The
United Nations (UN) has approved the use of marijuana for medical
purposes and has urged Nigeria to legalise it for the same purpose, Vanguard reports.
Harsheth Kaur Virk, the Project Officer of the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime in Nigeria made this known in a one-day public
hearing held by the Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Health on
the need to curb the pharmaceutical drug abuse among the Nigerian youth.
Cannabis is a miracle drug when allowed for medical purposes, she said.
Nigeria as a sovereign Nation has its stringent laws
against it but international conventions of the UN have approved it for
medical purposes based on outcome of researches conducted to that effect
by globally recognized institutes.
She urged that it be legalised only for medical purposes, and not recreational.
She also advised that people addicted to drugs be treated as sick and rehabilitated, and not convicted.
She said:
The Drugs and Crime office of the UN sees addictive drugs
users as people who are sick, in need of treatment, care and
rehabilitation.
A new report explores how Uruguay’s cannabis laws
came to be, what’s played out since, and what changes could be made to
ensure their effectiveness
By Alicia Wallace,
Tiny Uruguay barely matches North Dakota in
GDP, but with a few tweaks it could be the blueprint for the roll out of
cannabis legalization in other nations.
A new policy paper released by the Brookings Institution shines the
spotlight on the South American nation for a clearer look at the lessons
that can be learned from the world’s first country to legalize and implement adult-use cannabis sales.
The country with a population of 3 million legalized cannabis in 2013 — starting sales in July 2017
— to head off a fervent black market flush with “brick weed,” or
pressed cannabis, from Paraguay. The law hasn’t won many popularity
contests, but it has survived two presidential administrations, researchers said.
“It’s always hard to go first, but it’s not as hard to go second and
third,” said John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective
Public Management for the Brookings Institution, a Washington,
D.C.-based research organization.
Hudak partnered with researchers from the Washington Office on Latin
America to explore how Uruguay’s cannabis laws came to be, what’s played
out since, and what changes could be made to ensure their
effectiveness.
“There’s been a real commitment to the rule of law and to the
continuation of policy that I think is quite impressive in Uruguay,”
Hudak said.
Uruguay’s law
was “bold and cautious” so as to accomplish the goal of combating drug
trafficking while staying attuned to concerns that could arise from the
international community, he said.
Skepticism about the state runs deep in many Latin American countries
because of their histories with dictatorships and atrocities committed
against society, he said.
“And government lists are something that scare Latin Americans …
there is a real lasting memory of that sort of behavior across the
continent,” he said. “I think there was some real concern early on about
this system, but there has been quite a bit of uptake since.”
At the 30,000-foot level Uruguay’s law bears similarities to cannabis
laws seen in U.S. states like Colorado and California. There are
home-grow and commercial regulations, seed-to-sale tracking systems,
initial supply shortages and banking difficulties.
The market also presents pronounced differences.
Uruguay doesn’t have medical cannabis, which is often the precursor
to U.S. adult-use laws; it has only two authorized cultivators; the
federal government sets price and purchase restrictions; and sales are
limited to citizens. Additionally, the law has exclusivity provisions
under which a citizen must choose the one of three ways to procure
cannabis: growing it themselves, joining a cannabis club or purchasing
it at a pharmacy.
Following months of research and an October 2017 trip to Uruguay,
Hudak and fellow authors WOLA’s Geoff Ramsey and John Walsh saw areas of
potential improvement in the nation’s laws.
The authors’ seven recommendations include:
Access to banking: Develop solutions to allow
access to financial institutions. That could be an internal fix of
having local banks “play a game of chicken with U.S. financial
regulators” or the creation of a partnership with bankers in Canada,
which is expected to legalize adult-use sales this year.
Increase education: Reduce education gaps in
medical and law enforcement communities. Develop classes for medical
professionals and fund research into the potential medicinal efficacy of
cannabis. Hold department-level trainings for law enforcement officers
to prevent unlawful seizures of products.
Expand medical cannabis: Create a system for
medical-specific uses of cannabis. The country has an infrastructure in
place for this addition as Uruguay produces medical cannabis as exports
to other countries.
Reconsider the exclusivity of distribution: Address
issues such as supply shortages and illegal sales by devising a system
that allows people to access the product legally via more than one
specific means.
Create a dispensary model with viable revenue system:
The price of cannabis is currently fixed at about U.S. $1.40 per gram.
To increase revenue and the viability of the system, the government
could consider subsidizing cannabis operations, either as private
entities or government-run institutions.
Legal sales to tourists: The government could
consider implementing a pilot program by which tourists could legally
purchase cannabis — perhaps at a higher cost.
Readiness to correct future implementation problems:
Increase the staffing and funding for the Institute for the Regulation
and Control of Cannabis, the regulatory body that oversees the laws. In
addition to reliance on in-house officials providing evaluations of the
system, IRCCA should rely on independent, academic analysis about the
positive and negative aspects of the law.
A smoke is a smoke
is a smoke: New research suggests that folks who smoke pot may be more
prone to taking up -- or returning to -- the cigarette habit.
One tobacco-cessation expert said the findings aren't surprising.
"Among individuals that I have treated, the majority of those who
smoke cannabis as well as cigarettes often have a more difficult time
quitting, do not want to give up their cannabis use, and are more likely to relapse to cigarette smoking," said Patricia Folan. She directs Northwell Health's Center for Tobacco Control in Great Neck, N.Y.
The new research was led by Renee Goodwin, of Columbia University
School of Public Health in New York City. Her team tracked data on
nearly 35,000 American adults who took part in a national survey.
While the study couldn't prove cause-and-effect, Goodwin's team
found that marijuana use was associated with an increased risk that
nonsmokers would start smoking cigarettes. Pot smoking was also tied to a
lower likelihood that smokers would quit and a greater chance that
former smokers would return to the habit.
While cigarette smoking is declining in the United States, the
relaxation of laws against marijuana means its use is on the rise.
That's why it's important to gain "a better understanding of the
relationship between marijuana use and cigarette use," Goodwin said in a
university news release.
A prior study by Goodwin and colleagues found a dramatic rise in
the use of marijuana by cigarette smokers over the past two decades. It
also found that daily marijuana use is more than five times higher among
cigarette smokers than among nonsmokers.
"As indicated in the article, the relaxation of laws banning
cannabis may have had an impact on the cannabis use of many, who now
perceive cannabis as less harmful with fewer risks for health
consequences," Folan reasoned.
Other experts agreed
.
"This study demonstrates that smoking anything combustible is a
generalized habit," said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at
Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "It would seem that 'smoking is
smoking.'"
Dr. Alan Mensch is a pulmonologist and senior vice president of
medical affairs at Plainview and Syosset Hospitals, in New York. He said
there's a worry that "cannabis use could negatively affect the success
we've had in decreasing tobacco use and result in an increase in
tobacco-related diseases and death."
A greater focus on marijuana use is needed in efforts to reduce smoking and to help people stop smoking, Goodwin said.
The trend could be especially important for young Americans,
Goodwin added. She pointed to recent data suggesting that marijuana use
is more common than cigarette use among teens, so it's important to
learn more about how marijuana use may affect teens' risk of starting
smoking.
Health officials first reported cases of the condition, which reduces the blood's ability to coagulate, last week.
By Shannon Antinori,
SPRINGFIELD, IL — Illinois health officials are warning residents
amid reports that six people in northeast Illinois suffered severe
bleeding after using synthetic cannabinoids, interfering with the
blood's ability to coagulate. The Illinois Department of Public Health
first reported four people being hospitalized for cases of severe
bleeding on March 23. On Tuesday, health officials said six individuals,
all in northeast Illinois, have now suffered severe bleeding episodes
beginning on March 10.
Officials said all six reported using synthetic cannabinoids, which are often referred to as fake weed, K2 and spice.
"Despite
the perception that synthetic cannabinoids are safe and a legal
alternative to marijuana, many are illegal and can cause severe
illness," said IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D. "The recent cases
of severe bleeding are evidence of the harm synthetic cannabinoids can
cause."
Synthetic cannabinoids are not just one single drug,
but hundreds of different chemicals manufactured and sold. They are
called cannabinoids because they act on the same brain cell receptors as
the main active ingredient in marijuana, according to IDPH, which
issued a statement noting, "Synthetic cannabinoid products are unsafe.
It is difficult to know what's in them or what your reaction to them
will be. The health effects from using synthetic cannabinoids can be
unpredictable and harmful—even life threatening."
Officials said they are working to identify a common produce used by the six individuals who suffered severe bleeding.
Anyone
who has a serious reaction to synthetic cannabinoids should call 911 or
go to the emergency department immediately, according to IDPH.
Marijuana may be useful in combating alcoholism and curbing cocaine cravings.
A recent study published in Neuropsychopharmacology
found that a substance found in cannabis called cannabidiol, or CBD,
can help prevent relapses in drug and alcohol patients, especially when
those patients are re-entering stress-filled environments.
In the study, scientists from the Scripps Research
Institute in San Diego gave rats a daily dose of alcohol or cocaine,
leading to them exhibiting addiction-like behaviors including
impulsivity and anxiety. After the mice were addicted, the researchers
injected a CBD gel into the rat’s skin.
Over time, the rats injected with CBD showed reduced
signs of relapse into addiction, even when they were exposed to stress
or the cues researched had used to get them to take the drugs in the
first place.
CBD is already being used on humans to help treat pain as well as psychiatric and neurological disorders. A study last year by the National Academy of Sciences
also found CBD to help in treating nausea and other side effects from
chemotherapy as well as muscle spasms caused by multiple sclerosis.
Cannabis is legal in 29 states for medical use, and 9 states for recreational use. However, it is illegal under federal law.
A groundbreaking nonprofit is helping minorities
targeted by the war on drugs get a piece of the booming weed industry.
By MAX BLAU
OAKLAND—On a Friday in January 2017, the night of President
Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ebele Ifedigbo and Lanese Martin welcomed
several dozen people to a cozy officein a marijuana-friendly
part of the city cheekily nicknamed “Smoakland.” As folks lounging on
comfy couches lit joints and puffed from vape pens, the two business
school grads explained they were launching a project of their own, a
nonprofit that would do something no one in the nation had ever done.
As they put it, they were going to train black and brown people to start their own legal cannabis companies.
In the audience, Linda Grant listened
intently. Grant, who once sold enough weed to help support her children,
had gotten out of the illegal drug trade to avoid a lengthy prison
sentence. Since then, Grant, a 49-year-old mother of six, had watched
her hometown become one of the unofficial capitals of the state’s
ever-expanding cannabis business—an industry projected to do $6.5
billion in sales statewide by 2020. Oakland, with its decidedly
left-leaning political vibe, was rife with cannabis-related businesses,
legal and otherwise. But Grant’s dream of becoming the first black
female owner of a cannabis dispensary on the east side of the city,
where she lived, still felt out of reach. What she was hearing from
these two millennial activists was a way forward that she didn’t know
exist.
Ifedigbo and Martin founded the Hood Incubator
because they saw the recreational cannabis trade not just as a business
opportunity but “as a way to correct the injustices of the war on drugs
launched in the early 1970s. Though minorities like Grant had played an
outsized role in building the marijuana market, they also faced a
disproportionate response from law enforcement, as Martin explained to
the crowd assembled that night in early 2017. As recently as 2015,
Oakland officers arrested black residents nearly 20 times more often
than white residents for cannabis-related crimes. Ifedigbo noted that
black people had owned or founded less than 5 percent of cannabis
businesses nationwide and, across all industries, black-founded startups
had received just 1 percent of venture capital funding.
For many years,
while officials awarded more and more licenses for medical
marijuana-related businesses, only one black Oaklander held a dispensary
permit.
“The cannabis industry has an opportunity to make equity a
core component of the industry’s DNA,” Ifedigbo said later. “Other
industries have generally seen social impact [initiatives] as an
afterthought.”
