The Showtime series will light up its sixth season on Monday, Aug. 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

That means we’ll find out exactly what happened with Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker), her clan and Pilar (Kate del Castillo) post-croquet bashing.

Nancy certainly weaved a tangled web for herself last season with her Mexican crime boss hubby Esteban (Demian Bichir). We wonder what the new season will bring, especially since there’s a baby around.

Following the “Weeds” premiere, stay tuned for the series premiere of “The Big C,” starring Laura Linney.

The ominous part is that this isn’t the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes“. In 1976 President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out — unsuccessfully — to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the “high.”

In 1983 the Reagan/Bush Administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer, who states, “We know that large amounts of information have since disappeared.”

The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times all ignored the story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors.

http://patients4medicalmarijuana.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/marijuana-c…

(Includes 2 videos with instructions for making cancer cure “Hemp Oil”)

A measure to legalize marijuana in California has enough signatures to qualify for the November 2010 ballot, advocates say.
The Tax and Regulate Initiative has far more than the nearly 434,000 signatures needed to make the statewide ballot, said Richard Lee, well-known Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur and the initiative’s main backer. Campaign organizers say they will submit more than 650,000 signatures of registered voters next month.

“People were eager to sign,” Lee told the Chronicle. “We heard they were ripping the petitions out of people’s hands to do it.
“We’ll keep our organizers on the street to keep the momentum going strong, but today we’re declaring an overwhelming victory.”

The proposal would legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and older. Residents could cultivate marijuana gardens up to 25 square feet. City and county governments would determine whether to permit and tax marijuana sales within their boundaries.

County election officials across the state now must validate and count the signatures before the California Secretary of State puts the measure on the ballot .

Lee’s group has collected more than 680,000 signatures, about 57% more than the number needed. That should be plenty — as a rule of thumb, about 30% of signatures on petitions can be expected to be invalidated, according to Steve Smith, a political consultant who has run many California initiative campaigns.

“I’d be very surprised if they don’t qualify,” Smith told the Los Angeles Times.

A Field Poll conducted in April found that 56 percent of California residents supported legalizing and taxing marijuana to help bridge the state budget deficit. Still, pro-legalization advocates are divided over whether the ballot measure is being pushed too soon.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. But some legal scholars have argued the U.S. government could do little to make California enforce the federal ban if the drug became legal under state law.
Oakland is ground zero for marijuana legalization in the U.S. It became the first city in the country to pass a cannabis tax during a special election in July. The city is expected generate nearly $300,000 a year from taxes on medical cannabis clubs. Other California cities considering taxing medical marijuana are San Jose, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Los Angeles.
Lee owns a handful of Oakland businesses, including Coffeeshop Blue Sky and the famed Oaksterdam University, where students can enroll in classes for “entering the budding cannabis job field.” Lee’s company has spent $1.1 million on the effort already, and expects a full campaign to cost between $7 million and $20 million.

“Medical marijuana in California has been accepted as legalization in some ways by a lot of the population,” Lee told the Times. “To me this is codifying what is happening.”

There is a chance that Mary-Louise Parker will not return for a seventh season of “Weeds”. NY Post is reporting that the lead actress of the Showtime series is looking forward to quit the show once the sixth season ends.

The show is currently in hiatus to welcome the fifth season in June. Showtime has ordered both fifth and sixth season for 13 episodes each. However, it could as well end in the sixth as an insider was quoted as saying that there would be no point in continuing without Parker. “We’d have to see if it made sense to continue, but we can’t envision the show without her,” said the insider.

Parker is under contract until sixth season but plans to exit after fulfilling the obligation. No reason or comment from the actress or rep have been put out for this and also, the insider added that there is no talk taking place between Showtime and Parker.

While the show may lose one of its members in the future, the fifth season swells with the addition of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Nancy’s estranged older sister. Leigh will be in at least two episodes, playing Jill who is confided by Nancy to take care of her son Shane.

People who smoke marijuana do not appear to be at increased risk for developing lung cancer, new research suggests.

While a clear increase in cancer risk was seen among cigarette smokers in the study, no such association was seen for regular cannabis users.

Even very heavy, long-term marijuana users who had smoked more than 22,000 joints over a lifetime seemed to have no greater risk than infrequent marijuana users or nonusers.

The findings surprised the study’s researchers, who expected to see an increase in cancer among people who smoked marijuana regularly in their youth.

“We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes,” researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD. “But we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking.” Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.

Studies suggest that marijuana smoke contains 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to lung cancer than cigarette smoke. Marijuana smokers also tend to inhale deeper than cigarette smokers and hold the inhaled smoke in their lungs longer.

So why isn’t smoking marijuana as dangerous as smoking cigarettes in terms of cancer risk?

The answer isn’t clear, but the experts say it might have something to do with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is a chemical found in marijuana smoke.

Cellular studies and even some studies in animal models suggest that THC has antitumor properties, either by encouraging the death of genetically damaged cells that can become cancerous or by restricting the development of the blood supply that feeds tumors, Tashkin tells WebMD.

