4 Simple Tips for Eating "Special" Brownies and Other Marijuana-Infused Treats

It"s a new era of pot-infused goodies like soda, candy, and baked goods. Here"s how to consume carefully.

On Friday, Drug Policy Alliance’s Tony Newman, writing for AlterNet, posted some tips about eating marijuana-infused products like pot brownies. The end of prohibition is heralding a new era of pot-infused products like soda, candy, and baked goods. Some are so expertly made, it’s hard to tell there is any cannabis in them, leading to adverse events like clueless relatives, kids or pets scarfing THC-infused cookies. Newman offers some basic, common sense tips. Here they are again, summarized:

1) Lock up your edibles. Just like other medicines, pot foods need to be kept out of reach of anyone who may accidentally find and eat them. Think: medicine cabinet, not pantry. “Edible marijuana can be a safe and enjoyable way for people to ingest marijuana, but with that comes responsibility to make sure no one, especially kids, stumble upon them.”

2) Accidentally eating pot is not harmful. No one has ever died from ingesting pot. Ever. So don’t freak out. The media loves to call accidental weed ingestion “poisoning” and write that people were “sickened” — as if feeling loopy and sleepy is equivalent to dying from drinking anti-freeze, or god forbid a bottle of Jack Daniels.

3) Go slow. The onset of edible marijuana’s effects can take up to 90 minutes, so don’t get impatient and eat more. You could end up too high and feeling uncomfortable. If so, see rule 2.

4) Vote with your dollars for properly labeled marijuana edible products. That means dosage, usage instructions, expiration date, and ingredients including allergens. Colorado and Washington mandate labeling, but California’s do-nothing legislature — scared by recalcitrant police – refuses to create these basic regulations. Boycott unlabeled edibles and bakers will quickly get the message.

 

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4 Simple Tips for Eating "Special" Brownies and Other Marijuana-Infused Treats

The BIGGER Issue is Never The Mistake, It’s The Cover-up: 7 Years Of Litigation Reveals An Astounding Depth Of Governmental Inability To Admit A Simple Mistake…

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The BIGGER Issue is Never The Mistake, It’s The Cover-up: 7 Years Of Litigation Reveals An Astounding Depth Of Governmental Inability To Admit A Simple Mistake…

UK police: 3 women were slaves "in simple terms"

Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom Charity, speaks during an interview in central London, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013. Freedom Charity helped to rescue three women from a house in south London who were held as slaves for 30 years. London’s Metropolitan Police spoke about the rescues after two people were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of forced labor and domestic servitude. Those freed on Oct. 25, 2013 are a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman, police said. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom Charity, speaks during an interview in central London, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013. Freedom Charity helped to rescue three women from a house in south London who were held as slaves for 30 years. London’s Metropolitan Police spoke about the rescues after two people were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of forced labor and domestic servitude. Those freed on Oct. 25, 2013 are a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman, police said. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Kevin Hyland, head of the Metropolitan Police’s human trafficking unit speaks to the media outside New Scotland Yard’s headquarters in this image taken from TV Thursday Nov. 21, 2013. London police say three women were held for at least 30 years against their will in a south London home. Metropolitan Police revealed Thursday the women had been rescued and announced the arrests of two people as part of an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude. (AP Photo/ Sky TV, via Associated Press Television) UNITED KINGDOM OUT TV OUT

Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom Charity, speaks during an interview in central London, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013. Freedom Charity helped to rescue three women from a house in south London who were held as slaves for 30 years. London’s Metropolitan Police spoke about the rescues after two people were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of forced labor and domestic servitude. Those freed on Oct. 25, 2013 are a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman, police said. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom Charity, speaks to Associated Press in central London, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013. Freedom Charity helped to rescue three women from a house in south London who were held as slaves for about 30-years. A Malaysian woman, 69, an Irish woman, 57, and a British woman, 30, were rescued from the house on Oct. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

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LONDON (AP) — Three women who were freed from a London home after 30 years had been allowed outside in “carefully controlled circumstances” during their ordeal but were victims of “slavery, in simple terms,” a senior British police officer said Friday.

Commander Steve Rodhouse described a “complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years” in the case of the women, declining to say how they wound up in the south London home. Two suspects, a man and a woman, were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of forced labor and domestic servitude.

