Why Almost Nobody Wants to Sell Uruguay's Legal Marijuana

Uruguay was the first country in the world to fully legalize the production, sale and use of marijuana, but the legal market has suffered growing pains.

Uruguay announced earlier this month that legal marijuana would soon be available for sale at registered pharmacies, but only a small number have so far signed up as many are fearful of violence and security issues associated with the drug.

As of July, only 50 out of 1,200 pharmacies have registered to sell cannabis, according to The Cannabist. Many pharmacies are scared of robberies, are concerned about increasing costs and paperwork, and of disclosing their activities to other customers who do not agree with legal marijuana.

Some pharmacists feel they will become targets of violence as their pharmacy is taking away their profit margins. A Uruguayan government spokesperson said that so far no pharmacies have reported any threats to police.

Other reluctant pharmacists have said that they have not be explained enough about the drug in terms of its regulation and sale and do not want to sell as it would be medically unprofessional.

 

Since becoming the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana in 2013, Uruguay has taken a slow and cautious approach to legalization in a bid to balance the interests of public health while killing off illicit markets.

As well as distributing legal marijuana through registered pharmacies, legal growing clubs of up to 45 members can grow marijuana for personal consumption. Home growers also can grow up to six plants and harvest up to 480 grams per year.

There has been concern that cannabis clubs would open up grey markets for the drug, particularly with buying, selling and growing marijuana seeds. Legislation was changed after concerns were raised that buyers, home growers and growing clubs were reluctant to register their details on a government database to legally grow and purchase marijuana, forcing them to stay within the illicit market.

The price of pharmacy-sold marijuana has been set at around US$1 per gram to undercut the illicit market and lessen the prevalence of harmful and cheap Paraguayan marijuana and adulterated "paco" crack cocaine. For legal marijuana to be competitive, large amounts have to be grown to keep up with supply. Furthermore, there have been concerns that many will go to the black market to find strains and higher strength version of the plant that are not sold in pharmacies.

The reluctance of pharmacies to sell marijuana is a blow to Uruguayan reformers, whose key political challenge is to prove that their model can work, particularly amid a lack of domestic public support and external criticism from various international bodies that view legalization as a dangerous step away from international drug conventions. Neighboring Brazil and Argentina also have concerns that legal Uruguayan marijuana will be easily transported across their borders.

Why you should take a hit before hitting the gym

By Brandon Drenon

Want to drop some weight? To lighten up, the key may be lighting up.

Teetering on the line between taboo and total acceptance, marijuana has finally penetrated the fitness community, owing to benefits beyond the celebrated side effect of just getting high.

Medical research has revealed other effects of smoking weed that can actually contribute to fat loss and enhance fitness-related goals.

An article published by the American Journal of Epidemiology on the link between obesity and cannabis has revealed a provocative connection between lower rates of obesity and smoking marijuana at least three times per week. The conclusive analysis of the data from the survey involving a pool of over 40,000 people indicates that

“despite the evidence that cannabis use stimulates appetite in clinical trials and laboratory studies, cannabis users are actually less likely to be obese than non users in the general population.”

Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience suggests one possible reason for this outcome is that food and drugs compete for the same reward sites in the brain. The hypothalamus, the reward center of the brain, reacts in a similar way to the weed you may smoke to relieve stress or the food hyper-saturated in fat and sugar that you eat when you’re anxious.

Furthermore, medical research has proved marijuana’s ability to reduce pain and inflammation, lower stress and improve sleep. As it turns out, all of these factors are the key links to an enhanced physique — be it fat loss or muscle gain.

People often have the willpower to exercise with enough intensity, duration and frequency to keep their caloric expenditure to a maximum, thereby keeping their waistlines down, but the achy joints, slow recovery and chronic pain that can accompany exercise can limit the body’s ability to keep up.
Ultramarathoner Jeff Sperber resorts to weed as a solution.

  

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Photo: Shutterstock

In an article published by Runner’s Magazine, he emphasizes the importance of marijuana in his post-race recovery routine. Sperber relies on cannabis to control his inflammation and to alleviate the aches and pains from injuries induced by running hundreds of miles at a time. He has prescription pain meds at his disposal, but says in the article that he “can’t do that stuff and function as a normal human being.” However, “As a weed smoker, I can function.”

For the average Joe just trying to stay fit, what this means is that after a typical Saturday night binge filled with IPAs, Jagerbombs and regrettable 2 a.m. Seamless orders, the desire and discipline to “run the extra mile” the next day becomes more achievable after a few bong rips.

With reduced physical limitations, you can push yourself to run further, harder, longer, and burn more calories than before. Just make sure your phone is with you so you can Uber back home in case you get lost (marijuana is not known to improve memory).

The other way cannabis can aid in weight loss and help improve your physique is by its ability to reduce stress and as a result assist in lowering cortisol levels.

Have you ever felt like you were doing everything right and still not losing any weight? Exercising eight days a week, no booze, no dessert, and still no results? Just the thought of it is stressful. Pile that stress on top of what is presumably an already hectic life and one can only imagine the amount of cortisol circulating through your body at any given time.

Sounds like it’s about time to puff-puff-pass the blunt to yourself one time and relax.

According to an article published by doctors at the University of New Mexico, “high levels of cortisol cause fat stores and excess circulating fat to be relocated and deposited deep in the abdomen, which left unchecked can develop into or enhance obesity.” Since marijuana is known to reduce stress and thereby potentially lower your levels of cortisol, it might serve as a better nightcap than the usual Pinot Grigio, which can easily contain upward of 150 calories per glass.

Unsurprisingly, a lack of sleep has similar if not more damaging effects on fitness goals than stress. Not only does it elevate cortisol levels, but it increases the amount of leptin (the hunger hormone) in the body, making that buttery almond croissant behind the counter at the coffee shop even harder to resist.

Katt Williams, a celebrity cannabis enthusiast who has spent countless hours doing extensive and exhaustive marijuana research, reassures us in his standup special, “Pimp Chronicles,” that aside from happiness and hunger, sleepiness is a prominent side effect of smoking weed.

“You might think he dead. He ain’t dead,” Williams jokes of watching a friend sleep after smoking.
That near-death sleep he’s referring to is critical in order to minimize leptin levels and to ensure your body enters into an anabolic (growth) state, thus allowing for proper muscle recovery. Many people don’t spend much time in this sleep zone and continue to struggle to achieve their fitness goals despite doing everything else right.

Mary Jane offers an alluring solution to these common fitness conundrums: Smoke some, sleep more, achieve better results. The strategic implementation of marijuana into a fitness routine is as delicate a dance as the ballet. And trying to hit the spliff in order to actually lose weight is like executing 32 fouetté turns. (Translation: Not easy.)

Why? Because unlike your favorite superhero, the marijuana-induced munchies are a very real thing. Not to mention weed is illegal in most states.

Photo: Shutterstock

Should you happen to live in one of the four states in which recreational marijuana consumption is legal (plus Washington D.C., where it is also legal), or the additional 20 states that have legalized medical marijuana, here’s how you might approach lighting up the firebird and losing weight in the process.

