The Shalala Shuffle: Former HHS Chief "Evolves" on Marijuana

Former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala has become the latest Drug Warrior to "evolve" on marijuana.

Shalala, who is now running for a Congressional seat in Florida, tweeted on 4/20: "Decriminalizing marijuana shouldn't just be a policy priority — but a moral imperative." The tweet links to a page on her website where you can sign up for her campaign, and donate!

Yet, although Shalala once admitted to smoking pot in college in an interview with Diane Sawyer, as H&HS chief in 1996 she stood with Attorney General Janet Reno and Drug "Czar" Barry McCaffrey threatening to revoke doctors' licenses for recommending medical marijuana (a successful civil challenge later backed the government off). "Marijuana is illegal, dangerous, unhealthy and wrong," Shalala said at the time. "It's a one-way ticket to dead-end hopes and dreams."

SSRIs increasingly prescribed during pregnancy, without much study on their effects

Lead researcher Claudia Lugo-Candelas

Researchers from Columbia University, the Keck School of Medicine, and the Institute for the Developing Mind in Los Angeles, have published a new study on how infants' brains are affected when their mothers take SSRIs for depression during pregnancy. SSRIs include Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Luvox, Paxil and Zoloft, and are used by 1 in 10 adults in the US.

Excerpts from the study:

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) use among pregnant women is increasing, yet the association between prenatal SSRI exposure and fetal neurodevelopment is poorly understood.

A cohort study conducted at Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute included 98 infants: 16 with in utero SSRI exposure, 21 with in utero untreated maternal depression exposure, and 61 healthy controls. Our findings suggest that prenatal SSRI exposure has an association with fetal brain development, particularly in brain regions critical to emotional processing....To our knowledge, this is the first study to report increased volumes of the amygdala and insular cortex, as well as increased WM connection strength between these 2 regions, in prenatally SSRI-exposed infants.

Cynthia Nixon Advances Marijuana Legalization in New York

Sex in the City star and New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon has stepped up her support of marijuana legalization, after news reports trumpeted her position, at first reporting she was behind it for financial reasons.

Nixon has now released a video articulating the human rights reasons for her position: her concern that people of color are disproportionately punished for marijuana.

She even tweeted after former prohibitionist John Boehner turned potrepreneur, "Now that public opinion has shifted on marijuana, rich white men like Boehner and companies like Monsanto are trying to cash in. We can’t let them rake in profits while thousands of people, mostly people of color, continue to sit in jail for possession and use."

And just in time for 4/20, she's asking supporters to chip in $4.20 a month for her campaign against sitting Governor Andrew Cuomo, who remains opposed to recreational pot.

Nixon (in earmuffs) in Tanner '88.

It's possible Nixon got bit with the political bug when she played the daughter of a politician in Tanner 88, director Robert Altman's breakthrough TV series written by Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury").  In it, Nixon tells her dad, "There are so many pot growers in this state you wouldn't believe it." He then comes out in favor of legalization. 

Sex in the City was criticized for promoting alcohol use to young women, and co-star Kristin Davis (Charlotte) has admitted that she is a recovering alcoholic. The show had some pot smoking in it, though not with Miranda (Nixon's character, a workaholic attorney and single mom). Rather, it's sexy Samantha (Kim Cattrall) who is the procurer of the pot that Carrie (Sarah Jessica-Parker) is busted for after smoking on the streets of NYC. Samantha is perhaps punished for her freewheeling ways by being the character to get breast cancer, but as a new Mother Jones exposé reveals, it's alcohol that is the link there.

Let's hope Nixon is sincere in her embracing of legalization, and will look deeper and harder into the issues for the greater solutions, including coming to grips with all of our so-called addictions (like to sex and alcohol).

Lily Tomlin as Good Grandma Ganja

Lily Tomlin chillin' with silver fox Sam Elliott in Grandma

Almost as surprising as when I expected "Private Benjamin Goes to Kabul" from Tina Fey and instead got the excellent Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, I finally watched Grandma (2015) with Lily Tomlin, and it's the best movie I've seen in a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Lily fan. I laughed at her in "Laugh-In," and can
still recite much of the "Sister Boogie Woman" bit from her Modern Scream album (on which she tells a great pot joke). And I saw her emerge as an actress in that
single, unforgettable scene in Nashville where she listens to Keith Carradine singing "I'm Easy."

