cbdhn4-blog

[cbdhn4-blog]

Scientific guidelines for using cannabis to treat stress, anxiety and depression

Scientific guidelines for using cannabis to treat stress, anxiety and depression

Date:

April 19, 2018

Source:

Washington State University

Summary:

In a first-of-a-kind study, scientists examined how peoples' self-reported levels of stress, anxiety and depression were affected by smoking different strains and quantities of cannabis at home.

In a first-of-a-kind study, Washington State University scientists examined how peoples' self-reported levels of stress, anxiety and depression were affected by smoking different strains and quantities of cannabis at home.

Their work, published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggests smoking cannabis can significantly reduce short-term levels of depression, anxiety, and stress but may contribute to worse overall feelings of depression over time.

It marks one of the first attempts by U.S. scientists to assess how cannabis with varying concentrations of the chemical compounds tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) affect medicinal cannabis users' feelings of wellbeing when smoked outside of a laboratory.

“Existing research on the effects of cannabis on depression, anxiety and stress are very rare and have almost exclusively been done with orally administered THC pills in a laboratory,” said Carrie Cuttler, clinical assistant professor of psychology at WSU and lead author of the study. “What is unique about our study is that we looked at actual inhaled cannabis by medical marijuana patients who were using it in the comfort of their own homes as opposed to a laboratory.”

For example, the WSU research team found that one puff of cannabis high in CBD and low in THC was optimal for reducing symptoms of depression, two puffs of any type of cannabis was sufficient to reduce symptoms of anxiety, while 10 or more puffs of cannabis high in CBD and high in THC produced the largest reductions in stress.

“A lot of consumers seem to be under the false assumption that more THC is always better,” Cuttler said. “Our study shows that CBD is also a very important ingredient in cannabis and may augment some of the positive effects of THC.”

The researchers also found that while both sexes reported decreases in all three symptoms after using cannabis, women reported a significantly greater reduction in anxiety following cannabis use.

Data for the study were taken from the trademarked app Strainprint, which provides medical cannabis users a means of tracking how different doses and types of cannabis affect a wide variety of symptoms of wellbeing.

Strainprint users rate the symptoms they are experiencing before using cannabis on a scale of 1-10 and then input information about the type of cannabis they are using. Twenty minutes after smoking, they are prompted to report how many puffs they took and to rerate the severity of their symptoms.

Cuttler and WSU colleagues Alexander Spradlin and Ryan McLaughlin used a form of statistical analysis called multilevel modeling to analyze around 12,000 anonymous Strainprint entries for depression, anxiety and stress. The researchers did not receive any of the Strainprint users personally identifying information for their work.

“This is to my knowledge one of the first scientific studies to provide guidance on the strains and quantities of cannabis people should be seeking out for reducing stress, anxiety and depression,” Cuttler said. “Currently, medical and recreational cannabis users rely on the advice of bud tenders whose recommendations are based off of anecdotal not scientific evidence.”

The study is among several cannabis-related research projects currently underway at WSU, all of which are consistent with federal law and many of which are funded with Washington state cannabis taxes and liquor license fees.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Washington State University

Journal Reference:

Carrie Cuttler, Alexander Spradlin, Ryan J. McLaughlin. A Naturalistic Examination of the Perceived Effects of Cannabis on Negative Affect. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2018.04.054

via Scientific guidelines for using cannabis to treat stress, anxiety and depression

[cbdhn4-blog]

What is a cannabis landrace?

What is a cannabis landrace?

Have you ever been at a dinner party and found yourself completely and utterly embarrassed in front of everyone because you didn't know what a cannabis landrace was?

Don't worry. I've been there.

The good news is it will never happen to you again!

Just watch this video and you will now impress all of your friends when the origins of cannabis come up in conversation

via What is a cannabis landrace?

[cbdhn4-blog]

Marijuana causes less brain damage than alcohol, CU study finds

The study involved 853 people aged 18 to 55 and 439 teenagers with “a range of alcohol and cannabis use”

By Josh Magness, McClatchy Washington Bureau

It's a common stereotype that people who smoke weed are a bit foggy-headed and missing a few brain cells.

But a new study from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that alcohol is much more damaging to your brain than marijuana. In fact, the study - which was published in the journal Addiction - suggests that weed use doesn't seem to alter the structure of a person's brain at all.

Kent Hutchison, a co-author of the study, told Medical News Today that he wanted to examine what effect pot has on a person's brain because there isn't a conclusive answer to the question.

“When you look at these studies going back years, you see that one study will report that marijuana use is related to a reduction in the volume of the hippocampus,” he said. “The next study then comes around, and they say that marijuana use is related to changes in the cerebellum.

“The point is that there's no consistency across all of these studies in terms of the actual brain structures.”

For the study, researchers wanted to see the relationship between alcohol and marijuana use and the volume of gray and white matter in a person's brain. Both gray and white matter are important for a healthy and functioning brain.

The study involved 853 people aged 18 to 55 and 439 teenagers. They had “a range of alcohol and cannabis use,” the researchers wrote.

It was found that among those who drank alcohol, adults - and to a lesser extent, teens - had a reduction in gray matter volume. The study found that white matter was affected in adults, but not teenagers, who drank. These effects were especially seen in adults with a history of drinking for years, according to Medical News Today.

