November 29, 2007
Newsmakers
POT DOSES: Washington state law allows medical marijuana patients to possess up to a 60-day supply of pot for their personal needs. But what constitutes a 60-day supply? An article in the Los Angeles Times took up the question recently, quoting Gregory Carter, UW clinical professor of rehabilitation medicine, along the way. Carter studies, among other things, the role of cannabinoids in the management of neuromuscular disease.
It’s not a simple question, Carter and others say. “There are so many variables here. Even if you just look at smokers, you have to look not only at the quality of the pot, but also the efficiency of the smoker,” Carter said. “Some people are better smokers than others.”
The article stated that Carter and colleagues have studied the dose amounts for a long-running federal study of medical marijuana. Based on those amounts, a 60-day supply would amount to about 4 1/2 pounds of pot — much more than allowed by any state. “That’s probably a pretty conservative estimate,” Carter said.
LIGHT WOES: David Avery, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Harborview Medical Center, was quoted in a recent Washington Post article about the effects on humans of artificial light.
“Electric lights are wonderful, but as with a lot of other things, we really mess things up,” Avery, who studies light’s impacts on health, told the Post. “Our ancestors evolved in a very regular light-dark cycle, and our bodies just work better that way. But more and more, we are creating very irregular lighting cues.”
The article stated, “… the fact that artificial lighting can reset people’s clocks and boost alertness at night speaks to its potential to throw normal rhythms into disarray.”
WARMER WASHINGTON? Scientists predict that global warming could cause temperatures to rise by five degrees over the next seven decades, which will mean more flooding and severe weather. An Associated Press article discussing the issue stated “Lots of people in Washington are studying and preparing for global warming. The consensus emerging so far is that, while the impacts will be significant, they are not of disaster movie proportions.”
The article quoted Lara Whitely Binder, an outreach specialist for the Climate Impacts Group of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. “We don’t need to be panicking,” Binder said. “But we do need to be smart about what we do with information and prepare the region for (climate change).”
Newsmakers is a column noting some of the press coverage of the university in which faculty and staff are quoted.
