Huumesodan tuloksiin kyllästytty monissa maissa

[Dr. Bombay]

^ kiva rangaistus, ois ehkä kannattanu raiskata ja murhata jengiä niin pääsis vähemmällä.

[Poistunut käyttäjä 03ec59]

ei se varmaan istu ku pari vuotta jos sitäkään. sit kun vapautuu niin yritys vaan pystyyn, selkeästi myyntimiehen aineista.

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... op-in-kent

Three men jailed over light aircraft drop of £2.5m of cocaine in Kent

Andrew Barrett, Michael Mealing and Jonathan Hart were being watched by NCA when they released smuggled drugs

Three men have been jailed for smuggling cocaine worth £2.5m into Britain and dropping it from a light aircraft on the day of the EU referendum.

Andrew Barrett, Michael Mealing and Jonathan Hart plotted possible landing and dropoff sites in Kent on a map, and carried out reconnaissance of a location, unaware they were under surveillance by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

On 23 June last year, investigators watched as the aircraft flew low over one of the sites, a secluded field a few miles from Faversham. Shortly afterwards, Mealing and Hart drove away from the area in a Land Rover, the Old Bailey heard.

They were followed to a builder’s yard in the Kent town, where officers arrested them.

In the boot of the vehicle were three large fuel containers packaged with heavy-duty tape capable of withstanding a drop from the air. A total of 31kg of high-purity cocaine was recovered from the containers.


The fuel containers carrying £2.5m of cocaine that were found in a car driven by the trio to Faversham.

Barrett, said to have played a leading role in the operation, was later spotted at a house in Watford, Hertfordshire, in a white van and also arrested.

In the back of the van, officers found a holdall containing a further 18kg of cocaine, 1kg of MDMA and 15kg of cannabis. The stash had a combined wholesale value of about £650,000, but if sold on the streets, it could have been worth more than £1.5m.

Barrett, 41, of Cheddington, Bedfordshire, Mealing, 41, of Corsham, Wiltshire, and Hart, 60, of no fixed abode, admitted importing cocaine.

Barrett pleaded guilty to possession of class A and class B drugs with intent to supply, and money laundering. Mealing also admitted possession of criminal property – £7,000 found in a wardrobe at his home.

Sentencing, Judge Stephen Kramer QC said the defendants played important roles in a “sophisticated and commercial operation”. He sentenced Barrett to 16 years in prison, and Mealing to 12 years and six months.

Hart, who had a record for drugs crimes and committed the offence while on licence, was sentenced for 10 years and nine months in prison.

Steve McIntyre from the NCA’s border policing command said: “We are actively targeting criminals who try to use general aviation and small airfields as a way into the UK. Our investigation into others who may have been involved continues.”

[F66.6 Krooninen olemassaolo]

^ kiva rangaistus, ois ehkä kannattanu raiskata ja murhata jengiä niin pääsis vähemmällä.

Siit ei saa rahaa tai en tiiä. Aika överituomio, jos vertaa vaik Aarnioon.

Äkkiseltään tuntuis, et humelituomiolinja Suomes sen kuin kovenee. Laki, järjestys ja etenkin rangaistus. No joo myynti on myyntiä ja sössönsössön.

[RUNKKUMESTARI]

Palkinto tuolle pitäis antaa eikä rangaistus

[Pasi Fist]

Osa 1:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017 ... depression

How dropping acid saved my life

When writer Ayelet Waldman fell into depression she started microdosing with LSD. She tells Rachel Cooke about her extraordinary experiment with acid

Some time ago – for reasons that will become apparent I am not allowed to say when, exactly – the American writer Ayelet Waldman scored some LSD. She did this, not on a street corner or via the dark web, but middle-class style, through an acquaintance of an acquaintance, for which reason the drug arrived at her home in Berkeley, California, in a stamp-encrusted brown paper package whose sender (an elderly professor, she believed) identified himself only as Lewis Carroll, a “fellow resident” of her town. Mr Carroll had, however, troubled to write her a brief note. “Our lives may be no more than dewdrops on a summer morning,” it said. “But surely, it is better that we sparkle while we are here.” The bottle he enclosed contained 50 drops of “vintage quality” LSD, of which he advised her to take two at a time. Waldman was delighted. Not to put too fine a point on it, she believed this drug might save her life.

For as long as she can remember, Waldman has been held hostage by her moods. When she is up, she is up; when she is down, she is down. These highs and lows she has managed over the years with the help of therapy and a number of drugs, with which she has had varying degrees of success. At the time of the parcel’s arrival, though, she had entered a new and much more scary phase.

“I was so profoundly depressed,” she says. “It wasn’t the kind of depression where you fall into bed. I’ve been through that before, and while it’s grim, it’s manageable. This was more of a mixed state, a kind of activated depression, and that’s a dangerous place to be. I was doing everything I could to ruin my own life. I was afraid that if I stayed on that track, I would force my husband to leave me, and that I would probably attempt suicide – and being a very capable person, I don’t think a failed attempt was on the cards.”

It was while she was in this state of mind that she stumbled on The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, by the psychologist and writer James Fadiman, who since 2010 has been collecting reports from individuals who have experimented with regular microdosing of LSD and psilocybin, a naturally occurring chemical found in a variety of mushrooms. Fadiman’s book is certainly not the result of a scientific research project; there has never been an officially sanctioned study of microdosing.

But the people whose accounts it gathered together spoke repeatedly of experiencing, thanks to LSD, increased focus and better mood. They reported rarely losing their tempers, and becoming more fun to be with. None, moreover, had suffered any side effects. To put it simply, they went to bed feeling they had enjoyed that most elusive of things: a really good day. As Waldman read on, she grew envious. How she needed to have one of those! Was this her glimmer of hope? She thought it might be.

Waldman contacted Fadiman, and received a memo entitled “To a Potential Self-Study Psychedelic Researcher”. The protocol was simple. In order to participate in his international self-study group on the effects of sub-perceptual doses of LSD, she should take a microdose of the drug every third day. The suggested dose was a minuscule 10 micrograms, one 10th or less of what a person would have to take in order to experience an altered state of consciousness (ie to trip).