He said investigators are trying to figure out “what were the invisible handcuffs that were used” to exert such control for the 30 years the women were allegedly held captive and subject to physical, mental and emotional abuse.

“It is not as brutally obvious as women being physically restrained inside an address and not being allowed to leave,” Rodhouse said. “This may have appeared to be a normal family.”

The disclosure Thursday that a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton were freed after apparently spending 30 years in captivity prompted a flurry of speculation and questions about how such a tragedy escaped notice for so long.

The arrests were made after the Irish woman phoned a charity last month to say she was being held against her will along with two others. The charity engaged in a series of secretive conversations with the women and contacted police. Two of the women eventually left the house, and police rescued the third.

The case has sent shockwaves throughout Britain and around the world, but is the latest horrifying case of a broader phenomenon that officials warn is still happening — and on the rise.

“Cases of modern slavery are becoming more prevalent in Europe,” said Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. “Unfortunately, it remains a low priority for many national police authorities. Europol is committed to fostering stronger international police action in this area and to raising greater levels of public attention.”

Since the most recent expansions of the EU and the lifting of restrictions on employment in many countries, instances of situations which amount to forced labor have increased, Europol says.

Anti-slavery charity The Walk Free Foundation last month released a global index that estimated that more than 29 million people live in some form of modern slavery — which can take the form of domestic servitude, forced marriages, child trafficking and forced labor.

While the index found that Africa and Asia are home to the vast majority of modern slaves, it estimated that there are up to 4,600 slaves in the U.K. — a country which had the lowest estimated prevalence of slavery in a ranking of 162 countries.

Fiona David, of Walk Free, said Friday that the most recent case in London highlights that slavery can be perpetrated by “just people living in the neighborhood,” not necessarily “organized criminals.”

The suspects — both 67 — have also been questioned on suspicion of immigration offenses, police said. Regarding their identity, police would only say that the suspects were not British and had been in the country for “many years.” They would not elaborate on the pair’s nationalities, but did note that both had been arrested in the 1970s. Police did not say why.

Both suspects have been released on bail, having surrendered their passports and agreed not to return to their house as part of their bail conditions.

Police say they do not believe there are other victims in the case, and they are confident that they know the true identities of the three women. The relationships among the women — and between the women and the suspects — are under investigation, police said.

“Whilst we do not believe that they have been subjected to sexual abuse, we know that there has been physical abuse, described as beatings,” said Kevin Hyland, head of the Metropolitan Police’s human trafficking unit.

He and Rodhouse defended the lapse in time between Oct. 25 — when the women gained freedom — and the arrests, saying that the case is complicated and investigators must be careful to ensure they do not further traumatize the victims as they unravel the events of the past 30 years.

Hyland also urged patience as the case unfolds, noting that officers must sift through 55 bags of evidence seized in a search of the home, interview several people and follow up numerous strands.

Police noted that the case was “unique” not least because of the length of women’s ordeal, though the U.K. has seen a string of high-profile slavery cases in recent years.

Last month, an 84-year-old man was jailed for repeatedly raping a deaf and mute girl he trafficked into Britain from Pakistan and kept as a virtual slave.

Police in Wales have arrested at least seven people in recent months as part of a long-running investigation into a suspected slavery ring there.

___

Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

___

Follow Cassandra Vinograd at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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UK police: 3 women were slaves "in simple terms"

No Simple Answers on Security and Freedom

Years ago, the government snooped on my phone calls.  It happened in Soviet Russia, where, at 16, I already knew it was dangerous to have politically risky conversations even near the telephone, let alone on it.  Shortly after my parents sought permission to emigrate in 1979, we received startling accidental proof that Big Brother was listening.  While on the phone with a friend, my mother suddenly heard mysterious clicks—followed by a playback of her own conversation.  Moments later a strange voice asked, “Are you recording?”, and then the sound was cut off.

Given such experiences, the idea of the state monitoring private communications in my adopted country is unquestionably disturbing—but so is hyperbolic rhetoric about an American police state. 

At this point, there is much we don’t know about the telephone and Internet data collection by the National Security Agency. What is being monitored and on what scale?  Can the NSA eavesdrop without a warrant, or merely keep track of who’s communicating with whom?  Does the fact that the special courts overseeing foreign intelligence surveillance approve nearly all requests for wiretapping warrants mean that their oversight amounts to rubber-stamping—or that most requests are well-founded?  Is it true the NSA programs have helped prevent major terror attacks, including a New York subway bombing in 2009?

