Last Friday, the group aired an advertisement on a local Denver channel during daytime programming encouraging people to “start your conversation about marijuana.” The 30-second spot features a young woman typing a message to her mother on her laptop, explaining that after spending her college years drinking heavily, she now prefers marijuana because “it’s less harmful … I don’t get hung-over and honestly I feel safer around marijuana users.”

The marketing campaign aims to “break down the stereotype about who the typical marijuana user is,” explained the campaign’s co-director, Mason Tvert.

“Most of them are professional, hard-working people,” he said.

The TV ad, which aired only on Friday, cost about $2,000, according to Tvert. It may run again, depending on fund-raising efforts, he said. Last month, the campaign spent about $4,500 on a billboard near Denver’s (Sports Authority Field at) Mile High stadium — purposely adjacent to the Mile High Liquors store — to deliver a similar message, Tvert said.

The billboard also features a woman, this one in her 50s, standing with her arms crossed next to the message: “For many reasons, I prefer … marijuana over alcohol. Does that make me a bad person?”

Watch the TV ad

By attempting to change “stereotypes” about marijuana users, the campaign hopes to make Colorado the first state to legalize recreational marijuana use.

“The goal is the choice — to make sure adults have the choice to use a less harmful substance than alcohol,” Tvert said.

Dr. Otis Brawley with the American Cancer Society questioned that conclusion.

“The problems of excessive alcohol use and the problems caused by any even minor smoking of marijuana are so different, I have difficulty comparing,” said Brawley, CNNhealth.com contributor and the American Cancer Society’s chief medical and scientific officer.

“There are short-term and long-term primarily pulmonary problems associated with marijuana (and) excessive alcohol use is long-term correlated with GI (gastrointestinal) and neurologic problems.”

Study: Occasional pot smoking not as damaging as cigarettes

Also debatable is whether the money generated by legalizing and regulating marijuana through taxes will outweigh the costs of creating government-run marijuana distribution centers.

Tvert says the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol estimates that legalizing and regulating marijuana could generate $50 million a year in saved expenses and revenue.

“We’ve been pushing very hard in Colorado and people agree, it’s not worth the law enforcement resources being used (to crack down on marijuana users) and it’s not worth losing out on the tax dollars,” he said.

22 million Americans use illegal drugs, study says

Tvert said he was not aware of any criticism for the advertisement, noting that legalizing marijuana is “one of the biggest issues in our state legislature in the last few years.”

“We live in a state that has made a lot of progress on the issue,” he said. “It’s not as controversial as many other issues.”

That’s partly because of the prevalence of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state. State-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries now outnumber Starbucks in Colorado and there are well over 100,000 people on the medical marijuana registry.

Mobile marijuana clinic for Colorado’s rural residents

Six years ago, an attempt to legalize marijuana in Colorado failed. This year’s initiative goes much further than the 2006 ballot, because it establishes a system that regulates and taxes the drug, Tvert said. He believes the infrastructure created by Colorado’s medical marijuana industry will help boost the chances that voters will approve legal recreational use of the drug.

Residents are also more accustomed to the idea of a legalized form of the drug, now that medical marijuana dispensaries are a common sight across the state, Tvert said.

“We’re not asking people to imagine, as we would just two years ago,” he explained. “People have seen that just because there’s a marijuana center in Colorado … just because there might be a storefront in your town or city, it hasn’t caused any problems.”

He noted that the initiative would allow cities and municipalities to “opt out” of allowing marijuana sales, similar to “dry counties” which ban the sale of alcohol.

Colorado isn’t the only state where voters will consider legalizing marijuana in the fall: there’s a similar ballot initiative in Washington and there could be one in Oregon, as well, if enough signatures are collected.

“There are actually… close to 17 or 18 initiatives working their way to the ballots,” according to Sue Rusche, president and CEO of the non-profit anti-drug organization, National Families in Action.

Rusche said her group’s main focus is to “force the (marijuana) industry” to ensure that it doesn’t market the drug to children.

