Sponsored by

VGoodiez 420EDC
  • Welcome to VaporAsylum! Please take a moment to read our RULES and introduce yourself here.
  • Need help navigating the forum? Find out how to use our features here.
  • Did you know we have lots of smilies for you to use?

Law Atrocious and Horrible Cannabis News

Baron23

Well-Known Member
I have felt for a while that we needed this thread title for crappola like this below.

In addition to being atrocious, apparently there is some sort of different math being used in IL.

"ranzen pled guilty to possessing more than 5,000 grams of cannabis." = 5 kg = about 11 lbs

“The judge was cognizant of his health and wanted to give him some sort of break. But 40 pounds of cannabis is a lot,” Cambic said."

No way he had 40 lbs of chocolate, no way is edible weight necessarily equal to MJ weight, and this whole thing is such a travesty that I want to hide in shame that this crap is being done by my fellow human beings.



Cancer patient in Illinois sentenced to four years in prison for marijuana


On May 31, the Illinois General Assembly voted to make Illinois the 11th state to legalize recreational cannabis. The new law will take effect January 1, 2020. But Thomas J. Franzen, a Stage 4 cancer patient, will watch that historic day pass from behind bars, as he serves out the remainder of a four year prison sentence for marijuana. On May 30, a Kane County judge sentenced Franzen after he pled guilty to possessing more than 5 kilograms of cannabis in the form of THC-infused chocolates.

Franzen ordered the marijuana edibles from California in 2014, and police initially charged him with drug trafficking, which carries a 12 to 60 year sentence. In light of Franzen’s medical condition and Illinois’ recent moves to expand medical marijuana access and legalize adult use, Franzen’s attorney says the judge presiding over the case is being lenient in his sentencing. But due to the quantity of cannabis involved, Franzen will have to serve at least a few years behind bars.

Illinois Cancer Patient Self-Medicated with Cannabis
Thomas Franzen is a resident of suburban Chicago. For years, he has been fighting an aggressive form of testicular cancer that has spread to his lungs and abdominal cavity. He also suffers from renal cancer in one of his kidneys. So like many cancer patients suffering from painful symptoms and the severe side-effects of cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, Franzen turned to cannabis for relief.

In 2014, Franzen ordered an illicit package of marijuana edibles from California—430 individually foil-wrapped cannabis chocolates, according to court documents. As the package was en route to Franzen, Illinois law enforcement intercepted it. They subsequently charged Franzen with a number of drug charges, including possession of drug paraphernalia and trafficking more than 5,000 grams of marijuana.

As happens with so many criminal cases in the U.S.’s over-burdened legal system, Franzen decided to plead guilty to reduced charges rather than fight his case in court and face a potential 12 to 60 year prison sentence for drug trafficking. As a result, prosecutors dropped the trafficking charge, and Franzen pled guilty to possessing more than 5,000 grams of cannabis. Now, Franzen will spend at most four years in prison, rather than the much longer sentence he initially faced.

“Franzen is expected to serve less than half of the sentence,” said Franzen’s attorney, David Cambic. “We’d hoped to convince the prosecution to give him probation. The judge was cognizant of his health and wanted to give him some sort of break. But 40 pounds of cannabis is a lot,” Cambic said.

Cancer Patient’s Conviction Exposes Limits to Legalization
Considering the timing, coming just days after Illinois legalized recreational marijuana, there’s a particular outrage that a cancer patient is going to spend time behind bars—and receive a low standard of care there—for self-medicating with cannabis. But the unfortunate fact is that neither Illinois’ medical marijuana laws, nor its new recreational use law, apply to Franzen.

Even if Franzen had an Illinois medical marijuana card—and his attorney said “he did not believe” Franzen had one—Franzen would have broken individual possession limits and the ban on importing medical marijuana from outside Illinois.

And for those reasons, Franzen’s guilty plea and prison sentence expose the limits of marijuana legalization. There aren’t, for example, limits on how much alcohol a person can privately possess. And while there are a number of different—and some very weird—laws about transporting alcohol across state lines, in general, it’s okay for personal use.

Furthermore, affordability and access issues make it difficult for some patients to legally obtain medical cannabis in their state. And that can lead to people breaking the law in their efforts to self-medicate. Franzen’s attorney said the judge in the case “wants to make sure the sentence will not be horribly adverse to Franzen’s health, as he will not receive the same level of care in prison that he’s currently receiving.” “Kind,” as that may (relatively) be, Franzen’s prosecution and sentencing don’t seem to fit the crime.
 
That Alarming CBD Liver Damage Study Is Bunk—And the Media Should Know Better

It’s 2019 and we still live in a world where one small study, on mice, with a highly questionable methodology, published in a marginal journal, with major flaws, leads to a clickbait media panic.

Recently, you may have seen a Forbes article headlined “Marijuana Study Finds CBD Can Cause Liver Damage” that reported on a study out of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

It’s scary stuff:

Shockingly, researchers discovered that the mice given higher doses of CBD showed signs of liver damage within 24 hours. To that end, 75 percent of these animals in the sub-acute phase had either died or were on the verge of death within a few days.

But this panic and misinformation is nothing new—back in 1974, a study conducted at Tulane University supposedly showed that “the active ingredient in marijuana [THC] impairs the brain circuitry,” leading the press to dutifully run articles claiming that pot causes brain damage without a trace of skepticism.


RELATED STORY
Cannabis May Protect the Brain Against Stress and Injury, and Here’s Why

The 1974 study was deeply flawed. In Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana, author Martin Lee called out this exceedingly small study of rhesus monkeys as “a textbook case of scientific fraud”:

Shackled in air-tight gas masks, Heath’s monkeys were [regularly] forced to inhale the equivalent of 63 high-potency marijuana cigarettes in five minutes. Lo and behold, the primates suffered brain damage from suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning, but Heath attributed the results to marijuana toxicity.

Lucky for us—if not Forbes readers—Project CBD, a non-profit dedicated to boosting science-based understanding of cannabidiol (CBD), have just released a detailed rebuttal to the Forbes article.


RELATED STORY
CBD (Cannabidiol): What Does It Do & How Does It Affect the Brain & Body?

The Rebuttal
Much has changed in the last forty-five years, but the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) still holds a monopoly on the sole supply of cannabis that can be used for federally-approved studies. And the research they approve remains laser-focused on finding harm—either that or trying to create a pathway to patenting synthetic THC as a prescription drug.

Regardless of your feelings on the CBD study, it is hard to argue with dead mice—even if you are an all-knowing marijuana expert.

Mike Adams, author of the Forbes, wrote another article in which he claims there’s no such thing as an expert in cannabis because not enough is known about the plant and its effects on human beings. That’s a highly questionable claim, and I suppose it explains why he didn’t quote anyone in his article who might have poured cold water on the study’s more alarming claims.

For example, Project CBD.


RELATED STORY
CBD vs. THC: What’s the Difference?

In their rebuttal of the Forbes article, Project CBD says:

The breathless reporting in Forbes focuses on a single, flawed, preclinical study and exaggerates it to the point of falsehood… A close examination of the Molecules study reveals a Pandora’s box of strange statements, problematic publishing, and unreasonable experimental design. On the first page, the abstract makes a claim that is fundamentally impossible, stating that, with chronic administration of CBD, ‘75% of mice gavaged with 615 mg/kg developed a moribund condition.’ But there were only 6 animals that received this dose! One doesn’t need an advanced degree in science or math to recognize that something is amiss. Seventy-five percent of six equals 4.5.