Polls show that Americans lean toward supporting surveillance, though within limits.  In a Pew poll earlier this month, 56 percent approved of NSA tracking of phone calls while 41 percent disapproved; only 45 percent, however, agreed that the government should be able to “monitor everyone’s email to prevent possible terrorism.” (The figure might have been higher if the wording had clearly referred to tracking email rather than indiscriminately reading it).  When the question was posed in broader terms—“Which is more important, to investigate terrorist threats or not intrude on privacy?”—nearly two-thirds opted for the former.

It’s easy to mock supporters of extensive national security programs as docile “sheeple,” especially when a substantial number of both Republicans and Democrats seem to shift their stance on the issue depending on which party is in power.  But the inescapable fact is that the terror threat is very real.  Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001.  A successful attack on the New York subway could have caused devastating damage.  The specter of biological or nuclear terrorism is not just science fiction.

Critics of the “surveillance state” often charge that our response is out of proportion to the threat, since we handle far deadlier perils without compromising our freedom or privacy.   In a recent column making this argument on The Atlantic’s website, Conor Friedersdorf cites fatalities from drunk driving, diabetes, guns, and food poisoning.  But the analogy is deeply flawed. 

Terrorism is very different from the unavoidable vicissitudes of life such as diseases and accidents. We have a degree of control over these dangers; while this control is obviously limited, it is not illusory.  We can do many things to lower our risk of premature death from disease.  We can minimize the risk of dying in a drunk driving accident if we don’t drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver.  (For better or worse, we also accept tangible incursions on individual freedom to combat drunk driving, from age restrictions on alcohol sales to sobriety checkpoints.)  We can take basic precautions against food poisoning.  The risk of death by firearm is cut in half if you don’t commit suicide, and drops even lower if you are not involved in crime. 

Catastrophic events that strike unpredictably and are completely outside our control are inherently more terrifying—especially when they kill on a mass scale.  This is true even when those events are accidental: imagine the outcry, and the calls for action, if food contamination or a building collapse killed hundreds of Americans in a single day.  With terrorism, the impact is magnified by the knowledge that we are being deliberately targeted and that the perpetrators will likely seek new, more efficient ways to cause harm.  In the words of Bloomberg.net columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, “The fear of terrorism isn’t motivated solely by what terrorists have done, but what terrorists hope to do.”

That is why, even if this fear is disproportionate to the actual death toll from terror attacks, it makes a fair amount of sense.  Dismissing it as “irrational cowardice”—as Friedersdorf does—is not only condescending but wrong, and policy proposals based on such an outlook are doomed.  Persuading people to treat terrorism as an acceptable everyday risk on a par with traffic accidents and food poisoning would require reengineering the human psyche.  We remember how well that worked out for the communists.

Does this mean that we should simply trust the government not to misuse its power and its access to private information?  Certainly not.  While there is zero evidence that either the Bush or the Obama Administration has used surveillance data improperly—for instance, against political opponents or critics—the potential for abuse exists despite legislative and judicial oversight.   (Of course, a government nefarious enough to target political opponents would also be nefarious enough to conduct surveillance no matter how illegal.) 

We need federal legislation that provides strong penalties for any misuse of data obtained through national security programs. We also need more public accountability and public debate on these issues—which is why NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whatever his motives and morals, has performed a valuable service.

The libertarian critique provides an essential check on the surveillance state.  But liberty cannot survive unless a free society can be defended.  And, if libertarians downplay the threat posed by our enemies, they undercut their credibility in opposing the threat posed by the intrusive state.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

No Simple Answers on Security and Freedom

No Simple Answers on Security and Freedom

Years ago, the government snooped on my phone calls.  It happened in Soviet Russia, where, at 16, I already knew it was dangerous to have politically risky conversations even near the telephone, let alone on it.  Shortly after my parents sought permission to emigrate in 1979, we received startling accidental proof that Big Brother was listening.  While on the phone with a friend, my mother suddenly heard mysterious clicks—followed by a playback of her own conversation.  Moments later a strange voice asked, “Are you recording?”, and then the sound was cut off.