1. Empty your fridge and pantry of ALL crap foods.

2. Prepare a healthy dinner and dessert BEFORE smoking.

3. Smoke ONLY at night just before dinner or 2 hours before bedtime.

4. Eat a filling dinner high in fiber and protein. Think veggies, legumes and a giant porterhouse.

5. For dessert, have a large serving of your favorite fruit tossed in a bowl with some nonfat Greek yogurt and granola (healthy people’s ice cream).

6. Finally, make like the aggressive children’s book and “Go the F*ck to Sleep.”
By following the above rules, you will be nourishing your body in abundance with healthy vitamins and nutrients in order to give it the tools it needs to perform at a higher level the next day. And for those of you who claim healthy food sucks, it’ll taste like your mama made it if you eat it while you’re high.

By the end of the meal, you will be too stuffed with fiber to take another bite and can easily talk yourself out of ordering delivery. Plus, there won’t be much time left on the clock for you to get into any further mischief beyond the length of your bedsheets and a few crappy Netflix shows, which you suddenly find to be amazingly genius.

Sleep deeply, wake up happy, and burn more calories more efficiently.

Smoking Weed Makes You Less Paranoid About the Health Risks of Smoking Weed

by Candace Bryan

Photo by Zoa Photo via Stocksy 

According to a new study, the states with the highest rate of marijuana use also had the highest rates of people believing that smoking weed has no adverse health risks. 

A new study shows that marijuana use varies greatly across the US, even within each state, and that there's a strong correlation between smoking weed and believing that weed isn't really all that bad for you.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) looked at data collected from 204,000 people ages 12 and older from the years 2012 to 2014. Overall they found an annual average of 20.3 million people had used marijuana in the last month, which translates to about 7.73 percent of US population of people in that age group.

Meanwhile, 28.5 percent of people in the same age demographic reported believing there to be a "great risk of harm" involved with monthly marijuana smoking. According to Art Hughes, a mathematical statistician at the SAMHSA Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, this refers specifically to the risk of "physical harm" caused by smoking pot.

These statistics are national averages, but among the regions of the US and different census regions within each state, the numbers show great variation in both the usage and perceived risk of marijuana. Marijuana use was, on average, higher in the West (9.7 percent) and the Northeast (8.36 percent) of the US, while it was much lower in the South (6.43 percent).

Within many states, different regions showed varying levels of marijuana use as well. For example, while San Francisco's percentage of users was the highest in the US—at 15.46 percent—other regions within California had only a 6.2 to 8.15 percentage. Other states that contained high-usage regions included Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, as well as Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.

The lowest percentage of marijuana use was in a census region in southern Texas, where only 3.93 percent of residents had used the drug in the last month. In addition to southern Texas, people were smoking the least weed in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa, Utah, and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, perception of risk associated with marijuana smoking was lowest in the Northeast and highest in the South. In fact, the 16 regions that showed the highest belief of marijuana risk were all in the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

These findings show that there's a strong correlation between using marijuana and believing that doing so is not physically risky, and vice versa. "The perceived risk of harm is a strong predictor of marijuana use," says Hughes.

However, the study leaves many questions unanswered: The data didn't account for how access to marijuana and drug safety education may play a role in the variations among different regions in the US. Also, because the data assessed perceived risk of monthly marijuana smoking specifically, it's unclear how people across the US might perceive the riskiness of edibles or vaping the drug. After all, there is evidence that vaping, despite its social stigma, might be better for your health than hitting the pipe.

Study confirms legal marijuana leads to dramatic decrease in prescription use, abuse

 

money.cnn.com

 

Shane Smith 

 

NORMAN, Okla. – A new report released this month from the journal Health Affairs confirms what legalization advocates have been saying for years: legalized marijuana leads to less prescription drug use and abuse, as well as a decrease in Medicare spending. The authors of the study, a research team at the University of Georgia, looked at 17 states with medical marijuana legalized since 2013 and earlier, and found that painkiller prescriptions, as well as prescriptions for other medication, dropped dramatically compared to states where medical marijuana remained illegal.

The study shows that doctors in states with legal medical marijuana prescribed fewer antidepressants, less seizure medication, and less anti-nausea medication.

In addition to this finding, the researchers found that Medicare saved $165.2 million due to lower prescription drug use. If every state had legalized marijuana, the researchers estimated that the savings for Medicare would reach $468 million.

The research appears to confirm legal marijuana’s status as the only solution to the United States’ painkiller epidemic that has cut a swath of destruction across the country. Opioid abuse has quadrupled since 1999 here in the U.S., which has justifiably spooked the doctors prescribing painkillers.

This has led to doctors prescribing opioids less often, pushing addicts towards illegal, black market heroin. The overdose deaths from heroin have skyrocketed, as the black market entrepreneurs push the narcotic wherever the demand exists, occasionally lacing their product with fentanyl, a deadly opioid with a potency 50 times that of heroin.

Policy makers and politicians have scrambled for a solution, mostly overlooking the only true solution, the solution that legalization advocates have been shouting for decades, the solution that has now been confirmed with solid evidence. 

The evidence of the benefits of legal marijuana has piled so high that it has grown to a veritable mountain. It enriches states, it creates thousands of jobs, it cures those who couldn’t be cured otherwise, it alleviates chronic pain effectively and cheaply, it might even reverse/halt the effects of Alzheimer’s.  Marijuana doesn’t need a billion-dollar lab with a room-full of PHD’s spending tax dollars to create it.

It can be grown in your backyard for a pittance. Imagine that, people growing their own medicine rather than draining their bank account only to choke down the latest Big Pharma poison peddled by their doctors.

It’s small wonder that pharmaceutical companies are some of the biggest enemies of the movement for marijuana legalization. A study released late last year by the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia found that 80 percent of the 473 adult therapeutic cannabis users gave up their prescription drugs entirely after using marijuana.

Those numbers have surely put the fear of God in those whose outrageous profits depend on the thousands remaining hopelessly dependent on their addictive, deadly pill-mill racket.

It is bizarre to contemplate the reality that marijuana, a plant that has never killed anyone, remains illegal in many states despite the avalanche of evidence of its benefits. The situation is made all the more grotesque in that the U.S. is in the midst of an opioid epidemic of biblical proportions.

The simplest solution, the only solution, appears to be the one that politicians and their toady policy makers are most eager to avoid. They want an end to the senseless deaths at the hands of heroin and other opioids, but they desire the power and money that accumulates from the Drug War.

Legalized marijuana would pull the rug out from under them. In many ways, the political class appears more willing to live with the plague of opioid abuse than with less power and money.
But their loss would be our gain. They are the servants of the people, they should be working for our well-being, not the other way around.

And if the fact that the actions of our political leaders have led to a public policy that has killed thousands, and promises to kill thousands more, that policy should be abolished without regard for the effects it will have on our rulers’ lifestyles or wallets. The answer is plain: legalize marijuana, end the War on Drugs.

That’s all that it takes, not some multi-billion dollar “initiative” that will funnel tax dollars to favored cronies while they study the problem for the next two decades. The evidence is there, plain as day. All that is now required is action.

