The Minnesota House approved medical marijuana legislation Friday with overwhelming support that cut across party lines.
It’s passage, with a 86-39 vote, leaves Minnesota poised to become the 22nd state with a medical marijuana program. What that program will look like is still up in the air. A conference committee is now tasked with hashing out two very different bills before dropping the final decision on Gov. Mark Dayton.
Medical marijuana patients in Colorado whose physicians have recommended increased plant counts beyond the legally allotted six are on their own in court, since state officials said last week that they will no longer defend the practice.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment sent a notice to physicians and patients alike on April 30 letting them know that the state will no longer be able to officially register increased plant counts. Because there is no scientific data on effective medical marijuana dosing, the notice states, the state can’t stand behind doctors who recommend increased plant counts for patients who often use the larger amounts to make concentrates or edibles.
A bill that would have made the presence of just a little itty bit of weed in your bloodstream, even if you toked up a few days ago, worth a DUI prosecution was killed in the California legislature recently. The legislation was nixed by the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
The bill would have imposed a 2 nanograms per milliliter THC blood limit on the state’s drivers. Medical marijuana defenders were outraged because THC metabolites can stay in your blood days after the high has worn off. More over at the LA Weekly.
The Veterans Administration in Colorado says that injured and sick vets using cannabis legally according to state laws won’t face any pushback. The statement came in response to vets concerned that they would lose their federal benefits if marijuana came up in a blood or urine screen.
| A Nebraska highway checkpoint. |
If you listened to the law enforcement in Nebraska, you’d think that the world is coming to an end and it’s staring just west in Colorado. They’ve been doing it for months now.
In their latest installment of public whining, cops say that they find pot in one out of every five cars they search coming from Colorado now – all but admitting that all they do these days is profile cars from Colorado specifically to write tickets and make arrests for even the tiniest amount of cannabis they can find.
| Edibles selection at a Colorado dispensary. |
A Denver man with anxiety and insomnia issues ate a pot edible knowing it was a pot edible, then had an anxiety attack over the buzz and had to go to the emergency room. While the panic and self-imposed hospitalization sucks for Kyle Naylor, it’s hardly major national news.
Unless you are one of the 3.1 million people who read USA Today regularly, it seems.
Banks in the United States love money, except marijuana money. For years state-legal marijuana operations have struggled to find banks that will take their accounts out of fear of federal action for supporting a federally illegal industry.
Those issues may now be a thing of the past in Colorado at least, as the state legislature yesterday gave approval to a Colorado pot credit union of sorts, that will give medical and recreational marijuana businesses access to otherwise normal banking services.
Synthetic marijuana — K2 and its chemical analogues — is the scary-new-drug du jour in Dallas, having sent somewhere close to 100 users to local emergency rooms in the past week. Even scarier: This represents a spike of only 50 percent. Baylor alone treats 70 fake-weed overdoses per month.
Parkland hospital’s North Texas Poison Center would like to take the opportunity to remind you of other potentially lethal substances: cinnamon, nutmeg and marshmallows. “If you have teens in your house, it’s essential to keep an eye on your spice rack!” the center warned in an email “Poison Alert” dispatched yesterday. Seriously. Dallas Observer has more.
| Luke Bray. |
An officer on patrol in suburban Virginia Gardens last week noticed “the distinct and unique odor of unburnt cannabis” coming from a parked 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis. Like any good weed-smelling cop, he stopped to investigate.
In the driver’s seat, he found 23-year-old Luke Bray, a redshirt senior on the 2013-14 FIU soccer team. And in the back, sitting openly in Ziploc bags, was nearly two pounds of marijuana. GOAL!!!!
The legalization of recreational marijuana sales that kicked in on January 1 in Colorado has prompted a boom in pot tourism despite the continuing refusal by the State of Colorado and the City of Denver to embrace and promote the cannabis industry.
More indications of this phenomenon can be seen in the increasing number of marijuana-themed conventions and events — and not just around 4/20. Witness the Colorado Cannabis Summit, taking place later this month. And it’s far from the last major get-together of its kind. The conference gets underway at 8 a.m. on May 22 at the Exdo Event Center. Here’s how Stan Wagner, event CEO and head of Red Thread Creative Group, hypes it.