University of California medical researchers slipped an ingredient in chili peppers beneath the skin of marijuana smokers to see if pot could relieve acute pain. It could – at certain doses.
They monitored patients with AIDS and HIV as they toked on joints or placebos to determine whether marijuana could quell agonizing pain from nerve damage. It provided relief.
They tested a "Volcano Vaporizer" to see whether inhaling smokeless pot delivered healthier, low-tar cannabis. It did.
Over a dozen years, California's historic experiment in medical marijuana research brought new science to the debate on marijuana's place in medicine. State-funded studies – costing $8.7 million – found pot may offer broad benefits for pain from nerve damage from injuries, HIV, strokes and other conditions.
California's famed Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research – established by the Legislature to answer the question, "Does marijuana have therapeutic value?" – has now all but completed America's most comprehensive studies into the efficacy of pot.
The money is gone. State-commissioned clinical trials totaling more than 300 research subjects are over. The last data are being crunched for medical journals. And it is unlikely that medicinal pot research on such a scale is going to be repeated any time soon.
Headquartered at UC San Diego with work also conducted in Sacramento County and San Francisco, the Center for Medical Cannabis Research challenged medical orthodoxy by undertaking the first clinical trials in decades looking at pot as medicine.
Now it survives in name only – as an informational center and potential clearinghouse for grant applications for future cannabis studies.
Political frictions over pot remain volatile, and researchers say getting additional studies approved by federal agencies is as hard as ever. Despite findings of potential health benefits by California researchers, cannabis is no closer to winning federal acceptance as medicine.
Three years after California voters passed the nation's first medical marijuana law in 1996, the Legislature in 1999 approved funding for the nation's first sustained modern medical research for pot.
After seven completed trials between 2002 and 2012, with five studies published and two pending, California researchers say the research shows pot does, in fact, have therapeutic value.
"Every one of the studies showed a benefit," said Dr. Igor Grant, a neuropsychiatrist who served as director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. "The convergence of evidence makes me convinced there is a medical benefit here, and there may be a niche for cannabis."
The California researchers sought to avoid the politics of pot or advocacy of its use. But Grant said the research results suggest the U.S. government's listing of marijuana as a Schedule I drug with no medical use – on par with heroin and LSD – "is completely at odds with the existing science."
"It is intellectually dishonest to say it has no value whatsoever, because it's just not true," he said.
Trials with HIV patients
While doctors can recommend marijuana, and people buy it at California dispensaries, it is not available as a legal prescription drug.
So the challenge for California researchers was to try to determine if a plant with no uniform medical dose could be shown as effective.
In many cases, researchers took their cues from people already using marijuana.
Dr. Donald Abrams at UC San Francisco and Dr. Ronald Ellis at UC San Diego knew AIDS and HIV patients with nerve damage were treating themselves with cannabis to quell shooting pains from stimuli as benign as pulling a bed sheet over their toes.
In separate clinical trials between 2002 and 2006, Abrams and Ellis found that patients infected with HIV got marked pain relief from pot – even on top of prescription pain medications.
In May, a published study by Jody Corey-Bloom, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at UC San Diego, reported that 30 patients smoking marijuana got noticeable relief from painful spasticity.
Through May, another research team led by UC Davis pain management physician Dr. Barth Wilsey worked to determine whether cannabis could relieve pain without getting people stoned.
Wilsey was surprised when research subjects with discomfort from nervous system damage found the same relief from marijuana cigarettes with 3.5 percent tetrahydrocannabinol – the psychoactive ingredient in pot – as from cigarettes with 7 percent THC. He commissioned a follow-up, in which patients breathed in vaporized pot with even smaller amounts of THC or with psychoactive elements extracted.
"I think we're traveling together," Wilsey said of the synergy between researchers and subjects using cannabis. "I want to be able to provide a suitable dose that doesn't impair people or impairs them minimally."