How to Qualify for Medical Marijuana in California

Lindsey Lewis

 

California Medical Marijuana Program

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, which made California the first state in the United States to allow for the medical use of marijuana. The California Department of Health (CDPH) administers the Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program (MMICP).
We go into detail about the Medical Marijuana laws in California and show you if and how you qualify for medical marijuana in California.

The Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program (MMICP)

The MMICP was established to create a State-authorized medical marijuana identification card, and a registry database for verification of qualified patients and their caregivers. Participation by both patients and caregivers is voluntary. The Medical Marijuana Program registry allows law enforcement to verify the validity of a qualified patient or caregiver and allows cardholders to possess legally, grow, transport, and use medical marijuana within California state lines.

The California Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program is only available to California residents with certain medical conditions. Medical marijuana products are distributed by State approved dispensaries only. If you believe your medical condition(s) qualifies for a Medical Marijuana card, discuss your symptoms and condition with your doctor.

Getty

What conditions qualify for the Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program in California?

Patients in California diagnosed with one or more of the following medical conditions qualify for a Medical Marijuana Identification Card:

• AIDS
• Anorexia
• Arthritis
• Cachexia
• Cancer
• Chronic pain
• Glaucoma
• Migraines
• Persistent muscle spasms, including multiple sclerosis
• Seizures, including epileptic
• Severe nausea

Will additional conditions be added to the list of qualifying conditions? 

Other chronic or persistent medical symptoms that are not included on the above list, that either limit a person’s ability to conduct one or more of major life activities as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, may qualify for the use of medical marijuana.

Where to find a Medical Marijuana Doctor in CA?

California law requires all medical marijuana physicians to be licensed. Given that CA was the first state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical use, there is a large number of licensed physicians throughout the state. You’ll most likely find a licensed doctor very close to where you’re located.

Where are the legal cannabis dispensaries in California?

 There are legal cannabis dispensaries in more than 50 cities throughout California. There’s a site that will help you located a dispensary near you.

What does my medical card get me at a CA dispensary?

Medical Marijuana Identification Cards are valid for one year and allow the card owner to cultivate, possess and transport up to:

• eight ounces of dried marijuana
• six mature marijuana plants
• 12 immature marijuana plants

Where can you smoke?

 In California, marijuana smoking is permitting in the following areas

• In a no smoking zone
• Within 1,000 feet of a school or youth center
• On school buses
• In a motor vehicle, including a boat, while being operated

Patients are advised to be discreet when consuming in public.

Are patients and caregivers shielded from discrimination?

Yes. As a primary caregiver, you cannot apply for a Medical Marijuana Identification Card. The patient, the caregiver, cares for is responsible for applying for a Medical Marijuana Identification Card. On the Application Form, there is a check box the patient must check if they are applying for both themselves and their caregiver. Both the patient and the caregiver need to be present in person at the county program office when the patient applies because both the patient and caregiver will be photographed for their individual Medical Marijuana Identification Card.

What is the future of the Medical Marijuana Program in CA?

The rules and regulations in California regarding medical marijuana are constantly being revised and updated. You can keep up with all of the changes related to medical marijuana rulemaking, rule changes and other updates regarding the Medical Marijuana Identification Card Program. 

CA Should Pass New Regulations BEFORE Marijuana is Legalized in November

Jordan Ferguson

LOS ANGELES

 

POT POLITICS-California may soon join the growing number of states that allow recreational marijuana by passing the Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Initiative (Proposition 64) on the November ballot. The measure would legalize marijuana and hemp under state law. Portions of the measure could take effect as soon as the day after Election Day.

The potential for recreational legalization should cause local officials to rethink the way they currently approach marijuana laws and whether that approach should change before Election Day.

It aims to establish state agencies to oversee the licensing and regulation of a marijuana industry, enacting a sales tax of 15 percent and a cultivation tax of $9.25 per ounce for flowers and $2.75 per ounce for leaves, with exceptions for medical marijuana sales and cultivation. Proposition 64 is considered likely to pass, with recent polls indicating that roughly 60 percent of Californians support recreational legalization, and with a reported excess of 600,000 signatures on the initiative and financial backing of more than $2.25 million to date.

Around the country, the trend toward legalizing recreational use of marijuana is growing more popular. Recreational marijuana use is legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia. Eleven other states, including Nevada, Minnesota, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, may be legalizing recreational marijuana in the near future. Beyond that, 24 states already allow medical marijuana to treat a variety of physical and psychological ailments.

Proposition 64 is endorsed by the Marijuana Policy Project of California and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws. If passed, it would legalize marijuana for those 21 years of age and over and would establish the Bureau of Marijuana Control within the Department of Consumer Affairs to regulate and license the marijuana industry.

Proposition 64 would allow local governments to “enforce state laws and regulations for nonmedical marijuana businesses and enact additional local requirements for nonmedical marijuana businesses, but not require that they do so for nonmedical marijuana businesses to be issued a state license and be legal under state law.” 

It would also allow local governments to ban recreational marijuana businesses entirely. With respect to cultivation, Proposition 64 would allow local governments to “reasonably regulate” cultivation through zoning and other local laws, but only to ban outdoor cultivation outright.

Proposition 64 would require local governments to allow indoor cultivation in private residences, and further indicates that any local ban on outdoor cultivation would be automatically repealed if the California Attorney General determines the federal government has legalized marijuana. The wording of the initiative likely makes its application both retroactive and prospective, meaning it would preempt existing regulations if they are inconsistent and prohibit new regulations that violate its provisions.

Beyond that, some of Proposition 64’s provisions would likely take effect almost immediately. While the provisions surrounding recreational retailers and other businesses would not become functionally effective until the State began issuing licenses on January 1, 2018, recreational use and cultivation in private residences could begin as soon as the day after the election.

As a result, it is imperative for concerned public agencies to consider, and to enact, regulations surrounding recreational use of marijuana prior to Election Day.

This may seem counterintuitive — after all, it involves regulating around a law that has not even been enacted yet — but public agencies that fail to pass ordinances surrounding these issues could face preemption and grandfathering problems in the days, weeks and months after Proposition 64 passes.

Artfully drafted ordinances can avoid some of this awkwardness by including provisions only triggered by the legalization of recreational marijuana.

For example, a public agency could pass an ordinance banning all cultivation outright, and include a subsection clarifying that, in the event indoor cultivation in private residences is legalized, a regulatory scheme of the city’s choosing kicks in immediately. This would allow public agencies to regulate how they wish under current law, while protecting themselves in the event Proposition 64 passes.

But the window is short. Most public agencies would have to take a proposed ordinance to a planning commission and have two readings of the ordinance before their city council, and all of this would arguably need to occur prior to October 8 to allow the 30-day period to lapse so the ordinance is effective prior to Election Day.

Even if Proposition 64 becomes law, local governments still have wide latitude to regulate marijuana within their jurisdictions, but public agencies should act soon to ensure the most protection against grandfathered uses or preempted local schemes. A brand new regulatory scheme is growing in California, and local governments need to act swiftly to cultivate the proper regulations to ensure their communities flourish in the brave new world of recreational marijuana legalization.

