Marijuana Legalization: Chile’s Lower House Of Congress Approves Marijuana Bill

Chile’s lower house of Congress approved a bill Tuesday, allowing Chileans to grow small amounts of marijuana for medical, recreational and spiritual purposes. The lawmakers approved the decriminalization bill by a wide margin with 68 in favor and 39 against.

The measure, which still awaits approval from a health commission and the Senate, will permit each Chilean home to grow up to six marijuana plants. Planting, selling and transporting marijuana is currently illegal in Chile, and could be punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Those who want to use marijuana for medical purposes are required to obtain government permission, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

“This project is on the right path and we're optimistic that it will be passed quickly,” Ana Maria Gazmurri, president of Daya Foundation, a nonprofit group that sponsors pain-relieving therapies, told the AP. “It should go through the health commission in a month at most, and ideally it should be approved by the Senate in two months.”

Gazmurri’s foundation also backed the recent planting and harvesting of Chile’s first government-approved medical marijuana. The program, which began in October, was aimed at easing the pain suffered by cancer patients.

While supporters of the bill said that the move would help eliminate drug dealing, some lawmakers criticized the measure, arguing that it would result in more drug use, especially among young citizens.

“This is a bad project and authorities have been largely absent,” the AP quoted Sergio Espejo, a deputy for the center-right Christian Democratic Party, as saying. “It hides the country's public health tragedy with the increase in the consumption of marijuana among young students.”

However, a recent study conducted over 24 years in the U.S. found no evidence to suggest that legalizing medical marijuana makes adolescentsChile’s lower house of Congress approved a bill Tuesday, allowing Chileans to grow small amounts of marijuana for medical, recreational and spiritual purposes. The lawmakers approved the decriminalization bill by a wide margin with 68 in favor and 39 against.

The measure, which still awaits approval from a health commission and the Senate, will permit each Chilean home to grow up to six marijuana plants. Planting, selling and transporting marijuana is currently illegal in Chile, and could be punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Those who want to use marijuana for medical purposes are required to obtain government permission, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

“This project is on the right path and we're optimistic that it will be passed quickly,” Ana Maria Gazmurri, president of Daya Foundation, a nonprofit group that sponsors pain-relieving therapies, told the AP. “It should go through the health commission in a month at most, and ideally it should be approved by the Senate in two months.”

Gazmurri’s foundation also backed the recent planting and harvesting of Chile’s first government-approved medical marijuana. The program, which began in October, was aimed at easing the pain suffered by cancer patients.

While supporters of the bill said that the move would help eliminate drug dealing, some lawmakers criticized the measure, arguing that it would result in more drug use, especially among young citizens.

“This is a bad project and authorities have been largely absent,” the AP quoted Sergio Espejo, a deputy for the center-right Christian Democratic Party, as saying. “It hides the country's public health tragedy with the increase in the consumption of marijuana among young students.”

However, a recent study conducted over 24 years in the U.S. found no evidence to suggest that legalizing medical marijuana makes adolescents more likely to use it.

In total, 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have approved medical marijuana use in some capacity, while Colorado and Washington have legalized it for personal use. more likely to use it.

In total, 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have approved medical marijuana use in some capacity, while Colorado and Washington have legalized it for personal use.

Source : IBTIMES



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NEW VACCINE MIGHT PREVENT HIV INFECTION

A new study has found that an experimental vaccine completely prevented HIV infection in half of monkeys given the jab.

The monkeys were given the vaccine and then exposed to high doses of an aggressive virus that is the equivalent of Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in humans.
The results were so positive they spurred Johnson & Johnson to test the vaccine in people.

The research was published online in the journal Science.
The international trial is underway in 400 healthy volunteers in the United States, East Africa, South Africa and Thailand.

It is the first time since Merck’s failed 2007 trial that a major pharmaceutical company has sponsored clinical development of an HIV vaccine, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a vaccine researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard.
Some 35 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Since it began spreading 30 years ago, AIDS has killed 40 million people worldwide.
Despite progress in treatments, experts believe a vaccine is the best hope for eradicating the disease.

In a pair of studies Barouch and colleagues at Johnson and Johnson and elsewhere tested a two-step vaccine, which involves priming the immune system using a weakened version of the cold virus to sneak HIV genes into the body.

The second phase involves injecting individuals with a purified HIV surface protein designed to provoke a strong immune response.
Johnson & Johnsons’s chief scientific officer and worldwide chairman, pharmaceuticals, Dr. Paul Stoffels, told Reuters: “The company is using the same prime-boost strategy in its Ebola vaccine, now in early-stage human trials.”
Stoffels said the HIV vaccine trial in monkeys was designed to test the limits of the vaccine, exposing the animals to high levels of an aggressive virus that attacks non-human primates known as simian immunodeficiency virus, a close cousin to HIV.

The virus was potent enough to infect 100 per cent of unvaccinated animals after six exposures. Even so, half of the animals who got the vaccine were completely protected.

Stoffels said the infection rate per exposure in the trial is about 100 times greater than what is typically seen in humans.
Stoffels said: “Johnson & Johnson expects the vaccine to prove even more effective in people, but even if the vaccine only protects half of those people who get it, ‘it will still have an enormous public health impact.”
If all goes well with the early-stage trial, he expects a larger, phase 2b study to start in the next 18 to 24 months. Phase 2b studies test how well drugs works at the prescribed dose.

Source : The Guardian