But among marijuana users (defined as those who had smoked in the past 30 days), there was no relationship between getting high and the structure of a person's brain.

That led Hutchinson to make a bold proclamation.

“While marijuana may also have some negative consequences,” he told Medical News Today, “it definitely is nowhere near the negative consequences of alcohol.”

Of course, some studies have suggested weed can be harmful to a person's psychological well being - and especially for those with developing brains. According to the American Psychiatric Association, those who consume marijuana as an adolescent have higher school dropout rates, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.

Another study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging found that a high intake of marijuana is associated with psychosis, depression and schizophrenia.

A survey conducted by Yahoo News and Marist Poll in April found that a majority of Americans – 52 percent - say they have tried marijuana at least once. Of that majority, another 44 percent say they still use pot.

via: the Cannabist: https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/02/14/cannabis-causes-less-brain-damage-than-alcohol/99000/?spotim_referrer=newsfeed&utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_newsfeed&spot_im_comment_id=sp_4iGOdl8H_99000_c_SziDyw

[cbdhn4-blog]

'Into the dark': With just months to go before legalization, federal government funds marijuana research

'Into the dark': With just months to go before legalization, federal government funds marijuana research

 By Susan Lunn, CBC News

The federal government put aside $20 million in its most recent budget for research into the impact of cannabis use in Canada. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

With the legalization of recreational cannabis use just months away, the federal government is “stepping a little into the dark,” according to the scientist who helped create pot use guidelines for Canada.

Dr. Benedikt Fischer, a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said cannabis is a complex drug - and there's still a lot we don't know about its effects.

“We're stepping a little into the dark, into the fog, with this step forward for legalization,” Fischer said.

Even MP Bill Blair, the federal government's point man on pot, has said there's a need for more scientific evidence to help people make responsible choices once they're able to buy marijuana legally.

“I think we need to continue to work hard to identify what is a safe level of use, what effects this could have. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence and frankly not a lot of good health evidence to help people make healthy choices,” Blair told CBC.

He said young people in particular need access to better science.

“We have the highest rates of cannabis use in the world, and clearly just trying to frighten them into abstinence hasn't worked. I think we should inform them into healthier choices,” Blair said.

New money for research

The recent federal budget included new money for cannabis research - $20 million over five years to be divided between the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction.

The budget also set aside almost a billion dollars for Canada's three granting councils, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), to conduct general research that will include marijuana.

Dr. Samuel Weiss is the scientific director of neurosciences, mental health and addiction at CIHR. He's also co-ordinating government-wide research on cannabis use.

First Nations demanding a cut of cannabis tax after pot legalization

Research lacking on medical marijuana, new prescription guideline suggests

With legalization a year away, experts offer tips on minimizing pot harm

That research is focusing on 12 priority subjects, but Weiss said there are a few areas in particular that need more research, including neurodevelopment.

“Understanding the impact that cannabis has on neurodevelopmental outcomes, for example - preconception, pregnancy, the fetus, and child and youth brain development,” Dr. Weiss told CBC in an interview.

He also points to the need for a better understanding around impairment and “its effects on cognitive function, driving and workplace safety.”

Weiss said most of this research is only possible now that marijuana is about to become legal.

“The fact that it was an illegal substance made it almost impossible to study it before in a significant way. But now that it is to be legalized, it opens the door for more studies,” Weiss said.

Legalization raising new questions

But Fischer said the very act of legalization raises more questions.

“Does it change who uses cannabis, how people use cannabis and what the … acute and long term health consequences are?”

He also points to questions about how people intend to ingest the drug.

“Twenty years ago, pretty much everybody who used cannabis were either smoking a joint or, to a lesser degree, a hash pipe. Now we have vaping, e-cigarette devices, we have edibles, drinkables. All of those modes of use are available and evolving,” he said.

Fischer said he also wants the federal government to do more studies on how to treat those addicted to marijuana.

“The toolbox of treatment options or evidence-based forms of treatment for cannabis is extremely limited. There's no evidence-based or approved pharmatherapy, like there is methadone for opioids,” he said.

Despite all these unanswered questions, Fischer agrees it will be easier to answer them in a legal system than in an illegal one.

Conservative health critic Marilyn Gladu said she is pleased the government is doing the research but she questions its logic in funding that research, pointing out that the budget earmarked about $550 million to create the legal network - but just $20 million for targeted research.

“I don't know the government has the right priority on this,” Gladu said.

via 'Into the dark': With just months to go before legalization, federal government funds marijuana research

[cbdhn4-blog]

Colorado's “Women of Weed” steal the spotlight in new documentary

A new documentary by Windy Borman profiles 33 female cannabis entrepreneurs, more than half of which are based in Colorado

The pioneers shaping Colorado's $1.5 billion cannabis industry are ready for their closeup.

Nearly half of the 33 entrepreneurs featured in new documentary, “Mary Janes: The Women of Weed”, are from the Centennial State. The film directed and produced by filmmaker Windy Borman made it's Colorado premier Saturday night at the sold out Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Littleton.

Among the cannabis power players in attendance were Karin Lazarus, founder of Sweet Mary Jane Bakery; Wanda James, founder and CEO of Simply Pure; and Dr. Daniela Vergar, founder of Agricultural Genomics Research Institute. The trio joined Borman for a post-film Q&A durring which the director told told the audience that she was inspired to pursue the film by statistics showing that the nascent cannabis industry boasts the best gender parity of any industry in the country.

Related Articles

Colorado Republican congressman wants to reschedule marijuana to allow medical research

Snoop Dogg, Migos will perform in Denver on 4/20

Denver's new Mile High 420 Festival announces all-star lineup

Colorado man who shipped $3 million of pot to Kansas City gets five-year prison sentence

Not enough cooks in the kitchen: Big wages paid by marijuana industry eating into restaurant hiring pool

“When I moved to Colorado in 2014 and started meeting successful women in the weed business, I knew I was perfectly positioned to tell these female entrepreneurs' stories and inspire domestic and global audiences about how gender parity, social justice and environmental sustainability lead to greater success for all,” Borman said.

Borman isn't new to documentaries - her reel includes, The Eyes of Thailand, chronicling the true story of one woman's quest to help elephants hurt by landmines – but this was she was new to marijuana when he set out on her latest cinematic journey, she told the crowd.

The self-described product of the D.A.R.E. movement said she grew up thinking of marijuana as a gateway drug. That all changed during the filming of Mary Janes, she said. In fact, Borman shares her first vape and edible experiences on camera with other women in the industry, who she has dubbed “puffragettes.”

The director hopes that showing the success and diversity of the women of weed will show other women that there are opportunities for them in the industry.

The sentiment was best summed up in the film by rock legend Melissa Etheridge who launched medical marijuana company Etheridge Farms back in 2016.

“There's so much opportunity in the cannabis industry because it has not been set up within the old world male business paradigm,” Etheridge said. “Women can grow (marijuana), heal with it, and now, in America, you can make a business.”

via Colorado's “Women of Weed” steal the spotlight in new documentary

[cbdhn4-blog]

GROWING PAINS: CAN SUSTAINABLE FARMERS SURVIVE LEGALIZATION?

GROWING PAINS: CAN SUSTAINABLE FARMERS SURVIVE LEGALIZATION?

Part 3 of our 3-part series: Green Rush Blues: California Cannabis After Legalization

BY ANGELA BACCA ON JANUARY 29, 2018

Securing local and state licenses to cultivate cannabis is costly

The California counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity, which comprise the Emerald Triangle, emerged as the epicenter of domestic cannabis cultivation in the late 1970s and early '80s. After the Golden State legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the nascent cannabis industry spread throughout much of Northern California's remote regions and into the Central Valley. But today anxiety is high in weed country, which desperately needs the industry to survive.

The cost and risks of coming into compliance with county ordinances and state laws has deterred a lot of the Emerald Triangle's underground growers from choosing the path to legitimacy. With a larger and more lucrative black market beckoning outside of California, many cannabis farmers have opted to continue operating outside the law by exporting their product.

In order to become a licensed grower in California, there are various agencies one must seek approval from. One has to take all the necessary steps to obtain local permits (including payment for legal and licensing fees); register fingerprints with the state Department of Justice; submit proof of compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); submit cultivation, business and environmental plans, proof of ownership or right to use the cultivation space, any streambed or water alteration plans; implement a technically complex track-and-trace system; get a seller's permit from the state, and more.

Securing local and state licenses to cultivate cannabis is costly. And even after small growers pay for the property improvements, lawyers, architects, land use and permitting experts, and licensing fees, many will find themselves taxed out of existence.

Under California's new tax scheme, growers are taxed by the state at a rate of $148 per pound of cannabis flower and $44 per pound of cannabis leaves. In many places, growers pay an additional tax to the city or county of $25 per square foot of garden space.

Costs cannot simply be passed onto the consumer. Customers-both medical and recreational-are already being squeezed at the register. The state has imposed a 15 percent excise tax on all cannabis products. Several cities and counties have imposed an additional local tax that's as high as 15 percent. California sales and use tax, which ranges from 7.5% to 10%, is then applied not just to the retail cost, but to the excise tax as well (in other words the excise tax is taxed).

What's more, cannabis businesses may be penalized an additional ten percent if they pay their quarterly tax installments in cash!

Given that banks aren't supposed to service federally illegal marijuana companies, cash is the only viable option for the cannabis industry in California at this point.

The Los Angeles Times estimates the high rate of taxation could lead to retail prices going up 70 percent in 2018, thereby ensuring that the black market will persist as an alternative for cannabis consumers as well as producers.

Supply Glut

“The future of Mendocino is kinda bleak for small farmers,” says cannabis industry veteran Anna Foster. “The way the regulations are being set up, it isn't helping them compete.”

The challenges facing Mendocino farmers, according to Foster, are magnified by inconsistent county and city rules across the state and the current supply glut that is causing a sharp decline in per-pound prices. Taxes do not adjust with the price the supply is sold at.

The 2017 fall harvest brought the lowest prices in the legal medical market yet, with some growers saying they are unable to move even their top shelf at a break-even price. It is typical for growers to wait until post-harvest prices start to rise again before moving their product, but many are expressing concern they won't be able to move it at all.

