Marijuana

There is a huge gap between what we think medical marijuana does and what it actually does.

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Anti-inflammatory, analgesic, relaxing, sleep inducer, anti-tumor, anticonvulsant… It is not the definitive medication leaflet, these are just some examples of what I have found when searching for “medical marijuana benefits.” According to a survey in the United States and Canada, 27% of citizens have consumed it to treat anxiety, relieve pain and sleep better. What if it is not as effective as we thought? This is what UCLA has just concluded after an extensive study in which they have analyzed fifteen years of data. The study. We have known him through New York Times. This is a very extensive review in which a group of psychiatrists from the University of California has analyzed more than 2,500 articles published from January 2010 to September of this year. They have included clinical trials, meta-analyses and clinical guidelines and have prioritized those that are based on larger and more relevant samples. The beliefs. In recent years, cannabis has become popular after its legalization in the United States, where It already collects more taxes than alcohol. According to the survey we mentioned above, people who used for medicinal purposes did so mainly to relieve pain (53%), sleep better (46%), treat anxiety (52%) and depression (40%). The conclusions. The study is conclusive: there is a huge difference between what we believe and scientific evidence. The evidence is strong in very specific cases, such as loss of appetite associated with HIV/AIDS, chemotherapy symptoms (specifically nausea and vomiting), and some severe pediatric disorders that cause seizures. However, for other conditions, the studies analyzed did not provide conclusive evidence of its effectiveness. For example, in the case of pain, one of the most common uses, clinical guideline from the American Association of Clinical Oncology does not recommend it as a first-line treatment due to lack of evidence. For anxiety there is also no solid evidence on the effectiveness of THC, but CBD consumed orally did obtain more notable results in reducing anxiety. Risks. While the evidence on its effectiveness is doubtful in many cases, the evidence on the risks is more extensive. Marijuana is associated with the appearance of psychotic symptoms and anxiety, especially that which has a high THC content, increasing the risk of anxiety disorder by 19.1%. Smoking marijuana daily increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 2%, the risk of heart attack by 1.7% and stroke by 2.6%. Addiction. On the other hand, there is the issue of addiction. The study estimates that 29% of people who use medical marijuana have a substance abuse problem, especially those who smoke it. Speaking to the New York Times, the professor and expert Ryan Vandreystates that this explains the improvements in insomnia that many consumers advocate; It is not that marijuana makes them sleep better, it is that they sleep worse if they do not consume it due to their dependence on the substance. “If they stopped using cannabis for a month, they might notice an improvement in their sleep. But most never make it to that month because, after a day or two without sleep, they convince themselves that ‘this is the only thing that helps me sleep, so I have to keep using it,’” he says. The excuse. It so happens that many medical marijuana users do not have any medical prescription. According to one survey published this year77% of consumers declared using cannabis for medical purposes, but only 28% consumed on medical advice. According to Kevin Hill, one of the authors of the UCLA review, there are justified and effective uses of cannabis, but there is a huge group of users for whom medicinal use is the excuse to “rationalize their recreational use.” Image | RDNE Stock project, Pexels In Xataka | The positive (and quite predictable) effect of legalizing the sale and consumption of marijuana

We thought only marijuana growers were stealing electricity. Now it turns out that supermarkets too