I think I was afraid Tomlin's Grandma would be a little too much like her character in Netflix's "Grace and Frankie," where she's ridiculed and made to look ridiculous by the alcoholic Jane Fonda character. But no, in Grandma, Lily as the feminist poetess Elle is back in all her power, signified by the "Violet" tattoo she wears on her arm (the name of the character she played in 9-5, wherein she smoked pot with Jane).

Nat Wolff (Stuck in Love, Peace Love and 
Misunderstanding) proves no match for Grandma

This Grandma isn't just there for her kids: she's living her own life, falling in love (with Judy Greer as Olivia), and dealing with her anger issues and her past, even while confronting her granddaughter's crisis pregnancy. Elle is still alive and kicking, like when she takes down her granddaughter's asshole boyfriend, who wears a huge pot leaf on his hockey jersey. Afterwards, she steals his stash.

Elle makes good use of her find in the next scene with Sam Elliot: two old friends (and flames) who share a joint for old times' sake. It's a great scene, as are the ones Tomlin plays with Greer and Marcia Gay Harden as her equally angry, caffeine-chugging daughter.

There's no discussion about pot with the granddaughter (as there was with Lily
and her son in 9-5). It's just a part of Elle's life, and not something that rules or defines her.

With appearances by John Cho (Harold and Kumar), Lauren Tom (Joy Luck Club), Missy Doty (Shameless), and Judy Geeson (To Sir with Love),  the film even has a bit of a poem by Tokin' Woman Anne Waldman, plus a final appearance by Elizabeth Peña (La Bamba), who died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 55 in 2014. (One more reason to be more like Frankie than Grace.)

Grandma was filmed in 19 days at a cost $600,000, and made $8.7 million. The film was named among the top ten independent films of 2015 by the National Board of Review, and Tomlin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

Un-Debunking the Queen Vic Myth about Marijuana

Queen Victoria with five of her nine children

Several authors of late (e.g. James H. Mills in Cannabis Britannica) have sought to debunk the persistent reports than Queen Victoria used cannabis to treat menstrual cramps.

The rumor started when it was discovered that John Russell Reynolds, M.D. wrote an article published in The Lancet in 1890 extolling the virtues of cannabis for cramps and other ailments, while credited as "Physician in Ordinary to Her Majesty's Household."

Cannabis researcher Ethan Russo, M.D., co-editor of Women and Cannabis, wrote in that book that Reynolds was Victoria's "personal physician" and that "it has been widely acknowledged" that she received monthly doses of cannabis for menstrual discomfort throughout her adult life. However, Russo now concurs with Mills's assertion that we have no proof of this.

Reynolds was appointed as physician to the Queen's household in 1878, when she was 59 years old, likely past the age when she would have experienced menstrual cramps. Further, his appointment did not make him Queen Vic's personal physician, but rather one of at least 200 physicians, apothecaries and other attendants in her "medical household," to treat her staff of over 800 persons at her 12 residences. However, she often consulted with various members of her medical staff, and also physicians who were not part of the household. (A. M. Cooke, Queen Victoria's Medical Household, Med Hist. 1982 Jul; 26(3): 307–320.)

Famous for her prudishness, Victoria never hired a female physician and was appalled that female medical students performed dissection alongside their male counterparts. Yet, she was surprisingly experimental when it came to her own medical care. She was an early adopter of chloroform for childbirth, using it in 1853 while giving birth to her eighth child, and again in 1857 for her final childbirth, "despite opposition from members of the clergy, who considered it against biblical teaching, and members of the medical profession, who thought it dangerous." (Wikipedia)

The physician who gave the Queen chloroform for each of these births was John Snow, an eminent epidemiologist and pioneer in anesthesia, who "does not appear to have had any appointment to the Medical Household" (Cooke). So Victoria is known to have consulted with a specialist outside of her household for a relatively unknown treatment.

