Cannabis News

On Thursday, representatives from Health Advocates Rejecting Marijuana ( HARM ), spoke to an audience at the conference center at Choctaw Casino in Durant about the danger and prevention of marijuana use.  The conference was hosted by the Bryan County Turning point Drug Free Community Coalition and the Wichita Mountains Prevention Network.

The goals of HARM are “to decrease the accessibility/ availability of marijuana-related paraphernalia and to minimize messages that encourage, normalize or trivialize marijuana use” and “to reduce marijuana use by youth, to lessen the problems associated with the accessibility and use of marijuana by youth and to change the perception that marijuana is harmless.”

During the conference, the following five policy campaigns were discussed in-depth: head shop policy, retailers policy, special events and outdoor venues policy, dispensaries policy and media normalization.  John Byrom, co-facilitator of HARM, and Rebecca Hernandez, a policy co-chair, spoke to the audience about marijuana use in San Diego County, California.  In 1996, California passed a law legalizing the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana by patients who possess a “written or oral recommendation” from a physician that he or she “would benefit from medical marijuana.”

Byrom said he actively protested the law and has been fighting against marijuana use in California ever since.  Hernandez became involved working against marijuana use when she was employed at a San Diego high school working with at-risk high school students.  She said she saw how drugs and alcohol were negatively affecting their lives and futures.

“We’re losing a whole generation of kids to drug use,” she said.  During the presentation, the team spoke about different initiatives of the organization and how they have worked to stop the prevalence of the glamorization of drug use in society.  They showed pictures of clothing, shoes, belts, bags and other items found in major stores in California.  Pictures and clips of sound and video were also viewed that showed how HARM has been actively fighting marijuana use in San Diego County.

Hernandez said, “We need to stand up to the bully.  We’re going to lose our nation if we let people like that [advocates of marijuana use] move forward and that’s why we’re sharing what’s going on in California with other states.”

Byrom urges residents of Southeastern Oklahoma to take a stand against marijuana use and work to prevent its prevalence in the community.

“You can stop it and that’s what’s great.  You can stop it from growing to the point of California and you can be the prevention.  You have the ability because it hasn’t taken hold here; it’s nothing compared to California.  If you can stop it before it happens, that’s the whole idea of prevention.  ”

According to Gwynn Busby, Wichita Mountains Prevention Network regional coordinator, marijuana use was chosen as a priority issue in Bryan County because of the high rate of admission into treatment with marijuana designated as the drug of choice.  Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s arrest records show 100% of drug arrest for students 18 and over at the university had marijuana included with other drugs that were confiscated.  Slightly over one-third of the Bryan County Court’s cases are related to marijuana charges.  These charges include: possession, intent to sell, cultivate, and paraphernalia.

Source: Durant Daily Democrat (OK)
Copyright: 2012 Durant Daily Democrat.
Contact: http://www.durantdemocrat.com/pages/send_letter_to_editor
Website: http://www.durantdemocrat.com/
Author: Brittany Snapp

Let’s start by stating that driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol is a crime and must be punished. All 50 U.S. states have clear laws prohibiting this activity. But there is one intoxicant that is trickier than the others: marijuana, especially when used for medical purposes.

During the past two years, Colorado and Montana, along with more than a dozen other states, have proposed laws that set a strict threshold for determining when a marijuana user is deemed too impaired to drive. These would consider a concentration of more than 5 nanograms of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana) per milliliter of blood, as hands-down proof of intoxication or impairment.

The result would be an automatic guilty verdict, with all that entails: a temporary loss of driving privileges, fines, lawyer’s fees, possible jail time and greatly increased insurance premiums. By some estimates, a conviction for driving under the influence (DUI) can cost a driver as much as $10,000.

Several states are going further and have either adopted or are considering zero-tolerance laws for THC levels. This means any THC in the blood would result in a conviction.

Here’s the problem with these laws: There are questions about how, and at what level, cannabis use impairs driving ability. For a patient in one of the 17 states where marijuana has been legalized for medicinal use, how are you to know when it’s legal to drive? After consuming marijuana, should you wait 12 hours to drive or one day? When will your THC level be below the 5-nanogram threshold? The answer is complicated.

Chronic Users

Although marijuana is readily detectable in toxicology tests of blood, hair, urine or saliva, what isn’t clear is just how quickly THC passes through the body. We know, for example, that THC may be detected in the blood of occasional users several hours after ingesting. But in some chronic users there may be traces for days after the last use, long after any performance-impairing effects have subsided.

This is a very clear contrast with alcohol. There is a firm understanding of the rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol and there are well-known guidelines on how much time must pass after drinking before one is fit to drive. Tests can easily be administered in roadside stops. Those who fail simple benchmarks of sobriety — not to mention breath tests — are usually convicted or plead guilty.

The research on how marijuana affects driving is far less conclusive, though.

Testing done on drivers under the influence of alcohol often show that drivers display more aggressive behavior behind the wheel, and errors are more pronounced than when sober. The opposite tends to be true when drivers are under the influence of THC; they tend to have heightened awareness — rather than diminished sensitivity as they do after drinking — to their surroundings. As a result, they tend to compensate by driving more cautiously.

