Saturday, February 21, 2009

Open Thread Anxiety in Massachusetts The city of Methuen last month became the first to act, raising fines in what the mayor says is an effort to address some "unintended consequences" of the referendum, which some people may interpret as encouraging marijuana use. Mayor William Manzi approves of higher fines, but he says he's been surprised by the "vehemence" of local anger at his efforts and bemoans the divisiveness the issue has stirred up. Um, yeah, well, you see the people voted for decriminalization. What do you expect, a parade? Bill Downing, president of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, discounts such concerns. "The public will see that the sky does not fall," he says. Continuing with efforts to tack on additional marijuana-related penalties "shows a tremendous amount of disrespect to Massachusetts voters who voted to decriminalize," he adds. A book review over at Transform of "The globalisation of addiction" by Bruce Alexander. When rats were placed in an environment ideally suited to their needs, they no longer showed interest in pushing levers for rewards of morphine. Study: Marijuana Users Less Likely to Get Injured Than Non-Users Conversely, cannabis use was associated with significantly lowered risk of injury. Whereas the risk for injuries associated with the use of less than a pipe or joint's worth were not significantly different from the on associated with no use, relative risks decreased with increasing levels of use... DrugSense Weekly 9:02:05 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []