Marijuana News Roundup: US Attorney General to Give Pot a Pass?
Paul Ausick
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper met with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week and left the meeting with the distinct understanding that the recreational marijuana industry will not face the federal crackdown that it had feared.
According to an editorial in the Denver Post, the big takeaway from the meeting is that "the new attorney general is far more focused on other priorities, like securing the border with a wall, than in disrupting our legal cannabis marketplace."
The Department of Justice has been reviewing the Cole Memorandum, an Obama-era document that essentially directed federal law enforcement to keep its nose out of states' legal marijuana industry. According to Hickenlooper's chief of staff, Sessions finds the Cole memo "not too far from good policy."
Marijuana Business Daily published Hickenlooper's comments from an interview on MSNBC:
He is very clear. He is anti-drugs in all forms and he's not going to, in any way, encourage anyone to start a marijuana business to think it's a great idea to do or even safe to do so. That being said, he didn't give me any reason to think that he is going to come down and suddenly try to put everyone out of business.
Roger Goodell Says Medical Marijuana Might Not Be Safe Enough for Grown Men Who Hurt Each for a Living NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell isn't ready to take medical marijuana off the league's list of banned substances because the drug might be "negative to the health of our players," he told ESPN on Friday.
More from the man who suspended Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Seantrel Henderson--who's undergone two surgeries related to Crohn's disease--for 10 games as a result of his medical marijuana use:
I think you still have to look at a lot of aspects of marijuana use," Goodell said. "Is it something that can be negative to the health of our players?
Listen, you're ingesting smoke, so that's not usually a very positive thing that people would say. It does have addictive nature. There are a lot of compounds in marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long term. All of those things have to be considered.
And it's not as simple as someone just wants to feel better after a game. We really want to help our players in that circumstance, but I want to make sure that the negative consequences aren't something that is going to be something that we'll be held accountable for some years down the road.
Aside from the apparent connection between marijuana and people who are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, there is no compound in cannabis worse for human beings--in the short term or the long term--than football itself. Marijuana will not tear your meniscus or your ACL or your MCL or your achilles tendon. Marijuana will not give you bursitis. Marijuana will not break your back or neck. Marijuana will not give you chronic traumatic encephalopathy. As for the carcinogenic effect: You don't even have to smoke it anymore!
Read more at Reason.com.
Microdosing Marijuana: What Doctors Say Is the Best Way to Consume There are those cannabis connoisseurs who enjoy getting super stoned at the end of a long day at the office, while others are now embracing an emerging trend called microdosing, a procedure that allows the user to moderate their mind by taking small doses throughout the day.
The concept of microdosing is simple: instead of consuming enough THC to join the land of catatonia, the user leans on somewhere between 3 to 10 milligrams to feel some effect without entering into a realm of laughing fits, paranoia and ravenous hunger. It is [an] increasingly popular practice that Rolling Stone calls "Marijuana 2.0," an idea that less is actually more when it comes to using cannabis for its therapeutic and creativity-inducing benefits.
However, there are some challenges involved. What is considered a low dose for some may not cut it for others. It is similar to how it would be if measuring the effectiveness of Ibuprofen on a large group of people. Some of them would find relief with 200 milligrams, while it might take others near pharmaceutical levels to cut through the pain. So, the core of this dosing principle is really just about the individual finding the perfect "micro-buzz" that allows them to feel comfortable and productive.
Read more at The Fresh Toast.
California Issues Historic Medical Marijuana Rules Medical pot patients could see their marijuana become cleaner and safer, with the cost jumping about 10 percent, under new draft regulations for California's multibillion-dollar medical cannabis industry.
Friday afternoon, a trio of state agencies released 114 pages of draft rules for the medical cannabis industry. The rules cover every aspect of growing, processing, distributing and selling medical pot in the state, and kick off a 45-day comment period before they become law. Similar rules are pending for the much larger recreational marijuana market. The medical rules will take effect by the end of the year through 2018.
All medical marijuana would be lab-tested and tracked from seed to sale. Patients would be limited to buying up to 8 ounces of cannabis flowers a day, and dispensaries could no longer give free samples.
"It's a very big deal. All of the nitty-gritty details about how people will operate and what things they'll need to do to get compliant or stay compliant — that all comes out in these rules," said Nicole Howell Neubert, a cannabis industry attorney in San Francisco.
"This is the next step toward having a more regulated marketplace in California, the largest cannabis market in the U.S. It's super important," she said.
Read more at SFGate.
Study: Medical Marijuana Laws Linked to Increased Adult Recreational Use, Abuse A new Columbia University study suggests medical marijuana laws contribute to greater recreational use and dependence on the drug.
Researchers compared non-medical marijuana use and cannabis use disorder prevalence among adults in 15 states that legalized medical marijuana between 1991 and 2012.
Illicit use and use disorders increased in all 39 states studied during that time, but were 1.4 percent and 0.7 percent higher, respectively, in states with medical marijuana laws than those without.
Deborah Hasin, who authored the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, said such laws may benefit some with medical problems, but legalization also has adverse public health consequences.
"A prudent interpretation of our results is that professionals and the public should be educated on risks of cannabis use and benefits of treatment, and prevention and intervention services for cannabis disorders should be provided," Hasin said in a news release.
Marijuana legalization supporters said the study's conclusions are inconsistent with other research and relied on data rarely used to measure drug use.