Oakland officials were already looking at
how to use new regulations to help African-American and Latino residents
get jobs more significant than what one longtime City Council member
called the “security guard in the parking lot.” But Ifedigbo, 29, and
Martin, 32, knew that giving these aspiring entrepreneurs permits
without training—or training without permits—would likely spell failure.
In January 2017, the Hood Incubator launched the nation’s first
cannabis business accelerator for people of color. They began training a
dozen or so aspiring entrepreneurs whose business ideas included
everything from edibles, like cannabis-infused salsa, to delivery
companies hoping to be the Blue Apron or Uber Eats of the weed business.
Over the course of the four-month program, Ifedigbo shared
lessons learned in Ivy League classrooms with people who understood how
to run a cash business but didn’t speak the formal language of the
business world. One year later, the nonprofit’s first graduates are
beginning to launch their businesses and it is now in the process of
selecting its new class of trainees. It has since attracted multiple
five-figure donations—from sources including Harborside, a local
cannabis dispensary, and Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports
social entrepreneurs—and is in the midst of a campaign to raise
$500,000.
In this blue-collar city of 420,000 people,
where officials acknowledge that the benefits of a recent development
and jobs boom are not evenly shared across Oakland’s demographic groups,
even the efforts of a relatively small outfit like Hood Incubator can
help blunt the threat of gentrification that has stirred fears of
displacement. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf foresees that cannabis equity
measures will encourage new businesses, jobs and development after years
of disinvestment. “I’d measure success in the families who have lived
under intergenerational poverty come out of that poverty through
business ownership,” Schaaf says.
Ifedigbo and Martin, while fine-tuning the Hood Incubator’s
strategy in Oakland, have their eyes set on spreading the model to other
cities statewide—and eventually to cities like Chicago, Detroit and
Memphis. Ifedigbo and Martin believe they can rewrite the rules of
corporate responsibility to make diversity more than just a goodwill
gesture or publicity campaign.
“The Hood Incubator isn’t
just interested in weed—or getting a few businesses off the ground—but
in setting national standards,” said William Armaline, a San Jose State
University sociology professor who studies drug policy reforms. “They’re
interested in changing the power dynamics between communities and those
doing business in and profiting from those communities.”
Ifedigbo,
a “middle-class kid who grew up in the ‘hood’,” never had to look far
to see the signs of inequality in east Buffalo, New York. Ifedigbo’s
father, a Nigerian-born architect, called attention to the contrast
between their neighborhood’s check-cashing stores and bodegas, and the
major banks and grocers that served the whiter side of town. By the age
of 12, Ifedigbo (Ih-fay-DIG-boh) was encouraged to volunteer with
organizations like Meals on Wheels. As a high school senior, Ifedigbo
organized a student fundraiser that raised nearly $1,800 for Hurricane
Katrina victims.
“Help didn't seem to be getting there quick enough,” Ifedigbo told the Buffalo News in 2005, “so I decided to do something about it.”
Ifedigbo
often thought about how racial justice could be applied to lessons
economics major learned at Columbia University. Intrigued by classmates
who were eager to work on Wall Street, Ifedigbo interned at Goldman
Sachs and Ameriprise Financial. Private sector internships were followed
by an NAACP fellowship focused on crafting state-level policies to
close the wealth gap between whites and blacks. Ifedigbo, who identifies
using the pronouns they or them, also worked as a peer educator with
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center’s Gender
Identity Project.
After choosing Yale for business school, Ifedigbo used
the coursework to study whether historically disenfranchised
communities could actually benefit from capitalism.
“There
was a lot of conversation about social impact,” Ifedigbo says. “But
even all that still felt like the same old system with a few tweaks that
lead to a few superficial outcomes. [I wanted to know]: Is there a way
to shift that on its head?”
As Ifedigbo’s MBA program was wrapping up, hundreds of
thousands of Californians had signed a petition to place Proposition 64
on the ballot. Ifedigbo began to read just about everything published on
the burgeoning market. Ifedigbo conducted an analysis of Oakland’s
cannabis industry on the cusp of it going mainstream. By that fall, with
Proposition 64 destined to pass, Ifedigbo had become friends with
Martin, an organizer for the progressive advocacy group Oakland Rising,
after they were introduced to each other at a potluck. They brainstormed
how to prevent the new economy from becoming dominated by older white
men.
Martin, a Brooklyn native who had been adopted and
raised by a wealthy black couple, understood that opportunity bred
achievement. So, she sought insights from community members about what
resources they needed to break into the legal weed business. From there,
she urged Oakland council members—who were crafting cannabis business
regulations—to build a program that provided the resources those
residents needed most.
“The historical inequities weren’t going to disappear on their own,” council member Rebecca Kaplansaid. “The permits had to deal with that.”
After a year of policy debates, Oakland officials last year created thenation’s
first program designed to set aside at least half of its new cannabis
permits for residents who had been targets of the war on drugs. To
qualify as an “equity applicant,” residents had to make less than 80
percent of the city’s area median income—nearly $53,000 for a one-person
household in 2016—and either had to have been convicted of a cannabis
crime or lived for 10 years in a neighborhood where officers
disproportionately arrested people for cannabis-related offenses.
Ifedigbo and Martin realized that permits alone wouldn’t
help former cannabis dealers flourish as legal entrepreneurs. Enter the
Hood Incubator’s business accelerator. It would help minority Oakland
residents break into the legal industry with a twice-a-week boot camp
run over four months.
The fellows would be exposed to lessons out of an
MBA textbook: the basics of everything from reading financial statements
to writing a pitch deck, a snappy presentation used by entrepreneurs as
they entice potential investors for funding. And they would hear
directly from people in the cannabis industry, from owners to attorneys
to advocates.
“It didn’t make sense to work just on
policy but not have anyone pipelined in to be ready [to benefit from
that policy],” Martin said. “It made sense to tackle all of it.”
In many ways, Linda Grant was exactly the kind of person the
Hood Incubator wanted to get into the legal cannabis trade. Aside from
brief gigs as a bank security guard and McDonald’s cashier, the only way
Grant had ever made a living was selling weed, starting back in middle
school, when she’d sell dollar joints to her classmates. On her best
weeks as an adult she made roughly $2,000—which made life a bit easier
for a family that relied on welfare, food stamps and housing assistance.
