After Puerto Rico legalized medical marijuana, the industry has continued to grow and it has cause a big impact on their economy.
After Puerto Rico legalized medical marijuana, the industry has continued to grow and it has cause a big impact on their economy.
Young adults who use marijuana for recreational purposes may develop structural changes in their brains.
CannaKids founder Tracy Ryan with her daughter Sophie.
When Tracy Ryan’s daughter Sophie was just 8 months old, doctors found a tumor in the newborn’s brain.
Doctors told Ryan that the slow-growing optic pathway glioma tumor near her daughter’s left eye would never go away. And if the tumor continued to grow, Sophie could lose vision in that eye.
Faced with the prospect of their daughter’s blindness, Ryan joined an increasing number of parents who are turning to cannabis to treat their children for illnesses ranging from cancer to epilepsy.
After nearly two years of chemotherapy combined with highly concentrated cannabis oil, made mostly of non-psychoactive, can’t-get-you-high cannabidiol (CBD) with traces of psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — Sophie’s tumor has shrunk.
When combined with radiation therapy, low doses of THC and CBD helped to kill high-grade glioma masses, among the most aggressive brain cancers there is, according to a report from St. George’s University in London.
Researchers say the THC and CBD made the cells more receptive to the radiation and that the tumors shrank up to 90 percent of their original size.
Flickr/perthhdproductions |
A new study from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance shows that people who had THC in their systems at the time that they suffered a traumatic brain injury were significantly more likely to survive the trauma. One of the study’s authors, surgeon Brian Nguyen, says that the results show yet again that the federal government should loosen the rules that restrict scientists and doctors from studying the effects of cannabis.
“There are medical benefits to marijuana that aren’t as robustly studied,” he says. “Further research needs to be done on this controversial compound.”
Patients with THC in their system were less likely to die from traumatic brain injuries than those without it. Those were the findings of researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, released this week.
And according to the scientists, it’s not a coincidence.
There’s going to be a slew of reports in the next few months about marijuana-related traffic deaths increasing in the United States as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wraps up a three-year study on marijuana and it’s impact on drivers. And, as usual, they are likely going to claim that stoned drivers are a plague on the roads and that there are masses of red-eyed, resin-fingered pot smokers out killing people on the roadway.
Innovation is inevitable in any industry, and the field of medical marijuana is no different. With laws already in the books in 18 states and more on the way, investors who might not know their Blue Chips from their Blue Dream are flocking to these regions to stake their claim in what they see as the next big commodity.
White-collar Wall Street-types can certainly see the budding upside to sinking money into dispensaries, growing operations, and other cannabis related retail outlets. But those potential gains are often outweighed by the prospects of inventory control, employee management, product naiveté. And of course, the grey area that exists in all current state-level medical marijuana laws that fly in the face of Federal statute. Cue MedBox.
Tonya Davis/Facebook |
Tonya Davis is a medical marijuana activist in Ohio |