duty police officer walked by Nathan's Mitsubishi car and saw the defendant lighting up and inhaling the drug.

A search of her car was then carried out and the officer found a black sunglasses case stored in the drivers side door.

 Within that, 11 small ziplock bags were located and one contained a small amount of methamphetamine.

A glass pipe was also found in Nathan's handbag.

McKenzie said Nathan admitted she had tried to hide the drug away.

"She claimed she was blazing to celebrate passing her course," he said.

Nathan pleaded guilty to two charges, possessing the Class A drug and the pipe, when she appeared in the New Plymouth District Court on Thursday.

During the hearing, lawyer Julian Hannam asked Judge Chris Sygrove to request a probation report, to look at options which could support her rehabilitation.

Hannam said his client did have previous offending but it was alcohol related, rather than for drugs.

Sygrove remanded Nathan on bail to reappear for sentencing on June 17.

Resource: http://www.stuff.co.nz/79899718

Inky' the Octopus Escapes from New Zealand Aquarium

An octopus the size of a rugby ball made an audacious escape through a narrow pipe at New Zealand’s National Aquarium, reports said, with the “great escape artist” returning to the ocean.

“Inky” the male octopus, given to the Napier aquarium two years ago after being rescued from a crayfish pot, made a dash for freedom by slipping through a small gap in his enclosure, sliding across a wet floor and squeezing through a 150-millimeter-diameter (5.9 inches) pipe, Fairfax New Zealand reported Tuesday.

Octopus Sex: Six-Arm Hugs, Tentacle Hickeys: Photos

“Octopus are really intelligent animals, very inquisitive, and they also tend to explore whenever they get the chance,” aquarium manager Rob Yarrell told MediaWorks’ Newshub Wednesday.

“Giving him just a little gap was enough for him to get out and we noticed the wet trail across to one of our drains.”

The reports did not state when Inky made his getaway, reportedly the first-ever at the aquarium.

11 Amazing Animal Appendages

“They are great escape artists,” Yarrell told the New Zealand Herald, saying staff would be closely watching the remaining octopus in the enclosure.

While Inky was the size of a rugby ball he could stretch to extremes and squeeze through tiny spaces, Yarrell said.

“As long as its mouth can fit,” he told Fairfax. “Their bodies are squishy but they have a beak, like a parrot.”


Resource: http://news.discovery.com/animals/inky-the-octopus-escapes-from-new-zealand-aquarium-160413.htm

RIGHT AT HOME: Decor From Glass Artists

 Chris Ahalt's menagerie of blue whales, pink hippos and gold giraffes looks like a flotilla in a really fun dream. Their balloon-animal bodies are gathered at the point of attachment in a tight little knot, tethered to a tiny lead weight.

But they aren't latex. Ahalt, who lives in Minneapolis, makes the whimsical yet realistic-looking creatures out of blown glass.

"Balloons, to me, suggest celebration, children and wonder," he says. "The animals that I pick appeal to those child-like sensibilities as well."

But there's profundity in his designs, as well. He crafts animals that are facing endangerment; rendering them in glass, he says, highlights not only their beauty but their precarious existence.

"The thrill never gets old of thwarting the glass' desire to fall apart, and it's always a victory when a piece comes together," Ahalt says.

"At times I do wish I'd chosen a career in something a little less temperamental," he laughs. "Glassblowing can be a really frustrating medium. There are countless hours lost to broken glass." ( www.thechesterfieldgallery.com )

There are lots of other artists, too, willing to take the risk.

Danielle Blade and Stephen Gartner, glassblowers in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, create vessels and lighting inspired by the environment outside their rural studio.

"Both of us have strong ideas about beauty. We have spectacular gardens here, and it's wonderful to wander them," Gartner says.

"We're trying to bring that walk in the woods into our living room," says Blade.

In their Strata collection of vases and vessels, tones of warm, earthy color are blown into layers that evoke geological terrain.

