U.S. Physicians Announce Founding Of American Academy Of Cannabinoid Medicine

Santa Barbara, CA: A coalition of US physicians and researchers has founded a new organization dedicated to promoting ethical standards in therapeutic cannabis treatment.

“The American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine … is a professional medical organization dedicated to the clinical and scientific understanding of the endoccannabinoid system and the therapeutic application of cannabis and cannabinoids,” the group states in a press release.

It continues: “The Academy serves as an authoritative information source for doctors, state medical boards and the media on the medical application and research related to the clinical use of cannabis and cannabinoids. We are dedicated to educating physicians about the clinical therapeutic usefulness of cannabis to relieve symptoms of the myriad of diseases that respond to this class of medications.”

Members of the organization “will promote high medical ethical and practice standards in the approval and recommendation of cannabis for medicinal purposes.” According to the organization’s website, the AACM has “developed certifying practice standards and guidelines for practicing physicians who recommend and approve the medicinal use of cannabis acting within state law.”

“Our mission is to foster the highest standards in the practice of cannabinoid medicine,” the website states.

For more information about the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine, please visit: http://aacmsite.org.

An exchange between My Senator and I about GMOs and food safety..

On May 28, 2009, at 6:31 AM, <senator@feinstein.senate.gov> <senator@feinstein.senate.gov> wrote:

Dear Mr. Saunders:

Thank you for writing to express your views on the “Global Food Security Act of 2009” (S. 384). I appreciate hearing from you on this legislation and welcome the opportunity to respond.

Like you, I believe that Congress must maintain its commitment to a robust foreign aid package designed to help develop and maintain effective food security programs worldwide. Please know that I understand and have noted your concerns about the development of genetically modified food as a means to provide for global food security.

As you may know, on March 31, 2009 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations favorably reported S. 384 to the full Senate for consideration. Be assured that I have noted your views on how best to further global food security, and will keep your views in mind should the Senate have the opportunity to debate this bill.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue to write on matters of importance to you. Should you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my websitehttp://feinstein.senate.gov/public/. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletterSignup.Signup.

Dear Senator,

Thanks for your reply.
As for your statement which I am perceiving as a “hinting” without verbally committing to the position of being in SUPPORT of Genetically Modifying Organisms in dangerous and wreckless ways before feeding them to ourselves despite scientific evidence and a great deal of it that suggests that it is endangering to human health and safety to do so? As a public leader it seems that you hold a tenuous position of balance between individual human rights concerns and corporate interests, and possibly without enough time to fully research the information required to make a fully responsible decision about the issue, you have my empathy on that if it is the case. It is on this issue that I urge you to draw the line on the side of human rights concerns, many of your constituency have researched enough to know that GMOs for food is a dangerous proposition, and only valuable to those who would seek to harm human life, justifying the act with statistics, and junk-science. When this comes up on the floor for debate, what will your position be on the issue of GMO’s? You reply that you have noted mine, and neglected to inform me of your position. Am I mistaken in my assumption that you and I have differing views on this issue?

As always, I appreciate you and your efforts,

Stephen Saunders

Food Can Kill

eagbmeywexjlhii-58x43-croppedIf you’re looking for reasons why modern agriculture is bad for you, look no further than Sustainable Food blogger Natasha Chart’s post this week examining the negative effects of industrial agriculture on our health. From herbicides linked to cancer to industrial pesticides that cause sexual abnormalities, Natasha asks: Is modern day food going to kill us?

(Read more)

19 MILLION TONS OF DRUGS DUMPED INTO NATION’S WASTE STREAM EACH YEAR

Washington Post – The average American takes more than 12 prescription drug annusally, with more than 3.8 billion prescriptions purchased each year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The most commonly cited estimates from Environmental Protection Agency researchers say that about 19 million tons of active pharmaceutical ingredients are dumped into the nation’s waste stream every year.

The EPA has identified small quantities of more than 100 pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in samples of the nation’s drinking water. Among the drugs detected are antibiotics, steroids, hormones and antidepressants. Last year, [it was] reported that trace amounts of drugs had been found in the water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas; water piped to more than a milllion people in the Washington area had tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

The EPA does not require testing for drugs in drinking water and has not set safety limits on allowable levels. While the minute quantities now being detected appear not to pose an immediate health risk, according to federal authorities, “there is still uncertainty about their potential effects on public health and aquatic life” over the long term, the EPA’s water chief, Benjamin Grumbles, told a Senate committee last year. But the impact of long-term exposure of drugs on humans as well as on other species is less clear. Hormone-disrupting pharmaceuticals, for example, are one possible cause of a high incidence of “intersex” fish in the Potomac River basin: male smallmouth bass producing eggs, females exhibiting male characteristics.

Until recently, federal guidelines recommended that surpluses of highly toxic medications be flushed down the toilet; the same advice applied to drugs with a high potential for abuse or “diversion” — the industry’s word for what happens, for example, when kids help themselves to the OxyContin or Percocet in their parents’ medicine cabinet. For other drugs, consumers have been directed to adulterate the medication by mixing it with an unpalatable substance — such as cat litter or coffee grounds — and put it out with the household trash.

But this spring, concerns about pharmaceuticals in the water supply led the Office of National Drug Control Policy to amend its advisory, telling consumers to avoid flushing unless the label or patient information specifies that method of disposal. The new guidelines still describe the cat-litter method of putting drugs in the trash, but they also encourage consumers to make use of community drug take-back programs.