Meanwhile, she should lead life as normal, pausing only to record her moods, productivity and physical symptoms. Did this sound – to be blunt – preposterous? It did. Waldman is a middle-aged mother of four who, in addition to writing novels, lectures on the criminal justice system (she is a Harvard-educated former lawyer). As someone who is law-abiding and swotty, nothing in the world irritates her more than hippies, slackers, free spirits. Even people who won’t stay on the right hand side of escalators drive her nuts. Ken Kesey she is not. But she was suffering. She had nothing to lose. Why shouldn’t she try it, just for a month?

Having found a supplier, then, she did indeed begin taking the drug, an experience she has now recorded in her own book A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life. Its publication is certain to cause controversy. In fact, the madness has already begun. When we speak via Skype, a month or so before it arrives in bookshops, she tells me that only a few days earlier an excitable reporter got in touch to inform her that his editor had given him permission to “drop acid with Ayelet Waldman”. (Her response to his question about when they might schedule this journalistic endeavour was: “Like, never.”)

Attitudes to drugs in America are – irrespective of those states that have legalised cannabis – far from liberal. “Trump has appointed to the Department of Justice a war-on-drugs advocate [the Alabama senator, Jeff Sessions] who is so retrograde in his thinking, he believes the US suffers from an under-incarceration problem,” she says. It’s for this reason that she won’t reveal when her experiment ended: there is a three-year statute of limitations on drugs charges. “Do I think a white, middle-class lady will be high on his list of targets? No. But in this crazy new world we live in, you can’t be too careful.”

Its reception will also doubtless be muddied by the fact that she is its author. In America, Waldman is well known as an acclaimed writer in her own right and as the wife of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon, to whom she has been married since 1993. When she writes about herself, moreover – and this is something she does a great deal in A Really Good Day – people have a tendency to respond with unnerving fury.

Most famously, this was the case in 2005, when the New York Times published her essay Motherlove, in which she declared that she loved her husband more than her children (“If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother.”) In the days that followed, ABC’s daytime show The View hosted an unaccountably vitriolic debate about Waldman, her neighbours could be heard tearing her to shreds in Starbucks, and her inbox filled with emails from strangers threatening to report her to social services, the better that her children might be taken away.

Waldman is clever and funny and open-hearted. But as she readily admits, even her more sympathetic readers may sometimes have cause to wonder, in the case of A Really Good Day, which aspects of her behaviour – her compulsion to tell the world things that others might prefer to keep private among them – are simply the result of her personality, and which can be attributed to her illness. “It is hard to distinguish between them,” she says, almost wonderingly.

Still, she is probably better placed, now, to cope with any onslaught. Waldman is no longer using LSD – her experiment really did last for only a month – but its effects have, in some ways, been lasting. “I miss its anti-depressant quality, and I miss the way it made me focus. It was like Ritalin [a drug commonly prescribed in the US to children with ADHD] without the side effects, which is frankly incredible. But that month got me out of a dark place. Within the first couple of doses, it was like the computer of my brain had been restarted. I was still moody. I had some really good days, but there were also crappy days, and days when it was just the normal shit. Somehow, though, the bad days were not hellish days, and so I had the capacity to work on issues I just couldn’t before. Sure, I was hoping for joy. What I got instead was enough distance from the pain I was in to work on the things that were causing it.”

That work continues. “I’m still not on an even keel. I’m still struggling with my moods. But I’m committed to that. I’m doing a new kind of therapy that is working quite well, even if not quite so well as it might be if I was still microdosing.” If someone sends her a mean tweet in the coming weeks, she is unlikely to respond as venomously as she might once have done, or even at all.

Given its benign effect on her, why didn’t she just find herself a new supplier, and continue taking it? There were, she says, two reasons. The first was her complete inability to purchase illegal drugs: towards the end of her book, she describes how, having made contact by text with a dealer, she panics, having convinced herself that “Lucy” is a police informant. The second was her determination to write a book about her experience: for that to be safe, she had to no longer be using.

“If I could have overcome those things, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have carried on. Of course, it might not have kept working; I’ve been on medication before that seemed to be working, and then wasn’t. But if it was to be made legal, I’d be the first in the queue, and I periodically remind myself that, if I get desperate again, I do have the option.”

Her book is well-researched and, in the matter of LSD itself, careful and no-nonsense. The drug, a variation on the ergotamine molecule (ergot is the fungus responsible for the disease known in the Middle Ages as St Anthony’s Fire) which was first synthesised in Basel in 1938 by Dr Albert Hofmann, has, she argues, an undeservedly bad reputation. The scare stories it trails – of young men and women whose LSD hallucinations lead them to jump off high buildings – have little basis in reality. Rather, they are largely the result of conservative America’s response to the 1960s counterculture, to Timothy Leary’s suggestion that people “turn on, tune in, drop out”. Twenty million people have used it in the US, and millions more around the world, with no ill effects at all.

It’s complicated, but when it comes to the drug’s possible use in the treatment of mental illness, what you need to know is that LSD stimulates the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, which in turn leads to the stimulation both of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), something a pharmacologist described to her as “like Miracle-Gro for the brain… It stimulates growth, connections, and activity”, and of glutamate, the neurotransmitter most responsible for brain functions, such as cognition, learning and memory. (Hence its supposed new-found popularity in Silicon Valley, though Waldman thinks that, in reality, there are more magazine articles about tech dudes using LSD than there are, well, tech dudes using LSD: “If there were some mass secret movement, it would have been a lot easier for to get hold of my drugs.”)

She believes that during her experiment her neuroplasticity was enhanced, and that this didn’t only enable her to work for hours at a time, to achieve a real sense of “flow” at her desk, but that it also made her happier and less impulsive. What little research has been done backs her up – a study at Imperial College London showed that even a single dose of LSD “produced robust psychological effects” – though scientists still don’t fully understand the relationship between what happens in the brain, and the psyche.