Concerned about the adverse environmental impact of Green Rush grow-ops, Mendocino and Humboldt have implemented measures to limit the size of gardens and the number of cultivation licenses given to those who were in the area before legalization. This approach, however, has made it very difficult for the region's responsible growers to compete with better funded, large-scale industrial farms in other parts of California and the booming black market.

In Mendocino, for example, the largest garden size allows for a total of 22,000 square feet (including walkways and spaces not utilized for growing). A few hours south in Salinas, the agricultural town best-known as the setting for John Steinbeck's novels, Monterey County regulations allow huge cannabis cultivation operations.

Harborside CEO Steve DeAngelo

Harborside Health Center, one of the largest and highest-grossing cannabis dispensaries in the world, recently shifted from sourcing most of its supply from smaller medical farmers and producers to its own 47-acre farming operation in Salinas.

“How are we going to be a weed county if we can't even grow a whole acre of cannabis?” asks Foster, who lives in the Mendocino town of Willits.

Foster fears that the un-level playing field will devastate Northern California's small cannabis farming communities. With the wholesale price of cannabis on the decline yet heavily taxed, some farmers “are looking at jobs outside of cannabis, because it's not profitable or sustainable,” she explained. “They have always been farmers, but now they have to be businesspeople. And they don't know how to be businesspeople because they've always been farmers.”

Looking for Work

Will Foster and his family

Foster grew up in the world of marijuana cultivation and activism before the Green Rush and has been employed in the cannabis industry for most of her life. Her father, Will Foster, was arrested in 1995 for growing cannabis in his Tulsa, Oklahoma, basement to treat his degenerative arthritis. In 1997, he was convicted and sentenced to 93 years in prison, generating national coverage and outrage. During Will's incarceration, Anna moved to Oakland, California, where she lived and worked with author/activist Ed Rosenthal and his wife Jane Klein, who ran a cannabis-oriented publishing company and other businesses affiliated with the early Bay Area medical marijuana movement.

More recently, Foster teamed up with Karen Byars, a longtime Emerald Triangle cannabis grower and advocate who has been hosting educational events to help the region's responsible actors transition into a legal, regulated industry.

Byars relocated from Amarillo, Texas, to the Emerald Triangle in 1990 to participate in the Redwood Summer protests that sought to disrupt the logging industry and protect the disappearing old-growth redwood trees the region is famous for. Her work as an environmentalist exposed her to the underground cannabis farming community during Operation Green Sweep, a federal crackdown on marijuana growers who sympathized with the “tree huggers.”

After the passage of proposition 215 in 1996, Byars began to cultivate medical marijuana with an all-women's collective in Mendocino's Round Valley. Two decades later, when cannabis was legalized for adult use, she and Foster organized a job fair, resume-building workshops, and other vocational development services to support the establishment and growth of stable industry businesses in the region.

In late 2017, their organization, Mendocino Cannabis Resource, hosted its first job fair. Over 600 people attended, twice the expected number. With just 16 vendors hiring farm laborers, managers, scientists, accountants and other workers, the demand for jobs clearly outweighed the supply. Half of the job seekers were locals, while others came from the eastern U.S. or as far away as Chile and China; most of them wanted to find a way to make money from growing marijuana.1

Small was Beautiful

In the past, when the cultivation scene was completely underground, successful growers would reinvest their money in small, local businesses – both by choice and because other kinds of investment required considerable illegal maneuvering. Growers spent their cash on community development, contributing to independent radio, local theater productions, and start-ups that doubled as community centers.

The good 'ol days

“It used to be that you kinda knew this guy's sound studio wasn't paying the bills,” Byars recalled, “but there was this cool place everyone had access to.”

Today, Byars is concerned that out-of-town land-grabbers and speculators betting on cannabis grows are extracting wealth from small communities in the Emerald Triangle without contributing much in return.

“People are coming up here and 'green rushing' these communities without knowing what they are doing,” she cautioned.

In the pre-legalization marijuana market, most of the money accrued to the growers. The price per pound peaked after the passage of 215. But as the medical market evolved into the post-prohibition commodity market, the economic focus has shifted from growing marijuana to processing, taxing, distributing and retailing it.

In post-prohibition California, new regulations siphon much of the profits from farmers to fill the state treasury. “People are treating growers like ATMs because they know all the money is in the weed. All the middlemen profit. The farmers and consumers lose,” said Foster.

Going Broke

New tax regulations are crippling some growers

Kevin Simmonds is a licensed contractor and cannabis cultivator who's been serving the Bay Area market since 2010. Based in Santa Rosa, he struggles with lifelong pain due to arthritis, which is why he started growing medical cannabis. Simmonds uses an indoor compartmentalized grow system so that he is perpetually harvesting fresh product for dispensaries every week.

But now Simmonds is also struggling with the costs of coming into compliance, the glut of growers, and the plunging price per pound – and he may not survive. It would be much easier for him to keep turning a profit if he chose to move his product on the black market, which he has no interest in doing.

“It's always been my intention to participate in whatever regulation scheme they come up with. This is it, I am stuck dealing with it and I am going broke,” says Simmonds.

