Given the mounting evidence concerning marijuana’s healing potential and the fact that legalization in states has not spurred true conflict and only served to produce tax revenue, I think it’s about time for Congress to proactively reschedule marijuana. But will they listen?
Monsanto may be in trouble in Europe. After months of controversy over disparaging studies concerning Round Up’s main ingredient, glyphosate, the Committee on Environment, Food Safety & Public Health (ENVI) has formally objected to the re-authorization by the European Commission of the herbicide.
Voting to uphold this objection were 36 members, while 6 members voted against it and 18 did not vote.
Monsanto recently lost a bid to take over Swiss pesticide company, Syngenta, one if its largest competitors. Instead, China National Chemical Corporation (Chem China) successfully bought out Syngenta for a whopping $43 billion cash offer.
New research shows a 43% increase in clinical trials funded by drug companies during 2006-2014. Can you say “conflict of interest?”
Concerns have been expressed over the past few years about the independence of clinical trials, due to the funding of some trials by corporations with vested interests. New data from Johns Hopkins University suggests that this is now the norm rather than the exception. The clinical trials that allow a drug to go to market are most often funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
The word is out. Glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic,” according to the World Health Organization’s IARC, several agencies in the EU, and California’s Environmental Protection Agency. But what can a wife do when her husband dies from exposure to the chemical over a lifetime of farming?
France gets it when it comes to pesticides. Lawmakers in the country just approved plans to totally ban some widely used pesticides blamed for harming bees, going above and beyond European Union (EU) restrictions.
BASF, one of the big six pesticide and GMO corporations, has announced that it is closing GM test sites in Hawaii, India, and Puerto Rico, and cutting its work force by 350.
The third-time possession of marijuana in Louisiana results in a criminal felony, but the city of New Orleans hopes to become a positive influence on the overly-strict rules governing pot use in the state.
County staff in Colorado’s Boulder County have been directed to draft a plan to rid county-owned land of genetically modified crops in the relatively near future. The directive was given recently (March 2016) by the Board of County Commissioners in the best interest of their people.
Wendy’s has more than 6,500 franchises in the US alone. It’s the world’s third largest fast food hamburger chain, servicing millions of customers annually. A group of employees known as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is calling for a boycott of the hamburger titan, kicking off a demonstration to communicate its displeasure with a 12-day Workers’ Voice tour earlier this month.