Why isn’t more research carried out? The simple truth is that LSD still carries with it a lot of leftover political baggage. During the writing of her book, the few researchers sanctioned by the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) who are out there were reluctant to allow Waldman to quote them, fearing that to associate themselves with a “personal experiment” would tarnish their hard-won credibility.

[Pasi Fist]

Osa 2:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017 ... depression

So far, so good. However, when her book is on more personal territory, as it frequently is, Waldman is vastly less cautious, and for the reader – especially, perhaps, the British reader – this can be, well, excruciating. “I know!” she says, when I tell her this. “Can you imagine what it would be like for me if I lived in London?” Chabon, a feminist with whom she shares the childcare, has the power of veto over everything she writes. But because he’s a writer, too, this seems not to be something he often invokes. In A Really Good Day, nothing is out of bounds, from their agonising couples therapy (“My husband’s eyes filled… I collapsed in his arms, crying so hard I soaked his shirt”), to their sex life (“‘I know you love me,’ I said, as we made love”), to their periodic use of MDMA, aka ecstasy, as a way of “opening up” their lines of connection. “What we did was talk,” she writes, of the first time they tried it, in a hotel room they’d booked specifically for the purpose. “For six hours, we talked about our feelings for each other, why we love each other, how we loved each other.”

Waldman reveals that her moods can be “triggered” by everything from her writerly insecurities, to the dog, to the sound of her husband eating nuts (she suffers from misophonia, or selective sound sensitivity syndrome): “I handed him a handful of almonds, and walked out of the kitchen… I heard a crunch, the smack of lips; I felt a wave of anger.” She is also fed up that her husband earns more than her, and that she has to share his writing studio, which has an uncomfortable couch: “Though he’s welcomed me in, I feel like a girlfriend who’s been given a drawer in the bachelor pad bathroom.” Poor Michael Chabon. The reader begins to feel he is some kind of saint.

“Well, he is somewhat saintly,” Waldman says. “He makes my friends crazy. He gives great gifts. He has impeccable taste in clothes and jewellery. He is a know-it-all, but then, he does sort of know everything. He’s misanthropic, in that we [the family] are all he has space for; he doesn’t have any close friends, which I think he would benefit from. I was about to say that he’s far better than I deserve, but that’s the pathology speaking, because I am a very good wife for him.”

Isn’t he ever mean to her? “Yeah, sure he is.” He encouraged her to embark on LSD experiment because he was desperate, too.

Before we hang up, I have to ask: does she ever worry her extraordinarily intense relationship with Chabon – on Twitter she has been known to post pictures of her husband, along with a line informing her 15,800 followers just how much she loves him – might be another symptom of her illness? For the first time in our conversation, she is hesitant. The gale of her voice drops to a light breeze.

“Yeah, I have thought about this. I have said to him: ‘If I were to get healthy, would I still love you, and would you still love me?’ There is a way that I’ve confused needing with loving. I don’t want to sound like a Hallmark card, but love is [supposed to be] unselfish, and in my most internal, whirling dark places, I think I need him so badly because he takes care of me, protects me, makes me feel safe. One of the things that saved our marriage in that [dark] period was when I brutally tried to disentangle those things.”

The upshot is that she thinks, now, perhaps it’s OK to need him. “After the LSD, when I was having this intense new therapy, I took a drive one night in northern California, where the countryside is very beautiful. I had this thought: maybe I don’t love him after all. It was terrifying, and I was crying. But then the phone rang, and it was him.” How did she feel then? “His voice filled me like a glass of water.”

‘People have been curious, even excited’: an extract from ‘A Really Good Day’

A few days ago, I began tentatively to tell people about this experiment. To my surprise, I encountered few negative reactions. Every once in a while a listener might arch an eyebrow or smile uncomfortably, as if trying to figure out whether her discomfort meant that she wasn’t hip enough, or whether I really was nuts. But those have been in the decided minority. Most people have been curious, even excited.

Those with histories of mood disorders were intrigued to hear that my spirits have lifted, that though I sometimes feel the familiar clutch of anxiety in my chest, I am generally able to use mindfulness techniques to make it dissolve. When I told them that I have not gained weight and that my libido has not withered away, they got really excited. The side effects of SSRIs are so ubiquitous and unpleasant that the idea of a medication protocol with fewer of them is thrilling.

Friends who incline to the spiritual were disappointed when they heard that I’ve experienced no connection to the divine, but reassured when I mention the pleasure I’ve taken in the natural world, the tree outside my window, the smell of the jasmine beside the city sidewalks. Risk takers and hedonists were disappointed that I was unable to provide details of hallucinations. No kaleidoscopic colours, they asked wistfully, no feeling that the floor was shifting beneath your feet? I live in California. The last thing I want to feel is the floor shifting beneath my feet. They urged me to try a ‘real’ dose. It would change my life, they said, as though my problem is that my life has been too devoid of weirdness. Besides, my life is changing.

Tonight, however, was a different story. These two writer friends are about 20 years older than my husband and me, which puts them firmly in the boomer generation. They were in their 20s in the 1960s. They’ve travelled the world, rejected a life of secure conformity in favour of the risks and rewards of art. What better people to confide in? I thought.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been writing, but not working on a novel. I’ve been writing about microdosing with LSD.’

What does that mean, the woman of the pair asked? Are you writing some kind of nonfiction article on people who use LSD?

I took a breath and then explained.

Her face froze. If she had been wearing pearls, she would have clutched them. She looked horrified, even disgusted, as if I’d told her that I’d taken up murdering baby seals. Her husband’s reaction was only slightly less disturbing. He smiled uncomfortably and changed the subject. I immediately agreed, yes, the antipasto was delicious, and, no, I didn’t want any more.

Their reaction launched a series of cascading anxieties. Will I be condemned for doing this? Will people reject me as a nutcase, a crank, a deluded acid freak? Will I lose whatever credibility I have in the world? Will parents not let their children come over to our house any more, under the misapprehension that I keep drugs in my home?

As soon as dinner was over, I tried the technique for dissipating anxiety that my cognitive behavioural therapist recommends. I took a few deep breaths, exhaling for half again as long as I inhaled. My chest and throat unclenched. The anxiety ebbed. I was calm again. I was OK.

