Girl Scouts USA wrote a cease and desist letter to an Oakland, California, marijuana dispensary. They asked the company to stop using the name Girl Scout Cookies for this product. The Girl Scouts organization has exclusive rights to the name under trademark law.
photo via VSCO
As a result the Magnolia Oakland dispensary pulled this product of their shelves right away. Kudos to the Girl Scouts for fighting back.
In Nevada, a Las Vegas company, Shango, has been selling under the name Gurl Scouts. So far, the Girls Scouts haven’t taken any action against that company, as of this time. The parents. however, are very upset, reports a Nevada TV station.
Although the organization didn’t take legal action in Las Vegas, they released the following statement:
We were recently made aware of local dispensaries using the Girl Scouts trademarked name, or a variation of our trademarked name, to sell their products. In January, dispensaries in California were issued a cease and desist letter from Girl Scouts of the USA for trademark infringement and have removed the product in violation from their shelves. “Girl Scout Cookies” is a registered trademark dating back to 1936. Our famous cookies are known the world over for their delicious flavor and we do not want the public to be confused by unauthorized products in the marketplace.
Here is another article about the cease and desist in California:
There, a night of partying — Bacardi rum, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and half of a marijuana cookie — left her feeling so intoxicated she says could not get out of a car on her own that night when she went with Masina and a group of his friends to get fast food, and she said she cannot recall how she got back inside the house.
She said the next thing she remembered after passing out was waking up with Masina raping her.
“It hurt. It was very painful,” she said, and though she said she felt “scared and helpless,” she tried to move her legs to stop him.
“Did you consent in any way to the sexual contact you’ve been describing?” the prosecutor asked.
“No,” the woman said.
The woman testified she passed out and awoke several more times throughout the night, each time to a different horror: She awoke to Masina forcing her to engage in oral sex so rough she could not breathe; she awoke unable to move from a couch and unable to reach someone to come help her; she awoke, wearing only a bra and a blanket, on the lawn of a neighboring home where she saw Masina’s car still parked outside and “that fear came over me again because I knew he was still in the house.”
Guys, as well as gals, should consider that marijuana use may lead to unwanted sex
Calling Out the Role of Marijuana is not “Victim Shaming”
The description of the rape is horrible. The evidence suggests that the football player and the woman were abusing substances before the sexual activity occurred. The law should not excuse this behavior towards a woman who has passed out.
Nine days earlier, Masina, her high school friend, had invited the victim to Los Angeles for a long weekend. At that time, Masina, the woman and another football player, Max Hill, partied hard. The victim took marijuana, two Xanax pills along with alcohol The woman alleges that both Masina and Don Hill raped her. Masina and Hill were suspended from the team, but a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles has been dismissed.
Alcohol can produce some pretty outrageous behaviors, but when alcohol mixes with marijuana or other drugs, extremes happen. This case, the Stanford swimmer’s case and many others exemplify why we need to educate against intoxication. It is not “victim shaming” to explain that the 19-year-old would not have passed out if she had did not eat half a marijuana cookie. The effects of marijuana cookies happen about two hours after ingestion.
In 2014, the Vote No on 2 campaign in Florida warned about marijuana cookies and date rape. This recent rape case involving a college football player should scrutinize the role of the marijuana -laced cookie .
Half of a cookie from Colorado, Washington or California could have as much as 50 milligrams of marijuana. Levy Thamba jumped off a building to his death after eating a marijuana-laced cookie. A few weeks later, Richard Kirk shot his wife after eating a marijuana candy and going crazy.
There is no mention of how and when Masina or the woman obtained the cookies. Who bought or provided the cookie? Was interstate drug trafficking involved? Calling out substance abuse as a factor doesn’t excuse rape, but it warns of the conditions in which rape is most likely to occur.
No on 2 Predicted Correctly
In 2014, the Florida Vote No on 2 Campaign forecast that marijuana would become the new date-rape drug. Journalists, respectable blogs and the marijuana industry laughed at the idea. No on 2’s prediction was correct. Let’s hope the prosecutor explores the role of the pot-laced cookie during the trial. It should serve as a warning against this type of impairment.
States should pass laws to clarify consent for sexual activity in order to guard against rape and unwanted sex. Equally important, educators need to inform about the role of substance abuse in domestic violence and rape. Pedophiles often give marijuana to their victims.
Even groups concerned with violence against women remain in the dark. Colleges don’t do enough to warn against drugs to avoid unwanted sex. In fact, the United States is quite backwards compared to other countries in failing to see the connection. Those who blame alcohol only, and not other drugs, are complicit in the denial.
The incident happened off campus during the summer, but the defendant was suspended from his team last fall. A sophomore, he was slated to be a starting linebacker for USC’s varsity team.
Marijuana-related suicide is a controversial topic because other websites include commenters who claim marijuana saved their lives. Pot interferes with the reward center of the brain, just like cocaine, alcohol and heroin. So when someone dependent on the drug doesn’t have it, their depression or anxiety becomes stronger than previously. After prolonged use, the brain eventually doesn’t function as well.
For this reason, it’s much wiser to rely on yoga, counseling, walking, and other exercise for depression and anxiety. (Others will say that anti-depressants are safer, although we won’t actually endorse them, and don’t think they’re always necessary.)
