6 Reasons Why Legalized Marijuana is Good Even Though it’s Not - http://clapway.com/2016/01/26/6-reasons-why-legalized-marijuana-is-good-even-though-its-not/

The idea of legalized marijuana is a very controversial one. However, even though some will not want to hear this, there are several benefits to it. After seeing this list, try and decide whether you think it was a good idea to legalize this drug.

BENEFIT 1

One of the best benefits of legalizing marijuana is the fact that it has advanced the research of it. Ever since it was legalized, medical research on it has found that it is actually safer than many other drugs.

BENEFIT 2

Some states in the U.S are tight on cash, and they waste some of that cash on trying to track down illegal drug cartels. Well, the need to track down marijuana has been unneeded for a while because it is legal.

BENEFIT 3

Humans have their rights, and legalizing marijuana gives them one back. People all around the world are being sent to prison for what they decide to put in their body. There are limits, but people should be able to decide what they want to consume.

BENEFIT 4

There was actually a study that took place back in 2006, and it proved that there are health benefits to marijuana. The study showed that it can help prevent protein lumps that can inhibit cognition and memory. Also, more research has discovered that this drug can help Leukemia patients.

BENEFIT 5

One fact that you may be unaware of is the fact that crime has dropped since this legalization. In Colorado, the crime rate for murder, in the first quarter of 2014, actually dropped around 6%. Also, auto theft crimes went down by 11%.

BENEFIT 6

A while back, over 500 economists wrote an open letter to the President, Congress, and Governors, and it stated that legalizing marijuana would save around $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement.

6 Reasons Why Legalized Marijuana is Good Even Though it’s Not

Top 4 Reasons Why Lil Wayne is Better Than You Thought - http://clapway.com/2016/01/25/top-4-reasons-why-lil-wayne-is-better-than-you-thought/

When it comes to rap artists, many will argue that Lil Wayne is the best. If nothing else, it can not be denied that he is one of the most popular rap artists of all-time. The amazing thing is he is still very young, and his popularity could continue to spike. However, for the non-Lil Wayne lovers, here are five reasons he is better than you might think.

REASON 1

Lil Wayne, back in 2007, put on one of the greatest performances ever at the BET Hip-Hop awards. It was a rare instance where the live version actually sounded better than the studio version. That is a very rare statement, but it was proven at the Hip-Hop awards show. He always seems to sound really good when he is live, but this performance just stood head and shoulders above the rest.

REASON 2

What is really interesting is the fact that some of Wayne’s best material is actually in mixtapes. He always seems to pull out awesome songs when he records for mixtapes. His original material is still really good, but the mixtapes are where it is at.

REASON 3

One of the things that most everyone knows about Lil Wayne is the fact that he does drugs. This could be thought of as a fault, but sometimes people gain inspiration when they are high. If his best songs come when he is high, then why should he stop? He should just keep doing what works for him so he can keep his fans happy.

REASON 4

One of the most impressive things that Lil Wayne has done was with his album The Carter III. Due to the fact that several songs leaked, he had to consistently make more content to meet the demand. He did an amazing job at doing this, and he should be condemned for his efforts.

Top 4 Reasons Why Lil Wayne is Better Than You Thought

One-fifth of teenagers who have smoked #ecigarettes admitted to also using the device for #vaping #weed, according to recent survey. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/08/e-joint-vaping-marijuana123/

One-fifth of teenagers who have smoked e-cigarettes admitted to also using the device for smoking pot, according to recent survey, which included responses from 3,800 students from five high schools in Connecticut.

Less than a decade ago, e-cigarettes were an obscure product marketed by a single company in China. Today, electronic cannabis delivery devices have turned into a trend among teenagers in the U.S.

Experimenting with vaporizers

As electronic cigarette use is increasing rapidly among high school students, researchers started to wonder if younger generations were inventive enough to use the devices to vaporize cannabis instead of e-juice.

“To better understand how students were using e-cigarettes or other portable vaporizing devices to vaporize cannabis, we asked students, ‘Which of the following have you used to smoke marijuana?"” scientists wrote in their new paper on the subject, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Vaping weed

Researchers found that of the teenagers who admitted to being so-called dual users – having smoked both e-cigs and marijuana – 29 percent said they had vaped dried pot leaves, while 23 percent had used e-cigarettes to vaporize hash oil, and 15 percent to vape THC-infused wax.

