This month, two US states voted to legalise, regulate and tax marijuana. From advertising and marketing to drugged-driving enforcement, we ask what’s ahead.

The 6 November votes in Colorado and Washington left a lot of marijuana users happy and a lot of police officers nervous. And they set the two states up for a confrontation with the federal government, as marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US. Legalisation advocates say the recent votes mark the beginning of the end of the drug’s prohibition.

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Caught this over the weekend, really worth the time. If you do not know the story, you need to–KSH.

There is no excusing Armstrong’s behaviour. He shouldn’t have taken the drugs and he shouldn’t have compelled others to do the same. But the latest revelations do show how a beautiful sport had been corrupted and how anyone seeking to succeed could have been drawn into such behaviour.

But there are still reasons to admire this obviously deeply flawed man. Armstrong has done wonderful things – on and off the bike – and given me memories that I still savour.

On drugs or not, he was capable of magnificent and daring feats. On stage nine of the 2003 Tour de France, Armstrong swerved to avoid a fellow rider, Joseba Beloki, who had crashed badly on a descent. The American was forced to ride across a steep paddock, jump a drainage ditch and rejoin the race on the road below. It was dramatic, bold and impressive.

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Jaclyn Kinkade, a 23-year-old doctor’s-office receptionist and occasional model, was a casualty of America’s No. 1 drug menace when she overdosed and died, alone, in a tumbledown clapboard house in Dunnellon, Fla.

The drugs that killed her didn’t come from the Colombian jungles or an Afghan poppy field. Two of the three drugs found in her system were sold to Ms. Kinkade, legally, at Walgreen Co. and CVS Caremark shops, the two biggest U.S. pharmacies. Both prescription drugs found in her body were made in the U.S.””the oxycodone in Elizabeth, N.J., by a company being acquired by generic-drug giant Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., and the methadone in Hobart, N.Y., by Covidien Ltd., another major manufacturer. Every stage of their distribution was government-regulated. In addition, Ms. Kinkade had small amounts of methamphetamine in her system when she died.

The U.S. spends about $15 billion a year fighting illegal drugs, often on foreign soil. But America’s deadliest drug epidemic begins and ends at home. More than 15,000 Americans now die annually after overdosing on prescription painkillers called opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention””more than from heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs combined.

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An experimental drug appears to preserve and possibly even improve the ability of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to walk, according to the results of a clinical trial announced on Wednesday, raising hopes that the first effective treatment for the disease may be on the horizon.

Boys with the disease who received the highest dose of the drug had a slightly improved ability to walk after 48 weeks of treatment, the drug’s developer, Sarepta Therapeutics, announced. By contrast, the boys who received a placebo suffered a sharp decline in how well they could walk.

The drug, called eteplirsen, also appeared to restore levels of the key protein that muscular dystrophy patients lack to about half of normal levels, Sarepta said.

Read it all. The blog has been following this story for a while now–keep your eye on it, it is a potnetially once in a lifetime event; KSH.

A decade after his military service, McLean faces 15 years to life in prison if he’s convicted of first-degree burglary. He makes no excuses for the addict he’s become.

Six months in jail awaiting a court date have provided him some quality detox time. Abusing alcohol and crack cocaine, McLean was homeless when he was arrested.

“I’ve never gotten into trouble except when drugs and alcohol were involved,” he says.

He admits he needs help.

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Our nation is in the midst of a public health emergency the likes of which we have not seen since the first decade of AIDS’ spread across America. And much like the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the victims of the current crisis are both vilified and ignored, the families of the victims are shamed into silence, and the public at large doesn’t know enough to protect itself.

I am speaking of drug overdose, which is now killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, while leaving many thousands more mentally and physically disabled for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of drug overdose deaths are the result of two types of highly addictive, and highly profitable, prescription drugs: opiates and benzodiazapenes. In 2010, one of the more than 25, 000 Americans who died as the result of drug overdose was someone I adored with all my heart: my 18-year-old firstborn, my son Henry.

Before I learned that Henry was addicted to pills, I simply had no clue that the problem of pill addiction and overdose was quietly yet savagely ripping apart the East Tennessee community in which we make our home.