Scientists Want You to Know the Feds Restrict Cannabis Research

By Jason Sander

Getty

As we see more legalization, and less stigmatization put upon using the cannabis plant as medicine, more medical and science professionals are making their voices heard to protest the absurd classification of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act. Thankfully, there are currently several bold researchers and scientists who are stepping up to speak out about what cannabis advocates have already known for decades – federal restrictions severely hinder advancements in cannabis research and prevent patients from obtaining the potentially life-changing drug.

“While we have compelling evidence that cannabis has a whole range of therapeutic benefits – users report it’s capable of easing symptoms of chemotherapy, chronic pain, and post traumatic stress disorder – many of these effects haven’t been tested in externally valid, randomized clinical trials,” researchers Vigil and Stith wrote in a letter published in Science.

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. federal government continues to treat cannabis as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. This categorization of cannabis is more restrictive than that used for cocaine, methamphetamine and PCP. This classification was widely known to be overzealous back in its inception in 1970. Forty-six years later, this absurd classification remains in place, along with far too many non-violent users locked in a cage for simple possession.

“Millions of patients have been granted the authorization to use medical cannabis and cannabis-based products by their respective state health departments and four states have begun taxing and regulating cannabis sold for recreational purposes,” Vigil and Stith continued.

The researchers call for lawmakers to ease up on government control over cannabis research in order to allow scientists to ensure all cannabis products available to the public are as safe and effective as possible – and to what degree.

“As long as clinical research on cannabis is controlled by regulators expressly opposed to any increase in its consumption, health care cost reductions may be missed, and intoxication and long-term effects will remain unknown,” they write. 

“Most important, many severely ill patients may suffer unnecessarily because no one knows the true risks and benefits of consuming Cannabis.”

After all of these years, the federal government’s stranglehold on medical cannabis is downright criminal. One nonviolent cannabis user in jail is too many. One child who is denied access to life-changing medicine is too many. It’s time to end this insanity once and for all. If more people like this speak out about it, we could very well see that happen within the next few years.

FDA Approves Synthetic Marijuana in Liquid Form

By Jamie A.

FDA has recently approved a liquid form of synthetic marijuana.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved the first liquid formulation of dronabinol, which is a synthetic version of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) - the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.

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The synthetic drug is under the brand name Syndros, and is classified under the Controlled Substances Act as Schedule III, which means it is safe for medical use and is free of addictive tendencies, unlike real cannabis, which is a Schedule I drug along with heroin.

Syndros, which was manufactured by Insys Therapeutics, is approved for use in treating anorexia associated with weight loss in patients with AIDS, as well as nausea and vomiting associated with cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

According to Dr. John N. Kapoor, CEO and president of Insys Therapeutics, Syndros is the first and only FDA-approved dronabinol solution for oral use.

"It is a liquid that is easy-to-swallow and allows for the dosage to be titrated to clinical effect," Kapoor said in a press release.

According to Insys, there are currently 9,500 dronabinol prescriptions, and it hopes to convert a number of them to Syndros.

Dronabinol has been around since 1985 as a generic name for Marinol, a synthetic cannabinoid pill also manufactured by Insys. Marinol is also classified as Schedule III, but the drug is said to lack several therapeutic compounds available in natural cannabis and offer only limited relief to select patients. Moreover, as Syndros is in liquid form, it could be easier for patients to absorb than Marinol.

However, medical marijuana physician Perry Solomon said that a disadvantage of drugs like Syndros or Marinol is that they do not have the "entourage effect," which is the synergistic reaction of all cannabis plant chemicals to one another. In the case of dronabinol where only the THC compound is present, the medicinal effect is weaker.

"Most of our patients like having the full spectrum of the effect of the medication," Solomon told Motherboard.

According to Catherine Jacobson, director of clinical research at Canadian medical cannabis company Tilray, companies that manufacture synthetic versions of cannabis do all the clinical developments for the products.

"I think it is really important to understand the difference between a preparation that has gone through clinical development and one that hasn't," Jacobson told Motherboard.

"We would like to research on whole plant extracts. One of the holdups is the lack of safe, reliable, consistent products that are not pharmaceutical products."

Can Marijuana Enhance Athletic Performance?

Ricky Williams, pictured here in 2008 playing for the Miami Dolphins, has been a vocal proponent of marijuana reform, particularly for professional athletes. That cloud in the picture? It's his breath on a cold December night in Kansas City. Jamie Squire/Getty

by John Donovan

Wherever you think it falls on the Reefer Madness to Miracle Drug spectrum, marijuana is quickly — some say finally — gaining a measure of acceptance in the American mainstream.

Marijuana is a pain reliever. It can increase appetite and stave off nausea. It reduces inflammation. It can control seizures, and potentially help those with addictions or mental illness. It might even kill certain cancer cells and reduce the size of others.

Cannabis Files: Medical Marijuana

It’s easy to misjudge “medical marijuana” as an attempt by cannabis advocates to legitimize their favorite herb, but medicinal use of cannabis dates back to ancient times. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore both historical and modern uses of “the green medicine.”

This isn't pot-fueled propaganda. This is from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Some pro-cannabis athletes, as detailed in a recent Sports Illustrated piece, are convinced that marijuana can enhance athletic performance, too.

Scientifically speaking, that's not nearly as clear. Cannabis is not considered performance-enhancing. Even the NFL labels it as a drug of abuse, not a performance-enhancing drug (PED). The general consensus is that you're not at your best if you're playing high.

Still, marijuana can help athletes feel less sore, reduce inflammation and help them sleep better. And all those things, of course, could help their performance. Amanda Reiman, the manager of Marijuana Law and Policy at the Drug Policy Alliance and a lecturer in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, explains:

"I think that for athletes, really the best way that cannabis can help them right now is in recovery, in between exercise sessions, between games. For folks who are looking for something that is going to help with the pain, that is going to help with the inflammation, but they don't want to take opiates and they don't want to take a ton of Tylenol or ibuprofen or other anti-inflammatories, cannabis is a great alternative. And you don't have to get high. You don't even have to smoke it."

Former University of Miami and Canadian Football League player Rohan Marley, the son of reggae great Bob Marley, told SI that marijuana helped him focus in his playing days. He said he smoked marijuana once and ran a half-marathon — without any training. "It takes you to that place of, like, no resistance," he said.

Triathlete Clifford Drusinsky has similar stories, telling Men's Journal that, "Marijuana relaxes me and allows me to go into a controlled, meditational place. When I get high, I train smarter and focus on form."

Professional fighter Nick Diaz was open about his use of marijuana while on suspension from the UFC. He told High Times that, "If I'm at home and I'm training — doing my same things every day — then I'm definitely going to want to use cannabis. It's gonna help. I'm trying to stay focused on what I'm doing … If I'm going to train all day, when I get done, I'm gonna want to smoke. If I have to go and train all day, before I go, I'm gonna want to smoke."