It was as part of that study that Sacramento County resident Gene Murphy, a multiple sclerosis patient, was driven to a UC Davis research center in Rancho Cordova over a three-week period so scientists could watch him inhale different potencies of cannabis from a vaporizer, check his pain and see if he was getting high.
Murphy found himself taking tokes of government pot, grown for research at the University of Mississippi, and complaining about the taste as the UC Davis team tried to find out if a minuscule dose of marijuana could help with his shooting pains.
"It was harsh on your throat and you didn't get high or nothing," Murphy said. "I asked them, 'Can't you get something better out of Humboldt County?' "
But Murphy also found his discomfort seemed to decrease with cannabis use in a way it didn't with his prescription of Vicodin alone. His impressions will be included in an upcoming study.
This month, Wilsey is enrolling research subjects for another study, funded under a $910,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, on cannabis's effectiveness with spinal cord injury pain.
Conflicts over testing
Before the California research – and still today – federal agencies have preferred to support studies of marijuana as a drug of abuse, not as a potential medical benefit.
As U.S. authorities crack down on California marijuana dispensaries, some UC researchers question if medical cannabis research is any more acceptable today. "I don't think science drives the train here," Abrams said, adding. "It's a difficult environment at the current time to obtain funding."
Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit group advocating alternative medical research, said he hoped the California studies would have kicked open the door to large, multistate trials that could evaluate marijuana as a prescription drug.
That didn't happen. Neither did a much-publicized study MAPS hoped to undertake in Arizona this year on whether pot could help Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Doblin said the Food and Drug Administration supported the veterans study. But the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which controls access to the government's supply of marijuana for research, did not.
"With the fact that the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research had all of these promising leads, you would think in a rational world that people would be studying marijuana to make it a (prescription) medicine," Doblin said.
In response to written questions from The Bee, Stephanie Older, a public affairs officer with the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, wrote that the agencies "will continue to support research on the potential benefits of cannabis."
However, she added: "While there have been some small studies on the potential therapeutic benefits of smoked cannabis, the literature on its harms is much more well-established."
For now, Grant said, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis research suggests that pot is a promising secondary therapy for people for whom other treatments fail.
But Grant said he worries about a lack of standardization for medical marijuana. He suggests people buying pot at dispensaries – offering products far more potent than used in state research – is akin "to going to a flea market for an antibiotic."
And UC San Diego researcher Dr. Mark Wallace said finding proper dosing for marijuana is a challenge.
In a novel study, Wallace, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist, injected capsaicin, the hot ingredient in chili pepper, beneath the skin of healthy research subjects who smoked pot with different THC levels.
Five minutes after inhaling marijuana, none reported pain relief. After 45 minutes, those who smoked marijuana with 2 percent THC said they still hurt. But those who smoked pot with 4 percent THC said their pain was all but gone. And those who smoked marijuana with 8 percent THC reported their pain actually increased.
Wallace said the findings are significant because they showed "that cannabis has a therapeutic window."
But exactly what the proper marijuana dose is – and how it may vary for different conditions – will require much more research, Wallace said. He doesn't know when that may happen.
Source: www.sacbee.com
California dreaming? Waves at Sunshine State surfer beach lit up by mysterious blue glow at midnight - Daily Mail
- Chemical reaction, called bioluminescence, occurs when micro-organism in sea is disturbed by oxygen in waves
By Rob Waugh
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At midnight, all around was dark, but each crash of the waves at a famous surfing beach created an eerie blue flash - caught on camera by a photographer who had a camera ready to capture the strange phenomenon.
Steve Skinner visited the beach especially for the sight, caused by algae in the water at Swami's.
When the waves crash it causes the algae to give off a flash of blue light - called bioluminescence - as the millions of organisms are disturbed.
The amazing images were snapped at midnight by photographer Steve Skinner who visited the beach especially for the sight
Part of the sea was illuminated a stunning shade of blue due to a natural phenonemon called algae bloom
When the waves crash it causes the algae to give off a flash of blue light - called bioluminescence - as the millions of organisms are disturbed
GLOW WITH THE FLOW: THE CHEMISTRY THAT MAKES THE SEA GLOW BLUE AT NIGHT
The glow - called 'bioluminescence' - occurs when a micro-organism in the water is disturbed by oxygen.