Unlike a spliff, which involves actual smoke and combustion, a vaporizer turns substances into aerosols that can be inhaled by the user. Little is known about the health effects of vaping pot versus smoking it.

Researchers believe teens may be using e-cigarettes to consume weed for the added potency, or because it’s harder to detect than smoking.

“When you vape cannabis, the smell is way less pungent and strong than it is when you smoke pot,” study co-author Meghan Rabbitt Morean, an assistant professor at Oberlin College said. “Everybody kind of knows that characteristic pot odor.”

The rise of the e-Joint

Businesses promoting liquid THC claim it contains “all of the healing benefits of cannabis without the psychoactive effects”. They argue it is the easiest way to consume cannabis for the novice user as it is difficult to smell and easier to transport than traditional marijuana.

“It’s possible that teenagers are using pot in a much less detectable way,” Morean says.

Researchers now know it’s happening, but more questions remain about who is consuming pot this way and the extent to which it is damaging. The next step is to collect similar evidence from other states across the U.S. to see if vaping cannabis is just a passing fad or a permanent trend.

What do you think of teenagers vaping cannabis? Share your views in the comments section below.

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Apparently, Vaping Marijuana is a Thing Now

What if the #marijuana you buy "has blood all over it"? Now, it is legitimate to wonder: would anyone mind if #weed was #geneticallymodified? - http://clapway.com/2015/09/04/genetically-modified-weed123/

As the marijuana legalization movement wins ground, a group of scientists is mapping the genetic structure of weed to protect the biodiversity of cannabis from corporate interests.

A recent report by ATTN: sheds a light on the risks of multinational agrochemical corporations such as Monsanto, which might be tempted to capitalize on legal marijuana by securing exclusive patents on select strains.

Monsanto denies allegations of genetically modified weed

Monsanto, which has been widely criticized for its approach to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), released a statement in response to gossip about its interest in pot, stating that it “has not and is not working on GMO marijuana,” calling the allegation an “Internet rumor” and a “lie”.

For now, it is only guesswork, but this didn’t stop a team of researchers at Phylos Bioscience from launching the Cannabis Evolution Project last year. The objective? Mapping the history of Cannabis evolution, “from thousands of years ago in Central Asia to the pharmacy shelves of the 1930s, to the last few decades of breeding in California and Holland”.

Untangling the evolutionary past of weed

Researchers are sequencing the genomes of thousands of different varieties of Cannabis plants and collecting samples of “every single modern hybrid strain available.”

Phylos Bioscience will be offering genetic strain certification through its partner labs soon. This will allow small growers with “incredible plants” to protect themselves from the risk of being modified and monopolized. At the same time, an online data visualization tool will help ganja lovers locate their plants, by tracing their ancestry and seeing how they compare to their relatives.

No Fairtrade mark on drugs

However, the fear that marijuana may be genetically modified has already come true. Police in Mexico have arrested a gang of Colombians and Mexicans for growing genetically modified pot in three gigantic greenhouses covering 20,000sq ft. A total of 7,000 ‘mother plants’ of marijuana were being genetically modified and cloned. The gangsters were involved in much more than simple selective breeding.

In a recent article published in The Guardian, Jay Rayner argues that part of the problem these days is that, although Millennials are being extra careful about buying ethically produced food, very few are interested in knowing where the narcotics they consume actually come from.

The writer provocatively asks if those urban hipsters who love the hashtag #eatclean apply the same standards to their grass and coke.

Does it matter to twentysomethings if the drug “was produced by impoverished, subjugated Bolivian peasants”, or in the words of novelist Don Winslow, if the marijuana they buy “has blood all over it”? Now, it is legitimate to wonder: would anyone mind if weed was genetically modified?

Share your views in the comments section below.

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What other genetically modified things are you putting into your body? Use the Pavlok to rid yourself of them all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh73AjBjCN0

Scientists Are Against Genetically Modified Weed

A study has found that more college students are using #marijuana everyday. And for the first time ever, more students are smoking #pot or #weed than cigarettes. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/01/marijuana-use-college-students123/

A new study by the University of Michigan has found that more college students are using marijuana everyday, or almost everyday, compared to the last 35 years. And for the first time ever, more students are smoking pot than cigarettes, Tech Times reports.

