Search Results: sting/ (12)

They opposed REC sales in Arizona.

Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Several former executives of Insys Therapeutics, which sells the powerful opiate fentanyl, were arrested accused of “ bribing doctors, defrauding insurance companies, and fueling America’s opioid addiction crisis.” Insys contributed to successfully defeat Arizona’s November REC vote.

GW Pharmaceuticals reported some “pretty grim” quarterly numbers, but it could benefit from its anti-epilepsy experimental drug Epidolex which is in late stage clinical trials.

Bloomberg suggests there’s a Canadian pot-stock bubble.

Legalization in more states could depress California’s export market. And in another interesting piece by Madison Margolin, California’s “extract artisans” now have some legal protections from meth-lab laws.

Vice dives into regulatory tech which it calls the “ cannabis surveillance state.

Home grow system Leaf raised $2M.

Celebrity-branded weed costs about 24% more than unbranded. Forbes asks if the trend has gone too far.

Commercial landlords in northern California prepare for legalization.

Quartz profiles marketing company Octavia Wellness which throws pot parties for seniors.  The art world is joining efforts to re-brand cannabis.

The Denver Post’s Cannabist won most influential media source at the cannabis business awards.

A new study in Pharmacological Research, by Czech and Italian researchers, found that pot is an aphrodisiac. Read the study here.

Another study found that marijuana use may damage eyesight.

New York state wants patients to be able to access MED in hospitals. A study found that cannabis users have lower in-hospital mortality rates.

In an effort to reduce opioid use, Oregon wants opioid patients monitored for marijuana use. The health agency view on marijuana vis a vis opioid use is unclear.

The world’s first clinical trial to test MED for chemotherapy patients is beginning in Australia.

A device developed by Israeli start-up distributes “ nano-droplets” of CBD as a nutraceutical to relieve inflammation and pain is on sale in the U.S. KKTV looked at the cannabis research happening at Colorado State-Pueblo.

The U.S. is lagging Israel and other countries in cannabis research.

The Washington [state]CannaBusiness Association is starting a fund to support MED access for the needy.

 

It could be a rare chance for ordinary investors to buy into the Green Rush.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Download WeedWeek’s free 2016 election guide here.

Innovative Industrial Properties, a cannabis Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Led by experienced real estate executives, it plans to sell $175M worth of shares. The deal is the first of its kind.

The stigma is shrinking and the money is growing.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

Private equity investment in weed is heating up. Canadian MED company Organigram raised $17.5M. Denver’s Baker Technologies, a software company which helps dispensaries win and retain customers, raised $1.6M. The industry’s average seed round is $1M according to investment firm Poseidon Asset Management.

Commodities investor Jim Rogers, who started Quantum Fund with George Soros, has invested in PharmaCielo, a Canadian company that won the first license to grow MED in Colombia.

CMH Brands, a company which processes Willie Nelson brand Willie’s Reserve, acquired Denver Relief’s grow and manufacturing facilities. The deal comes weeks after Denver Relief sold a store to Terrapin Station.

The Clinic’s new flagship store in Denver cost more than $1M. A JPMorgan analyst thinks Scotts Miracle-Gro’s push into the industry will benefit the stock. Bloomberg BusinessWeek interviewed Dixie CEO Tripp Keber.

Fast Company looks at what it’s like to work for social media app MassRoots.

San Jose, Calif., dispensary Medimarts promised a court fight against a ruling that it owes $767,000 in taxes and late fees.

787 drivers were involved in Colorado’s 546 driving fatalities last year. Of the drivers, 59, or 7.1% tested positive for cannabis but not other drugs. The total number of fatalities was down from 606 in 2005.

Researchers found that a Vermont Department of Health study was overly negative and did not account for the possibility of legalization alleviating the state’s opioid crisis. This year the state legislature failed to pass a REC bill that was widely expected to become law.