Although a rare sight on a shoreline, the phenomenon is more commonly seen at sea in the wake of ships that stir up the oxygen in the sea, which causes the bioluminescent bacteria to glow.
Many undersea organisms ‘glow’, especially creatures that live at depths where light from the surface is less likely to penetrate.
The night-time glow is a side-effect of blooming red algae, known as red tide, which can turn entire beaches scarlet and murky during the day.
Despite its remarkable appearance, the huge bloom of algae is actually quite damaging as it decreases the water's oxygen and harms fish.
Meanwhile, during the day the water discolouration, otherwise known as red tide, can cause the water to turn a horrible reddish-brown colour.
The stretch of water, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, was illuminated for a week before the glow diminished.
Steve, 43, from Carlsbad, California, said: ‘It is a popular phenomenon and people go see it especially whenever it happens.
‘I had planned to visit the beach to specifically shoot these type of images and I was taking pictures for about an hour. The red tide was pretty strong and the effect could have been seen from any of our local beaches.’
Steve, who runs a website development business, added: ‘I was really pleased with the shots and in beach terminology, I was 'totally stoked'.
‘I've seen this before but never this bright. Plus the last time the glow was more of a dim green color and this time it was absolutely mesmerising.
‘As I live near the coast I do photography at the beach all the time, but these shots are by far my most unique and strange.’
Steve, 43, from Carlsbad, California, said: It is a popular phenomenon and people go see it especially whenever it happens.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
California's City of Carson Is First to Adopt Model Ordinance for Location Production - Hollywood Reporter
The city of Carson in Los Angeles County has become the first to adopt a new standardized statewide “model” ordinance designed to provide the entertainment industry with a uniform set of policies and procedures for on-location production.
The purpose of a standardized statewide ordinance is to streamline the film permitting process and send a clear signal that entertainment is a coveted industry that California intends to retain at a time there is increased competition for movie and TV productions from more than 40 U.S. states and numerous foreign countries.
“The Model Film Ordinance is a valuable tool for helping municipalities become more film-friendly,” says California Film Commission Executive Director Amy Lemisch. “Widespread adoption of the MFO will help Southern California create jobs and compete more effectively against runaway production.”
The plan to create a model set of rules for film and TV production in cities and towns throughout California (those done off studio lots) has been in the works since earlier this year. On May 1, the Model Film Ordinance and Best Practices plan was formally adopted by the California Film Commission. On July 5, the Southern California Association of Governments unanimously passed a resolution to encourage their members in 191 cities and six California counties to adopt the ordinance.
On Wednesday, the commission and SCAG were joined by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. and Film L.A. in endorsing the plan and encouraging use of the model ordinance. The Wednesday announcement said they “are partnering to support the important (task of) job creation and financial contribution(s) of the entertainment industry to our region’s economic recovery and sustained growth.”
“The bottom line is that we all share the same fundamental belief,” says Lemisch. “And that belief is that increasing entertainment production is good for our economy.”
Movie and TV production in California accounts for 176,700 jobs and $30 billion in annual spending in the Southern California region according to the LAEDC. The state legislature is currently considering a bill to extend a program of tax credits which provides $100 million annually to help keep movie and TV production in the state.
"Given California's persistent high unemployment rate, cities and counties are taking the lead locally to ensure that they retain important revenue generating industries and attract additional business,” says Glen Becerra, SCAG president and a Simi Valley city councilman. “Southern California is home to 'Hollywood' -- it is our heritage, but cannot be taken for granted.”
Becerra added that the model ordinance will send the message that “supporting the entertainment industry is critical to our region's economy and future. In addition, this is only the beginning of government, business and an industry specialist working together to adopt business-friendly principles that secure a prosperous California.”