A pendant light rendered in different hues brings to mind the gaseous planet Jupiter. Some of the design duo's objects come topped with surprising touches like a delicate snail's head; a sliver of animal bone or antler; or a curling leaf. ( www.gartnerblade.com )

Casey Hyland blows softly tinged blue and white glass into vessels that look like droplets of sky with wispy clouds. He'll teach you how to blow your own ornaments, mugs and paperweights in classes offered at his Louisville, Kentucky, studio. ( www.hylandglass.com )

Loy Allen rests delicate glass monarch butterflies and dragonflies on bud vases and perfume bottles, using a technique called lampworking, in which the glass is molded over a small flame. A native South Dakotan, she's inspired by the plant and animal life around her Hot Springs studio, as well as by the Art Nouveau movement. ( www.loyallen.net )

Corvallis, Oregon-based artist Eric Bailey's little creatures include sleek, racer-striped lizards, tree frogs and colorful snails that clamber impishly over bottles and cylindrical paperweights. ( www.artfulhome.com )

Beyond objects, some glass designers are producing furniture.

The "canvas" of a coffee, dining or side table can give an artist space to do extraordinary things.

John Foster, another Minneapolis-based artist, assembles multiple cut crystals of various sizes into his Sparkle Palace cocktail table, which looks like a giant molecular structure. When light shines through it, prisms cast a rainbow around the room. ( www.thefancy.com )

Designer Liana Yaroslavsky is known for avant garde creations; for example, she encases chandeliers, or piano keys and sheet music, inside her tables. O2, available as a side or coffee table, suspends 100 Murano glass balls inside a transparent cube to give the effect of bubbles in water. And the base of Yaroslavsky's Luna table was also blown from Murano glass; the sphere looks like she plucked the moon from the sky and rested a glass top on it. ( www.lianayar.com )

Resource: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/home-decor-glass-artists-39334546

One hookah tobacco smoking session delivers 25 times the tar of a single cigarette

As cigarette smoking rates fall, more people are smoking tobacco from hookahs--communal pipes that enable users to draw tobacco smoke through water. A new meta-analysis led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine shows that hookah smokers are inhaling a large load of toxicants.

The findings, published online and scheduled for the January/February print issue of the journal Public Health Reports, represent a meta-analysis, or a mathematical summary of previously published data. The research team reviewed 542 scientific articles potentially relevant to cigarette and hookah smoking and ultimately narrowed them down to 17 studies that included sufficient data to extract reliable estimates on toxicants inhaled when smoking cigarettes or hookahs.

They discovered that, compared with a single cigarette, one hookah session delivers approximately 125 times the smoke, 25 times the tar, 2.5 times the nicotine and 10 times the carbon monoxide.

"Our results show that hookah tobacco smoking poses real health concerns and that it should be monitored more closely than it is currently," said lead author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt's Schools of the Health Sciences. "For example, hookah smoking was not included in the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey System questionnaire, which assesses cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco, electronic cigarettes and many other forms of substance abuse."

Dr. Primack and his co-authors note that comparing a hookah smoking session to smoking a single cigarette is a complex comparison to make because of the differences in smoking patterns. A frequent cigarette smoker may smoke 20 cigarettes per day, while a frequent hookah smoker may only participate in a few hookah sessions each day.

"It's not a perfect comparison because people smoke cigarettes and hookahs in very different ways," said Dr. Primack. "We had to conduct the analysis this way--comparing a single hookah session to a single cigarette--because that's the way the underlying studies tend to report findings. So, the estimates we found cannot tell us exactly what is 'worse.' But what they do suggest is that hookah smokers are exposed to a lot more toxicants than they probably realize. After we have more fine-grained data about usage frequencies and patterns, we will be able to combine those data with these findings and get a better sense of relative overall toxicant load."

The research team also notes that these findings may be helpful in providing estimates for various official purposes.

"Individual studies have reported different estimates for inhaled toxicants from cigarettes or hookahs, which made it hard to know exactly what to report to policy makers or in educational materials," said co-author and expert in meta-analysis Smita Nayak, M.D., research scientist at the Swedish Center for Clinical Research and Innovation. "A strength of meta-analysis is that it enables us to provide more precise estimates by synthesizing the currently available data from individual studies."

These estimates come at an important time: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that, for the first time in history, past 30-day use of hookah tobacco was higher than past 30-day use of cigarettes among U.S. high school students. Additionally, about one-third of U.S. college students have smoked tobacco from a hookah, and many of those individuals were not previous users of other forms of tobacco.
Resource : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160111121406.htm

Smoking pot comes out of the shadows

Massachusetts voters will decide on the legalization of marijuana for recreational use this November. After spending a weekend in Denver on “respite” from caring for my 103-year-old mother, I can report on the impact of legalized marijuana in Colorado — the first state to do so — with some personal observations.

