Senora Cannabis” Alicia Castilla Released After 94 Days

Senora Cannabis” Alicia Castilla Released After 94 Days

25 05 2011

The 5th of May saw the release of 66 year old Alicia Castilla, who was held in prison for  94 days after police discovered marijuana plants at her home in Atlántida, Uruguay.
In a similar way to the Netherlands, laws in Uruguay allow possession of cannabis for personal use (although in Uruguay the amount considered reasonable for personal consumption is decided by a judge). Cultivation however is completely forbidden, a paradox that forces users to either (illegally) buy from criminal dealers or break the law by cultivating cannabis for their own use. Alicia Castilla, author of two books on cannabis, chose the latter option.

Alicia Castilla, cannabis activist and author, aka Senora Cannabis

In January 2011 police raided the house she had bought with the intention of having ‘a peaceful place to spend my old age’, and discovered 29 unsexed cannabis seedlings.
“I think it’s an injustice that a person is in prison for planting what they consume,” Castilla told Spanish  newspaper El Pais. The grandmother affectionately nicknamed “Senora Cannabis” by her many supporters expressed emotional relief at this turn in a case that attracted attention from all over the world, especially in her native Argentina.
Following her arrest, Alicia Castilla was imprisoned in Canelones, a squalid and violent prison where inmates include murderers and crack addicts. After 45 days and repeated requests, she was transferred to CNR, a rehabilitation centre. Here she had access to a laptop and began drafting a third book, inspired by her experiences.
Until very recently the Supreme Court in Uruguay was refusing to grant provisional release to Alicia Castilla but an appeal for probation was finally granted by prosecutor Fernando Valerio. Alicia must now await the final ruling, which has already been delayed. She intends to continue campaigning for the legal right to cultivate cannabis even more passionately than before.

Why Medicinal Marijuana Is Here to Stay

Why Medicinal Marijuana Is Here to Stay

6 06 2011 “We are not far from a time when pot will be hailed as a wonder drug.”
_{The following is the text of a speech by Lester Greenspoon, M.D. recently delivered to the 2011 NORML conference}.
In 1967, because of my concern about the rapidly growing use of the dangerous drug marijuana, I began my studies of the scientific and medical literature with the goal of providing a reasonably objective summary of the data which underlay its prohibition.  Much to my surprise, I found no credible scientific basis for the justification of the prohibition.  The assertion that it is a very toxic drug is based on old and new myths.  In fact, one of the many exceptional features of this drug is its remarkably limited toxicity.  Compared to aspirin, which people are free to purchase and use without the advice or prescription of a physician, cannabis is much safer: there are well over 1000 deaths annually from aspirin in this country alone, whereas there has never been a death anywhere from marijuana.  In fact, when cannabis regains its place in the US Pharmacopeia, a status it lost after the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, it will be seen as one of the safest drugs in that compendium.  Moreover, it will eventually be hailed as a “wonder drug” just as penicillin was in the 1940s.  Penicillin achieved this reputation because it was remarkably non-toxic, it was, once it was produced on an economy of scale, quite inexpensive, and it was effective in the treatment of a variety of infectious diseases.  Similarly, cannabis is exceptionally safe, and once freed of the prohibition tariff, will be significantly less expensive than the conventional drugs it replaces while its already impressive medical versatility continues to expand.

The War On Drugs Has Failed!

The War On Drugs Has Failed!

 

7 06 2011



The global war on drugs has failed, a high-level commission comprised of former presidents, public intellectuals and other leaders studying drug policies concluded in a report released Thursday.
International efforts to crack down on drug producers and consumers and to try to reduce demand have had “devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,” the report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy said.
The commission, which includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, challenges the conventional wisdom about drug markets and drug use.
Among the group’s recommendations:
– End of criminalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but do not harm others
– Encourage governments to experiment with drug legalization, especially marijuana
– Offer more harm reduction measures, such as access to syringes
– Ditch “just say no” and “zero tolerance” policies for youth in favor of other educational efforts.
The theory that increasing law enforcement action would lead to a shrinking drug market has not worked, the report says. To the contrary, illegal drug markets and the organized criminal organizations that traffic them have grown, the group found.
The report comes as countries such as Mexico suffer from widespread drug-related violence. More than 40,000 people have been killed in Mexico in the past four years as rival cartels battle each other over lucrative smuggling corridors and as the army fights the cartels.
The commission’s findings add more high-profile voices to a growing movement calling for a radical approach to drugs. Other leaders, such as former Mexican President Vicente Fox, have called for drug legalization as part of a solution to his country’s woes.