To become compliant with the regulations that went into effect on Jan. 1, he had to invest nearly $100,000 in his indoor operation. He will be taxed per square foot of his garden's canopy by both the state and Sonoma County. Additionally, he had to front tens of thousands more to get state licensing. Meanwhile, his margins are shrinking fast as prices drop in the legal market. He is worried that with the low wholesale price, high taxes and black market competition, legalization could bankrupt him.

“I have some cost projections for the coming year, and it's going to be super tight. It is going to be a matter of if I can move all my product and have successful runs that yield well, every time. Without all those components, I will fail,” Simmonds confides.

Simmonds currently has three to four employees that tend the gardens and four full time trimmers relying on work from his operation.  “What I am up against,” he emphasizes, “are some well-financed operations starting up, people who can afford to lose money for a good long time.”

He said if he must take a significant corporate buyout to survive, he would happily do so at this point.

“I was born with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The prediction for me was that I would be on public assistance the rest of my life. Through [growing] cannabis, I was able to find a way to financially prosper and raise my kids. I put them through private schools and bought a house. All of these things would never have happened if it wasn't for the small business models created by [Prop 215, which established] the foundation for my ability to start with nothing and make something,” Simmonds explains. “Now if anyone wants to make something with cannabis, they have to come in with at least a million dollars.”

Beyond California: The National Export Market

Adam J. Smith

Adam Smith has seen this scenario play out before on a smaller but significant scale in Oregon. A longtime proponent of drug policy reform, Smith has been working both to save and promote responsible, locally-owned cannabis businesses in the Beaver State, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2014.2   Ultimately, the success of these farming communities may rest upon the ability of West Coast cannabis companies to export and sell product in a legal national market and beyond.

“It's desperately important that we end federal prohibition, that we allow export,” asserts Smith.

“Northern California, like Southern Oregon, is deeply dependent on the fact that those small farms have supported thousands of families and whole communities,” he explains. “And there is a very good chance, in California in particular, that [the regulators] just wipe that out. If the export market was available right now, those farms would have a chance through branding themselves nationally and internationally as 'Real California Cannabis,' which is the product of an authentic, generations-old Northern California cannabis culture.”

With the roll-out of legalization in Oregon, Smith quickly recognized how big outside investment could negatively impact local economies in cannabis-dependent regions. “Those out-of-state interests had more money and resources than the local industry, but we've had an industry here for generations. It is an indigenous industry. It's not Massachusetts with millionaires opening mega-grows.”

How can the indigenous cannabis industry in Northern California and Southern Oregon avoid being steamrolled by outside forces?

“With craft beer, if you don't support your local brewer he can sell beer to [out-of-state] markets,” Smith notes. “If you don't support your local cannabis growers, they go out of business or back to the black market.”

“California-grown” cannabis

Smith recently founded the Craft Cannabis Alliance (CCA), a membership association of cannabis businesses in Oregon that share a “commitment to an authentic craft cannabis industry that respects and serves people, place, planet and plant.” The goal of the CCA is to build an industry that benefits small producers in cannabis-reliant economies by defining and promoting “craft cannabis” and providing resources to businesses with aligned missions. Smith intends to work with growers from California and other legal states as well.

A Different Kind of Capitalism

“Oregon Cannabis has a global brand and people should know about it,” Smith explained. “When the walls [of federal prohibition] come down, if the shelves here are dominated by international and out-of-state companies, then that's who is going to own the export market, and we will never buy it back. We will just be a low wage factory for the enrichment of other places and other people. Even if it is grown here, if you are buying cannabis and it's owned by a Texas investment group or a Florida company or a Canadian company, you are just sending the profits out, bleeding money out of state, while we sort of give away our local industry. What do we do about that?”

Smith continues, “Our message is that we are not doomed to be in this sort of extractive capitalist model that will steal this from us or bleed this [region]. We can create and support an industry here, that is locally owned and where the money reverberates back through this economy. This is something that is worth saving and if we can bring in tourism to support this part of the industry, it can build communities, institutions and wealth here.”

Implementing sustainable growing practices

The CCA defines the craft cannabis industry around six basic tenets: clean product, sustainable growing methods, ethical employment practices, community engagement, substantial local ownership and “meaningful participation in the movement to end the drug war, not just opening up the next cannabis market - because otherwise you're just profiteering off of 80 years of ruined lives and destroyed communities, and that's not moral and it shouldn't be okay with consumers.”

As Smith sees it, the cannabis industry provides the “perfect vehicle to express a different kind of capitalism.” But steps need to be taken now at the federal level to stabilize the markets.

“This is why we have to tear down the federal walls as quickly as possible,” says Smith. “A lot of people are going to go out of business. If cannabis is allowed to be sucked into an extractive corporatist system, leaving people who care about deeper things on the fringes of this industry … it will not only be an economic disaster, it will be a cultural disaster.”

via: https://www.projectcbd.org/growing-pains-can-sustainable-farmers-survive-legalization

[cbdhn4-blog]

BLACK MARKETS MATTER

BLACK MARKETS MATTER

Part 2 of our 3-part series: Green Rush Blues: California Cannabis After Legalization

BY ANGELA BACCA ON JANUARY 30, 2018

A lot of growers are in a state of panic about what's to come

PART 2.  BLACKMARKETS MATTER

Old Kai is an Emerald Triangle-based distribution business licensed by Mendocino County to transport cannabis from the farms and brands it works with to the main marketplaces in cities to the south. The company took all the steps required by the state and county to make their business compliant with the new laws and regulations, and they were excited to provide product to Bay Area dispensaries in anticipation of the January 1st roll-out of legal sales.

