There’s more bad news for teen boys smoking cannabis, but some good news for adults with certain cancers:
(Bay Citizen) // In our last summary we reported that young people who smoke pot are shown to have a permanent lowering of their IQ levels. Now teen males can add an increased risk of a particularly difficult form of testicular cancer to their paranoia, according to several studies including one in the journal “Cancer”. Any male who smoked pot as a teen should be vigilant about cancer, according to the Testicular Cancer Society.
(DailyBeast) // Meanwhile, studies at Harvard and the Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, as well as others, document that cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive component of the marijuana plant, can slow breast cancer cell production, metastasis, and tumor growth. Other studies show that THC, the main psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, can kill cancer cells in the brain.
(Books) // It’s a well known “fact” that marijuana is the nation’s largest cash crop. But the authors of the book Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know say marijuana wouldn’t be in the top 15 of cash crops if comparable valuations were used.
And no matter what the producer price, or the retail price is, California is America’s largest producer of the plant, as detailed in Field Guide to California Agriculture, part of the California Natural History Guides series published by the University of California Press.
(Center for Disease Control) // The Center for Disease Control says that 23.1% of American students used marijuana one or more times during the 30 days before their 2011 survey. This is a notable drop from the previous decade, when the percentage was 26.7%. That current percentage is very close to the number of students reporting tobacco use (23.7%). But it’s significantly lower than those saying they had one or more drinks of alcohol (70.8%) or who had participated in binge drinking, defined as five or more drinks within a couple of hours (21.9%). The full CDC report can be found at Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance.
(L.A.Times) // This dramatic video shows the benefits of a strain of medical cannabis with large amounts of CBDs, one of the non-psychoactive components of the cannabis plant. Jason David has appeared on the cable program Weed Wars and at rallies to save Harborside Health Center in Oakland. He says this strain of cannabis, high in CBDs, has literally saved the life of his epileptic pre-school son.
(Americans for Safe Access) // And while on the topic of rallies, the pro-cannabis group Americans for Safe Access is planning nationwide protests at Obama for President campaign headquarters this Thursday, September 20. Participants want to remind the President that more cannabis dispensaries have been closed under his administration than during eight years of the Bush presidency, despite Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to make dispensaries a low priority issue.
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