I have smoked marijuana illegally from the time I was in college in the 1960s. It was a medicine of sorts. We did not have the behavioral and mood prescription drugs available today, and alcohol and cigarettes were no good in the long run. Including marijuana in the “war on drugs” was a farce and an abomination, especially for the millions of Americans arrested and imprisoned for marijuana offenses. The voters of Massachusetts recognized the therapeutic value of marijuana in 2012, legalizing its medical use, but the state has been slow setting up the apparatus of care.

For most of us, possession of one ounce or less of cannabis is punishable as a civil offense with a fine of $100. Offenders under the age of 18 must attend a drug awareness program.

The first retail marijuana stores opened in Colorado on Jan. 1, 2014. Today there are more than 400 stores. Marijuana sales neared one billion dollars in 2015 with state and local governments receiving an estimated $125 million in tax revenues. Denver’s economy is booming — 6.5 percent growth in 2014 — and new schools, financed by pot taxes, are being built across the state.

Marijuana sales no longer take place in the shadows, enriching “El Chapo” and other evil men and women creating a pantheon of criminality.
View Story
From Colorado, a glimpse at life after marijuana legalization

In November, Massachusetts voters are likely to consider a ballot question legalizing recreational marijuana.

The retail shop I visited in Denver was a modest storefront on a block with a coffee shop and art gallery. I showed my driver’s license to a man sitting behind a plastic window with a pistol in his belt. This is an all-cash business — the federal government bars banks from dealing in “drug-tainted” dollars. Proprietors face the hazard of armed highwaymen when driving bags of money from place to place, including the state revenue office.

I was given a number and buzzed in, but the store had only a few customers.

A young female “budtender” took me into a private room stocked with more than thirty varieties of primo product in large glass jars with names like Blue Dream, Candy Kush, Critical Mass, Lamb’s Bread, New York Diesel. The selection was almost overwhelming. Under the expert guidance of the budtender, I chose Golden Goat with its tangy citrus and piney scent.

“The effects are strong, cerebral and very pleasant,” she said. “This strain is a great mood enhancer and is perfect for a day of physical activity as it will not leave you lethargic or unfocused.” The strain was listed at 24.8 percent THC and was 20 percent indica and 80 percent sativa. The price was right, only ten dollars a gram, $280 an ounce, about half the street price in Massachusetts.

The experience was similar to shopping in a fine wine store. There were pipes, vaporizers, and other paraphernalia for sale, also cannabis concentrates, extracts, edibles, balms and sprays. I bought a four-dollar “mildly medicated cinnamon cookie” — 10 milligrams — which I ate the next morning to no effect.

It was surprising to me how little impact legalization seemed to have on Denver and the society at large. The sky had not fallen. This new input in the life of the burgeoning city was easily absorbed. Amendment 64 does not permit the consumption of marijuana “openly and publicly” — akin to the laws against public drinking. Discretion rules — except for the annual April rally and smoke-out staged in front of the State Capitol.

Marijuana-related arrests have dropped more than 80 percent since legalization, saving thousands of Coloradans from the indignity of being flushed through the criminal justice system.

Legalization — this pipe dream of my generation — is no longer radical or revolutionary or particularly symbolic, but medically indispensable and simple common sense.

The weekend in the Mile High City provided a fine respite from my full-time job assuring that my old mother wakes up in the morning and gets to bed at night in the old family house in Cambridge on the edge of the Harvard campus. At age 103, frail but aware, she drives me crazy sometimes with her questions and demands, but she put up with mine for the first five, 10, and 20 years of my life. Using marijuana helps me carry out my filial duties, relieving my anxieties, discharging my boredom, improving my focus on the work to be done.

I’m old-fashioned. I do not smoke in front of my mother or my son. I smoke in the shadows. The habits of a lifetime cannot change overnight, no matter what happens in November.