The Carson City Council voted to revise their film ordinance June 6 and the model ordinance became effective July 6th. Carson is 16 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, in the South Bay. The city of almost 92,000, which consists of 19 square miles, is bordered by the city of Long Beach on the east, and the city of Torrance on the west.
Among the policies in the model ordinance are requirements that law enforcement be used only as needed; a reduction in the radius of the area required to notify businesses and residents when filming is taking place; and the elimination of the city’s business license requirement for film and TV productions.
“Carson has been the home of many productions over the years,” says Barry Waite, business development manager for the City of Carson. “Filmmakers told us our policies were getting in the way of getting the job done.”
Although thus far, Carson is the only California city to officially enact the new model ordinance, the cities of Simi Valley and Duarte are developing guidelines and are expected to vote on the model ordinance at upcoming city council meetings.
Lemisch is confident that many cities will follow Carson’s lead: “When any one city adopts the ordinance, there will be a noticeable difference. As more cities make the change, their neighbors will follow suit.”
“Despite being recognized as the entertainment capital of the world, Southern California must take additional steps to retain film and television production,” says LAEDC CEO and president Bill Allen. “So I encourage cities throughout Southern California to take SCAG’s unanimous support for film and television production to heart, adopt some version of the MFO/BP that fits their jurisdiction’s needs, and send a clear and loud message that filming is welcome and will always have a home in Southern California.”
Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
California cities go bust – just like European countries - Daily Telegraph Blogs
Golden California - but lots of bankruptcy
Some fairly substantial cities in the state of California are going bankrupt – or veering wildly close to it. San Bernadino is one of the latest to have its mayor, Patrick J Morris, declare that the municipal Fire Department or parts of the Police Department will have to be closed down if the situation does not change. And what is it that would need to change in order for these drastic steps to be avoided? Guess what? Concessions would have to be exacted from local labour unions over salaries and pensions. Sound familiar? How very like our own dear European Union partners – and for that matter how not very dissimilar from our own dilemma here in the UK.
A Stanford economist, the aptly named Professor Joe Nation, points out that Stockton, California, which has already gone over the edge into insolvency, was spending $12 to $13 million on pensions ten years ago. By 2010, that expenditure had increased to $30 million. And in another five years, the sum will double again if, once again, "nothing changes". And, given the intransigence of the labour interest, is anything likely to change? There is a real prospect now of whole swathes of Californian cityscape being reduced to ghost towns in which tumbleweed will sweep through deserted streets and abandoned homes which succumbed to the foreclosure epidemic will stand weirdly empty: a testimony to the modern gold rush of public sector privileges.
The EU, of course, has the answer to this: there may be similarly empty, abandoned towns in Spain which were left behind by the property speculation bubble but the public service infrastructure will never be allowed to collapse. The EU never goes broke: when it runs out of money, it just prints some more.
Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk
California’s Municipal Bankruptcies Sign of Stigma Waning - Bloomberg
Bankruptcy decisions by San Bernardino and two other California cities only weeks apart may signal that municipal insolvency, while still a last resort, is losing its stigma.
The City Council of San Bernardino, a community of 209,000 east of Los Angeles, joined Stockton and Mammoth Lakes in agreeing July 10 to seek court protection from its creditors, the first such filings since 2008.
“Do I expect more? Yeah, but I don’t expect a tidal wave,” Dick Larkin, director of credit analysis for Herbert J. Sims & Co. in Iselin, New Jersey, said yesterday by telephone. “I am starting to wonder whether or not the stigma of bankruptcy in California is going to be taken more lightly now.”
Cities and towns across the U.S. have been strained by soaring costs for labor including pensions and retiree health benefits, while sales- and property-tax revenue plunged after the longest recession since the 1930s. Stockton, a community of 292,000 east of San Francisco, on June 28 became the biggest U.S. city to enter bankruptcy.
California is among at least 27 states that allow municipalities to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, according to Meagan Dorsch, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
“It’s still no honor to be a Chapter 9 debtor, but if it’s your only alternative, that’s what you do,” said Marc Levinson, the bankruptcy attorney for Stockton and for Vallejo, a city of 120,000 in the San Francisco Bay area that filed for court supervision in 2008. Chapter 9 of the U.S. bankruptcy code covers municipalities.
