Run from the Cure

Cannabis Cures Cancer – “Run From The Cure” The Rick Simpson Story

(Google Video) After a serious head injury in 1997, Rick Simpson sought relief from his medical condition through the use of medicinal hemp oil. When Rick discovered that the hemp oil (with its high concentration of T.H.C.) cured cancers and other illnesses, he tried to share it with as many people as he could free of charge. When the story went public, the long arm of the law snatched the medicine – leaving potentially thousands of people without their cancer treatments – and leaving Rick with unconsitutional charges of possessing and trafficking marijuana!

Medical pot can cost parents in custody disputes

GENE JOHNSON
AP Features/Raw Story

Jun 21, 2010 06:31 EDT

Nicholas Pouch runs an organic farm and a glassblowing studio on a 20-acre spread in southwest Washington’s timber country. Spicy mustard greens, tomatoes and corn sprout in humid greenhouses as chickens and sheep roam nearby.

It would be an ideal place for children to romp, Pouch thinks. But his children can’t be there because he’s a medical marijuana patient.

A drug task force acting on a tip from his former partner raided his grow operation in 2007. Even though Pouch’s criminal charges were dropped, she cited the arrest and his marijuana use in winning full custody of their boys, now 9 and 11.

For the past 2 1/2 years, Pouch has seen the boys twice a month, during supervised visits at a neutral house in Olympia. “There’s no reason anybody should have to go through this,” Pouch said. “Why aren’t they here, chasing snakes like they like to do?”

More than a decade after states began approving marijuana for medical use, its role in custody disputes remains a little-known side effect.

While those laws can protect patients from criminal charges, they typically haven’t prevented judges, court commissioners or guardians ad litem from considering a parent’s marijuana use in custody matters — even in states such as Washington, where complying patients “shall not be penalized in any manner, or denied any right or privilege,” according to the law.

Arbiters often side with parents who try to keep their children away from pot. Medical marijuana activists in several states, including Washington, California and Colorado, say they’ve been getting more inquiries from patients wrapped up in custody-divorce cases in recent years as the ranks of patients who use marijuana swell.

Lauren Payne, legal services coordinator with a California marijuana law reform group called Americans for Safe Access, said that since mid-2006 her organization has received calls about 61 such cases.

In Colorado last month, an appeals court ruled that medical marijuana use is not necessarily a reason to restrict a parent’s visitation. Washington courts have held otherwise.

“The court cannot countenance a situation where a person is using marijuana, under the influence of marijuana and is caring for children,” an Island County, Wash., judge ordered in one such dispute. “There’s nothing in the medical marijuana law that deprives the court of its responsibility and legal authority to provide for proper care of children so that people aren’t caring for children who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

In that case, the medical marijuana patient, Cameron Wieldraayer, was granted only supervised visits with his two young daughters — a decision upheld by an appeals court.

Many patients insist that using pot makes them no less fit as parents, and that they shouldn’t lose custody or visitation rights if there’s no evidence they’re abusing the drug.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, two of the 14 states with medical marijuana laws — Michigan and Maine — specify that patients won’t lose custody or visitation rights unless the patient’s actions endanger the child or are contrary to the child’s best interests.

Pouch, who grows marijuana in an old chicken coop, smokes a few puffs three or four times every day, and says he doesn’t get high the way he did when he used marijuana recreationally in his younger days. He said he uses it to treat pain from carpal tunnel syndrome aggravated by glassblowing, as well as a shoulder that frequently pops out of its socket due to old sports injuries.

“I’m an outgoing, upstanding person. I do three different farmers markets and I’m a member of the Mason County Chamber of Commerce,” said Pouch, 37. “I am not an activist at all, but I have the right to use this. It aids my pain, and it allows me to function in my everyday activities, where pills and opiates don’t.”

The mother of Pouch’s boys declined to comment.

Pouch also has a young daughter with another woman, and is also allowed only supervised visits with her. This month, after a guardian ad litem made a favorable report about Pouch’s parenting skills, a court commissioner awarded him custody — but then stayed the decision while the girl’s mother challenges it.

