February 28, 2000

MoJo Must Reads

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Seattle’s card-carrying dope smokers

March 3, 2000

A Seattle organization that legally supplies marijuana under Washington state’s new medical marijuana statute plans to issue clients photo-ID cards confirming their right to smoke out, according to the SEATTLE WEEKLY. The group hopes the cards will prevent police from mistaking medical marijuana users from folks who toke for fun. The cops have responded positively to the plan. However, police and activists differ over just how much pot can qualify as medicine. Police guidelines say those with a prescription for marijuana can legally possess up to nine plants. But according to Compassion in Action medical director Francis Podrebarac’s reading of the law, card carriers should be allowed to grow up to 144 plants.

Read the SEATTLE WEEKLY story here.

—JB

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Freedom to dump

March 2, 2000

American coal-fueled power plants release 76 million tons of toxic waste each year. And if that doesn’t cheer you up, consider this: Waste from coal-based plants is completely exempt from federal regulation, according to the ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE. That means that in some states, like Texas, plants can dump their waste anywhere they please within a 50-mile radius, without so much as a permit. The article notes that Americans living within a one-mile radius power plants are twice as likely to live in poverty as the general population.

While the report links coal-plant waste to severely mutated fish, it’s not just the environment that suffers. “The cancer risks for children drinking ground water contaminated with arsenic from power plant wastes have been estimated to be as high as one in 100,” reports a Citizens Coal Council representative.

Read the ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE story here.

—KS

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Forest relocation

March 1, 2000

Leave Mohammed out of it and move that mountain!

When a plan to widen a major British highway threatened an old-growth forest in Kent, Britain’s Highways Agency simply scooped up the forest and moved it. According to the ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE, the agency relocated 10,000 tons of ancient woodland soil and used a “giant tree spade” to move 100 grouped hazel trees to a different site. The work was timed to take place while dormice that inhabit the hazel forest were hibernating.

Read the ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE story here.

—PS

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The UK’s killer hospitals

Feb. 29, 2000

If you find yourself in England with a broken bone or a severed limb, you may just want to walk it off. Going to the hospital could be life threatening, the INDEPENDENT reports.

At least 30,000 people in the UK may be dying in hospitals every year as a result of preventable medical accidents, according to the Imperial College School of Medicine. The number is higher than the total number of deaths from all other accidents, including those that occur at home and on the road.

Some doctors explain the staggering death toll by pointing out that modern medical treatments, while more effective, are generally riskier than older forms of treatment. Potential improvements include better training of interns, and reviving the use of leeches and blood letting.

Read the INDEPENDENT story here.

—JG

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Smoke pot, live longer

Feb. 28, 2000

A study at a Madrid university — published today in the the journal Nature — has shown that THC, the inebriating ingredient in marijuana, completely eliminated highly lethal cancerous brain tumors in lab rats, according to the ASSOCIATED PRESS.

Three of the 15 rats treated with THC saw their tumors disappear completely, while another nine rats treated with the substance outlived cagemates who did not receive THC.

Naturally, practitioners of traditional Western medicine pooh-pooh’d the study, saying trials on rats aren’t relevant to the effects of drugs on humans. This, mind you, from the people who brought you vivisection.

Read the ASSOCIATED PRESS story here.

—BSB

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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