Though there are about 13,000 medical cannabis patients in Hawaii, there’s no place for anyone to legally purchase the plant. Currently, patients grow their own, though technically there is nowhere to legally purchase seed or even clones – state law doesn’t even address that.
To address that issue, the Hawaii House Health Committee is looking into the possibility of creating legal dispensaries.
More than 20 percent of all vets coming home from the Middle East report at least some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For some, it shows in depression and anxiety or an inability to function normally in day-to-day civilian life. For others, it’s more grave.
After two tours in Afghanistan, Matt Kahl says the only way out he saw after returning home was through suicide. He tried and failed, and likely would have tried again if it wasn’t for one thing: cannabis.
The Food and Drug Administration could change the federal controlled substance scheduling of marijuana, possibly opening up the plant for wider medical usage. Interestingly, the review was initiated by a Drug Enforcement Agency request, according to the Huffington Post, which broke the story.
| Lone Star Mike/Creative Commons. |
Though it wouldn’t change any laws if passed, Austin City Council will consider a resolution supporting medical marijuana in Texas this Thursday. The resolution would merely show that Austin City Council supports the idea of medical cannabis. Marijuana – medical or otherwise – remains illegal in Texas.
A study due to be released in the International Journal of Cancer (IJC) has concluded that whether you like to spark up a joint once in a while, once a week, or once the last one goes out, the cannabis smoke alone that you inhale does not increase your risk of lung cancer or COPD.
While this may seem like old news to those in the know, the tired old myth that smoking pot leads to certain respiration issues is still a favorite, and effective, strategy of those opposed to cannabis legalization of any form.
At precisely 2:51 a.m. on Friday, June 20, the New York State Assembly passed the Compassionate Care Act, which (when the bill passes the senate, as it is widely expected to, when it is taken up around 10 a.m.) will make New York the 23rd state in the union where medical marijuana is legal…as long as you don’t smoke it. Seriously: Patients will need to use a vaporizer, pills or other extraction method. The use of joints, bongs and pipes–anything you light up–is strictly verboten.
Under the new law, physicians will have to go through a certification and registration process before they can prescribe the drug legally. Patients, likewise, will need to be certified by a doctor, and they will have to register with the Department of Health, which will provide an ID card proving one’s certification, but they will be free to carry up to 30 days supply of medical pot.
A proposed law to begin strict, statewide regulation of marijuana dispensaries would allow edibles and concentrates (wax, honey oil, dabs, shatter) to be sold legally in California dispensaries.
An earlier version of the bill proposed by Sen. Lou Correa would have banned concentrated cannabis products, often blamed for home-lab explosions triggered by butane extraction processes. Medical marijuana advocates have been dead set against the legislation.
| chphospice.com |
Legally obtaining and using marijuana just got easier for patients of one Phoenix-area home-hospice service. Starting this month, Comprehensive Hospice and Palliative Care offers an in-house doctor who will recommend cannabis for patients who qualify under state law.
To avoid trouble with Medicare, which often pays the hospice’s bills for patients, the hospice requires the patient or someone else to send the recommendation to the state Department of Health Services for final approval, and to pay the fees.
| High-CBD oil. |
Florida now officially recognizes marijuana as a substance with medical benefits… well, at least in some very narrow cases. As expected, Gov. Rick Scott signed the “Charlotte’s Web” bill into law today. The bill allows certain strains of non-euphoric marijuana tincture to be used to treat a very small list of maladies, including childhood epilepsy.
“As a father and grandfather, you never want to see kids suffer,” the governor said in a statement. “The approval of Charlotte’s Web will ensure that children in Florida who suffer from seizures and other debilitating illnesses will have the medication needed to improve their quality of life.”
Of course, cynics might point out that Scott’s signing of the bill may have just as much to do with his opposition to a wider medical marijuana policy in Florida as it does children.
| Pat Arnow/Flickr. |
The New York State Legislature has just more than three days to approve a bill that would legalize medical marijuana across the state, before the legislative session ends on Thursday, June 19. If it doesn’t pass–and it hasn’t passed the last sixteen times it has been introduced–it will be back to the drawing board.
Activists who have pushed to pass the bill, known as the Compassionate Care Act, remain stubbornly confident this will be the year–it is, after all, the furthest the bill has made it through the legislature since it was initially introduced in 1997. But Governor Andrew Cuomo is not bending over backwards to help move the legislation along. To the contrary, on Monday, Cuomo enumerated a laundry list of changes he wants to see implemented before he will support the bill to the Daily News.
The Village Voice has more of the local angle.