But the risks—three arrests, fines she couldn’t always afford and the
threat of at least a decade behind bars if she kept dealing—forced her
out of the business by the mid-2000s.
“I didn’t have
ambitions of being a nurse; I was never going to do a 9-to-5; I was
never going to sit behind a desk and be bossed around,” Grant told me
recently as she steered her black Chrysler 200 around East Oakland. “I
wanted to sell weed.”
Even though she had attended that open house in January 2017, it took a while longer for her to act on her ambition.Last
fall, having watched the first cohort of the Hood Incubator’s business
accelerator graduate, she decided she needed her own permit. She already
had a company name: Herbin Collective. Eventually, she wanted to start a
dispensary, but dispensaries required a ton of capital. So, she started
off small with a plan to build a delivery business.
Grant had lived for more than a decade in an over-policed
part of East Oakland. But proving residency was easier said than done.
Grant had never had property records because she had never owned land.
She couldn’t obtain housing or utility records going back more than a
decade because those agencies hadn’t kept records that long. Moreover,
when it came to proving her income, she had no pay stubs or W2 forms to
show city officials.
“I didn’t have that stuff,” Grant says. “Real equity applicants don’t have that kind of stuff.”
Since
May 2017, Oakland officials have received nearly 800 cannabis permit
applications. More than half are equity applicants like Grant. And while
the vast majority have been approved, it has not always been easy to
navigate the obstacle course of municipal bureaucracy. This is where the
Hood Incubator’s assistance has extended well beyond providing high-end
advice on launching a startup.
For instance, Grant doesn’t own a
printer, but needed to drop off a paper copy of her permit
application
at City Hall. So Ifedigbo let her use the one at the Hood Incubator’s
tiny downtown office. Martin has also arranged for pro bono work from
consultants and lawyers, so the program’s fellows can spend their money
on other startup costs.
But the most valuable service the Hood Incubator has
provided to the equity applicants is to help them overcome a lack of
formal business training. Before becoming a fellow, Dejah Fortune had
nearly two decades of experience making salts, lotions and oils—
including a cannabis-infused product to treat his grandmother’s
arthritis—but he had little idea how to pique investors’ interest.
He
got help tailoring his pitch to identify a specific market
(health-conscious cannabis patients), products (organic high-quality
cannabis extracts) and funding needs ($25,000). Esteban Orozco, who’d
worked as a nutrition coach, had never read a financial statement, much
less written one.
The program taught him how to “pivot” from his
original business idea—a line of cannabis-infused vegan edibles—to one
that teaches cannabis newcomers how to integrate pot into a healthy
diet.
“It gave me a lot of confidence,” said AanyaGambleHill,
a former University of California-San Francisco employee whose startup,
A+ Collective, delivers cannabis products throughout Oakland and caters
specifically to seniors. “I left thinking, ‘I could probably do this.’”
The Hood Incubator hasn’t just rolled out a niche program
serving a handful of entrepreneurs. It has built a network of more than
2,000members—some paying $1,000 a year—for newsletters,
clinics and webinars. Half of those come from California; the other half
from cities as far away as Atlanta (which sits in a state that
prohibits the growing or sale of medical marijuana) and New York.
As
Ifedigbo notes: “You're going to get much farther along in this industry
if you're well-connected to the people who help write the laws, issue
the permits, or other entrepreneurs within the space who are on the same
trajectory as you.” They’ve also created apprenticeships through
established companies so that black and Latino residents can be trained
on the technical side of the industry.
But James Anthony,
a local cannabis attorney, believes the biggest hurdle is the lack of
capital available to black and Latino entrepreneurs, even as investors
poured nearly $2 billion into the cannabis industry during the first two
months of 2018, a roughly fourfold increase compared with the same
period the year before. “If there’s no wealth in your community, and if
you don’t solve that problem, you’re going to have a [higher] failure
rate,” he says. Likewise, well-funded companies seeking permits have
started making cash offers—including some that are five or six
figures—to people who are eligible to get equity permits in exchange for
them becoming token stakeholders who stay out of the daily operations.
“The intentions of a lot of people getting licensed in the
Bay Area is more about money than cultural healing,” Fortune says.
“People with access to resources, who are jumping ship from their
current careers, have never smoked. There’s a disconnect.”
To
offset some disparities regarding access to capital, Oakland has
allowed larger companies who don’t immediately win “general” permits to
get one by providing an equity applicant with rent-free space of at
least 1,000 square feet for three years. Those companies could lose the
permit, however, if the businesses they’re incubating fail. Beyond that,
Greg Minor, assistant to Oakland's city administrator, says the city
will soon make available $3.4 million in interest-free loans to equity
applicants.
After Linda Grant obtained her permits in
January, she created an account on a city website that resembles a
dating app to match investors with entrepreneurs. One potential backer
offered $50,000 if she would agree to be a hands-off partner. She
rejected it. Ultimately, two men behind an edible company called
GummiCares offered her 1,500 square feet of space in their squat
warehouse 15 minutes from her duplex. Grant clicked with one of
GummiCares’ co-founders, Curtis Ohlson, a bass player who once toured
with Ray Charles. Ohlson wanted to help Grant fulfill her dream of
opening a dispensary. But first, they’d work on launching her delivery
business, which requires less seed money than a dispensary.
“Before, cannabis suppressed her life,” Ohlson says. “Hopefully, now, cannabis will uplift her family’s life.”
Next month, Ifedigbo and Martin will announce the next class
of Hood Incubator fellows, planting the seeds for dozen or so more
cannabis startups to flourish. Of the Hood Incubator’s 10 graduates in
2017, six are still pursuing their business concepts. But the rest are
employed in the industry.
Ifedigbo says the Hood Incubator graduation
rate, around two-thirds of its accepted fellows, is comfortably on par
with other kinds of business accelerators.
