James Graham Wilson’s brilliant history of how Reagan and Gorbachev engaged to end the Cold War, The Triumph of Improvisation, begins with this story. 

Late at night Reagan and his campaign manager Lee Atwater were descending into Chicago’s O’Hare Airport near the end of his ultimately triumphant 1980 Presidential campaign. The following exchange took place. (It is worth remembering that Reagan was 69 at the time).

Atwater: “Ron — why exactly are you doing this?”

Reagan: “I want to bring an end to the Cold War.”

Atwater: “How are you going to to that?”

Reagan: “I don’t know, but there has got to be a way.”

A poll conducted by innovative drugs pressure group VolteFace finds overwhelming cross-party support for the legalisation of medical marijuana.

A poll conducted by innovative drugs pressure group VolteFace finds overwhelming cross-party support for the legalisation of medical marijuana in the UK House of Commons.

After years of refusal to engage with the debate around medical marijuana, the sands seem to be shifting in the minds of UK policymakers.

A new poll of UK MPs had revealed that well over half of MPs support legalisation of cannabis for medical use, with 58% of MPs polled coming out in support.

More than half of MPs want to see the legalisation of medical marijuana, a survey has found.

The polling, which follows parliamentary debates on the issue, found that 58 per cent of MPs backed the use of cannabis for people battling health conditions.

Those supporting the move include Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, and Dr Dan Poulter, a former health minister and Tory MP. 

In 2015, the researchers at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Freiburg, Germany showed that the presence of cannabinoids in an individual's hair does not prove that the person consumed marijuana. More specifically, their findings, published in Scientific Reports, indicated that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active chemical ingredient found in cannabis, can be found in hair of non-consuming individuals due to transfer through cannabis consumers via their hands or sweat, or through passive marijuana-smoke exposure.1

While hair testing is widely used in employee drug screening and in child protective cases, their findings contradicted the prevailing view that hair testing is an accurate method for testing cannabis consumption.

Call it a ‘movement’, call it a ‘community’, whatever you call them, you can’t deny that activists campaigning for cannabis legalisation in the UK aren’t putting the hours in behind the scenes.

Indeed, while political turmoil bubbles on, those committed to a cause, those quite often motivated by the demands of their circumstances, in this case the need for patients to access medicinal cannabis, can’t afford to take a day off. Hence, a disparate group of activists has emerged – struggling valiantly along in the background, hoping to swing hearts and minds wherever they can.

Teenagers make up most of new cannabis users and also tend to consume it heavily. This is a matter of concern among health professionals and policy makers, mostly due to the possible harms the drug may have on brain development, cognitive faculties, and educational performance.

Research has more or less consistently shown that cannabis causes acute impairments in memory consolidation, working memory, attention, psychomotor control, impulse inhibition, and abstract reasoning. These effects may, in turn, explain why cannabis users often have a poorer educational performance and attainment compared to non-users.

Full-fledged cannabis legalization: is it only a matter of time? Before we get to the odds on the topic de jure, a little context.

Cannabis was a part of America’s consciousness long before Harry Chapin’s song “Taxi” was on the airwaves in the early 1970s, and even before grass enthusiasts endured days of rain at Woodstock a few years earlier.

Donald Trump is not getting the warm Scottish welcome he was hoping for.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee arrived in Scotland on Friday to officially open his new Trump Turnberry golf resort. Protesters greeted him with golf balls emblazoned with Swastikas — a symbol synonymous with Nazi Germany — at the opening of the course.

GW Pharmaceuticals gwph could be on its way to eventually winning the first U.S. approval for a marijuana-based prescription drug.

The U.K.-based biopharma on Monday unveiled more data finding that its investigational therapy Epidiolex, which is derived from a marijuana component called cannabidiol, or CBD, helped significantly reduce the number of monthly seizures suffered by patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS)—a rare disease that often strikes during childhood and usually causes debilitating epileptic episodes. It afflicts about 30,000 children and adults in the U.S., according to the LGS Foundation.

GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH) announced positive results Monday from a second, pivotal clinical trial involving children with a severe form of epilepsy treated with its experimental marijuana-based drug.

Shares of GW Pharma are up 16% to $96.52 in Monday pre-market trading.

In the phase III study, treatment with the GW Pharma drug epidiolex resulted in a 44% reduction in monthly drop seizures compared to a 22% reduction for placebo. The difference was statistically significant.