Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
And the response from Warren’s neurologist.
-
Pharmac’s letter declining funding for Warren (used here with permission).
-
Cannabis - labelled for decades as a "gateway drug" - is now being looked at as a potential exit strategy from life-threatening opiate addiction.
Earlier this week, state health regulators in Maine heard testimony from medical marijuana caregivers, who believe cannabis could be the key to helping people stay off opioids and cope with withdrawal symptoms.
Adding heroin and prescription opiate addiction to the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana would be a first in the United States: since Maine voters approved the use of medical marijuana 2009, only about dozen conditions, including seizure disorders, cancer, and AIDS, allow patients to qualify for the program.
-
Hard News: Things that do us good and ill, in reply to Sacha,
In theory, yes. You’d be surprised how much lip service or plain ignoring still goes on.
Probably more disappointed than surprised ...
-
Polity: Budget 2016: Dull on top, hollow…, in reply to Marc C,
This budget is again presented in an upbeat manner, as usual, but looking at the whole picture, it is not surprising and not has great as some may think.
I've been contemplating this. They've introduced targeted investment in disadvantaged kids via schools – but at the cost of freezing all schools' operating funding. That's not exactly redolent of the "strong"", confident economy the Prime Minister talked about. Then you look at the serious cuts in DOC's budget.
I basically like governments delivering surpluses, but they've had to dig pretty hard to construct this one.
-
I'll blog this proper next week, but just got this from Luke Buda ...
I have a new band with Tom Callwood (Phoenix) David Long (Muttonbirds) and Anthony Donaldson (primitive art group, Six Volts etc). We're called Teeth. Here is our first single, a quiet-violence, easy-listening-noise, bi-polar glam fanfare called "Something Has Gone Wrong in my Brain"...
https://teeth3.bandcamp.com/track/something-has-gone-wrong-in-my-brain
That's quite a pedigree. And sounds good!
-
Hard News: Friday Music: The Music Story, in reply to David Hood,
where he talks about working with Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin is some kind of savant I think.
-
Hard News: Things that do us good and ill, in reply to Michael Meyers,
It feels to me that many people see marijuana as a panacea that big pharma are keeping from the little guy and that it will fix all ills. This is surely not that case, although I’m sure there are some areas (such as pain) where it will be useful.
I’m less sceptical than I used to be, especially since the 2014 University of London study that used 50-50 THC+CBD plus radiation to shrink glioma, an aggressive and otherwise hard-to-treat kind of brain tumour. There really seems to be something there.
And there have been studies for a while that have found cannabis’s pain-relieving properties were-only-about-as-good as conventional pain meds. But if people find it much easier to tolerate, why would you deny it to them?
It's extremely disappointing that in ordering a review of the current criteria for approval to use non-pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis products, Peter Dunne didn't include any patients in the review. It seems out of step with how we're supposed to look at healthcare these days. I'm thinking I need to have a look and see what the right OIA request would be on that.
It seems like many people would like medical marijuana to be a gateway to across-the-board legalisation. I see that as poor policy and both should be legalised on their own merits.
I agree, with the proviso that until we get to that place, we need to think about how to support people who are using raw cannabis medicinally.
The thing I always think about is when I directed a friend somewhere she could get some weed for a friend’s father who was dying (dear police: I didn’t actually handle any pot) and thought I better ask how they were going to use it.
“Oh, I’m going bake it in a cake,” she chirped.
No, I said, you are not going to put an ounce of weed in a cake and feed a piece of that to someone who’s never even smoked a joint before, because that would be a really bad idea. I imagine that happens though.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: The Music Story, in reply to Moz,
Remember DCC? Coulda been a goer. I would have preferred DAT, and a housemate actually had a DAT tape deck in the early 90’s, but OMG the cost.
When I worked at the Virgin store on Marble Arch in 1988 there was a handful of actual DAT releases. One was whatever New Order album was out around that time.
-
In this-looks-better-than-Vinyl news, Baz Luhrmann is helming The Getdown, a story of disco/early hip hop-era Bronx:
Nelson George (who also worked on the show) interviewed Luhrmann at the Tribeca Film Festival.
It debuts in August on Netflix US, so you'd think we'll get it then too.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 181 182 183 184 185 … 2279 Older→ First