Eideard

An eighth-grade student in North Carolina was suspended for 55 days for showing another boy a bag of oregano and claiming it was marijuana, his family said.

“It was just a joke,” the boy’s mother told FoxNews.com. “He’s embarrassed that it’s turned into such a big issue. He’s actually said he doesn’t know why he did it. But he didn’t have an illegal substance to begin with.”

The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group best known for defending the right to religious expression, has taken up the boy’s cause. John Whitehead, the institute’s president, said the suspension may violate the boy’s constitutional rights…

Under Union County Public Schools policy, students can be suspended for 10 days for possession of a real or counterfeit drug with an additional 45 days possible if the student’s behavior was egregious. Whitehead argues that oregano is clearly not an illegal drug, and the school district does not define counterfeit drugs.

Any schools left in this nation that [a] concentrate on education instead of being nannies – and [b] have a sense of humor?

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A pair of F-16s were scrambled to divert a Cessna aircraft after it entered the airspace of Marine One, the military helicopter ferrying the American president during a trip to California.

The small plane was forced to land at Long Beach airport, just south of Los Angeles at around 11am, where it was met by police.

A search of the aircraft uncovered 640 ounces of cannabis, the Associated Press reported, a motherlode worth around $160,000.

The unfortunate pilot and at least one passenger were handed to over to local police after being interviewed by US federal agents. The pilot has not been identified and it is not known whether they have been charged with any crime.

What do you think?

The US Secret service said Mr Obama was never in any danger during the incident.

Not even a contact high. American presidents never inhale.

The president was on the West Coast for a string of fundraising events ahead of November’s election…

…and a speech at Boeing Aircraft, today, on rebuilding America’s manufacturing business especially technology. Pretty good speech actually. Unlike Republican candidates for his job he doesn’t think this requires more tax breaks for wealthy corporations.

A four-year-old U.S. boy who announced to his teacher at school snack time that he wanted to share pulled nine bags of marijuana out of his jacket pocket…Police in Meriden, Connecticut were called to Hanover Elementary School Tuesday afternoon after the young special needs student displayed the drugs, authorities said.

Meriden police said the nine individually wrapped bags of marijuana appeared prepared for sale…

“What’s so disheartening is this is really an adult issue and problem and adult behavior put a student at risk,” Meriden schools superintendent Mark Benigni told Reuters.

“This student had no idea what he brought to school or what the substance was,” he added.

Authorities are not releasing the names of the student or parents and police said there is a possibility for arrests pending the outcome of the investigation.

The coppers should smack daddy on the wrist for being extra dumb about hiding his retail stash. Unless he was more than extra dumb and just wanted his kiddie to build up his business with free samples?

A new poll suggests Canada may have reached the tipping point and a 66-per-cent majority favours legalizing marijuana…

The prohibition and a 40-year-long “War on Drugs” have led to pot being more widely accessible, taxpayers considerably poorer, gangs richer and thousands upon thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens branded “criminal.”

Another 50,000 or so Canadians are busted every year for possession; throw in 20,000 or so traffickers and producers and this so-called war is costing us as much as $400 million annually in law enforcement, court and corrections.

Bearing in mind a million dollars a year buys roughly 12 new cops, 14 teachers or public health nurses, ask yourself: Couldn’t all that money be better spent..?

Across the country today, more and more people agree.

Conducted Dec. 13 by Toronto-based Forum Research Inc. and released Tuesday, the latest poll…showed that residents of B.C. were the most likely to support pot-law reform, with 73 per cent wanting change.

Quebec had the lowest support for reforms at 61 per cent…

Who’s leading the way? Those aged 55 to 64.

The War on Drugs has been a useless waste of taxpayer dollars – in Canada, in the United States, in any nation that chose to waste their efforts supporting morality instead of simple science.

RTFA for a great deal of research and reference to other nations that have walked away from another unproductive war.

A study published Friday in a British medical journal may have finally uncovered the secret behind Australia’s laid-back lifestyle, and it turns out to be more than just sun and surf: The denizens Down Under, it turns out, consume more marijuana than any other people on the planet.

The study, an analysis of global trends in illegal drugs and their effect on public health published in The Lancet, a prestigious journal, found that Australia and neighboring New Zealand topped the lists globally for consumption of both marijuana and amphetamines, a category of drugs whose use the study found to be growing rapidly around the world.

The study’s co-authors…reported that as much as 15 percent of the populations of Australia and New Zealand between the ages of 15 and 64 had used some form of marijuana in 2009…

The Americas, by comparison, clocked in at 7 percent, although North America batted above the neighborhood average with nearly 11 percent of its population partaking. Asia demonstrated the lowest global marijuana use patterns at no more than 2.5 percent, the study said, although difficulties in obtaining accurate data in less developed countries were cited as one possible reason for the low figures.

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Medical marijuana advocates are hoping state governments can succeed where their efforts have failed by asking federal authorities to reclassify pot as a drug with medical use.

Shortly before Christmas, Colorado became the fourth state to ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify marijuana as a narcotic in the same league as heavyweight painkillers including oxycodone. The governors of Washington and Rhode Island filed a formal petition with the agency in November, and Vermont signed onto that request shortly afterward.