Dead mice aside (or rather, dead half-mice), the biggest problem with the study, according to Project CBD, is that just like in the 1974 rhesus monkey study, the dosage administered was astronomically high.

Scientists force-fed mice a single dose of CBD, ranging from the supposedly ‘low’ dosage of 246 mg/kg up to a mega-dose of 2460 mg/kg CBD… The maximum human dosage recommended for the CBD-isolate Epidiolex is 20 mg/kg, which is over 100x less than what the Little Rock researchers force fed their experimental mice.

The researchers explain away this mega-dosing by pointing to something called allometric scaling, which is basically a set of guidelines for estimating an equally potent dose of a substance for humans and other animals based on body weight and body-mass index.

But Project CBD argues that allometric scaling is a rule of thumb at best, and cannabinoids in particular are a very poor fit for the model: “The ridiculously high doses in this study will saturate the body’s metabolic machinery, preventing relevant dose-extrapolations.”


RELATED STORY
6 Common Myths and Controversies About High-CBD Cannabis

False Claims in a Sketchy Journal
In their critique of the study, Project CBD flatly charged the University of Arkansas researchers with producing “A hit piece against CBD, not legitimate scientific work.”

Specifically, the Project CBD article cites instances of cherry-picking previous research on CBD to downplay benefits and hype harms, which obscures how unreliable past studies on mice have been in predicting how humans will react to cannabinoids, and which also presents false or deliberately misleading information.

Project CBD points to the study’s claim that “numerous reports have demonstrated neurological, cardiovascular and reproductive toxicities subsequent to CBD use”—the researchers cited nine sources to back that claim, but the only one to actually involve humans did not show toxicity.


RELATED STORY
The Most Impactful Cannabis Studies of All Time

In fact, when contacted by Project CBD, Saoirse O’Sullivan, that study’s lead author, said, “Our research showing that CBD causes a small reduction in resting and stress-induced blood pressure does not support the authors’ claim that we demonstrated cardiovascular toxicity of CBD. In fact, most of our work is about the potential protective effects of CBD in the cardiovascular system.”

Project CBD also called into question the credibility of Molecules, the journal that published the CBD liver study.

MDPI, which publishes the journal Molecules, has been called a predatory publisher. MDPI has been criticized for publishing unsound articles… Even if such allegations are true, it doesn’t mean that good work can’t end up in one of MDPI’s 213 journals. But it underscores the importance of checking scientific work, rather than diligently repeating and amplifying whatever claims are presented.

And that really gets to the heart of the issue.

Because it’s 2019, and we still live in a world where one small study, on mice, with highly questionable methodology, published in a marginal journal, with major flaws, can lead to articles like the one in Forbes.

Which get clicks for sounding the alarm—without a legitimate reason to do so—while simultaneously drowning out more reasoned discussions of CBD’s potential dangers, and how they can best be mitigated.


RELATED STORY
Peak THC: The Limits on THC and CBD Levels for Cannabis Strains

A Final Thought Experiment
One thought experiment occurred to me while researching this article.

I came across this Leafly article describing a day of testimony this past May before the FDA. In particular, I was struck by the words of Alice Mead, on hand to represent the interests of GW Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in developing pharmaceutical drugs extracted from cannabis plants—including Epidiolex, the world’s first FDA-approved CBD drug.

Normally, when Big Pharma talks to the FDA about their products, they make every effort to present the rosiest picture possible. But Mead took pains to mention that CBD is “potentially toxic to the liver” and “has powerful drug-drug interactions.”


RELATED STORY
5 Takeaways From the FDA’s Hearing on CBD

But the real tell was when she argued for a “strong regulatory framework.”

Because what that really means is GW Pharmaceuticals wants a regulatory framework for CBD so strong that only they can surmount it. Leafly has been reporting on the company’s attempts to win temporary monopolies for its products in a number of US states since 2017, and there’s certainly no reason to believe GW wouldn’t prefer a blanket monopoly on the entire country.

And so here’s the thought experiment:

You’re GW Pharmaceuticals, and you’ve invested heavily in both time and money to create a patented CBD drug. Now you’re about to go to market, and want to make a huge return on that investment without having to compete with CBD hamburgers and truck stop snake oil.

So what’s the biggest threat to your bottom line—that people think CBD is too dangerous, or that people think CBD is too safe?
 
I'm sure the rabid, ideological, but moronic anti's like SAM will look at this and conclude that MJ causes crime. See the evil in MJ!!

While those of us with at least a few communicating brain cells clearly see that banking restrictions on the MJ industry directly results in hordes of un-deposited cash.....cash which attracts....wait for it....criminals.

IMO, in addition to the three that perpetrated this crime directly, our Federal politicians and their lack of reasonable action are responsible for this kind of crap.


Man Kidnapped, Tortured, Maimed Medical Marijuana Dispensary Owner for Buried Money, Prosecutor Says

A former pot grower and two of his high school friends kidnapped and tortured the owner of a flourishing medical marijuana dispensary before cutting off his penis after demanding he tell them where he buried $1 million in the Mojave Desert, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Prosecutors summarized their case in opening statements in the trial of Hossein Nayeri in a Newport Beach courtroom on Wednesday. He's charged with two counts kidnap for extortion, torture, aggravated mayhem, and burglary.

Read the six-part series "Twisted"

"There's no doubt the motive in this case was money — a million dollars," Senior Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown told jurors. "In fact, a million dollars the victim didn't have."

Man Accused in Jailbreak Talks About Days on the Run
Man_Accused_in_Jailbreak_Talks_About_Days_on_the_Run.jpg

"Adam" Hossein Nayeri is accused of leading a jailbreak that sparked a week-long manhunt. Vikki Vargas reports for the NBC4 News on Monday, Feb. 12, 2018.
(Published Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018)
Nayeri's attorney Salvatore Ciulla said two other men who Nayeri went to high school with, Kyle Handley and Ryan Kevorkian, orchestrated the kidnapping.

"This case nothing is as it seems," he said. "This man right here, Hossein Nayeri, did not do it."

Handley was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his part in the case. Kevorkian is awaiting trial.

The case goes back nearly seven years.

Three masked men armed with a shotgun beat the victim while he slept in his Newport Beach home on Oct. 2, 2012, prosecutors said. His roommate was also kidnapped at gunpoint. She was not hurt.

The victim's name was being withheld because he's a victim of a sex crime.

Former Pot Grower Accused in Kidnap, Torture Faces Life in Prison
At_Torture_Trial_Friends_Turn_on_Each_Other.jpg

A man accused of kidnapping and torture faces life in prison. Vikki Vargas reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018.
(Published Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018)
He was beaten so bad that he defecated in his pants, Brown said.

"Then they dragged him down the stairs, hitting his head on each step, thunk, thunk, thunk," she told jurors.

They continued beating him in the back of a van, hitting him with a rubber hose, burning him with a torch and shocking him with a Taser, while driving to the Mojave Desert.
Along the way, they demanded to know where the money was, which he denied having, Brown said.

He even offered tens of thousands of dollars in cash from his business, but it wasn't enough, Brown said.

When they stopped in the Mojave Desert, they dragged him out of the van, poured bleach on him to kill any DNA evidence, cut off his penis and left him for dead, Brown said.

The victim's roommate managed to free herself from the zip ties around her ankles and flagged down a deputy who happened to see her on the side of a road while he was on his way to work.

