Tag: medical marijuana

House And Senate Both Move To Keep Blocking D.C. Marijuana Sales But Protecting State Medical Cannabis Laws

House and Senate appropriators have approved large-scale annual spending bills that once again include language to protect state medical cannabis programs, as well as a controversial rider to block Washington, D.C. from implementing a system of regulated marijuana sales.

The Senate and House Appropriations Committee both held markups of Fiscal Year 2024 spending legislation for Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) on Thursday. And the Senate panel, as well as a House subcommittee, have also advanced their appropriations measures for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS).

Aside from the state medical cannabis and D.C. marijuana sales provisions, House lawmakers rejected a GOP-led amendment to the chamber’s FSGG report that would have called on the federal government to take steps to study other state cannabis regulatory models and develop a national legalization framework.

Lawmakers have consistently attempted to use appropriations measures as vehicles for cannabis reform, with mixed results. Even with Democrats in control of both chambers last session, efforts to expand marijuana protections to all legal states and enact limited cannabis banking reform stalled out following bicameral negotiations.

A rider to protect state medical cannabis programs from federal intervention, meanwhile, has been annually renewed each year since 2014—and appropriators in both chambers agreed again this Congress to keep that language intact in their respective base bills as they advance.

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Florida Bans Medical Marijuana in All State-Licensed Rehabs and Sober Living Houses

Last week, Florida legislators passed a law that will narrow the state’s medical marijuana eligibility. While the change might seem marginal, it’s a step in the wrong direction.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading contender in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, signed S.B. 210 into law. The bill pertains to substance abuse treatment programs licensed by the state, like rehabs or sober living residences. It adds language to Florida law that beginning in 2024, licensed treatment facilities must enforce “a prohibition on the premises against alcohol, marijuana, illegal drugs,” and prescription medications not prescribed to the person taking them. The text further clarifies that it “includes marijuana that has been certified by a qualified physician for medical use.”

Medical marijuana use in an addiction treatment or sober living facility is controversial. Cleveland House, a South Florida sober house, states on its website that if one resident is smoking pot, it could negatively impact another resident’s recovery. But studies increasingly suggest that marijuana can help alleviate symptoms of opioid addiction. Men’s Tribal House, a sober living facility in Utah, actively incorporates medical marijuana use into the recovery plans of half its residents.

In 2016, more than 70 percent of Florida’s voters chose to expand the state’s medical marijuana program. Under previous state law, only patients with “cancer or a physical medical condition that chronically produces seizures or severe and persistent muscle spasms” qualified, and only for doses low in THC, the principal psychoactive component in cannabis. The 2016 ballot measure, later passed into law as S.B. 8, expanded eligibility to include a variety of conditions like Crohn’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anything that caused “chronic nonmalignant pain.”

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Philadelphia Considers Zoning Restrictions on Still-Illegal Recreational Pot Shops

Recreational marijuana isn’t legal yet in Pennsylvania. That hasn’t stopped Philadelphia politicians from trying to future-proof their zoning ordinances to block recreational sales.

Philadelphia Councilmembers Brian O’Neill and Curtis Jones have proposed amendments to the city’s zoning code that would preemptively prohibit existing medical marijuana businesses in two overlay districts they represent from participating in recreational sales.

The prohibition would affect five existing medical marijuana stores, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported on the zoning amendments earlier today.

The immediate practical impacts of the amendments are minimal, given that recreational marijuana is still illegal in Pennsylvania. State lawmakers are nevertheless working on various proposals for legalizing recreational sales. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has endorsed legalizing (and heavily taxing) recreational sales.

Industry advocates say this will unfairly penalize existing medical marijuana businesses when recreational sales are eventually legalized, all because they opened up in the wrong part of town.

“If you set up a system where four or five stores can’t sell adult use and then 16 can, people are going to go to the ones” that can sell to recreational customers, says Jamie Ware, president of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition (a trade association).