Andrew Schlesinger is author of “Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience’’ and co-editor with his brother of “Journals: 1952–2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’’
Resource : https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/24/smoking-pot-comes-out-shadows/pr8epprnjUEjJV8FrSvkLJ/story.html

Through the magnifying glass

May 22 will mark celebrated crime writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 157 birth anniversary. Arathi M. begins her weekly column on books by introducing readers to some of his suspense-filled whodunits

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gained universal fame by creating Sherlock Homes, a fictional character, who became more famous than the author. With his master penmanship, Doyle wrote about 56 short stories and four novels featuring Sherlock. This May 22, Doyle will turn 157. What better time to get to know more about him…

Doyle and his life

An ophthalmologist, a gifted athlete, a politician, a historian — the caps that Doyle donned were many. He was born into a Catholic family in 1859 in Scotland. During his years as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, he published an article ‘Gelsemium as a Poison’, the findings of which were useful in murder investigations. He completed his education in ophthalmology from Vienna and later moved to London. He created his most famous character in 1887, which catapulted him to global recognition. Other than Sherlock, he also wrote novels such as The Mystery of Cloomber , Narrative of John Smith and short stories such as The Captain of the Pole-Star and J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement , which were inspired by his time at sea. Doyle also penned seven historical novels which critics consider his best work. After this, he stood for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist in 1900 and 1906 but was not elected. In 1902, Doyle was knighted in appreciation and recognition of his literary works. The prolific writer passed away at the age of 71. His epitaph reads: Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician, and man of letter. Well, we are not disputing that!

  Sherlock Holmes

There existed an era devoid of masterful detectives. There was no sleuth who could be counted on to solve ghastly cases using pure logic. It was at this time that Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes, who went on to become a celebrated detective and a cultural phenomenon. He and his beloved friend and assistant Dr. Watson appeared for the first time in  A Study in Scarlet . Sherlock was slightly eccentric, but we, as readers, are forgiving because once he flexed his intellectual muscle, the villains had no choice but to flee.

The impact of Sherlock on the human psyche is such that whenever someone says detective, we end up imagining a person with a deerstalker cap, a magnifying glass and trademark pipe.

After some short stories, Doyle was supposedly ‘fed up’ of Holmes and was thinking of killing him off. An idea his his mother (thank God!) opposed. Even then, Holmes did kill off Sherlock twice but had to bring him back following a public outcry.

Resource :   http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/through-the-magnifying-glass/article8562275.ece

The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories’ and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s ‘Mycroft Holmes’

Shadrach Voles, Upchuck Gnomes, Rockhard Scones and Blowback Foams: None of these great made-up detectives appear in Otto Penzler’s giant compendium of fake Sherlock Holmes stories, or Sherlock-Holmes-stories-written-by-persons-other-than-Sir-Arthur-Conan-Doyle. You will, however, be able to find stories about Sherlaw Kombs, and Solar Pons, and Picklock Holes, and Shamrock Jolnes, and Warlock Bones and (my own pick of the pseudo-Holmeses) Hemlock Jones, who in Bret Harte’s “The Stolen Cigar-Case” almost destroys the ardently worshipful Watson-like narrator with the sheer puissance of his intellect. On Hemlock Jones’s shelves are glass jars containing “pavement and road sweepings” and “fluff from omnibus and road-car seats.” When he thinks, his head shrinks, “so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.” Jones’s diamond-­encrusted cigar case, a present from the Turkish ambassador, has gone missing. There can be only one culprit: the narrator himself! Jones lays out the case, deduction by damning deduction. “So overpowering was his penetration,” declares the narrator in a fit of purest proto-Kafka, “that although I knew myself innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details of this lucid exposition of my crime.”

We in 2015, we the entertained, who live in a fun house of Sherlocks — Cumberbatch Sherlock, Downey Jr. Sherlock, Jonny Lee Miller Sherlock, etc. — need no convincing of the imaginative vitality of Sherlock Holmes. But the fact that Bret Harte, revered and shaggy forebear, of whose stories Conan Doyle felt his own early efforts to be but “feeble echoes,” could come out in 1900 with such a spot-on and beautifully modern satire of a Sherlock Holmes story tells us something of the immediacy with which Holmes franchised himself into popular consciousness. He quickly overcame his creator, of course: Having plunged Holmes — for good, it seemed — into the Reichenbach Falls in the fatal embrace of his shadow-self, Moriarty, in 1893’s “The Final Problem,” Conan Doyle found himself, 10 years later, rewriting his own story. “We tottered together upon the brink of the fall,” Holmes explains to a not unreasonably astonished Watson in 1903’s “The Adventure of the Empty House.” “I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip.” Slippery, unkillable

What’s his secret? In a sense Holmes is the perfect literary creation: a caricature with depth. A few quick strokes — pipe, brain, violin, Watson — call him into being, while beyond these scant markings an abyss of personality instantly suggests itself. Dimensions open up, speculation is invited, and what Tolkien called “sub-­creation” occurs: People begin to tell their own stories about him. There’s his tragic side, the paradoxically romantic ennui that arises from his being such a brilliant micro-materialist, knowing everything about train timetables and typography and trousers but finding himself lonely, so lonely, in this suddenly atomic and demystified universe. He reaches for his drugs, he scrapes at his violin; he shoots holes in the walls of his apartment. Around him, invisibly, a vast cerebral plexus shimmers and twangs. Then there’s his fantastic and inexhaustible yin-yang buddy-movie Quixote-Panza double act with John H. Watson, M.D., whose awe-struck narrations keep Holmes at one remove from us, the human race.