“We ask a question: if a state actually does legalize marijuana for recreational use… what kind of things can we learn form the alcohol and tobacco industries in the way they’ve marketed to kids?” she said. “What can we do to prevent that (marijuana) industry from marketing to kids?”

She said setting a legal age limit of 21 is not enough.

“We do not trust the advocates who are trying to legalize marijuana because we don’t believe they are willing to look at these other two industries (alcohol and tobacco),” Rusche said. “Everything we read in their initiative has to do with making money and not protecting kids.”

If any marijuana initiative passes, Rusche said her group is interested in working with the state agencies that write the regulations in order “to force the industry to self-police rather than (have) the taxpayers pay for the cost” of any negative consequences, including addiction treatment and accidents caused by driving under the influence.

“We want people to take marijuana legalization seriously and think seriously about the consequences to kids,” she said.

When asked about Rusche’s concerns, Tvert said he was confident the marijuana industry would not target its product to minors.

“There’s a great deal of self-regulating already taking place — business owners not choosing marijuana leaves or cartoon characters,” he said, referring to the medical marijuana industry. “It’s an evolving industry (and) in theory, these are standards that are already being created.”

That doesn’t mean the marijuana industry won’t advertise its product in places where children might be present, though.

“It’s worth noting, every young person that walks into a professional baseball game in Colorado (at Coors Field) is walking into a beer commercial,” he said. “So the notion that we somehow cannot possibly have marijuana legal because young people will somehow know about it and see it, is unrealistic.”

CNN’s Tricia Escobedo reported on this story from Atlanta and CNN’s Jim Spellman reported from Denver.

Most of the study’s participants will be drawn from an extended family of 5,000 people who live in Medellín, Colombia, and remote mountain villages outside that city, a family that is believed to have more members afflicted with Alzheimer’s than any other place in the world.

Those who possess the specific genetic mutation begin showing cognitive impairment around age 45, and full-blown dementia around age 51. The 300 family members who participate in the initial phase of the trial will be years away from developing symptoms, many as young as 30.

The $100 million study will run for five years. The results on sophisticated tests may indicate in as little as two years whether the drug is helping to delay memory decline or brain changes.

Dr. Eric M. Reiman, executive director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, and a lead researcher on the study, says that though a relatively small percentage of people with Alzheimer’s have the genetic early-onset form that affects the Colombian family, the trial is expected to answer questions that could apply to the millions of people worldwide who will develop more conventional Alzheimer’s disease.

“It offers a tremendous opportunity for us to answer a large number of questions, while at the same time offering these people some significant clinical help that otherwise they never would have had,” Dr. Steven DeKosky, an Alzheimer’s researcher says.

Some 5.4 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are only expected to grow as the baby boom generation ages.

The study will include a small number of Americans with gene mutations guaranteed to cause early-onset Alzheimer’s, part of the federal government’s first national plan to address Alzheimer’s disease.

Whether the Colombia trial will succeed is not a given. Many clinical trials fail, and the history of Alzheimer’s research is marked by frustrating results from treatments it was hoped would be promising. The unique nature of trying a drug years before the onset of the disease is considered a promising approach to identifying what causes Alzheimer’s and how to potentially prevent the disease.

The Colombia drug trial will be financed with $16 million from the National Institutes of Health, about $15 million from private donors through the Banner Institute and $65 million from Genentech, the drug’s American manufacturer.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

 The villa is home to interior designer Mina Jantunen, her husband, seven-year-old son and two Yorkshire terriers. The family are living in Dubai for the second time, having relocated back here in 2010 after two and a half years in their native Finland.

"We used to live on a compound, but this time we wanted a home with a bit more individuality and a more local feel, so we knew that Barsha was the area that we wanted to live in," Mina explains. "As soon as we opened the door to this villa we fell in love. It is so different to our Finnish home, which is very simple and Scandinavian in design. We were looking for something large and spacious and this is it." Unlike many Arabic homes, where the downstairs has been divided into closed Majlis areas, this villa retains an open-plan layout. To some, arranging the furniture in such a vast space may seem a daunting task, but Mina laughs when she admits that she knew instantly where all the furniture would go and explains that on moving day every item was placed in its perfect spot.