Also, I had some perspective. This couple were young in the 1960s, when Timothy Leary was spreading the gospel of psychedelic recklessness. For all I know, they had complicated histories with the drug that influenced how they responded to me. In all likelihood, their discomfort had far more to do with them than with me.

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman is published by Corsair at £13.99. To order a copy, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

[Pasi Fist]

http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000005039800.html

Perheenisät kehittivät liikeidean: Ostetaan talonrähjä, kasvatetaan kannabista ja pannaan talo myyntituloilla kuntoon

Hanke näytti aluksi etenevän hyvin: huumerahoilla korjattiin kattoa sekä ovet, ikkunat, rännit ja viemärit. Ulkoseinät maalattiin, ja porakaivokin saatiin. Edes naapurit eivät huomanneet toiminnassa mitään erityistä.

Neljä työssäkäyvää perheenisää jäi viime vuonna kiinni poikkeuksellisella tavalla viritetystä liiketoimesta. He aikoivat tienata kannabiksella ”rehellistä” rahaa.

Rikoksella ansaitun rahan siistimistä varten miehet hankkivat Porvoon läheltä huonokuntoisen talon 50 000 euron pankkilainan turvin.

Taloon perustettiin kannabisviljelmä. Huumeiden myyntituloilla miesten oli määrä kunnostaa taloa ja sen jälkeen myydä talo hyvällä voitolla.

Hanke näytti aluksi etenevän hyvin: huumerahoilla korjattiin kattoa sekä ovet, ikkunat, rännit ja viemärit. Ulkoseinät maalattiin, ja porakaivokin saatiin. Edes naapurit eivät huomanneet toiminnassa mitään erityistä.

Helsingin huumepoliisi kertoo 1980-luvun puolivälissä syntyneiden kaverusten tarinan blogissaan.

Blogissa kerrotaan sekin, miksi hanke meni myttyyn: yksi miehistä jäi kiinni muutaman kasvin kasvattamisesta kotonaan. Kasvattajan asunnosta löytyi kuitteja ja muita asiapapereita, joiden mukaan Porvoon taloon oli hankittu kannabiksen kasvattamiseen liittyviä tavaroita.

Taloprojekti on toistaiseksi syyteharkinnassa, ja poliisi on tehnyt ulosottomiehelle pyynnön talon takavarikoimisesta.

Hankkeessa mukana olleilla kaveruksilla ei ollut merkittävää rikostaustaa. He kävivät töissä ja elivät poliisin blogin mukaan kohtalaisen tavallista lapsiperheen elämää.

Kaksi heistä oli harrastanut kannabiksen kasvattamista, ja kahdella oli luottotiedot, mikä mahdollisti pankkilainan saannin.

Miehet ehtivät kasvattaa talossaan kuusi satoa, ja lähes kaikki myyntitulot sijoitettiin talon korjauksiin. Kaksi miehistä hoiti huumeiden myynnin, yksi toimi kirjanpitäjänä, ja yksi säilytti rahoja.

Viranomaisten mukaan rahaa oli tullut lähes 100 000 euroa, joista poliisi löysi käteisenä 20 000 euroa.

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... -sclerosis

Most marijuana medicinal benefits are inconclusive, wide-ranging study finds

Study of 10,000 reports into cannabis finds only enough evidence to support therapeutic use for chemotherapy patients, chronic pain and multiple sclerosis

There is not enough research to reach conclusive judgments on whether marijuana can effectively treat most of the symptoms and diseases it is advertised as helping, according to a wide-ranging US government study.

The same is also true of many of the risks said to be associated with using cannabis, the study finds.

More than 100 conclusions about the health effects of marijuana, including claims of both helpful and harmful effects, were evaluated by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in a study released on Thursday.

There was only enough evidence to support treatment for three therapeutic uses, the study found: to reduce nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, to treat chronic pain and to reduce spasms from multiple sclerosis.

“Really, most of the therapeutic reasons people use medical marijuana aren’t substantiated beneficial effects of the plant,” said Sean Hennessy, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the 16-scientist committee that carried out the review.

Uses for which there was either “limited evidence or insufficient evidence”, according to Hennessy, included increasing appetite and weight gain for patients with HIV/Aids, calming attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, and treating epilepsy.

“There’s been an explosion of literature since 1999 … We reviewed thousands of abstracts,” said Robert Wallace, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and another member of the committee tasked with reviewing more than 10,000 studies to reach conclusions about the current state of research on marijuana. “A lot of the report is really where the state of the evidence is.”

For example, the report found “conclusive” evidence that cannabis can alleviate some nausea and vomiting associated with cancer treatment, but that case was long ago considered settled. For many indications in the report, science has not reached a definitive answer.

The report’s key findings fell into a few broad categories:

Injury and death: evidence suggests that driving while high increases the risk of a car accident. In states where marijuana has been legalized, evidence suggests that children are at more risk of ingesting marijuana. Cannabis use could also harm adolescents’ educational and social development.
Mental health: cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, social anxiety disorders and, to a lesser extent, depression. Heavy marijuana users are more likely to report suicidal thoughts that non-users, and people with bipolar disorder who use marijuana almost daily show more symptoms than non-users.
Cancer: evidence does not support a link between smoking marijuana and cancers typically associated with tobacco, such as head, neck and lung cancer. Evidence suggests that smoking marijuana on a regular basis is associated with chronic bronchitis and phlegm production.
Addiction: evidence suggests that people who use more cannabis are more likely to be addicted, and that the younger people start, the more likely they are to develop problematic use.
Nausea: there is conclusive evidence that cannabinoids, compounds derived from marijuana, are useful to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.
Chronic pain: there is evidence to support use of cannabis in treatment of chronic pain, in particular in spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, the disabling central nervous system disease.

The report comes as the pace of marijuana reforms has quickened across the US. Medicinal marijuana is now legal in 29 states, and recreational marijuana is legal in eight states and in Washington DC. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US, with an estimated 22.2 million people using the drug in the past month, according to a 2014 government survey.

