marijuana

It was a close call, but California voters yesterday defeated Proposition 19, also known as the "Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010," so we're canceling our S.F. holiday plans and staying in New York. Oh well, at least we still have front-row seats to the World Series riots thanks to the newly appointed Riot Badges on FourSquare.

Speaking of things that are harmful to your health, a new report co-authored by former government chief drugs adviser David Nutt suggests that alcohol is more harmful than heroin.

Professor Nutt judged 20 drugs on 16 degrees of harm that include lasting effects on physical and mental health, social harms including crime, and environmental damage, and alcohol is the most prevalent on this chart, topping other substances like ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, crack, and methylamphetamines.

The results likely have more to do with alcohol being the only legal drug on the list, and cannabis surprisingly ranks fairly high on the list as well, just two under nicotine.

We all know cigarettes are lethal carcinogens, but a new company called Blu Cigs is manufacturing electronic cigarettes aimed at users who want to "smoke" tobacco without the addictive nicotine element.

We're obviously not condoning use of this product, but the tech angle on the device itself is interesting because they use battery-operated atomizers to warm up capsules of flavored liquid that then produce vapor you can inhale, making them technically "legal" to use in non-smoking areas, like on an airplane. Be sure to watch this segment's video to see an actual e-cigarette in action!

After we hit the break (and a small audio hiccup afterward), we have two jaw-dropping video voicemails queued up: the first is from our own Jeff Bakalar, who recorded a video of him and his new wife Stacie at some dreadful resort in who knows where, and the second is a relatively straightforward voicemail from "BMGreatness" that also features a disturbing prop. Check it out, and keep sending your video voicemails to the404(at)cnet.com!

Even in paradise, Jeff is still Jeff. BMGreatness: Please call back and verify the owner of that thingie.

Facebook is a company with some very personal--if public--quirks.

While allowing ads that support pot legalization, the company forbids pictures of the evil, coma-inducing plant.

Many will be delighted, then, to discover that two of Facebook's co-founders have not foundered when it comes to their own personal views about marijuana.

According to Proposition 19 campaign filings, reported by ABC News, Sean Parker, he of the nasal infractions in "The Social Network," has donated $100,000 to this California ballot measure that seeks to legalize pot in the state.

He is following the lead of his fellow Facebook … Read more

A federal case which alleged wireless carrier T-Mobile had blocked text messages from a service that claimed a medical marijuana dispensary as one of its clients, was settled outside of the court this week according to a report in Wired.com.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleged that T-Mobile had blocked all clients of a New York company called EZ Texting, specifically because one of those clients was a medical marijuana dispensary search service that operates the site WeedMaps.com. EZ Texting's service lets its clients solicit customers … Read more

Quirky social-news site Reddit always seemed an unusual acquisition for Manhattan media giant Conde Nast, and it's never been more evident: asked by Conde Nast overlords to stop running advertisements on behalf of advocates of California's Proposition 19, which supports the legalization of marijuana, Reddit decided they'd do it anyway.

Because Conde Nast said its main concern was obtaining revenue from those controversial advocacy groups, Reddit's solution was that they would simply run the ads for free.

"This was a decision made at the highest levels of Conde Nast," an announcement from Reddit read. &… Read more

It's always so galling when high enterprise is stifled by regulations.

So who could not feel a deep inhalation of sympathy for Jacob Walker? The 20-year-old from Gilbert, Ariz., stands accused, together with his friend of the same age, Joseph Velarde, of (gosh, no) trafficking marijuana on the Web.

Before you leap up on a large donkey, might I offer a few details to appeal to the better part of your judgment? According to AzFamily.com, Walker allegedly placed an ad on Craigslist in which he offered a trade which, to the objective eye, seems more than fair.

He … Read more

Driving while high may not be as bad as once thought. A study conducted by Hartford Hospital and the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine found that smoking marijuana has little effect on driving skills.

The study was published in the March issue of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, according to an article in The Hartford Courant.

Using legal marijuana supplied by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the University of Mississippi, researchers tested 85 participants under the influence on their ability to avoid crash-causing traffic incidents, such as avoiding a driver entering an intersection illegally or deciding … Read more

I am sure there are many of you who inhale marijuana for purely medicinal purposes. Your pains might be physical. They might be psychological. But you feel as though your world is going to pot, so you turn to pot.

Now, an enterprising man called John Lee has decided to bring a little online rigor to your smoking vigor.

Sonoma, Calif.-based Lee has created PlainView Systems, a remarkably non-hippie name for a venture that, according to CNNMoney.com, he describes as the Amazon of pot.

That would be Amazon.com, rather than the never-ending river.

A visit to the … Read more

New Jersey passed a bill last week legalizing medicinal marijuana, so we begin today's episode of The 404 Podcast with a quick discussion about the taxation, decriminalization, and dispersion of medicinal marijuana.

Entrepreneur John Lee hopes all the legal attention will give way to e-commerce in the form of B2B exchanges for "licensed providers of medicinal marijuana and their patients." Lee hopes that the system and his Web site, PlainView.com, will encourage distributors to keep their systems organized with pertinent information on records, invoices, sales reports, and tax paperwork.

We also spend good chunk of time dissecting all the drama surrounding Conan O'Brien and "The Tonight Show" being bumped back to 12:05 a.m. to accommodate Jay Leno's earlier time slot. Conan released a statement last night setting the record straight with an outright refusal to switch times, arguing that a 12:05 a.m. start time is ridiculous for "The Tonight Show."

Among other things, Conan emphasizes that nothing is more important to him than putting on the best nightly show possible, and we're in full support--as soldiers in Conan's army, The 404 is ready to stand tall and follow O'Brien to the ends of the Earth, although we're secretly hoping for a network switch to CBS.

Many more stories from around the Internet, including one about snowed-in Brits boosting Web traffic to a social network built for infidelity and the latest development for Punxsutawney Phil.

Stick around for the full episode, and don't forget to send your self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to the N.Y. CNET office, addressed to The 404 - STICKERS), to get your hands on your free handful of 404 stickers and temporary tattoos!

This is the last time we let Wilson choose the show title. Good news--The 404 Wikipedia page is BACK! Edit away, but please don't redirect the page. Today we talk about a fake bus stop in Germany, a "green" iPhone app, the iPhone 4G prototype, the "World of Warcraft" movie, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia.

That's right folks, our Wikipedia page is back up, and we're praying it's permanent this time! Big ups to our buddy Darth Paxton for helping us out, so go ahead and edit it all you like (we can't edit it ourselves) with inside jokes, characters, guests, etc., but please don't edit the redirections, those need to stay in place. Whoo! We're notable!!!

Also, do not attempt to adjust your monitor, the photo to the left is indeed our first look at Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia. With those two swords in his hands and that red sash around his waist, he looks more like a chef at a Chinese restaurant than the video game hero.

Speaking of bad video game movies, we're afraid to see what Sam Raimi has in store for the "World of Warcraft" movie adaptation, although it'd be pretty funny to just have a half an hour of peons mining and chopping wood.

A quick disclaimer: there are two stories in today's rundown that some might deem offensive, but although they're both a little dark, the beauty of The 404 is being able to find a lighthearted (and sometimes tasteless) joke in everything! For example, here's a funny story about a fake bus stop in a clinic that's designed to keep its Alzheimer's patients from escaping. Sounds awful, right? I agree--maybe all the money they spent on building this "net" could have been used to pay more nurses and doctors to determine the reason why the patients are trying desperately to escape in the first place!

Anyway, that's the first story. You'll have to listen to the full episode, which also includes news about an eBay auction for an original Sony PlayStation signed by Michael Jackson and a very "green friendly" iPhone app