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While the city slows down and most businesses close, some supermarkets continue to operate normally. They open at dawn, keep the lights on and the cold rooms running. For years, this constant consumption barely attracted attention. Until last December 2, a joint action by the Civil Guard, the National Police and the Urban Police revealed that several supermarkets in Barcelona were obtaining electricity through illegal connections to the grid. Under the magnifying glass. It was not a specific case or a single neighborhood. The inspections were distributed across Nou Barris, Sant Andreu, Sant Martí, Gràcia, Eixample and Ciutat Vella. In total, 26 supermarkets, and in 24 of them the electricity did not go through the meter. The Civil Guard opened proceedings against 26 people, of Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationality, for an alleged crime of electricity fraud. They were not small isolated businesses. Most operated as franchise supermarkets, some open 24 hours a day and belonging to well-known chains, according to The Newspaper. The performance, named Nihariwas carried out with the collaboration of Endesa technicians and Labor and Social Security inspectors, and ended with the immediate cutting off of supply in the establishments, as reported by the Urban Guard. Electricity tapped into the network. The investigation began after a complaint filed by Endesa before the Civil Guard, as pointed out The Vanguard. The electricity company had detected a suspicious pattern: businesses that, due to their activity and schedules, recorded anomalous or non-existent consumption in their contracts. Once inside the premises, the technicians verified that the electricity was obtained through illegal connections directly to the general network or public lighting. Manipulations without any type of protection or technical review, designed to avoid paying the energy bill. The fraud amounts to 2.85 million kilowatts, a figure equivalent to the annual consumption of 814 homes. A crime with risk of fire. The Civil Guard remembers, as collected The Newspaperthat illegal connections lack safety systems, adequate insulation and protection against overloads, which significantly increases the possibility of short circuits and fires. The danger is aggravated by the location of many of these supermarkets: commercial basements of residential buildings, with a large influx of people and proximity to garages, storage rooms and common areas. In this sense, the Urban Guard emphasizes that electrical fraud It is not only a crime against the energy system, but also a citizen security problem. Much more than light. The operation uncovered a wide catalog of irregularities. During the inspections, the National Police identified 59 people. Of them, five have been considered victims of labor exploitation and another five are in an irregular administrative situation. In addition, the Barcelona Urban Guard drew up 87 minutes for administrative infractions related to safety, hygiene and regulatory compliance. Among them, blocked emergency exits, absence of fire extinguishers, impractical bathrooms, lack of mandatory signs, sale of expired or spoiled food, and carrying out the activity without a license. For its part, the Civil Guard opened 16 cases due to smuggling, incorrect labeling of products, unmarked surveillance cameras, sales receipts without the businessman’s data and manipulation of scales, with a weighing favorable to the merchant. The absence of a food handling card was also detected in some workers. The same fraud, another showcase. What was previously detected in boarded-up floors and linked industrial warehouses to illegal marijuana cultivation It now appears in all-night supermarkets. The investigation confirm that electrical fraud has ceased to be a strictly clandestine phenomenon and has become established, in some cases, in apparently normal activities facing the public. The scenario changes, but not the crime. And neither are the risks. Image | Release and freepik Xataka | Spain lights up for Christmas, but an uncomfortable doubt arises on some rooftops

In 1995, NASA began to drug spiders with amphetamines, marijuana and the most devastating: caffeine