Unaffordable Judgment
The third recent bankruptcy was filed by Mammoth Lakes, a mountain resort of 8,200 that sought protection July 3, saying it can’t afford the $43 million it owes on a legal judgment, more than twice the size of its annual general-fund spending.
A bankruptcy filing can increase the cost of borrowing or make it more difficult to access the capital markets in the future, Lisa Washburn, a managing director at Municipal Market Advisors in Concord, Massachusetts, said yesterday.
“It’s worrisome to see them close together but I don’t expect that there will be a tsunami,” she said in a telephone interview. “We may see an uptick, but I think they’ll remain isolated instances.”
John Moorlach, an Orange County supervisor who became treasurer after the county lost $1.7 billion on interest-rate bets and entered court protection in 1994, said he expected more cities to follow.
“The dominoes are starting to fall,” Moorlach said yesterday in a telephone interview. “You’re going to get something every week, every month.”
Mediation Option
Last year, the California Legislature enacted a union- backed law to make it more difficult for cities to take that step. The law, which took effect this year, requires municipalities to pursue mediation with creditors or declare a fiscal emergency before seeking bankruptcy protection.
San Bernardino is poised to become the first California city to bypass mediation with creditors under the law, City Attorney James Penman said in an interview.
The City Council has scheduled a vote July 16 to declare a fiscal emergency, allowing San Bernardino to skip a 60-day neutral evaluation process in which creditors have a right to participate, Penman said late yesterday.
“We don’t believe we have enough cash flow to get through the next 60 days,” he said. “We believe our situation is pretty secure” to qualify to bypass mediation.
San Bernardino and its agencies have more than $220 million of debt, including $48.6 million of taxable pension-obligation bonds, according to financial statements.
Rating Reduction
Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating on the city’s lease- revenue bonds yesterday by 12 steps to CC, or junk, from BBB+, the third-lowest investment grade. The rating company said San Bernardino has depleted its cash, which could impair its ability to pay its bills. It put the credit on watch for future cuts.
Insolvencies in Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes are three cities out of 482 in California, said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California Treasurer Bill Lockyer.
“The notion that cities are chomping at the bit now to file for bankruptcy is misplaced,” Dresslar said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Most cities want to navigate through the fiscal straits they’re in without having to file for bankruptcy. If you take that route, the harm extends for years and years into the future.”
The state is poised to borrow an estimated $10 billion next month to pay bills until the bulk of tax receipts are collected later in the year.
“We expect heavy investor demand for those revenue- anticipation notes, and we fully anticipate getting a good deal for taxpayers,” Dresslar said. “We don’t see the recent events adversely affecting us at all.”
James Spiotto, a partner who leads the bankruptcy group at Chapman & Cutler LLP in Chicago, said there have been 641 municipal bankruptcies since 1937. He said Stockton and Mammoth Lakes are the only U.S. cities to file this year.
“Three does not make a trend,” said Spiotto, who helped Congress write amendments to Chapter 9. “What this really is is a wake-up call to everybody. Are people addressing their problems early enough?”
Chapter 9 is a process and not a solution, he said.
“The day after you file a Chapter 9, if there is a bad economy, there’s still a bad economy,” Spiotto said. “If you have problems with your workers, you still have them.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in San Francisco at avekshin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net
Source: www.bloomberg.com
As a teenager, we would camp on the beach and bodysurf in the red tide at night on occasion. One of the coolest experiences I remember was bodysurfing in the red tide (bioluminescence) and as you looked out, seeing the Channel Islands of Anacapa and Santa Cruz off the coast backlit by a huge setting moon over the Pacific. You'd tread water in the moonlight waiting, and then a wave would raise up to bodysurf, and you'd be surrounded by this incredible glow and sparkle, and no one else around. Beautiful!
- Colum, The Bear Flag Republic, North America, 12/7/2012 15:32
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