Five activists have filed a ballot initiative to legalize all adult marijuana possession in Washington state.

Its sponsors include two Seattle lawyers as well as the director of Seattle's annual Hempfest. The group, calling itself Sensible Washington, says state government is wasting money on police, court and jail costs for people who use or produce marijuana.

Douglas Hiatt, a lawyer who represents medical marijuana patients, told The Associated Press after filing the initiative Monday that it would remove all state penalties for adult possession of pot. Criminal penalties for juvenile possession and for providing the drug to juveniles would remain in place. Marijuana would also remain illegal under federal law.

Hiatt says volunteers are lining up to collect the signatures needed to get the issue on the November ballot.

A proposal to legalize and tax marijuana in California was approved by a key committee of the Assembly this morning, over the dire warnings of police chiefs and prosecutors.

The Public Safety Committee voted 4-3 to approve AB 390 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), who said the bill would provide tax revenue to the state and regulation of the drug. The new law includes a requirement that users be at least 21 years old.

The measure next goes to the Health Committee, but proponents worried it would not be acted on by that panel by Friday's deadline, which would require the proposal to be reintroduced to be heard this year by the full Assembly.

New Jersey's legislature passed a bill yesterday to legalize medical marijuana, and Gov. Jon Corzine has said he'll sign it into law before leaving office next week.

Marijuana is now legal for some patients in more than a dozen states. But, at least based on the Jersey bill, the rules seem to be getting stricter as legalization spreads.

Medical marijuana will be limited to certain patients -- people whose prognosis gives them less than a year to live, or those with specific symptoms resulting from certain diseases, such as AIDS, cancer and Crohn's. (The bill also allows the state health department to add other diseases to the list.)

California -- where doctors have wide latitude to prescribe marijuana for patients, and pot dispensaries have proliferated in some counties -- seemed to serve as a cautionary tale for New Jersey.

Thanks Cosmic Mike and Travis!

A group of police officers, judges and prosecutors who fought in the failed "war on drugs" is cheering this Tuesday's upcoming marijuana legalization votes in the California Assembly's Public Safety and Health committees as a sign of increasing public frustration with the harms caused by prohibition and the widespread desire for a new approach.

Judge Jim Gray, who retired last year from the California Superior Court in Orange County and is a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) said, "The mere fact that there will be votes in the Assembly to regulate and control the sale and distribution of marijuana would have been unthinkable even one year ago. And if the bill doesn't pass this year, it will soon. Or, the bill will be irrelevant because the voters will have passed the measure to regulate and tax marijuana that will be on the ballot this November."

Translocator Protein (18 kD) as Target for Anxiolytics Without Benzodiazepine-Like Side Effects: Science 24 July 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5939, pp. 490 - 493

Most antianxiety drugs (anxiolytics) work by modulating neurotransmitters in the brain. Benzodiazepines are fast and effective anxiolytic drugs; however, their long-term use is limited by the development of tolerance and withdrawal symptoms. Ligands of the translocator protein [18 kilodaltons (kD)] may promote the synthesis of endogenous neurosteroids, which also exert anxiolytic effects in animal models. Here, we found that the translocator protein (18 kD) ligand XBD173 enhanced {gamma}-aminobutyric acid-mediated neurotransmission and counteracted induced panic attacks in rodents in the absence of sedation and tolerance development. XBD173 also exerted antipanic activity in humans and, in contrast to benzodiazepines, did not cause sedation or withdrawal symptoms. Thus, translocator protein (18 kD) ligands are promising candidates for fast-acting anxiolytic drugs with less severe side effects than benzodiazepines.

Read the full post for more details from human trials and a history of research into emapunil.

Thanks TJ!

Phyllis shares a video and interview with late, great Gumby creator Art Clokey. Subjects include LSD, hippies, the sixties, carbogen, and NDEs. Fun times in Gumby land for sure.

Hippies always got Gumby, says Art Clokey. "They could see he was an honest expression right from my heart," explains Clokey, the soft-spoken, gently effervescent septuagenarian who created the fanciful pea-green funboy in 1953.

"I wasn't trying to exploit children or do formula television. Gumby was an honest attempt to entertain and give kids a little joy."...

And certain countercultural toonheads claim to have seen hallucinogenic entertainment qualities in "The Gumby Show." And they might be on the mark. Clokey briefly experimented with LSD in the early '60s, he said, when it was still legal, taking the mind-expanding drug under medical supervision.

"There were some pretty psychedelic scenes in the newer episodes," the affable animator confessed. But then, maybe he was just naturally high. "My original subsconscious was in touch with something," he observed.

Rest in peace.

Check out this great trailer for the upcoming film on the glass pipe art movement. Filmmaker M. Slinger looks at the movement's roots, the political problems the artists face, and some remarkable examples of the form.

Via Mason and BoingBoing.

Why is the guy at :35 or so WEARING A TABLECLOTH? Oh you wacky hippies!

[Via Ken Levine.]

Vancouver marijuana activist Marc Emery is taking his last puff of freedom -- as the clock counts down on an extradition order that will send him to a U.S. jail for five years.

Mr. Emery, founder of the B.C. Marijuana Party and publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, is currently out on bail waiting for Federal Justice Minister and Attorney General Rob Nicholson to sign the extradition order, which can be done any time after Friday.

Mr. Emery says he will not turn fugitive, but will obey the order, when it comes.

Until then, Mr. Emery, often referred to as B.C.'s Prince of Pot, is making the most of his last days of freedom.

"I've been enjoying every moment of it out with my wife. We are just living day to day," he said.

A documentary maker reveals the startling history of Ecstasy. In the 1960s some psychotherapists were treating alcoholism and neurosis with LSD -- and in 1957 a Catholic church monsignor in Vancouver even wrote a prayer for LSD trips. ("We humbly ask our Heavenly Mother the Virgin, help of all who call upon her to know and understand the true qualities of these psychedelics...") But after LSD was made illegal, psychiatrists struggled to keep MDMA (Ecstasy) from suffering the same fate for the next two decades.

MDMA was promoted in the 1970s by a senior research scientist at Dow Chemicals, but in 1985 it was still declared a Schedule One drug -- illegal with no medical use -- though it's been shown to dramatically enhance psychotherapy, especially for post-traumatic stress disorder. It's even considered safe -- one professor wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that "There is not much difference between the dangers of horse-riding and the dangers of ecstasy."

And according to the United Nations, the world already consumes 125 tons of Ecstasy each year...