Now the duo
is taking on a broader mission to help other cities follow Oakland’s
lead. Ifedigbo says elected officials and academics, hearing about the
nonprofit’s work by word of mouth, have reached out for advice. In
recent months, officials in Sacramento and San Francisco have looked
into creating similar programs. The Hood Incubator’s work was even cited
in a case study for the city of Los Angeles as officials there look to
build their own equity program.
Keith Stephenson, for
many years the only black dispensary owner in Oakland, fears the rising
costs of breaking into the cannabis industry business might limit the
impact of equity programs.
He ultimately hopes these kinds of permitting
measures, which he supports, don’t just lead to “photo-op moments.”
Anthony, the cannabis attorney, thinks permitting reforms may have the
unintended consequence of driving some minority-owned cannabis
entrepreneurs out of operation. He believes Oakland’s equity program is
“well-intentioned,” but, when asked whether the program would lead to an
increase of black and Latino cannabis businesses, he replied: “It’s
probably a wash.”
In response, Martin says the equity program wasn’t designed
to help those most likely to succeed: “It’s there to help those most
impacted by the war on drugs. If we wanted to help the most likely to
make it, we’d be targeting a different group [with our services.]”
No
matter how far the idea spreads, Ifedigbo and Martin do not expect
equity permitting will correct all the wrongs caused by the war of
drugs. But it could begin to erase arrest rate disparities and spur
legal changes, such as the recent decision by the Alameda County
district attorney to start dismissing thousands of pot convictions
dating from the 1970s. Ifedigbo hopes the data will someday show that
“everyone has an equal opportunity to not only enter the industry but
thrive and be sustainable in the industry.”
Grant is waiting for those seeds of change to bloom—slowly.
As GummiCares renovates what will soon be Herbin Collective’s
headquarters, she is now training her fleet of four delivery drivers and
negotiating with a supplier from Santa Cruz. Her drivers, who include
friends and a nephew, aren’t the only ones waiting to see if cannabis
truly helps their community.
Her 23-year-old daughter,
Makala, was inspired to apply to the Hood Incubator’s accelerator
program. The young college dropout is now perfecting her edible recipes,
including a weed-infused banana pudding topped with Chessman shortbread
cookies, for her business that she plans to call Majic, a nod to the
#BlackGirlMagic movement that celebrates the beauty and resilience of
black women. Like her mother, she sees her business as more than just an
income stream.
“I want to make hella money,” Makala says. “But I want to focus on healing people, too.”
The debate around the sale of recreational marijuana is no longer a
moral one. I can't help but put face in palm when hearing the notion of
prohibiting sales wafting like so much blown smoke over discussions
about how municipalities should handle pending legalization.
Taber,
Alta., the town that tried to make kids legally obliged to go inside
after dark and ban swearing in public, has Mayor Andrew Prokop taking a
hard-line stance and doing everything he can to block sales in their
community.
The notion was raised in Penticton by Coun. Andre
Martin when questioning whether people will be able to just say no, as
it were, during the upcoming public engagement on the
subject.
Penticton
planning manager Blake Laven said prohibition is an option, but a CBC
story says municipalities will have to work with provinces and won't be
able to outright ban sales.
This may be one of the few instances
in history that plays out like the opposite of the scene in “The Big
Lebowski,” where one Lebowski tells the other “the bums lost!”
In a
similar vein, those who hold a moral objection to recreational
marijuana use need to butt out and let the rest of us talk reality.
At
this point saying, “I don’t want marijuana in my community,” might as
well be heard as, “I don’t want apples in my community.” Yes, an apple a
day keeps the doctor away, and a bong hit a day has detrimental health
effects, but so does a beer (available at your nearest liquor store).
I’m
sorry if you are just waking up to the long history of marijuana
demonization, but if it makes the transition into the future any easier,
let us all remember coffee was at one time known as “Satan’s drink.”
To
clarify, Canada is obviously a free country and you can have a moral
objection to liquor, weed or V-neck shirts for all I care, but that side
of the argument is over, the bums win this time, Lebowski.
Moral
apprehension to marijuana is just regurgitation of the failed war on
drugs propaganada and the attempt to use demonization politically.
Fun
fact: Drug prohibition started in Canada with the Opium Act of 1908,
and cannabis wasn't outlawed until at least 1923. For over 55 years
since the birth of the nation the plant, and it is just that, was
perfectly legal.
Its popularity was more focused, however, on the many
uses of hemp as opposed to recreational use, which didn't get popular
until the '60s.
Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, and the war on drugs clearly didn't work if you take a look around.
So
object to marijuana consumption near schools and parks, sure, but keep
your holier-than-thou, Carrie Nation-style attitudes to yourself.
Marijuana
is inevitably becoming legal, and many stand to get jobs, tax benefits
and more out of the world's next big cash crop, so please, let the
mature among us carry on with logical solutions.
In a blow to Attorney General Jeff Sessions anti-marijuana agenda, President Trump has signed the omnibus spending package which included language introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
to prohibit the Department of Justice and its affiliated agencies from
prosecuting state-lawful and compliant medical marijuana systems,
businesses, and patients.
“We are very pleased to see that neither Congress nor the White House bent to the will of Attorney General Jeff Sessions when it comes to his anti-marijuana crusade,” said Justin Strekal, Political Director of NORML.
“There are thirty states that have authorized the use of medicinal
cannabis, serving over two million patients nationwide who rely on these
programs. At a time when the majority of states now regulate marijuana
use, and over six out of ten voters endorse outright legalizing the
plant’s use by adults, it makes no sense from a political, fiscal, or
cultural perspective to allow Sessions to attempt put this genie back in
the bottle.”
Originally known as the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment, it
explicitly states that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states
from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use,
distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, namesake on the amendment and the co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus said “While
I’m glad that our medical marijuana protections are included, there is
nothing to celebrate since Congress only maintained the status quo.
These protections have been law since 2014.
This matter should be
settled once and for all. Poll after poll shows that the majority of
Americans, across every party, strongly favor the right to use medical
marijuana.”