Of course, things are never quite that cut-and-dried with marijuana. Largely because of its Reefer Madness image of yore, marijuana was effectively criminalized in 1937 and stayed that way throughout the United States until 1996, when California became the first state to approve its use medically. But marijuana is, in fact, still illegal under federal law.

Things are changing, though, and rapidly. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia now have legalized marijuana for medical use. Some limit use to cannabidiol (CBD), the chemical in cannabis that does not affect mind or mood. (THC is the compound most often associated with the legendary "high.") A handful of states have legalized marijuana's recreational use, too.

And more states are likely to join. Many have marijuana measures on the ballot this fall, so a majority of U.S. states could soon have laws that OK marijuana for medical use, for recreation or for both.

It's a long way from the '70s and the War on Drugs.

The growing acceptance of marijuana is leading to further research and a burgeoning medical marijuana industry in the U.S. You can now get cannabis in pills, drops, edibles (mints and chocolates!), smokeables (joints or vapor), in lotions, in topicals, even in transdermal patches. And, as Reiman says, you can use CBD without THC, if you're concerned about getting stoned.

"With legalization," she says, "what we really get, which is one of the things that isn't talked about that much, is this innovation of product development that allows so many more people to benefit from cannabis without the side effects that they want to avoid."

It's an exciting time for those who might immediately benefit, Reiman says, and for those who may just want to see if marijuana can help in, say, enhancing their performance in the gym or in their daily workouts.

"I use cannabis in my exercise because it helps me exercise for longer without the pain. I'm not looking at it really to enhance my performance," Reiman says, "but I'm looking at it as a way to bike 50 miles instead of 25 miles, before the pain really starts setting in."

Reiman doesn't rule out that cannabis, outside of reducing pain and inflammation, actually will improve an athlete's performance. But with so many different factors involved — how much is used, how it's used, when it's used and who is using it — well, scientifically speaking, that's just not clear.

"I think it really depends on what each individual feels is their vulnerability in achieving the kind of outcome they feel they can achieve, and then how cannabis can specifically address that vulnerability, whether it's pain, whether it's inflammation, or whether it's just boredom," Reiman says. "That's the individual part of it."

Why are Colorado businesses still testing for pot if it's legal?

Last week’s THC scare in Hugo began when a company tested its employees for cannabis. While the drug is legal, employees can still be fired for using it

Alison Moodie

 
Captain Michael Yowell, of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, addresses the media in Hugo, Colorado, on July 21. Officials told residents not to drink or shower in tap water Thursday because one of the town’s wells may have been contaminated with THC. Photograph: Michael Reaves/AP 

aboratory tests conducted over the weekend showed that there was no THC – marijuana’s primary psychoactive ingredient – in the water supply in the town of Hugo, Colorado, after field tests at municipal wells earlier in the week came back positive for the chemical. 


While attention focused on the drama of the investigation into the town’s water, the incident highlights a legal gray area for employers and workers in states where marijuana use is allowed. The THC was first found in a vial of tap water meant to show an absolute negative result for drugs after a local company reported inconsistencies in drug tests on its employees.

While pot may be legal in Colorado, companies can still fire employees for using the drug when off the job, even when they have a prescription for medical marijuana.

That was the decision handed down by the Colorado Supreme Court in a case last year involving a quadriplegic worker who had a medical prescription to use marijuana to manage his pain. He was fired from his job at Dish Network in 2010 when he failed a random drug test. The court ruled that since marijuana is still prohibited under federal law, employers were within their rights to terminate employees who tested positive for the drug.

Employers continue to administer drug tests because of misconceptions about cannabis use and its effects on human behavior, said Amanda Reiman, a lecturer at the School of Social Welfare at the University of California-Berkeley and manager of Marijuana Law and Policy at the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that pushes for drug law reform.

“In many cases, business associations and chambers of commerce are wary of laws that do not give them control over their workplace drug testing policies,” Reiman said.

Companies’ concerns that employees who use pot may underperform at work might not be warranted. A recent study, published earlier this month in the Journal of Health Economics, found that people living in states where marijuana is legal took 8% – 15% fewer sick days than those living in states where the drug is outlawed.

The science around drug testing can also be tricky, and when it comes to marijuana is significantly more complicated than testing for alcohol. Cannabis is stored in the fat cells, and can remain in the system long after intoxication has worn off. This means someone who used marijuana when not at work can test positive for THC even weeks later, said Reiman.

She suggests that instead of drug tests, companies use different methods such as so-called computer-based impairment testing, which measures a person’s response time and memory when intoxication of any kind is suspected at work.

“Until the public adopts a more realistic view of cannabis and its effects, businesses will still likely respond with reefer madness when trying to protect their bottom line,” said Reiman. “Unfortunately, more and more, these practices rule out highly qualified and talented applicants and employees.”

Reefer madness is what took hold of the town of Hugo last week. The town’s roughly 730 residents were warned not to drink, cook or bathe in the water until further testing for THC had been done.

Officials distributed bottles of water to people and the local swimming pool shut down.

Colorado’s public health department issued an advisory about the dangers of drinking water containing THC, warning it could lead to impaired coordination while driving and psychotic symptoms.

Hugo’s Public Works Department investigated and found “signs of tamper” at one of the town’s wells, said Captain Michael Yowell of Lincoln County Sheriff’s office during a news conference.

Samples from that same well came back positive for THC, said Yowell. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was called in to conduct further laboratory tests, which came back negative.

The Lincoln County Sherriff’s office tweeted on Saturday to say they believed the earlier test kits had given false positives.

There were no reports of any health issues linked to drinking the water, according to an AP report on Friday. Even if it had been laced with THC, people likely wouldn’t have suffered any ill effects as a result.

“It would take more product than any of us could afford to contaminate a city water supply to the extent that people would suffer any effects,” Lincoln County health officer John Fox said in a statement.

THC also isn’t water soluble, so it can’t easily mix with water, said Reiman.

“There are some beverages, such as Dixie Elixirs, that contain THC and they have to go through a very lengthy and complicated process to achieve this,” she said. “It is not as simple as opening a water tank or a well and pouring in THC.”

After the Lincoln County Sherriff’s Office announced the warning on its Facebook page, numerous online commenters accused the department of disingenuous motives.

“You would only need a VERY basic knowledge of chemistry to know why this update is 100% false and even scientifically impossible,” one user wrote. “So what you are doing here is politics.”

The absence of widespread panic shows how people’s attitude has changed towards marijuana use, said Reiman.

“Many residents continued to bathe in the water and use it to wash their dishes,” she said. “No one was immediately calling for an end to legalization in Colorado.”

Your kid is way more likely to be poisoned by crayons than by marijuana

By Christopher Ingraham

 

Marijuana plants grow in a greenhouse in Avondale, Colo. (Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)

 

A new study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics is making waves this week with the news that there's been a sharp uptick in emergency-room visits and poison-control calls for marijuana poisoning among children in Colorado.

The study found that the number of marijuana-related hospital visits for children under the age of 10 more than doubled since the opening of Colorado's recreational marijuana market, from seven in 2013 to 16 visits in 2015. Marijuana-related poison control calls for young kids also rose sharply over that period, from 25 to 47.