COULD IT BE FACTORY FARM FLU?

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F. William Engdahl, Global Research – What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early on set of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.

The US Government’s Center for Disease Control in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.

How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?

According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico.

They reported, ‘Sources characterized the event as a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.’ What they later say is ‘strange’ is not the form of the illness but the time of year as most flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February. . .

Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been largely ignored by major media, they reported, ‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’

Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950’s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called factory farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.

Granjas Carroll de Mexico (happens to be such a factory farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia. The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised.

Now the story becomes interesting.

The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter notes, ‘Edgar Hernández plays among the dogs and goats that roam through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he contracted a few weeks ago – the first known case – has almost brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on alert. ‘I feel great,’ the five-year-old boy said. ‘But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay down in bed.”

The reporters add, ‘It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons’ at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.’

That’s quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.” Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.

Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odor from Granjas Carroll’s pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).’ There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield’s Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.’

Michigan to begin marijuana program

thoughts from the maji-

“The vague nature of the way that the initiative was written allows for law enforcement and government officials to control the rate at which the program deploys, the same thing was done here in California.. The answer to this?  STARK Raving and Rabid prescience and tenacity when it comes to communicating and pressuring officials to adapt the initiative to accomplish the true goal of balancing the health of the State.

HASSLE them until they do not want to hassle you anymore and are SICK of the issue, and just want to be left alone again in their tired little deadend lives….  this is the latest big chance to have the public’s attention on them, let’s make the attention uncomfortable, let them remember that their positions in government and law enforcement are not theirs to use for power-mongering, influence-peddling, or personal political agendas.  It is time for All Americans not just Michiganers to take back their personal Constitutions and in the process the collective Constitution will be restored… Not rocket science here folks, just have to step up and show for yourselves with courage, tenacity and steadfastness.

Thousands of people expected to sign up starting today
DETROIT (AP) — The first wave of what could be tens of thousands of people signing up for Michigan’s medical-marijuana program is expected in Lansing today.
For Greg Francisco, of Paw Paw, who is organizing the mass submission in the state capital, it will be a sweet moment after a decade of working to legalize medical marijuana.
“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 in practice, and resolving all the confusion may require additional 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.
Twelve other states have similar programs.
An analysis by the House Fiscal Agency estimates between 2,000 and 55,000 patients may sign up for Michigan’s program.
John Hazley, 39, plans to register “as soon as possible.” The Detroit man says he smokes marijuana to relieve pain in his knee and back from old injuries, and worries about becoming dependent on pain pills.
“Usually when I take the pills, I’m tired and sleepy, and when I take the marijuana it gives me a boost,” Hazley said.
In the five months since voters approved the measure, there’s been confusion about what the law will mean for police, prosecutors and patients.
For instance, Michigan’s law doesn’t say how patients will obtain marijuana or seeds to grow their own, nor does it address whether employers can enforce drug-free workplace rules if workers are registered to legally use marijuana. It also leaves unsaid how police will enforce the limit of 12 mature plants and 2.5 ounces permitted each patient.
Advocates and officials say many of those issues may end up in court. The state legislature also can modify the law with a three-quarters vote in each chamber.
“There’s going to be a lot of litigation here, there’s going to be a lot of court time … to answer these unanswered questions and put some solid color in those gray areas,” said James McCurtis, spokesman for the Department of Community Health, which runs the program through its Bureau of Health Professions.
State officials initially sought to head off many of those questions by writing some of the strictest rules in the nation for patients in the program, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Among the proposals were random inspections of growing sites, mandatory inventories of marijuana grown by patients or their designated caregivers and allowing the release of patients’ names and other information to law-enforcement agencies. Many of the rules went beyond the law approved by voters.
The officials drafting the rules were trying to plug perceived holes in the law, said Rae Ramsdell, director of licensing for the department’s Bureau of Health Professions.
“You’re trying to anticipate what kind of problems you’re going to have and address those problems before they happened,” she said.
In an internal e-mail two days after the Nov. 4 election, one official described the law as “a hopelessly short-sighted and simple-minded ballot initiative” with “some really poorly worded language.”
McCurtis said the official, Kurt Krause, then-acting director of the Office of Legal Affairs and now deputy director of the department, was referring to areas of confusion in the legislation and was concerned about the department seeming to offer legal advice to the public.
When draft rules for the program were released last December, there was an immediate backlash from patients and their advocates. Many turned out for a public hearing in January to blast the proposed rules.
A review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings and Rules dated Dec. 1, 2008, also determined a number of early rules “exceed that which is required” under the law. It called one on denying incomplete applications “somewhat harsh” and another “arbitrary and capricious.” Random inspections of growth sites were deemed a possible violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The comments from all the different groups made us go back and re-examine what the law said, and looking at what the law said drove the decisions to remove a lot of the enforcement-type language and not to try to anticipate the problems that might come up, but to work within the very tight statute that we had,” Ramsdell said.
The final draft of the rules, unveiled in February, pulled back on almost every point of contention.
“We had to kind of go away from the enforcement perspective and think about how we could get these people registered and use marijuana for medical purposes,” Ramsdell said. “That for us is a huge shift because we are used to enforcing laws that are put into place. And in this case, all we are responsible for doing is putting into place a registry.”