|
|
| Area MPs Divided on Marijuana Issue |
|
Posted by CN Staff on January 06, 2003 at 07:50:55 PT By Colin Hunter, Record Staff Source: Kitchener-Waterloo Record 
Waterloo Region -- It's been a long time since Kitchener-Waterloo MP Andrew Telegdi smoked a joint. But that doesn't mean he has anything against people who do choose to use marijuana. Telegdi supports the movement to decriminalize the use of moderate amounts of marijuana. He would like to see it made an infraction punishable with fines or community service rather than an offence met with harsher punishments and a criminal record. So many Canadians are using pot, he says, it's silly to consider all of them criminals. Plus, he believes police resources are wasted on trying to bust marijuana users when there are more serious crimes to worry about. Telegdi admits that during his young and adventurous years at the University of Waterloo -- where he served twice as president of the federation of students -- he occasionally indulged in recreational puffs of pot. Used in moderation, he says, pot is no more harmful than legal vices such as alcohol, tobacco or junk food. "In terms of the harmful activities you can do, I'd say it's on the low end of the scale," he said. Telegdi's views are backed up by the report of a recent parliamentary committee that suggested the decriminalization of possession of up to 30 grams (roughly 60 joints' worth) of marijuana. The debate was fuelled Friday when an Ontario Court judge in Windsor threw out a marijuana possession charge against a teenager based on a loophole in the current drug laws. The decision was seen by many as another step toward the eventual lifting of the prohibition against marijuana in Canada. Current court cases involving possession of small amounts of marijuana will likely be put on hold until an appeal launched by the federal Justice Department is heard. Cambridge MP Janko Peric says he will vote against any motion put forward to decriminalize marijuana, because he feels reducing the potential penalties would promote the use of a harmful substance among young people. "The fact is, we are spending a huge amount of money to tell people young people not to smoke tobacco," he said yesterday. "Why would we want to encourage young people to poison themselves with (marijuana)?" Peric says he has never smoked pot, nor even "tried anything harder than a cigar." He says decriminalizing pot would be a big step in the wrong direction. "If you open the door today for marijuana, tomorrow it will be hash, and then who-knows-what other chemicals," he said. Karen Redman, MP for Kitchener Centre, insists that more careful debate and discussion is necessary before jumping to conclusions about the decriminalization issue. "A lot of people equate decriminalization with legalization -- and that has trouble written all over it," she said. She believes marijuana likely has positive medicinal value for many people suffering from debilitating diseases, and that there are more dangerous bad guys for police to nab than recreational pot smokers. Personally, however, she stays away from the stuff. "I have never tried marijuana. I have had lots of friends who did, but it had no appeal to me. For me, to lose the acuity of your senses has no particular appeal. It sounds corny . . . but you can just get high on life." Waterloo-Wellington MP Lynn Myers said yesterday he is deliberately sitting on the fence over the issue, since he serves on the justice committee of the House of Commons that will likely address the question within the next several months. "I have to go in with my eyes open and ears open and listen to all sides of the debate," he said. Note: Telegdi supports decriminalization; says moderate use carries little risk. Source: Kitchener-Waterloo Record (CN ON) Related Articles & Web Site: Cannabis News Canadian Links Police Not Turning Blind Eye To Pot Possession Advocate Sees Judge's Ruling as Step Forward Legalized Pot Seems Likely Up North Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
 |
| Comment #14 posted by BGreen on January 06, 2003 at 14:27:19 PT |
| the spelling of my subject. I meant to say "Just The Opposite Of Nicotine." I still mean what I said about Dr. Russo. I'm just overjoyed to find out cannabis MIGHT be the tree of life as mentioned in the Bible. The good cannabis provides people is being divulged on an almost daily basis. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #13 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 14:19:29 PT |
| Dr. Russo is a gem. He has been so kind and never has caused one problem here. He's a Doctor and he could be kinda bossy and we would be tolerant but he acts like just one of us and that is what makes him special to me.
[ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #12 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 14:16:37 PT |
| Amphetamine Psychosis Rolling Stone's delirious take on the latest "new drug of choice" By Nick Gillespie January 6, 2003 Time was that connoisseurs of delirious drug war propaganda contented themselves with on-demand showings of Reefer Madness, the occasional late-night rerun of the infamous "Blue Boy" episode of Dragnet, and the odd parody of the "This is your brain on drugs..." ad campaign. Now, thanks to Rolling Stone—a magazine that still occasionally inveighs against drug war abuses and still occasionally gets attacked by conservatives for supposedly promoting drug use—you can get a Sonny Bono-quality irony fix just by wandering down to your local newsstand. Go to page 48 of RS's Issue 914 (the one with the Justin Timberlake cover, dated January 23), and read through "Plague in the Heartland," by Paul Solotaroff, the latest entry in the dubious but endlessly rewritten journalistic genre known as the "new drug of choice" story. Once upon a time, the drug under scrutiny was marijuana, then cocaine, then heroin, then Ecstasy, then pot again. Just recently PCP—better known to anyone who ever sat through a Quinn Martin Production as "Angel Dust"—got its requisite 15 column inches of infamy. This week's special guest villain? Methamphetamine—a.k.a. "crystal meth," "crank," and, says the federal government anyway, "redneck coke." Complete Article: http://www.reason.com/links/links010603.shtml [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #11 posted by BGreen on January 06, 2003 at 14:15:57 PT |
| From the news the other day:Certain tobacco chemicals trigger cellular genetic damage. Damaged cells are supposed to commit suicide; if they do not, the damage eventually accumulates enough to turn cancerous. Nicotine activates an enzyme reaction that inhibits cellular suicide, says new research by scientists at the National Cancer Institute. From Dr. Russo today:The cannabinoid drugs promoted tumor apoptosis (programmed cell death) without adversely affecting normal skin cells. Additionally, they inhibited angiogenesis, which is the terrible attribute of malignancies to promote their own blood supply.Do you folks know how lucky we are to have Dr. Russo here to answer questions and interpret medical data? We owe him a lot and I for one am extremely grateful for his insight.[ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #10 posted by darwin on January 06, 2003 at 13:11:16 PT |
| What a joke. This statement about driving an SUV is only accurate if you state it in relation to a car. Both cars and SUV use gas don't they? How can an SUV support terrorism but a car doesn't? My SUV, which I actually do use offroad and for hauling, gets 15 to 20 mpg. My wife's car gets 18 to 28. So let's... I calculate that to mean that I support 24% more terrorism than my wife. Add in a couple of ounces of medicine for my IBS per year and I must be Osama Bin Laden himself. I liked the reference on Simpson's last night about electric cars. The Simpson's were on a theme park ride, something about the electric car of the future...as presented by the gas producers of today. The car then says, "I can't go very fast...or very far...and if you drive me, people will think you are gay". More great political commentary from Matt Groening. The researchers of new technology are not getting paid to hurry in the new technology. They are paid to keep it on the backburner until the present technology is not profitable. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #9 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 12:01:39 PT |
| MONDAY, JANUARY 6 -- 6:30 P.M. ET They’re big, they’re tough and they’re everywhere -- but not if certain people get their way. New TV ads say, if you drive an SUV, you support terrorism. The outrage, and the controversy. http://www.msnbc.com/news/nightlytb_front.asp?cp1=1 [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #8 posted by John Tyler on January 06, 2003 at 10:09:02 PT |
| "If you open the door today for marijuana, tomorrow it will be hash, and then who-knows-what other chemicals," said Cambridge MP Janko Peric. Looks like another legislator who doesn't know that hash is a cannabis product and should be included in the decrimilization. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #7 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 09:55:07 PT |
| I'll email you when I figure out how a chat could be set up and we can think about a time that would be OK for you and maybe Richard Lake could promote it for us thru email newsgroups. I don't know how to do that but he sure does. [ Post Comment ] |
|
Comment #6 posted by Ethan Russo MD on January 06, 2003 at 09:32:10 PT:
|
| Yes, sure, I'd chat sometime. Melanoma is a black, highly malignant type of skin tumor. There are many other types, with variable degrees of danger. All are distinguished by their histology (appearance under the microscope) and their behavior (invasiveness, tendency to metastasize (spread to other sites)). [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by Sam Adams on January 06, 2003 at 09:30:17 PT |