Opponents of marijuana legalization were quick to jump on the findings. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, tweeted his reaction:
On the other hand, it's not entirely surprising that a new market offering a product for the first time will lead to an uptick in cases of accidental ingestion and misuse. Marijuana edibles — pre-packaged candies, brownies and the like — are naturally appealing to small kids and accounted for nearly half of the hospital visits in the JAMA study.

Beyond that, the raw numbers on marijuana exposure are extremely low. Marijuana accounts for only 2.3 of every 1,000 poison control cases for kids 10 and younger in Colorado, according to the JAMA study. At the national level, kids are much more likely to be poisoned by any number of common household products, like diaper cream, toothpaste, or energy drinks, than they are to be poisoned by marijuana.

Part of this, of course, is a function of how common these products are. You are much more likely to find toothpaste and diaper cream in a house with a toddler than you are to find marijuana — hence, little kids are more likely to swallow toothpaste or diaper cream, and worried parents more likely to call poison control over it.

It's also worth noting that a call to a poison control center doesn't necessarily mean that a poison has taken place — a child may slurp down the toothpaste on her toothbrush prompting a panicked call to poison control, only to have the operator tell the parent that everything will be just fine.

You can correct for this somewhat by looking at rates of poisoning, however — for a given substance, how many poison control center calls for every 1 million adult users of the drug. We have a good sense of how many people use any given drug from federal surveys that are administered every year.

So here's the number of poison control center calls nationwide for children ages 5 and younger, by the type of drug the child accidentally consumed, in 2014. I'm sticking with the big three American drugs — alcohol, tobacco and marijuana — because lots of people use them and policymakers often frame marijuana debates with comparisons to booze or cigarettes.

Drug	Poison control calls for kids 5 and under per 1 million adult users, 2014
Marijuana	9
Alcohol	9
Tobacco	134
Source:	National Poison Data Center, National Survey on Drug Use and Health

The big standout here is tobacco, which is kind of surprising. It's hard to tell why the tobacco number is so high, relatively speaking. The majority of little kid-related tobacco calls involves cigarettes.

It's possible that the sight of a 2-year-old gnawing on a Marlboro red is more concerning to the typical parent than say, if that same 2-year-old were to sneak a sip of dad's beer. Also, there historically has been a lot more public health messaging about the health risks of tobacco and nicotine than of alcohol, which may play a role, too.

The interesting number is marijuana, which has the exact same exposure rate for children as alcohol. But politicians generally aren't calling for alcohol to be outlawed in order to protect children. This is at least partly because legal alcohol has been around for forever. We’re comfortable with it. But legal marijuana  is new, and new things are scary.

As Smart About Marijuana's Sabet notes, "legalization hurts." But so does alcohol. So does tobacco. So do diaper cream, toothpaste, laundry detergent and crayons (1,683 crayon-related poison control calls for kids in 2014, in case you were curious).

This year, marijuana opponents are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to combat what they say are the threats of the drug. But as far as I'm aware, there are currently no efforts afoot to ban crayons.

Mom arrested after kids eat candy laced with marijuana

Subvertc/Courtesy photo

The cookie is infused with THC. Note that the label warms to “consume in small amounts.”

By BILL HELM, Special to Prescott Newspapers

COTTONWOOD - A Cottonwood woman has been arrested after her two young children ate some marijuana-laced candy that made them “act crazy.”

Jessica Barrett, 34, has been arrested by Cottonwood Police for allegedly giving her 11- and 12-year-old children THC-infused “gummies,” Cottonwood Police Sgt. Tod Moore stated in a news release.

Cottonwood Police seized a bag of orange and white medicinal marijuana candies, a bag of assorted gummy bear medicinal marijuana candies and a multi-colored marijuana lollipop that Barrett received from a friend, 35-year-old Anthea Sanderson Jones of Cottonwood, according to the news release.

Jones, who has a valid medicinal marijuana card, allegedly gave the candies to Barrett as payment for watching her child.

One of the children reportedly told the father that the marijuana-infused candies made them “act crazy” after ingesting it.

Though Cottonwood Police believe that Barrett “intentionally gave these drugs to her children, it’s important for the public to be aware marijuana intended for medicinal use can take on many forms now,” Cottonwood Police Chief Stephen Gesell said.

Gesell also stated that “THC-laden gummy bears and other edibles that are attractive to children” are also of particular concern.

“The marijuana industry continues to increase the potency to unprecedented levels,” Gesell stated. “As we’ve seen in incidents recorded in Colorado, the potency has resulted in trips to the hospital and behavior typically not associated with marijuana.”

Police also confiscated what was considered a “usable amount of marijuana and a marijuana pipe.”

Barrett has been charged with two counts of child abuse and two counts of possession of marijuana.

Jones was also arrested, and charged with one count of transfer and or sale of marijuana. Selling or giving away legally-purchased medical marijuana is a violation of Arizona law.

Because of time lapse of the investigation, the children did not receive medical attention, Moore stated.

Department of Child Services is also involved in the investigation.

Doctors find more questions than answers about medical marijuana

By JT McVeigh,

J.T. McVeigh photo Dr. John Hamlon, program direction at the University of Toronto Pain Medicine Residency spoke to area doctors to unravel the mysteries of introducing medical cannabis into treatment of pain management. The talk comes after Collingwood's first medical cannabis clinic opened.

Medical cannabis use is very much in the news, but not without some enormous challenges, particularly for the family physician.

The government has been forced to provide access and has off-loaded this access to doctors, but Health Canada still says that they have not reviewed the data and refuses to provide approval for use.

Now, Ontario doctors have to find a way to deal with patients looking for relief from chronic pain.

Dr. John Hanlon, the inaugural program director of the University of Toronto Pain Medicine Residency spoke to area doctors by invitation of Canadian Cannabis Clinics. A medical cannabis clinic recently opened in Collingwood, headed by Thornbury physician Dr. Linda Morel.

"It's hugely unfair to doctors to be put in this position," said Hanlon. "I think that it will change in time, I'm not a big fan of "big Pharma," but at least with their money and their power we will get larger data and information on what strains to use and hopefully better preparations, like a ventolin inhaler, so that it looks more like medicine."

"Rolling a joint is not medicine, I don't care what anyone says."

Hanlon's research has proved positive evidence that in some cases, cannabis is a much better tool for pain management, however there are caveats.

Unlike an opioid, Oxycontin for instance, where the results are felt immediately, there is some preparation with cannabis. There are three hybrid strains of the product, and dosage is highly individualized.

On the upside, there aren't the dangers associated with traditional pain medications, where the effectiveness of long-term opioids presents particular risk, especially for addiction.

Hanlon allowed that opioid misuse accounts for two deaths a day in Ontario.

"There are two plants commonly used in medicine, the poppy plant and marijuana, and despite poppies being presented as pretty pills by "big Pharma," it is, indeed, the most dangerous," said Hanlon.

Compounding the controversy and confusion is the proliferation of dispensaries popping up throughout North America.