He continued, “Instead, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is doubling down on the failed War on Drugs and Republican leadership in Congress—led by Chairman Pete Sessions—is
stonewalling. They’re ignoring the will of the American people by
blocking protections for state adult-use laws and cannabis banking. They
even refused our veterans access to lifesaving medicine.
Additional Context:
The
amendment has been in place since 2014, as a part of annual spending
bills. Because the provision was initially approved as a budgetary
amendment, it must be explicitly re-authorized by Congress as part of
either a continuing resolution or a new fiscal year appropriations bill
in order to maintain in effect.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions wanted to see these protections go away. In a letter he sent to Congressional leadership last year, he wrote:
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion
of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the
midst of a historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in
violent crime.”
In the past month, NORML has
worked with Representative Blumenauer and the Cannabis Caucus in
recruiting 60 additional members of Congress to co-sign a letter of
their own to Congressional leadership, which states,“We
respectfully request that you include language barring the Department of
Justice from prosecuting those who comply with their state’s medical
marijuana laws. We believe such a policy is not only consistent with the
wishes of a bipartisan majority of the members of the House, but also
with the wishes of the American people.”
Last year, the language was initially included as part of a Senate appropriations bill thanks to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) yet was absent from the House’s funding proposal because House Rules Committee Chair Peter Sessions (R-TX) refused to
allow House members to vote on it. As a result, it was left to House
and Senate leadership to ultimately decide on the amendment’s fate when
the two chambers’ appropriations bills were reconciled.
As the negotiations reached their peak, over 10,000 members of NORML contacted their federal officials to urge them to maintain these protections.
Additional language was stripped from the Senate version of the bill, known as the Veterans Equal Access amendment. Originally passed last
year in the Senate appropriations committee by a vote of 24-7,
Republican Congressional leadership thought it prudent to deny American
military veterans the ability to participate in state-lawful medical
marijuana programs through their VA doctors.
The omnibus spending deal keeps the shackles on DOJ's pot work.
Alan Pyke
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be prohibited from going
after state medical marijuana growers, retailers, and patients for at
least another fiscal year, after lawmakers included language tying the
Department of Justice’s hands on therapeutic weed in an omnibus spending
bill this week.
The restrictions defy Sessions’ personal plea to Congress
from roughly a year ago, when he sent a letter asking for permission to
interfere with the medical cannabis industry. Lawmakers have sheltered
state medicinal pot programs from federal law enforcement for several
years now using a policy rider in spending legislation. The language,
known today in both political and pot industry circles as the
Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment (RBA), says the Department of Justice
(DOJ) can’t spend a penny of its budget on investigations or
prosecutions of medical marijuana actors in 46 states.
The omnibus deal
hasn’t yet reached final passage. But if lawmakers or the White House
were to attempt changes to it, the RBA would likely still be safe. Every
spending measure adopted for the past three years has included some
version of the language.
The lead sponsors of the policy say that Sessions’ attempts to crack
down on marijuana have only strengthened congressional support for the
protections. Though the attorney general has made noise on pot in
various ways — including some chilling letters to legalization state
officials where he cited erroneous statistics
— he hasn’t yet managed significant or concrete action steps that could
push the growing conflict between federal prohibition and state
legalization into court.
In January, Sessions ripped up a series of DOJ memos spelling out the
conditions under which a state-legal marijuana operation could expect
to be left alone by the feds. The largely symbolic move prompted titters and eyerolling
inside the industry — a line of business already worth billions and
projected to grow at staggering rates in the coming years is not an easy
target, and business owners know they’ve got significant support from
both politicians and law enforcement organizations in their states — but
nonetheless stoked concern that Sessions might take harder steps soon.
But
it may have backfired. The January move “will give us something to
rally behind, both Republicans and Democrats, to show that we need to
have a comprehensive bill [for] not just medical marijuana but…all of
the decisions of the states when it comes to cannabis,” Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA) told reporters at the time. Rep. Earl Blumenauer
(D-OR) agreed, saying he’s “seen steady progress throughout this
Congress” on pushing to curtail federal interference with even adult-use
recreational cannabis in states that have legalized it.
Merely maintaining the RBA in the omnibus is not really a win for
Congress’ growing “Cannabis Caucus,” though, the Oregon lawmaker told
ThinkProgress.
“While I’m glad that our medical marijuana protections are included,
there is nothing to celebrate since Congress only maintained the status
quo. These protections have been law since 2014. This matter should be
settled once and for all,” Blumenauer said.
And though Attorney General Sessions is adrift through the end of the
omnibus spending cycle, it’s a different Sessions who lawmakers must
now target. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), head of the House Rules
Committee, “is stonewalling,” Blumenauer said. The chairman has used his
committee statute to kill a number of widely supported amendments and
bills that would bring federal cannabis policy further in line with the
popular will, as Politico detailed on Wednesday.
“They’re ignoring the will of the American people by blocking
protections for state adult-use laws and cannabis banking. They even
refused our veterans access to lifesaving medicine,” Blumenauer
said. “Republican leadership is hopelessly out of touch, and they should
be held accountable.
In
a 44-29 vote, the Senate nudged forward Bill C-45, one of two key bills
that would enact a new legal framework for cannabis production and
distribution.
A
woman waving a flag with a marijuana leaf on it next to a group
gathered to celebrate National Marijuana Day on Parliament Hill in
Ottawa on April 20, 2016. On March 22, 2018 the Senate passed the first
of two bills needed to legalize marijuana. The bill now moves on for
more detailed study in Senate committees . (CHRIS ROUSSAKIS / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
By Tonda MacCharles Bruce Campion-Smith
OTTAWA—The Liberal plan to legalize marijuana
by midsummer was rescued Thursday when senators — including
Independents who were appointed but not controlled by Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau — voted forthe Trudeau government’s proposed bill.
In
a 44-29 vote, the Senate nudged forward Bill C-45, one of two key bills
that would enact a new legal framework for cannabis production and
distribution.
It was a “second reading” or vote on the bill in
principle, and a late-hour victory that had appeared far from certain
for a key Liberal promise, coming only after a memo went out late
Wednesday to travelling independent senators to return for the crucial
vote.
