Acetaminophen Drug Linked to Liver Failure
July 6th, 2009 by Rick
Via MPP, we learn that on last Tuesday that a Food and Drug Administration panel voted on the fate of Acetaminophen, commonly found in Tylenol, Excedrin and other medication:
- 21-16 to lower the current maximum daily dose of nonprescription Acetaminophen.
- 24-13 to limit the maximum single dose of the drug to 650 milligrams.
- 1,000-milligram dose should only be available by prescription.
- 24-13 to keep the products on the market.
According to the FDA, Acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure, having sent around 56,000 people to the hospital every year. It is also linked to acute renal failure. Total sales of Acetaminophen drugs reached $2.6b, with 80% not having to be prescribed.
NASCAR Claims Mayfield Tested Positive for Amphetamines
July 6th, 2009 by Rick
Suspended since May for failing a random drug test, NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield has been spinning his wheels in anticipation for his day in court to have the suspension lifted. On Wednesday, July 1st, Mayfield received his chance in federal court. NASCAR revealed that Mayfield had tested positive for methamphetamines. Mayfield says he never touched the drug and contends that a mixture of taking Adderall for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Claritin-D for allergies caused him to test positive.
Mayfield’s lawyer, Bill Diehl, argued that Aegis Sciences Corporation, based in Nashville, TN, that runs the testing program for NASCAR, tested both the “A” and “B” samples. Diehl stressed the fact that Mayfield should have been given the opportunity to send the “B” sample to an independent laboratory.
Diehl said:
They say ‘We’re not bound by anything. We’re NASCAR. We can do what we want to do’. [...] If they decide to ban Coca-Cola, or coffee or orange juice, their argument is ‘We can’. That smells bad, and it stinks enough that the court should intervene.
Apparently the court felt the same way, U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen, reinstated Mayfield into NASCAR by issuing a temporary injunction. However the damage had already been done, preventing Mayfield from entering this past Saturday’s race in Daytona, FL.
Only owning a low budget team, Mayfield had to lay off ten employees, borrow money from family and sell any personal assets he had in order to keep up with living expenses. His wife, Shana, owns the #41 Toyota now, but hasn’t been having it race because of financial reasons.
Mayfield said:
Shana and I, as well as everyone at Mayfield Motorsports, will do everything in our power to race next weekend.
Unfortunately he’s not on the race entry list for next week’s race in Chicago. Mayfield has missed eight races since his suspension back in May.
tFS: Happy 4th of July!
July 3rd, 2009 by Rick
All of us here @ theFreshScent want to wish everyone a sick ass 4th of July weekend. We’ll be enjoying the Independence Day weekend ourselves with some tasty microbrews and BBQ and promptly will be back with some fresh posts for Monday.
As always, consume in moderation, and keep away from those pesky sobriety checkpoints. They are a serious, serious drag.
Until then… Cheers!
tFS Feature: Movies You Should See at Least Once
July 3rd, 2009 by ErinOkay, to clear things up before we begin; this is not a top #number movie list. This is simply a list of personal favorite movies I think every herb enthusiast should see once, if not add to their library. Moreover, I’ve also included my favorite accompanying strain and smoking method for each of the selections.
- Favorite Character: Saul Silver
- Favorite Strain: Pineapple Express (if available) or anything citrusy. Cali Orange, Lemon Diesel, etc.
- Preferred Method: Joint
Click through for the full list.
SF’s “Green Cross” is Cream of the Crop
July 3rd, 2009 by Russ
As California’s Great Weed Experiment of Ought Nine continues, some truly innovative dispensaries have begun to make a name for themselves. One such outfit, is the San Fransisco based “Green Cross,” earned a recent feature in the San Jose Mercury News.
Run Fight Club-style out of a single Victorian house on Howard Street, 19 space monkeys work around the clock baking edibles, and preparing the 55 delicious strains of green that the dispensary stocks its shelves with. A messenger delivery service runs from noon until 7pm. Even folks who are outside the delivery area meet the bikers halfway.
The Green Cross has its own newsletter, touting the relative benefits of indica and sativa strains, and recommending vaporizers and edibles for those bothered by smoke.
