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  Breaking News: Medicinal Cannabis Laws Have No Discernable Adverse Impact On Adolescents’ Pot Use

  by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

  [Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's news alerts and legislative advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up here.] The enactment of state laws allowing for the limited legal use of cannabis by qualified patients has little to no causal effect on broader marijuana use, according to data published online in the journal Annals of Epidemiology. Investigators at McGill University in Montreal obtained state-level estimates of marijuana use from the 2002 through 2009 US National Survey on Drug Use [...]

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  New York City: Still The Marijuana Arrest Capital Of The World

  by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

  Low level marijuana arrests in New York City rose for the seventh straight year in 2011 to 50,680. The arrest total is the highest total on record since former pot smoker Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office and it is the second highest total of pot arrests ever recorded in the history of the city (just 587 arrests behind the record holding year 2000, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani oversaw some 51,267 people arrested for marijuana violations). Shockingly, the near-record high arrest total comes just months after New York City Police Commissioner [...]

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  Cannabis Is “An Effective Treatment” For Cancer Patients, Israeli Study Concludes

  by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

  [Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's news alerts and legislative advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up here.] Some two-thirds of Israeli cancer patients authorized to use cannabis report long-term, symptomatic improvement from the plant, according to clinical data presented in late January at a conference of the Israeli Oncologists Union and reported this week in several international media outlets. Investigators at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, in conjunction with the Israeli Cancer Association, assessed the [...]

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  Marijuana Questions Passed Over During Obama Q&A

  by Erik Altieri, NORML Communications Coordinator

  Last night, President Obama took to Google+ and responded to the questions submitted to him from the general public. Despite accounting for a majority of the top questions, the moderator never asked Obama about marijuana legalization and the president certainly didn’t volunteer any comment of his own volition. It is immensely disappointing that, yet again, the administration has declined the opportunity to discuss the very serious issue of ending marijuana prohibition in this country. For the ninth time, the White House has solicited the American people for direct input on [...]

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  NORML’s Weekly Legislative Round Up

  by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

  January 2012 marks the beginning of a new legislative session in all 50 states. Already, marijuana law reform legislation is pending (or has been pre-filed) in over a dozen states. To keep up to date with what’s pending, and how you can support marijuana-friendly reform measures in your state, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here. You can also stay abreast of 2012 statewide ballot initiative efforts, such as those ongoing in Colorado and elsewhere, via NORML’s Legalize 2012 Facebook page here. Below is this week’s edition of NORML’s Weekly [...]

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  Obama’s Opportunity: Will the White House Snub Marijuana Yet Again?

  by Erik Altieri, NORML Communications Coordinator

  Last week, the White House launched the next in its long line of social media engagement initiatives, this one entitled “Your Interview With the President.” The concept was simple, anyone could upload their question to the President on YouTube, others would vote on them, and the highest rated ones would be posed to the Commander in Chief in a Google+ Hangout on January 30th. This seemed to be a logical opportunity to ask the administration about marijuana legalization. Last Tuesday, I posted NORML’s question to the White House YouTube page [...]

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  Teach Your Parents Well: Live Stream From Medical Marijuana Silver Tour In Florida

  by Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director

  Today @ 1:30 PM (eastern) the NORML and High Times-sponsored Silver Tour, hosted by America’s longest serving cannabis prisoner Robert Platshorn, is live from Temple Shaarei Shalom in Boynton Beach, Florida. Topic of the day: Teaching senior citizens about the safety, utility, effectiveness, cost savings and politics of medical cannabis. Featured speakers include Irvin Rosenfeld (one of the five federal medical cannabis patients who receive 300 pre-rolled ‘joints’ monthly from a special and closed-to-the-public medical cannabis research project) and former NORML board member and longtime cannabis medical researcher Mary Lynn [...]

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  The NORML Network provides 24-hour stream of marijuana news, education, and entertainment

  by Russ Belville, NORML Outreach Coordinator

  If you haven’t taken a moment to check out The NORML Network, you’re missing out on the internet’s only source of 24-hour live streaming news, education, and entertainment for the cannabis community.  Visit our Audio/Video department or click the graphic above to see the complete schedule. Our network is anchored by NORML SHOW LIVE, weekdays at 7pm Eastern, the official podcast of NORML.  You’ll get today’s headlines from Cannabis Karri, a new Daily Toker Tune from a different genre every day, an interview with one of the top names in marijuana, [...]

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  President Obama’s YouTube Forum deems marijuana legalization questions “inappropriate”

  by Russ Belville, NORML Outreach Coordinator

  NOTE: If you feel marijuana legalization was an entirely “appropriate” topic for debate, tweet your dissatisfaction of the White House’s censoring of NORML’s YouTube question by tweeting them using #WHchat and @WhiteHouse. “Pres. Obama, what is inappropriate about saving billions and not arresting nonviolent american citizens for marijuana? #WHChat @WhiteHouse” – E. Altieri, Comm. Coordinator   As of 7pm Pacific, I checked the YouTube.com/WhiteHouse page to see how many votes our question received in President Obama’s latest YouTube Forum.  The good news?  Our question, “With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, [...]

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  Latest Science: Non-Psychotropic Cannabinoid Inhibits Colon Cancer Cell Proliferation

  by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

  The administration of the non-psychotropic cannabis plant constituent cannabidiol (CBD) is protective in an experimental model of colon cancer, according to preclinical trial data published online in the Journal of Molecular Medicine. Investigators at the University of Naples assessed the effect of CBD on colon carcinogenesis in mice. Researchers reported that CBD administration was associated with cancerous tumor reduction and reduced cell proliferation. Authors wrote: “Although cannabidiol has been shown to kill glioma cells, to inhibit cancer cell invasion and to reduce the growth of breast carcinoma and lung metastases [...]