Opposing spouses often argue that they have a right to keep their children away from illegal substances, and marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

With some other medications, such as narcotic painkillers or bipolar medications, judges can require tests to establish how much of the drug a parent has in his or her system, said Eleanor Couto, a family law attorney in Longview, Wash.

But treatment providers can’t prescribe specific amounts of marijuana without running afoul of federal law, so it isn’t always clear what constitutes an appropriate level of the drug.

“How do you monitor how much someone can smoke?” Couto asked. “How do know they’re able to adequately care for that child? I think it’s got to be a case-by-case basis.”

Seattle lawyer Sharon Blackford noted that urine tests can establish how much marijuana is in a patient’s system based on current use, and that monitoring is “as easy to do for medical marijuana as it is for alcohol.”

Couto said she represents one father who worked out a tentative arrangement with his ex whereby he can continue to use medical marijuana, as long as someone else watches their child while he does.

In another case, she’s representing a father who is trying to win primary custody of his teenagers for the first time because their mother is married to a medical marijuana patient who also has a history of minor criminal offenses and several drunken-driving convictions.

Early this year, a judge who called Washington’s medical marijuana law “an absolute joke” and “an excuse to be loaded all the time” ordered that stepfather, Julian Robinson, to keep at least a quarter-mile from the teenagers because of his marijuana use, according to a transcript of the hearing.

That means Robinson can’t be around the children he has raised for the past 13 years, even though they live in his home near Castle Rock, with his wife and their four younger children.

Robinson sometimes stays with friends or rolls out a foam sleeping pad in his neighbor’s horse trailer. He misses baseball games and church services.

“It has torn my family apart,” Robinson said. “We used to do everything together.”

Pouch, who said he’s spent $35,000 on legal costs in the past four years, hopes to persuade the court to grant him partial or even primary custody of his children.

In the meantime, they dug a garden last year at the Olympia home rented by South Sound Family Services where they have their supervised visits. Pouch brought in manure and vegetable starts last month. The boys planted corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins.

___

More:

Pouch’s farm: http://www.naturescreationfarm.com/

Americans for Safe Access: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/

Marijuana Policy Project: http://www.mpp.org/

Nation’s Biggest Medical Pot Farm Coming To Michigan?

Steve Elliott | tokeofthetown
Thursday, May. 20 2010 @ 6:17AM

Photo: Legal Juice

All those plants, and not a pants pocket anywhere.

Let’s get one thing out of the way to begin with. If you get a job at the proposed biggest medical marijuana farm in the United States, you will be required to wear coveralls without pockets, so don’t plan on pilfering.

The huge, 25,000-plant marijuana growing operation could be coming to Michigan soon. A Florida man has approached officials to convert an empty paper plant in Frenchtown Charter Township into a gargantuan cannabis growing factory.

The planned operation would have 340 compartments, reports Dick Berry of WTOL. Each can supply five qualified patients and grow a dozen plans per patient, “which means the building could house up to 25,000 plants worth millions,” Berry reports.

The growing center would be located just outside Monroe, Michigan. Monroe was likely selected because there are no operating factories in the area, according to Frenchtown Charter Township Supervisor James McDevitt.

While officials expect to see a noticeable increase in revenue, they cannot actually charge taxes on the marijuana, according to McDevitt.

“He said we could charge a user fee which could bring in as much as $50,000 a month,” McDevitt said.

A neighbor, who lives across the street from the proposed marijuana operation, said he is a bit shocked, but open minded.

“It (might) be better for the government or state to get money for marijuana instead of spending money to fight it all the time, which seems to be a never-ending battle,” Saum said.

Legal questions, including possible zoning issues, still need to be hammered out. Also potentially problematic are federal rules against marijuana cultivation, particularly in view of the large numbers of plants being considered. Stiff mandatory minimums begin to kick in at the 100-plant level.