"You can go online and find a naturopath in British Columbia who, for $500, will forward you a medical document to get cannabis from a dispensary," said Hanlon. "There's no doctor, no medical history and no relationship with the person giving you the drug."

Legally it is an enormous grey area for the police. Medically, it could be a nightmare.

"The recreational stuff is going to be super high THC, blow-your-mind kind of stuff, and the medical cannabis will be lower THC, so there are very different preparations. The people seeking to get high are not going to be happy with the medicinal stuff," said Hanlon.

Regardless of the medical opinion, the recreational product will get you right in the pocketbook.
"When the government legalizes recreational marijuana, they are going to tax the hell out of it," said Hanlon. "That's what will drive people to the medical stuff, to avoid the taxes. It's already happening in Colorado."

But, will doctors feel comfortable prescribing cannabis or be willing to refer their patients to a medical cannabis clinic?

"People's attitudes are changing. It's not as if they want to see grandma high, but it's because they're desperate." said Hanlon. "Now that 90-year-old lady may become confused or have poor balance with the cannabis, but she certainly is not going to have respitory depression and she certainly will not die from cannabis. That's the big difference."

Feds snatch Islander’s medical marijuana plants

National Guard soldiers in conjunction with mainland State Police plucked four plants from 81-year-old Paul Jackson’s Edgartown garden.

 

By Barry Stringfellow

Paul Jackson shows the stump of one of his confiscated cannabis plants. — Sam Moore

It’s been some years since Islanders have seen a black helicopter crisscrossing the Island, its crew scanning Martha’s Vineyard woodlands and backyards for homegrown cannabis. Last Tuesday and Wednesday the black bird was back.

Although details of the operation were difficult to piece together, it appears that Massachusetts Air National Guard personnel, operating under a grant from the DEA, and in conjunction with mainland State Police, confiscated almost 460 plants that were sighted from above. Four of those plants belonged to Edgartown resident Paul Jackson, an 81-year-old former cancer patient who grows the plant for medicinal tea.

In a telephone conversation, Mr. Jackson said several plainclothes law enforcement officers in fluorescent orange vests came bounding out of the woods that abut his land and ripped out his plants, which he grew for medicinal tea. Mr. Jackson said none of the officers showed him identification or served him with a warrant.

“They just come charging through and start cutting it down,” he said.

Mr. Jackson, a lifelong Islander and renowned organic gardener with over 300 ribbons from the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair, expressed both bewilderment and disgust when he spoke to The Times on Friday.

“I told them they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re destroying it and it could be used for good purposes,” he said. “I know because I went through it before. You wrote about it in The Times. I had the article framed, took it out to show them; I said, ‘This is proof of what it does,’ but they didn’t want to hear it.”

Mr. Jackson was referring to a February 2013 article,” Love, life, and death: A Martha’s Vineyard marijuana story,” in which he described how cannabis tea had helped Mary, his wife of 53 years, through the pain of pancreatic cancer and the ravages of chemotherapy. Mr. Jackson said they forsook the morphine prescribed by her doctors, and substituted cannabis tea for pain management.

“I never ever saw pain in her face,” he said. “She was eating and happy, right up until she died. You had to see it to believe it. People don’t understand it. It’s a beautiful plant and it works beautifully.”

Over the years, Mr. Jackson has given away cannabis to others in pain. “There’s another fellow I’ve given it to, his wife has cancer bad,” he said. “They mix it with her food and it’s really helping her. 
Another fellow had a tube down his stomach and his wife would pour [tea] down his tube for the pain. And it worked. 

At least there’s no damn pain in it. I gave another guy some, he was taking seven different pills a day. I talked to him a month later and he said he’d gotten rid of three of those pills. It works on all kinds of different things.”

Paul Jackson picks an onion from his garden.

Mr. Jackson was an organic gardener long before the method became de rigeur on the Island. He said his naturally grown cannabis is far superior to the large-scale operations that supply the legal dispensaries.

“The people that are selling it are using chemicals that react with the chemotherapy,” he said. “Mine is much better because it’s organically grown. I saw it with my own eyes, I couldn’t believe how well it worked.”

Mr. Jackson also has firsthand experience with the analgesic qualities of his organically grown cannabis.

“I keep this because I’ve had cancer in both ears, and I never know when I may need it,” he said. “I grow a certain amount and I keep it. I found a way to store it for seven years.”

Mr. Jackson said he’s never smoked marijuana. “I don’t like smoke and I don’t like dust,” he said. “We just make tea out of it. But if I need to make the tea, I’ve got it. I don’t sell it. I will continue to have a certain amount in case somebody close to me needs it.”

Budding regulations
Massachusetts has historically been one of the more liberal states with respect to marijuana laws. On November 4, 2008, with voter approval, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to remove the possibility of jail time for simple marijuana possession.

The Act for the Humanitarian Medical Use of Marijuana, which was approved in the 2012 general election by 63 percent of state voters, became effective Jan. 1, 2013.

According to Department of Public Health (DPH) guidelines, a patient with a “Medical Use of Marijuana” (MUM) card can grow a 60-day supply of marijuana, 10 ounces maximum, or the equivalent in other forms such as edibles and tinctures. It does not specify the number of plants that can be grown by a card-holding patient. But it requires “cultivation and storage only in an enclosed, locked facility.”

The “Hardship Cultivation Registrations” allows people with MUM cards to legally grow their own medicinal marijuana. A patient can qualify if “access to a medical treatment center is limited by verified financial hardship, a physical incapacity to access reasonable transportation, or the lack of a treatment center within a reasonable distance of the patient’s residence.”

Mr. Jackson said he does not have a MUM identification card. 

“They tell you different things; they say you can grow as much as you want if it’s locked up, they say 10 ounces,” he said. “I figured what I was growing was such a small amount, what the hell was the big deal?”

Budding mystery
With cannabis legalization, also known as the Bay State Repeal Initiative No. 15-23, on the ballot for November’s election, The Times sought to find out who gave the orders for the mission. After conversations with several state and federal agencies, it is still not clear who ordered the aerial eradication. 

State Police Sergeant Joe Pimentel, commander of the Island’s State Police barracks, told The Times it was a DEA grant-funded operation, similar to searches that took place several years ago before funding expired. Sergeant Pimentel said each day of the operation one of his officers was assigned to the aerial team’s ground crew to provide local knowledge but was not involved in the actual operation.

A helicopter crew returned to Martha’s Vineyard Tuesday and Wednesday, making low flights around the Island in search of marijuana. – Susan Safford

Sergeant Pimentel learned about the operation a short time before it began and alerted Island police departments. Local police fielded numerous calls from concerned residents but were not involved.

In response to inquiries, on Tuesday, Colonel James Sahady, Public Affairs Officer for the Massachusetts National Guard emailed The Times, “The order was initiated by the DEA and Massachusetts State Police as part of pre-planned eradication missions throughout the year.”
  
In a followup conversation on Wednesday, Colonel Sahady said it was State Police and the National Guard Counter-Drug Team that collaborated on the mission. “We have a memorandum of understanding and work together on missions throughout the year,” he said.