A 2007 control study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health reviewed 10 years of U.S. auto-fatality data. Investigators found that U.S. drivers with blood-alcohol levels of 0.05 percent — a level below the national 0.08 percent legal limit — were three times as likely to have been driving unsafely before a fatal crash, compared with individuals who tested positive for marijuana.

What this means is that we need more research before new DUI marijuana laws are enacted. Setting an absolute impairment standard for THC bloodstream levels is premature. And these laws, which target marijuana use and associated medical marijuana patients, are discriminatory.

Pain Killers

I say this at a time when there is an absence of legislation dealing with the use and well-documented abuse of prescription painkillers, which can dangerously impair the judgment needed for safe driving. State legislatures aren’t setting arbitrary and scientifically unproven blood-level standards for these drugs. So why are they focused on marijuana?

Driving while intoxicated must anywhere and everywhere be illegal, whether that impairment is caused by prescription drugs, alcohol purchased at a liquor store or marijuana used on the recommendation of a doctor. Under current standards, someone can be charged with DUI for marijuana use based on roadside sobriety tests and observations by the arresting officer in conjunction with blood samples. Those tests serve their purpose at this point.

But if states are going to turn to strict threshold laws, they should answer this question: Based solely on THC concentrations in blood from marijuana, when is a driver too impaired to drive safely?

Until the evidence is in, it’s hard to see why any state needs to lower the burden of proof necessary to convict someone of a DUI marijuana charge.

Robert Frichtel is managing partner of the Medical Marijuana Business Exchange. The opinions expressed are his own.

Source: Bloomberg.com (USA)
Author: Robert Frichtel
Published: July 1, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Bloomberg L.P.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.bloomberg.com/

According to a U.N. report on global drug use, cannabis was the world’s most widely produced, trafficked, and consumed drug in the world in 2010.

Marijuana boasts somewhere between 119 million and 224 million users in the adult population of the world (18 or older). And there are no signs to indicate the popularity of marijuana will fall anytime soon. Cannabis is consumed in some fashion in all countries, the report says, and it is grown in most. Though the use of the drug is stabilizing in North America, and Oceania, smoking pot is on the rise in West and Central Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia and Central Asia.

In 2010, marijuana use was most prevalent in Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. and Canada came in second, followed by Spain, France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Nigeria, Zambia, and Madagascar were tied for fourth place.

The U.N. report also noted shifts in cultural trends. Some interesting standouts: The European market is moving away from cannabis resin (hashish) and towards the herb, which is more popular in America; cannabis became Afghanistan’s most lucrative cash crop in 2010, replacing heroin; and the marijuana seed market grew immensely from 2008 to 2010, with 100 to 200 brands available online when the report was written.

The U.N. also reported that cannabis is becoming more potent in developed countries. The popularization of hydroponic cultivation, a method that uses mineral nutrient solutions to grow plants in water without soil, means marijuana is a) more likely to be grown indoors and b) stronger than traditionally grown plants.

But beware of marijuana imitations. Or imitations of any drug, really. New chemically engineered substances are popping up all across the world (see bath salts), and weed is no exception to the trend. Synthetic cannabinoids that emulate the effects of weed but contain uncontrolled products have been detected since 2008 in herbal smoking blends.

Source: Time Magazine (US)
Author: Eliana Dockterman
Published: June 29, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Time Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.time.com/time/

A push to regulate California’s medical marijuana industry amid heightened federal scrutiny of cannabis producers and sellers has fizzled due to a lack of support in the state Senate.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano called off a scheduled Senate committee vote on his medical marijuana regulation legislation Monday, acknowledging that he was short on votes to advance ahead of a July deadline. “Certainly in counting noses, the noses weren’t there even in committee,” the San Francisco Democrat said.

Supporters of Assembly Bill 2312 say the state’s 16-year-old medical marijuana laws need to be updated to protect legitimate growers, sellers and users in the wake of raids and increased scrutiny from federal authorities. Scores of dispensaries have shut down and at least 100 municipalities have acted to restrict their presence in light of the federal crackdown.

But Monday’s decision virtually kills chances for a resolution this year. Legislation protecting some distributors from prosecution died on the Senate floor earlier this year and a drive to qualify a medical marijuana regulation initiative for the ballot failed to attract the money needed to succeed.

Ammiano said the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee has agreed to hold hearings on the issue and draft a report after this year’s legislative session is over. He said the decision gives supporters “breathing room” to continue working on issues with the bill without the added political complication of an upcoming general election.

“Even though there’s always a sense of disappointment – where for many people there’s an immediacy here – I think particularly when it comes to the Legislature, this extra time will be more beneficial,” he said.

The bill, which squeaked out of the state Assembly earlier this month on a vote of 41-28, would create a state Bureau of Medical Marijuana Enforcement to issue licenses and provide oversight for many aspects of the medical marijuana industry. It would also allow local governments to tax marijuana products.