Supervisor McDevitt said about 30 jobs would be created. Workers would be required to wear coveralls without pockets to lessen chances of an employee smuggling marijuana out of the plant.

Berry reports that officials in Bedford Township and Dundee have also been approached about similar large scale marijuana growing operations.

Some information about Marijuana

Study says marijuana no gateway drug

10 Pot Studies Government Wished it Had Never Funded

The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States

Study finds marijuana use leads to brain development in rats

VIDEO Marijuana and driving

Marijuana Water Pipe and Vaporizer Study

FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge

NY Times F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana

Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung cancer

SCIENTIFIC FACTS of POT

The Nose Knows: The Odor of Marijuana and Probable Cause

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

Marijuana Cuts Lung Cancer Tumor Growth In Half, Study Shows

THC (marijuana) helps cure cancer says Harvard study

Tobacco facts, part (2)

Granny Storm Crow’s List

Heavy Marijuana Use Doesn’t Damage Brain

Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects

On Role Models and their Bongs

Marijuana Uses

Why Marijuana Is Illegal

Pot Smoking Not Linked to Lung Cancer

VIDEO Cannabis Cures Cancer – “Run From The Cure” The Rick Simpson Story

People who smoke marijuana do not appear to be at increased risk for developing lung cancer, new research suggests.

Marijuana: the facts

New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer

Marijuana smoking safety, danger, medicinal uses by Ray Sahelian, M.D. Benefit and health risk of marijuana use

Cannabis extract shrinks brain tumours

Marijuana May Stall Brain Tumor Growth

MARIJUANA AND HEMP the Untold Story

Stoned drivers are safe drivers

Chemicals in Marijuana May Fight MRSA

Illegal Hemp? The facts Don’t Support the Propaganda

What does a pot smoker look like?

Why is Marijuana Illegal?

Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco

TRENDS AND PATTERNS IN CANNABIS USE IN THE NETHERLANDS

Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States

American College of Physicians Speaks Out for Medical Marijuana

MARIJUANA AND HEMP

The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High

San Francisco-based medical cannabis collective

Above the Ignorance

Celebrity stoners

Marijuana Does Not Raise Lung Cancer Risk

Study clears cannabis of schizophrenia rap

Cannabis less harmful than drinking, smoking: report

Who Supports Marijuana Legalization? Support rising; varies most by age and gender

Cannabis and Ancient History

Marijuana Smoking Doesn’t Kill

Marijuana Health Mythology

Marijuana May Stimulate Brain Cell Growth

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Therapeutic Use of Cannabis

UNDERSTANDING YOUR HIGH -The Effects Of Marijuana On Consciousness

Against the drug war but not sure what to do about it?

Fibromyalgia and Medical Marijuana

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

The Marijuana Conspiracy

Marijuana Policy Project

THC cuts lung cancer growth, spread

Marijuana Facts

Study Finds No Link Between Marijuana Use And Lung Cancer

Evaluating the drug use “gateway” theory using cross-national data

How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory

Visitors to Monticello don’t learn how Jefferson cultivated poppies, and his personal opium use may as well never have happened.

Alternet – March 3, 2010

The following is an excerpt from Jim Hogshire’s “Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication” (Feral House, 2009).

Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson’s famous estate.

Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson’s crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.

The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the hell out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of “Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppies.” The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.

Employees even gathered the store’s souvenir T-shirts — with silkscreened photos of Monticello poppies on the chest — and burned them. Nobody told them to do this, but, under the circumstances, no one dared risk the threat.

Jefferson’s poppies are gone without a trace now. Nobody said much at the time, nor are they saying much now. Visitors to Monticello don’t learn how the Founding Father cultivated poppies for their opium. His personal opium use and poppy cultivation may as well never have happened.

The American War on Drugs started with opium and it continues today. Deception is key to this kind of social control, along with the usual threats of mayhem. Ever since the passage of the Harrison Act made opium America’s first “illicit substance” in 1914, propaganda has proven itself most effective in the war on poppies. This has not been done so much by eradicating the poppy plant from the nation’s soil as by eradicating the poppy from the nation’s mind.