MARIJUANA USE: 1 IN 17 SMOKE DAILY OR ALMOST DAILY

The research found that the percentage of students that had used marijuana at least 20 times in the past 30 days had rose to 5.9 percent, having been just 3.5 percent in 2007. That’s 1 in 17. Frequent use by a larger number of students was found in polls about pot at college in the 1980s. However, marijuana smoking being more common than cigarette smoking on American college campuses is unprecedented.

“It’s clear that for the past seven or eight years there has been an increase in marijuana use among the nation’s college students,” Lloyd Johnston, the report’s lead author, said. “And this largely parallels an increase we have been seeing among high school seniors.”

HIGH SCHOOL GRADS LESS WORRIED ABOUT POT

Higher rates of marijuana use were also found among high school graduates aged 19 to 22 years old. While 55 percent of the group that was polled in 2006 responded that marijuana use was dangerous, only 35 percent said the same last year. Infrequent marijuana smoking also increased, but not as sharply.

The research is part of the Monitoring the Future project supported by the National Institute of Health that studies substance abuse in American youth. The study has been conducted every year since 1980.

WHY GENERAL DRUG USE IS ON THE RISE

The study also found that the use of illegal drugs overall had increased. In 2006, 34 percent of college students reported using illicit drugs; in 2014, 41 percent have. However, as Fox News pointed out, the increase is mostly related to the trend of growing marijuana use, rather than other substances.

OTHER DRUGS AND THE SURVEY

Students were also surveyed about the use of other drugs, like cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines. While cocaine use may be increasing among college students, the abuse of ecstasy and amphetamines has not increased, and have either remained the same or decreased.

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Marijuana Use Among Students At Its Highest

Casual Marijuana Use Doesn"t Shrink Brains #marijuana #weed #schizophrenia - http://clapway.com/2015/08/27/marijuana-brains234

Two studies that came out today in the Journal of American Medical Association explored the effects of marijuana in the developing brain. Each yielded mixed results, but one thing is clear: there is no evidence to suggest that smoking pot causes brain damage in young adults.

Did you know about synthetic marijuana?

Twins with discordant marijuana use show no difference in their brain volumes

Researchers interviewed and conducted neuroimaging on young adult twins or siblings with different marijuana use habits. Studies in twins or siblings allow controlling for genetic and familial factors on brain growth. Of the pool of participants, 71 twin pairs had never used marijuana, 81 pairs used it casually, and 89 pairs were comprised of one sibling who used it and one who did not. The neuroimaging analysis looked at the amygdala and the right ventral striatum⎯areas related to emotions and reward. They found that brains of casual marijuana users had smaller amygdala and right ventral striatum than the brains of siblings who never used marijuana, with the difference being within the bounds of normal variation. What is interesting is that even those who had never used marijuana had smaller amygdala if their sibling used marijuana. This means that marijuana does not cause lower amygdala volumes. Instead, common genetic and environmental factors (that siblings experience) predispose young adults to both marijuana use and smaller amygdala in their brains.

Males with a high risk for schizophrenia are more susceptible to the brain-altering effects of marijuana

In another study, 1574 young adults and adolescents were examined based on their genetic risk for schizophrenia and their marijuana use. They used brain cortical thickness as an indicator of brain maturation and information processing power. While both high-and low-risk females and low-risk males had no changes in their cortical thickness upon marijuana use, high-risk males responded differently. Their brains showed lower cortical thickness when they used marijuana. Thus, males who are at a high risk for schizophrenia show changes in their brain when they use marijuana. This doesn’t mean that the marijuana causes changes in the brain structures, but merely that common precipitating factors could increase the risk of schizophrenia in young men as well as make them vulnerable to marijuana use.

This is not an endorsement for marijuana

While these studies have importantly pointed out the fallacy in assuming causation from correlation, the results are just the tip of the iceberg. More research needs to be conducted to study different areas of the brain to put stock into these findings, and eventually proposing legislative solutions.

Photo Credit: IMG_4311 via photopin (license)

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Casual Marijuana Use Doesn"t Shrink Brains