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Even with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, there’s no stopping 12 year old Justin Trovillion. We met Justin last year just before he took part in a trail involving an experimental drug.

His mother Carrie Trovillion says she feels since the trial, Justin has a new energy for life.

“Now I’m pulling him inside at night trying to make him go to bed!,” said Carrie. “He doesn’t want to sit on the couch anymore!”

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Melky Cabrera, whose breakout season with the San Francisco Giants was highlighted by his MVP performance in the All-Star Game, has been suspended 50 games for testing positive for testosterone, Major League Baseball announced.

Cabrera, a 27-year-old outfielder, has produced a major league-leading 159 hits this season, along with 11 home runs and 69 RBI. Acquired by the Giants in the off-season from the Kansas City Royals, Cabrera was on his way to a career year prior to being eligible for free agency this winter….

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The most eye-opening and persuasive parts of the book explore the revenue and benefits to be had from cannabis without a single joint’s being lighted. Throughout human history, cultures from Mongolia to Peru have used the non-psychoactive cannabis plant for food, shelter, clothing and medicine. Early drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, and the covered pioneer wagons that took America westward were made of cannabis fiber. In 1942, cannabis prohibition was suspended because of a shortage in industrial supply during the war, and the government actually encouraged farmers to grow it, using a propaganda film, “Hemp for Victory.”

The place industrial cannabis is not found yet, Fine points out, is in the above­ground American economy, thanks to its listing as a Schedule I narcotic. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s official stance is that it has no medical value at all: “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science ”” it is not medicine, and it is not safe.” O.K., Fine seems to say, but tell that to the doctors with evidence of its ability to shrink tumors and ease the effects of chemotherapy; or to the seniors of Orange County who depend on medical marijuana to treat their arthritis, and the doctor who uses it to treat his glaucoma; or to the 30-year-old Iraq war veteran with the shrapnel injuries who thanks God every day for this drug. It is prescription drugs that are now the leading cause of fatal drug overdoses ”” more than 26,000 each year. Also each year, over 23,000 Americans die of alcohol-related causes. None have died from cannabis alone.

As I said, the issue is loaded. And yet the side that has all the load never seems to win in America….

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Illinois Medicaid recipients have been limited to four prescription drugs as the state becomes the latest to cap how many medicines it will cover in the state-federal health insurance program for the poor.

Doctors fear the state’s cost-cutting move could harm patients, who have to get state permission to go beyond the limit.

“We understand the state is trying to get its Medicaid budget under control, but our concern is it not be a hardship for patients and a hassle for doctors in the execution,” says William Werner, president of the Illinois State Medical Society.

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When a pharmacy sells the heartburn drug Zantac, each pill costs about 35 cents. But doctors dispensing it to patients in their offices have charged nearly 10 times that price, or $3.25 a pill.

The same goes for a popular muscle relaxant known as Soma, insurers say. From a pharmacy, the per-pill price is 60 cents. Sold by a doctor, it can cost more than five times that, or $3.33.

At a time of soaring health care bills, experts say that doctors, middlemen and drug distributors are adding hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the costs borne by taxpayers, insurance companies and employers through the practice of physician dispensing.

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After years of stalled efforts, Connecticut is close to legalizing medical marijuana.

The state Senate approved the bill early Saturday morning following nearly 10 hours of debate. The measure passed the House of Representatives in April, and Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has said he would sign it. The move would make Connecticut the 17th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize medical marijuana.

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Singing, strumming guitars and trying to shield themselves from a searing sun, tens of thousands of Mexican Catholics came together Saturday nearly 24 hours before an open-air Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.

They walked miles and took up positions in Bicentennial Park, a short distance from a hilltop monument that honors the 1920s Cristero War by Catholic counter-revolutionaries.

But as religious fervor was on display in Silao, in central Mexico’s Guanajuato state, a sexual-abuse scandal involving a notorious Mexican priest threatened to cast a pall over the pope’s first visit to the Spanish-speaking Americas.

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“Pope Benedict XVI comes during a very different time [than his predecessor]. With a country wounded, depressed by the prolonged violence,” [Bernardo ] Barranco says, “a country that doesn’t have a clear vision of its own future.”