Although Colonel Sahady did not know who gave the order for the mission, he said it would have come from State Police.“We would never give out the initial order. We always work in a defense support to civil authorities,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time.” 

In a later email on Wednesday, Colonel Sahady corrected his email from Tuesday and said the DEA was not involved.

Contacted by The Times, spokesmen for the Massachusetts State Police and the DEA said their organizations were not involved.

DEA spokesman Tim Desmond wrote in an email on Tuesday, “I have received confirmation from two group supervisors and the assistant special agent in charge whose area of responsibility is that region for DEA. I can only speak on behalf of DEA that we were not involved in any kind of marijuana eradication operation.”

Two Massachusetts State Police spokesmen checked into the matter and said there was no evidence of State Police involvement. “It was not us,” Officer Tom Ryan told The Times on Tuesday.

Although the helicopter was parked at Martha’s Vineyard Airport last Tuesday night, there are no records of landing fees or fuel purchases paid by a government agency, according to airport manager Ann Crook.

Ms. Crook said she had not been forewarned about the mission. “I only heard about it when my phone started lighting up,” she said.

“I had not heard about it happening in Massachusetts this summer, but I’m not that surprised,” Bill Downing, spokesman for MassCan/NORML, a legalization advocacy group, told The Times. “The idea we’re so frivolously spending money on marijuana interdiction, especially now when it’s about to be rolled back, is extremely frustrating. How many books or school lunches could have been bought instead of having these plants ripped up?”

Mr. Downing suggested the mission might have originated with district attorneys and/or prosecutors who strongly oppose legalization. He cited Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’ Keefe as one of its strongest opponents.

However, Mr. O’ Keefe told The Times that the order did not come from his office. “I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “The DEA and State Police do this across the state on a regular basis. That’s what the DEA does; they interdict illegal drugs.”

Mr. O’Keefe said he had no personal opinion whether the two-day mission was a good use of state and federal resources. “My opinion doesn’t matter,” he said.

Doctors make easy money from medical marijuana. What happens when it's legal?

Chris Roberts 

With full legalization slated for the California ballot this fall, cannabis-friendly physicians could be out of business as weed becomes easily available

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If approved, Proposition 64 could spell the end of a cottage industry that has attracted entrepreneurs and brought mockery on the notion of medical cannabis. Photograph: Gosia Wozniacka/AP 

Frank Lucido, a California physician, received a phone call in 2012 from a doctor in Colorado.

Like Lucido – one of California’s best-known cannabis-friendly physicians – the Colorado doctor had been writing recommendations for medical marijuana, the paperwork required for patients to access cannabis at medical marijuana retail outlets in his state.

Unlike Lucido, the Colorado doctor was worried about the future of his practice.

There was a legalization measure on the ballot for recreational marijuana in Colorado that fall. If it passed, he was looking for somewhere to move, where he could continue writing recommendations in the semi-legal gray area of medical cannabis.
“What’s the climate in California?” he asked.

Colorado voters did approve Amendment 64, one of the first two state legalization measures to pass. Lucido isn’t sure if the doctor did end up moving west. But if he did, he may need to move again.

This November, California – along with three other states – will vote on whether to approve recreational use of the drug. The state’s measure – Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act – would allow adults aged 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis and buy the drug in stores – no doctor’s note required.

If approved, Prop 64 could spell the end of a cottage industry that has attracted entrepreneurs and brought mockery on the notion of medical cannabis.

Cannabis recommendations are often issued by places such as San Francisco Green Evaluations, a “clinic” in an upstairs office at Amoeba Music, a record store in the city’s tourist-friendly Haight-Ashbury district. There, Samuel Dismond III, a former primary care physician with nearly 30 years of experience, writes recommendations for as little as $45 – and “super fast”, as multiple Yelp reviewers put it.

Dismond says he started writing cannabis recommendations after two serious car accidents left him disabled. Unable to continue with primary care, he started writing recommendations one day a week.

“I was holding my nose when I tried it,” he said. “But then I saw an opportunity.”
“It’s been gangbusters-good.”

There’s also the likes of Roger J Foster, dubbed Dr Skype, who gave “exams” to patients in his Sacramento, California, office from his Las Vegas home via Skype. For these doctors, medical marijuana has meant easy money: $50 or $100 cash for a few minutes’ work, with the requirement that the recommendation be renewed annually.

“Most of the physicians – not all of them – but most of the physicians doing this had some kind of problem with their medical license,” Dismond said. “They had restrictions; they couldn’t do any other kind of medicine. They were doing rubber-stamp recommendations because they didn’t give a fuck. That’s how the bad reputation of cannabis physicians came about.”

Conservatives and law enforcement officials have criticized medical marijuana as a sham, with “script mills” akin to the “pill mills” churning out questionable prescriptions for opiates.

This has meant professional ridicule and ostracism for doctors like Lucido, who have sometimes been lumped in with the Dr Skypes and Venice Beach clinics where street hawkers try to wheedle tourists into seedy offices. Prosecutors in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, allege that at least one chain of clinics, 420 MD, is tied to organized crime.

The seasoned political operatives secured by Spotify billionaire Sean Parker, Prop 64’s main bankroller, took this into account in their campaign. The measure promises to reform medical marijuana and “reduce the number of unscrupulous medical MJ clinics”, said campaign spokesman Jason Kinney.

If the measure passes, medical cannabis would still exist in California, but patients would need a new recommendation from an “attending physician” and would be required to obtain a state-issued medical marijuana patient ID card.

The card will exempt them from state sales tax on cannabis, though a 15% excise tax would still apply, plus any local taxes cities and counties might apply.

The tax difference – plus the allowance for 18-to-20-year-olds to continue to access medical cannabis (children whose doctors recommend cannabis are allowed in dispensaries if accompanied by an adult) – give doctors such as Lucido reassurance that there will still be a demand for medical marijuana post-legalization.

They are also banking on legalization drawing more people, like those with chronic pain, to try non-psychoactive cannabis strains and products. Only about 5% of Californians say they use medical marijuana, according to a 2012 survey.

When Dr Jeffrey Hergenrather, of Sebastopol, California, started writing recommendations 16 years ago, only 10% of his patients had never tried cannabis. Now, he says, about half his patients seeking a 90-minute, $300 exam are new to the drug, including “kids with autism, kids with seizure disorder”.

For startups like HelloMD – which offer recommendations via mobile apps, marketed especially to tech-savvy, well-off consumers who use Uber and Airbnb – legalization could mean a segue to telehealth – patients videoconferencing with doctors over a secure channel.

“There’s a misconception that this market is really just a recreational market,” said Mark Hadfield, the founder of HelloMD. “We think that there’s a much bigger market for health and wellness consumers.”

Under Prop 64, Lucido expects “25% to 50%” of his practice to go away.
“But we’ll still see patients who need guidance,” he said.

As for the Dr Skypes, the doctors in record stores, and his Colorado colleague? Lucido defends them – to a degree.

“They gave us a bad name and delayed legalization by a few years,” he said. “But say what you want about the script mills – they never harmed anybody.” At the same time, “90% of the doctors doing that will have to go out and find a job.”