Ware is also a senior vice president with Holistic Industries which operates one of the Philadelphia dispensaries that would be affected by O’Neill and Jones’ zoning amendment.

Existing businesses, she notes, are locked into longer-term commercial leases, so they can’t easily move to avoid the restrictions. If the current medical system is any guide to how future recreational businesses will be regulated, transferring a license to a new location would require state approval and could take years.

O’Neill did not immediately respond to Reason‘s request for comment. Jones told the Inquirer that while medical sales haven’t created problems, recreational sales will bring a less desirable crowd, necessitating the restrictions.

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Perceived Stigma of Cannabis Patients

A June 2022 study entitled “Perceived Stigma of Patients Undergoing Treatment with Cannabis-Based Medicinal Products” that was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health explored the potential impact of stigma on medical cannabis patients.

The study’s authors noted that “it is well documented that stigma can reduce utilization of healthcare services and can negatively impact treatment.” They reported that stigma can also lead to chronic stress and anxiety, “in addition to subsequent mental and physical problems that can cause individuals to feel isolated and withdrawn.”

Perceived Stigma of Cannabis Patients. “While there is a growing body of evidence on the associated effects of cannabis-based medicinal products on health-related quality of life in several health conditions, there is a paucity of knowledge on the prevalence and subsequent effects of stigma on current and prospective patients” in the United Kingdom, reported the study.

The study observed that “evidence from countries which have greater experience with medical cannabis therapies shows stigma to be a factor in both prescribing practice and patient perception.”

The study observed that “evidence from countries which have greater experience with medical cannabis therapies shows stigma to be a factor in both prescribing practice and patient perception.” Interviews of Canadian patients revealed that the most common sources of stigma were “health care providers, law enforcement, and close relatives.”

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Why Does Alabama Only Let You Consume Peach-Flavored Edibles?

Alabama, which legalized medical weed back in 2021, is just now getting around to licensing cultivators, testing labs, processors, transporters, and dispensaries so qualifying patients can begin to have access. The catch? You can’t smoke it, and all the edibles you consume must be peach-flavored.

You see, if the edibles are cube-shaped (also stipulated by law) and peach-flavored, they’re somehow less likely to interest kids—at least that’s the state Senate’s logic after a heated floor debate, according to Alabama Reflector‘s Brian Lyman (and the new regulations).

“At one point the bill said it would have no taste, but (state Sen. Tim) Melson said that would cause people to gag. So the compromise was a single flavor,” Lyman told AL.com. “Maybe peach isn’t as attractive to people?”

This isn’t the first time lawmakers have used “for the children” justifications to attempt to regulate which products adults may legally buy. For over two decades, Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has documented the assaults on malt liquor, clove cigarettes, and any other vice that might possibly excite the taste buds of minors. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration banned flavored e-cigarette cartridges to “combat the troubling epidemic of youth e-cigarette use,” ignoring the many surveys in which ex-smokers report that flavored vape cartridges actually helped them quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. And the Alabama case isn’t the first time the kid safety justification has been used to justify the regulation of edibles.

Maryland regulators, who took forever to get their medical cannabis scheme off the ground, were further delayed back in 2019 because they needed to develop rules governing the appearance of edibles “to ensure the safety of minors.” (“I don’t want to deprive anyone of their medication, but let’s treat this like medicine, not make little gummy bears out of it,” said Republican state Sen. Robert Cassilly at the time.) New York has banned the marketing and advertising of cannabis products “designed in any way to appeal to children or other minors.”

In 2014, Colorado regulators deliberated over whether to ban practically all edibles before ultimately allowing a broader variety, but disallowing those shaped like animals, people, or fruit (which are also banned in California). In 2018, Washington state regulators mulled rules that would have banned certain shapes of edibles—along with the use of icing and sprinkles—before ultimately just banning the use of bright colors; per the authorities, product colors must fall within a “standard pantone color book that sets the list of colors and specified ranges within those colors.”