In the Des Moines Register, the founder of an addiction center writes that pot is still dangerous. “We see the faces of marijuana addicts first hand. And it’s not funny. We see people who struggle with simple tasks at school and work.  People incapable of perceiving or expressing emotion. People who suffer from higher incidence of mental health diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, paranoia and anxiety.”

A frame from the ABC news report.

A California family claims school officials and police targeted and set up their special-needs high school-aged son in an undercover sting at Temecula, California’s Chaparral High School. Doug Snodgrass, the father of the unnamed boy, says the move has left his son shattered and unable to trust anyone.
In a lawsuit filed against the district, Snodgrass says says the school “participated with local authorities in an undercover drug sting that intentionally targeted and discriminated against their son” likely due to past behavioral issues at his former school.

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.

Jamison Arend
Jamison Arend of Minnesota won a groundbreaking religious exemption to being drug-tested for marijuana during his probation

​​It’s not very widely known. But in a groundbreaking case, at least one American citizen, a licensed Rastafarian minister in Minnesota, has been openly smoking marijuana daily with a judge’s approval for the past year and a half, despite the fact that he is on probation.

Jamison Arend was sentenced to five years’ probation on March 24, 2010 after an altercation at his home, reports WeedPress.
During sentencing, Judge Judith Tilsen handed down a trail-blazing exemption to Minnesota’s drug testing laws.
“[T]he defense has proven a colorable claim of religious right to ceremonial use of cannibus [sic], otherwise known as marijuana,” Judge Tilsen ruled. “Ceremonial use is intermittent use, but because of our chemistry and how we do UAs [urine analyses], it would seem to me that even with limited ceremonial use that a UA would come up dirty on a regular basis.

The Weed Blog

Mixed Findings Show Strengths and Problems Among Analytic Testing Services

How accurate is cannabis potency testing? California NORML and Project CBD have released the results of their first “Ring Test” to assess the accuracy of analytical laboratories.
In the winter of 2010-2011, California NORML and Project CBD initiated a “Ring Test” to assess the accuracy of the numerous analytical cannabis testing laboratories that have recently emerged to serve medical marijuana dispensaries, breeders, growers and patients.
Results of the study, coauthored by California NORML Director Dale Gieringer and Dutch scientist Dr. Arno Hazekamp, are reported in the Autumn 2011 issue of O’Shaughnessy’s, the Journal of Cannabis In Clinical Practice [PDF].

The Gilmer Free Press

​I know it’s the “Show Me” state, but this is ridiculous. A state technical college in central Missouri has begun what could be the most extensive drug testing policy at a public college or university in the United States.

The demand that students provide urine specimens for drug testing welcomed new enrollees at Linn State Technical College, a two-year school with about 1,200 students, reports Alan Scher Zagier at the Huffington Post.
More limited drug testing of college and high school students — say, of student athletes, or at private colleges — has been consistently upheld by courts at both the federal and state levels. But Linn State’s testing of the general student body appears unprecedented.

Photo: CBS Detroit

​A new technology that analyzes the sweat from your fingertips could revolutionize the drug-testing market, purportedly providing onsite results in minutes with a test so sensitive it can even detect marijuana intoxication.

The test, produced by the British company Intelligent Fingerprinting, uses gold nanoparticles and “special antibodies” to latch onto metabolites in the fingerprint, reports Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story. It turns a specific color depending on which drug byproducts are detected.
While it can be configured to search for drugs like nicotine, methadone and cocaine, what may turn out to be its most important innovation is its purported ability to help determine if someone is actively intoxicated on cannabis.

Graphic: Etsy.com

​I’m not lovin’ it. Staff at a Crestview, Florida McDonalds called police on December 14 after the drive-through window attendant noticed a customer was “rolling a blunt” at the window, according to the arrest report.

The customer, a 21-year-old Pensacola woman, showed police the notebook on which she rolled the blunt, according to the Crestview Police Department, reports Wendy Victora at the Northwest Florida Daily News.
Officers found marijuana residue on the notebook, and when the suspect got out of her car, they saw more cannabis on the seat and center console, according to the arrest report.
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