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We carry decades experimenting with animals. Despite the Ethical issueand that we see more and more vegan products that imply that there has been no experimentation in animals, until Large technological ones resort to this method. And in 1995, NASA made one of the more curious experiments To measure the drug toxicity. And they did it drugs. Measuring toxicity. It is not that someone woke up one day and wondered what would happen if we die LSD to spiders. Or well, exactly that is what happened, but for a good reason and not for fun. In 1948, the researcher Peter N. Witt He wanted to help his colleague HM Peters, a zoologist who wanted to modify the schedule in which his laboratory spiders began to weave the nets. To do this, he administered substances such as LSD, Mescalina (hallucinogen), amphetamines, caffeine and strychnine (stimulating such as cocaine) To the arthropods and discovered something: the schedule did not change the least, but the patterns of the cobwebs. Depending on the drug Administered, the pattern changed, and that revelation served as an economic model to prove the neurological impact of drugs and toxic on living systems. Why spiders? The problem is that the nervous system of arthropods is different from ours, so it is useless to draw conclusions when we want to try effects on humans, but it is interesting to know how these psychoactive substances influence their organism. In 1995, NASA, inspired by Witt’s experiment, chose spiders for new research, but also did it for An ethical issue. They wanted to measure the toxic effect of different compounds, but without resorting to mammals or “higher organisms.” They needed a sensitive and reliable organism, but not controversial. In addition, spiders are perfect because their cobwebs follow fixed and instinctive patterns that, as Witt already demonstrated, was extremely sensitive to chemical alterations. The experiment. Baptized as “Using Spider-Web Patterns to Determine Toxicity“, he experiment It consisted of exposing different European garden spiders to different drugs. To do this, they dissolved a certain amount of drugs in sugary water and administered it directly to the spider through the mouth or by means of flies previously fed with the solution. Once administered, they let each spider weave their air and, later, photographed the web that had been fabric, comparing that creation with cobwebs photographs that those same spiders had made before applying the drug. If you get drugs, don’t tile. The results They speak for themselves: In addition, the methodology was stricter than the one carried out by Witt half a century earlier when using statistical tools to measure changes in the number of complete sides of the ‘cells’ of each web and the general regularity of the design. In other words: high doses of caffeine, for example, and because it is the one that produces the most chaotic result, generated disorganized and incomplete patterns. Until the lowest doses they already allowed irregularities to be observed in the web that allowed researchers to correlate toxicity with tissue morphology. Consequences. We must not be a genius for this, but the greater the toxicity, the more incomplete and chaotic the web was. But the most important thing is that this thorough methodology of NASA converted the experiment In an alternative to traditional toxicity tests, especially in a scenario that, as we said, had less tolerance to tests with other types of animals. They were biological evidence, yes, and chemicals were also administered to living beings, but in a little invasive way and without losing rigor. And, precisely, the visibility of this work helped the debate on animal ethics to increase even more, evidencing that alternative, but economic methods could be used, with rigorous and replicable results, being more ethical than other models that were made -and they continue to do. Like Witt’s, NASA’s experiment provided very valuable information, but not applicable to humansdue to the differences between the nervous system of a human and other animals … and that of arthropods. For example, caffeine causes total chaos in spiders, but in humans, although It is not good if we want to make certain decisionsIt does not produce the same effects. Image | Das Morton In Xataka | If the question is “how much caffeine each cup of coffee or tea has”, this graph offers revealing responses

There are so many people growing marijuana in their homes that Endesa has a problem. And it will solve it with ia

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In the industrial areas of many towns or cities, the constant buzzing of high pressure lamps illuminates hundreds of marijuana plants that grow to the rhythm of stolen electricity. It is a scenario that is repeated daily throughout Spain, where illegal cannabis cultivation and electric fraud They have woven a network of silent crime. Faced with this threat, Endesa has taken another step. Root cut. Endesa and the General Police Station of the National Police have signed a collaboration protocol to strengthen the fight against crimes that affect the electricity supply. From the massive electricity fraud to the theft of material, sabotages and even cyberators, as collects the press release. A more joint action. The protocol foresees, among other measures, joint training, information exchange, analytical reports, technical field advice. In addition, it contemplates the active participation of the Judicial Police in technical actions of Endesa and addresses associated crimes such as the manipulation of measuring equipment, the theft of personal data or scams to consumers by cybercriminals. A problem that does not stop growing. According to the European drug report 2025, Spain concentrate 73% Of all the seizures of marijuana in the EU, many of them in plantations Indoor connected fraudulently to the network. Only in the last year, the Endesa networks subsidiary, e-distribution, disconnected 2,214 illegal hooks related to crops, with a consumption equivalent to 70,000 homes. The data is replicated in different areas of the country. In Granada, like has detailed ABC Granada, between January and April of this year, Endesa has detected 246 illegal plantations, at the rate of two a day. In Córdoba, in the same period, 19 files have been opened, which is equivalent to one per week, According to the Córdoba Diario. In both cases, the excessive consumption – quoted to the up to 80 homes by plantation – saturates the network and causes collateral damage. The highest invoice. The impact goes far beyond the economic. These illegal connections cause constant overloads, with serious safety consequences. Last summer, 24 fires were recorded in the distribution network in Andalusia, five of them in Granada and four in Córdoba, directly linked to marijuana plantations, According to the Córdoba Diario. Technology at the service of prevention. To deal with this challenge, Endesa has opted for prevention. For years, predictive models based on artificial intelligence and Big Data have applied to detect suspicious patterns. Now, it has also begun to display smart sensors in its networks, capable of anticipating overloads before they occur. A battle without rest. Electric fraud linked to illegal marijuana culture not only challenges electricity, but also the coexistence model in many areas of the country. The answer is already underway, but the challenge – technical, police and social – has just begun. Image | Pexels Xataka | There are so many marijuana crops in Spain that they are causing problems to one of their great industries: electricity

In 2014, Ibáñez drew a ‘mortadelo’ where he faced marijuana traffickers. Has been in a drawer until today

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The story of Mortadelo and Filemón has lived, over 67 years and 221 albums, innumerable ups and downs. Although Ibáñez always signed the adventures of the two disastrous spies, in its realization there was everything: apocryphal authorsRights struggles, frightened towards other publishers … and even an unpublished album, which will see the light next October. Ibáñez Mético. Mythological, even because this album had been heard in forums and between fans, but it was not known if its existence was real or an urban legend. ‘Hachish … Health!’ It presents the Aunt agents facing a network of traffickers. Penguin, current owner of the rights of Bruguera and the characters of Ibáñez, has barely given more details about the comic and the reason why he remained unpublished, but with that title the assumptions are already being shot: Ibáñez had crossed, for the first time, a red line with his agents? A new collection. ‘Ibáñez Mético’ is the title of the collection that Penguin opens with this album and will release stories of the characters with extras as original pages of the scripts and scanning of the pencil pages. Everything comes with notes from the expert in the comics of the time Jordi Canyissà. What Penguin has not yet made clear is whether in the next numbers of this collection they will discuss and score already published comics or will continue to recover unpublished after the death of Ibáñez, as it has been done here or took the last album of the characters, the posthumous ”Paris 2024‘. Always the present. As we commented on Our article about ‘I and I’in 1991 Ibáñez recovered the authorship of the characters after the closing of Bruguera. But the characters crossed a strong creative crisis from which they left in 1996, when the author decided to focus his histoprias on current issues, a resource that they would keep until the death of Ibáñez in 2023. Ladies were born as ‘The lord of the bricks’ in 2005, about the brick crisis, ‘For Isis, the crisis arrived!’ In 2009 u ‘Okupas!’ In 2002, about anti-okupation paranoia. And the hashish. The Legalization of marijuana It was one of the key debates of Spanish society in 2014, the year to which this story belongs, and Ibáñez, faithful to the trend that were following the last adventures of Mortadelo, approached it with its characteristic style. Ibáñez did not feature in these years to get into somewhat more controversial issues that brought the Aunt’s agents closer to social satire: ‘The treasurer’, of 2015, about corruption in the PP, it is a good example, and possibly this ‘hashish … Health!’ Follow the same line. Ibáñez recovered. Penguin has finally decided to start giving a good cueta of the deep Bruguera catalog he has in his possession. To this first installment of Ibáñez Mético is added the recent ‘The first 200 cases of Mortadelo and Filemon‘, which recover in chronological order the first and unusual adventures of the agents, published between 1958 and 1961, very different from the long adventures that would give them fame later. It is a process that we hope will continue at a good pace, and that it seems that the editorial is cultivating with other legendary characters such as Superlópez or Anacleto. Header | Penguin In Xataka | ‘Exterminius’: the alien photonovela that traumatized a generation from the pages of ‘Mortadelo’

Marijuana was for years one of the most potential industries in the United States. Now has entered Barrena