After the crime, Nayeri fled to his home country of Iran, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, Brown said.

Authorities were able to lure him out of the country using Nayeri's ex-wife Cortney Shegerian, who got him to leave Iran to visit her and his sister in Spain.

Shegerian, who authorities alleged was involved in helping Nayeri plan the kidnapping, has agreed to testify in exhange for immunity from prosecution, prosecutors said.

Nayeri was arrested as he got off a plane in the Czech Republic on a layover to Spain and eventually was extradited to Orange County.

While awaiting trial in this case in 2016, Nayeri grabbed headlines when he broke out of an Orange County jail and recorded it on contraband cellphone that his lawyer provided to NBC4.

Nayeri was captured in San Francisco and again returned to Orange County custody.

In a jailhouse interview, Nayeri denied the kidnapping and torture charges and told NBC4 his innocence will be proven in court.
 
Wow...with so-called "political leaders" like these people in NC, its really hard to find optimism for the future of the human race....I mean, WTF is smokable hemp? Yeah, that's right...as soon as the combine cuts it down in the field, its smokable hemp. Its hemp in a plant form. Just how do this wee dense bastards think this stuff is going to get to processors?

Perhaps I missed something in this article....but this action strikes me as incredibly stupid.



House looks to define smokable hemp as marijuana


Raleigh, N.C. — A legislative fight over hemp production in North Carolina shifted from a farming bill to a measure on illegal drugs on Wednesday, as a House committee voted to classify smokable hemp as a controlled substance.

Smokable hemp was the focus of two House committees on Wednesday morning, as Finance considered the annual Farm Act and Judiciary debated changes to the state's Controlled Substances Act.

A rewrite to Senate Bill 352 would tweak the definition of marijuana in state statutes to include smokable hemp. Processed hemp products and extracts such as CBD oil would remain legal in North Carolina under the proposal.

"This bill does not prevent a licensed grower from growing, handling, selling [or] transporting and product that they can produce," Rep.

Jimmy Dixon
, R-Duplin, told members of the House Judiciary committee. "The only thing it does is that it prohibits consumption of smokable hemp, with the exception of the CBD oil."
Smokable hemp became legal last year when the federal government loosened its restrictions in an effort to boost the wider hemp industry, which creates a range of products, including rope, clothes, paper, food and CBD oil.

The hemp flower contains CBD, a compound that many people believe has a range of medicinal qualities, but only miniscule amounts of THC, the compound that produces marijuana's characteristic high. The problem is that the smokable flower looks and smells like marijuana, and police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors around the state have said that, if the legislature keeps smokable hemp legal, marijuana might as well be legal as well.

"As long as smokable hemp is legal for use and sale in North Carolina, marijuana laws are virtually unenforceable," Fred Baggett, legal counsel for the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police, told members of the House Finance committee.

"It creates insurmountable barriers to enforcement," agreed Mike Waters, district attorney for Granville, Franklin, Vance and Warren counties.

Law enforcement isn't just worried about it being harder to enforce marijuana laws but about losing probable cause for searches based on the smell of marijuana smoke, or when a drug dog keys in on a vehicle.

"If this bill passes without the ban, we will put 800 of our law enforcement dogs and their handlers out of business," Dixon said.

Rhian Merwold, legislative director for the State Bureau of Investigation told lawmakers that, while drug officers could be reassigned, K-9s trained to alert for the smell of marijuana would have to be retired. "You can't unteach them," she said.


NC sees hemp as next big cash crop

A disagreement over smokable hemp has stalled the Farm Act, which focuses on setting up the necessary regulatory framework to expand the hemp farming industry in the state but also includes provisions on hog farms, skeet shooting and sweet potatoes.

The House version of the bill bans smokable hemp as of Dec. 1, which Dixon said would give farmers time to harvest their hemp crop this year. The Senate last month passed the Farm Act with a December 2020 ban to give the industry and law enforcement time to come up with a reliable field test to tell the difference between hemp buds and marijuana.

Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, who sponsored the Farm Act, has been vehemently opposed to Dixon's effort to crack down on smokable hemp, saying last week that he'd rather drop the Farm Act's hemp provisions than pass Dixon's version of the bill.
Hemp farmers have said that the smokable flower is the most profitable part of their business and accounts for about 20 percent of sales overall.

"If you take away smokable hemp, as a farmer, I don’t know what we would do," Fredericka Martin, who said she has invested $100,000 in greenhouses in Concord to produce smokable hemp year round, told lawmakers. "You’re letting down the farmer."


Law enforcement fears NC's effort to boost hemp industry could essentially legalize marijuana

Blake Butler, director of the North Carolina Industrial Hemp Association, said the smokable hemp ban would "devastate" the industry in the state.

"We are currently a top five state in hemp. We’re getting ready to get a lot of press for the wrong reasons," Butler said. "We’re throwing our hands up. We’re telling our nation, with all the technology in the world, we can’t figure this out."

"This is a flower that kills zero people and it helps so many," said Michael Sims, who owns a store that sells CBD-based products. "If we start banning something that is federally legal, it’s a slippery slope."

Sims said tests exist that can distinguish hemp from marijuana, and he and others in the industry would gladly accept taxes to generate revenue for law enforcement to have access to such testing equipment.

The Farm Act passed the House Finance committee Wednesday on a 16-11 vote and could be on the House floor by early next week. It's unclear, however, how the House and the Senate will resolve their differences on the smokable hemp ban and pass a final bill.

The House Judiciary committee passed the drug bill on a voice vote, and it also could be on the House floor by next week.
 
Ok, this is regarding Texas but its the same subject as NC in the artilce cited above this one.


Texas Legalized Hemp, not Marijuana, Governor Insists as Prosecutors Drop Pot Charges
Prosecutors say labs don’t have the time or equipment to distinguish between legal hemp and illegal pot.
http://​https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/texas-hemp-marijuana-legalization.html​​​
Texas lawmakers thought they were clear: The bill they overwhelmingly passed allowing the growth and sale of hemp had nothing to do with legalizing pot.
“This is no slippery slope toward marijuana,” Charles Perry, a Republican state senator who sponsored the bill, said in May, according to The Dallas Morning News.
But since Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure into law in June, county prosecutors around Texas have been dropping some marijuana possession charges and declining to file new ones, saying they do not have the time or the laboratory equipment needed to distinguish between legal hemp and illegal pot.
Collectively, the prosecutors’ jurisdictions cover more than nine million people — about a third of Texas’ population — including in Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

The accidental leniency represents one of the unintended consequences states may face as they race to cash in on the popularity of products made with or from hemp. Interest has surged in oils, gummies and other goods infused with CBD, or cannabidiol, which is processed from cannabis plants but does not get users high.
The police and prosecutors in Florida are facing the same problem as their Texan colleagues after the Sunshine State legalized hemp in July.

“This is not just Texas,” said Peter Stout, president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, which runs tests for the Houston Police Department and other agencies. “Everybody is struggling with this.”
In Texas, prosecutors have already dropped scores of possession cases, and they’re not just throwing out misdemeanors. The Travis County district attorney, Margaret Moore, announced this month that she was dismissing 32 felony possession and delivery of marijuana cases because of the law.

Mr. Abbott and other state officials, including the attorney general, pushed back on Thursday, saying prosecutors should not be dropping cases because of the new legislation, known as H.B. 1325.