| I'm going to go hit the vaporizer right now! I had no idea that it was keeping me cancer free! [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 09:23:08 PT |
| I went ahead and uploaded the pdf file and put it on my medical page. I have a question for you. Would you like to ever schedule a chat where you would be the guest and people could ask you questions? That would be nice but if you don't want to I understand. Let me know and I will figure out how to go about it. http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htm [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by Darwin on January 06, 2003 at 09:19:54 PT |
| What distinquishes a non-melanoma skin cancer from any other type? [ Post Comment ] |
|
Comment #2 posted by Ethan Russo MD on January 06, 2003 at 09:03:27 PT:
|
| Thanks, FoM, for drawing my attention to this, and providing the opportunity for comment. I scanned the complete article quickly. It is available as a great PDF with color pictures of the histology (microscopic anatomy) and gross pictures of the rat tumors: http://www.jci.org/cgi/reprint/111/1/43.pdf This is a landmark study. It is extremely carefully done, and provides irrefutable evidence of the therapeutic benefit of cannabinoid agonists in reducing and reversing malignant skin cancer growth. In plain English, cannabinoids (drugs akin in their action to THC in cannabis) may have activity on two types of receptors: CB1 in the nervous system, responsible for psychoactivity, and CB2 mainly on immune cells. Some drugs, such as THC, act on both. Other synthetics may work on only one. In the experiment, they showed that stimulation of both CB1 and CB2 (as THC acts) are of benefit to limit tumor growth. They chose to utilize synthetics, but THC would do the same thing. The cannabinoid drugs promoted tumor apoptosis (programmed cell death) without adversely affecting normal skin cells. Additionally, they inhibited angiogenesis, which is the terrible attribute of malignancies to promote their own blood supply. In essence cannabis would be a potential treatment that turns off cancer growth, inhibits cancer blood supply, alleviates nausea, promotes appetite, reduces pain, and helps the patient to feel better. That sounds quite therapeutic to me. It is another resounding refutation to the Schedule I lie. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by FoM on January 06, 2003 at 08:16:56 PT |
| Hi Everyone, I'm not sure I understand this article and will look for one that I can post on the front page. There are links to check if you click on the link to the article at the bottom of the page. Maybe Dr. Russo will see this and comment for us. Cannabinoids can inhibit non-melanoma skin tumor growth in vivo. January 6, 2003 Cannabinoids — the active components of Cannabis sativa linnaeus (marijuana) — have growth-inhibiting effects on gliomas, but their potential for treating other tumors such as non-melanoma skin cancer, has been unclear. In the January 1 Journal of Clinical Investigation, Llanos Casanova and colleagues from Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Madrid, Spain, show that activation of cannabinoid receptors inhibit skin tumor growth and angiogenesis in vivo (Journal of Clinical Investigation, 111:43-50, January 1, 2003). Using nude mice, Casanova et al. injected the mixed CB1/CB2 agonist WIN-55,212-2 or the selective CB2 agonist JWH-133 into the epidermis adjacent to induced non-melanomic malignancies and observed a considerable inhibition in tumor growth. Cannabinoid-treated tumors showed an increased number of apoptotic cells, altered blood vessel morphology and decreased expression of proangiogenic factors (VEGF, placental growth factor, and angiopoietin 2). In addition, abrogation of EGF-R function was also observed in cannabinoid-treated tumors. "The present report, together with the implication of CB2- or CB2-like receptors in the control of peripheral pain and inflammation, opens the attractive possibility of finding cannabinoid-based therapeutic strategies for diseases of the skin and other tissues devoid of nondesired CB1-mediated psychotropic side effects," conclude the authors. I. Galve-Roperh et al., "Anti-tumoral action of cannabinoids: involvement of sustained ceramide accumulation and extracellular signal-regulated kinase activation," Nature Medicine, 6:313-319, 2000. B.L. Limmer, "Nonmelanoma skin cancer: today's epidemic," Texas Medicine, 97:56-58, 2001. M.L. Casanova et al., "Inhibition of skin tumor growth and angiogenesis in vivo by activation of cannabinoid receptors," Journal of Clinical Investigation, 111:43-50, January 1, 2003. http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/111/1/43?ijkey=1mHZx420NOAL6 Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas: http://www.ciemat.es/eng/index.html Complete Article with Links: http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030106/04/ [ Post Comment ] |
| Post Comment |  |
 |  |