Tag: cannabis

Smoking cannabis can make you more empathetic, according to a new study

Stoners are better at empathising than those who don’t use the drug, a new study has found.

People who regularly enjoy a joint are better at recognising other people’s feelings and putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. 

Researchers from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico asked 81 cannabis users and 51 people who didn’t use the psychoactive drug to complete a 33-item questionnaire that measured empathetic skills.

It looked at perspective taking – the capacity to place oneself in the shoes of another – and emotional comprehension, which is spotting and understanding other people’s emotions.

The scientists also analysed whether or not volunteers could tune in to positive or negative feelings, and behave accordingly.

Roughly half of the week smokers and two thirds of the non-users then underwent brain scans to look for differences in activity in areas associated with sensing the emotions in others.

Results published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research showed that cannabis users scored higher on the empathy test, and had greater connectivity in areas involved with emotion, such as the anterior cingulate near the front of the brain.

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 House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘adopted’ 40-year-old son Michael Tirrell James in court on charges of running illegal cannabis business and possession of brass knuckles – as it’s revealed rap sheet goes back to 2003

The ‘adopted’ black son of new House Speaker Mike Johnson has spoken out for the first time in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.

Michael Tirrell James said he would ‘probably be in prison’ were it not for Johnson – after he appeared in a Los Angeles court Wednesday on charges of running an illegal cannabis business and possessing brass knuckles.

James has never taken part in publicity for Johnson’s political campaigns, and little has been known about the 40-year-old father of four.

But now DailyMail.com can reveal how the top GOP lawmaker and his wife Kelly informally adopted James after meeting him while doing charitable community work in Louisiana in the 1990s.

James went on to have a string of conflicts with law enforcement, beginning just a few years after the Johnsons took him in, and continuing to this day.

His rap sheet extends back to 2003 and includes a long list of drug-related and other petty crimes, some of which landed him in jail, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The 51-year-old House Speaker, elected October 25 after three weeks of confusion following the ousting of previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has revealed he informally adopted James, a Baton Rouge then-teenager, and raised him during the first few years of his marriage.

James told DailyMail.com: ‘If the Johnsons hadn’t taken me in as a teenager, my life would look very different today. I would probably be in prison or I might not have made it at all.’

The Louisiana Republican congressman first met James in 1996 while volunteering with Young Life, a Christian ministry catering to middle and high school teens.

The future speaker, then a 24-year-old law school student, became a mentor for the 14-year-old boy, a source close to the Speaker’s office said.

When James became homeless in 1999 age 16, newlyweds Mike and Kelly Johnson took him in, filing papers with the local Baton Rouge district court to become his legal guardians.

His life appears to have gotten back on track after the informal adoption. He earned his G.E.D. and graduated from a Job Corps program in 2002, and even ‘began to refer to the Johnsons as his parents, and they regarded him as a son,’ the source said.

The Johnsons later had four biological children: Jack, Will, Hannah, and Abigail.

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Nevada Commission Seeks Comment On Plan To Let People With Marijuana Convictions Become Police Officers

A Nevada commission will hear public comment this week on a proposal that would amend hiring standards for police officers to allow job candidates who were previously disqualified for certain marijuana-related offenses to be eligible for law enforcement positions.

The change being considered by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) at Thursday meeting would amend regulations around hiring that currently prevent a person from becoming a peace officer if they have been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale or possession of a controlled substance.

The new language would state that the restriction doesn’t apply “to a person who has been convicted of an offense involving the unlawful use, sale, or possession of marijuana if the offense is not unlawful at the time the person submits an application for certification as a police officer.”

A notice of intent says the change would expand the pool of eligible candidates for law enforcement positions and “aid agencies in the ability to fill much needed positions.” There would be no adverse effects from the change, it says, nor additional costs to regulators.

Members of the public wishing to comment on the proposal can either appear in person at the October 26 meeting, held at 8 a.m. in Napa Room B of the Southpoint Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Approval of the change would not mean that officers could use cannabis once employed, but it would represent a significant policy change, especially given that the current rules are written in a way that explicitly emphasizes the no-tolerance policy for marijuana.

“As with any psychoactive drug, POST strongly believes there is no room for marijuana usage in the policing profession,” the current administration manual says. “POST strongly encourages law enforcement agencies across the state to adopted [sic] policies prohibiting the on or off duty recreational or medical use of marijuana.”

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New York Officials Debunk ‘Misinformation’ About Fentanyl-Laced Marijuana

New York marijuana regulators are working to debunk what they say is the “false” narrative that cannabis is commonly contaminated with fentanyl—a “misconception” that remains “widespread” despite a lack of evidence.