All four are among the sixteen states and the District of Columbia that have laws on the books that allow the medical use of marijuana, even though the drug remains illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, federal authorities have asserted their power by raiding dispensaries in states including California and Washington.

Supporters say the public is on their side, and the state requests show the feds are increasingly isolated on the issue. But they acknowledge it’s still an uphill battle…

Insert appropriate smartass remark about “Change” here.

In their November petition, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee argued that “the vast majority of modern research” has found marijuana useful for treating patients with glaucoma, for relieving the nausea suffered by cancer patients in chemotherapy and for relieving symptoms of degenerative nerve diseases…

Critics call medical marijuana a “Trojan horse” for legalizing the drug entirely, and federal authorities mounted a string of high-profile raids in California, Washington and Montana in 2011…

Which further convinces social conservatives that their backwardness has at least an opportunist ally in the White House.

Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project said the states’ requests to reclassify the drug “could and certainly should” give the states some breathing room, “but I really don’t think it will…I think that it’s not going to provide any real tangible benefits immediately,” he said. But it if succeeds, “It will definitely bring the federal government more in line with currently accepted science.”

In the meantime, “There’s no reason for the federal government to be wasting resources going after medical marijuana providers,” he said.

Yup.

The former head of MI5 believes the “war on drugs” has proved fruitless and it is time to consider decriminalising the possession and use of small quantities of cannabis.

Eliza Manningham-Buller has backed calls for the government to set up a commission to examine how to tackle the UK’s drug culture and consider the highly controversial move of relaxing the law.

She was speaking at a meeting held by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform on Thursday where senior government representatives met experts from across the world to consider ways of combating the issue.

The cross-bench peer said the current policy was failing and it was time to look at alternative ways of tackling the production and use of drugs by assessing how other countries are dealing with the problem. She believes serious consideration needs to be given to the idea of regulating cannabis so that its psychotic effects can be controlled more closely…

Manningham-Buller said there was too much of a knee-jerk opposition to changing drug policy but it is an issue that needs to be at the forefront of national debate.

She urged politicians to come up with a more successful way of tackling the issue by assessing evidence that looks at how to reduce the harmful effects of drugs in a cost-effective approach.

Politicians at the meeting with a vested interest in continuing the same old policy offered up statements in opposition. If you have any knowledge of the topic, of the realities of of cannabis, pot, mary jane, marijuana, grass, weed, ganja or Texas Tea – you understand why I didn’t waste any space quoting such foolishness.

Authorities say a surprise search at a prison in Acapulco resulted in the discovery of two peacocks, 100 fighting cocks, two sacks filled with marijuana and 19 prostitutes.

Police in the Mexican resort city also found dozens of televisions, several bottles of alcohol and knives.

Arturo Martinez, the Guerrero state spokesman, said federal and state police searched the prison before dawn on Monday.

He did not say how the women, birds and other banned objects got into the prison, referring to the peacocks as “pets”. Cockfighting is popular in parts of Mexico.

There are no sanctions announced over this level of corrupt administration. Officials in Mexico’s government will delay any such announcement until they have someone equally on the take ready to resume.

Those who lose their jobs will probably be transferred to another government department – equally incompetent, equally corrupt.

Forget jobs and spending cuts. Ask around online, and it seems Americans just want the right to get high.

Marijuana legalization has been the top issue on the White House’s new “We the People” petition site since it launched last month as a way for citizens to lobby for issues that matter most to them.

The marijuana petition already has more than 55,000 signatures — 20,000 more than any other issue on the site and much more than the 25,000-signature threshold administrators set to warrant an official response. The White House has not yet responded to the marijuana petition.

And so it has been each time the Obama administration engaged voters online: Marijuana legalization was among the most popular questions raised on Twitter, YouTube and Change.gov, the president’s transition site…

“The political mind is pretty simple: What can you do for me, what can you do to harm me. … We’re not effectively casting that in either direction,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which started the White House petition…

“We are not nearly as organized [or wealthy enough] to put together the type of donations and PACs that arrest and immediately catch the attention of the elite body politic,” St. Pierre said.

Obama and all the other safe and secure ideologues need to realize that the majority of the American electorate know from experience that marijuana is no more of a public danger than beer – and probably less than a lot of other deleterious substances from cigarettes to PAC commercials.

What happens to transparency when the people speak and the president thinks its a joke?

Anybody who’s smoked marijuana knows about “the munchies,” that desire to eat everything within reach. But a study from France has found that, surprisingly, pot smokers are actually less likely than non-smokers to pack on weight.

Using data covering more than 50,000 U.S. adults, researchers headed by Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at the Louis-Mourier Hospital in Colombes, France, found that roughly 14 percent to 17 percent of the people reporting that they smoked pot at least three days per week were obese.

That compared with a 22 to 25 percent obesity rate among people who said they had not used pot in the past 12 months.

“Initially, we thought we made a mistake,” said Le Strat, adding that he and co-author Bernard Le Foll checked the results several times to make sure they were correct. “This is only a preliminary result. It doesn’t mean that marijuana does actually help you lose weight, but perhaps there is a component that does.”

RTFA. They find about three different ways to say the same thing. Cannabis smokers ended up gaining weight about one-third less often than those who didn’t partake.

Except me. I don’t smoke. I wonder if Alice B. Toklas brownies might be included in such a study?