In a review of the research published last fall, University of Colorado molecular biologist Robert Melamede, PhD, concluded that the THC in cannabis seems to lessen the tumor-promoting properties of marijuana smoke.

The nicotine in tobacco has been shown to inhibit the destruction of cancer-causing cells, Melamede tells WebMD. THC does not appear to do this and may even do the opposite.

While there was a suggestion in the newly reported study that smoking marijuana is weakly protective against lung cancer, Tashkin says the very weak association was probably due to chance.

Cancer risk among cigarette smokers was not influenced by whether or not they also smoked marijuana.

Tashkin presented the findings today at The American Thoracic Society’s 102nd International Conference, held in San Diego.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196678,00.html

Sergio’s White Top 5 is a recurring segment on Current TV’s weekly television show, infoMania. For more Sergio visit http://current.com/white-hot-video-countdown/ and Current TV.

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World’s oldest marijuana stash totally busted

Two pounds of still-green weed found in a 2,700-year-old Gobi Desert grave

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.

They apparently were getting high too.

Lead author Ethan Russo told Discovery News that the marijuana “is quite similar” to what’s grown today.

“We know from both the chemical analysis and genetics that it could produce THC (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, the main psychoactive chemical in the plant),” he explained, adding that no one could feel its effects today, due to decomposition over the millennia.

Russo served as a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany while conducting the study. He and his international team analyzed the cannabis, which was excavated at the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China. It was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45.

“This individual was buried with an unusual number of high value, rare items,” Russo said, mentioning that the objects included a make-up bag, bridles, pots, archery equipment and a kongou harp. The researchers believe the individual was a shaman from the Gushi people, who spoke a now-extinct language called Tocharian that was similar to Celtic.

Scientists originally thought the plant material in the grave was coriander, but microscopic botanical analysis of the bowl contents, along with genetic testing, revealed that it was cannabis.

The size of seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their color and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, which are less psychoactive, so Russo and his team believe there is little doubt as to why the cannabis was grown.

What is in question, however, is how the marijuana was administered, since no pipes or other objects associated with smoking were found in the grave.

“Perhaps it was ingested orally,” Russo said. “It might also have been fumigated, as the Scythian tribes to the north did subsequently.”

Although other cultures in the area used hemp to make various goods as early as 7,000 years ago, additional tomb finds indicate the Gushi fabricated their clothing from wool and made their rope out of reed fibers. The scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it’s evident that the blue-eyed man was buried with a lot of it.

“As with other grave goods, it was traditional to place items needed for the afterlife in the tomb with the departed,” Russo said.

The ancient marijuana stash is now housed at Turpan Museum in China. In the future, Russo hopes to conduct further research at the Yanghai site, which has 2,000 other tombs.

Stash for the afterlife: A photograph of a stash of cannabis found in the 2,700-year-old grave of a man in the Gobi Desert. Scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it’s evident that the man was buried with a lot of it.

It’s no longer a crime to have one ounce or less of pot. The state’s new marijuana decriminalization law, approved by voters in a November referendum, goes into effect today.

Those who are caught with an ounce or less would get a ticket similar to a building code citation. They could appeal the civil infraction in court within 21 days or pay a $100 fine set in the law. Juvenile violators would have to pay the fine and attend a drug abuse counseling course, or have the fine increased to $1,000.

The state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security released guidelines Monday in response to questions about the law. The state noted that the new statute applied to all substances that contain THC, which includes hashish and hash oil. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the active ingredient in marijuana that gives users a high.

So this pretty much  means, they’re just calling it something different. At least it’ll only end in fines for juvenile violators (even if they’re still outrageous).

John Walters Backs a Mexican Proposal Far More Sweeping Than U.S. Measures He Has Opposed

(Washington, D.C.) The Marijuana Policy Project today congratulated White House “drug czar” John Walters for backing a Mexican government proposal that would remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

“I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but John Walters is right,” said MPP executive director Rob Kampia. “We heartily second his support for eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana users in Mexico, and look forward to working with him to end such penalties in the U.S. as well.”

On Oct. 22, The New York Times reported Walters’ public support for a drug decriminalization proposal by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, quoting Walters as saying, “I don’t think that’s legalization.” Under Calderon’s proposal, individuals caught with small quantities of marijuana would receive no jail sentence or fine and would not receive a criminal record so long as they complete either drug education or, if addicted, drug treatment. Unlike proposals supported by MPP, the Mexican president’s proposal would also decriminalize possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

“It’s fantastic that John Walters has recognized the massive destruction the drug war has inflicted on Mexico and is now calling for reforms there, but he’s a rank hypocrite if he continues opposing similar reforms in the U.S.,” Kampia said. “The Mexican proposal is far more sweeping than MPP’s proposals to decriminalize marijuana or make marijuana medically available, both of which John Walters and his henchmen rail against.”

In a March 19, 2008, press release from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, deputy director Scott Burns called a New Hampshire proposal to impose a $200 fine rather than jail time for a small amount of marijuana “a dangerous first step toward complete drug legalization.”