The state Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) recently put out a factsheet on the issue, acknowledging that while fentanyl has been found in drugs like MDMA and heroin, anecdotal claims about marijuana laced with the potent opioid are so far unfounded.

OCM published the two-page document—titled “Cannabis and Fentanyl: Facts and Unknowns”—to “address misconceptions about cannabis being mixed with fentanyl,” it said. “The goal of this fact sheet is to provide evidence where it is available, to share information about what is currently known and unknown, and to provide safety tips to help alleviate some of these misconceptions, often spread through misinformed media coverage and anecdotal reporting.”

“Misinformation related to the danger of accidental overdose due to cannabis ‘contaminated’ with fentanyl remains widespread,” the office said. “Anecdotal reports of fentanyl ‘contaminated’ cannabis continue to be found to be false, as of the date of this publication” last week.

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FBI Report Says 3 In 10 Drug Arrests Are For Marijuana, But Agency’s Inconsistent Data Hinders Policy Analysis

Arrests for marijuana made up nearly a third of all drug arrests in the United States in 2022, according to a newly released report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As with last year’s report, however, inconsistencies in the data and recent changes to the agency’s methodology make it difficult to draw year-to-year comparisons or meaningful conclusions about cannabis and broader drug enforcement trends.

The data, according to FBI, comes from more than 11 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is submitted by 13,293 law enforcement agencies and 2,431 other agencies whose jurisdictions comprise more than 90 percent of the country’s population.

“Of the 18,884 state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies eligible to participate in the UCR Program, 15,724 agencies submitted data in 2022,” the bureau said in a press release about its annual 2022 Crime in the Nation statistics.

Because not all agencies provide data for the complete reporting periods, FBI explains in a methodology section of its website, the bureau calculates estimated crime numbers, essentially extrapolating “by following a standard estimation procedure using the data provided.” In terms of total reported arrests for “drug abuse violations,” for example, FBI said there were 766,595 arrests. The estimated number of arrests for drug abuse violations, by contrast, is 907,958.

Those numbers, however, aren’t consistent throughout the FBI report. In a section on arrests by region, FBI said there were 726,746 total drug arrests in 2022—nearly 40,000 fewer than its top-level number. In an analysis of  historical trends, meanwhile, FBI reported just 633,576 drug arrests in 2022. A section on racial breakdowns says there were 714,442 drug abuse violations.

Other sections list “drug/narcotic offenses” for the year at 1,459,460, the number of arrestees for drug/narcotic offenses at 787,347 and the total number of drug/narcotics offenders at 1,755,788. The agency further said there were 902,482 crimes involving a person’s suspected use of drugs other than alcohol in 2022.

FBI’s press office did not immediately respond to an email from Marijuana Moment requesting clarification on the conflicting numbers.

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German Lawmakers Delay Marijuana Legalization Bill Debate Due To Conflict In Israel

German lawmakers say that initial consideration of a bill to legalize marijuana will be delayed until at least next week due to the ongoing conflict in Israel that’s shifted international attention—though one legislator outlined a revised schedule that still puts the country on track to enact the first part of the government’s legal cannabis plan by early next year.

While Germany’s federal parliament, called the Bundestag, was scheduled to take up the cannabis reform legislation for a first reading on Friday, the scheduled debate has been postponed until next week, according to Carmen Wegge and Dirk Heidenblut of the Social Democratic Party.

They said the “global political situation” is the reason for the delay, but lawmakers “will make sure that everything gets done somehow in the next week,” according to a translation.

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Human Use Of Cannabis—For Food, Fiber And Psychoactive Effects—Stretches Back Millennia, New Report Says

A new paper in the European Journal for Chemistry traces the history of cannabis through “thousands of years of contact with mankind,” noting the plant’s legacy as a source of fiber, nutrition, medicine, spirituality and pleasure.

At the same time, it notes that cannabis “is perhaps one of the greatest controversies in contemporary humanity” and a key driver of the modern war on drugs.

The paper, “From ancient Asian relics to contemporaneity: A review of historical and chemical aspects of Cannabis,” was written by Gabriel Vitor de Lima Marques and Renata Barbosa de Olivera, of the pharmacy department at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

The cannabis plant appears to have first been used for its fiber, as a material for ropes and other manufactured goods, the authors wrote. Use of hemp fiber dates back to approximately 10,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia and to roughly 6,000 and 5,000 years ago in China and Kazakhstan, respectively.

Ancient peoples considered cannabis one of the five main grains, along with rice, soy, barley and millet, the paper continues. And once stalks were processed into hemp fibers, they became durable materials for ropes, sails and boat rigging, clothing, paper, animal husbandry and more.

“Used as a stunner to facilitate the capture of fish,” it says, “Cannabis is possibly the first plant to be cultivated for non-food purposes.”

