Every year, on April 20th, pot smokers and cannabis lovers all over the world gather to celebrate their connection to the herbs but do you know how this tradition got started? How did 420 become a universally recognized counterculture symbol, and how did the day 4/20 the “International Day of Cannabis”?
Well, there are many rumors that different state reasons but here is an interesting one we have for you. Basically, a claimed that 420 was actually the police code for “the marijuana arrest in progress.” In order to mess with the police, the stoners decided to take that term and make 4/20 that is April 20th, the smoker’ celebration, gathering with fellow smokers and lighting up at 4:20 in the afternoon.
However, it turned out that 420 wasn’t actually the arr…
Am Johal
VANCOUVER, Canada, Aug 23 2006 (IPS) – Three former mayors of Vancouver have joined current Mayor Sam Sullivan in calling for Canada s Conservative minority government to renew the exemption which allows North America s first legal safe injection site to operate for users of heroin and other addictive drugs.
The three-year exemption is set to expire on Sep. 12 if the federal cabinet does not support the Health Canada recommendation to proceed with the exemption.
The safe injection site has been in operation for three years as part of a pilot project designed to address an overdose and HIV/AIDS health epidemic that has plagued Vancouver s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood for almost two decades.
Drugs are not provided, but the facility offers supervised …
Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 18 2009 (IPS) – Egypt s parliament is set to review a long-overdue draft law to regulate organ transplant operations. If passed, the legislation could make more human organs available for transplant, and curtail the country s booming organ trade.
We ve been operating for 30 years in Egypt without any organisation, relying on local and personal efforts to regulate organ transplants, says Dr. Mahmoud El-Meteini, head of the Liver Transplant Unit at Wadi El-Nil Hospital. Things cannot continue like this. We need a law to organise all transplant centres, and shut down the bad ones.
Egypt currently has no legislation regulating organ transplants, only doctor union rules and health ministry guidelines that have proven difficult to enforce. An uncond…
Founder of the World Toilet Organisation Jack Sim says that on the African continent there has been some progress in terms of the community-led total sanitation approach. Courtesy: Meropa Communications
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 10 2012 (IPS) – When the founder of the World Toilet Organisation Jack Sim turned 40, he literally began counting how many more days he had to live and felt a sense of urgency to do meaningful things with the remainder of his life.
“Can you imagine a person coming into this world and spending his life only helping himself? When this person dies, his life has had no meaning, so why did he bother coming here?” he asks.
A successful bus…
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 2013 (IPS) – The controversial topic of medical cannabis has been put under a microscope after the internationally known neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta came out in support of its use this week.
An ounce of Green Crack bought from a dispensary in California. Credit: Coaster420/public domain
In a lengthy on CNN, Gupta outlines the benefits of medical cannabis, claims that U.S. citizens have been misled by the government for years, and apologises for his role in that. This reversal of opinions occurred during the yearlong production of his documentary �…
is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
Education CS Amina Mohamed chats with form four candidates of Mama Ngina Secondary School a few minutes before KCSE exams. Credit: Standard
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 19 2018 (IPS) – That almost one in five Kenyan teenage girls is a mother represents not only a huge cost to the health sector, but also a betrayal of potential on a shocking scale.
November 20, 2018 marks International Children’s Day. Perhaps a day we should use to reflect on a national crisis of underage pregnancies that confronts us.
Recent media reports of the high number of girls failing to sit their final secondary school examinations (KSCE) only…
It is essential to remember that femicide is actually a symptom of a much wider problem. It is patriarchal norms and gender inequality that are both the cause and consequence of gender-based violence in society.
Marx wrote ‘the tradition of all past generations weighs like an incubus upon the brain of the living.’ Yet there are many who wish to keep us chained to the past, including cultural relativists, feminists such as Germaine Greer and of course religious apologists. Ebru Asiltürk, spokeswoman for womens’ affairs for Turkey’s Islamic conservative Saadet Party, who opined recently that ‘…the treaty [Istanbul Convention to tackle violence again women and domestic abuse, as well as promoting gender equality – which Turkey was, ironically, the first country to …