June, 28 2010, 10:35am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Mike Meno, MPP director of communications 202-905-2030 or mmeno@mpp.org
Rhode Island to Hold Hearings on Medical Marijuana Compassion Center Applications
Rhode Island Moves to Expand Patient Access Through Non-Profit Distribution Centers, While Patients in Nearby States Continue to Suffer Without Effective Relief
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Rhode
Island's department of health will hold public hearings tomorrow to
review and receive comments on 15 applicants to open the state's first
medical marijuana compassion centers, which will operate as nonprofit
entities to safely and securely distribute medical marijuana to
qualified patients in the state. According to recently released figures,
Rhode Island has 1,562 medical marijuana patients who are currently
required to grow their own medicine or have caregivers grow it for them.
State officials plan to open up to three compassion centers to dispense
medicine to qualified patients and improve their access.
WHAT: Public hearings on applicants to operate compassion centers
in Rhode Island
WHEN: Tuesday, June 29, at 10 a.m.
WHERE: Department of Health auditorium, 3 Capitol
Hill, Providence, Rhode Island
If necessary, a continuation hearing is
scheduled for Wednesday, June 30, at the same time and location. Any
applicants who are granted a compassion center license will be required
to pay a $2,500 licensing fee. The health department is expected to
announce the first grant recipients in about a month. Once applicants
are approved, Rhode Island will join New Mexico and Colorado as medical
marijuana states that have state-licensed dispensary systems. Similar
regulated dispensary programs are planned to be implemented soon in
Maine, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. A bill that would
create a dispensary system in Vermont passed through three committees
this legislative session, but didn't receive a floor vote.
Since 1996, 14 states and the District of
Columbia passed medical marijuana laws. New medical marijuana
legislation was introduced in more than a dozen additional states this
year, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Delaware.
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is the number one organization in the U.S. legalizing cannabis. We passed 13 medical cannabis laws in the past 15 years, and we ran winning campaigns in eight of the 11 legalization states. No organization in the movement has changed as many cannabis laws, impacted as many patients and consumers, created as many new markets, or done more to end cannabis prohibition in the U.S. than MPP.
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"Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants," according to a group of 38 scientists, including multiple Nobel Prize winners.
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Dozens of scientists are calling in no uncertain terms for a halt on research to create "mirror life," particularly "mirror bacteria" that could "pose ecological risks" and possibly cause "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of the plant and animal species, including humans."
The group of 38 scientists, who include Nobel laureates and other experts, addressed research into "mirror life"—mirror-image biological molecules—in a piece of commentary published in the journal Science published Friday, which accompanied a technical report that was released earlier in December.
One of the scientists, synthetic biologist Kate Adamala at the University of Minnesota, was working on creating a mirror cell but "changed track last year" after studying the risks, according to the Guardian.
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When broken down into simple terms, mirror life sounds like something out of science fiction. All the biomolecules that constitute life have a "handedness" to them—"right-handed" nucleotides make up DNA and RNA, and proteins are formed from "left-handed" amino acids.
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