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Source: @norml
Posted By: norml@weedconnection.com
media :: news
- Mon, 14 Oct 2013 04:20:21 PST

Texas: Nearly 60 Percent Of Voters Support Legalizing Marijuana Like Alcohol

Austin, TX: Nearly six out of ten Texas voters support legalizing marijuana and regulating its production and sale in a manner similar to alcohol, according to survey data released this week by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they support "changing Texas law to regulate and tax marijuana similarly to alcohol, where stores would be licensed to sell marijuana to adults 21 and older." Thirty-eight percent of voters opposed the idea.

Men and women nearly equally supported legalization, with 59 percent of males and 57 percent of females endorsing it. Self-identified Democratic voters strongly favored legalization. Among Democrats, 70 percent endorsed legalizing marijuana. Fifty-seven percent of Independents and 48 percent of Texas Republicans also expressed support for regulating marijuana like alcohol.

In response to separate polling questions, 61 percent of Texas voters said that they supported decriminalizing minor pot possession offenses by replacing existing criminal penalties with civil fines only. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed also expressed support for allowing the physician-recommended use of medical cannabis.

This past spring, state lawmakers rejected a pair of bills which sought to lessen minor marijuana possession penalties and allow for certain patients to present an affirmative defense of medical marijuana necessity at trial.

Eight hundred and sixty randomly selected voters participated in the survey, which has a margin of error of ± 3.3 percent.

The Texas poll is the latest in a wave of recent statewide surveys showing majority voter support for legalizing cannabis, including state-specific polls in California, Louisiana, Maryland, and Michigan.

Study: Marijuana Less Likely To Elevate Vehicle Crash Risk As Compared To Other Substances

New York, NY: The presence of various controlled substances in blood is associated with an increased risk of fatal crash involvement, according to data published online in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.

Investigators at Columbia University conducted a case-control study to assess the association between drug use and fatal crash risk. Of the substances identified by researchers, authors reported that depressants were most likely to be associated with crash risk (estimated odds ratio = 4.83). Estimated odds ratios for other specific drug categories were 3.57 for stimulants, 3.41 for polydrug use (excluding alcohol), and 3.03 for narcotics. Marijuana (1.83) possessed the lowest odds ratios of the substances identified.

The odds ratio for cannabis is similar to that reported in a 2012 meta-analysis of 66 separate studies which estimated that cannabis was associated with a nominally increased risk of accident (estimated odds ratio = 1.25). In that study, anti-histamines (1.12) and penicillin (1.12) were associated with comparable odds to cannabis.

Previous studies assessing fatal crash risks have reported far higher odds ratios for alcohol. According to a 2004 study published in the journal Epidemiology, drivers who self-reported consuming two or more alcoholic drinks in a six-hour period prior to driving were nearly eight times more likely to suffer a car crash-related injury compared to non-drinkers.

While Columbia researchers did not assess the risk of alcohol consumption alone, they did report that the use of alcohol in combination with controlled substances increased subjects' risk of fatal accident more than 20-fold.

Full text of the study, "Drug use and fatal motor vehicle crashes: A case-control study," appears in Accident Analysis and Prevention.

Supreme Court Refuses To Review DEA's Denial Of Petition That Sought To Reclassify Cannabis

Washington, DC: The United States Supreme Court has declined to review a lower court ruling which upheld the federal government's classification of cannabis as a Schedule I prohibited substance that lacks medical utility or adequate safety.

This past January, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had acted properly when it rejected an administrative petition calling for a scientific review of marijuana's safety and therapeutic efficacy. Petitioners had requested a hearing to determine whether existing science contradicts the federal categorization of cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance that possesses "a high potential for abuse;" "no currently accepted medical use in treatment;" and "a lack of accepted safety for the use of the drug ... under medical supervision." The DC Court of Appeals affirmed the DEA's position that insufficient clinical studies exist to warrant a judicial review of cannabis' federally prohibited status. On Monday, the US Supreme Court denied an appeal to review that decision, rejecting petitioners' argument that adequate peer-reviewed studies already exist to sufficiently contradict the plant's placement in Schedule I – the same classification as heroin and PCP.

Several recently published studies and papers directly challenge the DEA's position. For example, a 2012 review of FDA-approved clinical trials assessing the safety and therapeutic efficacy of cannabis, published in The Open Neurology Journal, concluded: "Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification [of marijuana] is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking."

The case is Americans for Safe Access et al. v. Drug Enforcement Administration, case number 13-84, in the United State's Supreme Court.


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