Call it the Walmart of weed.

In a 15,000-square-foot warehouse just down the road from the Oakland Airport, an entrepreneur is opening a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation that's believed to be the largest in the state.

Don't know the first thing about growing pot? The folks at iGrow have a doctor on site to get you a cannabis card and sell you all the necessary equipment for indoor, hydroponic cultivation - from pumps, nutrients and tubing to lights and fans.

Don't know how to set it up? For a fee, on-site technicians will show you how to build it in your home and even maintain it weekly.

NBC, L.A.

A man that was pulled over on the 101 Freeway by the California Highway Patrol got his stash back and avoided prison time after his lawyer successfully argued that the duffle bag full of weed was en route to a Venice-based medical marijuana collective.

Sagura Doven, 33, was charged with possession of marijuana for sale and transportation of the drug, a violation of the state's health and safety code, when the patrol officer discover 60-pounds of marijuana divided into baggies and stuffed in a large duffle bag.

Attorney Glen T. Jonas argued that his client was a member of a Venice-based medical marijuana collective and was authorized to transport the 60 pounds of pot.

The state attorney general's guidelines regarding medical marijuana indicate that collectives are allowed to both grow and transport quantities of marijuana for its members.

If you can get past some of the boogey-man dialogue about drug use, there are some new scientific facts emerging about how and where psychedelics work in the human brain.

Federal drug agents won't pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

The guidelines to be issued by the department do, however, make it clear that agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes, the officials said.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Steve Jobs has never been shy about his use of psychedelics, famously calling his LSD experience "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." So, toward the end of his life, LSD inventor Albert Hofmann decided to write to the iPhone creator to see if he'd be interested in putting some money where the tip of his tongue had been.

Hofmann penned a never-before-disclosed letter in 2007 to Jobs at the behest of his friend Rick Doblin, who runs an organization dedicated to studying the medical and psychiatric benefits of psychedelic drugs. Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, died in April 2008 at the age of 102.

See the letter here.

Fear and Loathing the board game.

Sure, they've got the requisite suitcase full of drugs, but where's the adrenochrome?

BBC NEWS

Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one.

Ministers have outlined their opposition to any such move.

Professor Nutt wrote: "Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy."

It ain't fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air
Won't you care for John Sinclair?
In the stir for breathing air
Let him be, set him free
Let him be like you and me

Jeebus, they are trying to crucify Michael Phelps and make an example out of him for smoking god's green herb. It's sooooo pathetic.

They hate the idea that somebody so successful might choose to use the demon weed. Cause 'only losers use drugs', right? Uh huh. How many gold medals did YOU win at the last olympics?

So the body that governs swimming in the US has banned him for three months and Kelloggs won't renew their sponsorship deal that had put Phelps on the cover of the Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes cereal boxes.

Ya know, Kelloggs really missed an opportunity here. Instead of booting him, they should have just moved him over to the Pop-Tarts box. A classic stoner favorite!

But seriously, I hope this sparks a national discussion about the absurd hypocrisy that is our drug policy. Let's have a rational conversation about the harm done by use versus the harm done by prohibition. (Not even close, of course. But I'm preaching to the choir on this one, I suspect.)

Enough with the hand-wringing and 'what will we tell the children?', okay?

I know, how about we tell them the truth about cannabis, so they believe us when we tell them the truth about harder, more dangerous substances like heroin, meth, coke, etc. Because I've got news for you, if they find out you lied about how dangerous cannabis is, they aren't going to believe you when you tell them how dangerous heroin is.

I've gotta hand it to the kid. He asks some AWESOME questions.

Give it a watch.

One high school teacher's account of a trip he didn't mean to take...

Bohemian.com

Drugs are a common topic in my classroom. The students have questions and I have answers, and if I can prevent one less overdose or drunken driving death, it's worth it. My students get fucked up. We live in the wine country, and whenever you live in a booze-based economy, kids are going to grow up with issues. Acid, mushrooms, meth, coke, prescription drugs and a whole lot of weed are what the students are into. You would think it would change after 25 years, but it's just the same as when I was in high school.

