Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said yesterday that she wants state lawmakers to look into allowing clinical trials for marijuana-derived CBD oil for seizure-stricken children in her state. Fallin joins a growing number of conservative politicians to embrace CBD-only treatments in the last year and, if the plan pans out Oklahoma would become the 11th state to allow for high-CBD treatments of some kind.
Supporters of Oklahomans for Health say they are about 26,000 signatures away from hitting their goal to get a medical marijuana proposal on the November ballot.
But the going has been slow and time is running out.
The Florida anti-medical marijuana group called “No on 2” has made a lot of noise about the supposed dangers of legalizing medical weed in Florida. Some of its claims include that weed leads to gay sex and AIDS, weed has more cancer-causing compounds than cigarettes, weed causes more accidents and ER visits, and weed dispensaries will be the new pill mills.
But the latest argument is a bizarre mix of ignorance and bewilderment, soaked in offense. It’s weird enough to be from the The Onion. No on 2’s latest claim: that Amendment 2 will lead to people being able to sell pot cookies, which would be the new date-rape drug. Setting aside the colossal obtuseness of the claim for a minute, it’s important to remember what is behind No on 2. Money. Big, big money.
Medical-marijuana patients from Arizona and other states could shop legally at as-yet-unopened Nevada dispensaries under a plan being developed by Nevada authorities. Chad Westom, bureau chief of the Nevada Division of Public & Behavioral Health, said on Monday that his state’s new medical-marijuana program will honor out-of-state registration cards.
According to Nevada law, dispensaries could honor out-of-state cards as long as the state that issued the card has an official database of patients and “allows the Division and medical marijuana dispensaries in (Nevada) to access the database.” Nevada officials hope to have an interstate-access agreement in place by 2016. More over at the Phoenix New Times.
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| A baby nursing, from WikiMedia Commons. |
Despite the overwhelming evidence to suggest that breastfeeding a baby within the first few days of life greatly improve their health over time, a hospital in Portland, Oregon refused to allow Crystal Cain to nurse her premature newborn.
Their reason? She used medical cannabis occasionally during her pregnancy as a natural alternative to pharmaceutical drugs to help deal with her nausea and anxiety at the suggestion of her midwife.
Good news for would-be medical cannabis patients in Illinois: you can now, finally, get you patient application online. Yes, the state has finally got their act together and wants to start the process of registering patients.
Take your time filling it out, though, you can’t submit it until later this fall.
New Mexico’s Donna Smith says she was fired illegally for her off-work consumption of medical cannabis to deal with post-traumatic stress she was diagnosed with after serving in the military in the 1990s. New Mexico has laws against discriminating against people for their medical conditions, she argues.
But her employer, Presbyterian Health Services, says they are “protecting” their other employees from Smith and her off-work, medical use of cannabis.
If medical marijuana rolls out in November, people with legal businesses related to pot will be living like they’re in Breaking Bad. Until weed is legal on a federal level, it’s not going to be easy for people to stick their profits from the biz into a Wells Fargo. They’ll be stuck keeping tons of cash under the floor boards.
Sally Kent, a marijuana lawyer who practices in both Colorado and Florida, says this legal lag poses a huge security risk.
The Florida Medical Association has come out and opposed Amendment 2, the initiative to legalize medical marijuana in Florida. The FMA, which represents 20,000 doctors in matters such as regulatory affairs, public health, advocacy, and licensers, released a statement Monday over its concern that legalized medical marijuana would bring “unintended consequences” that would create a health risk.
The biggest threat, according to the FMA, would be that legalized medical pot would allow health-care providers with no training to order medical marijuana.
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Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County, South Carolina is the location of the latest in a growing list of regional centers receiving federal funding to study cannabis. They are actively seeking local marijuana users who are interested in being compensated for their time in exchange for participating in their research.
Perhaps it should be clarified, these studies only have one purpose in mind, and that is to discover and patent a pill-poppable form of relief from cannabis addiction. Let’s keep it real, many people still love the herb, but for any number of reasons may have a need to cut back for a while, or to put it away altogether.