Hours before, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had warned
senators that his government was elected with a mandate to make the
controversial change to Canada’s drug laws.
“We expect a more
independent Senate will do its work, to look at legislation sent by the
House of Commons, that they evaluate the positive impacts on the
community, that they bring ameliorations, if needed. But it is very
clear that this bill responds first to an electoral promise that we made
very clearly during the election campaign and for which Canadians
voted, and also that is something that we will continue to work on with
different levels of government.”
The
bill now moves on for more detailed study in Senate committees (in fact
five committees will study different aspects of the legal pot scheme)
with a final vote on the legislation expected in June.
The
Liberals’ proposed legislation — and its rush to get it passed into law
before the end of the parliamentary sitting in June — had run into
strong objections in the upper chamber from Conservatives and some
Independents who feared the government was moving too fast.
The
vote capped several days of nail-biting in Senate hallways for the
bill’s backers who figured they had just a six-vote margin to get the
bill passed. They expected 33 Conservative senators would vote against
the legislation, and were seeking support from the ranks of 43
Independent senators, 11 Liberals and six who have no affiliation.
Yet
there was a question mark over how several of those would vote, and the
outcome was thrown into doubt with up to 20 senators — mostly
Independent members — out of town because of Senate committee travel,
and others absent due to illness. The Independent senators’ group
circulated an email late Wednesday alerting them to the importance of
Thursday’s vote and several returned to Ottawa.
Sen. Peter Harder,
the government representative in the red chamber, said voting against
the bill “before we’ve even gone to committee and exercised our sober
second thought would be very much undermining the independent, less
partisan, more reflective Senate.” He said the Senate had never before
killed a government bill on second reading.
In
the end it was the vote of fiercely Independent senators, who did not
want blame for killing the bill prematurely, who determined the outcome.
She called for greater public education and awareness
around the risks of cannabis use and for more research into its effects
on health. She pointed to promising research on the benefits of cannabis
for chronic pain management and palliative care — it has been shown to
decrease opioid use by up to 64 per cent according to a 2016 study, but
she said “a number of alarming facts cannot be ignored.”
She urged Senate colleagues to take advantage of
the opportunity to shape a better law. “Legalization will occur but it
must not occur at any cost. Let’s take advantage of this moment to
engage in deep and meaningful discussion in committee.”
In New
Brunswick, Trudeau offered his oft-repeated justification for the bill,
saying “the current system does not work” because Canadian youth are the
highest users of marijuana in the world even though recreational use is
banned by law.
However, Conservative senator and medical
researcher Judith Seidman challenged Trudeau to provide proof, citing
the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that suggests cannabis use in at least
eight other countries exceeds the use among Canadian teenagers aged
15-16. Seidman slammed the government for failing to mount an aggressive
public education campaign for young people, its failure to regulate
cannabis marketing and advertising as tightly as tobacco, saying the
Liberal approach has “more in common with how we regulate alcohol, which
failed to protect underage users.”
“We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think the same thing won’t happen with cannabis.”
Independent
Sen. Tony Dean, who sponsored the government’s bill in the Senate,
urged Conservatives against relying on statistical disputes about youth
use of cannabis, “whether that places Canada first, second or third in
the world, we should be worried about it.” He said the government
launched its digital marijuana awareness campaign on March 16, and
Canadians expect senators to deal with the issues, “not sweep these
questions under the rug for another 20 years.”
But Sen. Larry
Smith, leader of the Conservative opposition in the Senate, said the
bill fails in its overall stated goal: to protect youth. He warned young
people exposed to second-hand smoke in homes where adults may legally
smoke or grow pot are at risk. He blasted the government for ignoring
the Canadian Medical Association’s recommendation to set the legal age
for consumption at 25, opting instead for 18, and for dragging its feet
on launching a public awareness campaign, and for failing to provide
Indigenous communities with the necessary supports for addiction and
mental health treatment in northern communities where substance abuse
and suicide rates exceed the national average.
Upper house could throw wrench in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plan for full legalization by summer
By John Paul Tasker,
Liberals in the Senate admit they don't know if they have
the votes to keep the bill alive. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
The government's cannabis bill faces outright defeat in the
Senate today if it can't secure enough support from members of the Red
Chamber.
According to an agreed timetable, senators will hold a vote at second
reading of the bill today. If the opposition Tories cobble together
enough votes to defeat C-45, the legislation would be effectively dead —
meaning the government would have to restart the entire legislative
process in the House.
If that happens, a summer timeline for legalization becomes much less likely.
Most Independent and Liberal senators generally support the bill, and
together they hold 54 of the chamber's 93 occupied seats. But that
doesn't guarantee that all of those members will vote together as a
block or be present when the vote is recorded.
New senators have been appointed as Independents — leaving the
Liberal government with no mechanism to whip votes or force them to
attend sittings in the chamber.
Moreover, two Senate committees are on the road: members of the
agriculture committee are meeting with stakeholders in Calgary, while
the Aboriginal peoples committee is in Winnipeg. That means as many as
20 senators — most of them Independent — will be out of the mix
today when a vote is held. Others, like Independent Quebec Sen. Jacques
Demers, are not expected to be in attendance because of illness.
The 33 Conservative senators generally vote in lockstep on government
legislation, since they all still sit as members of a national party
caucus.
Government sources, speaking on background, suggest they have enough
support from Independent senators to win the vote. But the slim margin
is ringing alarm bells on the government side, as only a few absences
could derail a key government policy.
When asked if the government has a plan B ready in the event the bill
is defeated, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould
said the minister still expects the legislation to face a final vote in
the Senate on or before June 7, a timeline the Senate leadership agreed to last month.
"The minister has been following the Senate's debate on C-45 since it
came to that place last November. She looks forward to appearing before
the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs as
part of the 'pre-study' of certain aspects of the legislation," the
spokesperson said.
Peter Harder, the Liberal government's point-man in the Senate, said
Thursday morning he simply wasn't sure he had the votes to get the bill
over the line today.
"I am never assured how any vote in the Senate will unfold and,
therefore, it would be presumptive of me to predict. What I can tell you
is that Conservative senators have said they will be voting against
this," he said. "This is a serious vote on a very important bill."
