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Study: With Legalization, Teens Find It Harder to Buy Weed

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By on News

The study is from a U.S. government agency.

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

U.S. teenagers find it harder to buy weed than they have for 24 years, according to an annual survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The same study found that teen drug use is declining nationally.

Humboldt County’s growing areas voted against REC, but the cities voted for it.

A long awaited task force report in Canada recommended 18 as the legal buying age. For more see hereand here. The country plans to legalize REC next year.

REC businesses in Portland, Oregon, are struggling to obtain licenses. And the head of the state’s lab accrediting agency is stepping down.

Florida lawmakers are thinking about how to regulate MED. For more see here. A proposal in Ohio would allow 40 MED dispensaries in the state.

Tennessee Republicans are considering a MED program.

Radio Free Asia reports that Chinese visitors to North Korea buy pot by the kilogram and sell it for a healthy mark-up in China.

Australian economists say legalizing REC would be good for the Queensland economy.

Stanford Medical School professor and tobacco advertising expert Dr. Robert K. Jackler editorializes that “If nationwide legalization happens, it is essential that the tobacco industry is banned from the marijuana market.”

L.A. Weekly profiles Seventh Point LLC, a cannabis private equity firm focused on Los Angeles. The firm expects L.A., the world’s largest cannabis market, to be the “Silicon Valley” of weed. The city’s cannabis community is uniting to legalize dispensaries.

Keith McCarty, CEO of delivery app Eaze, is stepping down, shortly after the company secured $13M in funding. He’ll be replaced by Jim Patterson, who, like McCarty was a senior executive at Yammer, a workplace social network which sold to Microsoft for more than $1 billion.

Aussies Caught With Pot Face Death Penalty In China

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By on Follow that story, Global, Say what?

Jurvetson/FlickrCommons


With a constant flow of cannabis-related headlines pouring out of Canada, the United States, and Mexico on a daily basis, it is easy to overlook the fact that public support for legal cannabis use is on the rise on continents all around the globe.
In Australia, marijuana is by far the most popular and widely used drug, with over 1/3rd of all Aussie’s over the age of 22 admitting to having taken a toke or two in their time. But as it becomes increasingly more popular in their home country, those same Aussies have begun to take their stash with them when traveling abroad, and simple pot possession has several of them facing possible death penalties as they sit in Chinese prisons awaiting their fates.

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Dutch Court Upholds Ban On Foreigners Buying Marijuana

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By on Culture, Global, Legislation

Radio Netherlands Worldwide
The “Wietpas” (Weed Pass) will exclude foreigners from the Dutch coffee shops where cannabis is sold

A Dutch court on Friday upheld a new law banning foreigners from buying marijuana in coffee shops in the Netherlands, possibly ending decades of “weed tourism” for which Amsterdam and other cities have become world-famous.

A Dutch judge in the Hague ruled that the new law is legal. The move to ban foreigners from buying cannabis is being fought in the city of Amsterdam, where the coffee shops are a major tourist draw and where many shops owners have vowed to ignore the law once it comes into effect.
The conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning back the clock to a darker time in Dutch history — a time when the cannabis trade was underground and people had to depend on the black market for marijuana. According to expert observers, the ripples could reverberate internationally.
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Cannabis Tolerance Endangered In Netherlands; Protest Planned

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By on Global, Legislation, News

NL Coffeeshop & Cannabis Nieuws

​In a maddening show of spineless backsliding after 35 years of tolerance, the conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning the clock back to a darker time in Dutch history — a time when the cannabis trade was driven underground and people had to access the black market for marijuana.

And, of course, in our interconnected world, such a failure of leadership would reverberate internationally, according to expert observers.
“If tolerance ends or gets limited in the Netherlands, then politicians all over the world will say things like ‘Tolerance failed in Holland,’ and use that as an excuse to enforce their anti-cannabis propaganda, opinions and laws,” well-known Dutch cannabis blogger Peter Lunk told Toke of the Town.
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Ban On Tourists In Dutch Cannabis Cafes To Begin Jan. 1

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Radio Netherlands Worldwide

​Foreign visitors will be banned from the “coffee shops” which sell cannabis in southern Netherlands starting January 1, supposedly to combat “anti-social behavior” among tourists. (So when do the tourists get banned from bars?) The ban won’t hit Amsterdam, however, until a year later, in 2013.