A pastiche is a form of literary criticism, as a tribute band is a form of rock criticism. There were things I didn’t understand about Bon Jovi, for example, until I saw, in a bar in Boston, a band called Jovi. (I just Googled them, incidentally. Now they’re called Bon Jersey.) So in Penzler’s Big Book we find the various parodists and imitators zooming in on key elements: Stephen Leacock, in 1916, lampooning the “inexorable chain of logic” that leads Holmes to an absurd conclusion, and John Lutz, in 1987, describing a Holmes who in the absence of a good case “becomes zombielike in his withdrawal into boredom.” It’s all, properly defined, fan fiction, some of the fans (Stephen King, H.R.F. Keating) being quite distinguished, others less so — long-forgotten bookmen lowering themselves into the Holmesian atmosphere as into a hot bath, with many a grunt and sigh of luxury. Kingsley Amis puts on a good performance in “The Darkwater Hall Mystery” — although because he’s writing for Playboy he has Watson go to bed with a servant called Dolores, “raven hair, creamy skin and deep brown eyes.” I loved Neil Gaiman’s elegiac and dreamlike “The Case of Death and Honey,” which really breaks up the mood. Anthony Burgess’s contribution to the genre, “Murder to Music,” is rather too elaborate in its formalities, but it does give us a Holmes of thrilling and merciless aestheticism: “If Sarasate, before my eyes and in this very room, strangled you to death, Watson, for your musical insensitivity, . . . I should be constrained to close my eyes to the act, . . . deposit your body in the gutter of Baker Street and remain silent while the police pursued their investigations. So much is the great artist above the moral principles that oppress lesser men.”

Grinding our Holmesian gears slightly, let’s turn now to “Mycroft Holmes,” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. For outsize polymathic energy and accomplishment, Abdul-Jabbar — N.B.A. champion, cultural ambassador, author — rivals Conan Doyle himself. Of his many triumphs I will always chiefly prize the line from “Airplane!” — “We have clearance, Clarence!” — that he delivered while playing the co-pilot Roger Murdock, but that’s because I know nothing about basketball. At any rate, here’s his novel about Sherlock’s older, fatter, cleverer brother, Mycroft — tantalizingly alluded to in the canon — who works for the British ­government.

The idiom of “Mycroft Holmes” is genially chaotic sub-Victorian with 21st-­century lapses — someone over here is “assailed” by a coughing fit, while someone over there “splurges” on a new overcoat — but the plot is a solid romp. Young ­Mycroft, early in his career, is dispatched to Trinidad to investigate certain grisly goings-on: missing persons, children turning up on the beach with their bodies drained of blood, that kind of thing. Mycroft is additionally in love (with the ravishing and enigmatic Georgiana) and watching with interest the development of his faintly inhuman younger brother, Sherlock, whom he tutors in deductive reasoning while administering boxing lessons. Their mother is insane. Given that Mycroft is, legendarily, a kind of database on legs, I might have made him a bit more cyber, a bit more “Terminator”-like — but Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse have gone another way, and the mood is very expressive. “ ‘Whatever is the matter?’ Holmes bleated. ‘You must keep me apprised as we go along,’ Douglas blurted out.” Bleats, blurts — not quite the Holmesian vibe. But the narrative rattles along, and the plot ramifies impressively, and it’s by (with Anna Waterhouse) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for God’s sake, an extraordinary man, a novel in himself, about whose fictionalized post-C.I.A. older brother — 15 feet tall, with purring Spock-like mind — there will one day, for certain, be a book.

THE BIG BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES

Edited by Otto Penzler

789 pp. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. Paper, $25.

MYCROFT HOLMES

By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

328 pp. Titan Books. $25.99.
Resource : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/books/review/the-big-book-of-sherlock-holmes-stories-and-kareem-abdul-jabbars-mycroft-holmes.html?_r=0