Drug policy reform has also became a topic of international debate, as high-profile medical organizations and some countries call for decriminalization of illicit drugs. The academies’ report is the first in 18 years to address such a breadth of physical effects from marijuana, and is likely to fuel arguments on both sides of the marijuana debate.

While the paper is broad and wide-ranging, it is unlikely to end debate on any number of treatments. One researcher studying the therapeutic impacts of the cannabis compound cannabidiol on children with epilepsy said researchers’ conclusions were broadly “conservative”, and on epilepsy “wrong”.

“For science to do what it does, I think when they do a scientific review they should incorporate all the evidence that is out there for that disorder, and I don’t think they did that for epilepsy,” said Orrin Devinsky, director of New York University Langone Medical Center’s comprehensive epilepsy center. Still, he called the report “very valuable”.

The report comes at a significant time for marijuana policy worldwide, as drug policy reform has picked up both in the US and internationally. Less than one year ago, an international commission published a report in The Lancet calling for decriminalization of all drugs, finding that prohibition did not effectively combat drug use, addiction or organized crime. At the same time, the United Nations held a special session to discuss global drug policy, the first in almost 20 years. Additionally, mental health concerns about “skunk” marijuana have also increased.

The study represents the broadest review by the National Academies of Sciences since 1999, after California and Arizona passed the first medical marijuana laws, and the public debated whether physicians should prescribe marijuana.

Controversially, the 1999 report found that marijuana could indeed reduce nausea, but that it could also help treat pain. While the report found some negative effects from smoking marijuana, it also contradicted the then US “drug czar” Barry R McCaffrey’s position that “not a shred of scientific evidence” existed for the medicinal use of marijuana.

Almost two decades later, legal marijuana has spawned an untold number of shops hawking marijuana for people to enjoy like beer or wine, but also products that more closely resemble cure-alls on the untested supplement market.

“There is a great fear that I continue to have, that the cannabis industry medically will be like the vitamin and nutritional supplement market,” Devinsky said. “People advertise on TV that we isolated a compound from jellyfish and it improves memory.”

He added: “It’s become a religion for people, and my personal view is if you want to pray to whatever gods you pray to, and you want to advocate for whatever political candidate, it’s a free country. But when it comes to medical therapy, we have a higher standard.”

In the US, the push for marijuana legalization comes at a time of increasing dismay over the state of the criminal justice system, as sentencing laws passed during the “war on drugs” are being reexamined in light of their disproportionate impact on people of color.

“This growing acceptance, accessibility and use of cannabis and its derivatives has raised important public health concerns,” said Marie McCormick, a pediatrician at Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health, who chaired the committee. “Moreover, the lack of any aggregated knowledge of cannabis-related health effects has led to uncertainty about what, if any, are the harms or benefits from its use.

“We conducted an in-depth and broad review of the most recent research to establish firmly what the science says, and to highlight areas that still need further examination. As laws and policies continue to change, research must also.”

The report also took the unusual step of calling for private funding sources to advance marijuana research. Researchers found it “difficult to gain access to the quantity, quality, and type of cannabis product necessary”, the report said. “A diverse network of funders is needed to support cannabis and cannabinoid research.”

One of those hurdles is the limited supply of research-grade marijuana, which is grown only at the University of Mississippi.

“Any federal study has challenges,” said Nolan Kane, a geneticist at the University of Colorado at Boulder studying the evolution of plants such as sunflowers and hemp. He described government-approved marijuana as having “a fraction” of the psychoactive ingredients of privately grown marijuana, and said research subjects described the marijuana as “old” and “low quality”.

“Getting people to even accept money to smoke their marijuana – you’d think college campuses, it would be easy to get people to smoke marijuana,” Kane said. “It doesn’t at all reflect the marketplace ... It’s always going to be comparing apples and oranges until they’re able to make the products more similar.”

The report is the product of 16 experts in their fields, including neurologists, oncologists, epidemiologists and child psychiatrists. Among the review’s most fervent calls were for more investigation.

The study was sponsored by a group of state health departments, federal agencies and nonprofits, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Robert W Woodruff Foundation and the Arizona department of health services.

[Hans Normaali]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... -sclerosis

Most marijuana medicinal benefits are inconclusive, wide-ranging study finds

Study of 10,000 reports into cannabis finds only enough evidence to support therapeutic use for chemotherapy patients, chronic pain and multiple sclerosis

There is not enough research to reach conclusive judgments on whether marijuana can effectively treat most of the symptoms and diseases it is advertised as helping, according to a wide-ranging US government study.

The same is also true of many of the risks said to be associated with using cannabis, the study finds.

More than 100 conclusions about the health effects of marijuana, including claims of both helpful and harmful effects, were evaluated by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in a study released on Thursday.

There was only enough evidence to support treatment for three therapeutic uses, the study found: to reduce nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, to treat chronic pain and to reduce spasms from multiple sclerosis.

“Really, most of the therapeutic reasons people use medical marijuana aren’t substantiated beneficial effects of the plant,” said Sean Hennessy, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the 16-scientist committee that carried out the review.

Uses for which there was either “limited evidence or insufficient evidence”, according to Hennessy, included increasing appetite and weight gain for patients with HIV/Aids, calming attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, and treating epilepsy.

“There’s been an explosion of literature since 1999 … We reviewed thousands of abstracts,” said Robert Wallace, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and another member of the committee tasked with reviewing more than 10,000 studies to reach conclusions about the current state of research on marijuana. “A lot of the report is really where the state of the evidence is.”

For example, the report found “conclusive” evidence that cannabis can alleviate some nausea and vomiting associated with cancer treatment, but that case was long ago considered settled. For many indications in the report, science has not reached a definitive answer.