Critics said the bill lacked detail and put too much power in the hands of the newly created panel of political appointees. Law enforcement associations opposed to the bill complained in a letter that the measure was “really a giant permission slip for medical marijuana stores to operate in a virtual unfettered manner.”

Ammiano, who is termed out in 2014, said he hopes to return with another measure on the topic when the Legislature starts its new session in January.

Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Sacramento Bee
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Author: Torey Van Oot

You know federal drug policy is bankrupt when the chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration is reluctant to acknowledge even a simple fact that any eighth-grader could confirm.

“Opiates are far more addictive than marijuana,” Congressman Jared Polis said last week. “That is a fact.”

Yet this particular fact is one that the Democrat was able to extract from DEA administrator Michele Leonhart only after a stunning interrogation in which she acted as if he were demanding she choose between Hitler and Stalin on a scale of evil.

The relevant exchange began at a congressional hearing on the DEA’s priorities when Polis asked Leonhart if crack cocaine (not an opiate, obviously) were more dangerous for a user than marijuana.

Leonhart: “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.”

Polis: “Is methamphetamine worse for somebody’s health than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “I don’t think any illegal drug …”

Polis: “Is heroin worse for someone’s health than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “Again, all the … .”

Polis: “Yes, no, or I don’t know. I mean, if you don’t know, you can look this up. … I am asking you a very straightforward question.”

Leonhart: “All illegal drugs are bad.”

Polis: “Does that mean you don’t know?”

Leonhart: “Heroin causes an addiction. … It causes many problems. It’s very hard to kick.”

Polis: “So does that mean that the health impact of heroin is worse than marijuana … ?”

Leonhart:

“I think you’re asking a subjective question … .”

Polis: “I’m just asking you as an expert in the subject area … .”

Leonhart: “And I’m answering as a police officer and as a DEA agent that these drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, because they are addictive, because they do hurt a person’s health.”

Polis: “So is heroin more addictive than marijuana?”

Leonhart: “Generally, the properties of heroin, yes, are more addictive.”

At last.

“We have an agency that can’t even acknowledge basic scientific facts,” Polis told me later. Indeed, its officials seem to believe that drawing distinctions between marijuana and other outlawed drugs is tantamount to encouraging pot’s use — as if intellectual honesty would thrust the agency into the drug legalization camp.

Yet you can, of course, make a perfectly good argument against legalizing marijuana and at the same time admit that you’d be far more alarmed if you found your 17-year-old experimenting with heroin, cocaine or meth than with pot — however much you deplore all teenage drug use.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Heroin is particularly addictive because it enters the brain so rapidly. … Cardiac function slows. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death.”

Surely our blunderbuss DEA should be able to admit that whatever the downsides of marijuana, overdose deaths are not among them.

True, pot’s proponents have a pronounced tendency to dismiss its perils, particularly for the young. But the DEA easily outdoes them for un-nuanced answers, such as Leonhart’s empty mantra that “all illegal drugs are bad.”

Maybe this explains why the last two DEA agents in charge of the Denver office have taken such clumsy public stances against Colorado’s medical marijuana law, with the current chief agent saying she’d refuse to live in a city with dispensaries.

Does that mean she’ll have to leave the state if voters approve a measure on this fall’s ballot decriminalizing the drug?

The DEA is an important federal agency. It would be helpful if it weren’t staffed by propagandists.

Source: Denver Post (CO)
Published: June 24, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Contact: [email protected]

Marijuana use among teens has been on the rise for some time–it’s become more popular than smoking cigarettes in recent years–but a provocative new study shows that legalizing pot for medical purposes doesn’t increase the chance that teens will abuse it or certain other drugs.

“There is anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is finding its way into the hands of teenagers, but there’s no statistical evidence that legalization increases the probability of use,” Daniel I. Rees, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Denver who worked on the study, said in a written statement.

Rees and his team looked at nationally representative data from high school students from 1993 through 2009–medical marijuana was legal in 13 states during that time–and found that legalization didn’t affect marijuana use at school. According to study co-author Benjamine Hansen, assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon, the data showed the opposite: There was often an inverse relationship between legalization and marijuana use.

What’s more, the researchers found no evidence that medical marijuana legalization led to an increase alcohol or cocaine use.

“This result is important given that the federal government has recently intensified its efforts to close medical marijuana dispensaries,” Hansen said in the statement.

The news adds another layer to the ongoing debate over whether medical marijuana should be legalized in more states. Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 17 states.

Just last month, a judge suffering from cancer wrote a New York Times op-ed in favor of legalization for medical reasons in New York state, confessing that he sometimes smokes before meals to relieve nausea and pain resulting from his illness and the medicines used to treat it.

In December, a study out of Rhode Island found that legalization of the drug did not lead to an increase in illegal use among teens.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that marijuana use has become too blase of a subject, even among parents, and such attitudes on the drug have led to an increase in use among young people.

As recently as December, R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, tied the increase in teen marijuana use to the drug’s legalization for medical purposes, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We know that any substance that is legally available is more widely used,” Kerlikowske told the paper.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Katherine Bindley
Published: June 19, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/