A hat on display at the Texas Hemp Industries Association booth at the Texas Republican Convention in San Antonio last year.CreditLouis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press

“Marijuana has not been decriminalized in Texas, and these actions demonstrate a misunderstanding of how H.B. 1325 works,” the officials, all Republicans, wrote in a letter to prosecutors.
Kim Ogg, the Harris County district attorney and a Democrat, shot back by saying that laboratory confirmation “has long been required” to prove someone’s guilt.

Before the legislation went into effect, laboratories had to identify hairs on marijuana flowers and test for the presence of cannabinoids, a process that required just a few minutes and a test strip that turned purple when it was positive. Because the new law distinguishes between hemp and illicit marijuana, prosecutors say labs would now be required to determine the concentration of THC in the seized substance.
Dr. Stout said he has been able to identify only two labs in the country that can make the fine distinction necessary and that are accredited in Texas. Both of them are private.

Prosecutors would need to pay the labs to run the tests — sometimes hundreds of dollars for each sample — and to testify about the results at trial. Sending all of the state’s suspected marijuana to a small number of labs would likely overwhelm them, prosecutors have said, and would result in severe backlogs.
Still, many prosecutors agree with the governor and are continuing to charge and prosecute marijuana cases as usual. The district attorney in El Paso, Jaime Esparza, a Democrat, said this month that the law “will not have an effect on the prosecution of marijuana cases in El Paso” and a spokeswoman confirmed that he had not thrown out any cases because of the law.

The sudden dismissals in other districts have been a welcome surprise for those who had been facing charges.
Brandon Ball, a lawyer, said one of his clients in Fort Bend had been distraught about the possession charge she faced until it was unexpectedly dismissed. She kept thanking him, but it wasn’t her lawyer who beat the case.

“I was trying to explain, it wasn’t me, it was this law,” Mr. Ball said, referring to the hemp legislation.
Mr. Ball, now an assistant public defender in Harris County, explained that test results are vital for prosecutors trying to prove that someone had an illegal substance.

“The law is constantly changing on what makes something illegal, based on its chemical makeup,” Mr. Ball said. “It’s important that if someone is charged with something, the test matches what they’re charged with.”
 
This is truly atrocious.

Déjà vu all over again: Another year passes without approval of new suppliers of marijuana for research

WASHINGTON — Forgive us if you read our stories on this topic from 2017 and 2018, but here it comes again: Another year has passed since the Drug Enforcement Administration said it was open to approving more suppliers of marijuana for scientific research, and another year has passed without an application being approved.


The lag has increasingly frustrated scientists, advocates, and members of Congress from both parties who argue that expanding research into marijuana could lead to new medicines and help identify what health risks use presents.


It’s also created an odd juxtaposition, as the availability of and interest in marijuana surges in other ways. A growing number of states have legalized marijuana for medical and, in some cases, recreational purposes. Consumer products made from cannabidiol — a component of marijuana that can also be derived from hemp — are flooding wellness shops, cafes, and beauty stores in ever increasing varieties. And last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the country’s first prescription drug derived from marijuana, a cannabidiol product called Epidiolex that treats types of epilepsy.


“My understanding was that if we went through the process to be federally compliant, we would be treated fairly and have an objective evaluation,” said George Hodgin, CEO of Biopharmaceutical Research Company, a California-based group that applied for a license to grow marijuana to supply it to scientists in early 2017. “Since then it’s become apparent that there have been no evaluations that I’m aware of, despite years of promises and congressional outrage.”


Hodgin described the years of waiting as a form of “bureaucratic purgatory.”



Despite what is happening in states, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level and is considered a Schedule I substance, meaning the government views it as having a high potential for abuse and no medical benefits. To study marijuana, scientists have to go through a rigorous review and can only get a supply from the University of Mississippi, which has had the lone contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse to grow marijuana for research for years.


In August 2016, the DEA, at the same time as it extended marijuana’s Schedule I designation, said it would consider granting additional licenses for suppliers. Scientists and advocates celebrated the announcement, saying it paved the way for more research into marijuana and the possibility of studying more strains than Mississippi could offer. (Mississippi scientists say their supply is of sufficient quality and variety.)


Some two dozen applicants sought approval in the first year. But so far, no new licenses have been granted.


“We are still working through the process and those applications remain under review,” DEA spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff wrote in an email.


NIDA — which is part of the National Institutes of Health — said in a statement that “there has been no major increase in the level of demand for cannabis by researchers in recent years,” even as the number of researchers who have received marijuana from NIDA has increased over the past decade, up from nine in 2010 to 21 in 2017 and 20 in 2018.


The agency said it had increased the variety of marijuana available due to researcher demand, including strains with high levels of cannabidiol, or CBD, which is an increasingly popular consumer product and which scientists are investigating for its therapeutic potential.


The inaction on the applications has drawn congressional scrutiny and forged some unlikely partnerships among lawmakers.


In a letter to the DEA and Justice Department in May, more than two dozen House members urged the agencies to “act on one of the 26 pending applications to grow cannabis for research purposes.” The lead signatories were Reps. Eric Swalwell of California, the onetime Democratic presidential candidate, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Republican and close ally of President Trump.


And this month, a bipartisan group of House makers introduced a bill to ease the registration process for researchers wanting to study marijuana and to open the door to private suppliers of marijuana for research.


(Drug research generally couples lawmakers oddly. Earlier this year, Gaetz and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York were two of the lawmakers backing an ultimately unsuccessful push to ease restrictions on research into medical applications of psychedelic drugs.)


By last month, one of the applicants to grow marijuana, the Arizona-based Scottsdale Research Institute, grew so frustrated with the DEA that it asked a federal court to demand the agency move on the applications. The petition described the marijuana received from Mississippi as “sub-par,” particularly for clinical trials.


“At this juncture, nothing short of a writ from this Court compelling the agency to act will stop the ongoing harm caused by DEA’s unlawful and unreasonable delay,” the petition says.


The DEA said it could not comment on the litigation, and the agency has not yet filed a response to the claim, court records show.


Earlier in the Trump administration, some advocates pointed to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ anti-marijuana views as a reason behind what they perceived to be stalling on granting additional licenses. But even with Sessions’ resignation in November, applicants say they still haven’t heard updates.


At a Senate hearing in April with Sessions’ successor, Attorney General William Barr, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) noted that Sessions a year earlier had said that the agency would approve additional suppliers of marijuana for research.


“I’ve sent two follow-up letters,” Schatz said. “Where are we on this?”


“I have been pushing very hard over the last few weeks to get that process underway,” Barr said. “I think we’re going to move forward on it. I think it’s very important to get those additional suppliers.”


“Can you assure me that I’m not going to be here a year later asking the same question?” Schatz asked


“Yes,” Barr replied.



 
Not really sure why this is such a surprise???

The surprising effect marijuana legalization has on police traffic searches

Earlier this month, a study found that legalizing recreational marijuana discouraged teenage use of cannabis. Other research has shown this isn’t the only positive impact marijuana legalization can have. Legal cannabis can also make workplaces safer and can raise the property value of your home. According to a new report, legalizing marijuana also protects your civil liberties in a direct way.

Data from the Burlington Police Department, Vermont’s largest local law enforcement, shows that traffic stops have dropped 70% since the state’s legal marijuana legislation went into effect. Local news station WCAX reports that roadside searches have plummeted for all races as well. In their report, which will be fully released later this week, Burlington PD admits that police searches are down compared to other years due to legal possession of cannabis.