The report’s key findings fell into a few broad categories:

Injury and death: evidence suggests that driving while high increases the risk of a car accident. In states where marijuana has been legalized, evidence suggests that children are at more risk of ingesting marijuana. Cannabis use could also harm adolescents’ educational and social development.
Mental health: cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, social anxiety disorders and, to a lesser extent, depression. Heavy marijuana users are more likely to report suicidal thoughts that non-users, and people with bipolar disorder who use marijuana almost daily show more symptoms than non-users.
Cancer: evidence does not support a link between smoking marijuana and cancers typically associated with tobacco, such as head, neck and lung cancer. Evidence suggests that smoking marijuana on a regular basis is associated with chronic bronchitis and phlegm production.
Addiction: evidence suggests that people who use more cannabis are more likely to be addicted, and that the younger people start, the more likely they are to develop problematic use.
Nausea: there is conclusive evidence that cannabinoids, compounds derived from marijuana, are useful to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.
Chronic pain: there is evidence to support use of cannabis in treatment of chronic pain, in particular in spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, the disabling central nervous system disease.

The report comes as the pace of marijuana reforms has quickened across the US. Medicinal marijuana is now legal in 29 states, and recreational marijuana is legal in eight states and in Washington DC. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US, with an estimated 22.2 million people using the drug in the past month, according to a 2014 government survey.

Drug policy reform has also became a topic of international debate, as high-profile medical organizations and some countries call for decriminalization of illicit drugs. The academies’ report is the first in 18 years to address such a breadth of physical effects from marijuana, and is likely to fuel arguments on both sides of the marijuana debate.

While the paper is broad and wide-ranging, it is unlikely to end debate on any number of treatments. One researcher studying the therapeutic impacts of the cannabis compound cannabidiol on children with epilepsy said researchers’ conclusions were broadly “conservative”, and on epilepsy “wrong”.

“For science to do what it does, I think when they do a scientific review they should incorporate all the evidence that is out there for that disorder, and I don’t think they did that for epilepsy,” said Orrin Devinsky, director of New York University Langone Medical Center’s comprehensive epilepsy center. Still, he called the report “very valuable”.

The report comes at a significant time for marijuana policy worldwide, as drug policy reform has picked up both in the US and internationally. Less than one year ago, an international commission published a report in The Lancet calling for decriminalization of all drugs, finding that prohibition did not effectively combat drug use, addiction or organized crime. At the same time, the United Nations held a special session to discuss global drug policy, the first in almost 20 years. Additionally, mental health concerns about “skunk” marijuana have also increased.

The study represents the broadest review by the National Academies of Sciences since 1999, after California and Arizona passed the first medical marijuana laws, and the public debated whether physicians should prescribe marijuana.

Controversially, the 1999 report found that marijuana could indeed reduce nausea, but that it could also help treat pain. While the report found some negative effects from smoking marijuana, it also contradicted the then US “drug czar” Barry R McCaffrey’s position that “not a shred of scientific evidence” existed for the medicinal use of marijuana.

Almost two decades later, legal marijuana has spawned an untold number of shops hawking marijuana for people to enjoy like beer or wine, but also products that more closely resemble cure-alls on the untested supplement market.

“There is a great fear that I continue to have, that the cannabis industry medically will be like the vitamin and nutritional supplement market,” Devinsky said. “People advertise on TV that we isolated a compound from jellyfish and it improves memory.”

He added: “It’s become a religion for people, and my personal view is if you want to pray to whatever gods you pray to, and you want to advocate for whatever political candidate, it’s a free country. But when it comes to medical therapy, we have a higher standard.”

In the US, the push for marijuana legalization comes at a time of increasing dismay over the state of the criminal justice system, as sentencing laws passed during the “war on drugs” are being reexamined in light of their disproportionate impact on people of color.

“This growing acceptance, accessibility and use of cannabis and its derivatives has raised important public health concerns,” said Marie McCormick, a pediatrician at Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health, who chaired the committee. “Moreover, the lack of any aggregated knowledge of cannabis-related health effects has led to uncertainty about what, if any, are the harms or benefits from its use.

“We conducted an in-depth and broad review of the most recent research to establish firmly what the science says, and to highlight areas that still need further examination. As laws and policies continue to change, research must also.”

The report also took the unusual step of calling for private funding sources to advance marijuana research. Researchers found it “difficult to gain access to the quantity, quality, and type of cannabis product necessary”, the report said. “A diverse network of funders is needed to support cannabis and cannabinoid research.”

One of those hurdles is the limited supply of research-grade marijuana, which is grown only at the University of Mississippi.

“Any federal study has challenges,” said Nolan Kane, a geneticist at the University of Colorado at Boulder studying the evolution of plants such as sunflowers and hemp. He described government-approved marijuana as having “a fraction” of the psychoactive ingredients of privately grown marijuana, and said research subjects described the marijuana as “old” and “low quality”.

“Getting people to even accept money to smoke their marijuana – you’d think college campuses, it would be easy to get people to smoke marijuana,” Kane said. “It doesn’t at all reflect the marketplace ... It’s always going to be comparing apples and oranges until they’re able to make the products more similar.”

The report is the product of 16 experts in their fields, including neurologists, oncologists, epidemiologists and child psychiatrists. Among the review’s most fervent calls were for more investigation.

The study was sponsored by a group of state health departments, federal agencies and nonprofits, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Robert W Woodruff Foundation and the Arizona department of health services.

tl;dr, mutta tässä lienee sama suomeksi ja lyhennettynä:

Yhdysvaltain kansallisen tiedeakatemian tutkijat ovat koostaneet laajan raportin kannabiksen käytön terveysvaikutuksista, TheScientist kertoo. Tutkijat kävivät läpi yli 10 000 vuodesta 1999 lähtien julkaistua tutkimusta kannabiksen terveysvaikutuksista ja koostivat niiden pohjalta aiheesta 440-sivuisen kirjan.

Viime vuosina useat Yhdysvaltain osavaltiot ovat laillistaneet kannabiksen lääketieteellisen käytön, jotkut myös viihdekäytön. Coloradossa, Alaskassa, Oregonissa ja pääkaupunki Washington DC:ssä viihdekäyttö on ollut sallittua vuoden-muutaman ajan. Massachusettsissa, Kaliforniassa ja Nevadassa se äänestettiin lailliseksi samoissa marraskuun 2016 vaaleissa, joissa Donald Trump valittiin presidentiksi.