It's possible, then, that Reynolds also treated the Queen while not yet one of her official physicians, when she was a younger woman. He was certainly prominent enough to have caught her attention:

The Voice and The Vipers*

UPDATE: On the Semifinals show that took the number of contestants down from eight to four, Jackie Foster performed a rockin' cover of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again," complete with ample fog machine–made smoke. Afterwards, host Carson Daly joked through the smoke, "This is legal now here, I think." Here was the coaches' reaction (right).

I've become a fan of TV's The Voice, since being introduced to Halsey's song "The New Americana" by contestant Moushumi on the 2016 season:

We are the new Americana
High on legal marijuana...

This year, the show's 14th season, features the addition Kelly Clarkson as a coach, along with returning coaches Alicia Keys, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.

And I've found a marijuana connection to all four of them.

First and foremost, Adam Levine sparked headlines like "World’s Biggest Killjoy Sues Universal Over Adam Levine’s Alleged Weed Habit" in 2013, after a security guard at Universal Studios, where The Voice is filmed, filed a lawsuit alleging that Macy Gray and others including Levine "began visiting the premises with drugs in hand and oftentimes offering drugs to [her].”

The plaintiff claimed that her complaints to management were met with “a blind eye,” including an incident when she smelled marijuana smoke coming from a recording studio. Her manager allegedly responded, “It’s Adam Levine. You know from Maroon 5 … He can do whatever he wants …" Ah, to be a musician.

Also in 2013, Levine was named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, joining the ranks of other pulchritudinous partakers Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Pierce Bronson, Harrison Ford and JFK Jr. 

As part of Maroon 5, Levine has won three Grammy Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award and a World Music Award. The winners of the first, fifth and ninth seasons of The Voice were on Levine's team. What a lazy pothead he is (not).

Country Singer Blake Shelton, Levine's nemesis on the show, somewhat surprisingly recorded "Ready to Roll" in 2011. The song is full of references to smoking pot:

We gonna burn all afternoon 
like it's something to smoke 
We gotta whole lot of 
nothing to do 
and nowhere to go 
So baby I don't know about you 
but I'm ready to roll 

No other word on whether or not Shelton has been on Willie Nelson's bus, or if he's a true Oakie from Muskogee, but he did say one singer's blind audition this season made him feel like he was "riding a unicorn." He's coached five winners on The Voice.

Kelly Clarkson, the OG vocal contest winner on American Idol in 2002, told USA Weekend magazine five years later that she ate a marijuana cookie while in Amsterdam. "It is legal there, and it is not legal here [in the US]," she noted.

"I don't ever do anything illegal here," Clarkson added. "I wouldn't do anything that would cause holes in your brain or your nasal cavity. Call me Texan, but I don't think of marijuana like that." Shortly thereafter, Blender magazine's profile of Clarkson presented her as a bit of a rebel, documenting her rift with 74-year-old BMG Chairman/CEO Clive Davis. "I can't stand it when people put out the same record over and over again," Clarkson told Blender. "Life is too short to be a pushover." Spoken like a true pothead.

Clarkson has sold over 25 million albums and 36 million singles worldwide and scored a total of over 100 number ones on the Billboard charts. She's won three Grammy Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, four American Music Awards, and two Academy of Country Music Awards. In 2012, she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.

The stellar singer recently revealed that she was hospitalized during a "horrible" pregnancy due to severe nausea and vomiting. It's likely she suffered from hyperemis gravidarum (HG), a debilitating ailment that afflicts 1-2% of pregnant women globally, including Princess Kate. Since cannabis is the safest and most effective anti-emetic known to man, with a non-oral delivery system (smoking) that offers immediate relief, it would make sense to study it as a remedy for mothers with severe morning sickness. Maybe now that it's legal in many states of the US, Clarkson will consider trying it again, for medicinal or recreational purposes.

Finally, Alicia Keys, who coached the winner on her last appearance on the The Voice two years ago, is so spectacularly soulful she probably doesn't need any herbal assistance to fly high.
Not so, perhaps, her fans. In the 2006 "Drug Testing" episode on TV's The Office, Michael (Steve Carell) attends an Alicia Keys concert and sheepishly admits, "I think I might have gotten
high accidentally by a girl with
a lip ring."

*A viper, for you cats and kitties who don't know, was slang for a pot smoker in the Roaring 20s.