Max had left a screensaver depicting 12 tabs of Scooby-Doo windowpane acid on one of my classroom computers. I told him to do a research paper on Timothy Leary and quit being such an asshole. I think that's why he dosed me.

By the time I reached Chase Street, I had a pretty good awareness of what was happening. Some of the treetops were dancing in the heat and wind, and my mouth was extremely dry. I went straight to Max, who was walking about 20 feet behind me.

"How you feeling, Mr. Moss?" he said with a smirk.

"Max, this is by far the dumbest thing you've ever done. How'd you do it?" I asked.

"Coffee" he admitted.

"How much?" I inquired.

"Small drop, one to two doses, should keep you going for a while."

So Michael Phelps was recently photographed smoking a bong. Big freakin' deal. Maybe that's the secret to his success? Powerfully developed lungs!

I dunno, but while I could give two shits that somebody got a picture of him horking a tube, I think there's nothing more pathetic than his weak and sniveling mea culpa

I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.

One of his sponsors, luxury watchmaker Omega, issued the following statement:

"The current story in the press involves Michael Phelps' private life and is, as far as Omega is concerned, a nonissue."

A puff a day might keep Alzheimer's away, according to marijuana research by professor Gary Wenk and associate professor Yannic Marchalant of the Ohio State Department of Psychology.

Wenk's studies show that a low dosage in the morning of a certain canavanoid, a component in marijuana, reversed memory loss in older rats' brains. In his study, an experimental group of old rats received a dosage, and a control group of rats did not. The old rats that received the drugs performed better on memory tests, and the drug slowed and prevented brain cell death. However, marijuana had the reverse effect on young rats' brains, actually impairing mental ability.

Here's a passage from the section on Francis Crick and the connection between LSD and DNA.

LSD. Yes, when not discovering the key to life, and winning the Nobel Prize for it, Crick spent the 50s and 60s throwing all night parties famous for featuring that era's favorite party favors: LSD and nudity. Crick never made it a secret that he experimented with the drug, and in 2006, the London paper The Mail on Sunday reported that Crick had told many colleagues that he was experimenting with LSD when he figured out the double helix structure

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

And here's Norm's college yearbook picture. (Thanks Ben!)

Clubbers who take the "love drug" ecstasy really might be "loved up". Studies in rats suggest the drug causes a brain surge of oxytocin - the hormone that helps bond couples, as well as mothers to their babies.

Earlier research found increased oxytocin in the blood of people who had taken ecstasy. However, many drugs increase blood oxytocin without raising it in the brain - something thought necessary for any "pro-social" effects.

Iain McGregor at the University of Sydney in Australia, and his colleagues studied the effects of ecstasy in rats, which, like people, become more sociable on the drug. "It's very characteristic behaviour. They lie next to each other and chill out," McGregor says.

LONDON -- Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine."

The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Rolling Stones rocker Keith Richards insists he never snorted his father's ashes - his recent comments were made in "jest". Richards can't believe people took him seriously after he told British music magazine NME he once snorted his dad Bert's ashes mixed with cocaine.

He said, "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared.

"It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

However, Richard's manager Jane Rose tells MTV that the hellraiser's comments were "said in jest. Can't believe anyone took (it) seriously."

Cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them, suggests a new study.

An active component of the street drug has previously been shown to improve brain tumours in rats. But now Manuel Guzmán at Complutense University, Spain, and colleagues have demonstrated how the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumours to sprout blood vessels – a process called angiogenesis.

And for the first time, the team has shown the cannabinoids impede this chemical in people with the most aggressive form of brain cancer - glioblastoma multiforme.

Cristina Blázquez at Complutense University, and one of the team, stresses the results are preliminary. “But it’s a good point to start and continue,” she told New Scientist.

“The cannabinoid inhibits the angiogenesis response - if a tumour doesn’t do angiogenesis, it doesn’t grow,” she explains. “So if you can improve angiogenesis on one side and kill the tumour cells on the other side, you can try for a therapy for cancer.”

"This research provides an important new lead compound for anti-cancer drugs targeting cancer's blood supply,” says Richard Sullivan, head of clinical programmes, at Cancer Research UK.

'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.

'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge.

He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'