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Archive for May, 2009

Marijuana is the most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States. It is a dry, shredded green and brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves derived from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa. The main active chemical in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol; THC for short.

Marijuana is usually smoked as a cigarette (joint) or in a pipe. It is also smoked in blunts, which are cigars that have been emptied of tobacco and refilled with marijuana. Since the blunt retains the tobacco leaf used to wrap the cigar, this mode of delivery combines marijuana’s active ingredients with nicotine and other harmful chemicals.
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With an explosion of Los Angeles medical marijuana storefronts - 143 of them, more than half in the San Fernando Valley - and reports of Grant High School students being targeted for business, Police Chief William Bratton is backing a moratorium on pot-distribution centers.

Bratton and the Los Angeles Police Commission called for the City Council to impose a moratorium on all new Los Angeles Medical Marijuana until they ban dispensaries within 1,000 feet of any school, day-care facility, church or other house of worship.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Federal law enforcement will no longer target Los Angeles medical marijuana Read the rest of this entry »

In 2003, Senate Bill (SB) 420 (Chapter 875, Statutes of 2003) was passed as an extension and clarification of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. The Medical Marijuana Program, within CDPH, is administered through a patient’s county of residence. Upon obtaining a recommendation from their physician for use of medicinal marijuana, patients and their primary caregivers may apply for and be issued; a Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Identification Card. Senate Bill 420 also required that the MMP be fully supported through the card application processing fees. Both the state and the counties have authority to cover their costs for the program through these application Read the rest of this entry »

The effects of smoking marijuana fade quickly, but the drug can be detected in the body for weeks and sometimes longer. How long it remains in the system depends on how often or how much marijuana the user has been smoking.

The Los Angeles Medical Marijuana reminds people who have been using marijuana that the active ingredient in marijuana — Tetrahydrocannabinol or delta-9-THC or simply THC — enters the body’s bloodstream rapidly after smoking marijuana. If marijuana is ingested, rather than smoked, it takes longer to be absorbed into the blood, usually from 20 minutes to an hour and a Read the rest of this entry »

Cannabis, also known as marijuana or marihuana, or ganja (from Hindi/Sanskrit: gañjā, hemp), is a psychoactive drug extracted from the plant Cannabis sativa, or more often, Cannabis sativa subsp. indica. The herbal form of the drug consists of dried mature flowers and subtending leaves of pistillate (female) plants. The resinous form, known as hashish, consists primarily of glandular trichomes collected from the same plant material. The major biologically active chemical compound in cannabis is Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), commonly referred to as THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol).

Humans have been consuming cannabis since prehistory, although in the 20th century there was a rise in its use for Read the rest of this entry »