Vermont isn’t the only state where this has happened, either. An analysis of data from the Stanford Open Policing Project found that roadside searches were almost cut in half following marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado in 2012. As NBC News reported, the data still found that Hispanic and black minorities are still searched at a higher rate than whites in those states. While in some cases traffic stops are just police doing their job, it can also lead to disruption of trust amongst different communities.
what-state-will-most-likely-arrest-you-for-marijuana-possession-696x418.jpg

“Searches where you don’t find something are really negative towards a community,” Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, told NBC News. “Have a police officer search your car is really like, ‘Why are they doing this to me?’ And you get more pissed off. If you’re trying to do relationship building, it’s not a good thing to do a lot of searches.”

Not only does the reduction of searches have a positive impact on civil liberties, especially for minority populations disproportionately targeted by roadside stops, it can also direct police attention to more serious crimes.

A 2018 study, as reported by Marijuana Moment, found that when marijuana possession arrests dropped, police made more arrests for violent crimes, burglaries, vehicular theft, and property crime in Washington and Colorado. Published in the Police Quarterly journal, the researchers concluded that allocation of police resources away from marijuana-related crimes was an overall positive development.

“While our results cannot specifically explain why police clearance rates have increased in Colorado and Washington, we think the argument that legalization did in fact produce a measurable impact on clearance rates is plausible,” the researchers wrote. “Our models show no negative effects of legalization and, instead, indicate that crime clearance rates for at least some types of crime are increasing faster in states that legalized than in those that did not.”
 
They have to be fraking joking...right? They're not? Oh, shit....sigh

Feds want GPS coordinates for hemp growers

ndustrial hemp is once again legal in the United States. But as with any good thing in this country that insists it is still the “Land of the Free,” there is always a trade-off somewhere to compensate for the illusion of rights. Perhaps this is the reason that some citizens do not trust their Uncle Sam. But on the flip side, that old, wrinkled, fire-breathing icon of the American institution does not trust us either. So, while the suited soldiers of the federal government may have unleashed the idea of bringing hemp production around again after more than eight decades, they are also forcing all of the farmers who get into the cultivation of this revisited cash crop to forfeit their privacy. Welcome to agriculture 2.0 inside the Paranoid States of America.


A section of the 2018 Farm Bill, which was brought to the table last year by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then signed into law by President Donald Trump, stipulates that anyone wanting to grow industrial hemp in the U.S. must provide the GPS coordinates to their farms during the application process.






In some states, however, the business of hemp farmers is being kept mostly private. Michigan’s hemp law prevents state officials from making information about farmers and their crops part of the public record. It is one of several changes ushered in by state Sen. Dan Lauwers to protect hemp farmers and their crops from hooligans who might try to vandalize or steal hemp plants for profit. The lawmaker was especially concerned for the safety of hemp farms as a result of the latest CBD craze. Because while most marijuana cultivation operations these days are confined to indoor facilities, hemp is still grown outdoors in the same manner as corn and soybeans.


So, unlike the state’s medical marijuana program, where almost every aspect of pot farm life is out there for anyone to see, there is no searchable database available in Michigan to show who is involved with hemp production. In ways, this is good, as it keeps hemp farmers under the radar, free to conduct their business without putting it all on front street for everyone to ogle. But then again, some worry that this level of super-secrecy might prevent business relationships from flourishing. Yes, there are actually hemp farmers upset that their identities are being kept private.


“I don’t see any benefits to keeping the farmers’ identities private,” Jeff Gallagher, managing member of a Michigan-based hemp processing company, told Hemp Industry Daily.


On the other hand, there are industry representatives who believe that while hemp farmers are entitled to just as much privacy as any other farmer, a list of licensed participants should be made available to law enforcement.


The problem is marijuana and hemp are close relatives, and they look a lot alike. The trick to keeping hemp plants in line with the law is ensuring that they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC. Some farmers say they test their plants weekly to keep close tabs on the THC levels of their plants. And if any of the crops should test above the legally allotted THC threshold, those crops are destroyed. They have to be. Any plant that ranks above the THC limit is unusable in Michigan’s hemp market. But if none of these farmers are registered, what is stopping the police from launching an investigation to determine whether the crop is above board or part of an illegal pot operation?


This conundrum is all part of the reason that hemp was made illegal back in 1937 in the first place. Lawmakers didn’t have any answers as to how law enforcement would determine the difference between hemp and marijuana, so they decided to ban both to keep things simple. What is interesting is that after all of these years, police still do not have more sophisticated technology at their disposal to tell the difference between the two cannabis plants. As we have seen in states like Texas, prosecutors are having a tough time sealing the deal on felony marijuana cases because they simply cannot prove the plant isn’t hemp. Finding laboratories that can facilitate this task hasn’t been easy, and the cost involved hardly makes it a worthwhile pursuit. It would cost hundreds of dollars to test each sample and present the findings in court. Going forward with such a thing could potentially create a backlog of marijuana cases and, quite honestly, nobody wants the burden. We shall see this confusion in more states soon.


In a lot of ways, the legalization of industrial hemp, while creating some privacy concerns for farmers, makes it more likely that marijuana will go legal nationwide in the foreseeable future. As more states get into the groove of hemp production within the next year or so, law enforcement officials all over the country, especially in the heartland of the U.S., are going to run themselves ragged trying to uphold two different laws (legal hemp, illegal marijuana) on a similar product.


And if prosecutors are not able to effectively move felony marijuana cases forward, we will likely find that more jurisdictions will throw their hands in the air and opt to collect the tax revenue instead.
 
No, but they can get narc'd or drunk on their ass and ruin their family with their alcoholism and hard drug addictions....sigh

New Coast Guard Order Makes Marijuana Dispensaries Off-Limits

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz issued a general order Tuesday banning Coasties from entering any business that grows, distributes, sells or otherwise deals with marijuana.


Pot may be legal for various uses in 33 states, but it remains an illicit substance under federal law, and the service's new general order is designed to send a message to Coast Guard men and women that they should steer clear, officials said during a phone call with Military.com.



Recognizing there has been "a shift in the social norms, especially because of the increased proliferation and availability of cannabis-based products," Schultz issued the new guidance to eliminate ambiguity, explained Cmdr. Matt Rooney, Policy and Standards Division chief at Coast Guard Headquarters.


"As a military organization, we have to be clear and direct to providing [guidance] to our members," Rooney said.


According to Coast Guard-wide message ACN 079/19, the new general order applies to uniformed Coast Guard members and prohibits them from entering brick-and-mortar establishments and mobile dispensaries and using online or delivery services.


The new order is punitive, but since the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not contain specific language barring service members from such businesses, punishment would fall under failure to obey a lawful order, with a maximum punishment of two years confinement, total forfeiture of pay and allowances, reduction to E-1 and a dishonorable discharge, according to officials.


Rooney said no specific event or activities prompted the new order. Instead, it is an effort to "protect our members ... and is a condition of our employment to ensure we remain mission ready."


"The culture in certain parts of the nation is shifting around marijuana ... we want to be clear to the work force in providing our expectation that consumption of marijuana is still prohibited," he said.


Related:


Although cocaine makes up the bulk of the narcotics seized by the Coast Guard each year, the service continues to interdict marijuana shipments. In fiscal 2017, the service seized 31,190 pounds of pot on the high seas.


Schultz said this law enforcement mission is precisely the reason that Coast Guard men and women should "maintain a lifestyle that neither condones the use of illegal substances nor exposes them to accidental intake of illegal drugs."