The whole operation has the flavor of a Baskin & Robbins, or Ben & Jerry’s origin story. It’s easy to picture a future in which a whitewashed marijuana conglomerate happily provides the best processed ganja to satisfied customers all over the world. The innovation and professionalism of groups like the GC make one wonder whether we’re just now on the ground floor of something big.
Appeals Court Upholds Sentence for Maimed Smuggler
July 3rd, 2009 by Russ
One of the most politicized cases in the Border Patrol’s history, crept on Monday as a federal appeals court upheld a sentence levied on a Mexican drug smuggler who was shot by two agents on the U.S./Mexican border. Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who had tried to smuggle over 700 lbs of weed across the border, on several occasions, was given a nine and a half year prison sentence for smuggling that occurred after U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean shot him in the buttocks and groin.
The details of the shooting and subsequent trials and media circus are quite convoluted. Salon managed to wrap it up pretty well a few years ago. In a nutshell, Ramos and Compean botched an attempt to apprehend the smuggler (Aldrete-Davila), shot at him as he fled, attempted to cover up the shooting by having another agent return to clean up the shell casings, and couldn’t agree on a coherent story when pressed by prosecutors.
As the two agents were being sentenced for egregious violations of their enforcement codes (and attempted murder), some conservative media figures (including CNN zombie-anchor, Lou Dobbs) decided to brand the agents as patriotic, U.S. turf-defending heroes. In the interim, the peripheral press began reporting a completely revised version of the pursuit and shooting story, and a petition emerged to set the agents free. Luckily for the agents, former Premiere Bush does watch TV (he famously never read newspapers), and responded to the conservative pleas by commuting the sentences of Ramos and Compean.
So, two corrupt Border Patrol agents run free and one smuggler with a shot up urethra gets a full term. The moral of the story here is that what actually happens on the ground is never as important as how it all ends up in the spin room. When it comes to politics, the motives of interest groups far, far, outweigh reason and truth.
Cannabinoid Research Organization Hosts Conference
July 2nd, 2009 by Rick
The three-day conference known as the 19th Annual Symposium of the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS) is scheduled to have 250 researchers worldwide attend from July 8 to July 11 at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Illinois.
Topics discussed (warning: PDF) will be scientific based analysis of the therapeutic use of cannabinoids to treat numerous conditions:
- Cancer
- Social anxiety disorder
- Alcoholism
- Acne
- Stroke
Aside from trying to prove there are more ways of fighting cancer and trying to put ProActive out of business, the ICRS is 400+ members strong, all who are researchers in the field of “endogenous, plant-derived and synthetic cannabinoids”.
Drug Court Sympathetic to Affluent Frat Boy
July 2nd, 2009 by Russ
Christopher Duncan of Copiague, NY is thanking his lucky stars that he was born a white, rich, child. This week, his lucky accident of birth earned him a free pass in a federal drug court that fell all over itself to spare him the humiliation of going to prison for knowingly breaking the law.
A former University of Vermont student, Duncan, was running a cocaine trafficking operation out of his frat house back in 2007. Local authorities raided the house the week of graduation finding it full of drug paraphernalia, coke, and cash. In danger of receiving some serious jail time, the judge let him off with 100 hours of community service and two years of probation.
District Court judge William Sessions III saw fit to take it easy on the young cocaine trafficker because he was “a stupid kid” and, as he said to the defendant:
It shows your lack of serious involvement and your absolute naivete, frankly.
Speaking of naivete, one wonders why judges find their soft streaks only when faced with the Caucasian Children of the Rich? Couldn’t a little leniency be in order for the bus baggage-handler busted by the DEA for passing along small packages of contraband? What about the church minister that set up a little weed garden for some of his sick parishioners? Or any number of low level street dealers who were certainly naive, certainly bit players in their own little neighborhoods. Where is their leniency? Where is the compassion for them?
The simple truth is, what was going through this young man’s mind when he decided to play Blow Daddy with the local sorority girls, is the same exact thing that goes through the mind of every aspiring drug dealer, large or small. It’s a mixture of greed, opportunism, and indifference for his fellow man. Once this mindset is in place, it’s all just a question of scale; of entrepreneurship. And when the hammer comes down, it’s all a matter of skin tone.