Speaking with reporters on his flight from Rome to Mexico, Benedict denounced the drug violence that’s claimed almost 50,000 lives here over the last five years.

This is expected to be one of the leading themes of his visit to Mexico. He’s also expected to call for a return to traditional Catholic values.

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A cheap antibiotic normally prescribed to teenagers for acne is to be tested as a treatment to alleviate the symptoms of psychosis in patients with schizophrenia, in a trial that could advance scientific understanding of the causes of mental illness.

The National Institute for Health Research is funding a £1.9m trial of minocycline, which will begin recruiting patients in the UK next month. The research follows case reports from Japan in which the drug was prescribed to patients with schizophrenia who had infections and led to dramatic improvements in their psychotic symptoms.

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She told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2002: “The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.”

Houston tried to stage a comeback with the 2009 album I Look To You, but things fell apart when a concert to promote the album was clearly off-key.

Broadcaster and music journalist Paul Gambaccini described Whitney Houston’s voice as “the template for female vocal performers for the last 30 years”.

But in the end, he told the BBC, she became the victim of a “self-administered decline” and, sadly, threw all it all away.

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Whitney Houston, the multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R & B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 48.

Her death came as the music industry descended on Los Angeles for the annual celebration of the Grammy Awards, and Ms. Houston was ”” for all her difficulties over the years ”” one of its queens. She was staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Saturday to attend a pre-Grammy party being hosted by Clive Davis, the founder of Arista Records, who had been her pop mentor.

Ms. Houston was found in her room at 3:55 p.m., and paramedics spent close to 20 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death, but the authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

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Nearly one in nine high school seniors have gotten high in the past year on synthetic drugs, such as “K2” or “Spice,” second only to the number of teens who have used marijuana, a new survey shows.

“Monitoring the Future,” the nation’s most comprehensive survey of teenage drug use, found 11.4% of the high school seniors had used the synthetic substances, often packed as potpourri or herbal incense and sold in convenience stores, which mimic the effects of marijuana.

“It is astounding,” said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa. “I don’t think they have any idea how dangerous these synthetic drugs are.”

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Pseudoephedrine is found in over-the-counter cold medicines such as Sudafed. While these pills may provide relief to cold sufferers, to criminals who are in the business of making meth, these pills are gold. Meth-makers legally buy as much of the raw product as they can at local pharmacies and drug stores.

A federal law designed to crack down on methamphetamine abuse sets a hard limit on pseudoephedrine: No more than nine grams, or about seven packs, per customer each month. But to get around that limit, which is electronically tracked by drug stores in certain states, meth users will team up so that each can buy the maximum at once. [Deputy director Dan] Smoot explained that it’s a practice known as “smurfing,” named after the little blue cartoon characters, Smurfs, who are small, but mighty as a team.

Caught this one on the morning run. The video is highly recommended if you have time. Did you know that Kentucky is number 3 in America in Methamphetamine production? I didn’t. Read it all–KSH.

How do you ask a room full of executives, actors, writers and producers expecting humor to forgive someone of an offense? That was exactly what happened recently at the Cinematheque Award Ceremony when Robert Downey Jr. received the prestigious honor.

During Downey Jr.’s acceptance speech, he said. “I asked Mel to present this award for me for a reason. When I couldn’t get sober, he told me not to give up hope and encouraged me to find my faith. It didn’t have to be his or anyone else’s as long as it was rooted in forgiveness. And I couldn’t get hired, so he cast me in the lead of a movie that was actually developed for him. He kept a roof over my head and food on the table and most importantly he said if I accepted responsibility for my wrongdoing and embraced that part of my soul that was ugly ”“ hugging the cactus he calls it ”” he said that if I hugged the cactus long enough, I’d become a man.

“ . . he asked in return that someday I help the next guy in some small way. It’s reasonable to assume at the time he didn’t imagine the next guy would be him or that someday was tonight. So . . . I would ask that you join me, unless you are completely without sin . . . in forgiving my friend his trespasses and offering him the same clean slate you have me.”