Given such experiences, the idea of the state monitoring private communications in my adopted country is unquestionably disturbing—but so is hyperbolic rhetoric about an American police state. 

At this point, there is much we don’t know about the telephone and Internet data collection by the National Security Agency. What is being monitored and on what scale?  Can the NSA eavesdrop without a warrant, or merely keep track of who’s communicating with whom?  Does the fact that the special courts overseeing foreign intelligence surveillance approve nearly all requests for wiretapping warrants mean that their oversight amounts to rubber-stamping—or that most requests are well-founded?  Is it true the NSA programs have helped prevent major terror attacks, including a New York subway bombing in 2009?

Polls show that Americans lean toward supporting surveillance, though within limits.  In a Pew poll earlier this month, 56 percent approved of NSA tracking of phone calls while 41 percent disapproved; only 45 percent, however, agreed that the government should be able to “monitor everyone’s email to prevent possible terrorism.” (The figure might have been higher if the wording had clearly referred to tracking email rather than indiscriminately reading it).  When the question was posed in broader terms—“Which is more important, to investigate terrorist threats or not intrude on privacy?”—nearly two-thirds opted for the former.

It’s easy to mock supporters of extensive national security programs as docile “sheeple,” especially when a substantial number of both Republicans and Democrats seem to shift their stance on the issue depending on which party is in power.  But the inescapable fact is that the terror threat is very real.  Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001.  A successful attack on the New York subway could have caused devastating damage.  The specter of biological or nuclear terrorism is not just science fiction.

Critics of the “surveillance state” often charge that our response is out of proportion to the threat, since we handle far deadlier perils without compromising our freedom or privacy.   In a recent column making this argument on The Atlantic’s website, Conor Friedersdorf cites fatalities from drunk driving, diabetes, guns, and food poisoning.  But the analogy is deeply flawed. 

Terrorism is very different from the unavoidable vicissitudes of life such as diseases and accidents. We have a degree of control over these dangers; while this control is obviously limited, it is not illusory.  We can do many things to lower our risk of premature death from disease.  We can minimize the risk of dying in a drunk driving accident if we don’t drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver.  (For better or worse, we also accept tangible incursions on individual freedom to combat drunk driving, from age restrictions on alcohol sales to sobriety checkpoints.)  We can take basic precautions against food poisoning.  The risk of death by firearm is cut in half if you don’t commit suicide, and drops even lower if you are not involved in crime. 

Catastrophic events that strike unpredictably and are completely outside our control are inherently more terrifying—especially when they kill on a mass scale.  This is true even when those events are accidental: imagine the outcry, and the calls for action, if food contamination or a building collapse killed hundreds of Americans in a single day.  With terrorism, the impact is magnified by the knowledge that we are being deliberately targeted and that the perpetrators will likely seek new, more efficient ways to cause harm.  In the words of Bloomberg.net columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, “The fear of terrorism isn’t motivated solely by what terrorists have done, but what terrorists hope to do.”

That is why, even if this fear is disproportionate to the actual death toll from terror attacks, it makes a fair amount of sense.  Dismissing it as “irrational cowardice”—as Friedersdorf does—is not only condescending but wrong, and policy proposals based on such an outlook are doomed.  Persuading people to treat terrorism as an acceptable everyday risk on a par with traffic accidents and food poisoning would require reengineering the human psyche.  We remember how well that worked out for the communists.

Does this mean that we should simply trust the government not to misuse its power and its access to private information?  Certainly not.  While there is zero evidence that either the Bush or the Obama Administration has used surveillance data improperly—for instance, against political opponents or critics—the potential for abuse exists despite legislative and judicial oversight.   (Of course, a government nefarious enough to target political opponents would also be nefarious enough to conduct surveillance no matter how illegal.) 

We need federal legislation that provides strong penalties for any misuse of data obtained through national security programs. We also need more public accountability and public debate on these issues—which is why NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whatever his motives and morals, has performed a valuable service.

The libertarian critique provides an essential check on the surveillance state.  But liberty cannot survive unless a free society can be defended.  And, if libertarians downplay the threat posed by our enemies, they undercut their credibility in opposing the threat posed by the intrusive state.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

No Simple Answers on Security and Freedom