But in late December 2017, just eight days before adult use commerce would begin, an Old Kai delivery truck was pulled over on Highway 101 in Mendocino County by the California Highway Patrol, which called in the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force as backup. Old Kai's drivers were arrested and cited and nearly 2,000 pounds of cannabis were impounded as evidence.

Technically, Old Kai was not yet in compliance with the new regulations, because the new regulations did not go into effect until January 1st. And if Old Kai had followed the old guidelines pertaining to Proposition 215, California's loosely regulated medical marijuana provision, the company would not have been compliant with the new policy for adult use.

Why did the California Highway Patrol and Mendocino County cops even bother to arrest an employee of a licensed cannabis distribution company when legal adult sales were imminent? Hadn't these law enforcement officials heard that marijuana prohibition in Mendocino County, and California at large, was supposed to be over?

The Old Kai bust was not an anomaly. Rather, it was one of several shakedown operations mounted against licensed cannabis companies in the Emerald Triangle prior to the start of legal sales for recreational use.

Drug raids involving seizures and forfeitures have long been a cash cow for police, and a spate of arrests in Mendocino County followed a similar pattern during the waning days of prohibition: money and product are confiscated, never to be returned, and the district attorney's office discreetly indicates that a six-figure sum will make the problem go away.

Now that marijuana is officially legal for grown-ups to purchase in California, will the cops back off? Not necessarily. State and local law enforcement could be very busy for a while targeting cannabis cultivators and businesses operating outside the regulated market.

The Road to Legalization

  Although cannabis has been a mainstay of California's unofficial economy for decades, the road to legalization has not been easy. Efforts to legalize marijuana at the state level began in the early 1970s and grew into a grassroots social movement, especially in San Francisco, the following decade during the worst days of the AIDS epidemic.

The passage of Proposition 215 in 1996 legalized the therapeutic use of cannabis, and a disparate network of cultivation collectives cautiously emerged in Northern California to provide medical marijuana to certified patients who could now legally possess it under state law. The first storefronts sprang up in San Francisco and Los Angeles and spread to a few other cities during the Clinton-Bush II years.

The federal government, working in tandem with state and local law enforcement, responded by threatening doctors, raiding gardens and dispensaries, and prosecuting suppliers.  According to the Drug Policy Alliance, between 2006 and 2015 there were nearly half a million marijuana-related arrests in California, mostly for possession. State legislators, meanwhile, declined to regulate California's nascent cannabis industry, which prospered, despite all, in a confusing legal limbo.

A pro-cannabis cultural shift in the United States was already well underway when President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009. Several TV reality shows featuring “marijuana millionaires” captivated a national audience in the throes of the worst economic downturn the nation had experienced since the Great Depression.

When Colorado and Washington voted to legalize recreational cannabis for adults in 2012, the Obama administration issued a memo outlining a look-the-other-way policy with respect to state marijuana laws. The four-page memo, written by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, basically asserted that marijuana businesses would not be subject to federal prosecution as long as they complied with state law.

Marijuana fever took hold in America, and the Green Rush went into overdrive. Growers, investors, scam artists, get-rich-quick schemers, and patients seeking relief began flocking to California and other Western states where a legal cannabis industry had taken root.

But the Cole Memo also asserted that each state, as a condition of avoiding federal interference, was required to originate its own cannabis supply and prevent it from leaving its borders. This has resulted in sky-high prices in Washington, “emergency shortages” in Nevada (which initiated recreational sales in 2017), and corrupt, pay-to-play medical marijuana legislation in Midwestern and East Coast states like Ohio and Florida.

Proponents of drug policy reform argued that a regulated adult market would generate significant tax revenues in states that legalized marijuana. They were right. From windfall taxes to job creation and increased tourism, the economic impact of legal cannabis commerce has exceeded expectations in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon.

Legislators in other states began to warm up to the industry. Several influential politicians in California endorsed Proposition 64, the successful 2016 ballot measure that allows adults to possess small amounts of cannabis and to cultivate as many as six plants for personal use. Prop 64 included anti-monopoly language that prohibited large-scale mega-grows for five years, while giving local jurisdictions considerable latitude to tax and regulate cannabis commerce, including onsite consumption at dispensaries and social clubs.1

Game Changer

In a surprise move, shortly before the new law was due to go into effect, the anti-monopoly provision was scrapped by state officials who had merged the medical marijuana program and adult use regulations into one system. Certain industry lobbyists got what they wanted, but this is not what California residents voted for.

There were no public hearings about the 11th hour reversal, which removed the cap on the number of cultivation licenses a single company could own. The rule-change directly contradicted an environmental impact report issued by the Department of Food and Agriculture a few weeks earlier.

Small and medium-sized cannabis growers felt betrayed, fearing a corporate takeover of the world's largest legal marijuana market. The California Growers Association, which represents some Emerald Triangle growers, filed suit against the California Department of Food Agriculture hoping to overturn the rule that permits cannabis farms of near-unlimited size.