Who would have thought 10 years ago that Robert Downey Jr. would have such care for another actor to plea for someone else’s forgiveness, and such respect in the community that the audience would respond in applause and thereby give forgiveness implicitly.

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Abuse of prescription painkiller have reached “epidemic” levels in the US, a government report says.

Overdoses of pain relievers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined, the report has found.

It says sales and prescriptions of the drugs rose sharply in recent years and this was linked to the rise in overdoses.

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As more Americans turn to government programs for refuge from a merciless economy, a growing number are encountering a new price of admission to the social safety net: a urine sample.

Policy makers in three dozen states this year proposed drug testing for people receiving benefits like welfare, unemployment assistance, job training, food stamps and public housing. Such laws, which proponents say ensure that tax dollars are not being misused and critics say reinforce stereotypes about the poor, have passed in states including Arizona, Indiana and Missouri.

In Florida, people receiving cash assistance through welfare have had to pay for their own drug tests since July, and enrollment has shrunk to its lowest levels since the start of the recession.

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Recent studies are showing how tumors sidestep targeted cancer drugs by activating other growth-promoting molecules. The findings may help doctors develop new drug combinations that squelch the resistance, said Pasi Janne, senior author of the study and a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Until now we didn’t know what caused acquired resistance to Erbitux,” Janne said in a telephone interview. “Our hope is that this will very rapidly translate into clinical trials” of new drug combinations. The study, done in collaboration with researchers at Kinki University School of Medicine in Osaka, Japan and other universities, is published today in Science Translational Medicine.

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Two Charleston-based Coast Guard cutters helped in the recovery of 15,000 pounds of cocaine from a submarine-type craft in what’s believed to be the first time the stealth vessels increasingly favored by drug runners have been spotted in the Caribbean.

The Cutters Oak and Gallatin both took part in the effort to find and secure the wreck after the semi-submersible’s crew scuttled the boat in 75 feet of water near the Honduran-Nicaraguan border.

The crew of the Oak located the sunken vessel on the sea floor while the Gallatin participated in security and the overall effort, officials said.

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Middle-class, high-earning professionals are more tolerant of casual cannabis and cocaine use than the rest of the population, according to the first official study of British attitudes toward illegal drugs.

Adults in their 30s, those who live in cities, and those who are educated to degree level also have a more relaxed approach to the “occasional” use of drugs than other groups, such as low-earners with no qualifications.

The latest findings from the British Crime Survey (BCS), a study of 26,000 households, also show that the recently banned drug mephedrone, or “meow meow”, is as popular as cocaine among young people.

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Amy Winehouse will have a funeral in the Jewish tradition once her body is released for burial after…[its] post mortem. If the tradition is followed strictly her grave, likely to be in North London, will not to have a tombstone until a year has passed. Her place of burial is likely to become a shrine like the graves of other pop stars such as Jim Morrison, who also died at 27 and is buried in Paris.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead synagogue, said: “As someone with Jewish parents and brought up Jewishly, Amy Winehouse never lost her sense of Jewish roots in later life. She still saw herself as part of the Jewish community, while the Jewish community always regarded her as one of its talented but wayward members.”

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The vast majority of U.S. hospitals have restricted the use of life-saving chemotherapy drugs and other critical-care medications in the past six months to cope with unprecedented shortages, according to a survey released Tuesday.

More than 80% of hospitals surveyed by the American Hospital Association reported they had to delay treatment, and nearly 70% said patients received less effective substitute drugs.

Three out of four hospitals reported rationing or restricting the use of drugs in short supply. For some drugs, such as a leukemia drug called cytarabine, there are no effective substitutes.

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In just four years, Monterrey, a manufacturing city of 4 million people 140 miles from the Texan border, has gone from being a model for developing economies to a symbol of Mexico’s drug war chaos, sucked down into a dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness.

Since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led war on the cartels in late 2006, grenade attacks, beheadings, firefights and drive-by killings have surged.

That has shattered this city’s international image as a boomtown where captains of industry built steel, cement and beer giants in the desert in less than a century — Mexico’s version of Dallas or Houston.

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