"Any involvement with activities, events or entities that promote illegal drugs is contrary to the service's core values," Schultz wrote.


According to the message, service members are also excluded from investing in cannabis companies. Although the UCMJ does not explicitly prohibit investment in the industry, involvement can jeopardize a service member's security clearance under Defense Department policy.


They also could be prosecuted, Rooney said.


"If you are in the business of manufacturing or distributing marijuana, that is still a violation of the UCMJ, so if there is a direct investment or association with those who are participating in those endeavors, it could be a violation of the UCMJ."


The general order only pertains to the Coast Guard, which is under the Department of Homeland Security. The Defense Department has yet to issue similar guidance but is exploring its policies on cannabis company investments by service members.


Rooney also urged caution on using substances like hemp and cannabidiol, or CBD, which aren't illegal and are making their way into foods and dietary supplements as well as vape oils. While hemp and CBD may contain zero to trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, products with them are unregulated and may not be what they claim.


"We advise everyone to err on the side of caution," Rooney said. "If they have a desire to use a product that may or may not fall into the definition of what's prohibited, they should seek guidance or use caution."






 
I sort of want to retitle this thread...after reading this article....to "Marijuana News that is so Stupid we can't understand how these people can Breathe and Walk at the same Time".

This is just stupefying.


Lawmaker Wrong To Blame Shootings On Marijuana Legalization, Ohio Attorney General Says

The attorney general of Ohio clapped back at a state lawmaker on Monday after the representative wrote on Facebook that marijuana legalization was at least partly to blame for recent mass shootings.

In the wake of back-to-back shootings that left 20 people dead in El Paso, Texas, nine dead in Dayton, Ohio and scores more injured, Rep. Candice Keller (R) wrote a list of factors behind the deadly incidents—including “acceptance of recreational marijuana,” same-sex marriage and violent video games.

“After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game,” she wrote. “Why not place the blame where it belongs?”


Her post, which has since been made private, was soundly rebuked by the state’s top cop.

1565032041125.png



“No, m’am. The blame belongs to the evil man who killed those people,” Attorney General Dave Yost (R) wrote on Monday.

An Ohio county sheriff and a local city councilman also condemned Keller’s post.

1565032117413.png



“Shame shame shame Candice Keller,” Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones wrote.

While it’s not entirely uncommon for politicians to take questionable pot shots at policies they oppose in the aftermath of tragedy (e.g. blaming hurricanes and other natural disasters on same-sex marriage), Keller’s take on the relationship between adult-use cannabis legalization and mass shootings is all the more confounding given that marijuana is not legal in either state that experienced shootings over the weekend.
 
You can't make this shit up.....man has medially documented epilepsy and when he has a grand mal seizure, the Dr's attribute it to his MMJ use? For crying out loud....I think we have a valid expectation that Dr's use logic and reason in their profession and not apply their antiquated, uninformed, personal bias to patient treatment.


Miami-Area Hospital Diagnoses Medical Marijuana Patient With Drug Abuse

The morning of June 20, Michael Morell woke up as he did every weekday, when his alarm clock rang at 6. The 34-year-old father of two sat up and reached over to his bedside table to hit snooze. But when he attempted to lie back down, his muscles became rigid, leaving him frozen in a sitting position. He was stuck.

The convulsions began in his upper body and moved up through the muscles in his cheeks, which started to twitch uncontrollably. In a matter of moments, Morell's body began to shake so hard it woke his wife. As he smacked his lips over and over again, Tania Gonzalez asked her husband if he was OK, but he didn't reply. He just stared straight ahead, eyes open, unresponsive.

"It's weird because I didn't feel like there was anything wrong in that moment, but I was confused as to why I was in an upright position," Morell recalls. "The next thing I remember is being in the hospital bed with my family surrounding me."

Morell, who had previously been diagnosed with epilepsy, was experiencing a tonic-clonic seizure, also known as grand mal. Unable to snap her husband out of his trance, Gonzalez frantically called an ambulance. EMTs rushed to the couple's home in Homestead and transported Morell to the nearest emergency room, at Homestead Hospital.

Upon his arrival, doctors with Baptist Health, which runs the hospital, gave Morell morphine, prompting an additional seizure. His attending physician ordered a series of medical tests, including a CT scan, MRI, EKG, and toxicology test. The CT and EKG tests were unremarkable, but the MRI showed a four-millimeter cyst in the mesial temporal lobe of Morell's brain.


Doctors received the MRI results at 4:49 that afternoon. Three hours later, psychiatrist Daniel F. Mandri stopped by Morell's hospital bed for a visit. But it wasn't the MRI results that Mandri wanted to talk about.

"At first, I didn't think anything was off, but then he started asking me weird questions," Morell remembers. Mandri asked if he did any illicit drugs. Morell said no. But then the psychiatrist got more specific, asking if he "did cannabis." Morell was honest: He told Mandri, yes, he used medical marijuana prescribed by a doctor to treat his epilepsy and occasionally smoked joints to calm himself.

“Yes, I smoke weed,” Morell says. “But I have a license and a full green light to do this legally.”

That fact apparently didn't sit well with the hospital. Mandri was "asked to see patient for 'drug abuse and seizures,'" according to consultation notes Morell provided to New Times. The next day, the attending physician, Dr. Jimena Amparo Blandon, also paid Morell a visit. By Blandon's estimation, Morell had a serious problem — cannabis abuse disorder.

"Yes, I smoke weed," Morell says today. "But I have a medical marijuana license and a full green light to do this legally."

November marks three years since Floridians passed Amendment 2 with a popular vote of 71 percent, establishing a medical marijuana program in the Sunshine State. To date, more than 327,000 patients have qualified for medical cards, including Morell. Now that medicinal marijuana is a reality for sick residents across the state, activists are busy waging the next battle in the war: circulating a petition to put recreational pot on the ballot in 2020.

Bias and misinformation, however, have a devious way of lingering long after laws have changed. Although epilepsy is listed as one of the "debilitating medical conditions" in the state's constitution — making it legal to treat with medical marijuana — some Florida institutions are still treating prescribed cannabis as an illicit drug.

Homestead Hospital declined to comment on Morell's case, citing patient-doctor privilege, and multiple attempts to contact Mandri and Blandon went unanswered. But Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, says hospitals are caught in a "federal Catch-22." The U.S. government defines cannabis as a drug with no accepted medical use, and hospitals could face penalties and lose federal funding for allowing patients to use medical marijuana. As long as marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance, hospitals are stuck.

"It's a problem," O'Keefe says.

Shortly after his conversation with Blandon, Morell asked to be discharged from Homestead Hospital. His exit paperwork included a four-page guide to cannabis abuse disorder and a recommendation that he go to a treatment facility. His bill for the 24-hour stay? More than $60,000 before insurance.
 