"My trademark style is mixing and matching, both in my own home and in my projects. It is elegant, harmonious, well thought out but always with something funky added, whether by mixing different styles or just adding some unconventional, or even unthinkable, touches here and there," she says. "I love to break up ‘matchy’ interiors with what I would call ‘a touch of Mina’, which makes them more interesting, unexpected and funkily chic."

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Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, shared the sentiment with students during a recent visit showcasing electric and solar-powered cars at the Higher College of Technology in Abu Dhabi.

With the help of S.S. Lootah Group, Shaikh Nahyan launched a ‘Green Car Campaign’ as part of the bid to introduce the technology behind green cars to university students.

Shaikh Nahyan signed a pledge in the presence of students and senior officials reiterating the UAE’s commitment towards protecting the environment.

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For those still wishing to pay in euros this summer, there will still be time to judge the situation.

"If Greece does default on their payments and drop out of the eurozone, this will not happen overnight," says James Hickman, managing director of currency firm Caxton FX.

"We predict that there will be a gradual shift to the drachma, so no holidaymakers or homeowners will be stranded with unusable currency. In fact your euros would be worth a lot and there would be no reason to get rid of them."

Travellers to other eurozone countries have been seeing their pound fetching more euros in recent weeks than at anytime for three years.

Mr Hickman expects that trend to continue.

"Considering that the euro will continue to depreciate – irrespective of a Greek drop-out or not – there is no need to rush out to buy your holiday cash, although we always advise you get spending money before you arrive at the airport," he says.

David Kerns, private client dealing manager at Moneycorp, says that only a big change in policy from political leaders in Europe could reverse the weakening euro value against sterling.

Uncertainty in Greece has led to huge withdrawals of funds from the country's banks.

In February, the former finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, said Greeks had deposited 16bn euros overseas, including "32% in British banks and 10% in Swiss banks".

For those who still have deposits in Greece, any devalued new currency would see the value of these funds decrease, and high inflation would affect the spending power of these savings – but the question would be by how much.

Were banks in Greece to collapse, then European rules state that savers should have deposits of up to 100,000 euros protected, but this assumes that the Greek banking system and government can honour this commitment.

If UK savers were involved, then their might be the chance that the UK government bail out those people, as it did in 2008 with UK residents who saved with the Icelandic banks – but this is by no means guaranteed.

As of November 2011, there were 5,410 people who lived in Greece and who received a UK state pension.

They make up about a fifth of the UK expatriates living in Greece.

These pensioners, by receiving their benefit in sterling, would see their spending power rise if a devalued new currency comes in, or even just because of the falling value of the euro against the pound.

"We are seeing some people holding money in pounds, then transferring into euros when they need it," says Mark Bodega, of currency firm HiFX.

"Some are keeping money in the UK just in case."

It is a very different story for those UK citizens who have moved to live and work in Greece and face the same uncertainties and austerity as everyone else in the country.

In a relatively small survey by HiFX, more UK citizens that had homes in Greece wanted to sell up that those with property in any other country.

Any exit from the euro is likely to see the value of this property fall.

Many UK people who own homes in Greece may live there during holidays and then rent them out during the rest of the year.

They face a decision on whether to keep charging this rent in euros if Greece readopts the drachma.

If they charge euros, then this would be expensive by local standards and they might struggle to find tenants. But, if they charged drachmas, then they might find this earns them very little if they convert it back into sterling or euros.

There are some 34,000 people living in the UK who were born in Greece, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Their financial situation depends on where their wealth is held.

For those who have assets in Greece, any euro exit could have a big effect. A new currency could be devalued by 40% to 50%, according to Mr Kerns, of Moneycorp.

However, those who own businesses or homes in the UK and sold up would be able to buy a lot more in Greece than at present.

Experts say that in order to win this year’s election, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will not just have to satisfy evangelicals — he will have to thrill them.