Prosecutions for crimes involving opium or opium poppies are rare. But that has less to do with the frequency of poppy crimes and everything to do with suppressing information about the opium poppy. A public trial might inadvertently publicize forbidden information at odds with the common spin about poppies and opium. This might pique interest in the taboo subject and, worse, undermine faith in the government.

The U.S. government strategy to create and enforce deliberate ignorance about opium, opium poppies, and everything connected with them has proven remarkably effective. The Monticello campaign exemplifies an effective tactic. The poppies were swiftly removed, and sotto voce threats ensured no one would talk about it afterward. Today, visitors to Monticello learn nothing about opium poppy cultivation or why Jefferson cultivated it in his garden.

Disinformation about poppies has been spread far and wide. Some of it is subtle, like when the New York Times talks about people growing “heroin poppies.” Some misinformation is so bald-faced as to stun the listener into silence, as when a DEA agent tells a reporter that the process of getting opium from opium poppies is so complex and dangerous that “I don’t even think a person with a Ph.D. could do it.”

This enforced ignorance reduces the chances of anyone even accidentally discovering the truth about poppies. Poring through back issues of pharmaceutical industry news from Tasmania might yield a mother load of cutting edge poppy science — from genetically altered poppies that ooze double-strength opium to state-of-the-art machines designed to manufacture “poppy straw concentrate.” Tasmania’s output meets roughly a third of the world’s narcotic requirement. But how many people know that Tasmania is the home of the world’s largest and most modern opium industry?

Opium and opium poppy ignorance is augmented by widespread false beliefs, chief among them that it is extremely difficult for opium poppies to grow anywhere in the United States. Opium poppies surely require exotic climates or special climatic conditions, don’t they? They’re found on remote mountainsides in the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan, where growing them is a secret art known only to a few indigenous people who jealously guard the seeds from hostile competitors.

These beliefs are all widely held, but entirely untrue. Opium poppies, in fact, grow nearly everywhere but the North and South Poles. The second prong of the strategy is the copious propaganda that demonizes opium, opium poppies and opiates. At times this demonization has been brazenly racist, catering to the xenophobic American mind at the beginning of the twentieth century. Later propaganda linked opium with the despised German “Hun” who ate babies and (as was reported) had been mixing narcotics into children’s candy and women’s face powder in a diabolical plot to weaken the nation from the inside. Later, Germans were replaced by communists, who also shipped narcotics to America’s youth to weaken and enslave us. This was the authoritative word from Harry Anslinger, the infamous first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Another example of false history is the mythical “soldier’s disease” or “army disease” that supposedly plagued the land after the Civil War. According to the story, opium and morphine were used so extensively during the war as a painkiller for wounded soldiers (especially amputees) that the inevitable result was opium and morphine addiction. As a result, crowds of broken-down men roamed the countryside, ramming themselves full of holes with their crude syringes, having been turned into dope slaves by the good intentions of doctors.

erfect example of anti-drug propaganda sounds plausible enough that few ever question it. And it has endured long after researchers discovered that this mythical legend was purely invention.

There is no documentation of any mass opiate addiction after the Civil War. The term “soldier’s disease” or its variants did not appear in literature until decades later. Yet the story fits the officially approved stereotype by portraying opium and morphine as so powerful and addictive that they could rob anyone’s soul.

If you knew that opium poppies do not grow in the U.S., you would not recognize an opium poppy even if you were staring directly at it. So, the idea of making opium tea from a bunch of dried decorative flowers purchased at K-Mart is ridiculous–absurd, really. If it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

Perhaps. But the establishment prefers to not test it. The idea of an individual having control over one’s own life, especially regarding pain relief, is far too democratic to be embraced by tyrants.

The government and its allies in the narco-military complex have gone to great lengths to set things up as they are, and not allow a shift in control would affect licit or illicit sales of narcotics, poppy seeds, and any products derived from Papaver somniferum. In a market the size of America, nothing is too insignificant to generate huge sums of money. And the opium poppy is hardly insignificant.