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HE Curves come For him cannabis sector In the United States. Curved and slippery curves that will make it difficult for companies focused on that market for two reasons, both equally challenging. One is the imminent expiration of debt they face and that some experts encrypt in 6,000 million dollars. The other is The legal framework in which they are forced to operate, a context that deprives them of some of the advantages and facilities that companies in other sectors do in trouble. There are those who already talk about bubble burst of cannabis in the US and fears that a bankruptcy waterfall now arrives. A sector in trouble. There are no quiet times for the American cannabis industry, forced to deal with a series of challenges, including financing, debt expiration and laws. Bloomberg explains in A broad analysis which is summarized in a single sentence: companies in the sector face the need to deal with a millmillionary debt without the ‘Legal oxygen ball that they would have if their activity were another. What does that mean? That because of the nature of his merchandise, cannabis, which It is still illegal In the eyes of the federal administration, companies in the sector face a particularly vulnerable situation when they have to deal with their creditors. Most businesses can resort to the bankruptcy court and shield themselves to renegotiate their debt; But like Remember From the firm Harris Beach Murtha, the companies dedicated to cannabis do not usually enjoy the protection of the US bankruptcy code. “To date, US courts have been reluctant to administer bankrupt confirm In Fox Rothschild. “Virtually all bankruptcy cases involving a restructuring or sale of cannabis -related entities Controlled Substances Lawthe CSA “. A figure: 6,000 million. This handicap, derived from the legal status of its merchandise at the federal level, is important right now because the sector faces the perspective of having to deal with a quite considerable debt in not much time. According to the calculations Shared with Bloomberg By Beau Whitney, chief economist of Whitney Economicsnext year will overcome a debt of up to 6,000 million dollars. And the figure includes only the largest companies in the sector, those that operate in several states. And two percentages: 42 and 27%. That default figure (6,000 million dollars) is bulky, but alone it does not say much. If it is so important, it is because it catches the sector at a complex moment in which at least part of the industry has not yet managed to market legal marijuana a stable business. Whitney handles A couple of data They help to understand it: if in 2022 more than 42% of distributors claimed to have obtained benefits, last year that percentage had been reduced to 27%. They are figures from the past, but as Bloomberg requires They talk to us of the future of the sector: part of those companies that have not yet been able to consolidate will probably end up broken. Others will have no choice but to sit with their creditors in a scenario that is not favorable. “The refinancing of this cycle will be carried out at much higher interest rates and companies will not have the cash flow to manage it,” confirms the economistwhich speaks of “a huge debt bubble.” What is the legal scenario? Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), an US organization dedicated to promoting legalization, explains it clearly: “Although the vast majority of states have reformed the laws on cannabis, the position of the federal government has remained practically unchanged since the early 70s. Except for rare circumstances, at the federal level marijuana and its products are illegal and They are subject to the application of the criminal law. “ Despite this federal framework, MPP remembers that “state governments record and regulate the production and sales of cannabis.” Right now There are states in which it allows the consumption of marijuana for medical but not recreational purposes, others that have legalized both uses and also certain territories in which it is totally illegal. In A plane in which the regulatory framework of each of the states at the beginning of this year, the American Nonsmoker´s Rights Foundation (ANRF) calculated that there are 39 in which smoking is allowed at least for medicinal purposes. Looking to the future. The result of this difference in criteria between the Federal Administration and the states themselves derives in a complex scenario, Recognize MPPin which a person “can fulfill a set of laws on marijuana and at the same time violate another.” Until now the federal government has not considered that state regulations shock with the Supreme clause which is pronounced in its favor in the Constitution, which is explained in part because the cultivation and sale falls on private companies. Last year the Department of Justice He moved file For marijuana to be classified as a less dangerous substance, which would have direct effects on companies in the sector, reducing their expenses and favoring that many are “profitable”according to the industry itself. With the change of government and the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House (and his New prosecutor, Pam Bondi) An unknown is now opened. And what are the figures? Apart from the legal framework, the 6,000 million debt about to defeat calculated by Whitney They tell us about something else: the weight and implementation that has reached the sector in the US. Pew Research Center data show that eight out of 10 Americans (79% of the population, to be exact) have at least one store where they can buy marijuana in their county. Moreover, the same study center calculates that 54% of Americans He lives in a state that allows the recreational use of marijuana and around 15,000 dispensaries are distributed throughout the US, especially common on the west and northwest and points like Michigan or Oklahoma. The Flowhub firm in fact indicates that the legal cannabis industry is directly related to 440,400 jobs full -time and that in … Read more

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