With a population approaching 40 million residents, the Golden State is an economic behemoth in both the cannabis industry and the nation at large. The staggering amount of money to be made has raised the stakes for farmers in the Emerald Triangle, the epicenter of domestic cannabis production, which produces much more marijuana than California residents can consume. Most of the marijuana grown in Northern California is smuggled across state lines and sold on the black market throughout the United States.

Caught between a voracious national consumer demand and recalcitrant federal law, the cannabis industry in California faces a precarious future. The same election that legalized cannabis for adult use in the Golden State also put Donald Trump in the White House and Jeff Sessions, an anti-marijuana ideologue, in charge of the Justice Department.

California's Green Rush got a lot more complicated on January 4, 2018, when Attorney General Sessions announced he was rescinding the Obama-era Cole Memo, which had provided a measure of protection for cannabis cultivators and producers. The Attorney General's drug war saber-rattling was a direct response to the legalization of marijuana for personal use and the advent of commercial sales in California.

Feeling the Byrne

  There are no reliable numbers on exactly how much cannabis is being grown in California, but recent estimates have put the total between $30 and $40 billion a year, with only about $5 billion worth consumed in state. The rest supplies an insatiable black market from sea to shining sea, despite ongoing law enforcement efforts to eradicate as many marijuana plants as possible.

Marijuana eradication efforts in the Emerald Triangle have been funded for over 25 years via the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program. This federal block grant program promotes collaboration between the DEA and local police agencies, which have raided numerous marijuana grow-ops and destroyed tens of thousands of illegal plants.

State law enforcement officials split the Byrne Grant funds 60/40 with local jurisdictions and have broad discretion on how the money is actually spent. The program has been criticized for financially incentivizing local law enforcement to focus on non-violent drug offenders in lieu of more serious problems like rape, murder and other violent crimes.

After nearly three decades, the Byrne Grant program has actually done very little to stem the supply or demand for illegal drugs, especially cannabis. And money for eradication shows no signs of drying up – even though marijuana commerce is now legal and licensed in California.

In 2017, the Department of Justice disclosed it would award 56 local grants that year worth about $17.7 million each, for a total of $174.4 million, through the JAG program. One of these grants has funded the County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team (COMMET), which continues to participate in federal and state efforts to destroy unlicensed grow-ops – not just in Mendocino, but throughout the state.

Mendocino County officials set aside an additional $60,000 in asset forfeiture money (seized from drug suspects) to pair with $70,000 from JAG to underwrite COMMET in 2018. And COMMET is just one of several agencies participating in anti-marijuana busts and shakedowns throughout the state, despite legalization.

Costly Failure

  Historically, the Byrne Grant program sponsored the efforts of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), a law enforcement operation that used helicopters and paramilitary units to identify and eliminate marijuana grows in the sparsely populated hills and mountains of the Emerald Triangle. In recent years, COMMET and other eradication efforts have begun to focus on the massive illegal gardens being cut into the California hills, targeting polluters and other black market cultivators.

But state agencies won't be able to fully protect the forests and water supply if marijuana remains a Schedule I Controlled Substance on a federal level. And that's where it remains – despite all the science showing that it should never have been scheduled in the first place.

As long as there is an illegal demand for cannabis, there will also be an illegal supply made artificially more valuable by the prohibition meant to prevent it. And because it is federally illegal, cannabis is valuable enough to grow illegally in the middle of remote forests, the ecosystem be damned.

In 2016, the DEA spent $4.3 million in California to eliminate marijuana plants, $200,000 in Oregon, and $760,000 in Washington.

“That's a huge cost when evidence has shown that these eradication efforts have not significantly reduced the total amount of illegal marijuana making its way to the market,” said Diane Goldstein, a former police officer. “We have to ask if local marijuana eradication is the best way for the federal government to spend its money.”

Goldstein, now retired, was the first female lieutenant at the Redondo Beach Police Department in Los Angeles County. During her career as a peace officer, Goldstein participated in raids to uproot illegal marijuana gardens on public lands. She witnessed firsthand the toll the drug war was taking in her community. After she retired from the force, Goldstein became chairwoman of the board of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), formerly known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which describes itself as “a nonprofit group of police, judges, and other law enforcement professionals who advance drug policy and criminal justice solutions that improve public safety.”

Goldstein says that California needs to lower barriers to entry for small businesses and pull back on taxes in order to bring the good actors into compliance and stabilize local economies. If not, the black market will flourish and anti-marijuana law enforcement operations will continue.

“There is no amount of money the federal government can give marijuana eradication task forces that is going to solve this problem,” Goldstein concludes.

The Cup Runneth Over

  The Emerald Cup is one of the biggest cultural events of the year for the Northern California cannabis scene. The annual December gathering features big-name musicians, thousands of vending booths for all things hemp and cannabis, educational panels and workshops, and a prestigious competition with awards for the best products in a variety of categories. The contest drew over 600 product entrees in 2017.

From a marketing perspective, winning a highly coveted prize for best THC concentrate, CBD-rich flower, gourmet edible or topical salve at the Emerald Cup can make a huge difference for a cannabis brand. But there's a good possibility that fewer contestants will participate in the next Emerald Cup, as many farmers and producers are opting out of the legal market.