Kannabiksen saatavuuden, yleisen hyväksyttävyyden ja käytön lisääntyessä myös tarve sen terveysvaikutusten ymmärtämiselle kasvaa entisestään. Tutkimusten erittäin runsaasta lukumäärästä huolimatta tutkijat totesivat sekä useimpien väitettyjen kannabiksen hyötyjen että haittojen olevan yhä pitävästi tieteellisesti todistamatta.

Raportin aihealueet ovat kannabiksen käytön vaikutukset muun muassa syöpiin, mielenterveysongelmiin ja hengityselinsairauksiin. Useimmilla osa-alueilla vahva näyttö kannabiksen vaikutuksesta hyvään tai huonoon suuntaan puuttuu, tutkijat toteavat.

Vaikka kannabiksen käyttö on hyväksytty joissain osavaltioissa, Yhdysvaltain liittovaltio luokittelee kannabiksen yhä samaan huumausaineiden luokkaan muun muassa heroiinin ja LSD:n kanssa. Tämä vaikeuttaa sen tutkimista käyttökokein ja rahoituksen saamista tällaisiin tutkimuksiin.

Raportissa pystyttiin vahvistamaan kuitenkin muutamia asioita kannabiksen terveysvaikutuksista. Vahvaa tutkimusnäyttöä on esimerkiksi siitä, että kannabis ja kannabinoidit voivat lievittää kipua monilla potilailla ja vähentää kemoterapiahoidossa olevien syöpäpotilaiden pahoinvointia ja oksentelua.

Ehkä hieman yllättäen vahvaa näyttöä on myös siitä, että toisin kuin tupakointi, säännöllinen kannabissätkän polttaminen ei lisää syöpäriskiä esimerkiksi keuhkosyövän osalta. Se sijaan muut tyypilliset sauhuttelijoiden vaivat, krooninen yskä, toistuvat keuhkoputkentulehdukset ja lisääntynyt limaneritys vaivaavat kannabiksen polttajia siinä missä tupakoitsijoitakin.

http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/tiede/tut ... an-6614852

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... is-smoking

Beer sales don't take a hit from marijuana legalisation, study finds

Research suggests cannabis legalisation linked to rise in drinking rather than users substituting Budweiser for bud-smoking

The legalisation of marijuana in several US states has not curbed beer sales, according to new research, as Americans managed to find room in their social schedules for both.

Analysts at investment firm Bernstein said fears that the brewing industry would be sent into chronic decline by red-eyed revellers reaching for joints instead of beers have proved unfounded.

“At first sight, one would regard marijuana and alcohol in general as clear rivals and that every extra dollar spent on weed meant a dollar less on booze,” they said.

But rather than swapping Budweiser for bud-smoking, the legalisation of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes has in some cases corresponded with an uptick in beer consumption.

In states where medical marijuana is legal, beer consumption was down 0.6% on average in the three years leading up to legalisation, but rose 0.1% in the three years after.

Bernstein admitted its analysis was based on a relatively small number of states over just a few years but said: “Our analysis indicates that the legalisation of medical marijuana had a positive impact on beer volume trends.”

It said this suggested “beer and weed are complements rather than substitutes”.

The picture was more mixed in states where recreational marijuana use has been legalised, but showed no signs that beer was losing out in favour of weed.

The surprising results could be down to smokers having more money in their pockets to spend on beer, thanks to a fall in the price per gram of marijuana since legalisation, said Bernstein.

In the state of Washington, habitual tokers paid around $10 per gram in March 2016, down from $25 in September 2014.

While the budding legal weed industry faces higher costs from taxes and regulation, Bernstein said retail prices had still fallen because black-market dealers require a premium to offset the risk of imprisonment.

“This would imply that previous users of marijuana now have more disposable income to spend on either more booze or more weed,” they said.

The report, put together by a team of 10 analysts, also highlighted anecdotal evidence suggesting a degree of overlap in the cultures surrounding marijuana and craft beer.

It pointed to what has become known as the “St Patrick’s Day massacre”, when police raided an event staged by the Lagunitas beer brand, at which pot-smoking was commonplace.

Lagunitas later produced a brand of beer commemorating the event, while its annual production figures still make reference to 420, a number commonly used as shorthand for marijuana culture.

Its published beer output figures for the years 2010 to 2014 all ended in the figures 420.

Fellow craft beer brand Oskar Blues even printed instructions on its cans, indicating how to turn them into a bong for smoking weed.

The brand is based in Colorado, America’s highest state (by elevation) and also one of the first two, along with Washington, to legalise marijuana for recreational use in 2012.

“One does not need to look far into popular culture to see that beer and weed cultures can be highly complementary,” said Bernstein.

The investment firm also highlighted several other industries that stood to benefit from marijuana legalisation, mainly companies likely to benefit from an onset of the munchies.

They include Domino’s Pizza, Mexican food chain Chipotle and salty snacks firm Frito Lay.

California became the first state to legalise medical marijuana in 1996, but a wave of states have since followed suit.

There are currently 28 states whose citizens can reach for a joint to ease their suffering and eight where its use is allowed for recreational purposes.

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... eith-boots

Police officer found with £700,000 of drugs at his home, court told

Insp Keith Boots, who was responsible for disposing of seized drugs, had heroin and cocaine in his Bradford house, jury hears

A police inspector responsible for disposing of seized drugs was found with an estimated £700,000 worth of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis at his home, a trial has heard.

A jury at Leeds crown court was told that Insp Keith Boots, 55, was responsible for disposing of confiscated drugs for West Yorkshire police in Bradford but instead stole large quantities to supply to others.

When colleagues raided Boots’s Bradford home they found illegal drugs worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, including 11kg of cocaine in his washing machine, the court heard.

Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “What was found on the ground floor would have kept a 1970s rock star, as well as his band, entertained for weeks.”

He said the drugs found in the house were estimated to be worth £700,000 by a police expert.

Greaney claimed that Boots, who had been a West Yorkshire police officer since 1990 and an inspector for more than 10 years, stole drugs from the stores he managed at Trafalgar House police station, in the centre of Bradford.

His home was searched in December 2014 after a colleague noticed a quantity of cocaine missing from the station store, the court heard.

