Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Hunter S. Thompson once spread a rumor of a presidential candidate’s drug addiction and it was taken seriously

After spending a few tedious months on the 1972 campaign trail, Ed Muskie—the Democrat favored to win the party’s nomination—had been putting his entire press corps to sleep with hopelessly repetitive stump speeches.

“I didn’t get a quote worth filing out of the whole goddamn trip,” a New York reporter told Hunter S Thompson about the senator’s tour of Florida.

So on May 11, 1972, Thompson gave the campaign a jolt, filing a speculative story through a primitive version of a fax machine he called the Mojo Wire. Describing Muskie as a competitive political animal who would never back away from a challenge, Thompson couldn’t understand why the senator had suddenly become rigid and unresponsive—seeming to read directly from a script—but he took one hilarious shot at figuring it out.

“Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign,” Thompson wrote in an article he later claimed was never meant to be taken at face value. In it, he declares, “word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with ‘some kind of strange drug.”

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Dad Arrested Over Address Error Found Dead in Jail Cell — His Heart Missing

 Lee Michael Creely, 34, was a good man, a father of two sons, and excited to have saved enough to move into his new home with his partner, Jessica Hodges, and their children. However, because Creely forgot to immediately tell his probation officer that he upgraded from a trailer into a new home, Creely would spend his last days alive dying in Chatham County lockup.

In August, Creely and his family finally saved up enough money to move out of their mobile home and into a new home so their sons, aged 12 and 7, could have their own rooms. Likely due to the fact that they were so excited to have upgraded their home, Creely forgot to tell his probation officer that he moved, setting off a chain of events that would lead to his untimely death.

To be clear, Creely shouldn’t have even been on probation. He was convicted of having a substance deemed illegal by the state, otherwise known as drug possession. There were no victims for the “crime” to which Creely found himself pleading guilty. Nevertheless, after his probation officer noticed Creely moved and didn’t notify him, Creely was arrested on Sept. 3.

Three days after his arrest, Creely — a young father of two — would be found dead in his jail cell. The cause of death was unknown.

Creely’s family is now going after the jail and demanding answers. One massive answer they are demanding to know is the location of his heart. Literally, his heart. According to the family’s attorney, an independent autopsy revealed that Creely’s heart was missing from his body after he died in jail. What’s more, the coroner refuses to explain what happened to it, according to the family.

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Governor Noem issues executive order against legalizing marijuana

Governor Kristi Noem issued an executive order Friday, January 8, against Amendment A, which would legalize recreational marijuana in the state of South Dakota. This move officially backs South Dakota Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. Rick Miller and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom, who originally filed the lawsuit.

Noem says she will be directing the suit challenging the amendment and has the authority to do so. She claims the process used to put it on the ballot violates the state constitution. A motions hearing is scheduled for January 27th.

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Novel cannabis plant extracts could protect against COVID-19

Researchers in Canada have conducted a study suggesting that novel Cannabis sativa extracts may decrease levels of the host cell receptor that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) uses to gain viral entry to target tissues.

SARS-CoV-2 is the agent responsible for the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that continues to sweep the globe threatening public health and the worldwide economy.

The team – from the University of Lethbridge and Pathway Rx Inc., Lethbridge – developed hundreds of new C. sativa cultivars and tested 23 extracts in artificial 3D human models of the oral, airway and intestinal tissues.

As recently reported in the journal Aging, 13 of the extracts downregulated expression of the SARS-CoV-2 host cell receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).

“The observed down-regulation of ACE2 gene expression by several tested extracts of new C. sativa cultivars is a novel and crucial finding,” say the researchers.

“While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is important for future analyses of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19,” write Olga Kovalchuk and colleagues.

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