A Polish prisoner triggered a crackdown on other inmates after he posted a photo of a large cannabis plant that he’d grown in his cell. To boast about his green thumb, Dozy Zendarski took a selfie with the plant using a smuggled smartphone and posted it to Facebook. When it went viral, prison officials searched the entire jail and seized […]
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■ A police station in northern France is storing so much seized marijuana that officers are getting high off the fumes. “The odor is really strong” said one officer. “After a day, you are stoned.” About 88 pounds of weed has piled up at the Roubaix station because of a strike at the agency that is supposed to dispose of […]
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(1) The Albany, New York, company Vireo Health told reporters it would soon offer the world’s first certified Kosher marijuana, announcing that the Orthodox Union of New York had authenticated it as having met Jewish dietary laws (e.g., grown with insect-free plants). (Other Kosher-validating officials complained that the approval should apply only to marijuana that is eaten, not smoked.) […]
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■ Colorado marijuana entrepreneurs have installed the first public vending machine to dispense weed-laced edibles. Only licensed medical marijuana cardholders can buy pot brownies and similar snacks from the giant green dispenser, but company owner Stephen Shearin says of his weed-dispensing machine: “I don’t think we’ve dreamed what it can do yet.”
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People who use sleeping pills regularly are far more likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, according to a new study. Researchers compared the health records of more than 10,000 sleeping-pill users with those of other patients of similar ages and health histories who didn’t use the drugs. They found that the heaviest sleeping-pill users were five times more […]
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Over the past decade, more Americans died from overdoses of prescription painkillers than from heroin and cocaine use combined, according to government health officials. Most of the deaths were due to misuse of the medications— not to treat pain but to achieve a narcotic high. Recreational abuse has fueled a 300% surge in sales since 1999 of drugs like oxycodone, […]
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Having a baby in some Alabama hospitals can mean getting tested for drugs without a woman’s consent—and winding up in jail for a positive result. Alabama’s chemical endangerment law, in effect for nine years, spurred an investigation by ProPublica and AL.com into hospital drug-testing policies due to the law’s strict penalties. A woman who tests positive for drugs in a […]
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What will it take for France to get serious about regulating prescription drugs? asked Sauveur Boukris. We French love to take pills; we are the biggest consumers of medicines in Europe. French doctors “tend to prescribe far more heavily” than their foreign colleagues, dispensing four or five drugs to treat any given malady, while German or Dutch doctors prescribe two […]
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Overdoses of prescription painkillers have become one of the leading causes of death among women. More women now die from overdoses of prescription pills like OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet than from cervical cancer, homicide, or street drugs such as heroin and cocaine, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. “We need to better understand how […]
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The number of children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is exploding, raising concerns that doctors are overprescribing powerful drugs to kids and teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The diagnosis rate of the disorder has soared 41 percent in the U.S. over the past decade. More than one in 10 school-age children have been diagnosed […]
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