Politics News
Harder's plea to keep the pot bill alive
Scathing criticism
Conservative senators have delivered scathing condemnations of the
legislation that will legalize the recreational use of cannabis in this
country.
Tory senators say they worry the legislation will endanger youth,
increase smoking rates, complicate the work of police officers, lead to a
backlog of court cases for possession offences and do little to curb
black market sales of the drug.
"Driven by a self-imposed, artificial political deadline of
implementation by this summer, the Trudeau government has hastily
assembled Bill C-45 and its companion impaired driving legislation,
Bill C-46," Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters said in a
speech to the chamber on Tuesday.
"Both bills are shoddily constructed and raise a myriad of unanswered
questions that will lead to unintended and devastating consequences.
Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters
is among the many Tory senators opposed to the government's cannabis
legalization bill.
"Honourable senators, this is too high a price for Canadians to pay
simply to satisfy Prime Minister Trudeau's political ambitions. For all
of these reasons, I will vote against Bill C-45 at second reading."
Batters is not alone. At least six other Conservative senators have
vowed publicly to vote against the bill, arguing the Liberals are
pushing ahead with a massive societal change under a constrained
timeframe.
"We, the select few with sober second thought, should not consider
saying 'yes' to this odious legislation until we, on behalf of all
Canadians, have all the answers. I believe that, at a minimum, an
intensive four-year education blitz should begin now before any
government contemplates legislation," Conservative Alberta Sen. Betty
Unger said.
Conservative New Brunswick Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen is equally unconvinced.
"The rush is incomprehensible," she said. "Within the space of a year
we have gone from debating supervised heroin injection to pushing
cannabis use nationwide.
"I'm not sure Canadians want Canada to be known for its liberal drug laws."
The bill's defenders — including its sponsor in the Senate,
Independent Ontario Sen. Tony Dean — say the government does not have
the luxury of time. They say illegal cannabis use — a $7 billion
industry that funnels funds into the hands of organized crime, according
to government figures — will continue unabated without the benefit of
federal regulations.
Harder has made an impassioned plea to appointed senators to debate
legislation thoroughly and propose amendments if necessary — but to hold
off on defeating government bills that implement promises made in the
last election.
Senate rules could prove fatal
The defeat of a government bill at such an early legislative stage is rare.
If a bill is defeated in the Senate at second reading,
nothing further happens to it. The Senate moves on to the next item on
the order paper and the bill, in effect, is dead.
The government could then introduce a similar bill, but it would need
to be an entirely new piece of legislation and not simply a revival of
the old one.
"If the motion for second reading is defeated, the bill dies and
cannot be reintroduced in the same session, since reintroduction would
be contrary to the decision of the chamber and a violation of the same
question rule," says the Senate Procedure in Practice (SPIP), the
chamber's guidebook.
The "same question rule" is a basic principle of parliamentary
procedure that demands "that a house should not consider the same matter
a second time in the same session if it has already made a decision on
it," according to SPIP.
So any new legislation would have to be different enough to be admissible.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he expects full legalization of cannabis by "summer."
Credit: Yale University
The social fabrics of their neighborhoods,
including friendships and ideas about masculinity, have a powerful
impact on marijuana use among young minority men, a new Yale School of
Public Health study finds.
The research led
by Tamara Taggart, Ph.D., MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale's Center
for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, discovered that strong social
bonds between men may increase, rather than decrease, marijuana use,
contrary to what was previously thought, and that men who believe in
more traditional masculine gender roles—like men are supposed to be
strong, successful, and not complain or show worry—are more likely to
turn away from marijuana. These findings are published in American Journal on Men's Health.
While marijuana use among adolescents in low-income neighborhoods has
been widely studied, Taggart's study breaks new ground in the
examination of minority men in emerging adulthood, a period between the
ages of 18 and 25, in between adolescence and adulthood. Marijuana is
the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States. While
marijuana use is prevalent among emerging adults of all genders and
races, Black and Latino emerging adults who use marijuana are more
likely to experience the drug's negative consequences, such as
incarceration, interpersonal violence, injury, and dependence, as
compared to their White peers.
Taggart's study takes one step further than previous studies that
determined that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood leads to
escalated rates of marijuana use. She looks at two crucial
characteristics to determine a neighborhood's impact on health:
neighborhood problems, which can describe a variety of indicators of
distress, such as abandoned buildings, litter, violence, and crime, that
are known to cause daily stress that can hinder health and well-being;
and social cohesion,
defined by strong interpersonal bonds, shared values, and a lack of
conflict between individuals and groups within a neighborhood, which can
foster positive health outcomes. Taggart found, consistent with
previous studies, there was a positive association between neighborhood
problems and marijuana use.
"This result suggests that neighborhoods can be a source of stress
that may influence men to cope through using substances," said Taggart.
There was also a positive association with social cohesion,
previously thought to be a deterrent to substance use. This could be
attributed, according to the paper, to social norms that are more
permissive of marijuana use, and strong social bonds between those that
use marijuana.
Taggart used data from the Cell Phone Research to Enhance Wellness
(CREW) study, a study on social networks, cellular phones, and health
behavior led by Yale School of Public Health Professor Trace Kershaw,
and senior author on the paper. The study interviewed 119 racial/ethnic
minority emerging adult men from New Haven, CT.
As not all young men in disadvantaged neighborhoods
use marijuana, it becomes necessary, the paper points out, to examine
other factors that may deter them, and to get a better understanding of
how neighborhood environments can impact substance use. Taggart turns to
masculinity as a further determinant of health behavior.
"These findings underscore the importance of understanding social
cohesion and neighborhood contexts when trying to reduce the impact of
substance use. Our findings imply that more socially connected men may
view marijuana
use as a way to enact their masculinity and establish a stable
identity," said Taggart. Future research in this area, the paper
asserts, may want to deepen understanding of the role of these bonds in
men's substance use behaviors, and possible interventions should aim at
reducing neighborhood problems overall through multilevel
community-based interventions.