Source: Christine Miller, PhD
Marijuana increases the risk for psychosis more than any other drug. Marijuana is not the panacea the pot industry wants you to believe.
In today’s world, students have huge problems and challenges even if they don’t abuse substances. Marijuana is the most likely drug of abuse for teens. Any substance abuse –marijuana, alcohol, opiates, other drugs or a combination – generally makes the depression more difficult to overcome.
The town of Pueblo, Colorado has had an alarming trend of suicides among its teens, at least five this year. Although local officials link these deaths to bullying, Pueblo is infiltrated with marijuana and other drugs. Dr. Steven Simerville, head of pediatrics at a Pueblo hospital, has spoken about the connection between marijuana and teen suicide. In October, 2016, he said that all but one of teens who attempted suicide had THC in their toxicology reports.
A few years ago studies showed that 28% of all high school students are depressed. There are plenty of reasons for teens to be depressed in this society: hormonal change, social pressure, relationships and academics. The social media adds a layer of complication to the problem with cyber bullying. When a teen becomes an adult, additional challenges emerge, and for some, entry into adulthood is jolting.
Suicide is Increasing Above National Rate in Colorado
The opposite is occurring in Colorado. Suicide rates in Colorado have reached all-time highs, according to a recent report by the Colorado Health Institute. Each one of Colorado’s 21 health regions had a suicide rate higher than the national average.
Those old enough to go into dispensaries can see how the pot industry advertises marijuana to treat depression or anxiety. Dispensaries prey on the vulnerable. For veterans and those without a job, it’s hard to resist.
When the pot industry tells us that “no one ever died from marijuana,” they’re being dishonest. There’s a popular strain of marijuana called Purple Suicide. There’s also a line of vape pens called Suicide Girls, specifically marketed for using honey/hash oil. Makers of the vape pens and marketers of Purple Suicide are onto something: marijuana use increases the suicide risk.
When they assert the numbers of those who die from alcohol each year, please ask who is tracking deaths from marijuana. Maybe it is time for the CDC to start tracking marijuana-related deaths. Please read Part 3, The Common Element.
When Hamza Warsame fell six floors to his death in December, 2015, the social media was abuzz with suggestions of a hate crime against the Muslim teen. Warsame, an immigrant from Somalia, was living in Seattle and had been invited to the 21-year-old classmate’s apartment.
Hamza Warsame. The 16-year-old killed himself after using only once, a reflection of the high potency of today’s pot.
However, the news came out that Warsame had smoked marijuana for the first time and had a psychotic reaction. He may have tried to jump to the next building’s roof. It wasn’t legal for a 16- year-old to smoke marijuana. But Washington is a marijuana state, and his 21-year-old classmate had bought it legitimately at a dispensary. (Signs along the highways of Washington warn that it’s illegal to buy or give alcohol to those under age 21. There should be similar warnings for marijuana.)
Warsame’s death was from smoking today’s high potency ganja, not the edibles. At least two young men, Luke Goodman, 23, and Levy Thamba, 19, killed themselves in Colorado after eating marijuana edibles which made them psychotic. In Colorado, edibles first went on sale for recreational purposes beginning in January, 2014. Many people read about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s experience with marijuana. A mother also wrote a New York Times column about that marijuana chocolate bar that put her son on suicide watch.
Less well known are the stories of Brant Clark and Daniel Juarez, featured on a CBS News Report of May, 2015. High potency pot has been the norm in Colorado since the early 2000s. Psychosis and hallucinations occur quite frequently. These teens became psychotic and killed themselves — before Coloradans voted to legalize recreational marijuana.
Tron Dohse, from the website of CBS4 News Photo of Daniel Juarez on top is also from the CBS affiliate in Denver.
Tron Dohse was a young adult featured in the same evening news report that reported about Clark and Juarez. He overdosed on marijuana and fell to his death while trying to climb a building.
As one Colorado resident said, “If residents had known the horror story of why Daniel Juarez death in 2012, they never would have voted to legalize.” (Juarez’s photo is on top of the page.)
More Recent Suicides
More recently, there were the marijuana-related suicides Marc Bullard and Rashaan Salaam in Colorado. (These are the stories that made the news, so we don’t mention recent suicides from pot not in the news.) Salaam was 41, a former Heisman Trophy winner. He had a promising football career until 1999, when he lost his energy and began spending time smoking pot. He never got his life back and when he died there was 55 ng. of THC in his blood.
Like Salaam, Marc Bullard was living in Colorado at the time of his death. The Texas native had been a high school valedictorian, a successful college student and had landed a dream job. However, he had moved to Colorado and was doing dabs. In his journal, he recorded the downward spiral of depression and his inability to stop doing marijuana dabs. He was 23.
A landmark study published in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal, September, 2014, tracked teenage marijuana use in Australia and New Zealand. The subjects were tested for a variety of outcomes by age 30. The evidence showed that consistent early use below age 18 is connected to 7x the risk of attempted suicide before age 30.
Not all suicide attempts are successful. But it is shocking and traumatizes a family when someone attempts suicide. Parent have written of these events and how it affects their families, I wish We had Never Moved Here and My Son’s Psychiatric Surprise. Another striking story of survival is on the MomsStrong.org website. Part 2 will explain more about the suicide risk with marijuana. Part 3 will have more specific information about marijuana victims Daniel Juarez, Levy Thamba, Andy Zorn and Shane Robinson.
