Marijuana

Linking any specific crime to pot use is difficult, but there certainly seem to be enough weed-related incidents to question whether legalization was wise.

New York City ended 2024 with a series of horrific subway incidents. Just days before Christmas, Debrina Kawam, a troubled New Jersey woman, was set on fire and burned to death by Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. Kawam had apparently been sleeping on an F train at the Stillwell Avenue station in Coney Island—a common gathering place for the homeless—when Zapeta-Calil used a lighter to ignite her clothing. Afterward, he reportedly sat on a bench to watch the flames.

Almost half of young adults in Canada reported using marijuana in the past year, according to a new report by the Department of Health.

Blacklock’s Reporter says the findings, part of the Canadian Cannabis Survey 2024, revealed cannabis use remains especially common among young working adults in Western provinces.

The risk of psychosis for teens using cannabis has become increasingly clear to researchers in Canada and abroad in recent years—and it’s tragically clear to Troy and Tara Neufeld of Westport, Ontario.

Their daughter, Mila, died by suicide in 2021 at the age of 18. What drove her to that point became evident little by little in the following weeks as the Neufelds spoke to Mila’s friends and read through her diary.

Legalizing cannabis was supposed to spark a revolution — a bold new era of progress, opportunity and transformation. Instead, it began a complicated journey marked by significant achievements but also frustrating setbacks. Canada’s legalization has shifted both the culture and the industry, paving the way for innovative products, strict quality standards and a burgeoning community of consumers. But several remaining hurdles make it hard for the legal industry to realize its full potential and, as legalization was supposed to do, eliminate the illegal cannabis industry.

In midcoast Maine, a pediatrician sees teenagers so dependent on cannabis that they consume it practically all day, every day — “a remarkably scary amount,” she said.

From Washington State to West Virginia, psychiatrists treat rising numbers of people whose use of the drug has brought on delusions, paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis.

And in the emergency departments of small community hospitals and large academic medical centers alike, physicians encounter patients with severe vomiting induced by the drug — a potentially devastating condition that once was rare but now, they say, is common. “Those patients look so sick,” said a doctor in Ohio, who described them “writhing around in pain.”

Supporters of the ‘green rush’, when Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalise, lament the industry’s decline — and wonder if it was a mistake

As Sean Azzariti tells it, queueing in the snow outside a cannabis dispensary in Denver was the end of a long road from Iraq.
The former marine had been in charge of base security at al-Qa’im and al-Asad — “constantly mortared, constantly being shot at” — causing post-traumatic stress disorder that a 13-pill cocktail of stimulants, tranquillisers and antidepressants had done little to assuage.

Tokyo Smoke is the latest Canadian cannabis retailer to close some of its locations and seek creditor protection in an unpredictable industry grappling with too many stores, high overhead costs and ultra-low retail prices.

One of the earliest brands to form in Ontario after the federal legalization of pot in 2018, Tokyo Smoke is shuttering 29 stores and restructuring its business under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, it announced Thursday. It will still have 167 locations open across four provinces.

A woman in California who became a killer while gripped by psychosis says companies selling the drug legally are hiding the truth about its effects

When Bryn Spejcher watched the police bodycam footage, she did not recognise the woman she saw.
The 33-year-old saw herself, deranged and frenzied, stabbing her body and then her service dog, Arya, the police having to taser her four times and beating her nine times with a baton — breaking her arm — to make her stop. Then she saw the man with whom she had been on a date, Chad O’Melia, stabbed 108 times in his home in Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles, where the two had been hanging out and smoking weed. She had killed him.

Driving while high on marijuana has become more “common” among Canadians since the substance became legal in 2018, according to recent in-house federal research.

“There was widespread agreement that cannabis-impaired driving is common among those in their social networks,” said the report prepared for Health Canada, which was first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

In October 2018, Canada became the first G7 nation to legalize recreational cannabis, and a federal review of how it’s gone so far shows what other countries may encounter if they do the same.

The push for legalization of other substances, such as psychedelics, has also begun in Canada—the pros and cons of which are likely to be viewed in light of our experience with cannabis, says addictions expert Michael DeVillaer.

“We failed to heed the lessons from alcohol [and] tobacco. … There is a very real danger that we will also fail to learn the lessons from cannabis,” Mr. DeVillaer, a health sciences professor at McMaster University, told The Epoch Times.

Germans allowed to smoke cannabis before driving under new law

Germany is already a nation where drivers know they can experience motoring with no restrictions.

Now, in a nod to the growing use of cannabis across the country, motorists will not only be able to drive as fast as they like in certain places, they will be able to get behind the wheel, legally, after a few puffs on a joint.

After it partially legalised the consumption and cultivation of the drug from April 1, the Bundestag has backed an amendment to the law that allows road users to consume limited amounts of cannabis.