how to fit a website in a iframe

A short while ago, I was surfing around, wasting time, when I came upon a site with links like, paraphrased, "Rotate content in an IFRAME" and "Display different content every day in an IFRAME." It gave rise to a surge of ideas about ways to use the IFRAME tag. For example, a comment/feedback form could be in an IFRAME. When submitted, the thank you page would be displayed in the same IFRAME on the same page where the form was submitted. No "click here to continue" or "click your back button twice to get back to where you were" messages would be necessary on the thank you page. The IFRAME tag is rather simple to implement. It's a window of sorts embedded in your web page. The window can contain content from other URLs. First, decide how big you want the window to be. Then, put the IFRAME tag where you want the window to be on your page. Give it the URL of the web page (or script) that will be displayed in the window. Example: <iframe height="200" width="300" src="http://willmaster.com/"> </iframe> When you put the above IFRAME tag on your web page, it will create an area 200 pixels high and 300 pixels wide and display the WillMaster.com home page in that area. To put a comment/feedback form in an IFRAME, simply change the URL so the web page of your feedback form displays. Change the dimensions of the IFRAME as necessary. When someone submits the feedback form, the regular thank you page then displays within that IFRAME area. You're beginning to have ideas of your own, right? Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, let me mention a drawback; Netscape 4.# doesn't recognize the IFRAME tag. When that browser encounters an IFRAME tag, the tag is ignored. Therefore, you won't want to use the IFRAME tag for anything that is critical for all site visitors -- a membership area log-in page, for example. Let's address the two concepts that gave rise to this pile of ideas, rotating content and daily content. For rotating content, Master Merry-Go-Round can be used. Install the script and give it some content to rotate. The content can be banners, testimonials, poems, anything a web page could have. Then, put this tag into your web page where you want the rotating content to appear (adjusting dimensions and URL as necessary): <iframe height="200" width="300" src="/cgi-bin/MasterMerryGoRound.cgi?page=complete"> </iframe> (The "?page=complete" part of the URL tells the program to generate the content as a complete web page.) For daily content, Master Daily Content can be used. Install the script and give it a month or more of content. Then, put this tag into your web page where you want the rotating content to appear (adjusting dimensions and URL as necessary): <iframe height="200" width="300" src="/cgi-bin/MasterDailyContent.cgi?page=complete"> </iframe> (Again, the "?page=complete" part of the URL tells this particular program to generate the content as a complete web page.) Other ideas: Similar to the contact/recommend form idea, a "recommend this site" form could be put in an IFRAME so the site visitor isn't required to navigate back to the page s/he started from. Surveys can be put into an IFRAME tag, with the results displaying in the same spot. Recommend and Survey programs are available at the Master Series site. Use the search box or scan the list of available programs. A site news IFRAME could be used to display content of importance, changing it as needed. Master Site News makes changing such content easy via a control panel. An index with photos could be put into an IFRAME. Create several regular web pages, one with an index to the others. The others contain the photos, along with a link back to the index. The IFRAME then contains the URL of the index page, which allows visitors to click on a photo link, view the photo, and click back to the index. The IFRAME has scrollbars when the content exceeds the allotted area. Thus, it can be used to display a large amount of text, yet require only a small amount of space on the web page. For example, you could display the current WillMaster Possibilities article, automatically updated every week, by creating a page like <html> <body> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://willmaster.com/possibilities/c/wmp.js"> </script> </body> </html> and then using an IFRAME with the newly created page's URL to insert the entire article into a small space. When you have a lot of content to display in an IFRAME, the content can be made to scroll. Try the Master Scrolling Presentation Generator V1 demonstration to see how easy it is to generate a scrolling text area. The IFRAME tag can be used to display anything a regular web page can display, and put it into a small area on another web page.