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Ohio Marijuana Legalization Campaign Sends Cease And Desist Letters To TV Stations Airing Opposition Ads ‘Filled With Lies’

Advocates behind a ballot measure to legalize marijuana in Ohio sent cease and desist letters on Thursday to local TV stations in an effort to get them to stop airing opposition ads that the cannabis campaign says are “filled with lies.”

“It’s incredibly disappointing anytime Ohio voters are lied to,” said Tom Haren, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, “but it’s clear our opposition sees no other way to defeat Issue 2.”

According to a copy of the letter included in a campaign press release, two television ads from the organization Weed Free Kids “contain multiple false or misleading statements about the proposed law.”

“Unlike candidate ads,” wrote lawyer Donald McTigue of Columbus-based McTigue & Colombo LLC, “organizations like ‘Weed Free Kids’ do not have a ‘right to command the use of broadcast facilities.’” And because stations aren’t required to run issue ads, the letter continues, “your station bears responsibility for its content when you do grant access.”

Citing federal regulations and case law, the letter says the stations have a duty to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising, warning that failure to do so “can be cause for the loss of a station’s license.”

“My client asks that your station cease broadcasting these ads immediately in the public’s interest in accurate discourse on the subject of the proposed law,” it says.

The yes campaign uploaded the videos to YouTube for reference.

In one, titled “Flatline,” a series of warnings flashes across the screen as the sound of an EKG machine beeps sporadically. A steady beep at the end of the spot suggests heart failure or death.

Among the alleged falsehoods in the ad are claims such as the initiative would allow “recreational marijuana sold in thousands of Ohio stores with NO protections for children.”

In another ad, “Candy,” the opposition campaign says that “stores could be flooded with candy laced with a drug that puts kids at risks”—a claim juxtaposed against a background products called Stoney Patch Kids, which resemble Sour Patch Kids candy.

The producer of those products, which are unregulated and not sold in licensed cannabis stores, was sued by the maker of Sour Patch Kids in 2019. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission also sent the company a warning letter.

“Issue 2 allows for marijuana manufacturers to market their edibles as sweets as candy, without any safeguards for children,” the opposition ad claims. “That means many children will be poisoned by lookalike products.”

Included with the one-page cease and desist letters are seven pages of fact-checking notes meant to demonstrate the alleged falsehoods in the Weed Free Kids ads.

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Cops and Reporters Are Still Hyping the Halloween Threat Posed by Strangers With Cannabis Candy

It’s October, which means it is time for alarmist cops and credulous reporters to start warning parents about the purported menace of cannabis edibles in trick-or-treat bags. KSNT, the NBC affiliate in Topeka, Kansas, got a jump on that annual rite last month, when it amplified a “community advisory” from the St. Mary’s Police Department about “THC-infused gummies and snacks marketed to children ahead of the holidays.”

That framing is misleading in at least two ways. First, it assumes that producers of marijuana edibles that resemble popular candy brands are targeting children, who cannot legally buy such products even in states where adults can, as opposed to nostalgic grownups with a sweet tooth. Second, it implies that nefarious adults are apt to distribute THC treats on Halloween, requiring extra vigilance by parents who already worry about the danger allegedly posed by needles, glass shards, or poison that might be lurking in their kids’ candy hauls.

The KSNT story features a photograph of cannabis candy made in California, where medical marijuana was legalized in 1996, followed by recreational marijuana in 2016. At a glance, the package looks a lot like cherry-flavored Airheads Xtremes, a blatant trademark violation that surely is cause for concern at Perfetti Van Melle, which makes the genuine article. But the package carries several clues that the product is not intended for children. The front includes a “medicated candy” descriptor, along with a state-mandated cannabis label and a statement of THC content. A label on the back warns: “Contains Cannabis, A Schedule I Controlled Substance. Keep out of Reach of Children.”

KSNT nevertheless describes the product as “disguised THC candies.” Citing police, it says “the THC edibles are very dangerous in the hands of children and are disguised as popular brands such as Air Heads, Fruit Gushers, Sour Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Buzzy Peaches and Cherry Blasters.” The implication is that the manufacturers want to trick kids into getting high, although it’s not clear why that would be a sensible business strategy. And while the reference to “the holidays” implies that the risk of dangerous confusion is especially acute around Halloween, the article cites no evidence to support that premise.

That’s par for the course with Halloween-related warnings about cannabis edibles, which police departments and news outlets have been issuing for many years despite a dearth of actual incidents involving malicious distribution of such products to children. “Doctors are warning about the risks of dangerous drugs being mistaken for candy,” WLS, the ABC affiliate in Chicago, reported last year. “Those incidents increase around Halloween, especially now with some drugs looking more and more like colorful treats.”

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