I'm putting this under Atrocious Cannbis News as we are seeing more and more often that moderation of social media sites is....well, not particularly fair often and def not particularly even handed when it comes to MJ related content....all IMO, of course! haha

Unfair social media restrictions for cannabis brands

If you’re a company/brand on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve likely been tempted by these platforms at some point to promote or “boost” your post for more exposure. Admittedly, we weren't confident that we’d be able to promote ourselves on these platforms. Marketing restrictions on Cannabis are strict, allowing only ‘brand elements’ to be shown to the public unless sufficient measures have been taken to prevent them from being seen by minors. If said measures have been taken, Cannabis brands are permitted to include ‘informational promotion’ and ‘brand promotion’ as well.
Once we dug a little deeper we discovered the high level of customization that’s offered for reaching your audience. Both Facebook and Instagram allow you to direct your promoted post to specific age groups, in specific Countries/Provinces/Cities, with specific interests. Being able to target our promoted posts to Canadians who are 19+ and interested in cannabis is completely aligned with the cannabis marketing laws. So when our post was declined for promotion we were both surprised and confused. After requesting a review for appeal, we received a message saying that our post was denied because they "don't allow ads that promote illegal, prescription, or recreational drugs." However, just yesterday the following sponsored ads showed up on our Instagram feed…
alcohol_ads_large.jpg

To be clear, we’re not trying to pick on alcohol brands, and we hope each and every one of you congratulated Larry, but we can all agree that alcohol is a recreational drug. According to their policy these posts should have been denied promotion as well.



The email did have a silver lining. Facebook provided us a link to their Advertising Policy and told us to “try editing [our] ad by following the policy guidelines.” Here are those guidelines...
"Ads must not constitute, facilitate, or promote illegal products, services or activities. Ads targeted to minors must not promote products, services, or content that are inappropriate, illegal, or unsafe, or that exploit, mislead, or exert undue pressure on the age groups targeted."

The post we were trying to promote (pictured below) adhered perfectly to these guidelines yet it was still denied for promotion.
Man-On-The-Moon-post-3_1_large.jpg

Friendly Stranger has been fighting for cannabis since 1994. We’ve always operated in accordance with the law because it’s difficult to make change from behind bars. We are asked hundreds of times every day why we don’t sell cannabis and the answer is simple, "We are not legally permitted to sell cannabis at this time." There are 23 million Canadians on Facebook and 8.5 million on Instagram, yet somehow our marketing laws are disregarded. Not being able to promote a post isn’t the end of the world, nor the end of our company, but being unable to do so because Facebook/Instagram, the largest social media platforms in the world, don't recognize what we’ve fought so hard and waited so long for, is upsetting.
Recreational cannabis is legal but there are still so many changes that need to happen and our peaceful activism will continue until we see them improved. October 17th 2018 was and will remain to be a day of celebration but let’s not forget that we still have further to go. We'll continue to correspond with Facebook in hopes of ending the negative stigma that they still hold towards cannabis. Until then we’ll remain positive and patient as we strive for change.
Are we missing something? Do you agree or disagree with us? Are you a Canadian cannabis brand with a similar story? If you have advice to give or an opinion to share, we want to hear from you. Leave a message in the comment box below.
 
"Wang's findings from Colorado's Children's Hospital are included in a new nationwide study that showed a 27% increase in children and teenagers getting emergency treatment for marijuana toxicity."

This is, IMO, a breathless and really atrocious example of journalism. Just BS.

27% increase over WHAT FUCKING RATE OF INCIDENTS? This figure, while alarming, means absolute fucking NOTHING. For example, a 100% increase sounds very alarming. But a 100% increase in something that occurs one in a billion is now two in a billion. See what I'm saying. Its lazy damn journalism to publish a figure like this without context.

Maybe this person got their journalism degree in a box of Jacker Jacks.

Also, while we don't know the actual rate of incidents from this article (which is silent on the only real figure of merit), they are alarmed because kids are getting into their parents MMJ. Well, guess what...anybody who has had kids and had to install child safety latches on all of their cabinets knows very small children get into anything and everything and their first instinct is to put it into their mouths. Now, if this "journalist" really wanted to do their job, they would have contacted the Poison Control Center and see what the rate of incident is of children getting into.....insect poison? Maybe harsh cleaners? What else...the list is long. But no, putting this into context would have undermined the whole hysterical slant of this POS example of American News (yes, this was from CBS...sigh)

The unintended consequences of more potent pot

The legalization of recreational marijuana in almost a dozen states shows how America's attitude toward the drug may be changing. But the drug has changed too: Newly developed strains of marijuana are far stronger than what people were smoking in the past, leading to unintended consequences like addiction and marijuana toxicity.

"Typically, young children around the age of 2 are getting into caregivers' -- whether it's parents', grandparents', babysitters' -- marijuana products, often edible products," said Dr. Sam Wang.
Wang's findings from Colorado's Children's Hospital are included in a new nationwide study that showed a 27% increase in children and teenagers getting emergency treatment for marijuana toxicity. Seventy percent of the cases occurred in states with legalized marijuana.
"In severe circumstances, it can affect how they're breathing and make them comatose and be put on a ventilator," Wang said.
An exponential increase in marijuana's psychoactive ingredient, THC, is at the center of the crisis. THC content has spiked from 3.7% to more than 20% -- and some cannabis concentrates contain close to 100% THC.
Twenty-year-old Colton said that his addiction to marijuana began when the drug was legalized five years ago while he was attending high school in Colorado.
"Once it was legalized, it was so… easy to get in its strongest form straight from the dispensary," Colton said. His father, Andrew Brandt, believes the high levels of THC fueled his son's addiction.

"This is nuclear strength… you know, rocket science Ph.D.s coming in and making this stuff stronger than any strains of weed anyone has ever known," he said.
When asked if there's anything the industry can do to regulate THC levels in legal marijuana products, Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association said, "What's important about potency is that the consumer knows what they're buying and what they're consuming -- and that is through consistent testing standards and labeling standards on these products, and that only exists under the regulated markets."
States that legalized recreational marijuana have generated almost $3 billion in tax revenue since 2014, when Colorado first started sales.
"The state was highly focused on how much tax revenue it could generate from marijuana sales," Brandt said. "Nobody really spent a lot of time thinking about, well, how this going to impact some of the younger community?"

For Brandt, the impact became clear when Colton was failing in college, couldn't quit cannabis and asked to go to rehab.

Colton said that asking for help is "the hardest thing to do" and that his recovery will likely take a lifetime.
"The worst part of it is until you do that, it doesn't get better," he said. "It only gets worse."
 
I have never opened FB and never will.


Facebook suspending medical marijuana forums for promoting drug use

Ohioans’ right to use medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation came face-to-face with Facebook’s community standards this week.


The social media platform on Wednesday took down the Ohio Medical Cannabis Review page, which gives medical marijuana users a forum to talk about the products available in dispensaries. Nearly 35,000 people saw the page’s posts from mid-July through mid-August, according to a site administrator. A message sent to administrators said the page was deleted for encouraging drug use and the six administrators were given warnings or temporarily suspended from Facebook.

The social media giant’s community standards prohibit the sale of certain regulated goods, including medical marijuana. But the page’s administrators said their site simply involved discussions about product quality.

“It was a page patients could go to and see all the cool things in the program, and also get information so they are informed when they go to their local dispensary,” said page founder Michael Reed, who lives in Dayton.

The move comes a month after the We Grow Ohio Facebook page was suspended in mid-July. The page was restored shortly after The Dispatch reached out to a Facebook representative, who said the suspension was issued in error.

The administrator, Robin Ann Morris of Sandusky, now takes a heavier hand in policing the group’s content.

Images of medical marijuana dispensary menus were flagged, Morris said, so she posted an announcement asking people not to do so.

Now, when she sees those menus, “I remove them right away,” she said.

Reed said that both menus and product reviews were flagged before the review page was deleted. He asked users to stop posting menus but continued to allow reviews. “That’s literally what the page is for,” he said.

Review page administrators Reed and Anthony Cordle, who lives on the Far West Side, believe dispensary employees flagged posts that were critical of their employers.