The Dutch Justice Ministry announced the ban was going forward after a consultation period, despite opposition from some MPs who called the move “tourism suicide, reports Travelmail Reporter at the Daily Mail.
Licensed coffee shops will be considered private clubs under the new rules. Their maximum of 2,000 members will be limited to Dutch residents 18 and older who carry a so-called “dope card.”
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Colombia’s President: Marijuana Should Be Legalized Globally

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By on Global, Legislation, News

Xinhua
These bricks totaling more than seven tons of marijuana were confiscated by the Colombian army from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

​Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said this week that legalization of marijuana would allow the war on drugs to move forward by shifting focus to harder drugs and helping to stop the international violence associated with drug trafficking.

Santos said more world leaders should rethink their approach to the War On Drugs in order to deal with drug trafficking and the use of hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, reports Natalie Dalton of Colombia Reports. The Colombian president made the remarks in an interview with Metro News.
“The world needs to discuss new approaches … we are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years,” the president said.
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Dutch Decide To Treat ‘Strong Marijuana’ As A Hard Drug

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By on Dispensaries, Global, Legislation

Peter Lunk
If that joint Dutch blogger Peter Lunk is smoking contains more than 15 percent THC, he just became a “hard drug user” according to official Dutch policy. Insanity abounds.

​About half the cannabis sold in the Netherlands just got banned — because it’s too good. According to the Dutch government, that joint of White Widow you’re smoking is just as bad as heroin or meth. And if they catch you smoking weed they think is “too good,” they can throw you into drug rehab for it.

The Dutch have been a source of both exhilaration and exasperation with their hard-to-pin-down cannabis policies for the past 40 years. Often held up as a model of tolerance by those in less-permissive countries, they actually have some serious perception problems of their own.

A couple of those have come to light recently, first with a move afoot (and gaining ground) to ban foreigners from “coffee shops” in the Netherlands, which sell marijuana and hashish to customers under an odd policy of “official tolerance” wherein cannabis is still officially illegal.
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Marijuana Has Positive Effect On Crohn’s Disease: Study

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By on Medical, News

Wish I Didn’t Know

​Cannabis may have a positive effect on disease activity in Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, according to a new observational study at Tel Aviv University, Israel.

In the study, disease activity, use of medication, need for surgery, and hospitalization before and after cannabis use were examined in 30 patients, reports the International Association for Cannabis Medicines (IACM). Disease activity was assessed by the Harvey Bradshaw index for Crohn’s disease.
The indication for cannabis use was lack of response to conventional treatment in 21 patients and chronic intractable pain in six. Another four patients used cannabis for recreational purposes and continued as they observed an improvement in their medical condition.
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International Hash Fair Planned; Denmark Police Appalled

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By on Global, News

Photo: Grarup Jan

​The first International Hash Fair is being planned for this summer in Denmark, but local police are reportedly appalled at the idea, claiming it will result in an “increase in the number of hash and skunk laboratories.”

Organizers are well-advanced with their plans to hold the hash fair June 24-26 in the country’s second-largest city, Aarhus, reports Politiken.dk. Guests from Denmark and abroad are being invited to study and buy products including fertilizer, grow lights (which a clueless press always seems to report as “heat lamps”), and smoking pipes.
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Dutch Officials Oppose Requiring Weed Passes For Foreigners

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By on Global, Products

Photo: UK420.com
An employee places filter tips in joints containing marijuana at a Dutch coffee shop.

​Officials in Eindhoven, a city in the south of the Netherlands, have rejected the idea of a pass system for buying cannabis, which would have prevented “drug tourists” from purchasing small amounts of marijuana in local coffee shops.

Local politicians in nearby Den Bosch and Maastricht have already come out against introducing the “weed passes,” the aim of which would be to bar the sale of cannabis to anyone other than Dutch residents, reports Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
Dutch towns including Eindhoven have supposedly been hit by a “wave of violent crime” somehow connected to the supply of cannabis to local coffee shops — at least if you believe those who wish to restrict sales.
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