“What Keith Boots had been doing is as simple as it is wicked,” Greaney said. “In a gross breach of trust, he had been exploiting weaknesses in the system for the destruction of controlled drugs in order to steal them.”

Boots went on trial on Wednesday with his son Ashley Boots. Keith Boots denies four counts of theft, six counts of possession of controlled drugs with intent to supply, one count of possessing ammunition, three counts of conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, one count of conspiracy to steal and one count of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Ashley Boots, 29, denies six counts of possession of controlled drugs with intent to supply, one count of possessing ammunition, three counts of conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, one count of conspiracy to steal and one count of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The trial continues.

[Pasi Fist]

http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000005052429.html

Saksa laillistaa lääkekannabiksen

Saksaan aiotaan myös perustaa kannabiksen viljelystä vastaava virasto.

Kannabiksen käyttö lääkkeenä tulee lailliseksi Saksassa. Uutistoimisto AFP:n mukaan Saksan liittopäivät hyväksyi torstaina yksimielisesti esityksen lääkekannabiksen sallimisesta maassa.

Lääkekannabiksen käytöstä tulee sallittua useiden vakavien sairauksien hoidossa. Niitä ovat muun muassa eräät syövät ja ms-tauti. Lisäksi lääkekannabista saa vastaisuudessa määrätä potilaille, joilla on epilepsia tai kemoterapiasta aiheutuva krooninen pahoinvointi.

Laki tulee voimaan maaliskuussa. Saksaan aiotaan myös perustaa kannabiksen viljelystä vastaava virasto. Sitä ennen kannabistuotteet aiotaan tuoda ulkomailta.

Muun kuin reseptillä määrätyn kannabiksen hallussapito pysyy Saksassa laittomana, vaikka joissain Saksan osavaltioissa katsotaan pienten määrien hallussapitoa läpi sormien.

Liittokansleri Angela Merkelin johtaman kristillisdemokraattisen puolueen parlamentaarikko Rainer Hayek kiitteli päätöstä mutta painotti samalla, ettei laki mahdollista esimerkiksi kannabiksen viihdekäyttöä eikä kannabissavukkeiden polttoa reseptilääkkeenä.

Reseptin saaneet potilaat voivat ostaa lääkekannabista apteekeista uutteena tai kuivattuina nuppuina. Jotkut potilaat voivat myös hankkia kannabista ulkomailta synteettisinä johdannaisina.

Laki edellyttää lääkekannabiksesta koituvien kustannusten kattamista vakuutusrahoilla.

Lakia ajanut terveysministeri Hermann Gröhe arvioi uudistuksen auttavan etenkin kivunlievitystä tarvitsevia potilaita.

Lakiesitys julkistettiin viime toukokuussa sen jälkeen kun eräälle potilaalle oli myönnetty poikkeuslupa kannabiksen kasvatukseen. Potilas sai luvan, koska oli pystynyt todistamaan, että vain kannabis auttaa hänen kipuihinsa.

[Hra Mezola]

http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000005052429.html

Saksa laillistaa lääkekannabiksen

Saksaan aiotaan myös perustaa kannabiksen viljelystä vastaava virasto.

Kannabiksen käyttö lääkkeenä tulee lailliseksi Saksassa. Uutistoimisto AFP:n mukaan Saksan liittopäivät hyväksyi torstaina yksimielisesti esityksen lääkekannabiksen sallimisesta maassa.

Lääkekannabiksen käytöstä tulee sallittua useiden vakavien sairauksien hoidossa. Niitä ovat muun muassa eräät syövät ja ms-tauti. Lisäksi lääkekannabista saa vastaisuudessa määrätä potilaille, joilla on epilepsia tai kemoterapiasta aiheutuva krooninen pahoinvointi.

Laki tulee voimaan maaliskuussa. Saksaan aiotaan myös perustaa kannabiksen viljelystä vastaava virasto. Sitä ennen kannabistuotteet aiotaan tuoda ulkomailta.

Muun kuin reseptillä määrätyn kannabiksen hallussapito pysyy Saksassa laittomana, vaikka joissain Saksan osavaltioissa katsotaan pienten määrien hallussapitoa läpi sormien.

Liittokansleri Angela Merkelin johtaman kristillisdemokraattisen puolueen parlamentaarikko Rainer Hayek kiitteli päätöstä mutta painotti samalla, ettei laki mahdollista esimerkiksi kannabiksen viihdekäyttöä eikä kannabissavukkeiden polttoa reseptilääkkeenä.

Reseptin saaneet potilaat voivat ostaa lääkekannabista apteekeista uutteena tai kuivattuina nuppuina. Jotkut potilaat voivat myös hankkia kannabista ulkomailta synteettisinä johdannaisina.

Laki edellyttää lääkekannabiksesta koituvien kustannusten kattamista vakuutusrahoilla.

Lakia ajanut terveysministeri Hermann Gröhe arvioi uudistuksen auttavan etenkin kivunlievitystä tarvitsevia potilaita.

Lakiesitys julkistettiin viime toukokuussa sen jälkeen kun eräälle potilaalle oli myönnetty poikkeuslupa kannabiksen kasvatukseen. Potilas sai luvan, koska oli pystynyt todistamaan, että vain kannabis auttaa hänen kipuihinsa.

It begins...

[Pasi Fist]

Koko artikkeli:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -most-ever

Obama commutes a final 330 sentences, most in a single day by any US president

Two days after cutting short the prison term of Chelsea Manning, a new flood of commutations further cements the president’s record-breaking numbers

In his last full day as president, Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 330 inmates, further cementing his legacy as having granted more commutations than any other president in US history.

On Thursday Obama cut short the prison terms of 330 people, the majority of whom were convicted of federal drug crimes. During the president’s second term, he exercised his presidential power to grant clemency liberally, particularly for those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. In addition to raising Obama’s total tally of sentences shortened, Thursday’s flood of commutations is the most Obama or any US president has issued in a single day. Obama has commuted more people’s sentences than the last 13 presidents combined, according to the White House. In total, Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 people, include more than 560 who were serving life sentences...