“If you go through a [New York] cannabis dispensary right now,” Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes told the Associated Press, “it’s almost absurd how youth-oriented a lot of the packaging and the products are.”

Lawmakers, regulators, and public health worrywarts are aided and abetted by a willing media. “Consumption of Marijuana Edibles Surges Among Children, Study Finds,” reads a New York Times headline from earlier this year. “3,000+ young children accidentally ate weed edibles in 2021, study finds,” adds NPR. (Though any accidental ingestion that results in hospitalization is worrying, no children died in any of the thousands of cases analyzed in the study—a not-insignificant point that few journalists pointed out.)

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The origins of weed: How the plant spread across the world

Cannabis has grown and evolved with humans for thousands of years. Many separate cultures cultivated the plant, using its seeds for food, its fibers to make textiles, rope, and other materials, and its buds as a medicine and psychoactive substance in spiritual ceremonies. Cannabis proved to be a very useful plant for our ancestors and it continues to be today.

If there was one thing our ancestors knew, it was the healing properties of cannabis. While the wonders of cannabis medicine may feel like a new discovery in the West, cultures in the East have used and documented it for thousands of years. 

Check out the story of cannabis—where it originated, how it spread across the globe, and which cultures used it. Learn how important the plant was to ancient humans and how it continues to be important to humans today. 

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The United States of Weed

IF IT SEEMS like a new state is legalizing cannabis nearly every week, don’t worry, you’re not high — states are indeed allowing adult-use of the drug at an unprecedented pace. If the wave of green legislation is slowing to some degree now, that’s only because so many states have already taken action. That doesn’t mean the wave will stop. Since our last update two years ago, numerous states have passed recreational or medical laws. At the same time, setbacks have come as ballot initiatives have been rejected. In other instances, lawmakers and certain governors remain steadfast in their opposition to pot. 

It’s now a question of when, not if, politicians in Washington, D.C., will get with the program and decide to do what the majority of Americans support by passing legislation to end federal prohibition once and for all. In 2022, Politico reported that over 155 million Americans lived in a legal cannabis state after the November 2022 Election Day results — inching closer to 50 percent of the population. In the meantime, states are continuing to prime themselves to legalize the drug, either for medicinal use, recreational use, or both. Here’s where things stand is all 50 of them.

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The 6,000-Year History of Medical Cannabis

Since the early 20th century, the use of cannabis for any purpose fell out of favor by both regulators and Western culture at large.

In the United States, a wave of regulations made access to cannabis more difficult starting from the late 1900s, ultimately culminating in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which effectively made cannabis use a federal offense. Meanwhile, prohibition in Canada lasted for 85 years until being lifted by recent developments.

Interestingly, however, this recent period of 20th century opposition is actually just a small speck in the wider 6,000-year timeline of cannabis. After all, the plant has been widely regarded for its therapeutic potential for many millennia by different cultures around the world.

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Circle K To Start Selling Marijuana At Its Florida Stores

In another big step along America’s path to normalizing the use of a once-taboo plant, major convenience-store chain Circle K will begin selling marijuana at its Florida gas stations. 

Circle K’s foray into the marijuana business will go live in 2023, through a partnership with Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries, a medical and recreational cannabis wholesaler and retailer with a presence in 15 states. Florida’s marijuana market is the country’s second largest, trailing only California.  

Green Thumb CEO Ben Kovler calls the new venture a “game-changer”: 

“The new RISE Express model is a huge step forward in making it easier and more efficient for patients to purchase high-quality cannabis as part of their everyday routine when stopping by their local convenience store.” 

Circle K parent Couche-Tard is a global pioneer. “Legal marijuana has so far been sold only in stand-alone dispensaries in the US and within pharmacies in countries such as Uruguay and Germany,” reports Bloomberg. Couche-Tard also has a Canadian convenience-store cannabis pilot with Fire & Flower.

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