Organized by Tim Blake, a former smuggler-turned-black market grower-turned legal entrepreneur, the Emerald Cup didn't start out as a high-profile event. Disguised as a birthday party, the first Cup was held in 2003 at a community center in Humboldt County,

“Back then, the first place winners wouldn't even pick up their awards,” Blake recalled. “People came in masks and there were only a couple dozen entries. Everyone was afraid they would be busted, but they weren't.”

Blake bought property in southern Humboldt and installed a medical marijuana dispensary on the premises, called Area 101, which included meditative gardens, a 1500-pound statue of Ganesh (the Hindu elephant god), and other “religious deities.” Area 101 hosted the Emerald Cup until it outgrew the space a few years ago. Today, the Cup has become so large, attracting more than 25,000 weekend visitors, that it sells out the entire Sonoma County Fairgrounds, its current venue.

Writing on the Wall

In many ways the evolution of the Emerald Cup reflects the changes that have transpired in recent years as the underground cannabis community has evolved into an above-ground, multibillion dollar industry. Not everyone is happy about the transition. At last year's Cup, anxiety and disdain for the new regulations were palpable among many of the vendors. “Black Markets Matter” signs appeared conspicuously at several vending booths.

  The message was unmistakable: Legalization won't work unless growers and producers who wish to be compliant have an easier path – which means California legislators must reform the overly burdensome tax code and other policies that favor well-heeled investors over long-time veterans of the cannabis scene.

Blake saw the writing on the wall. For several years, he and others had been preparing for legalization. Blake rolled the success of the Emerald Cup brand into a popular line of hash products, a cannabis nursery, garden center, and manufacturing and farming company that markets top-shelf rosin and popular, pre-loaded vaporizer cartridges.

Despite the anticipated cultural and economic shift within the cannabis community, Blake still felt it was important to support the passage of Proposition 64. “I supported Prop 64 in 2016 because I felt like as long as people were still going to prison and patients can't get their medicine, we have to put an end to this,” he said.

But as small farmers and boutique producers struggle to keep their businesses profitable while coming into compliance, Blake sees falling prices on the cannabis commodity market as a threat to the old way of life up north.

“Among my friends and family there is going to be more hardship and bankruptcy,” he predicted.

Even though it had been evident for some time that prohibition's days were numbered, few expected profit margins to shrink so quickly as California approached legalization. Blake says a “perfect storm” of factors, including legalization in other states, has shrunk the transition window and left a lot of growers in a state of panic about what's to come.

[cbdhn4-blog]

Marijuana Access Consistently Linked With Lower Opioid Use

Marijuana Access Consistently Linked With Lower Opioid Use

Patients routinely reduce or eliminate their use of prescription opiates following the use of medical cannabis; two recently published studies reaffirm this relationship.

“The consensus of the available data indicates that cannabis may play a potentially valuable role in mitigating the opioid public health crisis. It is time to set aside canna-bigotry and to stop placing politics ahead of American lives,” said Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director. 

In the first study, published by the Minnesota Department of Health, investigators assessed the prescription drug use patterns of 2,245 intractable pain patients participating in the state's medical cannabis access program. Among those patients known to be taking opiates for pain upon enrollment in the program, 63 percent “were able to reduce or eliminate opioid usage after six months.” The findings are similar to those of registered patients in other states' medical cannabis programs, including Illinois, Michigan, and New Mexico, among others.

In the second study, Israeli researchers assessed the safety and efficacy of cannabis in a cohort of over 1,200 cancer patients over a period of six months. Ninety-six percent of patients “reported an improvement in their condition.” Nearly half of respondents reported either decreasing or eliminating their use of opioids during the treatment period.

A third recently published clinical trial provides insight into explaining this relationship. Investigators from the United States and Australia and assessed the efficacy of inhaled cannabis and sub-therapeutic doses of oxycodone on experimentally-induced pain in a double-blind, placebo-controlled model. Researchers assessed subjects' pain tolerance after receiving both substances separately or in concert with one another. While neither the administration of cannabis nor oxycodone alone significantly mitigated subjects' pain, the combined administration of both drugs did so effectively.

Authors determined, “Both active cannabis and a low dose of oxycodone (2.5 mg) were sub-therapeutic, failing to elicit analgesia on their own; however, when administered together, pain responses … were significantly reduced, pointing to the opioid-sparing effects of cannabis.” They concluded, “Smoked cannabis combined with an ineffective analgesic dose of oxycodone produced analgesia comparable to an effective opioid analgesic dose without significantly increasing cannabis's abuse liability.”

The new studies add to the growing body of research finding that cannabis access is associated with reduced rates of opioid use and abuse, opioid-related hospitalizations, opioid-related traffic fatalities, opioid-related drug treatment admissions, and opioid-related overdose deaths.

Additional information regarding the association between cannabis and opioids is available from NORML's fact-sheet here.

###

NORML's mission is to move public opinion sufficiently to legalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults, and to serve as an advocate for consumers to assure they have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable

Find out more at www.norml.org and see our factsheets at www.norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets

Source: NORML press release – make a donation

via Marijuana Access Consistently Linked With Lower Opioid Use