It’s even classified as a chemical weapon.
Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Download WeedWeek’s free 2016 election guide here.
Arrests for possession are ongoing even in legal states.
Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Download WeedWeek’s free 2016 election guide here.
Big-money investors are starting to see the upside in going “green.”
It’s the largest cannabis raise yet.
The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.
New York-based Tuatara Capital has raised $93M to invest in the industry. It’s the largest known cannabis investment fund, so far.
It’s possible that Canadian cannabis companies could list on U.S. stock exchanges before American ones, since the Canadian outfits would have the support of their federal government. Last month, Ontario’s Canopy Growth became the first cannabis producer to trade on a major exchange (Toronto).
In Tampa, Regions Bank furnished a $100,000 credit line to nutrient and equipment business Efftec International. The bank’s parent company Regions Financial is a Fortune 500 company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
A member of the local health board wants Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif. to be the first hospital in the country where MED is used “openly and transparently.”
A lab at Stanford is working on a saliva test for police to use on drivers. PLOS describes a newly discovered anti-psychotic mechanism for CBD.
Missouri is suing two stores for providing CBD-oil without a license. Following the DEA announcement, Time listed seven questions scientists want to study.
A European study found no correlation between cannabis use and an elevated need for health care services.
A Minnesota MED patient tells the story of her quest to relieve disabling back pain.
Denver lawyer Robert J. Corry writes that some patients do need 75 plants. Colorado recently limited the number of plants patients can have to 75, and suspended four doctors for recommending higher plant counts to hundreds of patients. Without special permission, Colorado patients can have six plants at home. The four doctors, who didn’t violate an established rule, have asked for their suspensions to be lifted.
A new law will allow Canadian MED patients to grow a “ limited amount” at home. A Canadian mom says hospital nurses in Toronto refuse to administer MED to her very ill son, due to opaque regulations.
Legalization in Canada could be the end of the country’s formal MED program.
Two dozen were treated after eating edibles at a festival in Ohio. There was a similar incident at abachelorette party in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
At SFWeekly, I argued that the 2016 Presidential candidates have dodged their responsibility to discuss legalization.
Ohio is looking for an experienced pot grower to help write the state’s MED rules. The successful applicant will likely have to pass a drug test.
The National Conference of State Legislatures endorsed rescheduling.
North Dakota will vote on MED in November. Arizona will vote on REC. Supporters of the Oklahoma MED initiative are “ cautiously optimistic” that they gathered enough signatures to make the ballot.
Two MED initiatives could qualify for the Arkansas ballot. The question of which one voters get to decide may end up in court. The Arkansas Farm Bureau and the state’s Chamber of Commerce oppose both.
Denver’s limited public use initiative collected more than double the number of signatures needed to qualify for a vote in November.
Nashville may decriminalize. The Chicago Tribune visits a grow house, and catches up on the Illinois industry.
High Times lists its “ hateful-eight,” the country’s most influential legalization opponents.
Illegal drug sales on the so-called dark web have tripled since the 2013 closure of the site Silk Road.
Watch out for knock-off vaporizers.
In Oregon, some Craigslist sellers ask for payment in cash or cannabis. Minnesota’s two MED producers are both losing money.
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.”
In Colorado, if you’re 21 or older, you’re free to buy, use, grow and give away cannabis. You can even apply for a sales license to grow and sell it for profit. But what you can’t do is take pounds of it across state lines and try to make a killing selling it for double what it goes for in Colorado. That’s no secret — as anyone with common sense knows.
According to Nashville cops, two Coloradans visiting Tennessee had a lot more cannabis than they did common sense: They were busted with more than 425 pounds of pot — worth an estimated $1.5 million — and $355,000 in cash.
Though it might seem like pot is already legal in parts of California (We’re looking at you, Bay Area), it’s still an illegal substance for anyone in the state to use as a recreational substance. But not for long, and even the state’s top law enforcement official admits she can’t stand in the way of progression.
Attorney General Kamala Harris says marijuana legalization isn’t a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when” and “how”.
Weedmaps.com has long been a pioneer in the online cannabis market. Since 2008, their interactive marijuana dispensary map has led untold thousands of cannabis enthusiasts to their local pot shops based on an archive of tens of thousands of peer reviews and dynamically updated and easy to read menus.
With weed laws loosening nationwide and new dispensaries cropping up in record numbers, it would be easy for Weedmaps to rest on what they’ve built and just keep cashing checks. But lately, the multifaceted marijuana marketing magnate has been expanding its horizons a bit, and bunking down business-wise with some pretty odd bedfellows.
Proponents of prohibition often attempt to sandbag the issue of legal marijuana by pounding fear into the minds of the average citizen that any effort to loosen the nation’s drug penalties will result in anarchist youth, overdose, and a complete top-sizing of civil society. However, the latest statistics from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice finds that not only are these claims untrue, but laws that decriminalize and legalize marijuana might actually be the answer to sustaining a somewhat fruitful nation.
| INCB.org |
| Wayne Hall. |
Professor Wayne Hall dislikes drugs. So much so, he advises the World Health Organization on drug issues and teaches “addiction policy” at the King’s College in London. According to Hall, he’s gone through 20 years of research and can show that marijuana leads to mental illness, sick babies and car crashes.
His findings are based on government-funded (anti-cannabis) reports from the last 20 years that he hand-selected. Basically, he’s parroting other, old reports and passing it off as something new.