Jury nullification sets Vietnam vet free after marijuana charge

12160.org

“Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction… if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.” ~ Alexander Hamilton, 1804.

‘The Vietnam veteran walks with a cane, has bad knees and feet and says he uses marijuana to relieve body pain, as well as to help cope with post traumatic stress.’

Maybe this is how the war on marijuana ends.

A rural Illinois jury has found one of their peers innocent in a marijuana case that would have sent him to prison. Loren Swift (pictured below) was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, and he faced a mandatory minimum of six years behind bars.

According to Dan Churney at MyWebTimes , several jurors were seen shaking Swift’s hand after the verdict, a couple of them were talking and laughing with Swift and his lawyer, and one juror slapped Swift on the back.

The 59-year-old was arrested after officers from a state “drug task force” found 25 pounds of pot and 50 pounds of growing plants in his home in 2007. The Vietnam veteran walks with a cane, has bad knees and feet and says he uses marijuana to relieve body pain, as well as to help cope with post traumatic stress.

This jury exercised their right of jury nullification. Judges and prosecutors never tell you this, but when you serve on a jury, it’s not just the defendant on trial. It’s the law as well. If you don’t like the law and think applying it in this particular case would be unjust, then you don’t have to find the defendant guilty, even if the evidence clearly indicates guilt.

In jury nullification, a jury in a criminal case effectively nullifies a law by acquitting a defendant regardless of the weight of evidence against him or her. There is intense pressure within the legal system to keep this power under wraps. But the fact of the matter is that when laws are deemed unjust, there is the right of the jury not to convict.

Jury nullification is crucially important because until our national politicians show some backbone on the issue of marijuana law reform, it’s one of the only ways to avoid imposing hideously cruel “mandatory minimum” penalties on marijuana users who don’t deserve to go to prison.

Prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana wastes valuable resources, including court and police time and tax dollars. Hundreds of thousands of otherwise productive, law-abiding people have been deprived of their freedom, their families, their homes and their jobs. Let’s save the jails for real criminals, not pot smokers.

The American public is very near the tipping point where a majority no longer believes the official line coming from Drug Warrior politicians and their friends at the ONDCP, gung-ho narcotics officers protecting their profitable turf, and sensationalistic, scare-mongering news stories used to boost ratings. They are starting to see through the widening cracks in the wall of denial when it comes to marijuana’s salutary medical effects on a host of illnesses and its palliative effects for the terminally ill and permanently disabled.

People are coming to realize that not only have they been sold a lie when it comes to marijuana — they’ve been sold a particularly cruel lie, a self-perpetuating falsehood of epic proportions that has controlled U.S. public policy towards the weed for 70 years now. The extreme cruelty of the lies told about marijuana by drug warriors is in the effects this culture of fear and intolerance has in the real world — effects like long prison sentences for gentle people who are productive and caring members of society.

Because citizens are coming to this long-delayed realization, we are going to be seeing more and more cases like this where juries have chosen not to punish people for pot. As this consciousness permeates all levels of society, it is going to get harder and harder for prosecutors to get guilty verdicts in marijuana cases — and that’s a good thing.

Maybe this is how the war on marijuana ends… Not with a bang, but a whimper, as cousin T.S. would say.

What You Can Do

* If you ever serve on a jury where the defendant is accused of a marijuana crime, don’t forget about jury nullification. Tell the other jurors you don’t have to convict, even if all the evidence points to guilt, if you don’t agree with the application of the law in this instance. And if you can’t swing your peers to your way of thinking, at least you can cause the jury to return a hung verdict.

* American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): Drug Policy

* Change The Climate: Time to Tell the Truth About Marijuana

* Drug Policy Alliance: Alternatives to Prohibition and the Drug War

* Marijuana Policy Project

* National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

“It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.” ~ John Adams, 1771.