On Saturday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will deliver the commencement address at Liberty University, the nation’s largest evangelical university. The speech will be attended by nearly 35,000 people, and it will give him a chance to win over a huge constituency that, up until recently, has been lukewarm about his campaign.

Case in point: Last fall, the Rev. Robert Jeffress created a huge stir when he said that Romney, a Mormon, is a member of a religious cult and “a conservative out of convenience.” But now, Jeffress, who pastors First Baptist Church of Dallas, says he’s fully behind the candidate.

“I think there’s a realization among Christians that Jesus isn’t on the ballot this year,” says Jeffress, “and so, I mean, many times, voting is voting for the lesser of two evils.”

President Obama shifted that balance dramatically when, earlier this week, he announced that he supports same-sex marriage.

“This has brought a new dynamic into the election, and it really is a gift to Gov. Romney from President Obama,” Jeffress says.

Becoming Evangelicals’ First Choice

Even before Obama’s statement, evangelicals favored Romney over the president by 3 to 1, chiefly because they so dislike the president, according to a new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute. But can Romney turn that antipathy into enthusiasm for his own candidacy? Experts say that in order to win the election, Romney will not just have to satisfy evangelicals — he will have to thrill them.

“Social conservative voters in this election are not going to stay home,” says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “But the question is: When they drive to the polls, will they be driving a Suburban that’s packed with friends and neighbors that they influenced, or will they be driving themselves in a so-called Smart Car?”

In a wide-ranging interview with NPR, Richard Land talks about evangelical support for Mitt Romney.

Anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann studies the close personal relationship evangelicals have with God.

One company is combing through personal data to identify and register conservative Christian voters.

Evangelical leaders’ 11th-hour endorsement may only show their weakness as a force in the GOP.

That’s the question facing the faithful at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Jeffress’ 10,000-member megachurch. Several people said Romney was their second, third or fourth choice. They’re wary of him because, they say, he belongs to a religious cult; he was once pro-abortion rights and he was governor of Massachusetts when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal (though Romney vehemently opposed it).

“I was open to Michele Bachmann, I was open to Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, those guys that I thought came out of that more conservative base,” says Roy Sparkman, a former district judge. “But now that we’re here, I’m going to be a Romney supporter.”

Vera Strickland, a homemaker, says she’s voting for Romney because she doesn’t want a repeat of 2008, when millions of Christians stayed home rather than vote for John McCain.

“This is a call to arms,” Strickland says. “It’s a wake-up call to Christians that whether or not we like the choices, we must make a choice. And people need to wake up and realize if you want freedom, go vote.”

But Mark Lavvorn has some residual distrust about Romney’s commitment to conservative causes like traditional marriage and opposition to abortion.

“Mitt Romney is very smooth, very calculated — some would even describe him that way to a fault,” Lavvorn says. “And I think he has some distance to go to convince the evangelical that he is genuine, that he is sincere in these issues.”

Romney may have the chance to do just that when he gives the commencement address at Liberty University this weekend.

‘A Golden Opportunity’

“Gov. Romney has a golden opportunity to make peace with evangelical Christians,” Jeffress says of the speech. He says Romney will have an opportunity to hammer home the culture war themes that are so dear to religious conservatives — and he should be careful not to blow it.

“I think if Gov. Romney simply punts on this and says, ‘Well, I’m going to focus on the economy and jobs, and leave all this other stuff alone,’ I think he is going to absolutely squander this tremendous opportunity,” Jeffress warns.

University of Akron political scientist John Green says Romney has an advantage over John McCain in 2008. Back then, evangelicals didn’t know how much they disliked Barack Obama — now they do. But Green notes that if evangelicals want to have influence in a Romney administration, they need Romney as much as Romney needs them. And so far, they’ve snubbed him.

“Evangelical voters essentially backed other candidates in the primaries, so they need to mend some fences and strengthen their ties with [Romney],” Green says. “But of course the [presumptive] nominee will need them in the fall, and he’s got to find ways to strengthen his relationship with them as well.”

The next six months will show how rocky, or solid, this unlikely courtship really is.