Cordle, for example, said his personal Facebook page was suspended after he posted a picture of moldy marijuana from an Ohio dispensary.

However, Facebook doesn’t show users who flagged their content, so they can’t say with certainty who objected to their posts.

Both men expressed exasperation, noting that cannabis is now legal for medical marijuana cardholders in Ohio.

A Facebook representative did not respond to a message seeking comment.

While marijuana is now legal for medical or recreational use in a majority of states, Facebook’s acceptable content standards don’t seem to have kept pace.

The problem is not specific to Ohio. Medical marijuana dispensaries had their pages suspended in New Jersey and Colorado in 2016, according to Forbes and NJ.com.

The review page gives patients one of their few forums to express concerns and share their experiences with dispensary products, Reed said. Different strains of marijuana with varying levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and CBD, an extract commonly sold as a dietary supplement, are available at Ohio dispensaries, and Reed said the page helps medical marijuana users find the strain that’s right for them.

“A lot of us have wasted a lot of money trying to find good strains by growers,” he said. “If we can take out the guesswork for the patients it helps lessen their cost.”
 
Anyone who has ever made cannabis oil knows that this is total rubbish. It is not expensive to make... certainly not as expensive as they are making it out to be. So it really bothered me when I heard the prices being charged for Epidiolex (the legal CBD drug for Epilepsy). Now this.... I'd like to know why they can't just lower the price.

Cannabis oil too expensive to prescribe to epileptic children on NHS, advisory body finds

A cannabis drug used to treat children with epilepsy is too expensive to prescribe even though it reduces patients’ seizures, the UK’s medical advisory body has said.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) announced today that it would not recommend cannabidiol combined with anti-seizure drug clobazam for the treatment of two types of severe epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome.

Draft guidelines say that while there is evidence that cannabis oil reduces the number of seizures children have, the drug is too expensive and its long-term effects are unclear.

Nice was asked by the Department of Health and Social Care to examine whether the cannabis oil drug, used in the United States, should be used in the NHS in England to treat the rare conditions which begin in childhood.

The oil does not contain THC, the psychoactive ingredient that makes cannabis users ‘high’.

Nice’s draft guidance, published today, says that while the oil “reduces the number of the main types of seizures associated with these conditions,” the body had “concerns about the validity of the economic models” of GW Pharma, the company that provides it.

The committee said that GW had not explored the possibility of the oil becoming less effective over time, which is the case with other anti-epileptic medication.

Nice said that people who currently had access to cannabis-derived drugs to treat epilepsy would not be affected by the lack of recommendation.

A limited number of parents have licences to use medical cannabis oils to treat epilepsy, with some resorting to bringing in the medication from abroad in addition to having a valid UK licence.

Cannabidiol itself is not licensed for use in the UK but a Nice spokesperson said it expected this to change in the near future.

Professor David Nutt, head of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology, Imperial College London, warned that having effective cannabis-derived medication on the NHS may now be "a lost cause" after the lack of recommendation.

A spokeswoman for the Cannabis Patient Advocacy Support Services said the news was “disappointing for parents” and as the oil had in some cases helped children “dramatically”.

A spokesman for GW Pharma said: “We are working with NICE to address the questions raised in this draft guidance, with the aim of ensuring patients can access the medicine on the NHS once approved. We remain hopeful that NICE will recommend cannabidiol oral solution at the end of its appraisal process.”
 
They don’t lower the price because many people are greedy and want to make money off the misfortune of others. I’m getting cynical in my older age. It’s really too bad. Kinda like how edibles are too expensive for medical patients in my state.
 
WTF is the matter with these people??? Can they not understand the term "interstate commerce and transportation" which is under the sole authority of the Federal Govt which has legalized hemp.

"The Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a memo in May concluding that states can't prohibit interstate transportation or shipment of hemp that was legally produced."​

WTF...sigh. Perhaps somebody needs to sue the living shit out of S.D. , its Governor, and the police departments involved in this atrocious abortion of justice.

Minnesota hemp delivery driver arrested in South Dakota

A Minnesota hemp delivery driver has been charged with possession of marijuana after transporting a load of hemp through South Dakota.

The Minnesota Hemp Association is calling out South Dakota for violating the 2018 Farm Bill by arresting the driver. The case highlights the need for consistent state laws regarding hemp cultivation, transportation, processing and selling, according to association Executive Director Joe Radinovich, a former Minnesota legislator.

"A Minnesota Hemp Association member expected a shipment of legally grown hemp. Instead, their driver was arrested and their hemp was confiscated in a state that isn't complying with the Farm Bill and allowing hemp to be transported," Radinovich said.

The 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized industrial hemp, but South Dakota legislators failed to override Gov. Kristi Noem's veto of the bill legalizing hemp in the state this year. The Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a memo in May concluding that states can't prohibit interstate transportation or shipment of hemp that was legally produced.


More: South Dakota lawmakers take a lesson from Kentucky's hemp industry

The driver, contracted by a hemp extractor company in Minneapolis, was pulled over on an interstate in South Dakota on July 16 for exceeding the posted speed limit. The driver was delivering a shipment of 300 pounds of non-intoxicating hemp from Denver to the processor in Minnesota and the value of the unprocessed hemp seized by South Dakota law enforcement was $22,500, according to the Minnesota Hemp Association.

A close-up view of a hemp plant cut down at a University of Kentucky farm near Lexington, Ky.

A close-up view of a hemp plant cut down at a University of Kentucky farm near Lexington, Ky. (Photo: AP Photo/Dylan Lovan)

The driver was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute. The driver has been released and is awaiting the next steps in the legal process, but the current total in product loss and legal fees is more than $36,000, which has been borne by the Minnesota extractor company, according to the Minnesota Hemp Association.

More: Why lawmakers are frustrated with S.D. officials' lack of hemp research


Forty-seven states have legalized hemp so far and a committee of South Dakota legislators are currently studying the industrial hemp issue in preparation for the 2020 session. In their second meeting on Monday, legislators called out state agency leaders for their lack of research on the topic. Noem vetoed the industrial hemp bill in March, saying the state isn't ready for it yet and that legalized industrial hemp would open the door for legalized marijuana in the state. That argument was echoed again on Monday by Public Safety Secretary Craig Price.

Noem released a statement ahead of Monday's meeting that she's urging legislators to consider the unknowns about industrial hemp because there are still more questions than answers. She said she would be "thrilled" to introduce a new crop that could bolster markets and support producers, but industrial hemp "is surrounded by many question marks. It could be reckless to introduce a product that has serious implications on the health and safety of the next generation."




 
I looked at this video....what a sorry sight.

TBH, this looks like an accidental discharge rather than an intentional shooting....but accidental discharges are what does sometimes happen when you run around with a loaded gun, one in the chamber, hammer cocked, and finger on the trigger.

Where I think we have gone far wrong in this country is turning police into military. Do you see how these guys are dressed, the helmets, the black tac clothes, the AR type weapons. Looks just like clearing a house in Fallujah....but this is fucking Chico, CA.

Now I will also say, 1,500 plants and illegal tap on power grid is often indicative of a different sort of grower than most of us are familiar with. There is a LOT of criminal violence in some places around illegal grows and the cops got quickly tired of being shot at.

I don't really know the answer except to legalize MJ and at least this kind of shit won't happen over that particular plant.
 

Sponsored by

VGoodiez 420EDC
Back
Top