Shock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in govt. custody

By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 — 8:02 pm

Some 12 percent of minors held in government custody are sexually abused, and in some facilities the rate reaches a stunning one in three children, says a report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The first-ever National Survey of Youth in Custody found that no less than 10 percent of the 26,550 juveniles being held in detention facilities in the US are abused by staff at the facility, while another 2.6 percent report abuse at the hands of other inmates. Among the facilities studied were six identified to have rates of sexual abuse as high as three in 10. According to the Associated Press, those six facilities are Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Maryland; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, North Carolina.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Virginia. “The widespread sexual abuse of children in juvenile facilities shows that public officials either aren’t paying attention or can’t be bothered to do the right thing,” said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch. “The high rates of victimization are powerful testimony to the failure of governments to safeguard the boys and girls in their care.” The study was mandated by a 2003 law, the National Prison Rape Elimination Act, which also created the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Human Rights Watch notes that six months ago the commission set out “comprehensive, effective standards for the prevention, detection, and punishment of prison rape,” but the Justice Department has yet to act on those recommendations.

“Every day Attorney General Eric Holder fails to promulgate national prison rape elimination standards is another day in which kids and adults are being abused behind bars,” Fellner said. “The attorney general already has on his desk proposed standards that reflect the best thinking and effective practices to end this widespread scourge. There is no need to reinvent the wheel or to delay moving forward.”

The survey found that gay youth were at higher risk than heterosexual youth, with one in five reporting abuse at the hands of a staffer or fellow inmate. Males were more likely to report being abused than females (10.8 percent to 4.7 percent). And 95 percent of those abused by staff reported that the abuser was female. But that number may be influenced by the fact that 91 percent of youth in custody are male.

The AP reports:

Although advocates said the level of abuse wasn’t surprising, the prevalence of sexual abuse by staff, particularly female workers, was shocking, said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained.

“Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they’re placed for custody because they’re considered to be a danger,” she said. “If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community, then it’s just an incredible travesty.”

The Associated Press also notes that sex abuse by staffers was higher in state-run facilities than in privately-run or municipal detention centers, and smaller facilities appear to have lower abuse rates than larger ones.

The study investigated a 12-month period, and was carried out from June, 2008, to April, 2009.

CDC: Two-thirds of cocaine seized on US borders cut with cancer drug

Raw Story
By Stephen C. Webster
Sunday, December 20th, 2009

If you’re doing cocaine, chances are this story will not make you quit. But it may make you think twice about your supplier.

A new report by the Centers for Disease control follows 21 cases of the otherwise rare disorder known as agranulocytosis, which is hallmarked by a severe weakening of immune function.

The condition is brought on by the drug levamisole, which used to be given to colon cancer patients. It is also widely used to deworm cattle.

Citing the Drug Enforcement Agency, the CDC report claimed that 69 percent of all cocaine seized at US borders contains levamisole. The average concentration was near 10 percent. Tainted cocaine was also seized in New Mexico and Washington.

While only one death is known to have been caused by the substance, the report warned that other cases may have gone unnoticed since the DEA first began tracking the increasing rate of levamisole contamination in 2002. Cocaine users, the CDC said, may be less likely to seek medical treatment; and even if they did, the patient may not disclose cocaine use to their doctor.

As for why the drug taints such a large portion of cocaine in the United States, the CDC does not venture a guess. “The reason why levamisole is added to cocaine remains unclear,” the agency said. It added that levamisol was found in less than three percent of heroin seizures, and it was at much lower concentrations than those typically found in cocaine.

“Some studies suggest it intensifies the high by boosting dopamine levels in the brain,” Bloomberg News noted. “Other reports say it is used to dilute, or cut, the drug.”

The CDC said almost all of those suffering from agranulocytosis experienced “fevers and most also had sore throats,” MedPage added. “Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and mouth sores were common. A few patients reported pain and/or sores elsewhere in the body.

“CDC has begun national surveillance for agranulocytosis in association with suspected cocaine or heroin use, collecting information via medical abstraction form and patient interview,” the CDC added. “As of December 15, eight states had agreed to participate.”