Indiana Teen Died From Smoking Marijuana

Marijuana

A news article published last Friday highlights the tragic story of Brian Smith Jr., an Indiana teen who died from smoking marijuana last October.

According to the article, the autopsy report attributed his death to dehydration due to cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS).

CHS is a condition that sends many marijuana users to the ER with severe nausea and vomiting, and it can be fatal.

There has been increased focus on CHS in recent years as states have moved to legalize marijuana and as marijuana has become more potent.

The article notes,

Experts aren’t 100% sure what’s behind the relatively sudden advent of this condition. They suspect that more potent cannabis may be to blame, along with several states’ decision to legalize the drug for medicinal purposes or altogether.

In the 1970s, THC concentration in most marijuana would be about 7%, Lapoint said. The mean concentration has risen to 15% to 30%, and it’s possible to make extracts with 99% THC.

“Marijuana was the joke of the toxicology world when it was 7%,” [Dr. Jeff] Lapoint said. “People never got sick. … But now if you make the concentration 99%, it’s just like if a 17-year-old kid goes to a frat party and has a beer. That’s a lot different than drinking shots of Everclear 151. Just like anything, the dose makes the poison.”

Unfortunately, stories like these are not unusual. We have read time and again about people hospitalized or killed as a result of marijuana use.

All of this underscores what we have said for years: Marijuana may be many things, but harmless simply is not one of them.

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Questions Remain About Aborted Babies Found in Doctor’s Garage

Abortion, , ,

More than a week after the remains of some 2,246 unborn children were found medically preserved in the garage of Indiana abortionists Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, questions still remain.

Klopfer, who passed away earlier this month, lived in Illinois, but operated abortion facilities in neighboring Indiana — including in presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s home town of South Bend.

According to The Journal Gazette, in 2016 Klopfer’s medical license was revoked by the Indiana Medical Licensing Board “for failing to exercise reasonable care and violating several notice and documentation requirements. “

At the time, the newspaper described Klopfer as “likely Indiana’s most prolific abortion doctor in history with numbers going into the tens of thousands of procedures in multiple counties over several decades.”

While some have speculated that Klopfer may have been performing abortions illegally out of his home, authorities in Illinois said in a written statement, “There is no evidence that any medical procedures [abortions] were conducted at the property.”

However, questions remain about where the aborted babies originated and whether Klopfer was keeping them as “trophies,” as some have suggested.

In an opinion-editorial, USA Today‘s deputy editorial page editor David Mastio writes,

Klopfer isn’t the only abortionist to enjoy keeping trophies of his grisly work close at hand. America’s most infamous baby killer, Kermit Gosnell, also kept fetal body parts in “milk jugs and glass jars” at his clinic in Philadelphia before he was convicted in 2013 on three counts of murder for snipping the spinal cords of babies born alive. . . .

How does a doctor amass enough dead bodies in his garage to do a passable imitation of a World War II mass grave? Didn’t his employees notice he was taking home baby parts?

How does a story this sensational — that happens to have partly taken place in presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s hometown, where he’s the mayor — not get more than cursory attention from the national news media?

Grisly stories like this one are why Family Council has fought for tighter restrictions on abortion facilities and the treatment of aborted babies.

In the past six years, we’ve seen news about abortionists keeping the bodies of unborn children and undercover videos that show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale of organs and tissue harvested from aborted babies.

In 2016 a congressional report, revealed that an Arkansas abortion clinic provided StemExpress — the company featured in the undercover videos — with tissue obtained from aborted babies.

That’s why we have consistently supported legislation to make it easier for the state to inspect — and shut down — abortion facilities, and we have pushed for laws requiring aborted babies to be respectfully buried or cremated rather than sold to labs.

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Religious Liberty Scores Two Big Wins in Court

Religious Freedom,

Earlier this week the Arizona Supreme Court handed religious liberty and freedom of speech a major win in the case of Brush & Nib v. Phoenix.

Like baker Jack Philips in Colorado, Brush & Nib were in the midst of a lawsuit that centered on whether or not the government can force Christians to take part in same-sex weddings and similar ceremonies.

In this case, Brush & Nib was concerned about a so-called “nondiscrimination ordinance” the City of Phoenix had passed.

The ordinance would have forced Brush & Nib to create invitations and other artwork for same-sex ceremonies in violation of the artists’ deeply-held religious convictions.

We’ve seen similar cases all over the country.

Thankfully, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in Brush & Nib’s favor earlier this week.

John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview writes,

Rejecting the city’s argument that Brush & Nib’s “custom wedding invitations are fungible products, like a hamburger or a pair of shoes,” Justice Gould acknowledged the “many hours” Brush & Nib owners Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski spend “designing and painting custom paintings, writing words and phrases, and drawing images and calligraphy.”

Because “Duka and Koski are involved in every aspect of designing and creating the invitations,” he continued, “and they retain substantial . . . artistic control over the messages that are expressed in the invitations,” they are more than mere “scribes.” Thus, to compel them to create custom invitations is to compel them to endorse the message in those invitations, which the Arizona constitution forbids.

In a similar ruling, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion in favor of Christian videographers Angel and Carl Larsen in their case against Minnesota’s “nondiscrimination” law.

The Brush & Nib case focuses on Arizona’s state constitution while the ruling in the Larsen’s case focuses on the U.S. Constitution.

Taken together, these rulings could signal that after years of losing in court, religious liberty might finally be gaining a little ground, but it’s still too soon to tell for sure.

Religious liberty still is under attack from radical activists as well as from wealthy corporations in the private sector. These recent court rulings, however, offer at least a faint glimmer of hope.

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